Sandra Stewart | May 14, 2009
I’m excited to report that the Thinkshift® Credibility Quotient™ is ready for public consumption: we are beta testing it now, and would love your feedback.
We’ve been working on the CQ (as we call it in-house) for some time, and it’s exciting because as far as we know, this is the first system for measuring the credibility of communications—and letting people see how they stack up against competitors.
Why credibility? It’s a huge issue for companies trying to get people to adopt clean technology or a new approach, and for any company or institution promoting sustainability initiatives. (Don’t want to be accused of greenwashing? You’d better be credible.) It’s essential to being persuasive, whether you’re trying to convince people to buy a product or service, support your endeavors, or take action on an issue. And it’s just too important to assess based solely on insider impressions.
The CQ rates the credibility of any type of communication (websites, reports, marketing collateral) on a weighted 100-point scale. The system considers 10 factors integral to credibility and scores for each, with the most important receiving the most weight. The CQ rating (or grade) is the sum of those scores.
Thinkshift can provide a Credibility Quotient for a single communications vehicle or an entire program, or benchmark an organization’s communications against others in its field.
You can download a PDF that tells you more about how the CQ works and includes sample ratings (short versions) here: https://www.thinkshiftcom.com/ThinkshiftCQ_beta.pdf.
We’d love to know what you think: Do you see the value? Is it something your organization, or one you’re familiar with, could use?
Providing a score has to have ‘meaning’ for anyone to see the value. Quantification must link to Quality. Your own communication regarding your program’s value is very limited here, so I have my doubts. I do like the idea, however. But meaning must be integrated with the collective and individual values-sets and word-meanings of each organization. It must be able to learn and adapt to the system it is serving. Otherwise, you are producing another mono-nucleic system – an old-school design that eliminates diversity and thereby innovation …. thereby sustainability.
This has been very helpful for me to think more constructively about the quality of content on the sites we build. I posted more of my thoughts here: http://ow.ly/9qor