In this episode of The Unnoticed Show, host Jim James introduces the Active Communications Index (ACI), a simple scoring system designed to help businesses assess the adequacy of their public relations efforts. The ACI evaluates three core variables—content (quantity and quality), channels (number and diversity of platforms), and frequency (regularity of publishing)—and combines them into a 0‑100 score that classifies an organization into one of four categories: Unnoticed (0‑25), Follower (26‑50), Opportunist (51‑75), or Influencer (76‑100). Jim walks listeners through a quadrant model that maps content quality against publishing consistency, explaining how each quadrant aligns with the four categories. He then provides tailored, actionable prescriptions for each category: - Unnoticed: innovate content, add new channels, and schedule more frequent posts. - Follower: refresh dull content, expand channel usage, and automate publishing. - Opportunist: repurpose existing innovative content, broaden channel reach, and establish consistent publishing habits. - Influencer: deepen influence across concentric communities, create new revenue assets (courses, books), optimize audio/video and geographic targeting, and engage internal and partner audiences. Throughout, Jim cites practical tools such as Lately, Lumen5, and mo.work, and encourages listeners to use a spreadsheet version of the ACI, contact him for personalized help, and subscribe to the show. The episode blends instructional guidance with motivational encouragement, aiming to empower businesses to take control of their communication workload and let results speak for themselves.
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Hi, welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Show. Now, the question I've got for you today is, are you a follower? Are you an opportunist? Are you an influencer? Or are you just simply unnoticed? That's because on this show today, I'd like to go through some work that I'm doing at the moment on what I'm calling the Active Communications Index. Now, the ACI for short is a formula which leads to a synopsis which helps a business owner to decide if they're doing enough work for their publicity. Now, the reason I think this is important is because many clients that I work with are not consistent about how they communicate in their marketing. So I've devised the ACI to measure 3 variables, because in my experience, it's these 3 variables that are most important in your public relations. It's content, channels, and frequency. Now, when I map out these 3 variables, I am able to come up with some numbers, and the variables that give me the numbers give me 3. When I map out these variables, what happens is that I get a number. I get a number from 0 to 100, and within these numbers, I can put different companies' profiles into different categories of being a follower, an opportunist, an influencer, or just simply unnoticed. So I'm sharing this because this is something I'm working on now, and I'd love to get your feedback on it because I've spoken to so many entrepreneurs and big companies, and actually they don't know how much is enough. If you don't know how much work is enough, then the ACI could give you a good guide to that. Now everyone is so focused on getting work seen, on what we might call the vanity metrics of impressions and page views, but they don't necessarily measure the work that it's taking to get them seen. So this Active Communications Index is a very simple formula. So you can work out if you and your team are doing enough work every week in order to be consistent and have engagement with your various audience groups. And I talk about audience groups as being internal, your allies, and your external. What I want to do is just to share with you the methodology of the ACI, because you can apply this yourself straight away. What we have to do is to start to look first of all at these 3 different elements. Now content very simply is how much content are you creating on a daily or a weekly or monthly basis. Secondly is the channels. How many channels are you using? Many companies are using of course Facebook or Twitter and LinkedIn, maybe 2 or 3, or maybe YouTube, but there are many other channels as well that you can think about, which include Medium, for example, or Issuu, or also Outbrain, having your own Vimeo channel. So there are many channels that many companies currently are not using. Thirdly, frequency. How often are you publishing your content? So with these 3 variables, when we enter these into a simple formula, I can give you then a classification. Yes, it's a bit simple, But I think that may be useful for people to then start to identify which areas they can work on. And what I'm going to do later on in this podcast is explain some of the remedies that you can have, which are all free and easy to implement. First of all then, if we enter your data into our formula and it goes from 0 to 25, I'm sorry, but you're going to be unnoticed. Okay? And I'm going to count for you and share with you what these numbers look like in just a moment. Next, if you get from 26 to 50, you're probably a follower. 51 to 75, you're an opportunist. And 75 to 100, an influencer. Now, if I just ask you to maybe close your eyes and think of a quadrant with obviously on one axis we've got content and on the other axis we've got frequency. So at midnight, if you like, at 12 o'clock, we've got consistent content, and at 6 we've got inconsistent, and at 3 o'clock we've got innovative content, and at 9 o'clock we've got dull content. Now, if you're creating content inconsistently and it's dull, it's not going to get picked up. You're going to be unnoticed. If you're creating content consistently but it's dull, then you'll be a follower. If you're creating content which is innovative but inconsistent, you're really being an opportunist. Now, if you're creating constantly— now, if you're creating consistent innovative content, then of course you're going to become an influencer. Okay, so the next thing I want you to think about is With these 4 quadrants, which are defined by the amount of content you create, where you put it, and how often you publish it, then we've got these 4 categories. We can create some, some plans and some strategies for you to implement on how to get to the top right-hand corner. Okay then, so what I've got then is a table in front of me, which if you want, I can happily send to you later. And on this table, I've got the list of my 4 categories. I've got Influencer, I've got Opportunist, I've got Follower, and I've got the Unnoticed. And just to the right-hand side, I've got the condition. That is the condition that your company or yourself are in. So I'm going to go through those, then give you prescriptions of what you can do depending on the category that you find yourself in. So just to summarize, if you're an influencer, then your content is innovative, you utilize an optimal number of channels, and you are consistent in your publishing. If you're an opportunist, your content is innovative, but you're sporadic in your outreach, and you use a limited number of channels. If you're a follower, your content is dull, you're consistent probably though with your outreach because you're trying to keep up, and you use a limited number of channels. And if you're unnoticed, then your content is dull, and you're sporadic in your outreach, and you utilize a limited number of channels. Okay, so those are the definitions. Now, if we look at prescriptions, and we all really want to be in that top right-hand corner, where instead of us chasing customers, customers are chasing us. Okay, let's start with the unnoticed amongst us. The unnoticed in terms of your content— your content is probably dull, you're not using enough channels, and you're sporadic in your outreach. What can you do about that? On the content front, it's time to innovate and stop following what's been seen in the marketplace, either as best practice or even just something you've read. Let's look at the opportunities of storifying your business as we talk about in the Speak PR program, how you can put the customer into the center of the story, make them the hero, and create a whole new body of content around who your business serves as customers, as your staff, and also your partners. On the channels front, it's time to increase the number of channels that you're using. Maybe currently you're using the channels that you're familiar with, but they may not be the channels that the next body of audience may be using. For example, let's say you're comfortable with LinkedIn, but you're not using medium.com for those articles. What channels can you be adding in order to extend your reach? And the third, frequency. Now, currently, if you're unnoticed, you're probably not scheduling enough. You're not sharing enough content frequently enough. So your content is appearing every now and again. And it also may not be scheduled when people are ready to read it or watch it or listen to it. Especially the case if you're working across time zones. For myself, I have listeners and clients in Asia, and America and Europe. So I have to be really careful about when I send my content out. How can you schedule your content to be more frequent? And more consistent. If you're a follower, then my definition is that your content is pretty dull. You're probably using a limited number of channels, but you are consistent in your outreach because you're trying to keep up. You're not left behind like an unnoticed, but also you're just part of the also-rans. Now, your content, then it's time to innovate. What could you do to start to lift your content? How could you find content to be more fun, more leading edge? Could you be using more research in your content? Could you be showing more pictures in your content? Could you be using video, for example? With channels, it's time to extend the number of channels that you've got. As I've said before on the Unnoticed, you may already be using some channels that you're familiar with, but you may not be using those that not so comfortable with. You may be just embedding your content, for example, on a generic YouTube page. You may not have got it within your own YouTube channel. You may not be using some of the other platforms like Reddit, for example, which is very good in the B2B space. Now, what about frequency? Now, you're probably sending out enough content, but you're probably doing it manually because you're sending out content because you want to keep up with everybody else, but it's probably not going out in an automated way. You're probably just seeing when people posting things, or when you've got something, then you send it out. So get it scheduled, get it batched so it can go out more frequently. Now, the opportunist. Your content is innovative, but you're only using a limited number of channels, and you're sporadic in your outreach. You're really taking the opportunity when it arises for maybe an interview or a podcast, or maybe a tweet, or following up on somebody else's original article, but you've got something that moves that whole conversation on. So you're an opportunist, but actually you've got all the potential to become an influencer. Your content can be enhanced. You've got some great ideas that can be read and heard and watched by more people. Now, if you don't have time to create more original content— and many opportunists are actually innovators, they've got plenty of great content— you can repurpose it. You can take several pieces of content and put them into a platform like Lately, .com, and it will automatically generate multiple iterations of that content for you. For example, you can use a platform like Lumen5 where you include a web address, a URL for your blog, and it automatically creates video for you. What channels can you add? Take a look now at the number of channels that you're publishing your content on, and could you add them? Could you add some more? For example, do you have a Wikipedia page? If you are innovative, maybe you've got some patents, maybe you've got a copyright or a trademark. What channels could you add to take that great content that you've got and put it in front of more people? And frequency— again, this is probably the weak point for the opportunist. You're sending it out as and when you think there's a good moment. That could be, for example, around a trade show or a speaking conference, but Consistency in communications is key. If you're not communicating on a regular basis with your audience, then they don't know that they can rely on you and trust you. So just like a friendship, people will only buy from someone that they trust. And like a friendship, they will get to trust you over time if you're always there for them. So scheduling that content across multiple channels is going to move you to the top right quadrant. Now let's just look at those people in the top quadrant. You're already producing innovative content, you're using your optimal number of channels, and you're consistent in your publishing. So you've got a great Active Communications Index of 75 or above. What can you do to get better? It may be that you're an influencer in your own particular niche or in your own community, but how can you grow your influence outside into concentric communities. This is how you can build your audience and build your business, is by bridging into new communities. And of course, this is what media relations is all about. It's about going into the communities that are owned and managed by publishers. Could you start to think about content where you are registering as intellectual property, for example, and making into a course? Could you have your content as an asset, for example, as a book? Could you create new revenue streams? Could you start to think about partnering and having your content on other people's websites? Could you start to have your content go in as contributed articles, for example? In terms of channels, have you really optimized audio and video channels fully? But also, have you started to think about the channels by time zone, for example? To make geography-specific content, translated content if you're working across multiple languages, for example? And finally, have you thought about your internal partner audiences? Most people think that the communication they're doing is external, about winning new customers, but it's also about bringing all those members of the team with you, the people that you pay and those people that you rely on that you don't pay directly. Could you start, for example, to have a partner newsletter? Could you start to have internal engagement platforms that you can use? And there are quite a few of them now where you can give, for example, rewards, like this one called mo.work. Now, what about frequency? How frequently are you reaching out? Are you mapping out the avatars? In other words, your ideal customer profile. And do you know when they actually access the information on what device? I just recently made some videos for a client, and if it's going into China, we need to make sure that the video is mobile phone friendly. But if it's going out on LinkedIn, it needs to be landscape. But in both situations, people need subtitles because they're not going to be listening to the audio on the train when they're driving, or if they are on the train, or at work rather. If you're an influencer, How do you move over and above that area where you currently are? So with the Active Communications Index, this is really a very simple formula that I'd like to suggest you can start to put in place. And I have this as well on a spreadsheet, and it works out for you where you lie. But you really don't need the formula. If you take a look, how much content do you create, which channels do you have set up, and how frequently do you send it out? I'm going to be doing more work about the Active Communications Index and putting it online as a test. Just wanted to put this out there so that you could hear it, and if you've got any questions or you'd like to work with me on it or like to have your own company work through it, then please just contact me, jim@esospr.com. Thank you so much for listening, and I really hope that you can see the ACI as an index that you can use internally and with your partners to measure how much work goes into your marketing And then what will happen is the metrics will reflect how much work you put in. Take control of how much work you put in, and then let the results speak for themselves. My name is Jim James. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Unnoticed Show. Do please subscribe or send me an email or join me on LinkedIn. Jim James, East West Public Relations. Thank you and God bless. Stay safe.
