Why Did This Dogbert Tweet About Dashboards Travel So Far?
I have always been sceptical of dashboards and command work centres and judging by the success of this tweet - I’m not alone...
Dogbert on big data consulting and dashboards ~ pic.twitter.com/MCd5rPH8vF
— Jeremy ☁️ (@jeremywaite)
April 21, 2014
300+ RT’s is a big deal on Twitter these days ~ so this one has obviously struck a nerve with a few people…
Regardless of how amazing the technology is that drives a dashboard, they are only ever as good as the people who configure them. Given that the vast majority of people in the social industry haven’t been in it that long, this could be a big part of the problem. I’m planning to write a comprehensive post about social war rooms and dashboard best practise over the next few weeks (Tumblr isn’t the right place for it), but if you’d like some reading in the meantime, Jeremiah Owyang wrote a really useful post here.
We’ve all seen our fair share of sexy dashboards that sparkle and look gorgeous on a big screen (maybe they even look news-worthy or win an award), but ultimately many of them add very little to an organisation. The dashboards that I love the most are the ones that not only display the most useful information, but can be exported as one page reports (ones that c-suite exec’s might actually read).
"Only 14% of senior executives read digital marketing measurement reports" ~ According to a survey by eConsultancy
The main screen Radian6 dashboards I’m working on internally display my 5 W’s - these are the main audience components that matter the most to me (alongside ROI and financial metrics obviously) ~
Who are you customers? (Influencers, advocates, promotors and detractors)
What are they saying? (Topic / keyword analysis)
Why are the talking? (Trends / predictive analytics)
When did these conversations take place? (Recency / time)
Where did these conversation happen? (Share-of-voice on each platform)
It’s not really rocket science is it? But perhaps the fact that so many BAD dashboards exist explain why this tweet seems to have travelled so far…
Note: Notice my intentional omission of (pretty worthless) “reach” stats. Any smart brand marketer publishing content with commercial intent, would append a conversion tracking link to any such tweet, so that they can track any sales or uplift back to that initial piece of content.
Anyway ~ if good dashboards are your thing, feel free to check out this Radian6 video from MarketingCloud and let me know if you’d like any more info. It might be the tool that powers most of the world’s most successful social dashboards and command centres ~ but don’t forget that as with all technology, it’s only ever going to be as good as the people who set it up.
"We demand too much of technology and not enough of ourselves". Nate Silver