Best of the web – September

1. Four disruptive changes in market research

“Looking at the next 18 months,” says Ray Poynter. “I can see four disruptive changes impacting the insight business and market research in a big way, and this post looks at these four. However, my four may not be the ones you had assumed if you had followed the buzz from recent industry conferences. In my next two blogs I will cover four other factors that are going to help market research bridge the gap between now and the future, items I call sticking plasters, and four major changes that are just over the horizon.”

2. Lack of analytics and budget is holding back social marketing

“There is a huge amount of social data out there that brands are trying to tap into, but seeking out the conversations worth listening to is only the first step,” writes Econsultancy. “You then have to translate the seemingly endless waves of data into something meaningful that can be integrated into marketing activities.
New research carried out by Econsultancy and Adobe shows that 41% of organisations feel that a lack of tracking capabilities and analytics is preventing them from harnessing social data as effectively as they would like.”

3. With Hadoop, big data analytics challenges old-school business intelligence

Datameer and Karmasphere say their Hadoop-based platforms are what’s needed for the next era of data analysis. Are you buying it? asks InformationWeek.

4. Get social, mobile, and 40+ new data points with the Google Analytics API

From the Google Analytics blog: “Google Analytics Core Reporting APIs enable a powerful and flexible way to analyse, report on, and ultimately optimise such things as web and mobile experiences, conversions, and sales. Today we’re adding over 40 new metrics and dimensions that can be queried through the Core Reporting API.”

5. Eight great free SEO and Google Analytics tools

Econsultancy reports from BrightonSEO were “several of the speakers revealed some of the free tools they have found most valuable, as well as some custom reports created for Google Analytics”.

_{Best of the Web is a roundup of the most-shared links on Twitter, based on analysis of tweets generated by MR and related communities. Analysis by Dollywagon. Data was collected in the four weeks to 30 September.}