Available and Measurable Data
Sunday, January 31st, 2010In order to quantify all the responses, I had to essentially transcribe each entry into tags that I could sort and filter. For each question, I would run through the responses and extract the pertinent information… the things I ate or drank, where we went, the topics we discussed. Everything was reduced to a tag with as much specificity as provided.
Personal metric maven Nicholas Felton had that to say about the data he collected for his 2009 Annual Review. He’s really on to something, as I’m sure you can gather. But it’s something that I don’t think he specifically addressed. Measurable data is widely available for us, as marketers, to tally, measure, analyze and use. Surveys aren’t a necessity any more; they’re a nice to have.
I’ve always had issues with (filling out) surveys. For one, I’m constantly trying to figure out what the survey is really getting at. Second, they are typically too long and when they are offer me choices, like a multiple choice question, the answer I want to put is never there (it’s easier to measure though is what we’re told). And lastly, what’s the incentive for filling out the survey truthfully?
My belief is that we can use the internet for our surveys. Take for example, Turkey Twitter. We started out with the specific hashtag we wanted to measure (#turkeytwitter), however as we saw what was happening we realized there were 3 or 4 different hashtags that would gather better information.
Now, how can we pull data bits that are valuable out of a tweet that says, “I’m #thankful for friends, my dog beau, this cranberry sauce and world peace”. It’s easy. By analyzing what is in the data set we can break down that this person was thankful for “friends”, “dog”, “cranberry sauce/food” and “world peace”. It sounds simple, but I’m not sure how well it’s being used. Maybe someone could point me to some examples out there (companies using this data, tools out there, etc)?
So, I guess my point is that the web has allowed us this infinite pool of data to use for our research. I propose we, as marketers, do our jobs and use this data more routinely in our work.
PS. Having said all that, I do want to use a similar survey mechanism that Felton used for his survey. I think that’s powerful data and the quantified self is something I’m very interested in. In his case, he had to initiate the data through a survey as there are likely no tweets that will specifically address a meeting with him to the level of data he was interested in tracking. Sounds like a pretty good excuse to get some letterpressed business cards!
