Data Scientists: the Magic they do at Brandwatch

It’s weird to think that we’re a fairly big company now – just three years ago there were around 30 of us, and today we’re knocking at the door of 200.

As part of this expansion, understandably different roles become more refined and evolve over time.

To try and shed light on some of the more specialised roles at Brandwatch, we thought it might be nice to share what goes on in a typical day of a data scientist, as penned by US Brandwatcher Dina Daoud.

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8:15 – 8:30 | the dilemma

 

At Brandwatch, the selection of coffee and oatmeal will leave a data scientist analyzing (for quite some time) the perfect fit for a perfect day. And that is without mentioning candy machines, Bagel-Fridays, snacks or stationery choices!

 

8:30 – 9:30 | the catching-up

 

Yes, a lot happens during the (very short) period of time we are not around; especially so when considering different Brandwatch offices are on different time zones.

The operations team receives requests from sales teams to set up demos to prospect clients, to discuss how to find the best solution to their needs and to scope potential projects.

We also support the business services teams on current clients’ inquiries. We tailor and arrange the Brandwatch tool in a way that suits best our customers and we help them collect, analyze and report on the data that we turn into valuable business insights and opportunities.

Upon availability and depending on areas of expertise, and of course various languages we speak, we each take care of specific requests, scope the breadth of the work and give the teams an ETA for deliveries.

 

9:30 – 13:30 | the magic making (part I)

 

The magic-making hours are the most interesting hours of our days – the hours where we get to think strategically, create, crunch, analyze and find solutions (all enabled by the Brandwatch platform).

Those are also the hours where we learn so much from each projects, from each other and from the tool itself. If you are reading this on Monday at about this time, we are most probably in the middle of a company or analyst meeting.

We see each other weekly, virtually, from across continents to discuss progress, vision, performance, successes and funny stories. Collaboration is big at Brandwatch.

 

13:30 – 14:00 | the gathering

 

Most of us tend to catch up over lunch, exchanging cooking tips, jokes or latest updates on specific projects.

 

14:00 – 17:30 | the magic making (part II)

 

You might wonder what the magic looks like, so this is what we would do on a typical afternoon if our client was the grocery store Trader Joe’s and that they wanted to monitor the chatter around their brand in the social space:

The challenge in writing a query for Trader Joe’s is to make sure we narrow down the search for relevant mentions only, without eliminating the right content. To achieve this objective, we include in the Boolean enough keywords and context words that will reflect the “trader joe” we are looking for and the data we want to listen to.

After that, we analyze the results, refine our queries and set up a dashboard that will generate worthy insights to our clients for future activities or for CRM purposes:

For instance, we discover that in the US, for the past month, the bulk of mentions about Trader Joe’s are coming from Twitter and mostly authored by women.

Moreover, we are confident about the positive attitude of Trader Joe’s consumers online, men in particular.

 

An increasing number of brands are interested in knowing the top influencers on Twitter and Facebook (or other relevant pages) to improve worthy investments on engagement and outreach audience.

In the case of Trader Joe’s we are able to extract an influencer list ranked by their impact, for both of their main channels:

 

Interestingly, Trader Joe’s’ most mentioned tweeters includes a competitor, one of the top hashtags is a geo-location app and the most used emoticons are balanced between positive and negative ones.

And, when analyzing the most popular topics related to Trader Joe’s across the different channels and page types …

… we notice a high volume of Coconut Oil mentions. When we analyze this topic in more detail, we realize that people love using Trader Joe’s coconut oil both for personal care (make up or hair) and for cooking too.

With these results, we provide clients with a thorough understanding of the buzz online around the brand or specific topics. We give them access to all info they need to reach their target audience, to improve their ad campaigns or to keep an eye on the competition and industry trends.

Magical, isn’t it?

 

17:30 – 17:45 | the finishing touch

 

At this point, we organize our following day, confirm we are on time with schedules and sometimes we celebrate.

Besides collaborating, working hard and playing harder, at Brandwatch we celebrate: winners of tennis table games (we are quite serious about the tournaments), birthdays, new starters, karaoke masters and most frequently: we celebrate being Brandwatchers.

You now know what we do, but do you also know what we look like?