Speed Kills – Know How Loading Time Affects Your Website Performance

Page loading time is an important part of any websites performance.

Here is an infographic from Kiss Metrics highlighting how loading time can have impact on the abandon rate.

Facts and Stats to Tweet:

• 73% of mobile internet users say that they’ve encountered a website that was too slow to load. »tweet«
• 51% of mobile internet users say that they’ve encountered a website that crashed, froze, or received an error. »tweet«
• 38% of mobile internet users say that they’ve encountered a website that wasn’t available. »tweet«
• 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. »tweet«
• 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load.»tweet«
• A 1 second delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. »tweet«
• If an e-commerce site is making $100,000 per day, a 1 second page delay could potentially cost you $2.5 million in lost sales every year.

Article Source: blog.kissmetrics.com

The #WearableTech Market To Be Worth $34 Billion By 2020″

#Wearables #dataviz #iot

Getting Started with LinkedIn – for Writers

Getting Started with LinkedIn – for Writers.

LinkedIn is a powerful marketing and networking tool that offers a lot of opportunities for writers.

Whether you’re just starting your own business, or you’re a multi-published author; whether you write fiction or non-fiction; whether you write long or short, LinkedIn can help you find jobs, connections, and resources to improve your craft in your chosen specialty.

This post is a quick snapshot on getting started with LinkedIn if you are a writer. The tool is user friendly and quite a great resource for finding companies you want to work with or for.

Getting started:

Create an account. You can use LinkedIn a lot for free (it’s the version I have), so don’t feel like you need to invest money. You can, of course, but it’s not required to start out.

Create a profile. LinkedIn walks you through the profile creation process step by step. Help is available all along the way, too.  Use it; it’s actually helpful! Creating a profile is the most time-consuming part of getting started, but it’s definitely worth it to pay attention to each section.

• For your current job title, avoid generic terms such as president, owner, wordsmith or crafty titles such as ‘word whisperer’, ‘writing goddess’, ‘chief bottle washer’. Think about how companies you want to work for will search for someone with your skill set. Keep it simple, straightforward, and relevant.
• When you add in current and past employment, do the same with the titles (as prior bullet). Sure, you may have been ‘senior manager’, but that doesn’t benefit you when someone is seeking a software writer. You can include ‘senior manager’ in the description of the job, but put key works in your job titles, as well as in descriptions of job responsibilities.

Search for jobs, groups, people. The search bar at the top of the screen offers numerous search methods, and you can take advantage of the Advanced feature to help narrow in on the jobs, groups, and people you are seeking. Search on such terms as ‘beginner writer’, ‘(industry) writing’, whatever you want. Just like doing searches on Google or Bing, you’ll naturally start discovering the search terms that work best for you.

• When you do searches, particularly writing-related ones, you’ll discover the profiles that appear at the top of lists — look those profiles over and see what catches your eye for wording that you can adapt to your profile.

Connect with people. LinkedIn offers many ways to import various address books, and if you do that, invitations will be sent to the people in your contact list. It can be a good way to get started, but you won’t have any chance to personalize the e-mails sent out.

If you have specific questions about LinkedIn, feel free to ask in the comments. If you connect with me on LinkedIn, personalize the e-mail and let me know you read this blog.

Lisa J. Jackson is an independent writer and editor who enjoys working with manufacturing, software, and technology businesses of all sizes. She loves researching topics, interviewing experts, and helping companies tell their stories. You can connect with her onTwitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

16 Startup Metrics for Entrepreneurs to Master

Credits: 16 Startup Metrics for Entrepreneurs to Master.

 

A16Z has a great post up titled 16 Startup Metrics that outlines many of key metrics investors look for and entrepreneurs often get incorrect. I’m guilty of this: when I went into one of my first investor pitches 10 years ago, I talked about revenue when it really was bookings, and the VC politely corrected me.

Here are the 16 metrics to test your knowledge before reading 16 Startup Metrics:

1. Bookings vs. revenue
2. Recurring revenue vs. total revenue
3. Gross profit
4. Total contract value vs. annual contract value
5. Lifetime value
6. Gross merchandise value vs. revenue
7. Unearned or deferred revenue … and billings
8. Customer acquisition cost … blended vs. paid, organic vs. inorganic
9. Active users
10. Month-on-month growth
11. Churn
12. Burn rate
13. Downloads
14. Cumulative charts (vs. growth metrics)
15. Chart tricks
16. Order of operations

Every entrepreneur should read 16 Startup Metrics and understand the metrics applicable to their startup.

What else? What are some more startup metrics that are important?

Author: David Cummings  

Building the Right Keyword Queries for Social Media Listening

Social media monitoring or listening has been discussed for a quite long time and you’ll see articles about how to use social for business to break a revolution. Not many companies have succeeded in their social journey and many are still cautious to dip their toe in the ever-changing ocean of social media. Whether you have an active presence for you brand on social or not, you must realize the importance of monitoring and measuring social chatters.

 

Monitoring and listening tools play a vital role in accomplishing your listening objectives. Social Media Monitoring tool market is fragmented and each one is different in its approach, methodology and metrics and the fact that there is not an agreed-upon metrics and best practices available. You should be looking for a tool that provides both robust monitoring features and measurement capabilities. Tools like Radian6, Brandwatch, Sysmos, Attensity are some of the leading social media monitoring tool providers.

 

Outline the purpose/intention of monitoring

Social media monitoring should be intentional and you shouldn’t be doing it because others do so. If there is no objective defined you will be lost in the ocean of social media chatters and might end up with bare hands. Defining a clear objective will guide you to travel in the right path to find solutions for your business problems.

 

Sample goals

• Understand what customers opinion about my newly launched product
• Know what my customers likes and dislikes
• Monitor for customer discussions damaging brand reputation
• Understand my competitors standpoint and industry trends
• Identify people in need of services and products and provide assistance during their purchase cycle
• To prioritize customer service issues and respond to their queries by creating a collaborative and enhanced exchange of information

 

Decide what to monitor?

Typically social media monitoring is on the basis of keyword queries. Listening experts had always stressed the importance of choosing the right set of keywords for any social media listening projects. They also feel that “Query” is a backbone of social listening. The social media tool aggregates data from social media sites based on the keywords you specify. Relevant keywords include brand name, product names, campaign names, industry keywords etc.

 

Steps to Build Social Media Query

Choosing the right keywords

Industry Terms and Acronyms

When I start working on a project the first thing I will consider doing is to understand the customers’ business and the industry my customers is a part of. This will give me an idea of the recent trends and industry developments. Meanwhile I will also start collecting key topics, terms and acronyms which will help in building basic query.

 

Mining gold from company website, Corporate Social properties

There is no other better place than Company websites to understand their business. Company websites provides information like the products and service, channel partners, campaign details, stakeholders, competitors, and their corporate social properties. As mentioned before relevant keywords will include product names, category they serve CSR activities, promotions and campaign names etc. With the keywords gathers start building basic Boolean queries. Query building is not a one time activity and its ongoing process. You can always make your search result more accurate by building complex queries.

You can always look at other publications and databases for choosing the right set of keywords. This is one way of selecting keywords.

What does ENGAGEMENT mean to YOU on Facebook?

I’ve read through many articles talking about the importance of posting quality content on brands’ social media pages. “Content is King, but engagement is Queen and she rules the house”. I absolutely love this statement. Content might be the key factor for building a successful social media campaign but if there is no backing up from the customers it doesn’t serve the purpose. Combining content and engagement with the audience is very important . That’s the reason why brands should prioritize to get people engaged with the content on social media sites.

In this blog we shall see the most crucial social networking site Facebook, where our audience is somewhere among the 9.6 million users who sign in to their account at least once a day. Let’s first look at the ever-changing Facebook numbers

More than 1.26 billion registered users (1.19 billion of whom are active on a monthly basis)

• 350 million daily uploaded photos
• 4.75 billion average daily shared items
• 20 billion minutes of usage per day

We are now very certain that our audience is on Facebook but it is very important for us to reach and engage with these users to understand what they communicate. Facebook engagement metric will help you deliver better results for your strategies. Facebook has recently (not so recent though) added new features like the ability to reply for users comments on Facebook Page, inclusion of hashtags, graph search etc., shows that engagement is more important than before.

Calculating Engagement Score:

Three essentials signifying engagement for Facebook posts are Likes, Shares, Comments and Clicks. Aggregating Clicks data might not be possible if you don’t have access to Facebook metrics since Facebook API does not provide Clicks data publicly.

Engagement for a post is calculated adding total Likes, Shares, Comments for the respective post.

Engagement Score = Like + Shares + Comments

What Likes signify?

Likes indicate how well the content echoes with users.

Why comments are important?

While the number of comments is an important metric, it is critical to understand the tone of comments. It provides insight into how people feel about your content, products, or your overall brand.

What is Shares and how it can help?

The number of times people share your content, Shares can amplify content reach.

Engagement with your posts reflects three vital things:

• Ability to capture users’ attention
• Ability to create a connection with your content
• How many people see your posts

Engagement plays a major role in Facebook’s News feed algorithm, which determines which posts are displayed in and how many users you were able to reach. We all might have seen our friends Facebook status appear on our Timeline even if it was published two days ago, that’s because when someone engage, the actions they take appear in their timelines, making their connection with our friend visible to us and that builds awareness for the content posted.

User engagement with our posts impacts the ability to reach a larger audience. People who are engaging on our page are the most valuable audience segment.

Calculating Engagement rate:

Engagement rate is a metric that you can use to measure your effectiveness at engaging your audience. Engagement rate is the number of unique users who engaged with your content as a percentage of the number of users that were exposed to it

Engagement Rate = Total number of users who liked, commented, shared on your post / people saw your post (Total post reach)

Example:

500 unique users engaged with a given post and 1000 users saw the post

Engaged users = 500

Engagement rate = 50%

What if you don’t have access to Facebook insights?

We can calculate engagement rate by

Total Engagement (Likes + Comments + Shares) / Total page Likes

Example:

5,000 unique users engaged during a given period and 100,000 users liked your page

Engaged users = 5,000

Engagement rate = 5%

Often the first Facebook metric that marketers focus on is the number of fans for a Page or Reach. In my next blog i shall discuss about reach and impression in detail. Happiee reading, feel free to share your thoughts in comments section

Safety tips for Internet Savvy – Manage your online experience in a positive way

In this Web 2.0 world, where people have the ability to instantly communicate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, whether you are new to this world or a long time user, you should be diligent in protecting yourself, your family and your friends. Most people have stored a large portion of their details on social media pages, be it messages, personal photos and/or your friend’s contacts. While the message of “Think Before You Post” is relevant for all age groups, it is particularly important for those who frequently use social media services like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and etc. It’s time to think about your behavior online to protect your information and to keep your online experience both enjoyable and safe.

In all social networking sites security settings exist for a reason. We should learn to use the privacy and security settings on social networks to protect our private information. By using these private and security setting we can restrict the users from accessing what you post on Facebook or Twitter.

 

• Once posted, always posted: Protect your reputation on social media sites. Whatever you post online stays online until you decide to delete it. Think twice before posting pictures. Recent research (http://www.microsoft.com/privacy/dpd/research.aspx) found that 70% of job recruiters rejected candidates based on information they found online.
• Your online reputation can be a good thing: So show your smarts, thoughtfulness, and mastery of a particular subject that your interested in.
• Keep personal info personal: Be cautious about on how much personal information you provide on social networking sites. The more information you post, the easier it may be for a hacker or someone else to use that information to steal your identity, access your data, or commit other crimes such as stalking.
• Protect your hardware: Safety and security start with protecting computers. Install a security suite (antivirus, antispyware, and firewall) that is set to update automatically. Keep your operating system, Web browser, and other software updated as well.
• Be honest if you’re uncomfortable: If a friend posts something about you that makes you uncomfortable or you think is inappropriate, let them know. Likewise, stay open-minded if a friend approaches you because something you’ve posted makes him or her uncomfortable. People have different tolerances for how much the world knows about them respect those differences. Post only about others as you would have them post about you.
• Guard your financial and other sensitive information: Never provide or post your pan account number, address, phone number, bank account or credit card numbers, or other personal information that could be used by criminals.
• Think twice before clicking on suspicious links: They may contain viruses or spyware that could damage your profile or steal your personal information – including your online passwords and account numbers. Some messages may “spoof,” or copy the email addresses of friends to fool you into thinking that they’re from them.
• Avoid in-person meetings: The only way someone can physically harm you is if you’re both in the same location, so – to be 100% safe – don’t meet a person whom you don’t know. If you really have to get together with someone you “met” online, don’t go alone. Have the meeting in a public place, tell a parent or some other solid backup, and bring some friends along.
• Think about how you respond: If someone says or does something that makes you uncomfortable, block them and don’t respond. If they continue, let your parents or another adult know. If the messages are threatening in any way, save the messages and tell your parents as this may be considered a criminal offense
• Now what action to take: If someone is harassing or threatening you, remove them from your friends list, block them, and report them to the site administrator.

Dr. Ivan Misner, NY bestselling author & founder of BNI says “Networking is not about hunting. It is about farming. It’s about cultivating relationships. Don’t engage in ‘premature solicitation’. You’ll be a better networker if you remember that.” So be social(ly) responsible in sharing information online. Your information is worth protecting, so protect yourself (information) before it’s been exploited.

 

Reference: Safety Tips for Social Networking

The Problem With Salesforce (Radian6)

The Problem With Salesforce (Radian6).

Manage your social media accounts using Hootsuite

Hootsuite, a leading social media management platform today, helps you to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks. I think it would be useful to share a post on how to schedule Tweets on Hootsuite.

All you need to do is follow these seven steps (HootSuite’s Guideline) to schedule your tweets.

1. Click “Compose Message”
2. Compose your message and include links or photo’s or videos if you have any (For those who donot use Hootsuite: I will advice you to use bitly for URL Shortening, so that you can track the links performance. By the way you can also track your shorten links’ performance by using Hootsuite as well)
3. Click to select a profile from the profile picker
4. Click the calendar icon
5. From the calendar, select the date for the message to be sent
6. Select the time for the message to be sent
7. Click “Schedule”

Let me know if you have any questions on scheduling tweets.

 

Source: blog.hootsuite.com

Ways to start a conversation on social media

There are thousands and millions of users active on social media the question is how to engage with them. A brand can wait for the audience to start a conversation with it after publishing great content but there are other methods that can be deployed to proactively initiate customer conversations on social.  In Asia-Pacific there are 969 million active users in social.

Social Media Users In APAC

Initiate conversations by

Leave a comment: Find out where your audience participates on the social media communities and get started by leaving valuable comments.

Twitter Chat: Participate in organized chat that is relevant to the business. Or organize such chats on Twitter and get involved.

Answer Questions: Set up a social media listening program based on keywords, hashtags, geography, and more. Help customers by answering their questions that are relevant to your business or category.

Pose a question: Make it easy for people to comment on your content by posing questions that require varying levels of thoughtfulness.

Learn and optimize: If the tactics to spur sociability aren’t successful, try different methods, be persistent, and continue to optimize your efforts.