RonAmok!

I love data.

Whenever I get the keys to a client’s Web analytics, I feel like Indiana Jones, exploring cobweb-laced catacombs that contain hidden treasures which are just waiting to be discovered–treasures that frequently result in meaningful business intelligence. Unfortunately, though, I’ve learned that traditional business communicators don’t share my enthusiasm for online data analysis. Many view such activity as meaningless busywork, so, instead of rolling up their sleeves and wading deeply into the raw data, they cast fleeting glances at their automatically generated Web reports.

It’s understandable. Most marketing and PR folks still don’t understand the impact of a dynamic online marketplace. In the past, these professional business communicators reported on static measurements such as banner ad impressions or media mentions. Such metrics were good-enough when companies were the only initiators of online content, yet fall short of the task as 3rd parties (customers, prospects, competitors, and investors) have joined the online content party.

The amount of online content created about your company is increasing every day, and the effects of that content are becoming more significant. The question remains, “Does your company have a finger on the pulse of these effects?” If not, it’s like running into a dark forest without a helmet.

Most companies do nothing with the data that their analytics packages collect every day, and of those that do, even fewer perform analysis, preferring cursory looks at first-order results (unique visitors, page views, referrals, popular pages). First-order results work well in a traditional controlled content environment, but reveal their inadequacies in a dynamic online world. The real juicy business stories are found in the second-order calculations. Remember that old High School algebra and y=mx+b? Remember how to calculate the slope of a line?

Business stories are found in the second-order affects of Web analytics data. Rather than glancing at static numbers collected independently on a week-to-week basis, savvy communicators plot them over time. Enlightened business communicators study these graphs and ask questions such as:

• What is the slope of the data?
• Are the unique visitors rising or falling over time?
• Did the visits to a specific Web page spike and then return to its baseline level in a short amount of time? What could be the cause of that?
• Why did a number of people recently come to our Web site through someone else’s YouTube channel?
• Why did our company see a significant spike in Facebook fans over the past few weeks?
• Why is the fastest growing Web referral from Google tied to the keyword bad customer service?

Keep a close watch on these second-order effects. Find the trends. Once you do, you’ll be able to make smart executive-level decisions based on what you find.

Of course, if you’d like to hire a very smart consultant to show you how, I’m always available:-)

Photo Credit: vrkerbs

Tags: data y=mx+b algebra social media second-order effects ronploof measurements ronamok

Technologies in and of themselves are not very interesting. What people do with them, however, is. I’m fascinated with how people USE new technologies in their day-to-day lives.

Take Twitter for example. Standalone, the technology is new and interesting. But it wasn’t until I began using a desktop Twitter client called Tweetdeck that I noticed some self-behavioral changes.

I’ve found that the TwitScoop column in Tweetdeck is where I get all of my breaking news. Consisting of a tag cloud, the column represents Twitter’s trending topics. The larger the word, the more frequently it’s being used in Twitter-based conversations.

Last Tuesday, I returned to my computer after a few hours of client meetings to find the image above waiting for me. It didn’t take much imagination to see that the California Supreme Court had issued its ruling on “Prop 8,” the measure that banned same sex marriages in last November’s elections. The ruling caused such an emotional response that the Twitterverse lit-up with every conceivable opinion.

Tweetdeck was where I first heard about the plane that splash-landed in the Hudson. Tweetdeck is where I first heard saw the words “Mumbai” and “terrorists” — both examples arriving in Tweetdeck long before the mainstream press had a reporter on the scene. It has become the defacto place for your New Media Evangelist to get his breaking news.

How are New Media technologies influencing your day-to-day habits?

Tags:Twitter Tweetdeck Twitscoop Breaking-news New Media Evangelist

Yesterday, I got a call from Christy Simmons, an intern at Widgenie, asking me to take a look at a new data-display widget service. Since I’ve been contemplating a series on measurement, her timing was impeccable, so I checked it out.

Below is my first chart created using Widgenie. Data entry is as simple as uploading an Excel spreadsheet or a CSV file — the short training video is all I needed to get started.

I had a problem importing the data from an Excel 97-2004 formatted XLS file (created from three different sources (Open Office, Google Docs, and Excel 2008), but the native Excel 2008 and CSV files worked as advertised. Since the service is still beta (and free!), I’m willing to give ‘em a pass on this little annoyance. I used a CSV file exported from Open Office 2.4 to create this chart.

Embedding the chart into my blog was as simple as cutting and pasting some javascript — which opens up some interesting possibilities for content creators.

For example, lets say that you want to publish data that changes from week-to-week. Instead of creating a new chart every week, you simply update your spreadsheet and upload it to Widgenie, overwriting the old one. Since the widget is tied directly to the file on the Widgenie server, the data will always be up-to-date, rippling through to wherever the widget is embedded. I see this as an advantage for companies wanting to maintain live customized dashboards of all sorts of data.

Lastly, Widgenie also gathers stats. Since the widget is both embeddable and sharable, these stats will help you monitor where your data is traveling to and what sorts of traffic it generates. I’ll let you know how this is working for me over the next few months.

So far I like what I see, and this New Media Evangelist plans on using Widgenie to share and analyze data.

Update: I just noticed that the chart is not displayed in Google Reader. This is a little disappointing but hopefully Widgenie will figure out a way to make this happen.

Tags: New Media Evangelist Ron Ploof Widgenie widget widgets review data charts