A few Radian6ers including @ambercadabra, @davidbthomas, @melanieathomp, @jeffreylcohen, @mikegrad6 and @alsturgeon are currently at #BWELA blogging, speaking and engaging from our booth. Feel free to say hello if you’re out enjoying the conference. The following live blog is from @melanieathomp.

This morning I had the pleasure of attending Tom Webster’s keynote at BlogWorld New Media Expo in LA. The morning started with laughs and excitement for BlogWorld, and Tom Webster kept things going at a fantastic pace. He was funny, engaging and provided four great ways to help us stop “Drowning in the Numbers.”

He explained each in great detail in a way that really made sense and forced the audience to re-evaluate how we are currently looking at our social data.

1. Know What You Don’t Know

2. Ask Better Questions

3. Prove Yourself Wrong

4. Do Your Own Work

1. Know What You Don’t Know

Tom began by asking who in the room creates content for people they don’t know. As bloggers, most of us in the room raised our hands. This put us in the limited 10% of U.S. people who create content for people they don’t know. It means we need clear ways to evaluate the content we are putting out. Tom introduced a great example of a potential problem that could come from not knowing your audience. He said “You’ll never know if a problem you see in social media is actually a problem unless you calibrate with other info.”

A quick look at real conversations about “Frosted Flakes” would provide you with information about how people talk about this brand. Go outside of social media to learn if the discoveries you made have real value and truth. Tom emphasized that we often settle for the first answer and not the truth.

2. Ask Better Questions

Tom gave a great example of Lexus. Many car companies ask the all important questions such as “What do you want out of your car?” Lexus went above and beyond by interviewing their target audience and asking “How can we help in your life? What are your life problems?” What they ended up launching with was “Quiet,” which made for a hugely successful campaign.

Tom emphasized that we don’t re-frame the issue enough and look for the best question. When looking to answer questions we have, we might be tempted to look to social media. What Tom made very apparent was that social media will not give you better answers, but it will give you better questions.

3. Prove Yourself Wrong

Data for content creation is inherently incurious. Those creating it fail to prove themselves wrong and Tom sees this as disservice to the analytics industry. Per Tom, the main example of this in action today is infographics. Tom shared that the pie graph was created by Florence Nightingale which she used to save lives with data. She found the causes of mortality and presented info in a way that everybody understood. The problem with pie graphs and infographics, in the way they’re used today, is that they merely provide numbers  – and all too often – in ways that are not easy to decipher. They are not asking the right questions, nor are they seeking to prove themselves wrong.

The perfect example was in response to the information shared about the best day to tweet. He pointed out the fallacy in this was that it assumed that there is a best day to tweet. He explained that the question is not what the best day is to tweet but rather whether time or date has anything to do with success.

What we need to do is take the information we received from social media and seek to prove it wrong. Too often we simply take numbers and data at face value and forget to ask the big questions. As Tom said, “If you are not curious, you are not a scientist.”

If you heard information wrong once, you are likely not to believe. But if you hear it three times or more, it is more likely that you will believe it. That is Twitter. Because of this, we need to be sure we are seeking to prove information wrong or inquire more deeply into how information is acquired. This lead Tom to his final point.

4. Do Your Own Work

People will remember where they were when Kennedy died, when the Challenger exploded and lastly…when the “klout-calypse” happened. (When Klout changed their scoring metrics).

Tom emphasized that social scoring is inevitable. The issue with it is that it is not doing your own work and it doesn’t always do what you think it does. You need to take things further by doing your own evaluations and determining what influence looks like in your industry. Tom highlighted the factors of influence that we need to consider.

Factors of influence:

• Relevance of message
• Content of message
• Credibility of author

He explained that our own work will always be more relevant. If we are looking at the same information as everyone else, then we have no competitive edge.

Tom summed things up perfectly and his conclusion was captured well by @JasonFalls:

How are you currently looking at your social data? Are you following these four steps?

Melanie Thompson is a Community Analyst at Radian6. When she is not engaging with the Radian6 community she can be found reading or blogging. Find out why she calls herself Mrs. 20 Q’s by reaching out to her on Twitter @MelanieAThomp.

Tags: #BWELA, Blog World New Media Expo, blogging, blogworld, data, Jason Falls, Lexus, Tom Webster