Official site of Dr. Joni Salminen

How to reach B2B audiences online? That’s the question.

Published by Joni on July 7, 2017

Introduction It *is* indeed the question – most often focus of B2B digital marketing is on lead generation and marketing automation. Much less has been written about targeting. Yet, B2B targeting is far from having been solved. The typical conversation between decision makers and agencies goes something like this. Client: “All this online advertising is great – but I don’t…

How to achieve a good score from Google Pagespeed Insights

Published by Joni on July 6, 2017

Speed is one of the most important ranking factors in technical search-engine optimization (SEO). Besides search rankings, pagespeed directly or indirectly influences Quality Score in AdWords (and thus to click prices), and, perhaps most importantly, to the usability of website. Better usability, more conversions. PageSpeed Insights is a free service by Google to score the speed of a website. 100/100…

Argument: Personas lose to ‘audience of one’

Published by Joni on June 26, 2017

Introduction. In this post, I’m exploring the usefulness of personas in digital analytics. At Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), we have developed a system for automatic persona generation (APG) – see the demo. Under the leadership of Professor Jim Jansen, we’re constantly working to position this system toward the intersection of customer profiles, personas, and analytics. Imagine three levels of…

Kuinka Google toimii? Keskeiset lähteet.

Published by Joni on June 10, 2017

Googlen algoritmin tarkka toiminta on liikesalaisuus. Siihen, mitä tiedetään, paras lähde on Googlen oma sivusto. Tässä keskeisimpiä linkkejä: How search works? https://www.google.com/insidesearch/howsearchworks/thestory/ (lue kaikki alasivut) How Google works? https://www.slideshare.net/SearchMarketingExpo/how-google-works-a-ranking-engineers-perspective-by-paul-haahr (katso sisäpiiriläisen kuvaus) Googlen kolme opasta: Webmaster guidelines, Content guidelines, Quality guidelines: https://support.google.com/webmasters/topic/6001981?hl=en&ref_topic=3309300 (lue kaikki ohjeet) Hakukoneoptimoinnista löytyy paljon spekulointia – parasta on nojautua Googlen viralliseen tietoon. Monet ns. tutkimukset, joita…

First experiences with startup user studies (ca. 2010)

First experiences with startup user studies (ca. 2010)

Published by Joni on May 28, 2017

I was reading through old emails while backing up my Gmail inbox with Gmvault, an open source command-line tool. Among other interesting trips to memory lane, one message was about the first startup user study I was involved with. It was for a life-coaching startup that eventually failed. In retrospect, it’s interesting to reflect on what went wrong and how…

Thoughts on Remora’s Curse

Published by Joni on May 21, 2017

Remora’s curse takes place when startup attaches itself to a large platform in the attempt to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of getting users. The large platform then exercises its greater power to void the investments made by the startup into the platform, essentially causing more or less deadly delays and needs for re-design. The idea originates from Don Dodge who…

Machine learning and Facebook Ads

Published by Joni on May 17, 2017

Introduction One important thing in machine learning is feature engineering (selection & extraction). This means choosing the right variables that improve the model’s performance, while discarding those reducing it. The more impact your variables have on the performance metric, the better. Because the real world is complex, you may start with dozens or even hundreds of variables (=features), but in…

The Role of Assumptions in Startup Pitching

The Role of Assumptions in Startup Pitching

Published by Joni on April 30, 2017

More than truthfulness of the numbers, investors evaluate the assumptions underneath a pitch. They are not asking “Are these numbers real?” but “Could they be real?”. The assumptions reveal the logic of thinking by the founders. When examining them in detail, one should get logical answers to questions like: How many sales people are needed to hit the sales goals?…

Startup due diligence: Some considerations

Startup due diligence: Some considerations

Published by Joni on April 30, 2017

We had an interesting week with the Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP) that had invited several high-profile entrepreneurs from the US to evaluate the technologies of Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend all the sessions, but from what I saw I picked up a few pointers for due diligence work done by investors when…

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