Case Study - Data Collection and Scoring for Coverage Visualization

The Mule has allowed us to develop our reporting capabilities to include broad data collection for high-level analysis, offering opportunities to visualize coverage trends in new ways.

The Challenge: 

A company in the mobile apps industry brought us on to gather global press coverage and to help maintain a spreadsheet in Google Drive built to store all of their coverage metrics.  This spreadsheet included over 10 data points for each article, including: 

• Article Sentiment/Tone: was the company referenced in a positive, neutral, or negative way?
• Vertical: which types of apps are being discussed – Games, Tech, Travel, Media & Entertainment, etc.)
• Geographical Region: where outlet was based
• Was the article a Feature on the company or a brief Mention?

Using custom inputs in The Mule, we could create article tags to save each of these metrics, and then export to an Excel doc for review.

We also collected Alexa Global Rank for each article, which could be pulled into The Mule automatically using an API – so we didn't have to consult a separate website.  This data was used to organize coverage into three Tiers, with higher ranked outlets considered Tier 1. 

After working with us for some time, we were asked to use the coverage metrics we were already collecting to give each piece of coverage a weighted score.  These scores could be used to map data using charts for presentations shared with the company's executives.  

The Approach: 

The primary data used to determine scoring was whether coverage would be considered a Feature article on the company or a brief Mention, along with Tier based on Alexa Global Rank.  We assigned a relative value to these coverage metrics, then weighted each score by taking into consideration coverage Sentiment and details around the significance of the article: whether the company was mentioned in an article title, or if an executive was quoted. 

With the custom inputs built into The Mule, we could either choose from a list of base scores using a dropdown menu, or enter a final weighted score manually that could be saved in the report.