How big is your data? It's not the size of data that counts, it's how you use it
Big data. It is as impenetrable a concept for communicators as it is de rigueur. Which makes big data something of a contradiction for PR agencies.
Word Cloud of Wikipedia's Big Data Page
The use of data is growing daily in our industry - at Grayling it now defines our way of doing business - but whatever your exposure to it, knowing what to do with data is another matter altogether.
Look at the evidence: 600 tweets per second; two million blog posts, 250 million photos uploaded to Facebook and 864,000 hours of video content uploaded to YouTube per day; just the word 'news' brings instant access to nearly 30,000 articles on the front page of Google News. Making sense of it all for the benefit of clients seems a long way off when you get started.
Of course that's why we have all invested in analysis tools: to make sense of it all. They certainly help. From identifying high-value online influencers to share-of-voice snapshots, thematic trends to peaks and troughs in social traffic - suddenly the data makes sense!
Or does it? On a practical level it is still the imperative of the analyst (ie. you and me) to convert the data into insight, and insight that matters.
The central tenet of PR is to secure influence and endorsement, to build reputation - a task made easier the more you can hone in on an audience's needs and desires. So the irony of big data is that we don't need big, we need right. Which often means small: we've all used 'targeted' in a proposal recently, haven't we?
The threat of big data is that it's getting bigger, more impenetrable, harder to digest. I no longer expect a quick win when starting a piece of research. I think it takes time to understand what the statistics are really telling you.
The tonic in all of this, however, is that it does work! I am a believer. I think rooting a strategy in data breeds a more measurable PR campaign. I think knowing a challenge - really knowing it - gives you a more honest starting point with a client.
So, in case the big data maze sometimes throws a dead end your way, here are five pointers - they might just allow some light to filter through the blockage:
1. Ask not what the data is telling you, but what you want to find out: when the information starts to look overwhelming, remembering why you're looking often re-focuses your attention.
2. Don't assume that statistics are better than intuition: you were hired for your PR instincts, so trust yourself if something doesn't feel right - at the very least, test something that you weren't expecting.
3. Start on a tangent: if you want to understand your banana-growing client's place in the world, maybe have a look at fruit vs vegetables as whole categories, or banana food miles - specificity will reap rewards so it's up to you to think differently.
4. Read, read, read: there is literally no substitute for actually reading the articles, posts and blogs sitting behind the data you are looking at. Do this and your analysis of the graphs and charts will be informed, not flippant.
5. Distrust data: yes, after all that, you must be sceptical of what you're looking at. A common flaw of PRs looking at statistics is to think they are irrefutable. Information is not inherently useful, it is simply there. What's useful is what you already know, from your brief, from your industry know-how, from your experience. Combine the two.