Now “trending” in Facebook. We still do not believe you.

One more time Facebook has proclaimed an improvement or news at least it has been proclaimed) which consists in copying the concept of “trending” we already know from Twitter. La difference is that, opposite to the network of the little bird Larry, the little clarity and the obsessive “you have to pay to be known” drive us to an unbelievable world.
Alejandro Asúnsolo. @content_mk

Days ago Facebook announced its trending “new product“, designed to “surface interesting and relevant conversations in order to help you discover the best content from all across Facebook”, ergo, to help us finding important issues and to navigate through them.

Every service will become so alike that we will be tired of them and that will be the time to look for news in other places.

Wait: new product? Wait some more: for us to find out the best contents in Facebook? Wait: to help us all?

Trending 1

It is not a new thing that companies submit functionalities and improvements as a new product, new element, new idea, that, of course, are not news and are not theirs. But this is not the question. Basically now Facebook is saying it pretends to be more Twitter and it is going to show you the trending or more important issues due to your likes, uses and demands. Well, it is not a bad or a good issue, so far it is something I believe in firmly: every service will be so alike that we will be tired and we will look for the news in other places. Instagram will be succeeded; Pinterest will be used, it already is, to impulse advertisings and to link to blogs; Twitter will make up something to pass over the 140 characters without noticing and Google may find the success key without pushing its millions users to jump through hoops.

How it will work and which topics will be trending?

  1. Your interests and selection of likes, besides the pages you follow (commercial pages)
  2. The authority of people around that topic
  3. The news in the issue, or how long it is in Facebook
  4. The level of engagement the topic does have

To help us… all? I do not think so

We are not totally surprised yet, but, opposite to other social players, I doubt about it even more if it is in the hands of Facebook. Because is it a well-known issue that Facebook finally does what it feels to, and under a huge and opaque logarythm nobody can translate, it makes us turn back to the 20th century, where you pay for advertising due to the audience, where your contents, though outstanding, only reaches to the 10% of your fans if you are not ready to pay, and where you never ever know, while walking around your wall, if you are passing over something great because you do not know if it is last news, if it is outstanding (nobody understands these groups), but it is a not-paid-for issue.

I would like you to see this video explaining all this wonderfully.

Therefore, and by now, we doubt about, and so much, the use beyond the commercial benefits supposed by communication agencies, that will press their customers with the necessity of investing for your issue or topic to be trending, for it to be advertised in television live programs: “We are trending on Facebook”.

We already have hundreds os articles explaining and adding information about how to work better for these new trending. I recommend the article of Jesse Aaron “Preparing for the New Facebook Trending Feature”, that puts apart one by one every one of those elements regarded by the trending and wisely suggests how to act and which steps you should take.

It will be to common users, humble fans and little companies and entrepeneurs a headache, and it will keep us apart even more of what it is supposed to be the place where an interesting idea becomes stronger by itself and where we all have the same opportunities.

There will always be for us the choice of the kittens video, the babies video or the fact that fate will turn a video or image of us into something viral.

Brands invest 5 more times in Facebook than in quality contents. Wrong.

Minientrada

Due to a study, companies have invested five more times in advertising in Facebook than in generating quality contents. It is a contradiction when every indicator show how users and customers buy items they trust in, and that trust comes in from the quality in contents of their brands.

With Facebook making it harder for brands to be seen (even paid brands) and the fact that sound “Owned, Earned” strategies will lead readers to brand owned sites, companies that want to drive influence moving into 2014 are going to have to focus on their influencer outreach.

Dan Newman

Then, where should you invest the more: in a Facebook post or in a social-influence and qualified-on-your-brand content?

Alejandro Asúnsolo. @content_mk

And what do we do, then, with the data? Initiation to Big Data

Nobody can deny we swim in an information’s world, likewise it is true that most of us get overwhelmed about everything that exists “around”; but is is also true, on the one hand, the fact that so much noise is being generated, much invalid, untrue, uncertain information is being generated, and, on the other hand, the fact that we can not handle the good ones.
Alejandro Asúnsolo. @content_mk

 Fuente: rutgers.edu


Fuente: rutgers.edu

Yes, it is another usual concept in present posts, tweets and articles. And like every concept, almost every one of them, it is something that exists from long time ago, but something that is being formed and adapted to the new reality. The thing that confers Big Data that so-much special character in these times is that it is introduced like that thing we all understand to be necessary but that very few people know how and wht to do about. It is XXI century’s disease: you know you are doing it wrong but you keep on doing it because you can not stop to think about it too long.

What Big Data is?

So many things, but, to be understood, Big Data is when we go from the thought that our information can be hosted into a conventional data base to the thought that it is no longer enough, and, therefore, that we need resources, method, software, hardware and many other things so we can see the light among all the information we receive, notice, see and also disclaim about our environment.

Governments, scientific institutions and multiple players put big resources, from long time ago by now, into the right management of all the information they have. Obama himself did get a profit from it due to his reelection.

As for companies, Big Data appears when you actually go from considering a stocktaking or a reference of your items to pondering that the information you manage includes, besides, your CRM’s information, your logistic line, your interactions in Social Media, your Content Marketing campaigns, your loyalty club, the imputs of the coventional media…, and so on to something so big that becomes… Big.

Big Data exists, as we said before, from much more time ago than its own name does, but current technology makes a must from it inside big companies’ world, so much more inside those ones involved in ecommerce or presented as omnichannel companies. But it is not a company matter. Governments, scientific institutions and multiple players put big resources, from long time ago by now, into the right management of all the information they have. Obama himself did get a profit from it due to his reelection.

McKinsey said that a retail company could make their operational margins grow a 60% due to Big Data.

Therefore, Big Data is much more than software: it is planification, it is knowledge, it is hardware (beware of the hosting I will talk about later), it is specific resources and profiles, it is investigation and development, it is legal issues, it is time, time and time. And that is money, money and money. I will not discuss if it is investment or cost. If you consider the second one, then do not keep on reading.

You will have to decide which information you choose instead of another one, to make a priority among your necessities of information, to turn your quests into sequences due to the available resources.

There must be something when companies like Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, HP, Dell are investing hundreds of millions in resources and investigation of Big Dta, and there are already very many head hunters desperate for finding profiles in a level enough to approach to the responsability of managing the big data of a company.

Some more details:

  • It makes much more transparent, clear, the stored  information. It classifies, clarifies, administrates. It is, clearly, Ordena, clarifica, administra. It is, clearly, one of the most important values into current company.
  • It allows to enlarge the information’s circle of lifw with new variables we did not know before or we did not include before, it also manages the transactional elements.
  • Due to the stored and managed information we can take those business decisions much closer to customer’s reality.
  • Current digitalization strengthens the “just in time” of the information, and, therefore, of the companies’ reaction about what is happening.
  • It is and it will be an element which makes a difference versus the rivalry. The company to manage better the huge existing amount of information will be ahead the one that has stayed around the concept of Business Intelligence or the personalization of messages.
  • It is a window to the future, The complex and improved systems in variable measurement and behaviour studies are ingredients of a Big Data that will allow to overtake possible necessities into business issues, possible deviations about the estimation and, as I said before, to hit into decissionmaking.

What is “also” Big Data

But there are some basics we can not forget. It is clear the easy thing is to understand that a good management of the information is something useful, sure, but you must consider at least this elements:

  • Big data also is to host many interferences, many incomprehensible data, or, in the positive side, so many information that you will have to decide which one you prefer, the priority of your necessities about information, the sequences of your consultations to that information due to the available resources. I talked about planification before. That is.
  • It is a global environment, it is just not referred to the information of one of the elements you are about to consider. You have to consider every element of your data’s chain as a not independent part of the rest at all. An incidence captured in the chain supply has to fall on your call center information, a complaint in Facebook has to have a direct impact in your data base, or an improvement in the management procedures of the cash desks has to be seen and measured in your information system. And you can manage variables with different timing, different behaviour models. This is science, there is no doubt.

Current supply chain management must be concerned with multi-dimensional data that includes temporal and geospatial elements. Examples of temporal data are the acquisition of data from sources such as the Internet, speech and video data, real-time imaging from satellites, and ground-based sensors. Such inputs can be difficult to analyze because the different sources that comprise the data stream have different latencies. Moreover, the amount of temporal data is growing exponentially. Geospatial data, on the other hand, tracks location, whether that of a storm, a car, or a tornado that may render impassible to your trucks certain highways, thus demanding quick redirection to avoid time lost and equipment damage. For shippers, for example, both elements come into play: it is useful to know the location of ships, containers, and even packages in real time and/or two days prior in order to see if interim movement in is unusual and requires action. Coupled with temporal data, a logistics analyst can make informed decisions as events in his supply chain unfold.

Five Steps To Master Big Data and Predictive Analytics in 2014. Forbes.

  • Data are sensitive. Who is going to hace access, which data you are hosting, and where and which use you are going to give them. These are basics in any environment of more or less delicate information management, but if we talk about of Big Data you will have to propose that we talk as well about a Big sensitivity. You must ensure this issue well if you want in medium term to get over an audit that probably will give you many problems.
  • Knowledge takes place. And so much. One of the current problems is, clearly, that one that refers to data hosting. Wallmart handles 1.000.000 of transactions or every of their customers per hour, or Facebook, that has more than 50 billions of images. It is considered that companies duplicate their onformation in 1,2 years. And where do we put all this. There are so many solutions in the market place, pero they are expensive and they worth the cost, or are you going to be silly about the security copies?
  • It is not a place for rookies. Do not leave Big Data in unknown hands, just in the the most known hands. The required profiles have to be multidisciplinary, specialist, and they have to know so well the frameworks on your business’ model. There are necessities in the business and technical knowledges, you will need a very full team oriented to improve the hosting systems, processing, testing, depurating and development.
  • To have many data without  brains is the same than to not have data at all. Another big mistake is to enter the Big Data world and to have a lack in resources, time or even business sensitivity, and, to be well-used, you will have to go from Big Data to Smart Data, a not-so-easy issue if you can not do it.

As you can see, it is an issue you can not put aside, and you can not think it is simple, easy and answerable with a good software, as good as the company that tries to sell it to us can be.

To start…

[This is a translation of our spanish article: Para comenzar]

Prophecies

The blog business2community does have the good idea of asking every year (and they are so many by now) its readers for writing their prophecies about what they think it is going to happen the year after, then this blog files them and, this is the point, one year after publishes those predictions and judges if they were right or not.
One of them, for 2013, was a phrase that said this:

The phrase ‘content marketing’ will become the accepted term for the majority of businesses.

And it was so right. Books, blogs, articles, and, for sure, and, of course, advertising or digital communications agencies filled their pages and proposals or business models with not always honest proposals and (or) propositions, about what it is now in everybody’s mouth: the Content Marketing.

I will not be the one to add one more prophecy to this matter asserting now if it is a temporary issue (which one is not?) or it has really come for good. I consider that to remain in the actual digital world is something like getting over more than five years. If we put an eye on what we are used to read, I am sure it will be mutated, like energy, into another concept, to remain in some kind of two dot zero version of itself, such as the Content Marketing concept itself is the version (who knows which one) of so many others that came before and that we may not remember.

What is true, it always is so, is that many of the information we can find about digital issues comes, for sure, from the north american market, german in some cases, british the less, and this makes, it always does, really difficult to adapt these messages and to reallocate that knowledge; Internet is this all about, in not so advanced markets or not so, please let this expression to be, digitalized as mentioned, markets which digital contents’ consumption multiplies sometimes in a hundred the environment as the european one or the spanish one.

It is not about a language impediment, because who does not know, does know how, and the options in translation are multiplied (better or worse, but this is all about and in so may cases understanding this whole issues). The difficulty for us, the people who works in these matters in a pro way, is mighty always in the actual adaptation to the environment’s context we move in, to our country, to our business model, to our working sector.

Who is not tired of being told the same stories or the same instances? Thus so many people tell Jeff Bullas, a skilled professional in these issues, about it, even when they, the north american people, do not have that mentioned trouble about the precedent “who is that?”, what does that company do?”.

“Jeff, you are one of my favorite bloggers but honestly I am so sick of hearing about Zappos I could hurl. The blogosphere needs to come up with a few new success stories”. Read here.

All we have to face in our day to day communication elements or multinational companies with the intention of being in global markets have had to do more than one or two calls trying to explain what they mean by medium enterprises, here is not a medium enterprise, or what they see as an entrepreneur here, in spain, is like adventurous.

Born this blog with informative intention (what is not) and also with the intention to make a constant effort of reflection and adaptation to environments closest to ours (Spain, Europe, Latin American markets …) now under the umbrella of Content Marketing, we will see tomorrow if the name remains… but the idea will, for sure.