It all started with Dad wanting some company for the 10K marathon and checking if I will give him company. TCS marathon on 19^th May 2013 was the first marathon for me. The max I have ever run was about 7K on the road while in Chennai (morning jog to the beach). I used to give my dad company in Lalbagh park on Saturday/Sunday mornings for a jog but always end up doing two rounds less than him.

Three or four days before the run, I decided to check if I still have any hope of completing the 10K and managed to pull 8Kms in about a 1hr inside Lalbagh. So there was some hope as I knew I can walk the remaining 2kms in 20minutes 😉

TCS 10K – 19^th May 2013

My dad had participated in this last year and was eligible to start as part of Group B (those who have a timing of >55min and <1hr 20min). Unfortunately for some reason he did not get Group B which he was eligible for. Anyway, my dad didn’t mind as I was there for company 🙂 and gave me enough tips based on his last years’ experience. First tip being, TCS marathon never starts on time. This was true!  I did follow most of the tips religiously and got a net time of 1hr 3min 19sec. (Bib #8177)

Dad n Son – Post TCS 10k

Thanks to my favorite application Sports-Tracker. It kept reminding me that I have a long way to go before stopping. End of the race I did feel the after-effects of not having practiced enough, not having stretched enough and not having had a proper diet before the run. To top it all, a duplicate Reebok shoe from a Reebok showroom (closed down now) that had no cushions to absorb the strain on my legs while running on the road.

Bangalore Ultra 12.5K – 10^th November 2013

This time dad was in my native place so did not have his company L However, he managed to do the Pondicherry 10K and the Kaveri 10K marathon post the TCS 10K.

Bangalore Ultra 12.5K Results

Having never touched 10K after the TCS marathon and not having practiced at all during the three weeks before the run date, I knew this was difficult. The track was an excellent bamboo trail off Henur road. The route can be seen here. Soft ground (Muddy road) with ups and downs so no strain on legs. But getting to this place was a nightmare as I live in South Bangalore. It took me almost 1.5hrs to reach this place despite having started at 4:15am. My wifey decided to wake up at 4am and give me company 🙂 Sweet wifey! It was extremely cold on that day with mist all over the place as there were no high rises. Just farms! 

Bib number 1164, completing the 12.5kms in 1hr 21min 22sec. Weather did play a very vital role and thanks to the great treadmills in my apartment from Sportrack for not showing exact distance you cover.

SBI Midnight Marathon – 14^th December 2013

I first learned about midnight marathons while I was in New York waiting to see the useless Times Square ball drop. So this event was a little tempting. My colleague Sunil also registered so I had some company this time. Bib number 6567 clocked 1hr 00min 44sec. What a way to finish the year 🙂

Bangalore Midnight Marathon Results

You can read about my review of Midnight marathon here

Some say interest for marathon starts with just completing the marathon… Then it is about beating your earlier time. Very true! My next target is under an hour. Still not confident about doing a half marathon but will keep it in my To-Do checklist!

TCS 10K – 18^th May 2014

Got into Race category C with bib number 3827 and my dad was in category D. Few seconds delayed start for my dad but he did complete well before me with an excellent timing of 1hr 1min 15sec while I clocked my worst ever net finish time of 1hr 4min 48sec. Blame it on lack of practice and the Sports-Tracker app which just wouldn’t work.

Dad n Son – TCS 10k 2014

I was used to seeing the timing so I know when to take a break to catch my breathe and it failed me. The app worked for a few min and got stuck. So started off too fast and ended up losing all my energy way too fast.

SBI Midnight Marathon – 20^th December 2014

This one is my second attempt at midnight marathon. Unlike the previous year, this year the course was certified by AIMS-IAAF. The organizers also took the feedback comments from runners last year and had sufficient electrolytes and water throughout the course.

Thanks to Praveen (my brother) for leaving office early, to drop me at the venue and pick me up. One interesting fact here is, I landed from KL in the morning and the same day evening I did this run (chest number 7206). After a three month tiring engagement with hardly any time to practice, clocking 1hr 2min 49sec does not make me feel bad.

To top it all, somewhere around the 3.5kms mark I got a sprain on my right knee and it was slowing me down. At this point I had two options, either give up or keep running and make it my last run. I chose the latter. Btw, another big thanks goes to my manager for approving my high price ticket so I can land in India on time for this event.

Bangalore Midnight Marathon 2014

I had bought myself a fitness band, VivoSmart and was testing it during this run. It was pretty accurate given the fact that it did not have a GPS built-in.

Auroville Half Marathon – 8^th February 2015

First marathon in 2015 and that too a half marathon… Drove all the way to Pondicherry with my Dad, Mom, Brother and my wife (Meena). Ran inside the beautiful Auroville with trees to give me shade and the soft ground to absorb all the damage my knee would otherwise taken during the 21kms run. For a change I gave my dad some tips for the half marathon and with that he managed to get an excellent time of 2hrs 11min 🙂

Dad n Son – Auroville Half Marathon 2015

My Dad had chest number 2424 and I had 2423. My timing was no where close to his 2hrs 11min as I managed to clock 2hrs 19min and there were at least a 100 people who crossed the finish line in this 8 minutes gap. Now coming to what I did not like in this marathon. First, there was no finisher medal to keep as a memorabilia. Second, the course was not certified. Third, the electrolyte was so diluted in most of the stations that it tasted really bad. Finally, they took the start time of the race (6:15am) and then the crossing time (minus the seconds) to calculate our finish time. None of this is acceptable to me.

Kaveri Trail 10K – 19^th September 2015

In 2013, my dad ran the 10K alone and he used to say a lot about this scenic trail. The following year we both registered but had to give it a pass as my dad was down with fever.

Mens Veteran – 10K Category

This year, my dad got a fancy bib #3000 and I got bib #1303. Trust me! the picture in KTM website and the reality was way too far. Yes, it is the Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary but there were no birds except for a few crows, lots of cows, buffaloes and men bathing in the small stream flowing around. So that was a bit of a disappointment. On top of it, it was a sunny day and the 7am start added a bit more of sweat.

Given the fact that I just got back from London and was running this with absolutely no preparation in the last four months, my time of 1hr 2min 51sec was acceptable to me. Oh! btw, my dad was not a Finisher. He was the Winner in the Mens Veteran – 10K category! 🙂 You are my inspiration to run Dad!!!

@Finish line – KTM 10K 2015

Before I forget, I need to mention about the fiasco that happened. KTM decided to go with some local timing chip provider whose technology was not tested well enough. So a lot of people did not get their timings recorded properly and KTM had to rely on the personal time that was recorded on our fitness devices. Lucky that my dads device worked and sad mine didn’t. As the tracker was started well before the start line and stopped well after the finish line, the actual time is a little less than the one shown here for me.

Anyway! I did pour my heart out to RFL team on the goof up and they decided to give me a complimentary T-shirt or a registration for 2016 KTM or Bangalore Ultra (any segment). Given the sad trail in Kaveri and my bad experience, I picked the 12.5Kms Bangalore Ultra.

Performax Bangalore Ultra 12.5K – 8^th November 2015

Course record Bangalore Ultra 12.5K

My second attempt in this calm and tranquil trail with Bib #12118 clocked a time of 1hr 17min 21sec.

We did it!!!

This was my Dad’s first 12.5K with Bib #12601. He was a little confused whether to pace for 10 or 12.5K but he comfortably maintained a steady pace right from the beginning till the end. He crossed me somewhere around the 7 kms mark and I was trailing him for about a kilometer or so and then gave up. Now the good news! he set the course record in this track under the Men’s Veteran category with 1hr 16min 13sec.

Though he says this talks about the quality of other runners, the truth is its his regular practice that kept him going on. Practice is the only thing that can help you get the required stamina. Oh by the way, he was very happy to get his money back in the form of a T-Shirt and a nice memento. 🙂

I am sure he will break his own record next year, while I need to try hard and find some time to practice regularly. Getting under the 1 hour mark is my target. Let me see if it happens in the midnight marathon.

The Real Podium Finish!!!

SBI Midnight Marathon – 5^th December 2015

My third attempt with a lot of expectations that I will get under the 1 hour mark but unfortunately, it happens to be the worst ever in terms of timing. Barely managed to hit the 1hr 5min 41sec.

Bangalore Midnight Marathon 2015

Had the wrong food (KFC burger) before marathon so was thirsty and on top of it missed their water station twice as it was in a not so well lit area. Also had to rush at the last minute to the venue due to unplanned stops to pick up dinner and thanks to KFC for taking over 15 minutes to get the order. Also thanks to the great Bangalore traffic for making things even worse. The only good thing was, Meena accompanied me and she was in the stands cheering for me.

This event had about 11k runners and Meena was shocked to see that there are so many crazy folks to run at night, including old men and women. Ending the year with four marathons. Hope to do the same in 2016 and if all goes well, hit the sub 1 hour mark.

TCS 10K – 15^th May 2016

This was a very special one as my dad and brother also participated. As usual it was only me (Bib #4136) and my dad (Bib #4139) who registered for the event. Just a few days before the registration close, my brother (Bib #17465) decided to get run and got in through the charity route. Just before the special day, my father was down with cold, cough and a bit of fever. I was also down with a bit of cold and cough but still determined to run.

TCS 10K 2016

As it was my brothers first run he was in Group F and still managed to clock an amazing time of 54min 50sec.  Next year I am sure he is going to get Group B where he can run more peacefully and get a better timing.

Given my dads age and the cold and cough, his timing of 1hr 2min 24sec is really really good. After nine marathons, I managed to get under the 1hr mark and clock my best timing of 59min 36sec. Really happy about it. Thanks to my wifey too for feeding me with carb filled food.

Bangalore Ultra 12.5K – 13^th November 2016

This was the 2nd family run – Praveen’s first Ultra, Dad defending his Veteran-winner record of 2015 and me just enjoying my favorite track. We reached on time, had no issues parking, did a bit of warm up and started our run. Dad (Bib #1401) got a timing of 1hr 18min 26sec (not as good as the previous year) but he still holds the record 🙂 and that matters.

Podium Finish again!

Praveen (Bib #1091) did a stunning 1hr 8min and I did a 1hr 20min 2sec with Bib #1176. As you know, the amount of practice and hard work you put in is directly proportional to the output you get. So with <50min of practice a week, this is the maximum I was able to manage this year. Should try harder!

Our 2nd Family Run

Rock ‘n’ Roll Seattle Half Marathon – 10^th June 2018

After a gap of 1 year, I decided to participate in a marathon. It just so happened that I did a quick Google search for marathons in Seattle area and saw this event coming up the following week. I was so excited and searched for a 10K on their website. To my surprise, there was a 5K, half and full marathon only. I was like, 5K will not give me the satisfaction of having run, so let’s give the half marathon a shot. I remember very clearly, my decision to not do another half marathon after the Auroville run in Feb ’15. But given that I was practicing 3 to 4 times a week for a good two months, I decided to go for it despite the high registration cost. Post booking, I checked if my cousin, Monisha was interested in running and she was all-in just because the medal looked awesome! Can you believe that!!! Yes, the Rock n Roll series has some of the best looking medals. Karthik was into cycling so he decided to give this event a pass. Else it would have been triple the fun!

2018

With no practice and experience doing a half marathon before, Monisha (Bib #11447) managed to clock an awesome time of 3hrs 18min 42 sec. And the best part is, she managed to stop on the way for clicking some nice snaps! The only thing running in my mind was, when will the next mile marker come! I had Bib #11067, and managed to clock my personal best timing of 2hrs 3min 17sec. That’s an average pace of ~8min 45sec for the first 10miles, ~54min for the first 10K. Now that feels good! Thanks to the awesome weather too. I started to sweat only after the 4km mark. So you can imagine what the temperature would have been like. Without it, I am sure dehydration and other things would have kicked in.

Rank & Pace

Oh! by the way, I should say thanks to my client who let me work remotely. As they were on the East coast, I did have the evenings for myself to do these practice runs! Without it, it would not have been possible.

Beat the Blerch Seattle 10K – 15^th September 2018

My first 10K on a rainy day – start to finish. No company… but the trail (King County’s Tolt MacDonald Park, Carnation, WA) was simply amazing. With Bib# 3820, running on a near flat trail using my fingers as a wiper to remove the drops of rain from my specs every other minute, I clocked 57min 09sec.

Goodies…

If you are familiar with the cartoon characters, everyone was there. You will love the atmosphere. People from different countries were here participating as they were in the area! Oh btw, the medal was heavy, unique and an awesome one 🙂 Loved all the items in the goodie bag.

Hot Chocolate 15K Seattle – 3rd March 2019

My first 15K distance and my first run at near zero (32F) temperature with wind chill… To top it, the elevation was a killer as I did not practice enough.

Best ever picture of mine while running

Bib# 50243 with a timing of 1hr 32min 6sec is definitely not my best. However, the one thing I really enjoyed in this run was the warm hot chocolate drink at the end of the run. Perfect! Will definitely run again for this. The other good thing is, I got the best ever marathon picture taken while running. Thanks to the photographer.

Oh by the way, Hoka One One – Clifton 5 is definitely not my type of shoe for sure. Moving from a 11mm drop to a 5mm drop, does impact the running style and post run recovery. Need to go back to my favorite Brooks.

Shamrock 15K Portland – 17th March 2019

This run will always have a special mention. It took 6 years of persuasion to make my beautiful wife Meena say yes to a 5K event. She has come to cheer me on a few of my runs (including the midnight run) but never said yes to jog or walk long distances. One might wonder what’s the big deal. Let me tell you, she is neither a fitness freak nor someone who has an active interest in sports. However, she enjoys a long, lazy walk with a good company. So everyone who knows her well found it difficult to believe she really participated (and completed) a 5K run.

The whole process of convincing Meena to participate in this event started sometime late November. It was more like, try the 4mile walk it is a very scenic route, etc. etc. Then slowly I started to highlight the fact that 4miles (6.4kms) is longer than 5K and she should consider doing the 5K instead. My consultant hat at work 😉 Then one fine day in February, I made her say or create an expression that sort of looked like a yes (maybe an absent-minded yes) to register for the run. From this time on, there is no turning back. Booked everything before she could change her mind.

The thought of 17th March, did give her jitters, and some realization in terms of what has she got herself into. But at the same time, her curiosity to understand why there are so many crazy souls running and experience the whole thing once for herself took the best of her. The last couple of weeks before the run she pushed herself to come to the gym with me and do some practice walks on the treadmill. She did give all she had while on the treadmill, elliptical and cycle. Earlier, she used to do something for a few minutes and then find a nice spot to sit and relax. This time, I had to literally pull her out of the gym.

We went to Portland a day before the run to collect our bibs at the Expo – Meena got the orange bib# 13870, and I got the blue bib# 21180. She was all excited and at the same time very tensed. Three reasons: One, other runners who looked really fit and/or well-trained, two, the distance and finally the weather. Post collection of bibs we walked around downtown, picked up a running jacket and got back to the hotel. All along giving her small tips on what to do and what not to do as I could feel her tension.

The next day we woke up at 6am to a bright sunny day (35F with wind chill that felt like 30F), munched some of the yummy brownies Meena had baked for my birthday 🙂 and started to walk towards the start line which was roughly 5 blocks from the hotel. All the butterflies running in her mind and stomach made her forget the -1 centigrade weather for a while. I gave her a few more tips like my dad did when I participated in the TCS 10K for the first time in 2013. I got her into a corral I felt is right and she crossed the start line around 8am. Thanks to the location sharing apps, I was able to see where she was all through till the start of my 15K at 8:55am. She managed to get an awesome time of 56min 46sec.

Coming to how I did! I made the mistake of standing in the wrong corral, run with a higher pace (4.35/km) than my usual for the first 1 mile, on a stretch that had some elevation gain to give me a timing of 1hr 34min 44sec (Pace: 10.09/mile). The irony here is, I gave all this as a tip to Meena and I ended up not following any of them. Oh, by the way, this is my second run on Clifton 5 and in both the runs I managed to clock a pace of 10.x/mile. Brooks with a heel-to-toe drop of 11mm gave me 9.x/mile on both the 10K and half marathon last year. Definitely not going to use this shoe again.

Guess what my current task/target is… Convincing Meena to participate in another 5K and beat her current time of 56min. 😀

Iron Horse Half Marathon, Seattle – 25th August 2019

My 2nd USATF certified half marathon with Bib# 1088. Supposed to be a downhill marathon with an elevation loss of 880′. A beautiful scenic course where a lot of people set their PRs. The weather was super awesome at the start of the run at 8am (wave 4). Unfortunately, for me the terrain looked pretty much flat and I clocked a time of 2hrs 14min 29sec (Pace: 10:16/mile). I was literally dragging myself and walking every couple of hundred meters.

One learning though is that, practicing on a treadmill is not the same as running on gravel/road – I could feel the difference in foot strike. At the 10mile mark, my legs literally gave up. Compared to my previous marathon (Rock n Roll), my VO2max had took a hit too. Blame it on the lack of proper practice before the run (slight fever to make things worse). If I ever run another (half) marathon, I will make sure I do a fair amount of practice on the road as treadmills can’t be trusted for long distance runs.

Abstract

Financial services industry and the public services industry is currently faced with increasing regulatory norms, cuts in IT budget and a need for a strong IT foundation to stay ahead of competition. Though the CIOs seem to be pushing for IT transformation projects, Gartner Survey indicates that “For 2013, CIO IT budgets are projected to be slightly down, with a weighted global average decline of 0.5 percent”.

As a seasoned consultant you might be able to see the true potential of your client. But for various reasons like budget constraints, other IT priorities, etc. your request to implement certain key projects might not see the light of day. Find out what you can do to achieve a win-win situation in this article.

The D2RC model

In this model, the consultant is required to get two things. One, secure a “Go-Ahead” from the client to the start the project by explaining the big picture. Two, get the required approvals to reinvest the savings obtained in the first three months (post due-diligence phase) on key projects identified by the consultant. The four stages of the D2RC (Due-diligence – Deliver – Reinvest – Charge) model is detailed below:

Due-Diligence – This phase charts out a clearly defined and agreed upon benefits with up-front process to measure the resultant value. The consultant based on his knowledge of the client picks the least-effort-maximum-impact project that could bring about substantial savings to kick-start the “Deliver” phase. The consultant also identifies potential projects for implementation along with a roadmap. This is typically a consulting phase.

Deliver – In a short duration of say two to three months, the identified project must be executed and the savings required for reinvestment secured. If the consultant is going to take longer than three months, its better the project is reconsidered or not attempted unless there is a strong rationale behind it.

Re-invest – The estimated savings over a one-year period from the “Deliver” phase would fund the potential projects identified in the “due-diligence” phase. Projects will have to be hand-picked such that the funds are sufficient to implement at least 70-75% of the project. This is to show tangible benefits to the business for obtaining remaining funds.

Charge – Midway through the Re-invest phase, the consultant can show tangible benefits to the client and either charge for effort spent until then or ask for a percentage of the savings as fee. This is more like a Risk & Reward model. End of the day, it all depends on the progress made and tangible benefits the client can see.

Making it work:

The first step for the consultant is to convince his company that there is a lot of potential with the client. Secondly, he has to secure client buy-in before the engagement starts, which is not only tough, but also risky. To make this model work, the consultant must:

• Have sufficient knowledge of the client, his environment and culture (preferably worked with the client)
• Good rapport with key stakeholders (business, IT and top management)
• Long term commitment from the client and support when it comes to working with other vendors
• Clear definition of scope of activities, quantum of work and the projects to be carried out
• Follow caution in terms of explaining the model, billing and charge backs when tangible benefits are realized

The Risks:

If the “due-diligence” and “deliver” phase combined takes a long time to show tangible results, the planned projects might not even kick-off. If the due-diligence was based on sub-standard analysis or incorrect assumptions, the savings obtained in “deliver” phase will not be substantial to meet the funds required for the re-invest phase. If the consultant cannot show visible progress or results at regular intervals, the project is destined for failure. Above all, the consultant must have a clear view on when to pull the plug should anything go wrong to ensure damage control.

Presence of other incumbent vendors can also pose a risk if there is no client buy-in at the executive level to enable smooth implementation.

Possible due-diligence projects:

Here is a sample list of projects the consultant could consider for the least-effort-maximum-impact projects.

• Technology stack rationalization – If the client has a host of tools in their environment, this is a good place to start. The savings obtained from licenses per year can be used for reinvestment
• Lean BI projects – On occasions where the client has a lot of processes in place, which are age old, attempting to study a few key processes and trimming them could help achieve the required savings
• Centralization – If the client operates on a fragmented model, analyzing the impact of centralizing a few key processes could bring in efficiency and savings. Example, centralized report creation team

Benefits:

• Guaranteed Savings for the client
• The consultant can build the clients confidence/trust and a possible long-term relationship
• For the client, he gets to execute projects which he has been wanting to without having to go to the top management for funds
• Prevent the client from floating a RFP. Caveat: Assuming the client does not have the funding to float a RFP

Conclusion

There are several pricing models available in the market. What differentiates this model from the others is the fact that this is a combination of Risk-Reward model and Result-Oriented pricing model. Given today’s market condition, this model is a win-win for both the consultant and the client if risks are understood and cautiously handled.

You might have seen nice innovative error messages and maintenance messages in sites like Orkut and other Google Products when their site is down or not responding to your request. Well, there are other sites which have such unique messages. One of them is from RedBus.in Check it out below!

RedBus.in Maintenance page

Here goes one from GMAIL.

GMail server outage

Foursquare.com

Foursquare Server busy/down message

Twitter.com

Twitter Error page

Wooplr.com

Wooplr 500 Error message!

Flipkart.com

Flipkart.com 503 message

Simplilearn.com

Page not found message – Simplilearn.com

Will post more as I find them here.

Product and Service Organizations are increasingly showing keen interest in sentiment analysis as it can make or break their reputation overnight. Understanding the polarity/sentiment of every users post and addressing them on time is becoming critical. Considering the fact that thousands of posts are being generated every day on a single topic, it is nearly impossible to analyze them manually.

Sentiment analysis algorithms are not accurate and cannot be 100% accurate. But it can certainly provide the required warning signals to change the (product) strategy if required at the right time. This can also help the organization save time by narrowing down the thousands of tweets to a few hundred tweets to be analyzed manually.

Once the need for sentiment analysis has been identified, the organization starts to scout for COTS products and find there are way too many. This article has a list of 40+ parameters under six key buckets that the organization can use to shortlist the right tool for them.

In the below table, you can find the six buckets mentioned above along with the parameters and a short description about each.

Feel free to comment on the above parameters. If you have any addtional parameters that you feel are relevant, do let me know and I will be happy to include them (with due credits to you).

INTRODUCTION

Everyone understands the value of grouping users. There are various ways to classify users but primarily they fall into one of the three levels defined below:

LEVEL 1: PRIMITIVE

This is the easiest and the most common way of grouping users. This Level is synonymous to a company in US trying to read books about Japan to understand their culture. The distance between the user and the organization is high. Beyond a certain point, this level fails to connect with the users.

Organizations can only take generic decisions based on the typical characteristics of this user group. Example, if an organization is developing a portal and it finds that 75% of its users are female and in the teenage group, they might target pink for the portal theme. But if this group happens to like rock music and partying, the organizations decision to go with pink could be a road to disaster.

LEVEL 2: PASSIVE

Levels-2 is all about studying the user passively but closely to understand their presence (where they are active), their behavior (what they do online) and their tastes (what they like). This is synonymous to a company in US sending someone to Japan to collect information. Inclusion of Level 1 grouping to this level would be an added advantage. A good starting point would be to analyze data captured from social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

LEVEL 3: ACTIVE

In this level, hand picked influencers are analyzed in depth from both an internal & external networks perspective. Right content (information, samples) is then pushed to this small group of handpicked few to create the impact. This levels termed “Active” because on identification of influencers, some amount of handshake/contact/personal touch happens with the influencer (user). Tools like Radian 6, Sysomos, Klout help in identifying these potential influencers. This level is hard, time-consuming and relatively expensive but has a higher pay-off .

Forrester’s User life-cycle

Forrester’s User life-cycle (Ref. Figure 2) categorizes users into 6 groups: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and In-actives. This user life-cycle maps to Level 2 mentioned above as it can easily group users primarily based on their age and characteristic alone. But this does not tell you how many creators or critics in a particular age group posted only once. It is also not possible to determine how many of the joiners became inactive after the first login.

User Profiler

The profiler designed here (Refer Figure 3) categorizes users into 6 major groups: Joiner, Information seeker, Active/Dynamic, Responder, Creator and In-active. It is possible to map these groups to the Forrester’s user life-cycle groups with the exception of the Collectors group.

What do these categories mean?

Joiner: Moment a user registers they enter the Joiner level and take a default maturity of 0

Info Seeker: Users who seek answers to questions are the information seekers. Quality of the question decides the users’ maturity. Typically this ranges between 1 and 3

Active / Dynamic: These users actively seek information and respond to others in the group regularly. The maturity for these users range between 2 and 3

Responder: Responders are mostly users within the organization or industry experts. They either have the information or the resources required to secure the information needed for information seekers. Maturity lies between 2 and 4

Listener: These users log in and search for answers but have not posted anything yet. Mostly spectators. Beyond a certain point the lack of user activity except for login’s is either a BOT or Information collector (RSS)

Transition: This is the phase where the users tend to break the routine and shift to other sites or become inactive. One possibility is that the user has found what he/she was looking for

In-active: If the user does not have a single login in a say 1 year, the user is in-active and their maturity score drops to 0. This bucket helps identify and purge records easily for maintenance & performance purposes

Creator: Top management, visionaries and industry experts who are capable of generating interest in the public are Creators. Default maturity is assumed as 5.

Please feel free to get in touch with me if you have any queries or have suggestions around improving the above user profiler.

The aim of this blog was to develop a framework to assess the impact/influence of social media on the user(patients) for those healthcare providers who have invested in it. I am going to split this blog into pieces and the first part is going to build the foundation for the same.

The Common Definition for Social Media:
Social media is the creation and sharing of user-generated content. The content is nothing but unstructured data like dialogues (text), images, audio & video, etc. as a result of interaction and participation between individuals and/or groups.

There are eight pillars one needs to understand clearly to build a strong foundation. They are:

1. The Definition – How does Healthcare define Social Media?
2. The source – Social media sources for Healthcare
3. The Influencers – Who or What can impact/influence the outcome?
4. Trends – Where is the Healthcare industry headed with respect to Social media?
5. The Competition – What is the competition/peers in the industry doing to capture the users attention in the social media space?
6. Monitoring – How is Social Media monitored by the Healthcare companies?
7. What can hospitals do – with Social media
8. How to do – How can hospitals accomplish / get into social media?

Before expanding on the above eight pillars, a few facts on why this topic is relevant today and needs attention.

81% of all Cyberchondriacs have looked for health information online
17% have gone online to look for health information 10 or more times
86% satisfied with their ability to find the information they want online
85% believe the information they found is reliable

(SOURCE: The Harris Poll, Harris Interactive)

Moreover, social media has increased the awareness among users by letting them look up the internet for a variety of things like, facilities provided by a hospital, review about doctors, experience of other patients like themselves, comparison between treatment options given by doctors for the same disease, etc. This has put direct pressure on healthcare providers to not only excel in their services but also involve themselves in the social space.

Starting with the definition, expanding the eight pillars from a Healthcare providers perspective:

The Definition:
This is how Healthcare defines social media, “People trust ‘a person like me’ more than authority figures from business, government and media”, “Seeking ongoing dialogue, not one-way advertisement” and “Trust, transparency, openness, honesty”.

The Sources:
The social media sources for Healthcare not in any particular order.

• Blogs – DiabetesMine, HealthMatters, WebMD, NYT HealthBlog
• Social Networking – OrganizedWisdom, PatientsLikeMe, DailyStrength, JustAskANurse
• Microblogs – Livestrong, Stupid Cancer
• Podcasts – Johns Hopkins Medical Podcasts, Mayo Clinic
• Forums – Revolution Health Groups
• Social Sharing – Flickr, YouTube, ICYou
• Online events/campaigns

The sources mentioned above do not include sources like newspaper/journal advertisements, patient education, etc. Only the online media is in scope for this blog.

The Influencers:
The key influencers in this industry: Doctors, Patients, Patients relatives & friends, Hospital staff, Insurance agencies, Awards and Care givers.

Though these look pretty obvious, it is the word-of-mouth comments & reviews left by these people on the internet that has impacted the hospital most. A simple example, an eye care hospital (name cannot be disclosed) in India started off very well till a time came when a series of mistakes made by their doctors due to negligence changed the tables. Today, the patients do not even want to check if the doctors have changed or not. It will take another round of influencers to change this outlook about the hospital.

Trends:
When we say trends, its more around understanding what the leaders and emerging healthcare providers are doing in the social media space to influence and gain the visibility among the internet savvy public. Some of the interesting trends observed are below:

• Information sharing – Doctors come together to share research, exchange observations, and support one another
• Engaging e-patients – Connecting patients with similar disease processes, ailments, or conditions
• Rating – Of doctors, hospitals, service providers, etc. online
• Targeted search – Connect with patients and potential patients
• Managing a conversation – Q&A with surgeons
• Convergence with personal health records – Reminders to buy prescription medicines, Online personal health diary
• Location-based social media “check ins” – Inova Health System offers flu shot deals

The Competition:
The first mover advantage… and a big hit! It’s all about thinking differently and that idea clicking with the public. Few instances where such innovative/unique thinking resulted in positive visibility for the healthcare provider:

• Broadcast Emergency Room (ER) wait times every few hours across their Twitter feeds
• Seattle’s Swedish Medical Center, along with Mayo Clinic drew attention for hosting the first-ever “Sleep up.” The event, consisted of an all-night live stream following a patient undergoing sleep disorder testing and a Twitter Q&A session with physician sleep specialists, drew 10,000 visitors
• Live-tweet surgeries – Personally this is my favorite
• Interactive fitness program called “Fitfor50″ that incorporates video, Facebook, Twitter and user stories
• Disaster alerting and response
• Social media chats
• Daily health tips

Some of this have become common and no longer a differentiating factor. Example, health tips and social media chats. Users expect this by default though social media penetration by healthcare providers is still in the nascent stage.

Monitoring:
Currently there is a mix of in-house and outsourced social media monitoring and analysis. The major downside to this is setting up the platform for the users to interact and abandoning it. Here abandon means the lack of constant monitoring. When a patient posts a question in a Q&A platform setup by the provider, he/she expects a reply. When that does not happen, negative influence creeps in and the healthcare providers reputation goes for a toss.

Buzz vs. Prevalence analysis on datasets is one of the commonly found monitoring mechanism in the healthcare industry.

What can hospitals do with Social Media:
Few of the benefits healthcare providers can reap by getting involved in Social media are below:

• Help progress medical research when physicians start to interact more often with more social information available in hand
• Publish health news first (alerts, awareness, crisis communication, health hazard information, etc.)
• Monitor hospital reputation
• Introduce new products and service lines
• Strengthen patient provider relationships
• Bring patients with similar problems together
• Physician opinion sharing
• Enable better marketing and communications efforts

How can healthcare providers do this?
In simpler terms, where can they start? Based on my analysis, some of the key pointers are below:

• Dedicated team to monitor social activity
• Integrate marketing activities with social network
• Tools to monitor social activity
• Encourage physician to interact in social forums
• Dedicated team to check and respond to users grievances online
• Setup dashboards for executive team with metrics for social media monitoring

Here goes a listing of 230+ social media tools for extraction, monitoring and analysis. This was compiled in 2011 so some of the tools might not available today. You can leave a comment if you find any such tools in the list and I will have them updated in the next version (2012). Before you start looking at the list of tools, its better you get a clear understanding of the various terminologies so you know which tool is meant for what.

Social Media Engagement (SME) tools are communication platforms where users take action and can respond, engage, interact or communicate directly on social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, etc…Users provide the login credentials and offer OAuth permissions and can Tweet, comment on a blog post or respond to a question in a forum without leaving the SME platform. These are real-time, highly customized dashboards and often offer multiple accounts, a shared workspace for many users and the ability to respond in multiple places with one click.

Social Media Monitoring (SMM) tools, often called listening platforms, are where most social media strategies begin – monitoring and tracking mentions of your brand, products, competitors and industry issues. SMM tools offer countless ways to analyze, measure, display and report findings

Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) tools aggregate dozens of types of information from multiple social networks to give users the most complete view possible of each customer.

Social Media Specialized (SMS) tools fall into a handful of buckets. These tools are not stand alone tools or comprehensive platforms, but specialized tools focused on on analyzing and optimizing one aspect of your social media efforts. The intent is to use these tools to supplement, not replace, other tools. Some of these tools are available on SMM or SME platforms, for example, you can view Klout scores within Seesmic Desktop. These tools can be broken down into the following categories:

• Influence – Klout, PeerIndex, TwinFluence, Twitority, Zuberance
• Conversion tracking – Argyle Social
• Twitter analytics – Bit.ly, Tweetreach, Twitalyzer
• SEO – Hubspot, SEOMoz, Raven Tools
• Xefer
• Ad.ly
• Soovox

Social Media Content Management (SMCM) tools facilitate the creation, distribution, optimization and management of social media content. Each tool facilitates at least one specific activity. For example, Timely posts your tweets at a future time to achieve the most reach.

Click here to download the Excel. The price mentioned is only a ball park as it can vary from time to time and client to client. Any ratings mentioned by the author are based on very small in-house research and might not reflect true ratings.

Tools like Klout, PeerIndex, Kred[1], ProSkore and EmpireAvenue have been making noise recently and Kred’s the new social influence tracker on the block. Klout has been around for a while and has gained enough visibility & traction and hence the focus on Klout. All these tools use a series of algorithms to gauge the users influence in the social world. Off late, this is used by HRs during recruitment process and Sales & Marketing professionals during campaigns.

Influence score is similar to having a credit score. Recently at a “Fashion’s Night Out party” at Bal Harbour Shops in Florida guests had to have a Klout score of 40 or higher to gain entry. Samples are given out to users with a good influence score. This article is about understanding what the score comprises of to improve your social score.

Parameters that influence the Klout score to a significant level are captured based on the analysis of Klout for about four months between May and September 2011. One objective of the study was to maintain a consistent Klout score of 30+ for two months. The result of ~250 tweets and study of ~100 twitter handles, gives you some of the parameters that impacted the Klout score. Twitter handle primarily used for this study was _jk82.

Klout:

Influence matrix with notes

Klout measures the user’s influence across social networks based on the network size, content created, and how others respond to your content. Klout scores ranges from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout’s 4×4 influence matrix plots the user’s participation style based on the scores obtained for True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score. To even out errors in calculation, Klout factors the users influence in multiple social media accounts like Foursquare, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, etc.

 

Parameters that have an impact on Klout score

Re-Tweets (RT):

Re-tweets by influential users (good Klout score). Making these influential users to re-tweet you is not easy. So identify this bunch of users who do nothing but re-tweet in exchange for being re-tweeted. Mostly this group tweets quotes so it is easy for you to re-tweet and is less suspicious. Caveat: Do not over do it.

Mentions (@):

Mentions by influential users increase Klout score. Tweet questions that will make your friends reply. Skim through random twitter handles with a decent Klout score (use Trending Now as a starting point) and search for controversial tweets. ‘Reply’ with your disagreement or another controversial tweet, and rest assured you would have your mention.

Unlike Re-tweeting, this one requires some hard work. Influential users know what you are trying to do and do not respond so you will have to do a lot of replies to hit the jackpot. However, Klout does seem to factor in all this effort so it is not a wasted effort. But your participation style might change.

Quality of users Followed

Matrix score

Following active and non-spamming user handle is critical. Tools like Twitoria can help identify inactive users. Install the Klout extension for your web browser and see the influence scores of all the users you follow. Remove users with a very low score, say less than 10. Klout takes into account the influence score of your followers so try and follow more Twitter handles with a score of 80+.

Having a high follower base does not necessarily mean a high score. One can hit a score of 30+ with an average of 50 people following as Klout believes in Quality too and not just quantity.

Following: Followers Ratio

This is not critical but at one point during the study, decreasing the number of users followed to a number below the number of followers gave better spikes to the Klout score. As there are too many parameters involved at any point in time, it is difficult to gauge the effect of this one factor keeping all others constant.

Hash Tags (#):

Hash tags are very important when it comes to “amplification”. Keep a tab on trending topics and re-tweet or comment on tweets to amplify your reach. This is one of the simplest things to do so if required, Google that topic and pick out the best news item or a couple of images and post it with the same hash tag. This will enable other users reading the trend to click on your tweet and even re-tweet.

Links in tweets:

Have a generous list of tweets with links to images, posts, news items, etc. When others click on the links, Klout tracks it. It is good to have a Bit.ly account setup and have the API key supplied to Twitter so you can track the clicks too. Tracked a few twitter handles with fewer than 25 tweets but with links to some video or pic in each tweet and their Klout score was hovering in the range of 15 to 25.

Regular tweets:

Logging in regularly to tweet seems to have an impact on Klout score though minimal. Use tools like Timely.is, Bufferapp.com or Queued.at to schedule tweets. Primary objective is to keep inactivity at bay. These tools can be used to update the status in multiple social networks so if you have classified your user base between social networks like Friends in Facebook, Newsfeeds in Twitter, etc. then this can do wonders to your score. Never hesitate to send thank-you tweets as this increases the engagement score.

Linking multiple accounts:

Linking multiple social media networks is good as it can balance out any error in the calculation of influence. Not tweeting but staying active in another network say Facebook can keep your inactivity at bay as Klout will now search all your linked Social networks to provide the influence score.

Do not go overboard and link all accounts unless you have a good activity going on in each of them. For example, if you are not going to post updates in LinkedIn or YouTube, or there are not too many users looking at your profile, your score can go down. So be wise will linking multiple social media accounts.

Lists:

Create lists with users who have a good influence score or those who tweet interesting stuff and name the list properly. This will make other users follow your list. If you have interesting posts, then others might include you in their lists and more people might start to follow you through those lists. More the lists you are present in, higher the score.

 

Let me know your experiences with Klout if you decided to Game it! I definitely would love to hear how you fared and what more parameters can create that extra bit of difference. Happy fun! and Happy Gaming!

---

[1] Kred bases influence on community & reach, including 4 years summary of tweets.