BLOG.BILALAHMED.ORG

Building Custom analytics

Bilal Ahmed — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 19:04:30 GMT

Analytics

It is key to obtain key metrics for your company, with information pertaining to business goals and metrics. The tracking can easily be done on emails, buttons and pages. Configure URLs, passing in tracker Ids to each call. Each tracker Id associates with business objects within the system. With each URL call, whether onload of html page, button onclick, or email open, call the tracker URL to increment counters.

Once the tracking data is collected, there are various way to display charts and paginated lists. For each tracker, collect list of tracking, e.g. IP address and information pertaining to clients and browsers. Location information can also be obtained from the IP address. Http headers contain a wealth of user information.

Ab-testing, funnel testing, retention cohorts, engagement metrics and viral factors can be implemented with this mechanism.

Startup Motivation

Bilal Ahmed — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:57:22 GMT

"Most men die at 27, we just bury them at 72." - Mark Twain

A Startup motivation can be measured in 3 things:

Money: Need a big pay check? Middle stage & late stage startups have bigger payouts than early stage concept startups. However, the desire lasts for about 1-2 years.
Title: If you are looking for a solid title and experience, early stage startups are much generous. Get a nice acceleration boost to your career. Large companies love startup experience. If the startup has high growth curve, rewards could be huge.
Passion: Passion lasts longer than money or title. The internal desire to win at all cost. These people are very hard to find; however can help take your startup reach the promised land of glory. Passionate people make lots of money through their career, more than #1 and #2.

All startups are good.

"Be passionate, rest will follow."

Local food & farmers' market REST API

Bilal Ahmed — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 14:09:07 GMT

"and a new day will dawn; for those who stand long"- stairway to heaven

We are totally excited to announce @homecookme API! Search by food items, get details on a farmers' market or on a local business. This is our contribution to the local food and farmers' market developer community. From this data, we can build many applications.

The API is implemented using REST framework and the results are returned in JSON. Our customers can build mobile and web applications using our unique data which contains relationship between farmers' markets, vendors and the products they sell.

For example:

Search for food:

http://www.homecook.me/api/search?search=food

[{"class":"Users","id":1,"aboutMe":"Please contact us today at bilal@mytweetmark.com for any questions!","autoTweet":null,"backgroundUrl":"http://a1.twimg.com/profile_background_images/298837507/homecookme-mobile-app.jpg","blog":"http://www.homecook.me","businessAddress":"Concord, CA","businessName":"mytweetmark","businessPhone":"(925) 969-0494","color":"FFFFDF","countryId":1,"createTime":"2010-04-
...
...
...

Returns local business that contain the term food in their profile fields.

For example,

users[0].userName = Returns beckmannsbakery

class Users implements Serializable {
static searchable = true
Long id
String userName
String password
String email
Integer status
Integer marketingId
Integer countryId
Date createTime
Date updateTime
String ipAddress
Integer numCategories
String firstName
String lastName
Date lastLogin
Integer loginTimes
String profilePhoto
Integer tweet
String token
String tokenSecret
String facebookUid
Integer permission
Integer autoTweet
String website
String blog
String color
String aboutMe
Integer followersCount
Integer friendsCount
String businessName
String businessAddress
String businessPhone
String facebookProfile
String backgroundUrl

byte[] oauthObj
}

Search for local business by name:

http://www.homecook.me/api/biz?biz=beckmannsbakery

{"class":"Users","id":95,"aboutMe":"We sell breads, pastries and pies in your local California farmers markets.  Please come find us today in over 40 locations  ","autoTweet":null,"backgroundUrl":"http://a2.twimg.com/profile_background_images/274493898/BeckNewTwitterLower_nologoPSD.jpg","blog":null,"businessAddress":"104 Bronson St #6","businessName":"beckmann's bakery","businessPhone":"831-423-9242","color":"FFEFEF","countryId":1,"createTime":"2010-07-21T23:17:48Z","email":"tstumbaugh@beckmannsbakery.com","facebookProfile":null,"facebookUid":null,"firstName":"Peter","followersCount":270,"friendsCount":225,"ipAddress":null,"lastLogin":"2010-07-
...
...
...

Returns local business and all the farmers' markets they belong. Also the products they sell.

For example,

users[0].farmerMarket.title = Returns title of the market.

users[0].product.name = Returns name of the product.

class FarmerMarket {
Integer id
String title
Integer status
Date createTime
String marketPhoto
String address
String city
String state
String description
String timings
String marketAdmin
String googleMap
String facebookLike
}

class Product {
static searchable = true
Long id
Long userId
Integer status
Date createTime
String name
String price
String quantity
Date updateTime
}

Search for local farmers' market by id:

http://www.homecook.me/api/market?marketId=22

{"class":"FarmerMarket","id":22,"address":"1700 W. Hillsdale Blvd. ","city":"San Mateo","createTime":"2010-07-22T18:47:49Z","description":"This farmers market is operated by pacific coast farmers market association www.pcfma.com/market_home.php?market_id=15","facebookLike":"<iframe src=\"http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FSanLeandroFarmersMarket%3Fref%3Dsearch%23%21%2Fpages%2FDowntown-San-Mateo-Farmers-Market%2F128414687202114%3Fref%3Dts&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=recommend&amp;colorscheme=dark&amp;height=80\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:80px;\" allowTransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe>","googleMap":"http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?
...
...
...

Returns all the businesses that sell within the market.

See Users class above for results.

Search for local farmers' markets:

http://www.homecook.me/api/markets?searchMarket=San

Search for local farmers' markets product (item):

http://www.homecook.me/api/product?productId=10

Search for local farmers' markets products by userId:

http://www.homecook.me/api/userProduct?userId=96

Search for local farmers' markets by userId:

http://www.homecook.me/api/userMarket?userId=96

We will continue to add more features to our API. Please feel free to ask any questions, bilal@mytweetmark.com.

Happy coding!

Psyche of a tweet vs auto tweet

Bilal Ahmed — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:13:05 GMT

Tweet vs Status:

The benefits of a tweet are many compared to a Facebook status:

A tweet is small and rich in characters due to the limitation, i.e. 140 characters.
It's textual, great for search and keywords.
It's radius for viewers is much larger due to # tags, i.e. conferences.
Great for marketing message.
Great for distributing links with short descriptions.

More benefits on Twitter website.

Tweet vs Auto Tweet:

The benefits of an auto tweet are many compared to a normal tweet:

Automatic, hence physical person doesn't need to be involved.
Great for repeat marketing message.
Great for distributing links with short descriptions, continuously.
The tweet stays recent, hence high score on Google search results.
Gain continuous stream of followers and views.

Technology is changing very fast. Recently at SXSW 2011, Tim Draper of DFJ mentioned Mohr's law in affect where in 5 years we will evolve 50 years growth. Lots to learn in Social media management systems (SMMS) space, however auto tweets is a great advancement from simple tweets. If you can educate your audience for it. Sometimes people don't like automatic, but that's their ignorance and preferential rather any real reason. Opinions are many, we have lots of analytic data to show results and many customers recommendations and thank you letters for rewards for using auto tweets from local food and farmers' markets all over Northern California.

The diagram below illustrates a communication threshold graph. Most awareness happens at the beginning when the content is published. However not everyone is available to view the content, especially on Twitter. The interest goes for a while and then new content is posted. The repeat of the content posting still shows audience interest, people that didn't see the post first time through.

Below you will see mytweetmark blog analytics chart. You will see the huge amount of page view increase, using auto tweets, data distribution and followers increase on twitter.

Please try our product today! If you have any questions, please feel free to email us.

@homecookme mobile: Search #farmersmarket and local businesses

Bilal Ahmed — Mon, 23 May 2011 15:45:09 GMT

The key differentiator for @homecookme with any other food startup is that we keep great relationships with local businesses and farmers' market associations. Announcing @homecookme mobile where we are going to help local businesses with not just auto tweets that gains them followers and Google SEO, but also give consumers & customers easy access to find local businesses and farmers' markets through iphone and android mobile phones!

@homecookme mobile key features:

Search for local businesses, products and farmers' markets.
For each farmers' market, shows list of local businesses that sell in it.
For each farmers' market, shows Google map.
For each local business, shows list of farmers' markets they sell in.
For each local business, shows list of products and icons.
Contact the local food business right from your phone!

Coming soon!

@homecookme: #Socialmedia for #local businesses and #farmersmarket

Bilal Ahmed — Sat, 14 May 2011 16:30:00 GMT

Hello:

We are helping local businesses with B2B and B2C in over 150 farmers' markets in Northern California. For local businesses, you will see profile page, products, farmers' markets, google maps and twitter followers. Our marketing is measurable through the increase of followers on twitter and page views, at a monthly subscription.

http://www.homecook.me

We started working on @homecookme last year summer (2010). 30% of our customers are first time internet business users. We signed up local businesses by talking to them personally because none of these people can be found on the internet. Around 30%-50% of the local businesses check their emails on a regular basis. We collected every business information through surveys, i.e. where they sell their products and which farmers' markets they visit. Most of them told us that the local farmers' markets associations don't do enough for them. They wanted marketing. We build out @homecookme with live customer feedback and signed up almost 50% of the active selling businesses in Northern California. The rest of the businesses that didn't sign up get our regular newsletter emails. Please view our latest newsletter below:

http://eepurl.com/dLq1M

Please contact us today if your business needs marketing. We have expertise in social media marketing for small businesses, local food and farmers' markets. We would love to work with you.

Thank you.
Bilal Ahmed
CEO/Founder
bilal@mytweetmark.com

Social Business Tweet Algorithms

Bilal Ahmed — Mon, 09 May 2011 16:28:00 GMT

Twitter is great for business because it allows us access to search terms, i.e. #<search-term> which allows us to tap into other communities, or other groups of people. With @mytweetmark, we carefully find important search terms on twitter that can be beneficial for our business customers growth and influence. When using search terms with auto tweets, our customers enjoy constant flow of new followers, get added to twitter lists and also their profiles appear on top Google search results pages. Google indexes tweets first due to real-time nature of tweets. Below we will describe a few algorithms written for local food customers.

There are many auto tweets algorithms written for @homecookme using batch jobs. In simple words, batch programs are behind the scene short lived processes that come alive to do a simple task; In our case, generate an auto tweet and go back to sleep for a period of time.

Food Business Product job:

Every 30 minutes, the process starts up, pick a local business randomly and generate a tweet for their product.

Syntax:

Our #food #<search-term> Visit <user-link> Also at: <farmers-market-address>

Food Business Marketing job:

Every 4 hours, the process starts up, pick a local business randomly and generate a tweet for their farmers' market.

Syntax:

Visit #food #<search-term> <user-link> in <farmers-market-name>

Food Business Location job:

Every 30 minutes, the process starts up, pick a local business randomly and generate a tweet for their location.

Syntax:

Our #<search-term> #food product, #<product-name>: Find at <user-link>

Farmers' market job:

Every 1 hour, the process starts up, find a local farmers' market and generate 2 tweets for their location and customers.

Syntax:

#farmersmarket <farmers-market-name> cc #food #<search-term> @business-1 @business-2 ...

#farmersmarket #realfood #localfood <farmers-market-name> <farmers-market-link>

@mytweetmark job:

mytweetmark has additional auto tweets per customer that can be managed on the console and analyze metrics to measure the page views per auto tweet.

@homecookme uses the following search terms:

"celebrity", "business", "blogger", "marketing", "media", "writer", "entrepreneur", "technology", "artist", "socialmedia", "localfood", "farmersmarket", "smallfarm", "agchat", "realfood", "buylocal", "organic", "natural", "local", "farmersmarkets"

NOTE: Popular #<search-term> can be obtained from wefollow.com

Startup metrics: Viral factors, Retention cohorts and Engagement metrics

Bilal Ahmed — Mon, 02 May 2011 13:43:00 GMT

In this blog I will cover how to calculate 3 main essentials for Startup metrics:

Viral Factors: A simple example is importing address book. If I import address book of 100 users and send out invites for 10000 users, the child registration conversation has to be over 100%, e.g. viral factor of 1.00 for a startup to be in a growth mode.

Build a dashboard.
Build summary tables.
Measure # of users.
# invites send out.
# open.
# clicked.
# converted.
# of child registrations.
# calculate viral factor: total child registered/total parent registered.
Google chart intervals of viral factors, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 15 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.

Retention Cohorts:

Measure how many times your users are coming back to the site.

Build a dashboard.
Build summary tables.
Measure # of users (newly registered).
# of user logins.
# calculate retention co-efficient (cohort): amount of logged in times/total users registered
Google chart intervals of retention cohort, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 15 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.

Engagement Metrics:

Measure by product/feature, how many uploads, viewed, etc. metrics on how the adoption is increasing or decreasing.

Build a dashboard.
Build summary tables.
Measure # of users (newly registered).
# of uploads, # of views, # of comments, etc. aggregate.
# calculate engagement co-efficient (cohort): amount of users engaged in content/total registered.
Google chart intervals of retention cohort, 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 15 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days.

Lessons learned:

Don't over complicate the problem: Hadoop is a solution; Metrics is about finding the problem. Learn how to read metrics and make decisions that impact the metrics directly.
Build vs. Buy: Build in-house analytics solutions. It takes only a couple of days to build internal metrics. Building metrics helps understanding of analytics and making educated decisions.
Analytics companies: Google analytics, Kissmetrics, Kontagent, Mixpanel, etc.
Extra points: Add country, email domain, age, gender, locale, etc. to viral factors, retention cohorts and engagement metrics to really understand your user demographic.
Syslogs can be essential data to determine additional engagement metrics.

Enjoy implementing your startup metrics!

Startup life: Direction, Execution and a pack of cigarettes

Bilal Ahmed — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:28:00 GMT

Startup life is tough: You need a thorough commitment and focus. Recently I was watching NBA basketball and Jeff Van Gundy mentions inspiration of Kobe Bryant: Motivation, Skill and Will. My variation is a little different; Direction, Execution and a Pack of Cigarettes:

Direction:

Start with an idea
Pivot or change according to business requirement
Generate revenue
Profitability is achieved when business is paying for itself
Exit or merge into bigger offering
IPO

Execution:

Do it yourself because technology is easier to implement
Find folks with synergy to work with
Find amazing advisors and investors
Facebook engineer right out of college makes $120k/year in bay area, California. Architects $180k/year
Lots of attitude to hire any technical talent and the positions are in high demand
Contractors make $150/hour and more

Pack of Cigarettes:

Not literally
Skilled folks like to be comfortable
Move in herds
Do what makes you happy
Skilled people have lots of choices

Enjoy your pack of smokes!

Startup Pivot: Leaner than LeanStartup

Bilal Ahmed — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:44:00 GMT

In the past 14 months, @mytweetmark has launched 6 websites. Fail fast, pivot and try again. Some of them died, some of them are doing great but more coming! Here is the @mytweetmark lifestream:

January 2010: @mytweetmark launched - Saw need for blogging and metrics, cheaper advertising option to Google and Facebook utilizing open Twitter API.
January 2010 - March 2010: Cloned @mytweetmark to 5 sites,

@mytweetmark - Auto tweets
@drspiritcom - Spiritual thought sharing site
@mytweetsports - Sports score sharing site
@viralfactors - Viral analytics
@homecookme - Recipe sharing

March - April 2010: SXSW affect, killed @drspiritcom, @mytweetsports and @viralfactors! Chirp affect, chip monks coding away at chirp. Many implementing similar ideas to @mytweetmark..
June - March 2011: First mover advantage in signing up all the local businesses for over 150 farmers' markets in Northern California and Austin. Not signed are still on email campaigns, receiving offers.
March 2011: SXSW affect, launching @winehomeme for wine sharing and iphone mobile applications!

Some of the lessons learned:

Speed is everything.
Execute fast and learn on the metrics.
Make decisions.
Implementing new technology is much easier and faster.
Follow LeanStartup
@twitter is amazing marketing platform.
Never be ashamed of fail.
Quit whining, continue doing.
Action speaks larger than words.
Meet as many angels and VCs you can.
Pivot on feedback.
Time to market is everything.
Understand competition.
If your execution sucks and late, the market will be taken.
If your execution is early, determine whether the opportunity is worth the wait?
Only the first one gets the dinosaurs, i.e. the hockey stick chart or biggest piece of the pie, market share.
Startup is not about weekends, or weak ends (VC terminology). It feels like a weekend every day!

Startup Mentors and Advisors

Bilal Ahmed — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 15:44:00 GMT

Startup life is hard. The road is long and there are many road blocks. Mentors and advisors are important aspect of the journey. Below I will outline keys to finding successful mentor-ship:

Available: Startup progress is a game of timing and momentum. How available an advisor is makes a huge difference whether they are able to help you at critical junctures.
Synergy: Do you drink beer with your advisor? Not literally, but are you on the same page? Do you look straight in to eyes of your advisor?
Previous experience: What is the qualification of the advisor? Do they have resume credentials to help you unblock the road.
Domain expertise: How much do they know in the area of your business. Can they help you on technical side or the business side?
Outdated Skills: At a recent visit with Tim Draper, the founder of DFJ, he pointed out Mohr's law where in 5 years, we will make a leap in technology and business of what we achieved in 50 years in the past. Is the advisor still part of new wave of startups or their skills outdated? Early stage startups require a completely different skill than late stage startups.
Motivation: What's the motivation behind the advisor helping you? Is it corporate titles, money or passion. Passion lasts longer than everything else.
Introductions: How eager are they to make introductions to people that can unblock the road and help you grow your business?
Big picture: Do they see the big picture and your business growth or are they just hanging for the ride?

So there you have it. Choose your advisors and mentors properly and put them on your weakness. If all the above are answered correctly, you will enjoy the ride and I am sure they will be part of your success as well.

Happy advisor and mentor hunting!

Early Stage Startup Marketing Strategy

Bilal Ahmed — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 16:35:00 GMT

Startup marketing strategies need to be crisp, with lots of options. Here we will discuss how to implement various marketing techniques for early stage growth of your startup.

Distribution: If you have a subscription model or monetizing your audience where every conversion will result in a sale, then advertising is a viable option. If your product is not ready and you are advertising, you have a short window to start converting into sales otherwise it will kill your monthly burn rate. Once you start advertising, your audience will expect the site traffic to always be on that level and up.
Social networks: Leverage affective usage of Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc. Affective social networks marketing reduces your cost of advertising.
Search: All data produced from your website needs to affectively be searchable by Google and show up high ranked and on first page of result.
Data: Capture all the data. Collect all the information you can about your users. Overtime, the data will make more sense and growth patterns can be obtained. Data helps you build more product features over time that are viable to users.
Email campaigns: More now than ever, email campaigns are huge! Email campaigns help you define your audience. Tools like mailchimp, constant contact, etc. will help you determine what users are interested to hear about your service, or not. Regular emails create a sense of community, a niche. Measure conversions, clicks, open rates will give you a great ideas of the value of your service. Are people actually excited to know about your business?
Other sites: Partner sites are key. We are moving into an arena from portal websites to niche websites. It's important to create a cluster of companies that help you build a bigger offering. Each company specializes in key areas.
Word of mouth: Word of mouth and gorilla marketing is back in action. Companies like yelp started with local buzz in local niche markets and by word of mouth and social connection, expanded to huge businesses. Connect with your customers and add them to your email campaigns mailing list to promote constant word of mouth marketing.
Measure: Measure is the buzz word for 2010. Unfortunately, most people know how to measure but don't know how to act. Once you get your analytics report, identify patterns. Is your offering too large to know about your customers? Viral factors, retention cohorts and engagement metrics. Figure it out.

So there you have it. Enjoy and happy marketing for your early stage startup!

Startup Pivot (Infinite loop)

Bilal Ahmed — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:56:00 GMT

Unfortunately, 'startup pivot' is one of the most mis-used terms today. It's like when folks started defining 'software engineering' back in 1990s. Pivot means change. If you are pivoting for a business model, you are pivoting to find a model that can scale and grow. Companies nowadays are being built around niches. Not portals. Once you find the model for your niche that can grow and scale, you are done.

Should my employees be pivoting? It depends. Are you pivoting for design? What are you pivoting for? It's important to have clear distinction for pivot and evaluate the results. Metrics are important to install so as you are pivoting, you are constantly evaluating your data and really understand the data, not build it (engineering problem) or look at it (project management problem). Everyone in the team should understand the process of data evaluation correctly. Don't shoot shit in the dark forever. Infinite loop.

Times are changing. A new decade has begun. It's the decade of multi-skill talent people. For example, you have to know design, but also be able to develop it. If you are an engineer building metrics, you are also responsible for understanding it and figuring out how it impacts your business. Don't just shoot shit in the dark, measure the results and then make smart decisions. Understand that pivot is a great thing. It will help you resolve your problems and remove obstacles. Persistence is good and also timely execution of tests.

Happy pivoting! Happy hunting!