October 2014

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 21 oct 2014

Professor Rita Gunther McGrath of Columbia University, explains that in situations where companies seem to be too generous to their customers, the real question should be whether the company is designed to serve multiple stakeholders (investors plus customers, suppliers, the community) well or whether we allow executives and owners to claim a disproportionate share of profits generated. She quotes the recent HBR article "Profits Without Prosperity" by Professor William Lazonick of University of Massachusetts Lowell, in which he argues that investors and executives have become 'takers' in their organizations rather than 'makers' who invest to fund future growth. According to her, 'It is nearly always profitable in the short-term to cut on quality, offer less service or otherwise extract greater profits from the same dollar of customer spending. But in the longer-term it can be very dangerous.' Read on...

RitaMcGrath.com: Pressuring customers for profits can be a loser in the long term
Author: Rita Gunther McGrath

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 18 oct 2014

The recent study regarding use of content marketing by B2B marketers by Content Marketing Institute found that 93% of B2B marketers use social media for content marketing, up from 87% in 2013, while the use of blog and website based long-form articles has declined from 83% to 81%. Similar trend was observed in a Didit survey of top 100 social media influencers where only 34% of them maintained active blogs. These findings may not mark the end of traditional blogging for content marketing as it still have certain advantages over social media facilitated microblogging. Kevin Lee, cofounder of Didit, explains these benefits - (1) Control: Customized look and feel of the website and freedom to tweak and change (2) Ease of Measurement: Myriad metrics and analytics available to establish content marketing ROI (3) Page Rank and Domain Authority: SEO benefits like merit-based article rank and link worthy articles lead to enhanced domain authority. This improves the visibility of the content on website (4) Accessibility: Flexibility to provide mixed content categorized according to various topics and headings. Moreover he also suggests use of 'hub and spoke model' for effective content marketing, in which main content residing on a blog or a dedicated website can act as a hub while content can be shared in various formats on multiple social media platforms acting as spokes, driving traffic back to the main website in addition to exposure to specific social media audience. Read on...

ClickZ: Is Blogging an Outdated Content Marketing Tactic?
Author: Kevin Lee

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 17 oct 2014

It's been 20 years since the blogging pioneer, Dave Winer, began scripting his blog stories via DaveNet and Scripting News. In the continuous evolving field of individual publishing, innovative technologies bring shifts that keep on transforming the way people share their content. Microblogging platforms and mobile-based content sharing being the most recent ones. Text-based blogging is now been changing to sharing of visually enhanced content like pictures, inforgraphics etc. Year 2012 saw the rise of visual content sharing sites like Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram and a study same year concluded that 44% of users engage more with a brand with visual posts. Author, Christian Adams, explains the visual information processing as quicker and better in his ebook, 'InstaBRAND'. There are number of platforms and websites that are pursuing the collaborative storytelling and blogging with visual content. The next wave of blogging thus might be concise, aggregated, dynamic, visual content shared effectively on myriad of mobile devices. Read on...

Huffington Post: Is Collaborative Storytelling the Next Generation of Blogging?
Author: Andre Bourque

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 oct 2014

Social media presence provides organizations multiple opportunities to better connect and interact with their audience and customers. Social media analytics gives them insights about what their customers think and how to serve them better. But the challenge is to process and make sense of this huge data effectively. The text is unstructured and requires use of specialized natural language processing techniques and tools for analysis and data inflow is continuous. According to Sarah Biller, president of Capital Market Exchange, 'It's a misnomer that all this data is at our fingertips now and big data has made it available. Organizations need talented individuals in-house who can normalize and structure all the data being collected so it can be run through analytics engines.' Lack of available talent in the field is further adding to the woes. Jiri Medlen, senior text analytics specialist at PayPal, says 'ROI from social media sentiment analysis can be questionable.' He adds, 'The biggest question is what to do with this kind of data. How is this going to impact the bottom line of the company? We still have to answer the question of value.' Another challenge is related to technical difficulties with social media data. According to Usama Fayyad, Chief Data Officer at Barclays PLC, the rapid streaming and unstructured nature of social data makes integrating it into analytics systems a big headache. Early tests of social media analytics applications showed promise, but dealing with the complexity of the unstructured data proved difficult. We really don't know how to deal with variety. You can enhance any data set with all this and it makes it better. But it's a monster.' Read on...

TechTarget: Social media analysis has promise -- but also pitfalls to avoid
Author: Ed Burns

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 10 oct 2014

As big data requirements of companies in finance, retail, healthcare, education etc continues to grow, there will be corresponding growth of companies providing innovative analytics tools and services to store, analyze and monetize the big data. This inturn propels the need of workers at various levels to have big data talent and skills. Business leaders with strong understanding of business, analytics, technology and communications skills would be in high demand. A 2011 report of McKinsey estimated that by 2018, about 140000 to 180000 big data jobs will remain unfilled due to lack of experience and expertise. The 2014 CDO Talent Map predicted that the number of Chief Digital Officers will double this year increasing to 1000 by the end of 2014 and the number of Chief Data Officers will be more than 200 by year end. Due to this imminent need of big data talent, both educational institutions and technology corporations are collaborating on curriculum and project-based learning opportunities for students. Large number of universities globally are incorporating new courses related to predictive analytics, machine learning, data analysis and infrastructure. These initiatives range from full degree programs and addition of new courses in existing curriculum, to short-term skill-specific certificate courses that are available online. Moreover, professional organizations are also offering free courses, training programs and hands-on learning projects to fulfill the knowledge and learning needs of their members. Read on...

Umbel Blog: Big Data Equals Big Jobs: New Educational Programs to Help You Snag the Sexiest Jobs in the Industry
Author: Thrupthi Reddy

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 01 oct 2014

From traditional perspective, human resources (HR) handles relationship of the employees with the organization, while marketing handles dynamics of interaction between customers and organization. But the value of brand experience for both consumers and employees, alongwith technological advancements is bridging the gap between these two critical components of any business. The notion 'happy employees can make customers happier' is becoming more real. Convergence of HR and marketing will facilitate a learning exchange between the two and create new paradigms for organization's benefit. HR can effectively pursue strategies for talent acquisition much in the same way that marketing works toward seeking customers and can develop employment value proposition (EVP). Social media is facilitating new connection between organizations and consumers. These technologies can be leveraged by HR for interaction with prospective employees and to develop effective recruitment strategies. HR should learn from marketing to embrace change and be early adopters. Read on...

Human Resources: When HR meets marketing
Author: Anthony J. James

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