Data Mining: Finding a PR Goldmine in Statistics
New York City-based dating site, OkCupid, says it regularly mines the company's database of customer profiles and surveys to find amusing trends like this particular smartphone statistic: Which smartphone users have the most sex? As reported in this article on the Inc. website, the answer, according to OkCupid, is iPhone owners — but more importantly spotting interesting trends in its data has turned out to be a PR goldmine for this dating site company.
“The company's foray into statistics started last year, when the founders set out to create a company blog that would attract an audience outside of
OkCupid's existing customer base. The founders had an idea: What if they took survey answers, messaging habits, self-descriptions, and other statistics from OkCupid's millions of members and compared that information with external data? Perhaps they could unveil larger truths about the online dating world – or even society as a whole.
“But OkCupid's blog has done more than just spur conversation. The blog's popularity has boosted OkCupid's ranking in search-engine results. ‘It's helped us a ton in search-engine optimization and traffic,' says CEO Sam Yagan. He says nearly two million people have visited the blog since it launched. In that time, OkCupid's monthly unique visitor count has nearly doubled, to 5.5 million. ‘Having a blog about data helps create the impression that OkCupid treats this like a science,' Rudder says. ‘And we do.'”
Read the Full “Mining Company Data for PR Gold” article at Inc.
