Business & Finance

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ClickZ: Is Blogging an Outdated Content Marketing Tactic?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

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

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 17 oct 2014

According to Cisco, a networking solutions company, venture capital firms are expected to invest US$ 1.6 billion on 'Internet Of Things' (IoT) technologies this year. While speaking at the IoT World Forum, Cisco's chief globalization officer, Wim Elfrink, said, '13.69 billion things are connected virtually by October 2014 and it is estimated that 50 billion objects to be connected by 2020.' With IoT consumers are looking for intelligence from connected devices, equipment and infrastructure. The startups in IoT continues to grow from just 13 in 2013 to 189 this year. At present nearly 300000 people are involved in jobs related to IoT. As IoT is evolving and billions of devices are getting connected to each other there are issues and challenges related to security and availability of skilled & educated workforce in the area of networking. Read on...

The Times of India: VC firms likely to invest over $1.6 billion in Internet of Things in 2014
Author: NA

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 15 oct 2014

To fully and effectively adopt and integrate latest technologies in a healthcare system requires understanding and cooperation of all the stakeholders. Clinical staff is a critical component of the healthcare ecosystem. Hospitals must involve frontline staff and seek their suggestions and feedback while beginning to implement new IT system. Julia Ball, assistant director of Nursing at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (UHL), explains how their hospital pursued implementation of mobile technology successfully by listening and involving their frontline staff. According to her, their CEO, John Adler, in order to achieve their strategy of becoming 'paper light' obtained feedback from staff that voiced frustration regarding the amount of time spent on paper work and the resulting impact on patient care and suggested use of less paper and more technology support in their work. Nursing staff of selected wards was provided with iPads and iPhones to effectively and efficiently record observations and this data has been instantly shared with all staff responsible for the patient's care. This provides targeted flow of information to specific services and clinicians that can timely respond to a particular patient's needs and requirements. The new process provides more time for nurses to be with patients and provide better care. The staff of these selected pioneering wards thus became the champion for the new system and, advocated and supported the management's strategy for a paperless and technology-enabled environment. Read on...

the guardian: Involving hospital staff is key to implementing new technology
Author: Julia Ball

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 14 oct 2014

Although economists were critized for not been able to predict the financial crisis of 2008, but macroeconomic forecasting is just one aspect of their work. In a recently published book 'Trillion Dollar Economists', author & economist Robert Litan, argues that while macroeconomic forecasters are more publicly renowned due to press coverage but there are other economists who worked for the private sector and contributed substantially to transform businesses in America. Following are seven economists mentioned - (1) Julian Simon: Helped revolutionize the airline industry by popularizing the idea that carriers should stop randomly removing passengers from overbooked flights and instead auction off the right to be bumped by offering vouchers that go up in value until all the necessary seats have been reassigned. (2) Hal Varian: As economist for Google, he fine tuned 'Dutch Auction' first designed by William Vickrey, that Google utilized for its 2004 IPO. He further helped develop the Google Trends tool and the use of A/B testing to improve the launch of other new services. (3) Vernon Smith: won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002 for his contributions in helping economics become a more experimental science that relied on laboratory testing to understand human behavior. His experiments proved that through careful deregulation of energy markets, electricity companies could become more efficient and still sell energy at fair prices. (4) Frank Ramsey: In 1920s formally proved that rather than charging one price, firms ought to discriminate against customers based on where they fall on the 'Demand Curve'. In other words, companies should charge the most any particular customer is willing to pay, rather than one price for all. His concepts are utilized in airline and hospitality industries. (5/6) Lloyd Shapley and Alvin Roth: Nobel Prize winners of 2012, their work in 'Market Design' has helped revolutionize the way buyers and sellers are matched in many different markets. They worked on how to design markets to attract enough buyers and sellers, to give those participants enough time and information to make rational choices, and to do it in a way that prevents fraud or the leaking of confidential information (7) Burton Malkiel: He helped popularize the concept that investors do better when they diversify through his book 'A Random Walk Down the Street' and inspired entrepreneur Jack Bogle to work on 'Index Funds' as they would be a cheap way for the average investor to diversify. Read on...

FORTUNE: 7 economists worth their weight in gold
Author: Chris Matthews

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

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

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 09 oct 2014

The travel industry landscape is finding shifting business dynamics due to the emergence of innovative ride-sharing services like Uber, Lyft, Sidecar etc. These internet-enabled services have now got critical attention of governments and taxi unions. While economists on the other hand seem to favor these services and want them to operate freely without interference from governments and unions. Moreover they also agreed that the competition on equal footing with taxi services regarding genuine safety and insurance requirements, but without restrictions on prices of routes, raises consumer welfare (56% strongly agreed & 37% agreed). Professor Austan Goolsbee of University of Chicago when asked commented, 'Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes.' A study from University of California at Berkeley found that Uber is more efficient in picking up passengers, 92% arrive within 10 minutes, compared to 10% of taxis. According to MIT study, 95% of all taxi trips in some areas of New York City could be shared. Read on...

VentureBeat: Here's why top economists unanimously agree the government should stop regulating Uber
Author: Gregory Ferenstein

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

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 30 sep 2014

Whether you are a big global brand, a B2B enterprise, or a small business, in today's technology powered business world, an effective digital strategy is required to stay ahead and succeed. Aaron Kahlow, CEO of Online Marketing Institute, provides a list with in-depth analysis of essential digital planning ideas that should be kept in mind for the coming year 2015 - (1) Go Big on One Content Idea (2) Use Big Data in Little Ways (3) Make Time for Technology (4) Get Real: Re-Learn Best Practices (5) Target or Die an Irrelevant Death (6) Advertise More, Hope Less (7) Invest in Yourself, Invest in Your People. Read on...

Business 2 Community: The 7 Essential Digital Planning Ideas for Breakthrough Results in 2015
Author: Aaron Kahlow

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