Dan Siroker’s Five Keys to Successful Data Analysis

Dan Siroker, former Director of Analytics for the Obama Presidential Campaign, was a keynote speaker at SoCon10. SoCon is an annual conference run by the Center for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University in the Atlanta, GA area. This year’s theme was “Proven Social Media, Social Network Tactics to Enrich Your Business, Nonprofit and Yourself.”

Siroker described how his team used the power of data analysis to raise an extra $44M or so for the Obama presidential campaign. Here are his five keys to success in getting actionable and profitable results using data analysis:

  1. Define quantifiable success metrics. For Siroker, these were donations and votes.
  2. Question assumptions.
  3. Divide and conquer (segmentation of data).
  4. Take advantage of circumstances – be prepared to leverage unplanned events.
  5. Always be optimizing – continual improvement.

Siroker’s results speak for themselves!