March 29, 2015
This week’s subject of Information Aggregators is of personal interest as I tend to be a data hound when it comes to my marketing methodology. When I look to a new strategy, campaign, initiative, I love to research not only what data we have, but also what it is – and isn’t – telling me about trends, performance and opportunities.
The white paper, “From Information to Audiences: The Emerging Marketing Data Use Cases” (January 2012) was both enlightening but also reaffirming in what I’ve personally encountered in my professional experience. A quote in the Executive Summary really hit home and set the tone as I read the rest of the paper:
Today, even while some enjoy modest success in redeploying their existing resources to the new cross-channel task, most other marketers—saddled with legacy technology platforms, depleted of expertise by years of underinvestment and structured only to support “traditional” approaches to data usage—are finding they’re woefully unprepared for this transformation.
While I know a future class and subject will be big data and its usage, many companies, websites, social networks/platforms are all gathering very large amounts of data on usage, engagement, a performance. The above quote I think accurately exemplifies the challenges businesses face when trying to make sense of what they’ve got and what they can do with it.
The ultimate solution isn’t a tool, but a strategy on what you’re collecting, what it means, what you could stop collecting, and what you need to collect to next then determine what to do with it and how to activate it into successful within existing or new marketing programs.
The subsequent articles this week related to social content and aggregation, both positive and negative, are interesting in and unto themselves. The idea that Reddit had to communicate new guidelines or values for journalists is somewhat foreign, but only reinforces the “trolling” aspect of online behavior with guidelines quoted as, “Please respect redditors who may wish to stay anonymous, or not be featured in an article.” Anonymity carries a certain amount of power, intrigue, and when leveraged by a trusted source can be detrimental to society by disrupting communication and rallying bandwagon behavior around false or artificial pretenses.
Anonymous Content, Big Data, Data Marketing, Information Aggregators, Information Analysis,