Mike Buckley, vice president of global business communications, Facebook, was the closing keynote at PRSA’s 2014 International Conference. With nary a hoodie or Adidas slide sandal in sight (I’m looking at you, Mark Zuckerberg), Big Data and Analytics for Communications Pros: Why the Math Matters pulled no punches.

While you might assume right off the bat that Facebook’s resources far outpace your own when it comes to nearly all aspects of business operations (and you’d be right), let’s put this in perspective:

-Buckley’s Global Communications team is comprised of 100 members

…but before that inspires deep-seated jealousy consider:

• that’s approximately 1 team member per 15 million Facebook customers

…and more data is being produced PER DAY than there are grains of sand in the world.

“Fred Cook said to have balls—YES, go in and look at the data!”

Like sands through the hourglass, so is the data streaming through each of your systems, websites, portals…start small, start somewhere before you’ve missed another opportunity.

Related reading: High-Impact PR Planning that Drives ROI & Supports Demand Generation

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

The more you can make recommendations that are grounded in data and produce tangible business results, the more effective you are—and the more effective Public Relations appears to the larger organization (see more on this topic by clicking here)

“Biggest lever on how people feel about us and our reputation has all to do with product and experience.”

This advice is perhaps best applicable to an iterative technology company like Facebook—but we can all walk away with a lesson learned: don’t presume to know what impacts your customer satisfaction and brand reputation…actually know what impacts your customer satisfaction and brand reputation. If you didn’t realize that your website’s user experience is driving a large portion of satisfaction, you wouldn’t be able to account for potential, temporal reaction to change.

On an ongoing basis you should be measuring and tracking sentiment, time spent interacting with your site/portal, and overall satisfaction. This will help you establish a baseline over time and avoid unnecessary panic—and also give you an early indication if a new launch is having a more extreme effect than is normal.

“The issue is not the downward curve, it’s how fast and the likelihood of rebound.”

Baseline data can help you predict behavior patterns resulting from planning changes, launches, etc. They can also tell you how long any negative reactions might last, and when you can expect to rebound. To quote Buckley, “We will know, based on math, what will happen in the future.”

Once you’ve proven the data works—and you respect what it is telling you—you have more freedom to take actions and make decisions that at first glance might seem like a fool’s mission, but will actually move your brand and business forward in the long-term.

OK—you get it. Data isn’t nerdy; data is cool. Data is what will inform business decisions that take your career, team, company, and customers forward. But what can’t data do?

Buckley left us with some key words of wisdom when it comes to the limitations of data, which aren’t likely to disappear anytime soon:

“Data can be conflicting.”

It can prove extremely difficult to isolate variables, especially as you work with larger and disparate data sets.

“How do you evaluate paper cuts to brand and reputation?”

Hiccups happen, and you might very well rebound quickly—and data might reassure you that your reputation has rebounded…but is there a cumulative effect of these minor disruptions to longer-term sentiment and trust levels?

“Data will never replace human interaction. It will never explain pain and why it requires a human touch.”