I don’t know if this issue will bring any luck to the newsletter’s fate, but I certainly feel lucky to have Kevin Hillstrom this month as our guest writer. Kevin is one of the best customer analytics experts around. He is an accomplished author, with several books on the market, who is sought after by CEOs around the globe. Kevin also shares for free an amazing amount of insights on his blog, and Twitter. I am telling you: reading one year’s worth of his production will make you very, very smart.
I for one have always thought the term HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) was funny the first time I heard it, maybe the second too, but that it quickly turned into a cliché. Unfortunately, as with so many things online and especially on social media, it started to be used as truth, never criticized or nuanced. The reader will remember Jim Novo’s amazing contribution about analytics and gut feel decision making in which he explained how too often analytics fail executives, leaving them to resort to their experience.
Kevin Hillstrom has written a lot about how the HIPPO term did not reflect reality a bit. In his fascinating article, which made me laugh several times, he shows how even analysts can be a pain, not helping the analytics cause in the least.
As for me, I examined Klout, and particularly the notion of indexes, which are now everywhere in social media measurement. I am not sure they’re very useful, for now at least.
Thank you again so much for reading the WAO/FACTOR newsletter, and recommend it if you find it valuable.