Your Communications Measurement Reading List for October, 2016

Here’s our shortlist of recent interesting articles, mostly about communications measurement and evaluation. (For more on the chocolate chip cookie technology illustrated above, see below under “Content Marketing.”):

Social Media

Facebook’s recent “Overstategate” has hopefully cured you forever of blind belief in data. Especially when it’s provided by someone who uses it to profit from you. To learn more about Facebook’s fake—or perhaps just vastly distorted—video viewing stats, read Facebook Video Scandal Reveals Underlying Social Media Measurement Issues over at CyberAlert.
If you missed the event itself, then September #MeasurePR Twitter Chat: Measurement Month Key Takeaways is the next best thing, featuring the advice of a dozen measurement all-stars. Jennifer Zingsheim Phillips provides the summary at our sister pub, Media Bullseye.

Data Science

Last month here in The Measurement Standard we asked “Will Your Measurement Insight Job Be Taken Over by a Robot?” That now appears much more probable, as entrepreneur and investor Nova Spivack wants to automate the work of data scientists. You can read about it in The Wall Street Journal, on the Bottlenose website, or go straight to Mr. Spivack’s blog post, AI, BI, and the Necessity of Automating the Analyst.

Presentations

Lea Pica helps people improve their data presentations with her Primp Your Slide video and podcast series. The first one includes good advice on not using pie charts, and also her P.I.C.A. system: Purpose, Insight, Context, and Aesthetics.

Politics

If the recent cat fight/mud wrestling debates have not spoiled your appetite for Clinton vs. Trump, then… In Semantics—What Does Data Science Reveal about Clinton and Trump?, Maixent Chenebaux at medium analyzes the candidates’ words to better understand the vocabulary, style, and rhythm of their political communication. Results imply that Clinton has adapted her style toward Trump’s, and that Trump has disruptively simplified the speech of our national leaders.

For Your Next Cocktail Party

The Simpsons by the Data: Analysis of 27 seasons of The Simpsons’ data reveals the show’s most significant side characters, a pattern of patriarchy, and declining TV ratings.
In Alzheimer’s Early Tell: The language of authors who suffered from dementia has a story for the rest of us, Adrienne Day at Nautilus reviews new evidence that early signs of Alzheimer’s can be found in loss of vocabulary and writing ability.
Did you know that in 1675 the king of England banned coffee houses, claiming that they were places that people met to conspire against him? Visit The Oatmeal to learn about this and more in 15 Things Worth Knowing About Coffee. You’ll find a great many comics and illustrated rants.

Content Marketing About Content Marketing

We don’t usually trust content marketers who generate content to market their own content marketing (see The Tragedy of the Commons and the Death of Content Marketing), but here are two excellent exceptions:

The Ultimate Guide to Infographic Marketing includes good advice and resources.
Chocolate Chip Cookie Technology! Patrick Burke at Content Marketing Institute writes with the title of 6 Times Less Was More in Content Marketing, but what he really provides are elegant examples of data storytelling with images. That’s one of them up above, a deliciously simple way to tell a complex story about cookie ingredients. In the article you’ll also learn 11 ways to tie a scarf, because, well, winter is coming.

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Thanks to Handle the Heat for the cookie infographic.

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Bill Paarlberg

Bill Paarlberg co-founded The Measurement Standard in 2002 and was its editor until July 2017. He also edits The Measurement Advisor newsletter. He is editor of the award-winning "Measuring the Networked Nonprofit" by Beth Kanter and Katie Paine, and editor of two other books on measurement by Katie Paine, "Measure What Matters" and "Measuring Public Relationships." Visit Bill Paarlberg's page on LinkedIn.