Big Data : Case Studies, Best Practices and Why America should care

We know that Knowledge is Power. Due to Data Explosion more Data Scientists will be needed and being a Data Scientist becomes increasingly a "cool" profession. Needless to say that America should be preparing for the increased need for Predictive Analytics professionals in Research and Businesses.

Being able to collect, analyze and extract knowledge from a huge amount of Data is not only about Businesses being able to make the right decisions but also critical for a Country as a whole. The more efficient and fast this cycle is, the better for the Country that puts Analytics to work.

This Blog post is actually about the words and phrases being used for this post : All words and phrases on the title of the post (and the introductory text) were carefully selected to produce specific thoughts which can be broken down in three parts :

•  Being a Data Scientist has high value. 

• "Case Studies" and "Best Practices" communicate to readers successful applications and knowledge worthwhile reading.

• "America should". This phrase obviously creates specific emotions and feelings to Americans.

"Case Study" and "Best Practices" were phrases found to be commonly associated with posts of high visibility. You might also get many views if you create a post which proves that whatever concept you are writing about is the right thing to do (for example write a post that clearly demonstrates yet another reason to use Social Media and have this post shown to Social Media Professionals).  Regarding our example : It is very probable (and logical) for Data Miners to look at and then re-tweet (or otherwise share) information which is a "proof" about Data Mining being useful  and also a "cool" profession. The higher concept / motive which works behind the scenes is that "I am doing the right job and this post proves it".

You might also get many views by submitting a post which disproves well-accepted concepts or posts that demonstrate the difficulties that well-accepted concepts face : For example, if you were a Data Scientist or a BI Professional, you would be inclined to read a post titled "Big Data is a Big Hype".  Whether you will re-tweet or share the post is of course under your discretion. At this point it should be noted that there is a big difference between number of clicks of a post and the number of shares it got (by Retweeting it, Liking it, etc) because sharing a post means that this post is considered worthwhile to read.

All of the above (and much more) have been found by analyzing thousands of Blog posts along with their number of clicks and shares they got (either by RT's , FaceBook "Likes", etc) and this is what i will be presenting in Text Analytics World in New York this October. It was also very interesting to see that some findings are in tandem with findings discussed by Joseph Carrabis during the Text Analytics Summit 2011 in Boston back in May. 

Of course it is not suggested  that   by using specific words and phrases you are guaranteed a successful post being re-tweeted from thousands of people and there are many reasons for this which i will not get into here. Additionally, Text Analytics cannot infer the higher meaning and concepts suggested within Text and this problem deserves a post on its own. This analysis however identifies concepts and/or phrases that point Bloggers and Marketers to look at a specific direction and with this knowledge to have increased probabilities for a successful Web presence. Again, this is an example of true Social Media Intelligence. Not (just) Reports.

So, in case that this post title immediately got your attention from other posts, you've just had a little taste of Predictive Analytics in action.

Do Social Media Monitoring tools provide True Intelligence?

Having recently read a report from WebLiquid one of the interesting facts to consider is that around 70% of Marketers replied finding the insights gleaned from Social Media Monitoring tools "Somewhat Valuable".  Slightly more than 20% of them found these insights "Extremely valuable". The report also shows that most Marketers plan to invest more in SMM tools with few of them retreating from any further investment.

This is Big News. 70% of Marketers finding insights gleaned from SMM tools "Somewhat" valuable is not a good thing and perhaps there are reasons for this. It would be very interesting to know what do Marketers consider Insights, how they prioritize those Insights and how easily they can act once they have those insights . The problem can be summarized in one sentence:


- Marketers do not want (just) Reports.

There is a lot of useful information provided by many Social Media Monitoring tools  : The number of mentions of a Brand (or Product or Service) per channel, which users talk frequently about your Brand  (and which of them are considered influential). Sentiment Analysis provides Marketers with the perception of a Brand but also the perception about competitive Brands leading to what is known as Competitive Intelligence. Perhaps Social Media Monitoring platforms have many types of metrics still to offer : For example, a potentially useful metric could be the ability to identify Consumer  Intentions ("I will definitely buy...") and how these intentions differentiate - such as "I would buy 'ABC' if it was cheaper" or "I would buy 'ABC' if i hadn't  purchased 'XYZ' already".

Notice that SMM tools provide metrics  : Number of mentions per channel, Top influential users, percentage of positive / negative / neutral sentiment and sentiment intensity, how mentions of a new product disperse through different social media channels, etc. 

But what is considered Intelligence in Social Media? Would someone identify as intelligence the fact that during the past 2 months there was an increase in specific Brand Mentions on Twitter but not on YouTube? Or is it Intelligence when we notice that there has been a decline in positive sentiment about a product?  All of this information is Reporting and Feedback. It is not meant that this is not useful information :  It is important to know what is happening and why.

So what True Intelligence is all about?

True Intelligence is about knowing how to successfully Promote and Market a Brand, Product or Service. To do that a Marketer wants to know the Best Practices : With Social Media Reports, Marketers know what is happening (a decline in positive mentions on our new smartphone) and why this is happening (a potential hardware problem). Social Media Analytics can identify the right strategies to make things happen. True Social Media Intelligence is about knowing which parameters (channels, number of mentions) are important in achieving a result. Is it important to have a product associated with intense (positive) sentiment? Or could it be more important to have a Product being highly associated with Rumors?

There is still a long way to go in terms of Insights from Social Media Monitoring tools. There are many processes and parameters that will eventually used for deriving more Insights and better Strategies. The answer to true Social Media Intelligence is the use of Predictive Analytics (Data and Text Mining)  applied to Social Data : One area that is currently untouched by most Social Media Monitoring tools.