Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Will they stay or will they go?

Have I ever said how much I love analytics? Well, if I haven't said it enough, I love analytics. I enjoy looking at hard data and analyzing it. One of my favorite temp jobs I ever had was actually with a market research firm in Dallas where we took thousands of data points and drilled them down into their essence. It was a lot more than just saying X # of people enjoyed Y product or whatever. There's a lot of interpretation in that data.

Take for example a heated debate I got into with one of my colleagues about Social Media and the Holiday Season*. We agreed that the subscriber numbers would go up.

Where we disagreed was how those subscribers will react to the various product pages, etc. My guess is that while we will see actual subscriber numbers increase, interactions will decrease since users will be using their networks to reconnect with old friends, communicate with family members, coordinate events, etc. She thinks those interactions will increase on our corporate pages.

We recently started actively monitoring our social media networks and don't have any data prior to May 2009, so I have no evidence that I am right or wrong.

Do you have any idea which the outcome will be? Will our subscribers even increase during the Holiday Season?

*Holiday Season refers to the time period from Thanksgiving-New Year's

2 comments:

  1. My gut said to side with you, Taylor, but I think I talked myself into the opposing side, because people are so product-minded during this season. I wonder if that won't ultimately lead to more research and then more interaction with the public faces of those products? Hm. There's my non-opinion opinion.

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  2. Amen to that! I kind of go around in circles myself. Hopefully consumers are researching more on corporate websites and listening to the social media mouthpieces. Needless to say, I'm pretty stoked to share analytics with you after the holidays!

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