So Much Data #SXSWi
It seems that everyone is trying to figure out what to do with data, how to show it, and how to analyze it. There is data available in abundance with people sharing more than ever across social channels, mobile applications and web traffic.
At SXSW today, even in sessions where data wasn't the topic, data came up in the discussions. From journalistic storytelling to digital sports, participants were curious about what could be done with the data being captured. Even panelist from EA Sports said there is no such thing as too much data, they have a ton of it, but now they are trying to figure out what to do with it. Then, I ended the day with a session dedicated to data called Beautiful Data? No, that Data is a Sex Machine.In a room with everyone from hardcore developers to brand marketers, we had a discussion about how to mine the data and how to display the data. In general, displaying the data visually makes it easier for people to consume and comprehend the data (and when they can manipulate it themselves, it is even better). But how do we decide what data to visualize? Stew Langille, CEO of visual.ly said that infographics are not about the design, but rather about the story that the data can tell. We must look for the story, then wireframe it out and put it together like you are putting together the front page of the newspaper. Infographics should first be approached withan editorial mindset, a journalistic approach. This makes so much sense, yet most are not approaching it this way; instead they are approaching it as pretty pictures, making the data less meaningful.So this sounds really interesting and exciting, but how can marketers use data to engage their audiences? Langille and Visual.ly have been working with ad agencies and brands to figure this out. He gave the great example the Showtime series "Shameless": they worked with Visual.ly to create a application that allows users to create a "Shameless" character using their Twitter content. I don't watch the show, but I played with the application. For fun, you can see my "shameless" character here (though it is quite wrong!):Not only does data visualization have a role in consumer-facing communications and engagement, but using it inside organizations for metrics dashboards is a huge need. No one has the perfect model yet and everyone is still trying to figure it out. Companies like Visual.ly are providing tools to get closer to the product desired for visually tracking varying measurements and providing differing views depending on the user (i.e., CEO views vs. marketing views vs. digital strategy views).The bottom line is that everyone, from brand managers to consumers, are interested in looking at data in varying ways. Consumers are willingly sharing their data and enjoy seeing it fed back to them in interesting ways. As marketers, we need to be looking for the stories that we can tell within the data and then sharing those stories with anyone who will listen.