Analytics Is King
Content is the Queen
An Open Letter to Northeastern Ohio Brand Managers
Aug 16th
Even though I left Cleveland/Northeastern Ohio six months ago (exactly to the day), I still say in pretty regular contact with friends/professional contacts that I made in the area. It’s one of the beauties of social media, right? Geography is no longer a factor in effectively networking with like-minded professionals. With that ability comes lots of good, and bad news. Over the last few weeks, I’ve heard a number of accounts from “locals” who still say that the corporate community in Cleveland has yet to really adopt social. Why? If we wrote this post two years ago I could see it, but now? Sure, the area is not typically a trailblazer when it comes to technology, but with so many using social media to bolster communications efforts why is there still hesitation? With that as a backdrop, I offer this open letter to Northeastern Ohio brand managers.
Dear Northeastern Ohio Brand Manager –
I write to you in the hopes that this letter will spark something within you, and your organization to get started in social media. There is a large number of you that have yet to adopt. Why? Is it because of regulatory concerns? Is it because your “corporate culture” is very conservative when it comes to technology? Is it because you do not spend as much money on communications as other companies who are already engaging in social? Are you concerned about scaling up to meet the demands of social media? Is it because you think it isn’t measurable, or result in real return? I can tell you that there are companies of similar size who have asked, and then answered these questions — many 12-24 months ago.
Unfortunately for you, the number of different technologies has exploded exponentially, while the possible uses has gone up. There’s even more to consider now. Where do we start? How do we start? What do we say? Now, you’ve got these questions, plus some of the ones I asked above.
So what do you do? Well, assuming you work with an outside firm I’d recommend you bring them in to talk about using social technologies to augment current efforts. Or even bring them in to have a frank discussion about how social could be used to support your business goals. One word of caution though: If they come in talking about tools, politely ask them to leave. This isn’t about tools. It’s about using social tools to solve business problems. OK, so if you bring them in who should be there from your side? Well, ideally you’d bring in someone from corporate communications, marketing (other than yourself), internal communications (HR), legal (yes, even legal) and market research. That last one might surprise you, but these are the folks who really help set the direction for your communications efforts. If you aren’t ready to engage in social, at least you can be listening to conversations. Ideally, you’d want your listening agenda to align with your offline research agenda. Hence, why market research should be in the room.
Social media allows you to get closer to your customers than what has ever been possible through traditional communications channels. Why wouldn’t you want to know your customer better? I’ll assure you that if they are already an ambassador of yours, they wouldn’t mind knowing you better. Even the folks who have only recently bought your product want to know you better. It’s how you turn them from someone who casually buys your product into someone who constantly buys your product, and then tells everyone else about it. You want the latter…trust me.
Are you still looking for case studies? I’d encourage you to check out this list, or even a list created by Chris Brogan. I can assure you that they aren’t all Dell, or Comcast, or Southwest Airlines. They are companies big, and small who all had the same questions you have. They are companies that have saved millions in recruiting costs, or sold millions through Twitter, or increased the number of generated leads through social media.
I can attest to there being a lot of smart pros in the area – talk to Lisa Zone. or Dominic Litten, or Melissa Koski. Heck, give me a call if you want. I may not be living in the area anymore, but I still care what happens to people there. After you’ve talked to them, or someone else, start by listening. The reasons for engaging in social become clearer the more research you conduct.
It’s time to wake up and ditch the communications efforts that involve deluging the world with press releases. No, I’m not saying press releases are bad. It is also time to ditch the media relations effort that involves pitching nonstop. Guess what? That doesn’t work. How about you use social to determine who has the most influence and then reach out to that group? Sounds much better right? Time to stop advertising for the sake of advertising. Time to stop using old recruiting methods when LinkedIn gives you a better chance to reach the people you want to reach.
Pull some people together. Do some research. Get in the ballgame. We, and your customers are waiting!
Sincerely,
Chuck Hemann
Four Ways to Make Your Conversation About Research Easier
Aug 5th
We all (I hope) understand the importance of research to any public relations, advertising, marketing or social media campaign. Research is the beginning, middle and end of any campaign. It can help identify appropriate messaging, help us gauge the success of our campaign, identify potential influential online community members and provide a solid benchmark Despite its importance, the conversations we have about research are often strained. Whether it be about budget concerns (some recommend ~10% of an overall budget be spent on research), the client’s sense of urgency in getting started or just an unfamiliarity with the topic, we typically do not handle the conversation about research very well.
So how do we make the conversations go a little more smoothly? I have four ideas that might help you:
1. Make research one of the first things you bring up. Not only will it make you look like you are concerned with their bottom line, but it will show that you are thinking about the campaign on a strategic level and not a tactical one.
2. Avoid jargon and acronyms. Public relations (even social media and advertising) is one of those professions that is littered with acronyms and jargon. For whatever reason, we are in a hurry to make something an acronym, or compose a sentence comprised entirely of jargon. The research conversation is typically no different. I’m not advocating talking to the client like they are five, but don’t start off the conversation by using a term like “KPI” without any context.
3. Be confident in your results. I can guarantee that if your client senses you do not believe in your results, neither will they. If the results are negative, then position them as a way to tweak your campaign to get the desired results. If they are positive, don’t be so quick to take credit for all of your hard work. Praise the client for their work, but also demonstrate how you can continue improving to make the next report even better.
4. Provide actionable insights – For whatever reason, there’s often a reliance on FYI’s. By FYI’s I mean interesting information that doesn’t immediately lead to the client solving a specific business problem. Along the same lines, one key to actionable insights is timeliness. If you’re providing old data chances are good the window to actually act on that intelligence has passed.
I don’t believe for a second that these are the only things that would make the conversation about research easier. Are there other things that you have done when talking to clients about research? I look forward to hearing from you.
Seven Essential Tools for your Analytics Toolbox
Aug 3rd
I get asked all of the time about what analytics tools I use to do my job every day from folks who know this stuff inside and out, as well as folks just starting out in the business. My answer is usually that it really depends on the project. Sometimes I rely heavily on monitoring solutions, while other times it’s mixing and matching from a bunch of different tools. However, there are a set of tools I go back to time and again. Here are some that work for me and I hope, in turn, work for you.
- Radian6 – The people who know me best would probably call me a Radian6 fanboy. I guess there are worse things in the world, right? I’ve known those guys for a few years now and firmly believe they are producing the best monitoring solution on the market. There is significant debate in “listening” circles about that point, however, so if you’d prefer to use someone like Alterian I won’t think less of you. They are both good tools, it’s just my feeling that Radian6′s is more comprehensive (maybe too comprehensive sometimes, but that’s the subject of a different post). The listening tool is the building block for all other tools. It gives me a sense for who’s talking about my brand, where they are talking, what are the main themes, etc… Without it, we’re flying blind
- Backtype – Backtype provides some baseline metrics on the “reach” of a particular URL. Granted, one of the metrics they provide is impressions (ugh), but the other data on tweets, clicks, Facebook shares, comments and likes more than makes up for that. Depending on how popular the link is, they’ll also give you metrics on digg’s and number of reddit’s
- Compete/Alexa/Quantcast – If you don’t have constant access to Omniture or Google Analytics, you’ll need at least one Web metrics tool. I’m kind of indifferent on which I’d use amongst these three because they are all giving me (essentially) the same metrics. I’m most interested in total visits, unique visits, time on site, percent change in site traffic, bounce rate, etc…
- Yahoo! Site Explorer – If you are ever wondering who is linking back to your site, this is the place. Not only that, but it gives you the total number of indexed pages for a particular site. Oh, and one other thing… it allows you to download the inbound links for future use. Really cool tool.
- Google Adwords – As I mentioned in my first post here, the intersection between social, brand.com and search is very real. Adwords gives me the most popular search terms relevant to a particular phrase that I’ve entered. Not only that, but it gives me information on the competition for that word, global volume, local volume and a direct link to Google Insights.
- Google Insights – Most people have been exposed to this tool already, but Insights gives you the ability to break down search trends by category, seasonality, geography, as well as get a handle on what terms are the most popular now
- Wordle – You may not see this as an analytics tool, but I do. We often need visual representation of the data we are collecting, and Wordle gives us a great free tool to do that.
Those are just the seven I use all of the time. What are some tools you utilize to gather data about your brand?
Size Doesn’t Matter…In Social Media
Aug 2nd
Stop me if you’ve heard these before:
- We’re going to calculate the total number of impressions
- Then we’re going to apply the famous PR multiplier to the total number of impressions
- Maybe we can apply advertising value equivalencies. Because, you know, advertising and PR carry the same value for a brand (sarcasm)
- Lets find the total number of fans a person has
- Then lets find their total number of Twitter followers
- I’m also interested in how many posts have been written about my brand/industry
- They write for the New York Times, or Wall Street Journal so they must matter to my brand.
Guess what? All of that is bullshit. OK, maybe just PR multipliers and AVE’s. The rest aren’t total BS, when placed into context. We know that a brand engaging in social media, at its core, is attempting to influence a consumer, or potential consumer, into doing something. Most often it is buying your product, but you could be using it to respond to customer service inquiries. Or maybe you are using it to just gain market intelligence (read: listening only). Or maybe even using it as an employee recruitment tool. Or, finally, using it as an internal communications vehicle. No matter what your purpose in using social media is, looking at raw numbers (like the ones listed above) is pretty meaningless (just like in traditional PR, actually).
I mentioned during the #DellSTU SMaC Unconference last week that one day I hoped we would get over our love affair with size. The anecdote I used was that just because Amber Naslund (she was sitting next to me at the time – I wasn’t picking on her) has 20,000+ followers on Twitter doesn’t mean she’s relevant to your brand. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, the magic word: relevancy! If Amber has written 10,000 tweets, or 500 blog posts in the last year, how many of them relate to my brand? If only a handful are related, then how is she influential for me/my brand? On the other hand, if you take Joe Smith who has only 5,000 followers, half as many blog posts and half as many tweets but is writing more on topic content than Amber isn’t he more influential? I would postulate that he is.
Taken another way in traditional communications…. We love the big name writer from the New York Times or Wall Street Journal or Forbes, but what we’re not taking into consideration is how much they write about us, or our industry. Just because their content is widely syndicated, or their publication has several million impressions (gag me, please), does not make them influential for you. My boss, Bob Pearson, is fond of saying that there are likely only 50 or so people shaping your brand online at any given time. Underlying that is the notion of relevancy. Just because they have a lot of followers, impressions, etc… doesn’t mean they are relevant.
Before your boss asks you to reach out to someone via traditional media or social media, take a second to figure out whether or not they are relevant to your brand. It might just save some swings and misses down the line
Reflections on Dell’s SMaC Unconference – #DellSTU
Jul 29th
How many conferences have you been to in the last 12-24 months that have utilized Dell as a case study for the adoption of social media? Probably somewhere between a bunch and more times than you’d care to count, right? Well, I can tell you that all of those case studies applauding their adoption of social are true.
I had the good fortune of being invited to participate in Dell’s first Social Media and Community (SMaC) Unconference with several people from outside of the organization, including Kelly Feller (Intel), Shel Holtz, Amber Naslund, Chris Barger (General Motors), Katie Paine, Jordan Williams (REI) and Andy Sernovitz. It’s hard to encapsulate an entire day of talking about social media with such smart people in a single blog post, but I’m going to give it a try.
- Dell’s commitment to listening – This is probably one of the biggest takeaways for me, given the role I currently hold with WCG. During our panel discussion to start the day, there were a couple of questions specific to metrics/listening. Dell’s commitment to doing listening correctly really showed through in the afternoon sessions. I had the privilege of sitting through probably 2-3 sessions on listening where we talked about everything from categorizing conversations to setting up profiles to filtering through noise. All great discussions, but what really struck me was how committed everyone was to listening to the voice of their customer. Even Dell’s Chairman and CEO, Michael Dell, made it a point to mention how important listening was to the organization. NOW THAT IS COOL! If there are brands still on the fence about listening (and I know there are) it’s time to get off!
- Scaling social media – No surprise, but Dell’s social media team is large. Given the size of the group you would think it would be very difficult to coordinate. However, after spending the day with a large chunk of the team it appears they are more coordinated than I could’ve imagined. Major kudos to Manish Mehta on building a fantastic team.
- Measuring social media – Again, no surprise. Everybody is wondering how you measure this stuff. One of the points I made during the opening panel discussion was that a focus on ROI is great, but don’t lose sight of other metrics. Categorized more as awareness or assessment metrics. When given the opportunity it’s absolutely imperative to show direct linkage to sales, but relationship and trust metrics are just as important when trying to demonstrate the value of social activities. I think that’s something the folks at Dell understand, but it’s something I worry about for the industry-at-large.
- Commitment from the top – Everyone in the audience was excited to hear from Michael Dell at the end of the day. He had a lot of great things to say, but his dedication to social technologies that help the company get closer to its customers was the biggest takeaway for me. C-level executives who are still skeptical about the value of social should spend 30 minutes talking to him. They’d instantly be turned around.
- More brands should pull together teams in this format – It doesn’t matter how big your social/digital/community team is in this case. Bringing them together to recognize their work (an excellent point made by Shel Holtz early in the day) is critical, but it also helps in building team comradery. That’s all in addition to bringing together ideas that someone in another business unit may not have thought of previously.
I could probably go on for days about what I learned yesterday, but i’ll stop there. Before I go, I wanted to thank Manish, Bill Johnston and Richard Binhammer for inviting me to participate in the event. It was a great experience for me to talk with so many smart people in the space. Wish you, and your team the best of luck moving forward.
Breaking Down Silos Doesn’t Just Apply to Communications
Jul 19th
How often do you hear that communication silos don’t work? Quite often, right? We’ve probably read at least 10 posts on that over the last couple of years. They are right, of course, that for communications to truly be successful all parts of the engine need to be working together. Marketing needs to be talking to PR needs to be talking to customer service and so on… Without true integration, you’re a ship that’s dead in the water.
Funny thing about this silo concept… it can also be applied to research. Most companies have pretty large market research departments that service multiple brands within the organization. The issue, as it so often is within communications, is that the disparate groups don’t often talk to each other. This group services “X” brand, while this group assists customer service, while this other group services marketing/PR. We, as researchers, need to get better at talking to each other. Most often, there are cross-brand learnings that never get shared because we’re in our own little worlds. That needs to stop, and fast!
The explosion of data available through social media has only helped to amplify that disconnect. As we noted in the post about the social analytics lifecycle, we most often use data found in social media for PR and marketing purposes. We need to be using that across the organization – particularly in customer service, strategic planning and product development. But, in true silo fashion, strategic planning and product development researchers are off doing their thing. Improving collaboration amongst the different research departments is critical.
With that as the backdrop, what does the research group of the future look like? Who participates in a super market research function? Here are six components of the ideal market research group:
- Public Relations – This involves more than just sharing media monitoring reports, obviously. Many brands are doing interesting things in terms of measuring PR efforts – reports that encompass everything from topics covered by media, sentiment (ugh), story prominence, etc…
- Marketing – Under this umbrella goes whatever social media listening/research you’re conducting. Focus groups, surveys (internal and external) also fall under this bucket.
- Search – Before this blog dies, we’re going to hammer home the linkage between what’s being searched for and what’s being talked about online. Your search folks need to be an active participant in sharing data with this broader team.
- Product Development – The reality is that the people we talk with in social media, or offline (through focus groups/surveys) can easily provide us new product ideas or just enhancements. If the product development research team is working closely with the marketing research team, we can start building those products more quickly.
- Customer Service – We’ve all been hit by the unwanted customer service survey either on the Web or via phone. That kind of feedback is invaluable, however, both online and off.
- Investor Relations – My friends over in the IR department are benchmarking performance against competitors from a financial perspective. That’s information the product development team could use as they work to build a case for a new product initiative, particularly if one of your competitors has launched a similar product already.
- Management Reputation – some of this would fall under the market research, or investor surveying we do, but the strength of your management team is an integral part of your company’s valuation. Under this super market research group, we’d be conducting periodic surveys both in social media and the investor community to truly gauge sentiment.
I suppose what we’re getting at here is almost a “super dashboard” of data that a senior manager could access at any one time. This is where I see “market research” going in the future. Do you agree? What other components could be a part of the process?
An Update on the 5W’s of Social Media Listening
Jul 15th
Last August I was struggling for a way to talk about the value of social media listening. I knew it was important from a general market research perspective, but many companies hadn’t jumped on the “listening” bandwagon as yet. Social monitoring, in my view, was being labeled with the traditional media monitoring stigma. By that I mean, reactive, not timely and generally low value/priority for senior executives.
To try and explain the value, I came up with the 5W’s of social media listening. In that post for Social Media Explorer (check it out or the rest of this post isn’t likely to make much sense), I outlined the who, what, when, where and why of social listening, but then also how you turn that data into actionable insights. Actionable insights are what really resonate with senior level executives.
But, like anything else, ideas and concepts evolve. The who, what, when, where and why still apply to social media listening, but the horizons are broadening beyond just social media. We’re slowly getting there, but the real next generation for social media listening incorporates findings from search and Web analytics. To that end, I’ve taken a crack at “amending” the 5Ws to include those ideas.
- Who – This is still the most fundamental of all the “W’s,” but it’s the one so often erroneously defined. We don’t just want to know who is talking about your brand (are they doctors, moms, over 60 year old dads), but we want to know how influential they are within their micro community. To the point of our post on influence, we need to be able to identify the strength of the site they are participating on, as well as their individual influence. We don’t just want to know what their demographic characteristics are, but who they are specifically. Is it Jane519 in a forum? Is it @Joe519 on Twitter? What can we learn about Joe or Jane? What are their habits on the web? These all help better define the “who.”
- What – This “W” stays relatively consistent from the post last year, but the only addition would be not only finding what the individual is saying, but also what they are sharing. Quite often we post to Twitter, or Delicious, or Facebook without making a comment. But that doesn’t mean we don’t care about the content they’ve shared. Sharing, and commenting carry equal weight in this equation.
- Where – Specifically, where are the conversations happening about you and your products? This also stays consistent from last year, but again with an addition. We want to know where people are talking, where people are sharing content, but also where people land when they are searching. It may sound intuitive to you (echo chamber FTW), but social media conversation volume leads to increases in search volume leads to increases in views for pages other than brand.com. When that occurs, it’s an important insight to deliver to your brand manager/boss. Similarly, if they land on your brand page, where are they going? Are they going where you want them to go?
- When – When are they talking about you? Are the conversations taking place in a vacuum (often not the case)? Are they event-driven? For example, in the case of many public companies (particularly, B2B) you often see spikes in conversation around specific corporate events, like earnings announcements. Are the conversations cyclical? This stays consistent from last year.
- Why – As my friend Don Bartholomew pointed out to me when I originally started talking about this concept, the why cannot be entirely answered through listening. Primary research is required. The good news is that we’ve come a long way in social community surveying over the last year. This is something that’s not entirely common, yet, but will be as the push for more definitive ROI grows.
The key, as I noted then, is how we turn the data we glean from these “W’s” into actionable insights. Once you do, you’re golden with your superiors. What would you add to this list? Are we capturing everything?
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Influence: The Hardest Easiest Concept on the Web
Jul 14th
I’ve been amazed watching the sheer volume of conversation around the Fast Company Influence Project. Can’t we all agree once and for all that it’s a really poor representation of influence online? I mean, spreading a unique URL in the hopes that someone clicks on it, signs up and starts the project themselves is an appropriate metric for influence? In the words of my friend, David Mullen, “hogwash!”
Amber Naslund wrote a truly excellent post (please check out Brass Tack Thinking if you haven’t already) in response to the project that received a lot of fantastic comments and sparked a question in my own mind: Are we making the definition of online influence harder than it needs to be? I tend to think the answer is an emphatic yes!
I’ll agree that it’s very difficult to make sweeping generalizations on who (or what) is influential across verticals. I’ll also agree that it’s difficult to make assumptions on influence given the diversity of goals that every brand has online. However, I think what we’re talking about can be boiled into a relatively simple equation: Individual Influence + Outlet Influence = Overall Influence. Let’s hit each of those individually… Oh, one quick note – I’m only providing metrics for demonstration purposes. These shouldn’t be used in your campaign unless you feel that they align with your program’s goals. Please don’t cut and paste otherwise I’ll hunt you down 
. Anyway…
- Individual Influence – Each brand is going to have a different definition for how influential a person within their micro community is on other members of that community. What we’re really wanting to know is how relevant is their content (related to a particular), how many people are they (or could they) reach, how much content are they producing (without spamming us) and how often their content is picked up by others. There are metrics you can obtain pretty easily that underlies each of these categories, but I think it makes sense for you to start at that level and match metrics to each category that also align with your goals.
- Outlet Influence – Again, every brand is going to place varying weights of importance on the different channels. Some will place more emphasis on blogs, while others will think forums are most important. Ideally, to define influence within your online community, you’re taking into account a variety of channels, but understand that most aren’t going to go to that level. Whether you’re looking at inbound links for a blog, or total visits for a mainstream news outlet, or total authors on a forum, your goal is to quantify (ideally you’re looking at a bunch of metrics) how strong that Web site’s strength
The trick, in the end, is bringing those two areas together to provide a meaningful overall metric or score. I know there are a bunch of metrics underneath each of those categories, and I know I’m not giving them to you, but I think this easy categorization can help you start to get your head around influence online. Happy to try and answer specific metrics questions underlying this in the comments.
What’s Next for Social Analytics
Jul 13th
What’s Next for Social Media Analytics?
At WCG, we’re fond of talking about “next practices.” Best practices is a buzzword that’s been sufficiently killed by communicators for years. Yes, best practices are important, but with the speed in which social media moves, it’s almost impossible to label anything a best practice. Why would you want to anyway? Are you really going to model your social media program on what some other brand has done? Do they have the same customers as you? Are they trying to achieve the same goals that you are? The answer to both of those questions is probably “no.”
So where do you get started? We’ve advanced well beyond the stage where you need to hear us tell you how important listening is for your brand. It helps inform content, it helps alter content and it helps us measure the overall performance of your program. Most brands are starting to grasp that concept. What’s not being fully leveraged yet are the volumes of data and information available to a brand leader through the social Web. When we’re listening to online conversations, we’re typically doing so to inform our marketing and PR efforts. That’s great, but there’s much more to the equation than marketing and PR.
Last October, Ken Burbary and I developed the Social Analytics Lifecycle for brands looking to really take data available on the social Web to the next level. Our thought was that data on the Web, while being leveraged for marketing and PR could also be leveraged in the areas of product development, strategic planning, customer care and sales. Fundamentally, the lifecycle works by gathering data, filtering out signal from noise, segmenting the data by corporate department, developing insights that form business strategies, which ultimately lead to execution. And, as is the case with any “lifecycle,” the process then continually repeats based on changing goals.
There’s obviously more to this story that we’ll get into in future posts (like the convergence of Web, social and search analytics), but so far, we’re not seeing many (if any at all) brands using social data in this way. Are you? Where do you see the evolution of data going?
Content is King…. Or is it?
Jul 11th
“Content is king.” How often over the last 12-24 months, as social media has really exploded, have you heard that phrase? Probably more times than you can actually count, right? I know I’ve heard it a bunch. It’s one of those “buzz” phrases that causes everyone in the room to roll their eyes. Why? Well, it’s easy. We all know that content is important, but what people really want is a road map that helps them identify what content, specifically, will resonate with people. Brand leaders (ones not living under rocks) know that company’s are successfully engaging in social media. The ones who are still sitting on the sidelines are doing so because they aren’t sure where to get started, and what content they should use to reach their customers.
I’ve spent the last few years studying/helping to implement “next practices” (thanks to my boss, Bob Pearson, for that one) in social media and can say definitively that where brands fall down is in the lack of adequate pre-launch research. Realize, that as much as we talk about doing pre-launch research in social media there are still plenty of brands engaging in a practice known to many weekend golfers as “hit and hope.” “Lets launch our Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Flickr channel because everybody else is doing it.” Or, “we have tons of content that people care about.” And even, “we know because we’ve used it in press releases, our Web site and in media pitches.” Guess what? They often don’t care.
This, my friends, is where research comes in. Are you doing pre-launch listening? How are you combining those findings with offline research that your market research team has conducted? Are you truly identifying who the influencers are in your space? NOTE: There’s definitely some very cool, and more scientifically sound methods to define influence in your space then what Fast Company is doing. More of that to come in future posts. These aren’t the only questions that need to be answered, but are likely the primary ones you should be focusing on.
So where does that leave us? Well, I think based on the title of this blog, and the first part of this post you’ll realize how important I think research is for brands. It’s essential. So much so that I think analytics is the true king. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I think content is important. But without solid research your content is likely to miss the mark. This blog will be talking a lot about “next practices” in social media research. Sure, we’ll be talking a lot about general social media issues as well, but we’ll eventually gravitate back to analytics.
Hopefully I will give you plenty to think about, and implement in your own programs. If there are things that are eating at you now, just drop in a comment and we’ll tackle them one-by-one. Looking forward to embarking on the journey with you!
