It does not matter if you are in the healthcare, fashion, sports, or any other industry. Your market is affected by the buzz and excitement around certain events. It could be a new major social network, a new automation app, a Google algorithm update, or a cultural movement that affects the views of your market.
Having adequate visibility of all current events is the key to making data-driven decisions that to grow your business. This ensures you do not overlook any critical information and make only the best action for each situation. The first step is to establish clearly your data sources.
Knowing Your Data Sources
Not only should you broaden your data coverage, but you should also develop a system for distilling from multiple resources. Staying ahead of all reliable data sources such as social media, news, and stock trends will enable you to spot more events you can take advantage of. Moreover, verifying information across multiple resources will guarantee making informed decisions.
You do not have to invest cash for obtaining big data sources. With the Internet, you can access sites that offer useful information for free. Here are some of the best free data sources on the web:
- New York Times Developers – This site lets you search an indexed archive of all news from the New York Times. The articles span current events all the way back to 1851.
- Data.gov – Data.gov is the result of the US government’s promise to make data freely accessible online. It spans various event categories such as education, crime, healthcare, corporate, and climate.
- Google Trends – This tool allows you to search favorable trends and statistics, including information on search volume for specific topics. This is an excellent way to obtain a quick glance at the SEO landscape.
- Google Finance – Apart from online stock trading platforms, you may also rely on Google Finance to watch stock trends and movements. It also covers news in the currency market. Google Finance is updated in real-time and can provide you with historical data that spans over 40 years.
Acquiring Data Tools
Identifying and organizing your data resources is a step in the right direction. Consider using an online business dashboard like Cyfe that can help you set up your data sources, organize information, and monitor every aspect of your business in one dashboard. It is particularly easy to collect data from social media by installing the appropriate widget. For example, you can install the Facebook widget to track likes or the Twitter widget to have a hashtag roundup and listen to what your customers have to say about your brand. You may also integrate other business platforms such as Salesforce and Freshbooks to monitor important metrics – all in one dashboard.
A platform like MarketWatch is an excellent way to obtain industry news and other data such as news related to stocks, banking, retail, and technology. However, most of these resources offer raw information about current events, meaning you need to siphon the relevant information first so you could obtain data you can work with. You can make this process much simpler with data and analytics tool like Cyfe.
Finding Data You Need
Sure enough, not all events directly concern your field of expertise. It is highly possible for your business to sustain a comfortable position whether or not it’s your industry that thew news affects directly. However, you could be missing out on opportunities to leverage the buzz for a quick spurt of growth.
For retailers, being updated in your industry is critical to remaining competitive. Not only will this help you strategize for sales and marketing, but it will also contribute to building your authority as an expert. Remember that people gravitate to those who get first dibs on the latest news. This is always beneficial for networking and attracting leads regardless of your particular niche.
For online businesses, being adaptive to the latest platform for automation or lead generation is a great way to gain a competitive edge. There will always be new software for content creation, online marketing, analytics, and social media. Furthermore, if you are in the SEO business, learning the latest Google algorithm changes is imperative for survival.
With data-driven decision making, you can ride the waves and ensure your business is in a favorable position no matter happens. Moreover, for this, you need an integrated method of observing trends, figures, causalities, and a handful of other relevant information.
Conclusion
Information holds the key to relevance – and acquiring the latest data is the key to winning in a competitive industry. It is only a matter of knowing the most efficient way to obtain data, as well as having a plan on how to use them. The key here is leveraging big data services in designing and achieving data-driven objectives for your business.
