Accounting

Online Social Networking is no doubt one of the most powerful marketing tools nowadays. Information can be easily be echoed from all corners of the planet with the help of these new Media Platform. So as a reminders, each and everyone of us has a responsibility to maintain the quality, integrity and truthfulness of information that we unleash in them.

I have been busy lately participating on almost 50 different webmasters’ forum just to learn and gain tons of reliable tips from the social media gurus coming from all over the world. Tweeting is such a hot topic and most SEO and Webmaster experts have been discussing it.

I really gained so much from them and I am going to post here some of the top tips I learned from them and some quotable quotes if it does not falls under these tips. The following are what I have learned from the forum gurus:

1. Never inflate your twitter following just to gain followers. One consequence of inflating your following and getting them to follow you back would mean low quality followers. Just focus on getting quality followers so that you can easily convert them to become your clients/customers.

2. Follow only those people that you are really interested in. For example, if you are a fan of Britney Spears, then you can follow her to keep track of what is latest about her shows, her next concerts, tv appearances, etc. If you are an aspiring SEO Consultant, then follow the people who are considered the most influential and highly regarded as the top notch and by doing so, you may use Twitter to interact with them at the right time which could have never been possible without the existence of Twitter. Or if you are an Accounting Software Retailer, then you may follow those people who are mostly in this kind of business and you may be use it to connect with your prospective clients.

3. To keep your followers keep on following you and attract more people to follow you, always make sure that your tweets are useful, interesting, informative and very much relevant to your niche. Make your tweets reflects your true personality.

4. To gain quality followers, you should advertise you “Follow Me” logo to your blog, attach it to your forum signatures, include it in your business cards, etc.

5. Always remember that a 500 high quality followers is better that 7000 ordinary followers.

6. Avoid the Rule of 150 /inflection point which states that your Twitter community starts to fall apart when you reached 150 followers by making sure that your tweets remain interesting and relevent. This is a case to case basis, others’ inflection point varies, just make sure you do not get into it.

7. From time to time, communicate with your followers through direct messages(DM’s) to make sure that your followers know how you value their effort for following you.

As we go on with our daily lives, we always think of how much is our budget for the day and how we can optimize that budget to meet our day’s needs. It is all about optimization and analysis, just as the title of this blog. It would be such a great help if we have a tool that would readily tell us what is the best for us to do with our budget. And luckily, developing such app is very much possible just like how we thought of computerizing Accounting Systems was impossible several decades ago.

In the world of Numbers and Equations, all of our daily activities can be quantified and broken down into different datasets. These datasets sets usually exhibit relationships among their variables. These relationships are often linear, or at least approximately so, making them amenable to common analysis techniques. One such technique is principal component analysis (”PCA”), which rotates the original data to new coordinates, making the data as “flat” as possible.

Amazing isn’t it? Well, it simply wonderful to know that is very much possible.

Online Social Marketers often faced with a problem on how they can increase their sales from their online visitors.  Knowing the probability of their visitors to purchase a product could be the key and therefore a scientific method with high accuracy to extract such information is needed. The Logit Method or Logit Model is one of the most popular.

To apply the Logit Method in predicting when will a customer will decide to purchase an item, use the formula:

where z = Intercept + ab + cb1 + db2

Use the following values: Intercept = -5; b = 2; b1 = -1; b2 = 1.2

So, if customer A is single, 38 years old with an stable monthly income of $6000 as an Accountant/Accounting Software Consultant, and he often browse the Toyota Prius page, registered in the website to get the latest updates and leaves his contact information.

Then the rest is up to you readers to decide.

Linux is an open source operating system and is currently one of the best operating system that challenges the dominance of Microsoft’s Windows , VB Bulletin is an open source Online Bulletin Board, Arduino is an open source hardware. Open Source Technology can really make things accessible to everyone. Open source is a development method for a product(medicine, software(accounting software, operating systems), hardware, consumer goods, etc.) that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. We should not therefore limit or prevent others from developing, accessing useful knowledge that can help Mankind conquer poverty because the universe has limitless resources more than enough for every Man.

Have you ever wondered why some very very large organizations gets bigger and bigger everyday and how they ever get their money? Why they do these things and sometimes the community does not get the benefits of their prosperity? In third world countries, where poverty still remains a big challenge, you will be surprise that some really gets very rich and yet the community on which they reside remains poor? Some  even say, several third world countries is the place where high technology and slums can live together side by side.

Data Mining techniques can easily find the best answer to these questions. It is not obvious if you see a very large conglomerate keeps on building huge malls at every strategic location of a huge metropolis where most of the hard-working urban employees use everyday to go to their respective offices to work and you will see that the end result is a humongous/monstrous traffic that it has created in each one of these malls. It is not obvious if you see the government will be building infrastructures that are designed to accommodate a handful of people of lets say 20,000 when the demand or the real need should have been for 1,000,000 people.

So what makes very large organizations do something like those I mentioned? If we will apply data mining, perhaps, let us start with the poverty issue, the next would be the ethical standards of groups of people. A very good metrics must be used to determine the scores of every person being studied to determine his/her tendencies. And the third is that most people in the third world countries embrace/adapt advanced cultures that is not really appropriate for their own situation, this could result in the further deterioration of their respective countries resulting in further delays in their development.

Once you have gathered huge data related to the ones, I have mentioned, the next step would be to analyze the data to extract trends and hidden information using popular Data Mining algorithm.

I have been using Generic Drugs for quite sometime now because it is just as effective as the Branded Drugs, and while I was on my busy daily routines, I just had a good idea which of the two will prevail in not so distant future and does it going to signal the end of the Branded Drugs. I just thought that the most objective answer to this question can be extracted from Data Mining Techniques.

Very large Pharmaceutical companies spend a lot of money in research and development of new medicines and they patent whatever information that is patentable to prevent others from copying/producing the same drugs and as a result, the medicine becomes very expensive but after the patent expires and becomes a public domain, the medicine can now be produced by anybody. That medicine now becomes Generic and since a lot of people are able to produce it, chances are, it becomes very very cheap.

To get our study quickly started, first we determine what are the factors that will definitely drive consumers to patronize cheap medicines or prevent people from buying cheap medicines. Of course, we can easily generate a very long list, but then is this really accurate? Or how are we going to prove it? And how does each item in our list will contribute to the overall impact and where are we going to get the necessary data, very very large data?

I would start from getting the necessary data from  large databases that contains accounting/logistics data collected from accounting software of very large phamaceutical firms, identify the trends and do some surveys on people.

In Data Mining Projects and working with very large datasets in particular just like when analyzing people’s reactions on several forms of advertisement in a website, it is very common that anomalies(occurrence or object that is strange, unusual, or unique) will exist and the most common method of identifying/removing anomalies is Spectral Analysis.

Spectral Analysis is commonly known in Statistics as frequency domains. Further analysis of data reveals patterns that can be described by fourier transforms wherein most of the data are broken down into smaller infinite sinusoidal wave. But like any other conditions that exist in nature, data needs to undergo cleansing by filtering algorithm. Filtering at this stage means removing those datasets that are not very much correlated with other datasets. In electronics, signal filtering is commonly known to pass the signal being analyzed into a circuit that discards certain bands of frequencies. This technique is also applied in Data Mining so that the resulting information are the most relevant to what is being studied. The seemingly senseless information has now revealed a new pattern previously hidden and can be the basis for further analysis using common data mining algorithm.

Knowing the activities of your online visitors to your website is a very important data that you will need to analyze how will you ever make them keep on coming back to your blog or of course make them buy the products that you display on your website. First and foremost, you have succeeded in luring them to your website. It could only mean that the banners you have must been been attractive or it was not really attractive, they are really looking for that contents. The data(your online visitors’ activities) can usually be found on the AWSTATS.

For ordinary or layman’s terms, the following should be made: (1) Use appropriate designs for your niche; (2) Content is King. Online visitors will tend to come back if your website’s contents is excellent; and (3) You have good reputation and authority rating. Assuming that you have these qualities, the next step is to maximize your potential web presence and earnings by qualitatively analyzing the log data you currently have in your AWSTATS.

The most common method to analyze the data is the Logit Modelling. I wont go too much technical explaining the Logit Model, but to have a glimpse, the common process is identify the factors that affect one behavior that leads to a conversion. The common factors are (1) general clickstream behavior at the level of the visit; (2) more detailed clickstream information; (3) customer searches and views; (4) customer demographics, and  (5) historical purchase behavior.

Collecting large information on how your visitors behave while they are on your website can influence how you will design and arrange information that you are displaying to influence your visitors’ future activities and will result into higher earning revenues and that should be a very good way to make money online. And lastly if this module is tightly integrated in Accounting Systems then the value of your Accounting Data goes up and you are adding more value for your company and investors.

I have mentioned in my previous blogs that Data Mining can help a company identify changes in the business environment. This is very true. If you can remember, the early 90’s saw dramatic growth of pager subscribers. Paging Companies enjoyed dramatic increases in their revenues and of course popularity. These process continued for five to six years, then eventually, these companies disappeared unnoticed after several telecom companies(their rivals) introduced sms(text messaging). The paging companies either struck by a lightning and melted and instantly turned into ashes. These paging companies had not noticed the rapid advancement in telcommunication technologies that made their swift disappearance.

That was what happened 2 decades ago. And now, let us study what is the possibility of toppling down of the currently very profitable wireless business. Our basic question is, what are the changes taking place in the online world and how it will affect cosumer’s preference in the next couple of years and what are the driving force behind these changes.

Microblogging has become so popular and we are seeing a lot of people getting hooked into it, and yes, marketers has already seen the value of microblogging as a great medium to promote their products and services. Microblogging as we all know is very much similar to sms. And several apps are now being introduced in the market to integrate microblogging with sms. This can drive major changes as more and more people will be hooked into the microblogging thing as it widen its reach up to those who have never heard of it before but had been using sms.

Base Station Equipments which are becoming more efficient in terms of energy consumptions and becoming more affordable and easier to install and maintain that even small businesses can afford to buy them. This could ignite stiffer competition with more ideas about application software and new business models are surfacing could drive sms and the wireless business as a whole crazy. An example of business model could be offering the sms  service for free and the wireless voice messaging for half the current price, integrate your microblogs with your sms’es therefore your cellphone will recieve ads in exchange for the free sms service and reduced call rates. This could mean internet marketers can have wider reach and therefore are willing to pay premium rates to these new small telecom companies.

And probably in the next decade, if the miniaturization of the base station equipments has become possible, where in each cellphone can act as base station, perhaps it will signal the end of the ever so very rich telecom companies.

So now we have made our speculation based on observable scenarios, all we need to do is provide adequate proof using Data Mining Techniques. I am still thinking how I can do this (I will probably dig out data stored in Accounting Softwares) if you dear readers who probaly are experts in the field, you may leave suggestions on how to start with this project.

Our usage of computers and our online activities can be very important to us especially when we do shopping, do our business online or our whole business operation is highly dependent on these technologies. Of course, unlawful activities can not be avoided. There is always a darkside to everything and that is for sure.

High Tech crimes are those criminal activities that involve usage of computers and the internet to aid the criminal to carry out his criminal acts. But luckily there is a way to catch these people or even prevent these people before they actually perform the crime.

Data Mining is a very good way to track and predict the future occurrence of the crime or determine the exact motive of the criminal. The FBI digged into existing retail customers data(accounting data) collected with Accounting Software and its sub modules with data mining and immediately they were able to determine and catch 5 of the terrorists involved in the 911 Bombing.

And today, the online world has become quite secured because Data Mining is here with us to scare people from carrying out criminal activities on the world wide web.

Large organizations especially the governments need a system to know and track how people rate their managers or subordinates. Popular Companies and products also need to track their reputation. Knowing accurately how people thinks of someone, a product, a company or an organization is a very important data to make wiser future decisions and course of actions.

The method or system to determine the reputation varies. Data Mining algorithms usually are employed to seek and classify gathered information. Advertisers looks at the Authority Ratings of a website or blog before they place their advertisements. Advertisers on Twitter also checks out the reputation of a tweeterer before they sponsor his/her tweets. They do this by checking out his/her Klout Score and Twitter Grader Score.

Why do we need mathematical equation to determine our reputation instead of just checking out what people really says and think about us? This question is usually asked during marketing campaigns and the answer is simple…numbers do not lie people do…and what people say and think  are still taken into major consideration but it is treated as one of the Key Performance Indicators.

Today, no major Accounting Software vendor has this kind of a sub module which I believe is a very important factor to determine the marketability of a product, influence factor of their managers and as key to monitor the performance of their Employee. Having a well organize and highly reputable Reputation Management System is the way to thrive in a rapidly evolving world.