4 Strategies To Utilize Your Nonprofit's “Big Data”

Image courtesy of iviz Security

If you’ve read an article about big data in the last year or two, and thought “That’s too big to effect my nonprofit...” you’re probably wrong.


Big data is the name given to the millions of digital interactions corporations and nonprofits experience every day across social media platforms, websites, and third party resources. Many people view big data as the key to unlock marketing potential and grant thorough insight into the minds and habit of constituents.

 In a previous post, we talk about ways that nonprofits are struggling to keep up with all the data they’ve collected. Here, we provide even more in depth strategies to deal with your nonprofit’s data deluge.

1. Filter out the unimportant information

   Dell is famous for receiving 25,000 mentions across their social media channels in 11 different languages every day. It would be ludicrous to try and sift through all of those social interactions by hand to discern the important messages from the less important ones.
   
   
   To filter the important from the less important Dell uses social media analytics to find the messages and stories that matter. Tweets from influential Twitter users with thousands of followers, Tweets from high profile websites and blogs with high domain authorities, and Tweets with high secondary interactions (Retweets, Favorites, Replies), are also taken into consideration to catch and handle any potential problems before they go viral.
   
   
   Whether your nonprofit sifting through 10 or 1,000 Tweets per day, or is just trying to find out how many clicks a blog post received, make sure you’re utilizing all the tools available to you.

1. Track overall changes

   Too often nonprofits and organizations with less experience in handling social media are get caught trying to do too much with their data. Tracking the amount of overall messages sent, received, shares, Retweets, and Favorites your social feeds receive per day can be invaluable information.
   
   
   Keep an eye on these big picture numbers before trying to harness specifics. Knowing that interactions shot way up, one week, then dropped abnormally low the next is information that should not be taken for granted.

1. Sentiment tracking

   One of those more advanced, niche, analytic tools can automatically track and categorize the sentiment of a tweet. The software will scan a Tweet then automatically categorize it is as being positive, negative, or neutral.
   
   
   Knowing exactly how your product, content, or message is being received by social followers is priceless.

1. Create visual reports representing change

   Believe it or not, not every single nonprofit, corporation, and foundation is engaging in social media marketing and content marketing. These short sighted nonprofits and corporations are quick to point to their bottom line, and claim it is not worth the investment.
   
   
   Rich, thorough analytic tracking can be represented visually to show those short sighted executives what they’ve been missing out on, and reinforce the effectiveness of all that data collection.
   
   
   Or, if your nonprofit’s already actively engaging social media interactions, it can show your already hard working social media staff just how much good they’ve been doing!