BIG DATA Solutions with Small Business Roots

Posted: April 11, 2018

I just finished, Creating A Data Driven Enterprise With DataOps from Qubole. I was reading for big data solutions for small business and it came up short. It boasted a clearly tech oriented author, with bonafides from Facebook’s own data lake. And offers insight into how LinkedIn, Twitter, & Ebay got started with big data. What isn’t clear is if Qubole's strategy is to overwhelm and scare potential customers into just giving up and calling the “expert” for help with big data solutions. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they are clearly reaching for a tech audience. When I finished it, I had two main takeaways:

• The title of the book should have been, “How to Invest In Your Data.”
• I need to build a data warehouse before I can build a data lake.

I want to build a small business data lake. That would be fun. What does that mean? To start I want to connect to the APIs of the various social networks I am on and take my social media marketing to the next level. I’ve done that on a smaller scale and I learned that there are some insights you just can’t get any other way, even if you hire a full time social media manager. There is also the Google Analytics on my blog, I know there is more I can be doing with the data Google Analytics gives me. You can get lost in bells and whistles; to prioritize big data solutions for small business, I'd start with a data warehouse.

Probably not the best time to announce I am working on that with all that is happening with Facebook.

Oh. well.

For a small business, a blogger (like myself), or a starving artist social media offers the highest leverage to get your message out there. But it is really noisy. It’s also your best avenue to finding potential customers, but it is really noisy. But it's cheap, which is why it's so noisy. I think you can spend a lot of time wading through the noise on social media. I’m betting that my investment in a data warehouse/lake will help me get past the noise.

Which brings me back to the first takeaway, the title should have been, "How To Invest In Your Data." That is how an owner thinks about big data solutions for small business: "I know I should invest in data", she says, "I just don't know where to start."

I've been steeped in that grass roots approach thinking because I grew up in a small business, a New York Deli. (And yes, above is a pic of my family in the Deli.) I never watched Saturday morning cartoons growing up because we spent Saturdays at the Deli. It was my second home.

BIG DATA Solutions for Small Business.

So . .. if you (1) have something to offer, (2) want to market on social media, and (3) believe Google Analytics and data can help you be more effective then you should sign up for my new BETA Course: How to Invest in YOUR Data and get my Free Data Warehousing for Dummies PDF.