Using Data to Create Relevant Content for Facebook

Creating content for social media can challenging. How do you know if users are responding to your content? Likes, comments and shares can only tell marketers so much. How can we tell if our content is connecting with our target audiences?

Measuring Relevancy
Facebook has an answer - the Facebook relevancy score. Once your content is seen by 500 people, Facebook is able to gauge how users are responding to the content. Relevancy score is used on a scale of 1-10, one meaning audiences are reacting poorly to the content, ten meaning the response to the content is phenomenal and seriously resonating with the audience.

In order to gauge the content, Facebook examines how audiences react to the posts. Are they clicking on the content, liking or sharing the post or clicking through to the website? Or are they hiding scrolling past content, ignoring content or worse - blocking or hiding the post. Facebook examines these behaviors and then gives each paid post a score once it gauges the reaction of 500 people. If a lot of people are ignoring or hiding the post, it will receive a lower relevancy score than a post that people are liking and sharing.

Improving Your Content
Once marketers have these scores they can use them to create more relevant posts moving forward. Measure relevancy of posts throughout the month and when it comes time to organize content for the next month, there is a plethora of information to draw from. Marketers can look at the most relevant posts and identify patterns in the content. If audiences are responding more to certain subjects marketers can create more posts about those subjects. If audiences are finding certain types of posts more relevant than marketers can adjust the content accordingly. If audiences are responding more to certain types of content, like video or links to blogs, then future content can be tailored to fit into those post types.

Advantages

Some advantages to posting content on Facebook that resonates with the target audience (other than that fact alone) are increased post reach and decreased cost. If an ad account consistently turns out content that ranks high with audiences, Facebook will show that content to more people than an account that produces ads that turn out lower relevancy scores, even if the audience is exactly the same. This is an advantage for brands that work to increase relevancy with their audiences, and an incentive to improve for ad accounts that do not. Another advantage of using relevancy tracking is decreased ad costs. Over time Facebook will show ads to more people for the same cost if relevancy scores are high. There is a financial incentive for brands on Facebook to produce great content.

Disadvantages
As positive as the relevancy score is, there are some downsides to relevancy tracking. It is pay to play - in order for Facebook to come up with a relevancy score for ads and posts, they need to be boosted or paid. The posts also need to reach an audience of at least 500 people. If a post is boosted and does not reach at least 500 people Facebook will not be able to generate a relevancy score. This means that businesses need to be able to invest in their Facebook marketing. Some small businesses may not have large enough budgets to really take advantage of relevancy tracking, it changes the playing field for brands on social.

Overall the Facebook relevancy is a useful tool for marketers that allows us to use data to analyze our content and optimize content strategy moving forward month to month.

Big Data, Big Tools

With Big Data comes big tools. Data sets have grown dramatically in the past five years and continue to quickly expand. A decade ago Big data used to mean thousands of records, but now Big Data encompasses millions and billions of number sets. With data this big we need to use some powerful tools in order to perform proper analysis. Below is a review of some of the popular tools businesses are using to analyze their data.

SAS
SAS is a powerful program that can do a lot of fun things. Using SAS Enterprise Miner allows users to perform association, linear regression, cluster analysis, uplift and more within minutes. Setting up a workflows and creating models are simple once familiarity with the platform is established. Filters can be added to partition the data and separate out the portions of data that are specifically needed to solve a problem. This can be extremely useful for big data sets with thousands of variables. The results can be tricky to decipher, sometimes different drop-downs need to be used to switch views or discover hidden pieces of data results.

SAS Visual Analytics is an amazing tool. Variables appear down the left hand column of the screen and users can literally drag and drop two variables into the work area to produce a graph or chart of the data. Autocharting is a feature that automatically selects the best type of chart or graph for the data variables a user drags into the workspace. The software is able to analyze the relationship between the types of data being used and instantly produces a visual result. The intuitive autocharting feature definitely makes the program more user friendly. The filers are intuitive and drilling down to reach the correct data variable is less complicated than in SAS Enterprise Miner.

Excel Miner 
Even Microsoft is capitalizing on the data mining trend. Excel Miner is an extension of Microsoft Excel that allows users to work with sets of data that would normally not be compatible with the regular program. The Excel Miner extension is simple enough to install, but the program can be slow when taking in larger data sets. Excel Miner allows users to perform some of the same types of analysis as they would in SAS, but it takes a lot longer to perform some of the same tasks. Running regression in Excel Miner may take forty five minutes to set up, where you could run the data set in SAS Enterprise Miner and be finished in twenty five minutes.

Tableau
As someone who appreciates design and user experience, Tableau has the most aesthetically pleaseing interface of the tools I have used. The navigation is clear, the layouts are clean and the icons make tools easy to distinguish and easy to find. Tableau’s drag and drop features are easy to navigate. Dragging elements from data sets into the “column” and “row” features set up quick, comprehensible charts. Tableau’s map feature also allows users to show metrics by location, and can even filter by color density. The dashboard feature allows users to lay out charts, maps, tables and data. There are features that can also make dashboards interactive, so hovering over an area of the dashboard can isolate certain metrics to give the end user a better idea of individual performances. The interfaces are already perfectly designed and easy to adjust to fit brand guidelines and can please everyone from a CMO to a creative director. If you care about aesthetics and usability, Tableau is the best option.

As Big Data gets bigger and bigger, new tools will be released and tried and true tools will continue to evolve to keep up with the demand. There are quite a few Big Data analysis tools on the market right now, but SAS, Excel Miner and Tableau are user-friendly tools that are powerful enough for experts and easy enough to navigate for beginners.

How to Use Your Data to Tell a Story

With so much data available for free it is no surprise that data visualization is more relevant than ever. Infographics, business dashboards, annual reports, case studies and videos use graphic design to make data atheistically pleasing and easier to understand. Telling a story with your data goes beyond just looking at individual metrics and ties together data and human communication.

Connect the Dots
In order to use your data to tell a story you need to explore relationships in your analytics and make connections. Think about what is relevant to your target audience. What do you want to convey though your storytelling? What data is unique to your company or platform that others may not have access to? Who would benefit from the information you are sharing? What platform are you planning to use to share the story? All of these questions will help inform the story you will tell.

Visualize the Data
Once you know what you want to do with your data it is time to make it digestible to audiences. One extremely important factor will be the kind of graphic you use to display the data. The data relationships will inform the type of charts or graphs you can use to best get your story across. Educate yourself on some of the best practices of data visualization to ensure your audience is able to understand your data.

Share Your Story 
Print your report, post your infographic, publish your blog or send that email. It has never been faster to get your story out into the world. Just be sure to track the results!

Three Reasons Data Isn’t Just for the "Numbers Guy"

For anyone that doesn't consider themselves a numbers person, the mere thought of data can invoke the uncomfortable jolt of a surprise math test in some marketers. Now that technology is advancing, data is no longer something to be feared, nor is it something that is reserved just for data scientists and the "numbers guy." Data is becoming available to everyone, even small businesses are able to access data and analytics from their website, social media, products, customers, transactions and even employees. Data is allowing businesses to make better, more informed decisions about their products and practices. Get ready to analyze and embrace the data trend!

1. Data is All Access
The way we use data has shifted dramatically over the past decade. Digital Marketers have a much better understanding of the internet and how it can be used to engage with users and collect data. Free tools like google analytics allow users to track everything on their websites, social media platforms have native analytics built in for companies to track their metrics, and email marketing programs are able to collect insights on campaigns. These individual metics cannot do as much on their own, but when cross platform analytics are combined business can really get a sense of how their content is performing.

2. Data Will Inform Your Campaigns
With the advent of A/B testing on almost every platform, marketers are now able to test their calls to action and see how their target audiences are responding. Businesses are able to create two versions of the same marketing piece and test on two audience segments. From here companies are able to choose the version that best fits their clients. This isn't 1985 where companies create content based on a "gut feeling" - data gives us the evidence-based reasoning we need to inform our marketing strategies.

3. Data Helps Businesses Innovate
Since we are able to measure so many aspects of our online marketing, analyzing these metrics can help business create actionable plans to reach their high-level goals. HubSpot was able to analyze their blog traffic and discovered that calls to action at the end of the blog posts only generated 6% of leads, and the best calls to action were in the anchor text. HubsSpot started putting more calls to action within their blogs, and those CTAs generate 83%-93% of clicks. Analyzing different aspect of your website, blog, social media and transaction process can help businesses innovate and find better solutions.

With so many free resources at hand it is easier than ever to dive into your data and make informed decisions. That is something any non-numbers person can appreciate.