RonAmok!

Recently, I’ve been experimenting with Google Docs to help illustrate how Social Media activities can be measured, tracked, and analyzed. By combining Google Spreadsheets, Google Gadgets, and a little HTML, my Social Media Dashboard offers an at-a-glance view of my client’s social media efforts. Here’ s a screen-shot of what my dashboard should look like:

Unfortunately, it hasn’t looked that way since last Tuesday morning, when I noticed that Google Gadgets stopped working. Today, my dashboard now looks like this:

I first noticed the problem while calling it up live in front of a business prospect. Having just talked-up the use of these great tools, I felt a bit red-faced, but shrugged it off as a minor hiccup in technology. Software breaks and I figured that Google would have my dashboard back up and running within a few hours. Unfortunately, 96 hours 120 hours six-days one-week ten-days later and the problem still persists.

I’m not the only person affected by outage. The following thread on the Google Docs Help Forum shows four examples–just from last Tuesday:

“I was going to do a training which included motion charts tomorrow morning.”
(newbopke)

A part form the disruptions this problem is creating to my website, what I find amazing is that after 24 hours Google doesn’t come out with a solution, and none even says “well, we will find a solution in 48 hours, and we will do this and that” or so.
(Jorge from Burgos)

I’ve been using “Gantt Chart” to follow projects progress of an ONG I’m working with. Gadget stopped working yesterday! Please! Jules: Help me, Help US!
(sosa.0991)

Is google working on this? I too have a presentation tomorrow using motion gadgets. Very stressed! Any alternative motion chart options out there for the computer illiterate?
(wmkay87)

I believe in cloud computing. I also understand the risks involved with new technologies. But if cloud computing is going to be a viable option for companies, downtime will need to be measured in hours not days.

Tags: Google Spreadsheets Gadgets Cloud Computing Broken Ron Ploof Orange County Social Media Social Media Dashboard

Last Monday I wrote a post called Real Time Communications, describing how mass communications tools in the hands of average people are having a profound affect on our lives. At the end of the article, I posed a question about business implications of such access.

The difficulty with this question is manifested in the sheer magnitude of the problem. How does a company monitor mass communications channels, save the data, analyze it, and act upon what it finds? That’s when I ran into a simple and very understandable example.

For the past few months, I’ve observed how one company uses the real-time information of a competitor to set pricing. The company is Amazon.com, the competitor is Barnes and Noble, and the product is my book Read This First: The Executive’s Guide to New Media–From Blogs to Social Networks. The chart below demonstrates what I mean.

My book was released in November 2009. Since Amazon was the first bookstore to carry it, and thus had no competition, it chose the retail price of $17.95. That price held for a few weeks until it dropped suddenly to a seemingly arbitrary $12.21. It didn’t take me too long to figure out what had happened. Read This First had just debuted on Barnes and Noble’s site at that price.

Three months after the book was released, Barnes and Noble decided to increase its price to $15.34, triggering a corresponding and almost instantaneous increase on the Amazon side. But this time, instead of matching the price increase as it had earlier, Amazon only increased it by 10%, to $13.46.

Finally, about a week later, Amazon returned its price to $12.21 while Barnes and Noble has held its at $15.34 — where both prices remain today.

To me, this chart represents a simple example of how future businesses will use real time mass communication. Computer programs will watch for specific information, events, triggers, social graphs, etc… They’ll run that information through algorithms, perform pre-programmed actions, and closely monitor the results of those actions. Over time, the algorithms will be adjusted to optimize the results.

Perhaps companies will be able to better predict mass demand for a product. Perhaps they’ll be able to automate the purchase and sale of goods and services at an optimal price. Perhaps they’ll be able to predict large earthquakes, based on disparate and seemingly inconsequential data that on a whole paints an accurate picture.

I can’t predict what they’ll do with the information, but I can predict one thing with certainty: Technology is not the limiting factor…our imaginations are.

Photo Credit: Tolomea

I love data.

Whenever I get the keys to a client’s Web analytics, I feel like Indiana Jones, exploring cobweb-laced catacombs that contain hidden treasures which are just waiting to be discovered–treasures that frequently result in meaningful business intelligence. Unfortunately, though, I’ve learned that traditional business communicators don’t share my enthusiasm for online data analysis. Many view such activity as meaningless busywork, so, instead of rolling up their sleeves and wading deeply into the raw data, they cast fleeting glances at their automatically generated Web reports.

It’s understandable. Most marketing and PR folks still don’t understand the impact of a dynamic online marketplace. In the past, these professional business communicators reported on static measurements such as banner ad impressions or media mentions. Such metrics were good-enough when companies were the only initiators of online content, yet fall short of the task as 3rd parties (customers, prospects, competitors, and investors) have joined the online content party.

The amount of online content created about your company is increasing every day, and the effects of that content are becoming more significant. The question remains, “Does your company have a finger on the pulse of these effects?” If not, it’s like running into a dark forest without a helmet.

Most companies do nothing with the data that their analytics packages collect every day, and of those that do, even fewer perform analysis, preferring cursory looks at first-order results (unique visitors, page views, referrals, popular pages). First-order results work well in a traditional controlled content environment, but reveal their inadequacies in a dynamic online world. The real juicy business stories are found in the second-order calculations. Remember that old High School algebra and y=mx+b? Remember how to calculate the slope of a line?

Business stories are found in the second-order affects of Web analytics data. Rather than glancing at static numbers collected independently on a week-to-week basis, savvy communicators plot them over time. Enlightened business communicators study these graphs and ask questions such as:

• What is the slope of the data?
• Are the unique visitors rising or falling over time?
• Did the visits to a specific Web page spike and then return to its baseline level in a short amount of time? What could be the cause of that?
• Why did a number of people recently come to our Web site through someone else’s YouTube channel?
• Why did our company see a significant spike in Facebook fans over the past few weeks?
• Why is the fastest growing Web referral from Google tied to the keyword bad customer service?

Keep a close watch on these second-order effects. Find the trends. Once you do, you’ll be able to make smart executive-level decisions based on what you find.

Of course, if you’d like to hire a very smart consultant to show you how, I’m always available:-)

Photo Credit: vrkerbs

Tags: data y=mx+b algebra social media second-order effects ronploof measurements ronamok