With all of the discussion lately about which social media monitoring and measurement tools to use, which ones not to use or just how to go about choosing, it seems we’ve all forgotten the biggest key to successful measurement: the analyst.
Just the other day I was reading a summary of a report on the state of Web analytics today, and one quote really stood out to me in regards to measurement tools:
“In his view, web analytics vendors have focused on making systems appeal to people who don’t really work with web analytics on a day-to-day basis. There has been too much emphasis on pretty pictures, ease of deployment, and finding ways to justify the investment. These are all signs of products that must appeal to people who won’t use the products, don’t see the point, and don’t really understand the task that the software is designed for. If you have to sell to such people, what else can you do but focus on stuff that doesn’t require any skill to understand, such as fancy graphics?”
Even the best technology and most thorough tools will never be valuable without an analyst to use them. More often than not, I find myself using data pulled from one tool or another, but I rarely use the pretty graphs or other functionality. It’s just too hard to find insights that way. I find insights by digging through the raw data and manipulating it the way I want to, not the way some interface allows me to.
That said, there are some tools with which I can manipulate data more than others, and I tend to prefer these to others. But there is not perfect solution out there. Not yet.
I’m as guilty as the next guy (or more so) of nit picking about which tools really work and which don’t. But let’s all knock it off. For each new situation, campaign or project, there will likely be a different tool that provides the most relevant data. In every case, the most valuable and complete tool will always be the analyst.
Let’s make a pact to stop fighting, OK? We each have our own preferences and bias, but can we all agree that no tool will ever replace humans?
