Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Business. Show all posts
Friday, 2 September 2011
Patent Wars: A New Age of Competition
Patents are a source of constant lawsuits between large tech companies like Apple, Microsoft and Samsung. They’re one reason Google wants to pay $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility. And many entrepreneurs believe these documents stunt innovation rather than protect it.
Last year, 107,792 patents were issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Here are some interesting points on the history, process and recent impacts of this important component of the tech ecosystem.
Friday, September 02, 2011 0
5 Social Media Tips for Scoring Your Next Job
Marc Hoag, CEO and co-founder of Venturocket, is a California-licensed attorney with an econ degree from UCLA and a strong background in math and science. Marc’s mission with Venturocket, first conceived nearly 10 years ago, is simple: to help make the world a more productive place.
Unless you’re fortunate enough to be deliriously happy with your professional life, the odds are high that you’ll be looking for a different job in the future. On the bright side, the fact that you’re reading this article means you know how to navigate the Internet — a point in your favor. So how can you use that ‘net savvy to most effectively court the employer of your dreams?
Your cover letter and résumé may still be your opening gambit, but the life you lead online increases in relevance every day, especially as a resource for potential employers. Companies are turning to social networks and media more than ever. A recent study suggests that nearly 90% of companies will use networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter for recruiting, and that nearly 80% will review a candidate’s online presence and behavior before making a hiring decision.
Since social media presence will likely be investigated and considered prior to your next hire, you’re going to want to put your virtual house in order.
1. Keep Your Profiles Clean…
The first step is a matter of common sense, but nonetheless a vital task: Do not make an idiot of yourself online. One would think this advice is hyper-obvious by now, yet it seems that all too often we encounter a new article profiling an employee’s shortsighted tweeting or a large company’s bafflingly insensitive Facebook status. A golden rule of television is, “When in doubt, your mic is always on.” The same applies to the Internet: Everything you post, tweet or comment on is being recorded, and will come back to haunt you. Not to mention, if a tweet can get you fired, it can also prevent you from being hired the next time around.
2. …But Show Some Personality
On the flip side, however, is the danger of being too careful. While you’ll want to avoid putting up those incriminating and obscene photos from your Vegas bachelor party, don’t let fear prevent you from posting anything at all. An employer will be looking for a candidate who is social and outgoing, who has a demonstrable knowledge of networking and communication. They’ll also be looking for somebody with character, who stands out from the crowd.
If all you’ve shared are the same bland qualifications that are already attached to your résumé, your potential employers won’t have the excitement of learning something new about you. Be bold, be opinionated, be unique — just do it without cursing or detailing your hangover symptoms. Take a tip from Nicholas Allegra, the iPhone “hacker” known better as Comex, who turned his notoriety into an internship with Apple.
3. Spread Yourself Around
When crafting a proper online appearance, you’ll have better luck sharing the right things once you’ve shared them in all the right places. Twitter and Facebook are essential platforms, but at a bare minimum, you should also maintain a fully fleshed-out profile on Google+, LinkedIn and About.me. Get your name out to as many sources as possible — you’re building strong SEO for a vital product: yourself.
4. Target Your Message
When an employer Googles your name, make sure that the first thing they find is a result you’ve handcrafted for their perusal. You may even wish to secure your own domain name and build a website about yourself. Witness the efforts of Eric Romer, who launched a blogging campaign that proclaimed his eagerness to work for a company (he was hired a day later). Or take a tip from Louis Gray, whose demonstrated love and dedication for Google+ got him hired as a product evangelist.
5. Connect With the Company You Want to Work For
This leads directly to the next tip regarding your online activity: Don’t be afraid to actively engage the company you’re courting via your tweets and status updates. Any business actively checking a potential hire’s online profile will most certainly have a social media presence of its own. Therefore, start following its tweets, “like” it on Facebook, etc. Be careful on LinkedIn, though; it’s something of a faux pas to add someone to your network if you don’t personally know him. Still, nobody says you can’t check out the LinkedIn groups and communities to which he belongs.
While you’re at it, don’t forget that a company’s social media isn’t just a place to make yourself heard — it’s also the perfect opportunity for you to observe the company’s actions. How is the company interacting with the public? What insight can you glean from its tweets and statuses? What kind of culture does it display, and what are its subjects of interest? Take meticulous notes, because these are the kinds of things you’ll want to keep in mind when sitting in the interview chair.
Start reinforcing your digital persona now. In the coming years, companies and recruiters will only become more thorough when evaluating new candidates’ online behavior.
Friday, September 02, 2011 0
Thursday, 28 July 2011
Start your own business?
But how do you grow that seed into a thriving, new business? Firstly, do you really want to? Are you cut out for it? Even if you are, is it too greater risk to give up a secure income? And just where should you start? You’ve probably got at least one of these questions, along with many others, swimming around your head right now – and that’s perfectly understandable.
Starting up your own business will change your life. It’ll change the way you think, the way you work, the way you spend money and the way you socialise. It’ll be one of the most demanding challenges you’ll ever be likely to take on.
You’ll work every hour possible to get your business off the ground then even longer to keep it afloat during the early days. You probably won’t have another holiday for a couple of years and virtually your entire life will become focused on making your business start up succeed.
If you’re in a relationship, it will undoubtedly feel the strain and if you’ve got a family prepare to be repeatedly torn between them and ‘the business’.
This is the harsh truth of starting your own business. If you thought you’d be reducing your hours not increasing them, that it wouldn’t disrupt your family life and that, frankly, it all seems a bit too much trouble, then stop reading now; turn off your computer and think of a different way to improve your everyday happiness.
If what I’ve just said hasn’t curbed your desire, keep reading – you’re showing all the attributes an entrepreneur needs when starting up in business.
Sure, you’ll still have plenty of anxieties and unanswered questions, but like every successful entrepreneur starting a small business, the thought of a challenge excites and enthuses you.
If you’re going to succeed, you won’t mind concentrating all your energy into the new business because it’ll be ‘your baby’ and you and your family will be the ones reaping the rewards – not a fat cat on ten times your salary. You’ll also have the enthusiasm and ideas to find solutions to the obstacles in your path.
And remember, you’re not the first to have these anxieties or to face these obstacles as you’re starting your own business. Every successful entrepreneur has overcome many barriers and continues to do so every week with his new internet business startup, her freshly launched business magazine or whatever new business it is you are bringing to market.
What’s more, many successful entrepreneurs had no business qualifications or experience prior to starting up in business; many spent months, even years, formulating their idea into a viable business proposition; and absolutely every single one has made mistakes, accepted help and learnt lessons as they’ve gone along.
The reason they’ve succeeded is because they’ve remained determined, focused, worked extremely hard and had the clarity of mind to realise they couldn’t do it all on their own. If you share these attributes, you’re half way there.
And needn’t be that scary. It might seem that you only ever hear bad news about the condition of the economy, but there’s never been a better time to start a business.
There’s never been so much help and information from business startup services available to people wanting to do it as there is today. There’s never been so much funding available for business start ups, and the government has never been so geared to encouraging enterprise.
The doom and gloom merchants certainly haven’t put off the 3.8 million businesses currently operating in the UK, or the 904,000 people that made the plunge and started-up last year. Every year the figure gets bigger as more people decide to work for themselves, and each year the number of business closures decreases too.
What’s more, business start ups are now fundamental to the economy. The days of thousands of large companies employing millions of staff are no more. The number of aspiring entrepreneurs starting small businesses have surged in recent years, and their companies now make up 99.8% of the total businesses in the UK and are responsible for almost half of the UK’s workforce.
So while you might be on the verge of starting your own business with the freedom to work when, where and for how long you want, you won’t, contrary to popular belief, be ‘going it alone’. There will be others going through the same experience, there will be others who have already gone through the experience and there will be business startup services to guide you.
That said, nobody’s going to build your business for you while you sit content in the knowledge you’re now master of your own destiny.
Finding suppliers can be one of the most difficult parts of starting a business and you will need to use your contacts and make new ones. They are out there and once you have a list of them you can appraoch each of them and negotiate pricing.
Resarch your competitors and see what they are offering. There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing a little recce on the competition. Can you beat their pricing or make offers more attractive. One thing I have learnt about being back in South Africa is that most shops arent up for negotiating, which to be does not ake since. I would rather sell an item and make some profit that let the item sit on the shelf for another week.
Have a fresh up to date website. Remember that your website is a first impression on you and your business. If it looks like you built it yourself with no eperience of web design it will reflect badly on your image. Consumers need to be able to speak to someone if they are having problems so insure your "contact us" page has a telephone number. I hate having to send a message through the site and not know if it's even been looked at 3 days later.
Marketing is propbably going to be your biggest ongoing expense. The rule of thumb here is to set aside 20 percent of your profit to marketing each month. Dont think "I have the right amount of customers. I can stop my marketing campaign" Consumers come and go and if you arent constantly letting people know who you are and what you are offering your business will likely suffer in the long run. You can keep the cost of marketing down by using Social Networks, blogs and forums. Google Adwords is also a great way to drive much needed traffic to your site, however you may initially need an SEO company like TechFundi to set this up for you.
Starting your own business will likely be tough in the beginning but the rewards can out way the time and effort. Dont feel like oh well there are to many companies doing this or that if you can offer something better or different for the same arena you will get customers.
If you are thinking about starting your own business contact us and we will gladly assist where we can and put you in contact with some excellent South Africans to assist in growing your business.
mail: info@techlabs.co.za
Thursday, July 28, 2011 0
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
Fancy Yourself a Writer, Journalist, Blogger or Reviewer? TechLabs Paying Up To R500 For Your Articles!
"This is a great platform for anyone who enjoys social networking and has something interesting to say." writes founder Scott Alwood. If your story trends well we will even increase the payout for that story. At the End of each month the writer with the most amount of hits gets a prize.
"We want to encourage more South Africans to share their views and experiences. It can also be a nice little income if your good at it." Initially we pay R100 per story that is published, the more hits and tweets the story gets the more we pay the author. It's that simple. This is a great way to gauge interest in your journalistic ability.
To submit your article or questions please email info@techlabs.co.za.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011 1
Monday, 3 January 2011
What Will Facebook Do With All That Money?
We’re still reeling from the news that Facebook has raised $500 million in new funding at a $50 billion valuation. While The New York Times report has yet to be confirmed, we’ve heard rumors for a while now that Facebook was looking to raise a massive round of funding to fuel its rapid growth further before an eventual IPO.
According to the deal, Goldman Sachs will invest $450 million in the social network, while previous investor Digital Sky Technologies will add an additional $50 million. Not only that, but Goldman Sachs will help Facebook raise an additional $1.5 billion through a “special purpose vehicle” designed to allow outside investors to indirectly invest in the company.
Facebook had previously raised $800 million, so when all is said in done, the social giant will have raised an astounding $2.8 billion. What will Facebook buy with all that new cash?
The first thing Facebook’s likely to do with its $2 billion in new funding is to cash out some of its existing investors and employees. The social network previously did this when DST bought $200 million in Facebook stock from its employees. Some of its early investors may also reach into the $2 billion pot and cash out.
Once that’s done, it’s all about growth. We’ve heard from a reliable source that Facebook is close to purchasing the Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park, California from Oracle Corporation. The deal could be finalized as soon as this week, but it won’t be cheap. The new campus will give Facebook the room it needs to grow for the foreseeable future.
Facebook is also likely to greatly ramp up its hiring. Currently the company has between 1,500 and 2,000 employees, a small number compared to its 500 million users and definitely small for a company with a $50 billion valuation. eBay and Starbucks are worth far less, but have 15,000 and 120,000 employees respectively. If Facebook intends to truly challenge Google as king of the web, it needs to ramp up its hiring in multiples.
The new round of funding could be the beginning of Facebook’s expansion into other markets as well. It has stayed focused on social networking since its inception, but it could follow in Microsoft and Google’s footsteps and use its vast reach to launch products in new markets.
At some point, Facebook needs to find new markets to continue its expansion. The company is on pace to serve 1 trillion display ads per year, but it could make so much more money with a competitor to Google AdSense and AdWords, the primary revenue drivers for the search giant.
What do you think Facebook should buy with its new cash? Let us know in the comments.
Monday, January 03, 2011 0
HOW TO: Use Social Media to Create Better Customer Experiences
Maria Ogneva is the director of social media at Nimble, a social relationship management solution that transforms your entire community into business opportunity by leveraging the best of customer relationship management, social media and communication tools. You can follow her on Twitter at @themaria or @nimble, or find her musings on the company blog and her personal blog.
It’s no secret that customer experience is one of the cornerstones of an effective business strategy. In all honesty, it should have been all along, but many companies chose to hide behind corporate walls and only talk to customers when it was convenient for them instead of when the customer needed them. There’s no need to belabor the point that social media has put customers in the driver’s seat. However, companies don’t need to live in fear of the next Kevin Smith or Nestle Fanpage episode. They just need to fix their customer experience to ensure that products and services actually do what they’re supposed to do and the company’s support and service are actually helpful.
Social CRM Connects Social Customer to Social Business
Today’s business must address more aspects of the customer experience than ever before. In addition to a stellar product or service, you now have many more channels to listen to and participate in, while keeping the experience consistently excellent. Where it gets complicated is wading through the noise, turning data into insights that the whole company can use, and sharing these insights. Because there is so much data being hurled at you, solutions that help unify and share information in a usable format have become necessary. Analyst firm Gartner estimates that more than 80% of growth in enterprise use of social networking tools will be driven by customer engagement projects and estimates social customer relationship management to be a $1 billion submarket of CRM in 2011.
Recall that in my previous post about social CRM, we addressed some key tenets:
- Listen and engage;
- Have a 360-degree view of the customer;
- Adopt transparency and customer service as cultural foundations for your business;
- Share and align with your team; develop necessary workflow;
- Social engagement must be enterprise-wide.
In an effort to see these theories applied to real-life situations, let’s examine some examples of how my personal customer experience was affected by businesses correctly capturing, sharing and acting on relevant information.
Honeymoon and Teamwork
For my honeymoon, I stayed at a world-class resort called Tabacon in Costa Rica. Each day was full of thoughtful and personalized details that were carefully orchestrated among various employees of the hotel, as well as external parties. The best part of the experience was a private dinner in a cabana in the rainforest. Let’s dissect the collaboration and communication that had to occur for this experience to happen:
- Our travel planner contacted the hotel to make arrangements and communicate our honeymoon status.
- A reservation specialist received the reservation, captured client (mine) information in the internal record system, analyzed honeymoon suite inventory and booked it.
- The hotel referenced client preferences via my profile for that hotel group (“Leading Hotels of the World”) and discovered my preference for champagne.
- The hotel communicated this preference to housekeeping; housekeeping prepared the room for arrival with a champagne bottle and a personalized note of congratulations.
- The concierge greeted me at the door and offered the private dinner and established a channel in which I could book it.
- The hotel collected menu preferences and desired time; communicated time to chef and waiter.
- The waiter came to pick us up in the room and the chef prepared food to client specification.
At least five people and two systems (internal and external) were involved in making this an unforgettable experience. So why did I use this as an example, even though there was no social media involved? Because social or not, the underlying business principles haven’t and shouldn’t have changed. A finely tuned communication and collaboration system is key if you want to provide an excellent experience, whether it’s via the social web or in-person.
How Does Social Media Enhance Experience?
Only when you are confident in your ability to support the collaborative process should you invest in a full-scale social media effort. I recommend following these simple steps:
1. Listen and respond. You should be listening for signals from social media for needs of existing and potential clients. You want to engage proactively: listening at the point of need; as well as reactively: listening for indicators that someone may need help. To provide another personal example, Virgin America effectively and quickly responded to a need I had via social media. Unlike its competitor, Virgin got back to me very quickly, taking care to resolve the issue in the backchannel instead of sending me to an 800 number.
2. Cross-reference social and internal customer data. Is there anything that could have made the Virgin example even better? Certainly! It would have been even better if the company automatically knew my frequent flyer number without me having to message it. To successfully serve someone or give them an unforgettable experience, you need to know what your relationship is with the person who tweeted, your history of communication, as well as purchase history, if it’s a customer. For example, at my company, we help you cross-reference people from the social media stream (either your own or as a result of tracking keywords) to the internal record for a full 360-degree view.
3. Understand context of relationship. Quick caveat: this new level of customer intelligence should be used in context of the relationship. While the customer may want you to get the full scoop on him or her in a customer service scenario, a company should never appear like it is using the personal information of someone who has no relationship with the company.
I once had a sub-par experience with a major financial institution where I couldn’t get in touch with customer service. Exasperated and in a panic, I complained on Twitter, after which the Twitter rep got back to me promptly. Before I could even write back with details about my situation, she proactively e-mailed me via the e-mail address on record. In this case, it wasn’t creepy and actually provided value, because we had a relationship, and I knew the company had my e-mail address.
Of course, if an existing customer is having a bad experience, your first priority should be fixing the experience, communicating it back to the user and asking this person to keep voicing feedback and opinions. This will increase brand affinity and create an experience worth sharing with others. Whether your customer is having a good experience or bad, it’s key to create a participatory channel in which ideas can be voiced and captured, and progress communicated back to the customer.
Share and Collaborate, Rinse and Repeat
As you do all of the above, make sure that your team, as well as key external parties, are on the same page with you. Cross-reference social data with internal data, retain and reference current and prior conversation threads and ensuing actions items. Just like how the Tabacon personnel immaculately shared information about me, delegated tasks to each other, and stayed on the same page, so should any business that wants to provide a superb customer experience.
Monday, January 03, 2011 0
Facto.Me Is an Addictive App for Sharing Facts About Yourself
From the maker of designer/developer community Forrst comes Facto.me, a highly self-referential app that’s at least mildly addictive, entertaining and social.
The premise is simple: We all have stories to share about ourselves, but sometimes, they don’t quite come out the way we’d like them to in conversation. We tend to disclose information about ourselves in passing and as it’s relevant to the conversation. Often, this means we leave out the most interesting bits about ourselves and our lives, simply because no one ever asks us those questions.
Like Formspring, a similarly addictive anonyous Q&A app, Facto.me draws our focus inward. We’re asked not to respond to questions from strangers but rather to share fascinating non sequiturs about ourselves, things few or no other people might know.
For example, Kyle Bragger, the guy who made Facto.me, secretly enjoys country music (secret’s out, buddy). And I turn to the crochet hook when I need to unwind.
Monday, January 03, 2011 0
Friday, 31 December 2010
Top 10 Shared Web Pages of 2010 [REPORT]
Sharing widget-maker AddThis released 2010’s top 10 most shared webpages on Thursday. The list was compiled from AddThis widgets installed on more than 7 million sites, and pages on it were shared between 192,400 and 428,761 times.
Six of the 10 most-shared web pages were mainly videos or photos, but only three news stories made the list. Jokeroo.com and nypost.com pages were the most prevalant sites, earning three and two spots respectively.
1. Texas Mayor Kills Teen Daughter, Kills Self (AOL News): In July, the mayor of Coppell, Texas, shot and killed her 19-year-old daughter before turning the gun on herself.
2. Paper Cuts – Rolls (Behance.com): Paper scenes set inside of paper rolls make excellent photographs.
3. Awe-Inspiring Scenes from Mother Nature (happied.com): A collection of breathtaking landscape photography.
4. Sniper Kills Qaeda from 1.5 Miles Away (nypost.com): A British sniper set a world sharpshooting record by taking out two Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan from more than a mile and a half away.
5. Super Heroes vs. the Westboro Baptist Church (Comics Alliance): Attendees of San Diego’s Comic-Con staged a humorous counter-protest in response to the annual protests of Westboro Baptist Church.
6. WereBox (Hooda Math): A strangely addicting puzzle game.
7. Brazillian Samba Baby (Jokeroo.com): Baby gets down.
8. Hilarious World Cup Dive (Jokeroo.com): Italian player Daniele De Rossi bites the dust during a World Cup () game against Paraguay.
)9. Day in Photos: June 18, 2010 (nypost.com): Nahanni Johnstone kisses her 8-year-old daughter, Chloe, both covered with oil during a Global Day of Action demonstration in Toronto.
10. Chinese Susan Boyle (Jokeroo.com): “I Will Always Love You” sounds like Whitney Houston, but definitely doesn’t look much like her.
Which of these pages would you share? Tell us in the comments below.
Friday, December 31, 2010 0
New Site Crowdsources Shopping Advice From Your Facebook Friends
Name: Cloud Shopper
Quick Pitch: Cloud Shopper asks your Facebook friends to review products you’re interested in purchasing. If you’re buying a gift or deciding between similar products, you can share a list of potential items.
Genius Idea: The majority of consumers rely to some extent on social networks to guide them in their purchase decisions, according to a 2009 survey by Gartner research firm.
Cloud Shopper aims to organize the way people solicit this advice. Users can browse products (pulled from Amazon.com), and select those they’d like to start a conversation about. They can either create a Facebook wall post asking for comments on that specific item or compile a list — let’s say, “possible gifts for Suzie” — and share it with friends. When friends click on the Facebook link, they’re directed to a commenting section where they can review each product. Products each user likes are kept in a tabbed section for others to browse.
But why not just create a wall post or a Facebook question when soliciting shopping advice from your Facebook friends? The best reason is a feature that is due for release in about two weeks, which will let users solicit advice from specific friends in their networks. So, for instance, if you were thinking about buying a camera, you could ask only your photographer friends for advice. If you’re shopping for a birthday present for John, you can share your potential gift list exclusively with your and John’s mutual friends.
Another cool feature of the site is that it pulls information about a product into its dashboard from multiple other sources like Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr. We’ve seen similar functions work well on product sites like Retrevo, and having the information handy while browsing and commenting is convenient.
Cloud Shopper’s site, which launched on December 15, is still suffering from its newness. When Facebook friends click on the products you’re asking them to review, for now they land on a page that is less than intuitive to navigate. Options like Facebook Poll and Facebook Question integrations are also still on the way.
The idea could have some weight if the promised features pan out. People like to discuss purchasing decisions — if that weren’t true there wouldn’t be so many peer-written review sites — why not take friends’ advice instead of a stranger’s? The success of the self-funded company, however, depends more on its users following through with Amazon purchases. Collecting a fee on a significant number of referrals could be a task equally as tricky as building a network.
Friday, December 31, 2010 0
12 iPhone Apps to Jumpstart Your New Year’s Resolutions
We are mere days away from 2011, and still happily ensconced in the holiday madness of 2010. This jolly season, which usually kicks off at Halloween, is a fast-moving fog of candy, cookies, cards and frenzy at the malls. It is also hopefully full of joy, laughter and quality time with family.
After the season’s last hurrah on New Year’s, what emerges is a renewed sense of spirit for the coming year –- and sometimes a desire to undo everything that has just been done. This is precisely why most people hit the ground running on January 1 with a resolve to lose weight, get in shape, walk the dog more, and so on.
The following roundup contains apps that can serve as trusty sidekicks to help you keep those resolutions you swear you’ll actually follow through on this year. In addition to personal health, other common resolutions include managing finances more efficiently, quitting smoking, finding a better job and finding love. There are obviously many more apps out there for each category, but I’ve hand-picked twelve to help you get 2011 off to a good start. Happy New Year!
Losing Weight
Lose It!
Lose It is a great, easy-to-use app that provides users with features for managing and tracking their weight loss and fitness goals. With an extensive database of foods and nutritional information available, you can simply scroll through the options and log what you have consumed for the day to get a total calorie count. The app also tracks calories burned through fitness and shows where you’ve gone over or under your caloric requirements for weight loss each day.
Cost: FREE
Friday, December 31, 2010 0
RIP Kodachrome Film
It’s the end of the line for Kodachrome, the first commercially successful color film, created by Kodak in 1935. The iconic film will no longer be processed, as Thursday marked the last time Dwayne’s Photo — a lab in Parsons, Kansas — was willing to accept Kodachrome rolls that needed developing.
Kodachrome’s demise was first announced in June 2009. Kodak cited a decline in sales as photographers had traded their old film for digital memory cards — or, in some cases, newer films. This meant that the company also stopped producing the chemicals needed to develop the film.
As The New York Times reported Wednesday, there was a time when there were about 25 labs in the world that could process Kodachrome film. But the number of labs began to decline a few years ago when the last Kodak-run facility in the U.S. closed, followed by another closure in Japan and another in Switzerland. Dwayne’s Photo was the last place still developing Kodachrome, but last week, the lab opened the last of the chemicals used to process the film.
Even though Kodachrome saw diminishing sales toward its end, this is the end of an era for a number of photographers and photography buffs. The film — currently trending at number seven on Google in the U.S. — was noted for capturing rich color and light in a way that many say cannot be replicated by digital cameras or apps like Hipstamatic and Instagram. As Paul Simon noted in his 1973 song — titled, “Kodachrome,” of course — ”You give us those nice bright colors/ You give us the greens of summers/ Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day.”
The film was used to take some world-famous photographs, including Steve McCurry’s National Geographic 1985 cover image of a young Afghan girl. Incidentally, Kodak gave McCurry the last roll of Kodachrome last year. The photographer, who hand-delivered the final roll to Parsons after he finished shooting, has posted some of the last 36 frames on his blog.
Meanwhile, as the Times noted, the last roll to be processed at Dwayne’s Photo belongs to owner Dwayne Steinle. The final frame will feature all his employees standing in front of the business wearing shirts that commemorate the film’s official retirement.
Friday, December 31, 2010 0
Thursday, 30 December 2010
HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Facebook Insights for Small Business
David Hartstein is a partner at JG Visual, an Internet strategy company that works with organizations to develop and implement their online presence. You can connect with David on the JG Visual Facebook Page.
You’re a small business owner and you’ve decided to create a Facebook Page for your company. Or you’re an employee in an organization and, since you are the only one who “gets” social media, you’ve been charged with running a Facebook Page.
You set it up and make it look nice. You put up some photos and videos that you think represent the organization well. You e-mail a bunch of your friends and the page has almost 100 “Likes.” But one day, your boss comes in and asks you the question that you have been dreading: “Is this Facebook Page helping us or just eating away most of your time?”
Enter Facebook Insights, a powerful analytical tool that can help any organization evaluate the effectiveness of its Facebook presence. But, for a small business where time is perhaps the most important (and often rarest) resource, Facebook Insights can help you evaluate whether you’re investing or wasting your time.
The following scenarios are illustrations of how a fictional small business, “Bill’s Tech Company,” can leverage Facebook Insights to evaluate the effectiveness of its new Facebook Business Page. Within each scenario are the different aspects of Facebook Insights that Bill could utilize to answer his questions. Beside each measure (in parentheses) is a note on where to find that specific piece of data in Facebook Insights.
Facebook Insights Overview
Before delving into the specifics of Facebook Insights, it is helpful to understand some of the basics. Once you have 30 “Likes” on your Facebook Page, Facebook Insights will automatically be activated and available on the left sidebar of your Facebook Page.
When you navigate to Facebook Insights, you are brought to the main dashboard, which shows you two summary graphs titled “Users” and “Interactions,” both providing overviews of subpages with the same names. Below is a list of the measures you will find on each of these subpages:
Users: monthly active users, daily new “likes,” total “likes,” new “likes/unlikes,” “like” sources, demographics, page views, tab views, external referrers, media consumption
Interactions: daily post views, daily post feedback, daily story feedback, most recent posts, daily page activity
Now that we’ve outlined the basics, let’s dive into the scenarios.
Scenario 1: Are “Likes” Enough?
Bill’s Tech Company launched a Facebook Business Page two months ago. When he created the page, Bill sent out messages to all of his friends and it quickly grew to around 100 followers. While he feels good about having 100 “Likes,” he wants to know if having these “Likes” is enough.
- Daily active users (top of main dashboard): Bill should avoid the lure of looking only at the number of “likes” that his page has received. Realistically, passive followers that “like” his page and never come back aren’t helping his business grow. Instead, he should focus on daily active users, which are the number of users that actually come to his page or consume his content on a given day. If a follower engages in some way with Bill’s page, it is far more likely that Bill’s Tech Company will be on the top of this follower’s mind, which is crucial for any small business.
- Daily page activity (bottom of Interactions): To go beyond “like” counting, Bill should use daily page activity to measure his followers’ level of engagement with his page. In particular, he should pay attention to the number of mentions that his page is receiving. When someone mentions Bill’s Tech Company, they are broadcasting his company to their friends. Mentions can help a business reach a whole new audience.
- Daily story feedback (top of Interactions): Is Bill engaging his followers? Is he alienating them? Daily story feedback can provide Bill a glimpse into the minds of his followers. Whenever a follower “likes” or comments on something on Bill’s page, it will show up here. Bill could go a step further by looking at particular days of the week that his followers are more active and targeting the release of his content to the days that are more likely to garner a response.
- Spikes in “likes” and “unlikes” (top of Users): Bill should take time to check his “likes” and “unlikes” for any deviation from the norm. A spike in either is worth investigating. To help him understand such a spike, Bill should align the date of the spike to the content he has released using most recent posts (middle of Interactions). He can sort his content by date posted to see what he did on a particular day that may have caused users to “like” him or leave him. If he sees that a certain subject or type of content seems to cause a spike in people “unliking” his page, he should avoid this content in the future.
Scenario 2: Producing Content Your Followers Want
Bill’s Tech Company only has two full-time employees and can never seem to find enough hours in the day to get everything done. They can’t afford a full-time social media strategy coordinator but definitely want to leverage the “power of social media” that they keep hearing about. In the little time that they have between serving their clients, Bill wants to know what content he should focus on to use his time most effectively.
- Most recent posts (middle of Interactions): Bill can’t afford to waste time producing content that no one cares about. By utilizing most recent posts, Bill can sort his recent content first by impressions to see how many people are seeing a post on his page, on a news feed or on a follower’s profile page. Generally, the more that followers share a post by posting it to their profiles or sending it to their friends, the more impressions it will receive. Bill can then sort his most recent posts by feedback percentage to see which of his posts are leading his followers to comment or “like” an individual post.
- Media consumption (bottom of Users): Bill loves the idea of producing videos, recording audio and shooting photos to engage his followers, but each is quite time consuming. Bill should use media consumption to see how many views each type of media is getting per day. If Bill’s active users are not listening to the audio files he uploads, he should either change the nature of these audio files (perhaps try a new topic) or scrap them and use this time elsewhere.
- Daily story feedback (top of Interactions): Bill can leverage daily story feedback to see if a particular day has a spike in “likes” or comments. If so, Bill has clearly found a topic that resonates with at least some of his followers. He can focus his efforts on producing content that is similar enough to receive the same favorable response.
- Tab views (bottom of Users): This measure allows Bill to see how active users are engaging with his Facebook Page. If he’s spending a lot of time writing in the discussions tab but none of his visitors are viewing this tab, Bill should probably spend his limited time doing something else. Conversely, if one of his tabs is particularly popular, he should use it to engage his followers. To optimize the use of his tabs, Bill should ask himself the following questions: “What tabs are my fans engaging with?” “What content is within these tabs?” “Can I cut out any tabs?” “Should I change the order of my tabs to prioritize what I want active users to see?”
Scenario 3: Evaluating Facebook Beyond “Facebook.com”
Bill devoted an entire weekend to setting up his web presence. He created accounts on many social media sites, put Facebook Like buttons on his company website and began promoting the company’s Facebook Page all over the place. Bill wants to know what worked and what didn’t.
- External referrers (bottom of Users): Bill’s concern is a common one. He wants to know if the time he spent setting up everything was worth it. Fortunately, Facebook Insights has something called “external referrers,” which shows the top external domains from which visitors are finding a Facebook Page. Bill can see which sites are driving traffic to his Facebook Page and use these successes to change his profiles on less successful websites. Additionally, if Bill is getting traffic to his Facebook Page from his website, he’ll know that something on his site is piquing his visitors’ interest.
- “Like” sources (top right of Users): Since he added the ability for visitors to “like” his Facebook Page from his own personal website, Bill now wants to track whether people are actually doing so. He can find out simply by looking at his “like” sources. Most of his “likes” are probably coming from his Fan Page, but he may get some from other sources. If Bill wants to prioritize getting more “likes” from another source like his website, he should consider making the button more prominent and seeing if it leads to more “likes” from external sources.
- Insights on an external domain: Now that Bill took the time to add “like” buttons to his company’s website, he should definitely set up Facebook Insights for this domain. By going to facebook.com/insights and clicking the “Insights for your Domain” box, Bill can easily copy a bit of code onto his website and link it to his Facebook account. By doing so, Bill can see how users of his website are interacting with his content including what users are “liking” and sharing with their Facebook friends.
- Website analytics: Since Bill is interested in how effectively his Facebook Page is integrating with his overall Internet presence, he should definitely keep an eye on the website analytics on his company’s website. Ideally, Bill wants his Facebook Page to drive traffic to his website, which would show up as a referring source on his website analytics.
Scenario 4: Reaching the Right People
Bill has been using Facebook Insights to create content that he thinks will be popular with his followers and has been linking to this content on numerous tech blogs. He has been seeing steady growth in “likes,” which he is very proud of, but Bill runs a local service business and wants to make sure that he is reaching the right audience.
- Demographics (middle of Users): It is important that Bill first identifies the target audience for his Facebook Page. Does he want to target older men and women that may own businesses in the area? Does he want to target a younger crowd in the hopes that they will be influential when it comes to making decisions about tech spending? Once he has his audience identified, Bill can use Facebook Insights to evaluate how effectively he is reaching this target group.
Since Facebook collects personal information from all of its members, it can give page administrators demographic info about page followers. Bill can see who “likes” his page according to age and gender. He can also see what countries and cities his followers come from as well as the languages that they speak. If the demographics of his followers do not match his target demographic, Bill may need to adjust his content or even his entire Internet strategy to target a different group of people.
- External referrers (bottom right of Users): Bill can use external referrers to see if he is effectively driving traffic from the established tech blogs that he is posting on regularly. By adding his voice to conversations in his industry, Bill can establish his own authority on technology-related topics and drive traffic to his Facebook Page. If he’s not seeing any traffic from these websites, he may need to adjust the content he posts or the websites that he frequents.
Conclusion
Hopefully the scenarios above resonate with you and your organization. While Facebook Insights won’t provide you with all the answers to your questions, it can be a powerful tool for any organization to utilize when evaluating its online strategy. By utilizing Facebook Insights, you can ensure that you are making the most of your business Page while using both your successes and failures to craft a solid presence on Facebook.
Thursday, December 30, 2010 0
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