Tag Archives: social media

IPMA Event Report: Market Research Using Social Media

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(This is a live blog of the presentation on Market Research using Social Media, by Pinkesh Shah, for the Indian Product Managers Association (IPMA) Pune event. Since it is a live blog, it might have errors, and won’t be as well organized as an article ought to be. Please keep that in mind while reading.)

Background – Why is Market Research Important

Product Management is really about Value management. There are five parts to it:

  • Understanding Value: Understand what the customer wants / care about
  • Creating Value: Build the Product
  • Capturing Value: Making sure that your product is appropriately priced. It is not necessary that you charge for the product immediately, or at all. You might make money somewhere else.
  • Communicating Value: Position your value proposition appropriately
  • Delivering Value: Making sure your product / value reaches the right person. Having the correct Channels.
Pinkesh Shah talking at IPMA Pune

For your next product or product feature, you will have lots of idea. But knowing what will really be the right thing to focus on is difficult. For a successful product or feature, the following pipeline is important:

  • Market Analysis: Choosing what to build
  • Strategic Analysis: Building the product profitably
  • Building the Product: In India we are very good at this step
  • Go to Market: Marketing it Right
  • Sales Enablement: Selling Effectively

The rest of this talk will focus on mostly on Market Analysis.

What does a PM do? It’s more than just requirement analysis:

  • Champions the customer’s context within the organization
  • Define the roadmap for a product, and deliver products that customers will actually buy
  • Master orchestrator of the productization process

Market Research – An Art and a Science

Ways to do market research:

  • Surveys: very few people do surveys. And it is easy to do. The only thing difficult is to come up with good survey questions. But otherwise this is one of the best and scalable techniques for market research.
  • Talking to your sales guys
  • Reading research reports from people like Gartner
  • Ethnography: watching your customers in their natural setting. In Big Bazaar there are always people standing in a corner of the store and observing customers. They spend 8 hours watching the patterns.
  • User research: Bring users in and make them go through use cases
  • Win Loss Interviews
  • Product Advisory Council: Announce a product, as if it is already done. Put out a Google ad about this product that does not exist. Target it for the geography and demographics that you’re interested. And then check who and how many people are clicking on it. Gives you a good idea of whether it is really working or not. Very easy and cheap way of figuring out whether your product is going to work. And you can do it sitting at home in India for any product targeting anywhere in the world

Why is social media is a great tool for market research?

  • Getting real users in a the real world is a lot of effort. Easier to get users online: LinkedIn, Facebook, Blogger, Quora, Twitter, etc.
  • Viral propagation. Truly borderless. And impossible to do without social media even if you have lots of money
  • Asychronous. You and the users don’t have to be in the same place at the same time. Makes it much easier.
  • Figure out who are the influencers

LinkedIn

Great resource. All people in professional settings are on LinkedIn. Hence, for product management, especially enterprise products, this is a great resource.

Very easy to create surveys / polls on LinkedIn and ask questions about your potential future product / features, and get responses from people all over the world. With demographic information from LinkedIn.

You can not only get quantitative results, but also qualitative results and opinions.

In addition, you get to go back and give updates to all those who participated about what happened, what features were included, etc.

Audience Question: What about competition finding out about your product ideas / features?

Answer: This is a problem with all market research. But in most cases, the idea is not the most important part of the product, so it’s OK. If indeed your idea is the secret sauce, then don’t include it in your market research, but in most cases it is no.

Uservoice

If you are a product manager, you must use Uservoice.

Similarly there is CustomerVoice, an Indian Startup similar to Uservoice, but for India.

Facebook likes are not a good substitute for Uservoice. You need really granular feedback, which a “like” does not give.

Landing Pages

A landing page can be created within 5 minutes of creating an idea. Just put up your idea, ask people to register for the beta. At this point, you don’t have a beta, but you can decide whether to create one or not based on the amount of interest you generate.

Online Ads for Validation

Think of a product. Assume that the product already exists, and create an ad for the product. Put the ad out. Target a few important cities and sectors (e.g. Bangalore, Delhi, Pune, Chennai). See how many people click on the ad, and from which city and sector. That will give you an idea of how much interest is there for your product, and which geographies and sectors your product should target.

Do not start building a product unless you have done this.

Google Ads are good for validating a concept, but not very good for getting an idea of the people who clicked on the ad. LinkedIn ads cost more, but provide much more details about the click-throughs.

Analytics

Make sure you have Google Analytics installed on all your websites. It is free and gives you lots of data on who’s coming and what they’re doing.

In addition there are paid services (often fairly inexpensive) that do even better.

For example, there is an Indian startup called Wingify that allows you to do A/B testing on your website. If you don’t know what A/B testing is, find out now.

Other interesting websites/products

  • Ask Your Target Market: http://aytm.com – ask questions to specific target groups (mostly US)
  • Sprout Social: http://sproutsocial.com – get social media conversations about various keywords
  • CDC Pivotal CRM – get twitter and other social media conversations of each customer

Parting Thought

Samuel Colt, who invented the revolver, said that his invention was one of the most important things ever. Because, he said, “God made men. I’ve enabled them to be equal.” The person without strength, money, knowledge, can still win if s/he has a revolver.

Social Media is the revolver for product management. Anyone can do it now.

Don’t let this weekend end without sending out a survey.

IPMA Event: Leveraging Social Media for Market Research – 3 Dec

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The next meetup of the Indian Product Managers Association (IPMA), Pune, will feature a talk on Leveraging Social Media as a Market Research Tool (as opposed to outbound marketing), by Pinkesh Shah, Founder and CEO at Adaptive Marketing. The event is on Saturday, 3rd December.

About the Speaker – Pinkesh Shah

Pinkesh Shah, is a Silicon Valley Executive who has been a Product Management Practitioner for the last 14 years in US. Most recently he was the global Vice President of Product Management at McAfee (now acquired by Intel). Having played a key role in understanding how global products have to be adapted to work in emerging markets, he also started the product management organization in McAfee India.

Before McAfee he had several senior management roles in product companies like IBM, netIQ and have launched new products in the high technology space in startups like Netrex and Captivo.

Shah is a gold medalist from M.S.University where he earned his Bachelors in Engineering in Computer Science and a UPE research scholar at Purdue University where he earned his Masters in Computer Science.

Shah started Adaptive marketing with a vision to create the next generation product managers and marketers in India to enable technology product and services companies to market their product globally. He is part of the Angel network which invests in early stage technology companies.

About IPMA

India Product Management Association (IPMA) is a not-for-profit, voluntary, grassroots organization. IPMA Mission is to Foster Product Design and Innovation and Catalyze Product Management/Marketing Talent in India across software, mobile, hardware, telecommunications sectors in the IT industry. IPMA organizes knowledge sharing and networking forums such as Monthly Speaker Series, Workshops, P-Camps etc for professionals interested in product management and marketing. IPMA operate chapters in major product hubs across India and for more information about upcoming events, visit indiapma.org

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Register here

TechWeekend Pune: Facebook’s Open Graph API – 1st Oct

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There’s a TechWeekend this Saturday (1st Oct, 4pm-7pm, SICSR) to discuss the latest and hottest technology: Facebook’s newly announced OpenGraph API. Join a discussion to see how the recent launch by Facebook can change the way we think about Social Apps and Businesses. Read More: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/beta/

Speakers:

  • Rohan Dighe – Design Experiences and Not Apps using OpenGraph
  • Aman Jain – My Experiences with OpenGraph

About Techweekend

TechWeekend Pune is a volunteer run activity. Each TechWeekend event features a few talks on advanced technical topics. These events are free for all to attend. See PuneTech articles about past techweekends to get an idea of the events.

Join the techweekend mailing list to keep in touch with the latest TechWeekend activities.

Fees and Registration

The event is on the 7th floor, SICSR, (Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, near Om Market, Model Colony) on 1st October, Saturday, from 4pm to 7pm.

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here

Interview with Mahendra Palsule – Editor at TechMeme

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(Mahendra Palsule is one of Pune’s most well-known people in the technology news / social web space in the world today due to his role as Editor at TechMeme, which is one of the most influential technology news websites. BlogAdda has a great interview of Mahendra where they cover his blogging, his work, personal life and other things. We have excerpted here, with permission, portions of that interview that are related to his work, for the benefit of PuneTech readers.)

Q: 19 years in IT industry and counting. You have been a witness to the fall and the rise of the industry. What have been your prominent observations in this period? Based on these observations and your experience, what changes do you predict in the next 10 years?

A: In the early days of my career, the entire IT industry in India was purely services-based. I always lamented the lack of product-based companies in India. Seeing the proliferation and rise of many Indian product-based companies and startups, is the most fulfilling observation in all these years.

Predictions for the future are always a dangerous game with many unknowns, but here are some I’d dare to make:

The Indian startup ecosystem will mature significantly in the coming years, making life a bit easier for entrepreneurs who undergo a difficult struggle today.
Indian IT outsourcing companies will face significant challenges and opportunities in several areas – getting qualified labor in India, diversifying geographically outside India, capitalizing on the growth of SaaS, etc.
In terms of overall online space, we are already witnessing a shift to a personalized experience. This will only get bolstered further in the coming years, with relevance filtering, giving you an optimal experience in everything you do online.
User behavior online will increasingly tend to share more publicly, leading to continued discussions and concerns about privacy.
User behavior online will increasingly tend to share more publicly, leading to continued discussions and concerns about privacy.
Q: Being a first ranker in college for all the years, is a fulfilling achievement. Can you share some very special moments from your college days that still bring a smile on your face when you think of it?

A: I was once asked by our Electronics professor to take a guest lecture on Multivibrators, in the middle of the year. When I started the lecture, I realized that my class wasn’t following me, because they had not understood what had been taught in the earlier months. So I reverted back, asked them if they knew how a transistor worked. By this time, our class got bold enough to be frank and replied in the negative.

So, I eventually ended up starting with basics of how diodes worked, followed by transistors, and then covering multivibrators over a span of 3 lectures. After I was done, my fellow-students suggested that we get rid of our Electronics professor and just use me instead.

Q: ‘Mahendra embodies the ideal Program Manager I would like to be working with’ & ‘He is one of the best Project Manager I’ve worked with’ is what some of your ex-colleagues say about you. You are now an editor at Techmeme. How and Why did this shift happen? Was it because of your keenness to explore new frontiers and realization that communicating well is your forte or was it something else? How did your friends and family react to this move?

A: The Project/Program Manager role in large Indian IT companies is a stressful balancing act dealing with challenges on three fronts – your bosses, your client, and your team. After 18 years of working in this role on several US & European projects, I realized I wanted a change.

I have always been an avid researcher, with a huge appetite for scanning a multitude of information sources and filtering the best from them. My present job goes hand-in-glove with this innate skill, and makes me think I was born to do this kind of work.

I have a hard time explaining what I do to my friends and family. Initially, they were skeptical, but over time, they’ve slowly realized the fulfilling nature of my work and accepted it. The fact that I work from home is an added benefit.

Q: Your current role at Techmeme is ‘Editor working as a human filter for automated algorithm’. Do you think an automated algorithm, no matter how intelligent it could develop into, can replace the intelligence and editor skills of a human? Also, is it better to ‘crowdsource’ and let users decide the relevancy and usefulness of a story, rather than an editor or team of editors doing it?

For a news aggregator, automated algorithms have limitations that can’t be overcomed.
A: For a news aggregator, automated algorithms have limitations that can’t be overcomed. Gabe Rivera, founder of Techmeme said it in 2008 when Techmeme hired its first editor.

Whether one decides to crowdsource or use an internal editorial team depends on one’s target audience – both models have been used online to varying degrees of success.

Q: ‘Relevance is the only solution to the problem of information overload’, according to you. Relevance is subjective. Do you feel the relevance could be influenced with popularity and things that might not have been relevant to someone would appear like one, just because it was shared by his/her friends or popular personalities? This seems like a constant challenge and it’ll be great to hear your views on how do you think this issue can be addressed and your suggestions for an individual to handle the information overload he faces everyday. You can even suggest tools if you like.

You will find both popularity-based and personalization-based relevance models to continue to coexist in the future.
A: Yes. As I described in the article, relevance is very dynamic and difficult to pin down. There are times when what is most popular is most relevant, and there are other times when a personalized approach is more relevant. This is why you will find both popularity-based and personalization-based relevance models to continue to coexist in the future.

My tips for handling information overload are listed on Quora:

Q: In one of your recent post, you opine that Facebook and Quora should be worried about Google+ but have not mentioned about Twitter, where asking questions, sharing links and speed seems to be the key. According to you, will Twitter not get affected by this? What kind of innovations do you want to see happening on Twitter, to counter any threats from other networks?

Twitter’s 140 character limit will remain its USP against Facebook and Google+
A: Twitter’s 140 character limit will remain its USP against Facebook and Google+. This limit makes it more suitable for sharing links & hence its suitability as a news-discovery network. Twitter needs a better on boarding process for new users and a flourishing developer ecosystem – both of which are weak areas today.

_(Please read the full interview at BlogAdda for more. Also check out the recent PuneTech article about Google+ which features the views of Mahendra on why Quora and Twitter should be afraid of Google+.)

Top tech influencers of Pune (@dnene @ScepticGeek @trakin) give Google+ a Thumbs Up

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For the past few weeks, every techie in Pune has probably had Google+ on his/her mind. Many have tried it. Some have dismissed is as a Facebook wannabe that will never really catch on. Others think it is a little too complicated for the common man.

However, three of Pune’s top tech bloggers have weighed in with positive opinions about Google+

Arun Prabhudesai of trak.in was first to say that Google+ will be adopted by Businesses and Brands:

After Google’s half baked and feeble attempts at Social Networking earlier, Google Plus is a refreshingly fresh & honest attempt at making people’s lives Social.

and

The biggest factor that Google Plus takes care of – Individual Privacy. It probably has simplest of privacy policies and user can control everything as to what is supposed to be public and what is not. Yes, initially users do have to spend time in creating circles (aka groups of people), but once you are done with that, it becomes far more easier.

and

Google Plus adoption for Brands & Businesses might be slow initially, but over a period of time, it will surely catch on. It will be a place where Brands can put up their profiles, their “+ses” and it will be accessible to anyone and everyone without having to actually “follow” the brand.

After that, Mahendra Palsule, the Skeptic Geek, and Editor at TechMeme, wrote to say that Facebook and Quora should be worried. His main points are this:

  • The future belongs to the “Interest Graph” of users complementing the “Social Graph”. Facebook does a bad job of capturing users interests. Google+ is taking steps in the right direction with Sparks.
  • Quora should be worried because:
    > It was reported earlier […] that code for Questions has been found in Google Plus. If this comes as a surprise, you haven’t understood Google’s ambitions with Emerald Sea.

Finally, Dhananjay Nene was initially lukewarm about Google+ (“good, but people will not shift from facebook for this”, and “circles are too complicated for average users”) but after spending some time with Google+, he has decided that Google+ is the social network of the future:

[Google+] is really building public / private, asymmetric networking built using social graphs based on friendships, work relationships, online discoveries and probably soon enough interest graphs as well. It is building the network that will be. While google wants to own the experience, it is liberal enough to publicly commit that the data is owned by the user. Combined with the awesome google portfolio and its evergrowing warchest built out of search advertising revenues – This is the network to beat.

You really should read the full articles that I have linked above. In fact, you should follow these guys on twitter (@dnene, @ScepticGeek, and @trakin) and follow them religiously.