In June of 2013, a blogger by the name of Bohemea lost 2 blogs, 100,000 pieces of content, and 150,000 followers in an instant, without warning. No, it wasn't a cyber attack or vengeful hacker or because she accidentally hit the "ruin my life" button on the internet – Tumblr removed her content. The popular blogging platform where she hosted her content and managed her brand deleted the data because, out of her 100,000+ posts, five were accused of potentially using copyrighted material. The worst part? Bohemea had to start over from scratch.

You might think this cautionary tale is a rare occurrence but, as digital technology becomes a bigger part of every interaction, it’s alarmingly common – which begs the question: Do you really own your data? And if you don't, what should you do about it?



Why your data is important

There is an old saying, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” The reason why your data is vital to you and everything you do is that, in a digital world, you know a lot of people. But the average person can only maintain about 150 relationships before they start to forget important things about the people they interact with, and that’s where data comes in. Data is what you know about, who you know, and, with the average number of followers on each of the largest social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) being well above 150 people a piece – plus your website traffic, email list, and all your offline interactions with real humans – I’ll bet you have a lot of data. Now, imagine that data is your savings. Maintaining it within a static platform is like storing it under a mattress – it just sits there.

If you have fans, voters, customers, donors, volunteers, tweeps, or all of the above – you’ve got data. But data for data sake is kind of pointless. It’s not intrinsically valuable; where all those 1’s and 0’s truly shine is in their ability to give you actionable insight. These little nuggets of information can help you understand why people donate, open your emails, come to your events, share your cat photos, or buy your products and how you can get more people to do all of those things more often. A dynamic database that is updated regularly accrues interest like a bank account – it connects your data to a wealth of information, and you can watch it grow over time. You can move beyond superficial metrics about rough demographics and start targeting and tailoring your interactions for specific individuals, which is far more effective. Because connecting with people on a personal level is actually the key to accomplishing things at a much larger scale than yourself (but we can talk about that in another blog post).

Now, I’m not saying that by the simple act of owning your data you’ll be able to magically answer all of these questions but what I am saying is that it is mighty, mighty hard to get those answers if you don’t.

Why it’s bad if other people own your data

Because if you don’t, someone else does. This could be a really long cautionary tale but I’ll keep it short and sweet: “it’s better to own than to rent”. If other people own your data, they can keep it and use it for themselves. They can advertise to your hard earned supporters, tell you what you can and can’t do with your information, restrict who you can share it with, or limit where you can operate. They can shut you down at will and force you to start all over again, or accidentally delete your account in a major, well-intentioned spam purge. They could even charge you an arm and a leg just to look at it and tap on the glass.

Here’s a quick test to see if you own your data: Try to take it with you. Yep – find that “Export All” button and click on it. You should be able to export your data into a CSV or MDB or take a Snapshot or something and drop it right on to your desktop. What do you mean you don’t see an “export” button? If you walking out of the front door with your data requires some sort of intermediary or payment, sorry to break it to you…you don’t really own your data.

Owning your data puts you in the driver seat – as opposed to the trunk – so you’re not bound to one platform, one software, or one strategy. Owning your own data means you control how it’s used and when it’s used so you reap its full benefits.

What to do if you don’t own your data

Every week I talk to another person who had no idea he didn't own his data, until it's too late. If you are that person, here's what you can do, right now.

First, take a deep breath. If you’ve already tried asking for your data nicely, demand it. Regularly export whatever you can. If hard built information or backup requests require payment, you can usually extract the data yourself and, in most cases, a quick Google search will give you what you need. It’s worth learning how to do that and looking at alternative platforms or, better still, asking about data ownership before you start a new platform or sign a contract.

Second, if you can’t export your data from a service or software (this is usually the case with many social media platforms) create ways to gather information about your supporters in a place that is yours. This typically come in two forms: an app that plugs into your current platform and asks for information about your followers (like Action Sprout), or a simple redirect to your website or another place where you can capture information with an incentive to click.

Either way, you should approach every opportunity to communicate with your audience with the dual purpose of learning more about your supporters and deepening your mutual relationship. Get to know people better and offer them a chance to get to know you.

You're ready to rock

The more you ownership you have over your information, the more you can do with it. Using your data to guide your outreach creates more high-quality relationships – and it is those relationships that keep customers coming back, transforms fans into ticket purchasers, turn voters into canvassers, and makes donors out of Twitter followers.