Using data for good

We hear a lot about businesses looking for ways to tap into data to make better decisions. For Bloomberg, financial data is not just about the numbers that make up corporate profits. It's also about the metrics of a company's sustainability in terms of its social and environmental impact. - See more at: http://www.baselinemag.com/news/using-data-for-good-is-good-for-business.html#sthash.dDbMetvo.dpuf

Mind the gap: information governance in the age of big data

"Many companies don't benefit from big data because of the gap between those who manage the data and those who apply it. The solution is information governance.


Sue Trombley, managing director of thought leadership at Iron Moutain, offered some perspective on the causes of this clarity gap.....

Going forward, Trombley asserts, businesses will have to adopt a new paradigm that enables each department to have direct access to the information it requires in order to extract value to meet its goals.  

- Read more  in Information Governance Is Key to Big Data's Value 

The value of blogs for marketing: attraction, connection, and SEO

picture from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/Blog_(1).jpg

A few years ago, everyone seemed to think video was the way to go to capture attention for effective marketing. Now, people seem to realize that many people -- like me -- would prefer to read information in text form at their own pace rather than sit through a video that can take several minutes to get to a point they are truly interested in. 

Unless you have time to kill or really need to hear information to absorb it, why would you want to sit through something for 10, 15, sometimes even 45 minutes or more to get information you can read in less than 5 minutes? If you don't want to lose the attention of the people who feel that way, you need to reach out to them with articles. Smart marketers know this. That's why some are now getting writers to turn the information they had put into videos into articles. 

There are good reasons for brands to sponsor blogs.

Lots of blog readers out there

Most people, as many as 8 out of 10, according to  Content Marketing Institute consider themselves blog readers. People are also very receptive to communication from businesses in the form of blogs because of the insight they gain either from information about their field or about how the business operates without feeling like they are bombarded by ads.

 Blogs generate leads, build brand recognition, and boost SEO

Companies that blog generate 67% more leads each month than companies that don’t, according to Social Media B2B.  In addition to the blog building the brand recognition among those who read and share the content, it boosts SEO. For one thing, fresh content is a plus for Google rankings, and blogs add new content much more regularly than website updates do.

Blogs increases indexed pages and raise search engine rankings

As Content Plus explained, websites can gain 434% indexed pages and 97% more indexed links from their blogs. That increase in the indexing count translates into higher search engine rankings, which can drive a lot more browsers to a brand’s website. Indexed pages and indexed links translate into higher rankings with the search engines, which also contribute to higher rankings for a website. The effect can be even further enhanced when social media and mobile communication send out links to new content on a company blog.

No one denies that content is king, though this indicates that the power of the crown remains linked to the written word.

Big data alone is not enough for an agile enterprise

Ever get a promotional email or ad that has no relevance to you? We all have, and it’s usually due to the marketing algorithms used to analyze big data inputs responding incorrectly to the wrong signal. For example, eBay started applying algorithms to the tags used to track customers in 2007 to measure the relevance of search results on its site. After a couple of years of success, the results became less accurate and seemed more random and arbitrary. The algorithms no longer worked because one of the tags had shifted. Events like that one resulted in customers seeing search results or receiving marketing emails that made no sense to them.

“The algorithm is not a human brain and doesn’t realize that the parameters have changed when tags change,” Ratzesberger observed. If a change is made to a variable, everything “downstream” from that variable must change, too, or the complex results can backfire.

The solution to this entire problem of achieving agility at scale is the Sentient Enterprise, a concept that Ratzesberger developed with Dr. Mohan Sawhney, a professor at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. 

Read more here

Big Data Analytics for Better Results in College and Job Recruitment

Students are not the only ones who go back to school. We can all come back to learn about ways to direct our efforts more productively. Predictive analytics can show the way. Whether applied to university recruitment or corporate hiring, whatbig data reveals can show us that our assumptions about what works are leading us in the wrong direction. 
Read more in 

Back to School With Big Data Analytics

The URL,which was first put up very long form was changed on my article. Here's the new one: http://ww2.cfo.com/it-value/2013/09/is-digital-currency-catching-on/http://

I took this picture at the Bitcoin Conference

on/ … #bitcoin #Ripple #CFO

A straight pitch?

Today I received the following email (personal identifiers removed):

Ariella,

As you may know, in my capacity as Chief Marketing Guy for The __ __ Project, I help facilitate networking meetings for professionals who are members of ___ with other professionals who I am connected with on LinkedIn and in other networks.
There is a ___ member named ___, [She] is looking to meet and network with (NOT sell to) other professional business women who are serious about their businesses and careers. I was wondering if I can make an introduction and facilitate a networking meeting between the two of you.
Let me know.
Make it a wonderful day. 

I responded that I would just send an invitation to connect on LI, which I did (though I then discovered that the person was there twice, having failed to remove her old profile). I got this response to that:

Ok cool.

Would you be interested in us setting up a meeting  between the two of you?

I declined that honor because I really don't favor in-person meetings. 

He didn't like that and tried to still persuade me by saying, "Really? Why is that? They are extremely effective. I have meetings multiple times a week, and thus grow my network effectively and successfully."

Well, good for him. I happen to be connected to over 1300 people and organizations online, though I've only met a small handful of them. And some people I've taken the time to meet have proven to be a huge waste of my time.  
 I wrote back:
 "Just a matter of personal preference. I don’t mind talking on the phone, and I’ve found it works just as well." 

He finally dropped the matter. The fact that he was so keen on the meeting, though, makes me suspect that the woman he was contacting was not just trying to meet other professionals but to try to sell her services to them. That is what she does professionally, marketing.  And that would make the original claim that said "(NOT sell to) false." In fact, likely that's what he was being paid to do, procure prospective clients for her under the guise of setting up networking.

What makes this even more suspect is that the guy who claims he loves meetings hasn't even met the person he's promoting! I sent her a message about the pitch via LinkedIn and she said that someone else at the same organization is trying to set up a meeting between him and her. Hmm...

IT and business don't always agree on big data

Not all decision makers within an organization are on the same page with respect to big data plans. The disparity is due to the different perspectives of the business and IT end of the organizations.

Read more: IT, business have different views on data - FierceBigData 

Analysis in light of the Pareto Principle

Many businesses who are not getting as much utility out of big data as they would like identify the source of the problem as their inadequate hardware, and inadequate finances. However, in a Smart Data Collective post, Paige Roberts argues that it's not the hardware, but the software that's to blame.

"Investing in better utilization of existing hardware is a far better, more sustainable, and cost-effective solution" for businesses who find their current setups inadequate. Roberts points to the inefficiency built into current "utilization rates of hardware [that] are around 15 percent worldwide." Even the most efficient data centers max out at only 20 percent, meaning that 80 percent is untapped.

Do those numbers ring a bell?

Read more: What's the real problem with the hardware? - FierceBigData

Marketing weather data and retro appeal

When it rains, it pours. Well, weather is one of the topics that I addressed. But as the expression goes, what I mean is that I had two blogs published on the same day, even though they were written many weeks apart. One is on long term weather predictions applied to business decision.

The other is on the use of retro design for modern places and products and set up as a slideshow for the numerous pictures to illustrate them. Nostalgia sells, as we see with the attention brands garner on their Facebook timelines that showcase their origins with the stores, ads, and logos of the last century. 

The usefulness of art

"All art is quite useless" is one of Oscar Wilde's famous sayings. In looking it up, I found a letter in which he elaborates on the point. He offers an analogy: "A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers." You can Letters of Note link to see the letter as written and more of the transcript.

There has long been a debate over whether literature should simply entertain or entertain and instruct. Most of us read fiction for fun, not for information. However, The Business Case for Reading Novels contends that there is utility is what has been deemed "useless." It expands a bit on the research presented in the following paragraph:

Over the past decade, academic researchers such as Oatley and Raymond Mar from York University have gathered data indicating that fiction-reading activates neuronal pathways in the brain that measurably help the reader better understand real human emotion — improving his or her overall social skillfulness. For instance, in fMRI studies of people reading fiction, neuroscientists detect activity in the pre-frontal cortex — a part of the brain involved with setting goals — when the participants read about characters setting a new goal. It turns out that when Henry James, more than a century ago, defended the value of fiction by saying that "a novel is a direct impression of life," he was more right than he knew.