The Meek School of Journalism and New Media is sponsoring its first Ole Miss New Media Data Day, where senior executives from Facebook and LinkedIn will discuss data and how it is used in today’s technology-driven world.
Data Day will be a day-long event beginning at 9:30 a.m., with a repeat performance of the sessions at 1 p.m., Thursday in the Overby Center auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.
Data Day is aiming to answer questions on consumer privacy, how analytics will impact careers in data-related fields, how companies and individuals can use data to do better at business and more.
With each passing day, digital media becomes more a part of our lives, and businesses aided by data are seizing the opportunity to reach and track audiences like never before.
Eric Schnabel is a director at Facebook Creative Shop.
“In the last 10 years, there’s been a technical revolution that [has] changed human behavior and media consumption,” Schnabel said.
Schnabel helps run a team at Facebook which consists of creative directors and strategists who work with clients to build campaigns on Facebook and Instagram.
“Facebook has 1.6 billion people and Instagram has 400 million,” Schnabel said. “Both platforms are only as valuable as their ability to show people content that they like. We use the things that people choose to watch, share, like and comment on to figure out what’s important to them and what they may want to see.”
Schnabel said with the emergence of new digital media and data mining, businesses no longer have to develop a single message that can be served in the same way to as many people as possible. The data gathered on consumers allows the businesses to better customize content for individuals.
Sean Callahan will be representing LinkedIn at Data Day. He is senior manager of content marketing at LinkedIn. Callahan uses data to assist marketers in reaching the right audience.
“Using LinkedIn data, these marketers can target their messages by job title, by location, company name, company size and a host of other demographics,” Callahan said. “The content is so relevant that it often doesn’t seem like our members are being marketed to, because the content delivers information they want.”
Callahan said he believes the modern marketer must possess not only creative skills, but also a myriad of data-driven and analytical abilities – a new marketing landscape that Mad Men’s Don Draper wouldn’t recognize.
“Ideas remain important, but ideas that work and generate results are more important. In the digital world you can tell fairly easily and fairly quickly what’s working–and what’s not,” Callahan said. “A marketer doesn’t merely come up with ideas and hope that they work. We now come up with ideas and test them to prove that they work.”
With simple data sets – like those from an email blast – available to every company, no matter the size or industry, there is unprecedented access to amazing amounts of data that can help companies determine who their best customers are and how to reach them.
“Data can provide great insight into how customers are behaving, what kind of messages they respond to, and how well marketing is working,” Callahan said. “The companies that put it to work, those are the ones that are going to thrive.”
