First off, it’s just awful.
But the other reason is that you might not have enough data to have anything meaningful to look at.
We’re known for doing beautiful real-time visualizations (that’s a live link to 1% of everything happening on twitter. But for most companies, if we monitor your mentions real-time, you’ll be waiting a long time between tweets.
We’re also known for complex affinity analysis– to say people who like A also like B. Then we split this out by 92 different countries to see how your brand performs by language and geography. But if you have customers mainly in one city, only one Facebook page, and only one product– the fancy analytics here don’t mean a thing.
There just isn’t enough data there to do social affinity– it’s just not physically possible.
The same thing is true for small websites using Google Analytics. If there are only a few pageviews a day, there’s just not much analysis possible, unfortunately.
Some clients ask us to fudge the metrics to make them look good. We’d rather focus on taking rapid, intelligent action than to sweep things under the rug.
So if you’re a start-up or small business, focus not on big data, but on big action.
Then people will buy from you regardless of your name or what the pretty charts say!
Dennis Yu
Dennis Yu is co-author of the #1 best-selling book on Amazon in social media, The Definitive Guide to TikTok Ads. He has spent a billion dollars on Facebook ads across his agencies and agencies he advises. Mr. Yu is the "million jobs" guy-- on a mission to create one million jobs via hands-on social media training, partnering with universities and professional organizations.You can find him quoted in major publications and on television such as CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, and LA Times. Clients have included Nike, Red Bull, the Golden State Warriors, Ashley Furniture, Quiznos-- down to local service businesses like real estate agents and dentists. He's spoken at over 750 conferences in 20 countries, having flown over 6 million miles in the last 30 years to train up young adults and business owners. He speaks for free as long as the organization believes in the job-creation mission and covers business class travel.You can find him hiking tall mountains, eating chicken wings, and taking Kaqun oxygen baths-- likely in a city near you.