We’ve all been told, don’t jump to conclusions. Yet we all do sometimes – marketers especially. With so much data at our disposal today, it’s tempting to latch on to any persuasive numbers. Problem is, they may lead us to the wrong decision.

Take social content strategy, for instance. Let’s say we circulated a post with a funny cat meme and it got an unusually high number of likes and shares. Does that mean our audience is clamoring for this type of content? Well, we’d have to say yes in this case because, let’s face it, who doesn’t love a cat saying semi-amusing things in broken English? But what if we then concluded that our social content strategy should focus on fluff rather than marketing? We might get some more likes, but we’d probably be doing little to build important relationships or gain SEO credibility.

Now don’t get us wrong. We love to look at the numbers, whether it’s analytics on user behavior or results on campaign effectiveness. But the data is only the starting point – figuring out what the data means and what action to take is where the challenge lies.