Tag: Business

Twitter Analytics

Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

Was listening through a podcast by Duct Tape Marketing on Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik. It started of as an interview promoting his new book on analytics powered through crowdsourcing. Towards the fag end of the interview, something that Avinash said really got my attention.

Most people treat Twitter as a shout channel. Please do not treat it as one.

Then he rattled off two important parameters for measuring one’s tweeting success. They made more sense because I agree with him on Twitter being an engagement space with your customers. His parameters are –

  1. No. of RTs/1000 followers
  2. No. of replies per day

The first one measures how many of your followers are listening to you and see value in your ideas. The second one measures how many of those listeners are engaging with you.

Simple.

Social Entrepreneurs

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imageWhen it comes to work, ours is a curious lot. Always willing to check new things (as long as it takes us away from our work ;-)).

So it was no surprise when on our way to lunch we noticed a simple sign at a hall … it said “Youth Venture Workshops”. Since we are in the career space and passionate about entrepreneurship, off we went. The workshop was having their lunch break and we took that opportunity to talk to some of the organizers. Their idea was simple, they talk to individuals who have a burning desire to change something in the society, and help them achieve it through guidance, team building, and funding. They identify potential social entrepreneurs who have the drive to change the society and help them.

The organizers were kind enough to invite us to stick around and watch some of their sessions. The teaming sessions were simple, and involved a lot of play … just the right thing needed to build a team of young and energetic people.

The workshop turned out to be a subscription based program, for which one has to enroll in the month of June. So we gathered took information about their site and went back to work. After coming home, I decided to check up on their site, and read about the youth venture. Turns out that Ashoka Partnership is one of the largest association of social entrepreneurs!!

At the program, we talked to some of the participants who were volunteering, and it was a good experience to see people take charge of the desire to change something in society and act upon it. The next time you blame society for something, remember it can be fixed :-)

Work is Play!!

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I have been reading Reeves and Read’s Total Engagement: Using games and virtual worlds to change the way people work and business compete, this is as part of my work (I know, rocking job :-)). The whole idea started when we decided to see how individuals change their approach of work if they see their passion in their work (and not the other way round!!). One of my passions is games. Hence the book, and to see how games can be used in work scenarios in order to change the way employees engage with their jobs.

By the first set of chapters itself, the authors had me re-affirm my faith in games completely. The authors looked at around 800 different jobs available with the US Labour Department (O*NET), and identified around 50 0r so different capacities/skills needed to function in those jobs. Each of these skills was then explained as something that we (as gamers) do whilst playing our favorite games.

So why do we pay for doing the something for which we can also get paid for? Why cannot work become play? I strongly believe it can be made into a play-space. Imagine your job as a MUD :-)

A VC who nurtures entrepreneurs

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Just read this on the Wall Street journal, that there is a venture fund by the name of Pacific Lake Partners who actively seek out young entrepreneurs, give them enough money to scout around for the right organization to takeover. Then help them acquire that organization for a healthy return.

You can read the rest of the article here. An excerpt –

Pacific Lake will provide between $300,000 and $500,000 to entrepreneurs to cover living and travel expenses for two years while they search for a business opportunity – generally an established business with revenue between $10 million and $30 million. There’s no sector focus; it all depends on the opportunity the entrepreneur finds.

It feels good to know that there is a venture fund who values someone who can not only boot strap an organization but take on an already running organization and turn it around. This is the stuff of what legends are made up of. All of the awe-inspiring case studies that we used read in our b-schools have suddenly come real. I wonder if any VC or angel investor follows a similar policy in India. As a developing economy, we need increasing number of such folks.

Social Media

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Yesterday, I attended Startup Saturday … the theme was Social Media and how it can be leveraged by start-ups effectively.

Some of my key learning –

  • Online marketing does not replace offline marketing efforts, and vice versa. If you are planning a huge effort in one media, do not ignore the other
  • The best way to use these platforms is not as a broadcasting medium, but as a way of engaging with your customers
  • Don’t create propaganda, create evangelists … who can propagate your name
  • Social media marketing is not cheap, and it is certainly not a free alternative to traditional marketing
  • In case of B2B space, marketeers can target the end-customer through social media and get the attention of their intended customer organization

Will attach the respective presentations as and when the organization committee puts them online :)

Why use LinkedIn

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This is more of a recollection of my learnings than anything else, people can share their learnings and I promise to grow this space.

  1. Targeted resume submissions – Find the organization you want to apply to, go find folks in your network who work for  that organization. Use their referrals to get your resume the place you want it to be.
  2. Business Visibility – Professionals talking about their organizations can act as evangelists on LinkedIn. With the integration of Twitter, the value of LinkedIn as a Social Media Platform has increased a thousandfold.
  3. Peer learning – People who work in the same industry can collaborate to discuss and resolve each other’s problems. Whereas this seems to be a generic utility of a community, I have seen this happen pretty well through the Q&A forum of LinkedIn. Since people who contribute to these are serious minded professionals vis-a-vis the casual replies of Orkut. All this for free unlike Experts-exchange, where the user has to fork out good money to get to the solution.
  4. Showcasing – This is the most obvious one, do I need to get into this :-)

Your comments are more than welcome on this one, since it will only add to this post.

Theory and Practice v/s Practice and Theory

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I graduated in 2006, one of the last subjects I took was IT Enabled Marketing (ITEM). Another was Business Models for E-Commerce (BMEComm). The subjects were easy to crack, and were a breeze. We call these mickey subjects, since the subjects are easy to cruise and you get along by putting half the effort required.

After graduating, I was (and am) involved in 2-3 web start-ups. Great ideas, good people … but none of them know exactly what is it thats to be done. Everyone explores. They finally get it right, and so did we. The thing that gets to me, is that we have been taught all this … in theory. But then we never appreciated that theory then. Theory is useless without practice, and practice without proper theory is a blind struggle.

Today, I am tempted to open by texts and see if the models that we have been taught make sense. I am sure that they.

As I stand on a platform to make the jump, I would like to have some sound theory with me as well.