How to implement a meritocracy using analytics?

It's unlikely that companies would look to outsource such a critical component and also it would be near impossible to create trust around 3rd parties accessing their data especially via an intermediary service.

1) Look through posts and just and tally which "side-topics" show up the most within the last week. Rank them. The top two side-topics for each group will be the most promising ones to suggest to that group in the future. You'll basically be making a 'word cloud', like this: https://www.jasondavies.com/wordcloud/ 2) To test your new hypothesis, occasionally start making your own posts on the groups with links to articles about the most promising side-topics you've identified. Either make brand new posts, or cross-post from other groups. See how popular the posts are. 3) If not, move to the next most popular side-topic and do some tests with that. 4) Repeat steps 1 - 4 (each time you do step 1, use the most recent week of posts) If you'd like more detailed advice on how to do this, and test its effectiveness with regard to your specific groups, let me know, best, Lee

There are so many ways to do it... Do you need this data for yourself, or you are planning to make a product around it? From what I see you can use Twitter API and Facebook Graph API (Are you comfortable programming?) Most of the students are active on social media so you will find lots of data. Facebook graph API will give you a number of likes and comments to all the posts of you competitors. You can analyze all the posts of your competitors. Using Twitter API you can get all the twits that use certain hashtags or mentions. If you are not into coding, but still want to get social media information, you can take a look at tools like IBM Watson ANalytics ($30 for personal use), it natively connects to Twitter API, and you don't have to be a programmer at all. It is intuitive and easy to learn. Analytics Canvas connects to Facebook Graph API (it's free for 30 days of trial). Unfortunately, you would not be able to collect any personal information from social media at large scale (age, income, gender, etc.), because it violates all the laws about privacy on the Internet. You can use census data instead. Google Sheets are a very handy tool if you are planning to use this information for personal research. You can set up a spreadsheet and add some Java script to make it collect all information from competitor's blogs, and also sites like Reddit. Finally, you can try web scraping (it's not the best, but can speed up the process). A tool like OutWitHub will collect information from websites (such as website reviews) based on the structure you provide (select html tags). You can collect thousands of reviews in one day if you automate it (paid version). Very easy to use. Note: not all the websites are open to this method, review their policies to make sure you are not violating their terms of service. Reviews belong to the website where they were published. If you REALLY need personal data (like how much they earn and how much they spend, etc.), just print out 100 questionnaires and go to Student Union Building of Dalhousie University. Most of the students will share any personal data in exchange for a Tim Horton's gift card that gets them a free coffee. It is probably the least technical and fastest way to get all the data you need. Hope this helps.

You mention, that you can code and maintain yourself, and at the same time it sounds like your data can be dispersed across multiple sources. And you want to minimise license cost. In my business we use R a lot for both analysis and reporting. It is free (open source), but you will have to build programs. But it will read any format, and also create output to any destination you want. So you could start off with a mix of R, Excel and pdf, just to get things going. However, it could make sense for you to build a database already so you familiarise yourself with data warehouse thinking, since you want to expand with marketing automation. At that point you will need a database for monitoring response, sales etc. So it is important to build the right foundation as ealy as possible. If you don't want to code, but want point-and-click, there is boatloads of software for that, but probably more license cost (unless you can find open source for that). So If I were you, I would start off with something smaller. After all, you want to focus on the value you create for the business and your colleagues, and the time you save, rather than a smooth IT-infrastructure for this. I have lots of experience building reporting and analysis in the areas you mention, so if you want to discuss further, feel free to set up a call. Good look with your development. Best regards Kenneth Wolstrup

While this can seem a logical extension of a business, it’s important to know that operating and investing are completely different pursuits and require very different skill sets. To get started, try to define the mandate of the department. It’s useful to understand whether the investment process you envision is designed to broaden your current business or to better use existing capital. Investing in business lines related to your primary business can often inform buy vs. build decisions, can help define product extensions by better understanding costs and market dynamics, and can also bring your firm closer to suppliers, distribution or product innovation. If this is the goal, target investment opportunities can be filtered through the lens of vertical or horizontal extensions to the existing business. The best investments are ones where there is a natural asymmetry in marketplace information, where the opportunity is informed by your existing business knowledge. However, investing can also be incredibly distracting for the core business, and rather than diversify the firm’s risks, can often concentrate them. Having defined the purpose of the investment program, it can be helpful to know in advance which resources you would use to make investment decisions, and more importantly which would be deployed to solve problems should a portfolio company run into trouble. You want to avoid the scenario where you have your best talent working to solve problems in a small investment instead of running your primary business. Finally, it’s important to have a clear and shared view of how and when to exit investments. It’s easy to get behind great people; but if they turn out to be unproductive or your business is better off deploying capital in a more productive venture, having pre-determined rules of disengagement can be as important as understanding why you’re initially setting up the department.