How can public affairs professionals benefit from using big data in their daily business?

Data is exploding

Every minute over three million new Facebook updates are published. All internet activities leave traces. Behavioural user data from a plurality of other sources is increasing exponentially as well: Sensor networks, business transactions, mobile phones – all are contributing to the buzzword known as big data.

The term also refers to the collection and analysis of data. Best-of-breed marketers have embraced this and base insights and decisions based on real-time data.

Below are three lessons for politicians and lobbyists to be learned from sales and marketing organisations:

• Engineer your messages and channels. By continiously measuring the search terms and sources people use to take part of your messaging, conclusions can be made about how your message should be phrased and the efficiency of your channels.
• Derive further insights by using behavioural data, and finding correlations with existing data sources to provide comprehensive information about events, individuals, organizations or phenomena.
• Leverage from unstructured data. A vast majority of big data is unstructured, i.e not organised in relational databases. New techniques such as text analytics can be used to interpret unstructured data such as tone/sentiment in news articles and recorded interviews.

Public affairs and marketing are converging disciplines. Think like a marketer!

Jonas Ander is the CMO of Nortal, a multinational strategic change and technology company. Combining the unique experience of transforming Estonia into a digital leader and creating change in businesses with a strategic approach and data-driven technology, our vision is to build a seamless society. Nortal operates in nearly 20 countries and employs over 500 specialists who carry out high-impact projects across Europe, Middle East and Africa.

This article was originally published in Politik & Kommunikation – Nr 117, Rising Stars