How to Leverage Unstructured Data

Big data is a goldmine of valuable customer insights – but to leverage this data, marketers need the right tools for deciphering and interpreting unstructured information. Harvesting insight from vast amounts of raw data requires powerful analytics technology to identify the most impactful trends and optimize decision-making processes. AI techniques such as natural language processing (NLP) enable us to make sense of and use these huge datasets more meaningfully. Marketers can utilize advanced AI platforms to extract actionable intelligence from unstructured big data sources. 

 

While structured datasets provide valuable information on customer behaviors and preferences, unstructured datasets can often reveal insights that otherwise would remain hidden. Because AI algorithms can analyze large amounts of textual data quickly and accurately, drawing actionable insights from these vast collections of unstructured information has become increasingly feasible.  

 

Identifying Unstructured Big Data Sources 

Identifying unstructured big data sources is critical for businesses to gain insights into customer behavior, preferences, and satisfaction levels. By analyzing unstructured data sources, businesses can make informed decisions, improve customer service, and increase revenue. Here are a few typical huge data sources that are unstructured: 

  • Social Media Feeds: Unstructured data is commonly seen in social media. Millions of posts are created daily on websites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Social media feed analysis can help businesses understand their customers’ attitudes, patterns, and preferences. 
  • Customer Reviews: Another excellent source of unstructured data is customer reviews. Businesses may better understand customer satisfaction levels, spot problem areas, and provide better customer service by analyzing customer reviews. Reviews can be found on several websites, including Google My Business, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Amazon. 
  • Email and Chat Logs: Unstructured data can be abundant in email and chat logs. These data sources include details on customer contacts, customer service problems, and worker opinions. Businesses may enhance customer service and find possibilities for process improvement by analyzing email and chat records. 
  • Website Data: Businesses may optimize their websites, enhance user experience, and boost consumer engagement by analyzing website data. Information on user activity, preferences, and interests can be found in website data. This information consists of clicks, page views, and user interactions. 
  • Audio and Video Data: Podcasts, webinars, and online videos are audio and video data examples. Multimedia data can provide insights into users, customers, or clients’ interests, preferences, and behaviors. This information may be used by businesses to create focused marketing efforts, enhance their product offers, and increase client engagement.

 

Establishing Metrics for Measuring Impact and Insights

Establishing metrics for measuring impact and insights is critical for businesses to assess the effectiveness of their data analysis efforts. By defining objectives and goals, identifying KPIs, choosing relevant data sources, implementing data analytics tools, and monitoring and analyzing results, businesses can measure the impact of their data analysis efforts and optimize their performance. 

 

Extracting Meaningful Insights from Unstructured Data 

Textual analysis tools are essential for extracting insights from unstructured data sources. These tools use natural language processing techniques to analyze text and identify patterns, sentiments, and trends. Some common textual analysis tools that extract insights from unstructured data include sentiment analysis, named entity recognition, topic modeling, text classification, and keyword extraction.  

  • Sentiment analysis measures customer satisfaction, identifies customer complaints, and monitors brand reputation. 
  • Named entity recognition is used to identify key players in an industry or topic and monitor the popularity of specific products or brands.  
  • Topic modeling can be used to monitor trends in customer feedback, identify emerging topics in social media, and analyze customer support tickets.  
  • Text classification is used to categorize customer support tickets, identify trends in customer feedback, and monitor customer sentiment. 
  • Keyword extraction is used to identify frequently mentioned topics in social media, monitor brand reputation, and analyze customer feedback. 

 

Visualizing Results from Unstructured Content Analysis 

Visualizing results from unstructured content analysis is crucial for making sense of large volumes of text data. It helps businesses identify trends and patterns that may not be immediately apparent from analyzing raw text data. Visualizations provide an easy-to-understand way to present insights, making it easier for decision-makers to understand the data and make informed decisions. 

One popular visualization technique for unstructured content analysis is word clouds. Word clouds provide a visual representation of the most frequently occurring words in a corpus of text, with the size of the word proportional to its frequency. They are useful for identifying the most common themes or topics in a dataset, making it easier to spot trends and patterns that might not be immediately obvious from analyzing raw text data. 


Another popular visualization technique is sentiment analysis charts. Sentiment analysis charts visually represent the sentiment expressed in a corpus of text. They are often represented as bar charts or pie charts, with positive, negative, and neutral sentiments in different colors. These charts can be used to track changes in sentiment over time, identify common sentiment themes, and measure the impact of specific events or marketing campaigns. 


Other useful visualization techniques for unstructured content analysis include: 

  • Heatmaps are useful for visualizing the frequency of specific terms or phrases across a large corpus of text.  
  • Network graphs can be used to visualize the relationships between different entities mentioned in the text, such as people, organizations, or products.  
  • Topic models can be used to identify and visualize the most common themes or topics in a dataset, providing a way to identify trends and patterns quickly. 


Visualizing results from unstructured content analysis is crucial to making sense of large volumes of text data. It enables businesses to identify trends and patterns that may not be immediately apparent from analyzing raw text data, making it easier to spot insights and make informed decisions. Businesses can gain valuable insights into customer behavior, preferences, and satisfaction levels by leveraging visualization techniques such as word clouds, sentiment analysis charts, heatmaps, network graphs, and topic models. 

 

Taking Actionable Steps Based on Insight Derived from Unstructured Data 

Taking actionable steps based on insights derived from unstructured data is essential for businesses looking to stay competitive in today’s data-driven world. Once meaningful insights have been identified through analysis and visualization of unstructured data, it’s important to take concrete actions to address the insights and improve the areas that need attention. For example, if sentiment analysis has identified a common customer complaint, action should be taken to address the issue and improve customer satisfaction. If topic modeling has identified a new emerging trend in customer feedback, action should be taken to leverage the trend and stay ahead of the competition. By acting based on insights from unstructured data, businesses can improve their customer experience, optimize their operations, and ultimately drive better business outcomes. The key is to move beyond simply identifying insights and use the insights to drive meaningful changes and improvements in the organization. 

 

 

Takeaways 

Leveraging insights from unstructured big data sources can provide businesses with valuable information that can help drive growth and improve customer experiences. With the increasing volume and complexity of data available today, businesses need a robust strategy to extract insights from unstructured data sources. This includes identifying relevant data sources, establishing metrics for measuring impact and insights, using textual analysis tools to extract meaningful insights, and visualizing the results of data analysis. 


The insights from unstructured data can give businesses a competitive advantage, allowing them to make data-driven decisions that improve customer experiences, optimize their operations, and drive better business outcomes. However, it’s important to remember that the process of leveraging insights from unstructured data is an iterative one, and it requires ongoing refinement and adjustment to ensure that the insights are relevant and actionable. 


By following the best practices outlined above, businesses can better understand their customers and make data-driven decisions that help them stay ahead of the competition. In today’s data-driven world, leveraging insights from unstructured data sources is no longer a nice-to-have — it’s necessary for businesses looking to thrive in a rapidly changing landscape. 

WEBINAR

INTELLIGENT IMMERSION:

How AI Empowers AR & VR for Business

Wednesday, June 19, 2024

12:00 PM ET •  9:00 AM PT