Sunday, March 28, 2010

The last four posts...

I just moved my blog to blogger.com and so the last four posts have the same date stamp! Thanks!

Uma

Internet Attention

With more than 200 million websites on the Internet, the biggest challenge for online businesses is simply to attract attention and even more so, retain it. The term for internet attention is stickiness - it is a combined measure of the time a visitor spends on a site + number of visits per person in a give time + number of pages viewed per person. While stickiness is a measure of attention on the Internet, just being sticky doesn't necessarily guarantee success.

It’s not just the number of eyeballs but, who they belong to and how to persuade the owner of those eyeballs to 'buy' into your company/product/service. Page impressions are certainly passé. An array of mind-boggling data that is produced under a seemingly scholastic title of 'web analytics' has rendered them so. Web analytics is forcing businesses to measure success beyond the stickiness factor. The new emphasis is to engage eyeballs and persuade them to bring about a behavioral change.

While the bean counters are mulling at the quarterly profit and loss , its worthwhile for every business using their online presence as a revenue generator, to invest time and resources in Web Analytics.

Best,
Uma

The DNA of an Entrepreneuer

There's plenty of information circulating the web about the genetic charactersistics of an Entrepreneur. Are they Born so? or are they Made? No matter how a person arrives at Entreprenuership, we have several real life examples to emulate and identify the common threads. Of all these common characterictics , the one that is least higlighted is an Entrepreneur's ability to build a network of Business Evangelists inside and outside the Company/Business.

Business Evangelists (nothing to do with the religion), but people who would market the Company, its Product and Services in a way that can have a greater impact on an individual than tradional advertising and marketing. The collective Goodwill of these Evangelists is simply abysmal. They serve as Agents working 24*7 days taking a fledging company to its next level of growth or a growing company to a stage of exponential growth. Often a chunk of these Evangelists are the company's Product/Service users who would help to 'sell' more.

However, the lesser known Evangelists are those who bet on the Entrepreneur based on their individual interactions. and no, these Evangelists dont carry a Business card or wear Badges but they are simply people from different walks of life who have seen the Entrepreneur when the Spotlight was not on him.

cheers
Uma

Summer 2009

Faced with the dilema of having to choose either the mountains or the beach as the backdrop for a summer vacation, we decided to have it all. Yes, we decided to move the mountains, swim the seas and be in the country side all in one holiday. In short we went on a Roadtrip. We drove from Cologne to Paris to Cote d' Azur. It was a lot of driving ofcourse, (about 3000 Km overall) but we loved this trip for the flexibility and variety of sights we saw. We followed our own schedules, stopped anytime to devour a sight and the best of all, made detours!

In fact. it was the sum of all these detours that made a great trip! If we had stuck to the route (highway) as deemed by our navigation system, we would have simply arrived on time. We would have reached our destination minus the fun and the excitement that comes with the unexpected.... the fun which comes with spontaneity.

We rented a car to avoid the wear and tear of our own vehicle and also for better mileage. It seemed a wise thing to do in these ecenomic times.

To test our memory and retention factor on the sightseeing we did, we are now playing "where in France did we spot this?" game, with the pictures we took !

Would I recommend such holidaying for a family? Well, only if you want to challenge yourself with a different way of holidaying. If Roadtrips are your way of 'taking-a-break', then hats off to you!!!

cheers!

The relaunch....the Re-entry

The re-launch… the re-entry…
Re-launching myself as a professional after years of being Kids-bound wasn’t as simple as I believed it to be. For one, the global economic outlook has made it worse for aspirants like me to re-enter the workforce. While those who were in various rungs of the corporate ladder have been dislodged from it by the global crisis, how could those who took a sabbatical, expect to set foot in it again – that too at this point in time?

The decision to run my own race not only stemmed from Market conditions but also from the fact that I believe, that I have no other contenders in my race. Yes, I am, like you are, the One and Only. There is no other person who’s life is exactly matched to mine, just like there is no one exactly like You! So why put ourselves in a ‘race’ that makes us an ‘also ran’, just by being in it?

I wanted to go solo…barefoot…sleeves rolled up, bursting energy, eager to learn and more importantly not afraid to fall. Striving to make a difference for the better, I wish to run… not a race but a journey, where success would be a metric measured by me.

For my maiden Blog (as a repackaged professional), I juggled between different ideas that would give the reader an insight of the writer. I thought of ‘Random facts about myself’ which is so in vogue in the Social Media. But decided against it for fear of sounding too ‘wannabe’. Then I thought ‘Trends 2009’ would be a good subject to blog as a pro and that it would instantly put me in the league of professionals with original thoughts, ideas and thereby greater audience. Just as I spotted some trends, I realized, writing about trends when more than half of the calendar year was ‘Past’ wasn’t so trendy after all.

It takes a while to find one’s space. I found mine in-between trend spotting and pondering facts about myself – Attitude. Sometimes that's all it takes to sail through stormy seas.

Cheers
Uma