Speaker, writer, and tech consultant Stephen Nold, founder of TeccSociety and president of SCN Partners, literally sang the praises of “Big Data thinking” during a session on how incentive planners can benefit from all the data that’s being crunched, analyzed, and spit back out these days.
In his session at the IRF Invitational’s education day, he explained that the sheer amount of data we have available now makes it difficult to process, analyze, and figure out how to use it to make decisions about our events. Which may be why we’re not, for the most part, using tools like Google’s Big Query. But why not use more familiar tools, such as analytics from social media sites, Web sites, registration information, apps, press releases, and inbound marketing pieces?
He also pointed to what we can use Big Data for, including:
• profiling exhibitors
• ensuring the content is relevant to attendees
• recruiting new audience members
• making advertising relevant to user needs
• cross-branding and messaging across different platforms
Oh, and the singing part? A love song to Big Data, to the tune of “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone.”
