Predictive Alerts are now live in NewsWhip Spike, allowing you to get advance notice of any important news in your space.
As of this week, we’ve introduced Predictive Alerts in NewsWhip Spike. Through email and Slack, these Alerts will notify you of any stories and social posts about to gain engagement in any topic, keyword, language or segment of your choosing – and even reveal how much engagement each story is projected to get.
The Alerts, built on our vast real-time data capability, are powered by the most sophisticated predictive algorithm in the market today.
We expect this functionality to be transformative for how journalists monitor their beats, and how communicators monitor crises and opportunities for their clients.
Predictive Alerts for PR
For communications professionals dealing with today’s volcanic news cycle, Predictive Alerts will spot – and quantify – any potential reputation threats. Those experts can see how big a story will become and advise on the right response, confident in the fact that they have the backing of a robust dataset.
The stakes here are high for companies, for whom reputational damage can cause long-term issues. According to a ten-year study of S&P 500 companies, a reputational crisis can cause a company’s stock price to drop an average of 20 percent, with an average recovery time of 80 weeks.
Last week, Marshall Manson of Brunswick Group talked about using our predictive technology in three major recent brand crises.
As Marshall writes, “there’s a lot of buzz about data, but too often it’s disconnected from purpose. Predictive analysis supports a focus on purpose, empowering decision makers to deal with communications efficiently, minimize disruption and address substantive problems. That’s a big win.”
And that’s just one of the use cases. Predictive Alerts will also make spotting and combating the spread of misinformation a much more refined process.
Combating Misinformation with Predictive Alerts
Mark Twain once said that a lie can travel around the world twice before the truth can get its boots on. (Well actually he probably didn’t, but that sort of proves the point.)
If that was true 100 years ago, in the era of telegrams and daily newspapers, imagine how true it is today. The entire adult population is connected with social apps, like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, and in recent years has become primed for jumping on bandwagons of outrage and justice. Today, misinformation can travel around the world hundreds of times a minute.
With our new Predictive Alerts capability, any falsehoods ‘going viral’ will quickly be notified to the people who can do something about it. And the truth might stop losing the first round of the battle with falsity.
In recent years, voters in the US, France, Germany, and the UK have all been mislead through deliberate campaigns of misinformation, designed to tap into existing prejudices and assumptions, and spread on social networks. Each time, the press got wind of the problems too late. With these Alerts, we’re aiming to change that.
Drawing on 3 Billion Data Points
Our Alerts are built on a robust dataset. Since 2014, NewsWhip has monitored real-time social engagement of over three billion news stories and social posts. This data has allowed us to build algorithms to project how much traction each and every one is likely to get.
Our Predictive Alerts draw on wide foundations, but will send alerts only on specific events, based on criteria set by you. For instance, you may wish to be notified every time a story about Samsung is published and is predicted to reach 100 interactions.
When a story is identified, we’ll send you an email with context on the story. You can click through to the Spike dashboard to get an in-depth view of the story – including how engagement is predicted to grow and which social accounts are amplifying it.
The alerts are real-time – so you’ll be the first to know once a story breaks. There’s no limit – so you can create as many as you want. And you can choose to get alerts by email or Slack – integrating directly into your workflow.
Get Set Up!
We invite you to take a look for yourself, and let us know how you find them.
We’ve got details on getting your Predictive Alerts here – or drop a line to your account manager.
If you’re not a NewsWhip client and would like to have a look, you can take a tour of Spike here.
