See Larger Version here from Labnol's Flickr Account
I've been thinking about reflections that you need to ask as you harvest your hard data and metrics for insights about your social media. When you get to your grand synthesis, you need to create visuals to convey the key points.
Charting and graphing your data helps you see patterns and trends more easily and articulate them to decision-makers. Digital Inspiration found this terrific visual field guide to selecting the right chart or graph or graph format. After you select your desired chart format, use the Chart Chooser to generate a PowerPoint or Excel template.
Need to visualize a process, system, or concept that isn't based on data? A Field To Using Visual Tools by David Hyerle can help. Try Gliffy it is an web-based diagram that reminds me of Visio. It's nifty too.
Read his post here.
Beth:
I think the visualization process is essential in helping decision-makers better understand the data they have collected. But it begs the question of whether or not they collected meaningful data to begin with. Better visualization of garbage doesn't change the fact that you're still looking at garbage.
When I teach MBA students on how to set up their marketing programs I suggest they follow the 5M approach -- Mission, Money, Message, Medium, and Measurement. If they develop their plan correctly, their measurements are planned in parallel to the mission of the program. They start out with an idea of the data they need to collect, what will be useful, and ways to collect that data. Then, at various times in the marketing program, they can collect and analyze against their mission for key metrics.
Related to your post, what I think is critical to emphasize is the need to plan your measurements PRIOR to starting a marketing or communications effort. Focusing only on the visualization of data after the fact is like trying to unscramble an egg.
-- David Kinard, PCM
Posted by: David Kinard | January 19, 2009 at 10:33 AM
Visual thinking makes a big difference. It's hard to get there sometimes, but when you do there's a payoff.
Posted by: Geoff Livingston | January 20, 2009 at 06:04 PM