Google Analytics 4, Data Processing, Personal Brand MarTech
In our Analytics for Marketers Slack group, Jon asked an interesting question: in the analytics lifecycle, I don’t feel like I’m doing much data processing. Can you expand on that?
Data processing specifically refers to cleaning and fixing up your data prior to either analysis or visualization. A lot of the data we receive isn’t in the best condition. Let’s say some of our marketing data is in a spreadsheet. What are the things that typically go wrong?
We could have:
- Missing columns. These would be variables that were omitted, either intentionally or accidentally. You’ll see this a lot with social media data and CRM data; when you export your data, sometimes it’ll ask if you want to export your current view and that won’t be all the data you could export.
- Missing rows. These are records in your data that are missing. You’ll see this with poorly implemented analytics solutions, where you have periods of time when data wasn’t collected.
- Missing or damaged cells. These are individual pieces of information that are missing or corrupted. You’ll get a ton of this in social media data, especially because social media data tends to be really badly formatted.
Your data processing steps should be fixing these things up. If your data is perfectly clean, then the data processing steps should involve spot checking your data to ensure it’s remained clean.
Data processing also may involve the manipulation and adjustment of data, such as ensuring unique values, aggregating and summarizing, and other functions to make it easier to work with. We do this all the time whenever we look at data by date, for example, and switch between daily, weekly, and monthly views.
Depending on your marketing technology stack, you may do very little of this data processing (it may be handled by your tools) or a great deal of it (if you have lots of custom analysis and large data sets). Either way, it’s likely happening to ensure your data quality is good.
In this week’s In-Ear Insights, we discuss your migration strategy for Google Analytics 4, the new version of Google Analytics. What should you be thinking about? Which companies are best suited for it?
Watch/listen to the most recent episode of In-Ear Insights here
And in last week’s So What? (which airs Thursdays at 1 PM Eastern on YouTube), the team tackles setting up your personal brand’s marketing technology, including Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics Classic & 4, WordPress, and more.
Watch the most recent episode of So What? here!
Coming up on this week’s So What?, we’ll be tackling part 2 of MarTech basics for personal brand and small business sites, including newsletters, dashboards, and more. Tune in on Thursdays at 1 PM Eastern Time on our YouTube channel.
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In this week’s Rear View mirror, let’s look at a specific niche: podcasting on Instagram. Instagram is one of the world’s largest social networks, with over 1 billion monthly active users. It’s also one of the few networks that allows for easy influencer mapping along with Twitter (which has a third of the user base). So how effective is Instagram for identifying influencers?
Many influencer identification tools either look at vanity metrics like number of followers or engagement rates with content, but those metrics don’t necessarily help us identify the highest quality influencers, just the loudest ones.
To test Instagram’s networking, we downloaded 382,686 Instagram posts about podcasts and applied 3 different network graphing algorithms against it. What did we find?
First, the Instagram podcast universe is gigantic. It’s a massive place, with only a few concentrated hubs – Joe Rogan and Spotify – with everyone and everything else scattered. However, within that universe, there are hundreds of niches, reflecting the diversity of the overall podcasting landscape.
Second, it’s very possible to drill down to very specific segments with the data; doing so allows for much more granular control of influencer identification by filtering people talking about your specific topic. Here’s a sample of Instagram accounts talking about both podcasts and marketing:
It’s much easier to navigate this tiny slice of the podcast universe on Instagram than it is to try ot digest the whole thing.
Key takeaway: Instagram can be a rich source for outreach if you’re using the appropriate tools and techniques. Because it’s so large, it’s futile to attempt pitching every show out there; instead, focus on just the niches that matter to your business and industry.
If you’re working with an agency or software vendor, be sure they’re able to process the massive volumes of Instagram data available, and even more important, that they’re using modern algorithms and techniques to identify influencers properly.
Methodology: Trust Insights used Facebook’s Crowdtangle platform to identify 382,686 Instagram posts from 47,859 accounts using the term podcast or #podcast in their post descriptions. The dates of extraction are January 1, 2020 – October 20, 2020. The date of study is October 21, 2020. Trust Insights is the sole sponsor of the study and neither gave nor received compensation for data used, beyond applicable service fees to software vendors, and declares no competing interests.
- {PODCAST} In-Ear Insights: Planning a Google Analytics 4 Migration
- Marketing Analytics, Data Science and Leadership via October 19, 2020 Week In Review
- So What? Personal Brand MarTech Basics, Part 1
- {PODCAST} In-Ear Insights: Convenience Marketing
- Where Can I Get The Slides? Will The Slides Be Available?
AI Academy for Marketers is an online education platform designed to help marketers understand, pilot, and scale artificial intelligence. Join Katie Robbert, CEO of Trust Insights, and Christopher Penn, Chief Data Scientist of Trust Insights, for three separate courses in the academy:
- 5 use cases of AI for content marketing
- Intelligent Attribution Modeling for Marketing
- Detecting and Mitigating BIAS in Marketing AI
The Academy is designed for manager-level and above marketers, and largely caters to non-technical audiences, meaning you do not need a background in analytics, data science or programming to understand and apply what you learn. One registration gives you unlimited access to all the courses, an invitation to a members-only Slack Instance, and access to new courses every quarter.
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Shiny Objects is a roundup of the best content you and others have written and shared in the last week.
Data Science and AI
- 8 Things you should know to Build a Career in Data Science in 2020!
- You Ask, I Answer: Quantifying Hallway Conversations?
- Machine Learnings Greatest Omission: Business Leadership
SEO, Google, and Paid Media
- 10 Basic SEO Tips to Index Rank New Content Faster Best of Whiteboard Friday via Moz
- The 10 Most Common SEO Mistakes to Avoid
- Google Podcasts Manager Shows Your Podcast Search Performance
Social Media Marketing
- Inclusive Design for Social Media: Tips for Creating Accessible Channels
- 9 tips to get the most from your social media video content via Sprout Social
- YouTube Hashtags and How to Increase Video Views via Sprout Social
Content Marketing
- State of B2B Content Marketing: 5 Trends That Will Get You Promoted
- How to Catch and Keep a Journalist in Content Marketing
- Content Marketing: The 5 Essential Stages You Need to Master via She Owns It
Get Back To Work
We’ve changed things up in Get Back To Work, and we’re looking at the top 310 metro areas in the United States by population. This will give you a much better sense of what the overall market looks like, and will cover companies hiring in multiple locations. Want the entire, raw list? Join our Slack group!
What do you do with this information?
By looking at this data, you’ll see what the most popular titles are; use any of the major job/career sites to ensure your resume/CV/LinkedIn profile matches keywords and phrases for those titles. For companies, search job sites for those companies specifically to see all the open positions and apply for them.
You can also hit up LinkedIn and see who you know at companies listed, and see if your connections have any inside tips on hiring.
Top Marketing Positions by Count, Manager and Above
- Marketing Manager : 396 open positions
- Digital Marketing Manager : 251 open positions
- Social Media Manager : 168 open positions
- Account Manager : 113 open positions
- Marketing Director : 99 open positions
- Director of Marketing : 93 open positions
- Communications Manager : 78 open positions
- Product Manager : 78 open positions
- Project Manager : 68 open positions
- Demand Generation Manager : 67 open positions
Top Marketing Hiring Companies by Count, Manager and Above
- Google : 150 open positions
- Amazon.com Services LLC : 90 open positions
- Thermo Fisher Scientific : 68 open positions
- Deloitte : 48 open positions
- Verizon : 40 open positions
- Amazon Web Services, Inc. : 39 open positions
- Pearson : 36 open positions
- Microsoft : 34 open positions
- Citi : 33 open positions
- Intuit : 33 open positions
- JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. : 33 open positions
Top Locations of Hiring Companies by Count, Manager and Above
- New York, NY : 550 open positions
- San Francisco, CA : 303 open positions
- Chicago, IL : 281 open positions
- Remote, NA : 254 open positions
- Seattle, WA : 242 open positions
- Boston, MA : 206 open positions
- Austin, TX : 200 open positions
- Los Angeles, CA : 189 open positions
- Dallas, TX : 186 open positions
- Atlanta, GA : 185 open positions
Methodology: Trust Insights uses the Indeed.com API to extract open positions from a geographic area focused on marketing analytics, marketing, social media, data science, machine learning, advertising, and public relations, with a filter to screen out the most junior positions.
Featured Partners
Our Featured Partners are companies we work with and promote because we love their stuff. If you’ve ever wondered how we do what we do behind the scenes, chances are we use the tools and skills of one of our partners to do it.
- Hubspot CRM
- StackAdapt Display Advertising
- Agorapulse Social Media Publishing
- WP Engine WordPress Hosting
- Techsmith Camtasia and Snagit Media Editing
- Talkwalker Media Monitoring
- Otter AI transcription
- Our recommended media production gear on Amazon
Join the Club
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Upcoming Events
Where can you find us in person?
- MarketingProfs, November 2020, virtual
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Trust Insights maintains business partnerships with companies including, but not limited to, IBM, Talkwalker, Zignal Labs, Agorapulse, and others. All Featured Partners are affiliate links for which we receive financial compensation. While links shared from partners are not explicit endorsements, nor do they directly financially benefit Trust Insights, a commercial relationship exists for which we may receive indirect financial benefit.
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