What makes the Perfect Post on Social Platforms?

Perfect Posts On Social Platforms

Perfect Posts On Social Platforms

 

When it comes to maintaining your presence on different Social Media networks, the key to this is timing, consistency and knowing what your audience appreciates. As your channel matures, your audience will start realizing that your updates are according to a schedule, which means your interested audience can know exactly when to check your channel for news they can use.

The time in these platforms and the platforms themselves should also give you a cue as to which social update to put where and when.

What is the big deal about Big Data?

Imagine a typical day at the office for any business executive. All of us would be checking our emails, getting into meetings, attending to our phone calls and planning for that weekend getaway to unwind from a stressful week. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? These activities will lead to a source of unstructured data being generated, data which until some years back was really difficult to store, much less analyse.

What is Big Data?

The industry has termed all these disparate sets of data as Big Data. Big Data is a collection of data sets which either is unstructured and poses a challenge in storage and retrieval or is such a large set of data that it cannot be analysed by existing systems. Dan Kusnetzky of ZDNet has put it succinctly when he wrote about Big Data

In simplest terms, the phrase refers to the tools, processes and procedures allowing an organization to create, manipulate, and manage very large data sets and storage facilities.

Big Data could be a series of images that are used in preparing a report, it could be a video recording of an event, and it could also be a behavioural data of users on your web product.

Is Big Data just Hype?

Do we at the end of this article simply write off this jargon … or are there real life applications of Big Data in organizations? The applications of unstructured data needs one to take a step back and look at the bigger picture –

  1. A customer searches for a particular product on an e-commerce site.
  2. The site has the product, but it is currently out of stock.
  3. He tweets about this to the site’s support on Twitter.
  4. They follow-up using Twitter and finally email him about the availability of stock.
  5. The individual goes ahead and purchases the product, he also manages to buy some other gifts for his family.
  6. The site sends him an SMS and email confirmation.
  7. The order is dispatched and the site sends him a separate SMS about this. The order is sent into two separate dispatches with two separate dispatch IDs.
  8. Both the dispatches reach the happy customer. He goes on and thanks the support on Twitter.

If you see this entire cycle, the interactions and data points are across a series of different systems. Some of these systems are not even owned by the e-commerce site, some of them are vendor systems, yet there is a clear need for a better understanding of these data points.

In order to be more responsive to the potential customer, to reduce the lead to cash times, to invest in the right inventory and to justify Social Media expenditures, the organization (our e-commerce site) will have to analyse this data.

Apart from the obvious business applications, big data is also being used to make society safer. For example, in 2009 Google was able to apply big data to search terms to help identify how the H1N1 virus was spreading through communities. They did such a great job at this that not only was their tracking real time but also it was more accurate than the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Next Big Challenge

Any business analyst will tell you the importance to have clean, structured and codified data in order to cull out business insights. Without proper codification on a data set, a business analyst cannot run different statistical tests to check their hypotheses.

With Big Data the challenge is that statistical packages such as SPSS, R or the giant in this field SAS cannot handle really high volumes of data (we are talking data of the size of exabytes here!). Multiple problems will have to be addressed and solved to capture the full potential of big data. Policies related to security of data, privacy and ownership of data and intellectual property rights will also need to be formulated.

Understanding the nature of the problem is the first step to solving it. The next step would be start developing methodologies and systems. In the race to develop the next set of software applications, software giants such as Oracle, IBM and even Infosys are looking at developing their own propriety systems.

Summary

For any new technology to be adopted in main stream implementations, it has to go through a chain of events. It will be widely discussed, it will be touted as the next elixir of life, it will also see some failed implementations and then written off as just another snake oil. In the course of these events, some enlightened organizations would end up doing the right implementations, then success stories will be shared and finally it will be adopted by all organizations as a main stream technology.

Big Data has a long way to go, and it is here to stay.

Saving your Paper Trail

 

In the course of our lives, we create a large paper trail which we take with us as a means of identifying who we are, this trail involves

  • Identification proofs such as driver’s license, pan cards, UID (hope that works!), ration cards
  • Bills (telephone, electricity, credit cards) and their respective receipts
  • Mark sheets and Passing certificates (and thank god I have gone through that phase!)
  • Certifications
  • Insurance policies and other financial documents (pass books, cheque books, shares)

The list of paper documents we manage is endless … in fact as I am writing this, I know that there is one drawer-full of electricity bills in my house, all of my family members have a separate file for certificates and documents which is at least 2 inches thick. Despite of maintaining this growing trail of papers, when the time comes to fill taxes (which should have been a mundane task since I have been doing it for the past decade of my working life), I end up running around till the last-minute.

The problem?

A paper storage and retrieval system which is messy at best and chaotic at the worst. I am not alone in this war against documents, businesses suffer the same problem as well. For start-ups, the first 5 years go in peace, in the sixth year though, there is a drastic need to get all of your papers in place. That includes TDS filings, bills for incidentals, purchase documents, sales receipts … the list goes on. So what is to be done?

This is where Document Storage Solutions come into play

Document Storage involves storage and management of important documents, records management for example or simple archival of the existing documents to be fetched at a later time. These solutions are also useful for governments, for example the UK government does use strong record management facilities to support their Freedom of Information requests from the citizens. However, FOI can only be useful where the document is actually stored, what about those  documents which are destroyed? Some problems are beyond the scope of Document Storage :-)

What is important for us here is that sometimes maintaining and storing all these paper documents becomes an issue (in terms of space, in terms of finding the documents at the right time), and that’s why services which can effectively maintain these services are being founded and I find them just the solution for saving you (or your organization’s) paper trails.

WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal – Which CMS should you use?

Wordpress vs Drupal vs Joomla

I have seen this question being frequently discussed amongst start-ups and content marketers. Here’s my small attempt to help decide between which content management system one should go for.

What is a CMS?

A Content Management System (CMS) is an application using which you can create, update and delete your Content. Now this is a very loose description, and any web application where you upload stuff and manage it falls into this definition. So let me narrow this down a bit.

A CMS is a web application using which you can easily publish content on your website.

Yes, it’s the backbone software based on which you create (or have just created) a rocking website.

Why do I need a CMS?

You don’t. If your site is made of a few pages (5 or so), then perhaps you are better off with a static site. Plain Jane HTML. There actually is no need to hire an agency to create your site.

However, if you like me love writing on a regular basis on your site and keeping the site updated, with more and more pages … or have a site which is dynamic in nature (stuff keeps on happening on the site and there is never a boring time for you), then it is best to use a CMS to control what content goes live on your site.

  • A Content Management System will help you manage the content that you publish in a better fashion
  • A good CMS will also help you promote your content
  • An ideal CMS will help you monetize your content ;-)
  • The best CMS should make publishing a breeze, a process easy to perform and involving as less hassles as possible

So which CMS are out there?

There are more than a million Content Management Systems out there … no really! Talk to your average Joe, the web vendor and he would convince you to create your site in his awesome custom CMS. I know of Indian vendors out there who are doing this as their business model!!

But let me not talk about those, and focus on the ones which really matter. The ones which hold a significant share of the internet. The ones which are free :-), yes, since the free ones have a high share of the internet.

WordPress

WordPressThis is by far the most widely used Content Management System on the internet. At last count, WordPress has been powering more than 17% of the internet!

WordPress (yes the P is intentional, and has to be in caps!) is the proud creation of Automattic and is free to use. If you do not want to get into the technicalities and only focus on publishing, then simply head on over to WordPress dot com. If you can brave the tech part of setting up your own hosted WordPress (which is a breeze), then head on over to WordPress dot org and download the latest source.

Let me be honest with you, I am biased towards WordPress and it’s my defacto CMS.

One look at the search trends of Google will confirm this for you –

Pros

  • The community around WordPress is lively and helpful
  • This has the highest number of themes and plug-ins available for any CMS out there
  • Did I tell you that it powers more than 17% of the internet?
  • Very easy to setup and start using
  • Amount of efforts in terms of knowing technology v/s getting started with a kick-ass site is quite low

Cons

  • For complex requirements, you have to rely on other systems or major plug-ins. These are not as seamless as I would have wanted.

Joomla

JoomlaUnlike WordPress which started out as a blogging software and went on to become a full fledged Content Management System, Joomla started off as a CMS and was a fork of Mambo (forget about this CMS, it had its fair share of problems which Joomla fixed quite elegantly). During the initial days of Joomla, there was a lot of controversy between free software and open source (since it was formed from a CMS which was not exactly free). However the community that Joomla built was loyal and has since developed great support for it.

Although Joomla does pack a wallop when it comes down to meeting your CMS requirements, it does require a bit of getting used to and that’s why it powers 2.8% of the Internet.

Pros

  • Great support and documentation available
  • Built with CMS based sites kept in mind.
  • Easy to roll out complex site navigations.

Cons

  • Learning curve is a bit steeper and requires patience to understand the works
  • Plug-ins and Themes are not as seamless as one would expect

Drupal

DrupalThis is the oldest CMS amongst the three, and must have seen a lot of attrition in its community base as the other two CMS’ would have been released. That also explains why this community is fiercely loyal. That also would explain the well documented help for this CMS (a developer’s paradise). This is the CMS of the techie which comes bundled with a lot of power.

But with all this power comes a complexity which becomes difficult to master, and hence lesser adoption rates. At 2.13% of the internet, I will not call it less, but the other counterparts are doing well.

Pros

  • Well documented support centre
  • Strong base with excellent core features
  • Community of techies who know their CMS

Cons

  • Extremely steep learning curve
  • Lesser plug-ins and themes, it is assumed that the nuances you want can be implemented in-house

So which one should I go for?

I am not going to play safe and just stop at a CMS comparison, for that there are tonnes of other sites who have even done beautiful infographics on this topic. I am going to pick one of these CMS for you!! So help me out and ask yourself these questions (just pick the options!)

  1. Am I already familiar with any of these systems?
    1. Yes
    2. No
  2. How fast do I need to go to market?
    1. I have time, I am just toying around
    2. Yesterday
  3. Do I have a clear idea of what kind of features I want in my CMS?
    1. Yes
    2. No

If your answer is mostly 1’s then go ahead with the CMS you already know … you have the time to learn it and you know what you need to implement. Ask around in the communities and people will help you out.

If your answer is mostly 2’s then just pick WordPress and start. It is easy to learn, fast to implement and flexible at the start (since you do not know what you exactly want, you would have to do a lot of tests to determine what works for you.

What the Internet has to say about WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal

You can say that I am biased with WordPress. Yes, I am … since these days I make my living by working on the WordPress stack. However, you do not have to take my word for it, here’s a comparison of what the Internet has to say about these three different CMSs.

 

Google Plus banned my Profile

I am trying to develop a regular rapport with this Google+ since I believe that over a period of time, this will affect in a big way on how search results are displayed to users. I do not have definitive stats which indicate that a person in higher number of circles result in higher SERPs, but this is a gut feel and more on that later. Visiting Google+ and engaging on the social network is part of my daily agenda. If you are a blogger, you should try it out some time.

However, when I logged onto Google+, this is what I saw on the top of my screen

Google+ ban

So I did what any normal person would do.

I raged. Then I calmed down and tried to reason with the system as to why this could be the case. After reading through the myriad of support articles that were linked in the notifications, the only action one could do was delete all content that I had submitted and submit the profile for review.

Google Suspension

After submitting my profile and waiting for a day, the good folks at Google decided that my profile was still violating some of their policies.

As a user, it would have been great if they could clearly point that out, however much to my chagrin there has been no actionable point from Google. Big Brother wants to disable my profile and that’s the way it would stay. An automated system is a good thing, but an iron wall is bad … I cannot even question why my account was suspended … the two documents that suggest probable reasons are Google+ User Content and Conduct Policy and Name Policy.

The former suggests that I have uploaded some content which could be hate comment, spam, …. the later suggests that my name does not seem genuine. I don’t know which allegation is more disturbing. I would love to contest these allegations, but there is no committee with whom I can take this up with … there is simply a red notification about the ban.

I have always been a Google Fan-boy, perhaps I still am, but this system makes me question their approach at trying to launch a social network. If you are spurning away your active users, how do you propose to get more users to stick to your social network?