The Big Fat Geek - Personal blog of Prasad Ajinkya

Thoughts on Social Media

February 23, 2018 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

I wrote this note out for a discussion on Social Media sites and how their relationship with publishers has evolved over a period of time. It goes to show that too much of reliance on any one channel may not be such a good thing after all!

Can we as digital marketers and analysts create a measurement model that can reliably help us to identify whether our social media investments are justified?

Social Media and Creators

One of the problems that new Social Media websites face is generating enough content that users want to consume. This they do by welcoming publishers to come and register on their websites. This is the main fuel for their growth.

The social media site in question (including Facebook) does all it can to attract publishers and creators. The focus is on getting more creators and therefore more users. Users get to follow their favorite brands and celebrities on these sites. Brands and celebrities get a scalable way to engage with their fans. A win-win on paper.

A platform is born

As more users sign-up and start using the site, it soon starts being recognized as a platform. This platform now is independently known and now, creators are attracted to the platform not because its easy to publish their content or its easy to create their content … but because that platform already has their potential target audience.

So, from engagement at scale, the reason why the platform is being used shifts to reach and discovery. The very publisher who used to get throngs of crowds flocking around them now is looking at the platform as the source of that crowd. The shift of behavior due to the change in thinking is not amiss to platform owners.

From Win-Win to Monopoly

The platform owner now knows the dependence of the publisher upon the platform. E.g Facebook single-handedly crippled the stock prices of Zynga (famous for Farmville app on Facebook) by taking it off their Featured apps page.

Take the organic reach that Facebook now provides. Some years back (circa 2012), a single post on your Facebook page would be shown to 10-12% of your followers. This has slowly trickled down to 1% now (3%-4% if you have high engagement on the page). The reason behind this is because every brand out there is pushing out more and more content than what the platform was designed for, and every brand / celebrity out there wants to create content that goes viral.

Pursuit of Viral

Publishers in the pursuit of this holy grail tend to create a Sea of Crappy Content. This is loads and loads of content which does not drive engagement. Platform owners now are scared by the very publishers they used to chase. Not because they don’t need them … but because they are not clearly able to differentiate the good ones from the bad ones. The definition of quality becomes more blurred.

Zero Organic Reach

In the end, the platform owner plays the one card that they can control. Throttle the impressions and reach of the publishers. Quality is then replaced with budgets, with the underlying assumption – if you can create great content, most likely you have enough budgets to buy the impressions required to go viral.

Another example to highlight this is to look at any Facebook page which has over 10,000 likes, the last post of that page won’t even have an engagement rate of 1%. The problem may not with the page or the post in itself, it stems from the throttling down of organic reach.

So what can be done?

Do we pay the piper and buy our followers? Or do we dance to the tune of the platforms and keep pushing more content in the hopes of getting that one beautiful post that gets shared by the millions.

Can we instead, arrive at a scientific method of identifying what platform works and what doesn’t in furthering our objectives?

Webmaster rolls out new Search Console

February 1, 2018 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

This has been coming for quite some time. Google Webmaster is slowly rolling out an update to the Search Console. The new search console is a much cleaner interface with most of the reports and insights hidden under multiple layers.

The Dashboard

The new Search Console dashboard is much more simpler now, with just three reports that you can view –

Performance – How your site is performing in the search results. This is similar to the Search Analytics report.
Index Coverage – How your site has been indexed and what errors does the search engine detect on the site
AMP – Information about the Accelerated Mobile Pages and how Google detects AMP on your site

The good things

Straight off the cuff, this tool provides just the right information to the user. It forces the user to engage with the reports available, and provides interesting insights that were not available before.

Take a look at this new report which tells me the impact on Search Impressions when I decided to mark 75 odd pages on noindex.

Index Coverage Reports Insight — The report shows how I have lost impressions because of adding noindex to pages

Overall, most reports even if being the same are now much more easier to understand and interpret.

Another example is the Performance report with the Pages section selected. This feature was available in the older interface as well, but now the data is much more clear and this tells me which pages should I work on to improve my CTRs.

Search Analytics Report — I need to tweak the description and meta details of some of the top pages

The bad things

There are more things yet to come, and this is not a complete experience yet. I cannot only rely on the new interface. Some reports simply haven’t been incorporated into the new Search Console yet.

Reports on Structured Data is completely missing. The diagnostic set of tools and the crawl request tools are not included in the tool.

The update to the search console is welcome and I for one am glad that a much more cleaner interface is made available.

2018, the year of numbers

January 10, 2018January 11, 2018 Prasad Ajinkya1 Comment

I have been talking about data and analytics for quite some time now. So much so that, I have shifted from doing development as a service (at 13 Llama Studio), to agency as a service (at 13 Llama Interactive). The reason behind this was to capitalise on my love for data analysis and build an organisation that works with data instead of opinions.

From Full Service to Data Analysis

One of the main things that I have been doing, is never say no to anything that lands on my work desk. This is a good thing, since you can pretty much get started as a service based business and do a variety of things.

This, however, is a bad thing since it takes you away from your chosen area of work. In my case, that’s analytics.

We started off as a Full Service Digital Agency and did everything under the sun. Websites, logos, app development … product development, incubation even. Whereas, it’s a fantastic way to keep busy, it did not sate my need to work with numbers.

Saying No

The year 2017 was the year of No. I have been steadfastly refusing to engage with anything which did not involve numbers. So much so that, the organisation that I had so loving built has become an empty shell, almost.

While, this lean attitude is good for companies where there is a lot of waste, taking this to near starvation levels also does not help. Unfortunately, I keep getting such insights only as hindsight :)

What 2017 did offer was a massive consolidation of business interests, which was a good sign. It also taught me the value of human engagement and how business engagements were closely related to the simple human interactions.

Focus on Measurements

I had been going on and on about measurements for some time. I realised that without getting into this completely in your system, you cannot really appreciate this thought. Here’s a quote from Swami Vivekananda –

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life — think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success…

To fully understand and appreciate what this means, do go through this interpretation by Srinivas Venkatram.

It took me some time to fully get this, and for me that meant focusing on analytics. It did not really mean saying No to different engagements. It means applying my love for data and analysis in whichever engagement to drive value.

2018 for me, represents just this. A year where using measurements I would drive value. Be it in product development, be it in promotions.

Using Intelligence reports in Google Analytics

December 7, 2017 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

It’s always a pleasure to use a product that keeps evolving. The possibility of discovering a new feature that’s been recently launched, and the happiness of seeing the applications of that new feature is what keeps me coming back to the product. Google Analytics is one such product for me. Slowly and steadily, they have evolved the product so as to give the free tier users a taste of what Google Analytics Premium (GAP) offers.

Intelligence reports have been around for quite some time now. However, what GA has done in the recent times, is give the user the ability to articulate their question in natural language, and use natural language parsing to understand the question and present meaningful answers back to the user.

Smart and Intelligent reports

Here’s an example of how these intelligent reports work. Suppose, I see a spike in traffic yesterday, and I want to know the reason why.

Normally, I would go to the Source/Medium report in the Acquisition section and see which of the sources have had an increase in traffic since yesterday. However, what intelligent reports does is this –

Intelligence Reports in Google Analytics

So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is this. If you are not comfortable with the analytics interface or are not savvy with using the right set of reports for fetching your data, then the intelligent reports are a rather user friendly way for getting access to perhaps the right data.

Notice, in my example, the segments that intelligent reports ended up reporting was a rather advanced segment (Organic traffic, Country-wise).

To reach there, I’d have to go through atleast two separate iterations. This was given to me rather quickly.

Cool, are there any disadvantages?

There is one huge disadvantage. The data given is prescriptive in nature.

You are relying on Google Analytics to give you the right data.

While, for most use cases, the data may not be that important, but for someone whose living runs on getting the right numbers, this may not be enough. It’s good enough to get you started in the right direction though.

Why do I still like it?

The nature of querying is also pretty great. Now, business teams can directly dive into Google Analytics instead of having to wait for an agency or an analyst to make sense of this data. That’s power to the people!

This means, a lot more people can now engage with analytics and take the right data driven steps for improvement.

Tying up loose ends

December 1, 2017December 1, 2017 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

I consider most phases of my life (and of my career) as specific projects. Projects which have a certain outcome tied to them. Projects which need metrics to track and project closures which have targets to reach.

In this obsession to be objective about things, I got involved in a couple of projects which were of subjective nature.

What are subjective projects?

Subjective projects are those where the progress of that project is dependant on individual opinions and feelings. An example of such a topic could be Career.

Career fulfillment is a subjective thing. For some people a fulfilling career might be a one which involves loads of payment, for some it might involves getting respect from peers, others might look at impact. You get the drift?

It’s not even about individual feelings as well. As a person supporting a family, the subjectivity is made more complex by not only your belief of a fulfilling career, but also your immediate family’s.

Suddenly, that one question – What does your son do for a living? becomes real.

As a parent, I would love some bragging rights about my children’s achievements. That may or may not be aligned with what my children want to do. So, the moot question was how to go about objectively defining success for a subjective topic.

Numbers help

Some key measures of success do help. Let’s stick with the Career example –

My son makes a lakh a month
I manage a team of 6
My daughter has been working with GDFC Bank for over a decade
She got an 20% salary hike this year
My son runs his own company that employs 100 individuals
I wan’t to be able to take atleast 10 days off in a year to interesting destinations around the world

What’s the problem with this subjectivity?

And here’s my problem with this subjectivity thing. It freaking keeps changing the measure of success!

Sometimes it’s years of experience, sometimes it’s people employed, sometimes it’s cash in hand … and there is no clear metric you optimize things for.

The problem in this world, is where the team which decides the success of this subjectivity has not taken the pains of articulating What is Success.

When this is not articulated enough, you tend to optimize Career (in this example) on some parameters which might be an implicit rubric for you, but may not be understood by everyone else. Hence, the need to articulate.

Another example

Here’s one more example which works for most people.

What’s a good life mean for you?

Can you put down metrics on which if you measure your life, you will be able to answer this question?

If yes (and I haven’t done this yet), then are you doing anything which helps you increase those measues?

In life, or in our Career (my last example), we have these tiny niggling doubts at the back of our mind. These are the loose ends I am talking about.

Can we use metrics and measures to answer and squash these doubts. I think so, but to get there, we need to have a definition of what are our measures of success. I used to post my yearly resolutions for a couple of years on this blog, and then I stopped. Primarily, because of this subjective struggle. No one cared how many posts did I put up on the blog (not even me!), so how did it matter that I post one a week or more.

Measure for closure

So, what are good measures of success for the year 2017 for me? And what would the year 2018 be measured against. Well, that’s what I have a month to figure out!

PS – This is a thought experiment I am doing to see if I can indeed wield measurements and analytics for improvement. It’s a belief that I have long held close to my heart, now I am putting it to the test. Those who know me would know that I am fundamentally lazy and putting in these measurements as a life practice involves a certain discipline. That is my personal challenge.

मराठी भाषेची विस्मृती

November 16, 2017November 22, 2017 Prasad AjinkyaLeave a comment

हा लेख जेव्हा मी लिहायला बसलो तेव्हा विचार केला होता कि ईंग्रजीमधे लिहीन. पण जसे मी ह्या लेखाबद्दल विचार करायला लागलो तसतसे ठरवले कि इंग्रजी सोडून मराठी भाषेत हा लेख लिहीन. अशी प्रयत्नांची पराकाष्ठा मी पहिल्यांदा करतोय, त्या मुळे जर काही चूकभूल झाली तर माफी असावी असे अस्वीकरण घेऊन तुम्हा लोकांशी माझी हि नम्र विनंती आहे कि चुकांना कसे सुधारू हे लेखाच्या टिपण्यांतून कळवावे.

अजिंक्य परिवारात सद्ध्या दोन मस्तीखोर कार्टी आहेत. मोठीचे नाव आहे अनसूया आणि छोट्याचे नाव आहे मल्हार. दोघेही शाळेत जातात. मी विचार केला की त्यांना माझ्याच शाळेत म्हणजे पार्ले टिळक विद्यालय मध्ये भरती कारेन. देवाचा आशिर्वादानी आणि बरोबर “जॅक ” लावून त्यांची ऍडमिशन झाली. मी इंग्रजी माध्यमात शिकलो आहे, म्हणून विचार केला कि मुलांनाही इंग्रजी माध्यमात टाकावे. ते पण आय से एस सी बोर्ड मध्ये. जेव्हा आम्ही हा निर्णय घेतला तेव्हा मुलांच्या शिक्षणाचा विचार घेऊनच तो केला होता.

भाषा हि एक संपर्काचे माध्यम आहे. जर तुमच्याशी कोणीही त्या भाषेत संपर्क साधणार नाही, तर तुम्ही ती भाषा वापरणार नाही. हळू हळू, तुम्ही ती भाषा विसरायला लागणार.

सकाळी उठल्यापासून रात्री झोपण्यापर्यंत जी भाषा आपण वापरतो तीच आपली मातृभाषा, असे म्हणायला काहीच हरकत नाही. मग तर माझ्या मुलांची भाषा इंग्रजी आहे. त्यांना गप्प करायचे असेल तर मी त्यांना म्हणतो “मुलांनो आता मराठीचा तास!”

घरी आम्ही मराठी फार क्वचित वापरतो. अर्थात संध्याकाळी मराठी टीव्ही चालू असतो, पण तो तर आजी आणि आजोबांसाठी असतो. एक तर घरी भाषेचा वापर कमी, शाळेत पण फक्त मराठीचा तासात भाषेचा वापर होतो. बाकी सगळा वेळ मोबाईल आणि टीव्ही मध्ये जातो. ह्या दोन माध्यमामध्ये इंग्रजीचा वापर जास्त होतो.

मुद्दा हा, कि दिवसात मराठीचा वापर होताच नाही.

कारणीभूत कोण?

खरंतर हि माझीचं चूक आहे.

भाषेचा वापर कसा करावा हे जर दिसले नाही तर मग ती भाषा कशी वापरायची ते कसे कळणार? मान्य आहे कि मी काही मराठीचा पापड नाही. पण, प्रयत्न नाही केला तर आता जसा माकड आहे तसाच माकड राहीन. आणि जेव्हा माझी पोरं मराठी भाषेची चिरफाड करतील तेव्हा मी फक्त “हूप हूप ” करिन!

एक रामबाण उपाय

मराठीत जास्तीत जास्त संचार करून भाषेचा वापर वाढवा.