Marketing: Use-Case Dashboards – Get from Data to Decisions Faster

The saying goes that ‘you can prove anything with statistics.’

At Brandwatch, we prefer to think that our data can tell you anything you want to know.

Of course the key with data is to make sure you are looking at it in the right way; not in a way that tells you what you want to hear, but in a way that shows you what you need to know in order to take actions. Actions that add value.

That is the focus of our social-to-dollars approach: getting you from data to decisions faster.

We’re making it easier than ever to visualize your data in Brandwatch Analytics in the way that works for you and launching four new dashboards.

If you’d like to learn more from the experts, come and join our webinar next week where we’ll be sharing how to use your Dashboards to turn data into real results.

Register Today 

July 30th London: 5pm BST | New York: 12pm EDT

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New use-case dashboards

Over the next month, we will be adding four new use-case dashboards to help our different users view their data quickly in a way that helps them do their jobs.

With the most flexible analytics platform on the market there’s a wealth of things you can do with Brandwatch, but sometimes you just want to start with the headlines that matter to you.

The first three going live today are:

• Reputation and Crisis Management
• Influencer Marketing
• PR and News Tracking

The fourth will be designed by you. Until the 6th of August we’ll be accepting submissions of your saved dashboards for any use-case of your choice.

This blog post will tell you more about how you can submit your entry.

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There’s never one chart for all needs

Take a look at this chart of brand mentions over time. What is your initial reaction?

Good news?

It probably is. You always want people talking about your brand – the more the better. But different people in any organisation might have varying reactions to any chart, this one included, and each person will want to look at it in a different way:

A marketer measuring the buzz of their brand would call this a success. Clearly their brand name is growing and more and more people are hearing about them and the products they make.

But a reputation manager might actually feel a sense of dread looking at this chart, before they were able to get more information. A big spike like this could mean something’s gone horribly wrong and it’s time to get on the phone for some crisis management. For them, a breakdown of sentiment and the topics being discussed here would provide the most important information.

A community manager focusing on influence marketing would obviously be pleased with the growth in conversation about their brand but they would want to know more about who has been mentioning them. Does this increase actually represent a larger reach overall? Are they being talked about by people in their target audience, people who will actually become valuable paying customers?

An analyst doing competitor benchmarking would want to interrogate what else was happening during this period. The jump in mentions might correspond to a major event taking place that was relevant to their brand and they want to know if their strategy during this event was as effective as their competitors’.

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Don’t drown in the data

Without innovative analytics ‘the data are useless’ warned Gary King of Harvard University in his 2013 lecture “Big Data is not about the Data”.

It’s true that ‘big data’ is a term that gets thrown around a lot, and is often cited as a catch-all term that promises everything.

However, data on its own has its limitations. It can often only tell you part of the story. Occasionally, it can be downright misleading.

But if you know how to interrogate it, big data can give a solid backing to business decisions, save large amounts of time and uncover things you never could have known when looking at the smaller picture.

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Personalization is key

One of the great things about doing what we do at Brandwatch is that no two customers are ever the same and, even within a client’s organization, each user is often using our platform in a different way to their colleagues.

We’ve been adding ever more ways for you to make your data your own in Brandwatch Analytics – from displaying several components on the same line, to more powerful filters and charting.

Find out more (and get some inspiration for your competition entry) here.

We’re also going to be exploring the opportunities of adding new types of data to our analytics in the future, giving you an even more complete view of what’s happening to your brand online, going beyond keywords, and connecting that with real impact in the offline world.

Watch this space.

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