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Over the last 5 years there was a sharp increase in the number of education blogs in various areas such as art education, technology, creative writing, mathematics, or drama, from primary school level to lifelong learning approaches.
Despite this surge in education blogs, there haven't been many attempts at classifying the blogs according to their authority. We will present a ranking of education blogs ordered by their Onalytica Influence Index.
The Influence Index we compute at Onalytica shares the same idea with the impact factor that nowadays all academic journals publish on their cover. Essentially impact factors just represent what is common wisdom; that some publications matter more than others, and impact factors attempt to quantify this. Similarly, the Onalytica Influence Index measures the "punching weight" of education blogs compared to one another.
Our influence measuring methodology is based on the Input/Output model developed by the Nobel Prize winner Wassily Leontief.
The model takes into account all references and citations between the blogs. We developed three metrics for each blog: Influence Index, Popularity and Over-Influence.
The Onalytica Influence Index is the impact factor of a blog, or how much that blog matters.
Popularity represents how popular or well-known the blog is among other education blogs.
Over–Influence seeks to capture how influential a blog is compared to how popular it is. There is a strong correlation between how popular or well-known a blog is and its influence. However some blogs carry more influence than their popularity leads us to believe; this is what we call over-influence.
Below we present a list of 100 most influential education blogs ordered by their Onalytica Influence Index.
The most popular blog in our list is Larry Ferlazzo's blog, however it's not the most influential. Its over-influence is 0.8, meaning that the blog carries only 80% of the influence we would expect from how well-known it is.
The most influential is Dan Meyer's blog and its over-influence score of 1.6 means that the blog carries 60% more influence than we would expect from its popularity. Similarly, the Hack Education blog, the second most influential, is more than twice more influent than its popularity would lead us to believe.
The reason for a blog being over-influential, i.e. his over-influence is greater than 1, is that those who reference or cite the blog are themselves influential blogs.
Please contact us if we have missed any blogs or you would like more information on our influence measuring methodology.
One slide from the joint Samsung / Onalytica presentation “Using the digital debate in real-time to drive insight led strategy and execution”.
Key Benefits Of This Initiative:
- Ability to be “always on” for market perception and monitoring
- Instant market feedback where needed
- Provides ability to get data on areas we otherwise would not be able to
- Low-cost vs more traditional techniques
- Historical data available from outset (not the case with traditional research)
- Tools allow embedding of solution directly with teams to drive engagement
Global investment bank Jefferies has used Onalytica data and insight to inform their latest piece of equity research into brands whose business models leverage the “many-to-many” network of the Internet.
The research explores the growth dynamics and business models of UK comparison sites MoneySuperMarket and Rightmove, as examples of businesses which exploit the many-to-many dynamic in different ways. Our previous work with Jefferies includes research analysing the global Fashion debate and retail markets, which eventually led to a buy recommendation on ASOS based on our insights.
Using our InfluenceMonitor platform, we draw out brand insights from the online debate to see how these sites’ share of influence has developed over the quarters in comparison to their market competitors. As David Reynolds states, our method of analysing brands through the online debate is “The Onalytica Way”!
This article has more information about the importance of weighting for influence when using online analysis as both a reflection and predictor of movements in brand perception and other areas. Copies of our recent co-presentation with Samsung at the WARC Next Generation Research are also available if you would like more information about how our platform can help inform brand strategy.
At WARC’s recent conference, Next Generation Market Research, Oliver Harcourt from Samsung and I presented the story about how Samsung has implemented and are benefitting from Onalytica’s Voice-of-the-Market solution.
The solution is now powering real-time insight for a large number of stakeholders at all levels of the organisation.
Drop me an email here or Tweet (@flemming_ona) if you would like to receive a copy of the presentation.
With the global obesity epidemic becoming an increasingly critical issue for brands, we took a look at the US and UK obesity debates over the past 12 months to analyse the impact of obesity-related issues on businesses across a range of industries. Here are a few of our findings:
What is driving the debate?
The US and UK obesity debates are generally reactive, with spikes in the debate driven by events such as the Olympics, which led to criticism for McDonald’s, Cadbury and Coca-Cola over their sponsorship of the games, or campaigns such as the supersize soda ban in the US.
The primary issues currently driving the obesity debate in the UK are hot topics such as childhood obesity and the recently-proposed sugary cereal ban, while weight-loss reality TV show The Biggest Loser is currently the top debate driver in the US.
Largest brands attract most negative perception
McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are synonymous with fast food and sugary drinks within the global debate, receiving significantly more negative attention than competitors such as Subway and PepsiCo.
However, PepsiCo saw a spike in negative attention in December and January, driven by criticism surrounding the appropriateness of Beyonce’s sponsorship deal with Pepsi.
Cereals - US vs. UK perception
When it comes to cereal brands, Nestle dominates the share of negative attention within US debate in comparison with Kellogg’s. However, the reverse is true within the UK debate, giving the companies different reputation profiles across these regions.
However, the recently-proposed sugary cereal ban has driven additional negative sentiment towards Kellogg’s cereal products in the UK, with Frosties singled out by shadow health secretary Andy Burnham for its high sugar content. General Mills’ Sugar Puffs product and Kellogg’s Special K are also strongly associated with obesity, receiving high levels of negative attention.
UK supermarket brands
Over the past 12 months, Tesco is the supermarket most associated with obesity in the UK. However, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and ASDA received a positive sentiment boost between November and December 2012 as the result of research suggesting that supermarket ready meals are more healthy than recipes from celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver Nigella Lawson.
Please get in touch if you would like a more detailed breakdown of the key issues, brands, sentiment and emerging trends within the obesity debate.
While Social Media programmes are widespread, opinion is polarised as to whether these programmes reflect the marketplace as a whole. When implementing an online listening programme, it is important to know that your programme offers an accurate overview of the market. Taking influence into account ensures that your programme is a true reflection of the market, and that outcomes can be accurately measured.
THESE ARE INFLUENTIAL TIMES
Influence can be defined as the capacity of an individual, organisation or publication to impact upon the actions, views or opinions of others over whom they do not hold power. Influence is topical – that is to say, the amount of influence a stakeholder has will vary by subject matter, whether this be smartphones, fashion or finance. For example, an article in the FT about the performance of a major public company is likely to have a larger impact upon the firm’s corporate reputation and stock price than a similar piece by a private blogger. However, the FT probably has less influence than many blogs when it comes to subjects such as climate change or wildlife.
WEIGHT A MINUTE
Scoring stakeholders by topical influence shows how much “punching weight” they have in any given debate. This has important implications for brands, as influence is a reflection of how much a stakeholder can move the markets through their opinions. In the battle between competing brands within a marketplace, an influencer’s voice can lend additional firepower to a brand’s share of the debate, which in turn can translate into market share.
TESTING, TESTING
Ok, so we’ve established that influence weighting is important. But how can we be sure that this scoring is accurate? Firstly, the methodology behind influence scoring should be sound. At Onalytica for example, we use an influence-measurement technique developed by Nobel prize winner Wassilly Leontief. Secondly, it must lead to results. We have tested our methodology to predict outcomes such as market share movements and have found our results to be very accurate. One example includes our recent work with investment bank Jefferies.
Weighting for influence as well as analysing all types of online media means that your online listening programme has a better chance of providing a good return on investment. Get in touch if you would like more information on our influence methodology, or would like to build your own real-time online listening programme.
Together with Oliver Harcourt from Samsung Electronics Europe, I will be presenting at WARC’s Next Generation Research conference, Thursday 17th January 2013.
I’m excited about this conference because it focuses on ways of staying ahead with innovating digital approaches to market research.
Our presentation is titled “Using the digital debate in real-time to drive insight led strategy and execution” and focuses on 4 main issues:
- Why a new approach was needed for Samsung Europe to make a continuous, real-time loop between the digital debate and action.
- Finding the right tools to tap into the online debate, identify influencers and move from listening to analysis to insight, plus overcoming implementation challenges.
- Influencing communications and business strategy with instant market feedback on how sentiment is driving brand perception.
- Refining the solution for the next stage.
I am looking forward to a great day!
According to a recent report from Forrester Research, B2B marketers should increase their focus on influencer identification and engagement when planning their 2013 marketing strategies. While listening to the market remains an important element of an organisation’s communications strategy, actively engaging with influencers gives marketers an opportunity to shape their discussions and in turn have a measurable effect upon key metrics. There are a number of emerging tools that can help brands supplement their online listening analytics with influencer engagement solutions.
TALK IS CHEAP
Influencers are going to talk about your brand and products whether you engage with them or not. Positive or negative, amongst advocates or detractors, there are countless conversations about your company taking place across various online and social media channels. As a result, brands are increasingly moving beyond reactive responses to these conversations and towards proactive engagement with those influential in their key sectors and areas.
IF YOU DON’T, THEN SOMEONE ELSE WILL…
Interacting with influencers allows brands to steer their conversations in a direction that can lead to increased positive sentiment for the company, both amongst these influencers and their networks. Engaging with influencers in the right ways can not only boost the amount of positive dialogue and content created around your brand, but also ensures that your brand is indeed what they are talking about – if you are not working to actively shape these conversations, your competitors may already be doing just that!
GETTING ENGAGED
According to Forrester’s research, while 71% of B2B firms use listening tools as part of their market research, and 66% do so for brand tracking, just 40% are employing listening tools for influencer marketing purposes. This is because many existing platforms (such as Radian6 and Visible Technologies) are great for listening, but are less robust when it comes to influencer engagement. Furthermore, many of these platforms are overly focused on Twitter – as pointed out by Forrester, Twitter is far less influential than other forms of social media, for B2B audiences in particular.
THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE JOB
There are a number of rapidly-evolving solutions out there to help drive influencer engagement. Your choice of tool will depend greatly upon what it is you are trying to achieve with your strategy. You can read more about measuring the results of influencer marketing here, or if you want to get started on your own influencer program you can download a step-by-step guide here.