Getting The Data Habit

In the Digital Strategy Sessions I run I often talk about acquiring the data habit. The world of web analytics and data can be utterly overwhelming for those who are coming to it for the first time. It’s the part of the digital marketing ecosystem where jargon and strange language goes on steroids and the whole thing can easily sound like a geeky maths class. Even when looking at simple tools, such as Google Trends, it can be easy to get lost in the vast data sets that it uses. How can so much information be so meaningless is the sense that I think a lot of people – understandably – have. That’s why it’s important to find a single business-related issue and focus on that. And then, crucially, keep on returning to that data on a regular – maybe weekly – basis. The next step is to find a way to log the changes that you see and the picture will begin to appear. You could do this with a few screen shots – or maybe download a CSV file and create a chart in Excel. It doesn't have to be too clever to begin with. Perhaps just try following a company’s brand name on Google Trends and see how it changes over time. Before you know it, you will have developed the data habit.