Power Bi for Mac Users Workshop
A free workshop presented with the Latinas in Data at the Microsoft Global Power Platform Bootcamp Feb 23-24, 2024 in Orlando.
Welcome to Power Bi for Mac Users!
I’m Femmebot 10.0, your hostess for tonight’s workshop. With the help of Latinas in Data and Guy in a Cube on YouTube, I showed attendees of the Microsoft Power Bootcamp 2024 three ways to use Power Bi on a Mac:
Limited cloud-based Microsoft Fabric version. This is by far the easiest and most straightforward. It also provided short insights generated by AI with my very simple data.
Install a virtual machine. Installing a virtual machine allows you to split your Mac operating system into IOS and Windows. This was difficult for me at first, especially since my Mac did not have enough disk space to run the virtual machine. How much do you need? After clearing off space and creating a couple of visualizations, I am seeing it takes about 7 GBs on my machine as of the date of the presentation, February 23, 2024.
Turbo.net - apparently it’s free, but I didn’t try it. Not enough time! If you’ve used it, please let us know!
The Agenda for
Why do we use Macs? Why do we need Power Bi?
How to use the Cloud-based Power Bi.
How to install a Virtual Machine to use Power Bi.
Practical applications for marketers who need to show the ROI to the CEO.
Conclusions
Why do we use Macs?
The Mac User Experience naturally activates the creative side of my brain. Animating, video editing, and creating graphics for the Season 3 version of Dr. Nutmeg’s Femmebots® is more pleasurable for me on a Mac than it is on a Windows machine. If you don’t believe me, watch Dr. Nutmeg say it below, she’s always better at “showing” rather than telling.
Being creative is fun, but real life requires money to support creativity, so I often use Microsoft products like Excel to add, multiply, and track metrics over a specific time frame for my clients. I was told by several sources that I should try Power Bi to understand my business metrics better, so I tried the cloud-based version of Power Bi first, following the steps below:
How to Use Cloud-Based Power Bi on Mac
Step 1: Create a Free Power Bi Account.
Ugh! Another pinche account! I'm GenX peeps, I may still have my Friendster account somewhere on a server farm, far, far away that's now feeding an LLM to generate AI content. Sticks tongue out. Dang-it.
Step 2: Download Microsoft Fabric Softener, haha, JK.
Microsoft Fabric is the SaaS platform that serves a free version of the Power Bi app....
Step 3: Open cloud-based Power Bi.
The interface doesn't look too different from Google Studio which creates dashboards that are connected to Google Analytics (which measures traffic to websites). I'm familiar with these dashboards so I am not intimidated and create a VERY basic data visual to show the web traffic of a client.
Cool. But this is a very basic data visualization. I’ve created more complex visualizations with Infogram, which I have been using for my main clients for at least five or six years. So, what do I need Power Bi for again?
Step 4: Find a new reason for using Power Bi.
I’m about to give up on it at this point, but I don’t have an MBA, and I feel like I still don’t know what I don’t know. After watching a couple of YouTube videos, I learn that I can’t create relationships with the data in Infogram like I can with Power Bi. OK, fine. Let’s keep plugging away!
Step 5: Create a Dashboard using new Power Bi skills with the help of Latinas in Data.
On Monday, Dec. 11, I met with Latinas in Data member Lucrecia Krause, who works with Hewlett Packard as a High Performance Computing & AI NonStop Enterprise Solutions Architect Project Manager. Go girl!
I showcased my cloud-based version of Power Bi and the simple data visualization (above) that I had created for my client.
Lucrecia praised me, almost like a mother would, and said, "Great job with your first visualization!" She also got really excited about my learning journey, but at this point, I am still NOT excited, and I don’t see the point of learning more, but I'm determined to keep going.
Lucrecia pointed out the text conclusions to the right of the visualization:
Sum of Pageviews trended up, resulting in a 13.90% increase between January 2023 and November 2023.
Sum of Pageviews started trending up on April 2023, rising by 30.68% (3035) in 7 months.
Sum of Pageviews jumped from 9,894 to 12,929 during its steepest incline between April 2023 and November 2023.
"That's the power of the built-in AI that analyzes the data in different ways," said Lucrecia. Ooh, yeah, I didn’t even notice those automatic Insights! They told a fantastic story of increased web traffic, but even then, they were not enough to get this client to renew their contract with me. Womp womp.
At that point I thought I could get my other client some insights for their monthly newsletters. When Lucrecia showed me the power of tree map charts in PowerBi, it was like…
Boom chakalaka!
I knew, in that moment, it would be a tree map chart that would allow me to show insightful data to my other client. The next two days I barely slept trying to crunch the data, but eventually I learned from Mailchimp's analytics that the 2022 and 2023 monthly newsletters were more successful because the majority of them went out on Mondays after 4pm and Thursdays between 9am and 2pm.
But you know what? My brain just DID NOT want to return to Power Bi to create this visualization, so instead, I created a tree map chart in Infogram.
By the third day, when I presented the information intelligently to the client, I was feeling quite proud of myself when they said, "Hmmm, Mondays and Thursdays were the most popular times for our clients to open our newsletters? That's all good to know."
I got excited because all the work I put into crunching the data with both Power Bi and Infogram would surely result in getting paid more for my services. But then the client said:
"The only thing is, we've never gotten any new clients from marketing."
Womp womp…again.
We interrupt this Power BI workshop for Mac Users with a commentary on the J-O-B of communications and marketing...
Marketing is good for visibility (which is important to a company’s bottom line) but it often doesn't generate the money needed to run a business.
Great. I truly thought this data I was crunching was valuable, and that I was ultimately going to help CEOs and Executive Directors make data-informed decisions for their businesses and nonprofits…and they certainly did, by not spending more money on marketing!!!
And then I realized the only way I was going to prove that my data visualizations are valuable was to apply it to my own project: TheFemmebots.com.
It's a Pivot!!!!!!!!
OK, so the idea for a while has been to apply everything we did for the clients to TheFemmebots.com.
Now that we have a Substack and TikTok for Dr. Nutmeg’s Femmebots®, I want to track traffic from social media, the website TheFemmebots.com, and backlinks from other websites that convert into paid subscriptions.
We will spend the same amount of time and energy on TheFemmebots.com marketing as we spent on clients last year. If we want the marketing to directly impact the bottom line, ie PAID SUBSCRIPTIONS, we will need to do the following in 2024, Q1:
Add a Tag to the Subscribe button like we did for "Apply Now" on Urban Alliance.
Add a Subscribe button to all newsletters in 2024.
SEO optimize more content on the website in order to drive traffic from Google and social media.
IF there were 89 visitors to the homepage of TheFemmebots.com in Q4 2023, THEN which percentage of those visitors can we convert into PAID subscribers in Q1 2024?
70% of 89 visitors seems like a reasonable conversion rate, since that’s the percentage opening up the Substack newsletters. That’s 62 paid subscribers.
IF the annual subscription to TheFemmebots.com is $30, THEN the maximum amount of revenue generated by 62 paid subscribers would be $1,869. That’s not even a full month’s salary.
OK, the only way this will work out is by scheduling all the posts ahead of time for the rest of Feb thru March 31. This way we can potentially generate passive income while working on other income streams.
It's a start! But how do we get to this sample competitive marketing analysis report, which is included as a template in Power Bi?
I think this will require the more robust version of Power Bi, which takes us into Part II of this workshop:
How to Install a Virtual Machine to run Power Bi on Windows 11
If you decide you need to access the fully powered version of Power Bi, you’ll have to install a Virtual Machine on your Mac. Scroll down if you want to see how I installed Parallels, which will run Windows 11 on your Mac. Thanks to the help of Gilda Alvarez, founder of Latinas in Data here in Central Florida!
Step 1: Find out if you have enough Ram on your Mac to run this virtual machine.
Go to System Settings/General/Storage on your Mac.
At first, I did not have enough storage because I was storing all my video and animations on my hard drive, which is a super no-no in film production, but I was doing it anyway because I figured I would eventually delete all the videos/animations and upload them to YouTube and TikTok servers. But it turned out that was NOT working out for me because Mac automatically stores files on the Cloud, which was making editing really difficult because files would suddenly go unlinked on my Premiere Pro timelines.
Now that I knew there was a practical reason for buying an external hard drive for $76, I went ahead and bit the bullet in order to make my creative life easier. I transferred all my heavy video and animation files to the external hard drive (which was giving me issues at first, but then started working, thank God!)
As a result, I now have 42.86 GB available on my Mac storage, woot!
Step 2: Install Parallels Desktop for Mac in order to run Windows 11.
It turns out I could only use this free virtual machine for 14 days, and I was dumb because I didn’t try Power Bi before my trial ran out. Womp womp…again. Yikes! So many disappointments in this process! Even when I tried to create a different account using a different email address, the Parallels platform detected that my specific Mac with my specific IP had already installed a version, so then I had to cough up another $84.99 for a year-long subscription to Parallels.
This experiment is getting expensive, y’all!
Step 3: Re-configure your budget and determine your ROI.
In order to continue this experiment, I canceled my SEO SEMrush account, for which I have been paying $129/month. As you can see, investing in a tech career can get really expensive when you don’t have enough paying clients, so some hard decisions have to be made.
I already paid $1,038 for a ticket to the 2023 Grace Hopper conference as an investment into finding new clients, and as of today, February 19, I only have one client and two paying subscribers to my brand new Substack.
Would this paid version of Power Bi help me determine my ROI and a strategy for converting 254 new users to TheFemmebots.com into 254 paid subscribers in a way that my free Infogram account can’t?
Because I made a commitment to Latinas in Data to present this workshop, I decided to bite the bullet — again — and pay the $84.99 for the Virtual Machine.
OK, now I have 35.11GB left on my machine, which is probably plenty for the things I want to do, but at least now we see that this Virtual Machine + Windows 11 + Power Bi and whatever dashboards you create take about 7GBs.
Conclusions
After creating two different Power Bi dashboards to better understand which pain points I am attempting to fill in the market, I’ve come to the following conclusions:
Educational workshops need to be free for this demographic of Latinas in Tech and Latinas in Data. I am not showing/teaching anything that can’t already be found online. I’m really just inviting subscribers to learn with me while sharing their own skills and ideas. The amount of time I’ve spent learning, however, will more than likely NOT be recovered by paid subscriptions. Instead, I should pivot to just offering chapters of “The Nine Lives of Maria La Gata” because the open rate has remained consistent for three chapters.
Chapters of “The Nine Lives of Maria La Gata” need to be paid because there is a hole in the entertainment market that shows Latinas and women of color paving their own paths as entrepreneurs. Entertainment is not a necessity, therefore, if I am able to find an audience that will buy a ticket to the show, I’ll be as happy as Lin Manuel Miranda and JLo. Meantime, I’ll probably need to keep trying to land a full-time job or a new contract.
The Latinas in Data — not the built-in AI of Power Bi — deserve the credit for helping me with this experiment. Lucrecia Krause helped me learn how to use the cloud-based version of Power Bi; Gilda Alvarez of Waveform Data Solutions showed me how to install the Virtual Machine; and Andrea Freire at Adalitika helped me understand that my dashboard has good metrics, “but it does not show what your users are looking for, or how your newsletter helps them solve a problem.”
Oh. You mean, I can’t just email my random thoughts every week about tech??? LoL. Thanks for the reality check, Andrea!
After talking with Andrea, I skipped over to ChatGPT and asked how marketers convert website visitors into paid subscribers. Here’s what it spit out:
It involves a combination of strategies focused on engaging your audience, demonstrating value, and providing a seamless user experience. Here are some steps you can take to achieve this:
Understand Your Audience: Before implementing any strategies, it's crucial to understand your target audience's needs, preferences, and pain points. Conduct market research, analyze customer data, and gather feedback to gain insights into what motivates your audience to subscribe.
Create Compelling Content: Develop high-quality, valuable content that addresses your audience's interests and provides solutions to their problems. Whether it's articles, videos, webinars, or podcasts, your content should showcase your expertise and differentiate your offering from competitors.
Offer Exclusive Benefits: Provide incentives for visitors to subscribe, such as exclusive access to premium content, special offers, discounts, or members-only events. Highlight the unique value proposition of your subscription service to entice users to sign up.
Optimize Conversion Paths: Streamline the subscription process by optimizing your website's user interface and navigation. Make it easy for visitors to find subscription options, understand the benefits, and complete the signup process with clear calls-to-action and intuitive design.
Use Social Proof: Showcase testimonials, case studies, or user reviews to build credibility and trust with potential subscribers. Social proof can reassure visitors that others have had a positive experience with your subscription service, making them more likely to convert.
Implement A/B Testing: Experiment with different elements of your website, such as headlines, pricing strategies, and subscription forms, using A/B testing to determine which variations yield the highest conversion rates. Continuously optimize based on the results to maximize conversions.
Personalize the Experience: Utilize personalization techniques to tailor the subscription experience based on individual preferences and behavior. This could involve recommending relevant content, sending personalized email offers, or providing customized subscription options.
Engage with Visitors: Interact with visitors through various channels, such as live chat, social media, or email newsletters, to build relationships and nurture leads. Address any questions or concerns promptly and provide helpful guidance to encourage subscription sign-ups.
Offer Free Trials or Samples: Allow visitors to experience the value of your subscription service firsthand by offering free trials, samples, or limited access periods. Once users see the benefits for themselves, they may be more inclined to convert to paid subscribers.
Track and Analyze Metrics: Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rate, churn rate, and subscriber lifetime value to evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies. Use analytics tools to gather data and insights, then adjust your approach accordingly to optimize conversion rates over time.
By implementing these strategies and continuously refining your approach based on feedback and data, you can effectively convert website visitors into paid subscribers and grow your subscription business.
Power BI is a powerful business intelligence tool that allows you to visualize and analyze data to gain insights into your metrics effectively. Here's how you can use Power BI to track and analyze metrics:
Data Preparation: Start by connecting Power BI to your data sources, such as databases, spreadsheets, or cloud services. Use Power Query Editor within Power BI to clean, transform, and prepare your data for analysis. This step is crucial for ensuring that your data is accurate and structured properly for analysis.
Create Visualizations: Once your data is prepared, you can create visualizations to represent your metrics graphically. Power BI offers a wide range of visualization options, including bar charts, line charts, pie charts, maps, and more. Choose the most appropriate visualization type for each metric to effectively communicate insights.
Dashboard Creation: Build dashboards within Power BI to bring together multiple visualizations and metrics into a single, interactive interface. Dashboards allow you to monitor key metrics at a glance and track performance trends over time. You can customize dashboards to suit your specific needs and preferences.
Interactive Analysis: Power BI enables interactive analysis of your data, allowing you to drill down into specific details, filter data based on criteria, and slice and dice data to uncover insights. Use features like cross-filtering, slicers, and bookmarks to explore your metrics from different perspectives and answer specific questions.
Data Modeling: Take advantage of Power BI's data modeling capabilities to create relationships between different data tables and define calculations and measures. Data modeling allows you to perform complex analyses and calculations, such as year-over-year comparisons, growth rates, and cohort analysis.
Sharing and Collaboration: Share your Power BI reports and dashboards with colleagues and stakeholders to collaborate and make data-driven decisions together. Power BI offers various sharing options, including sharing via the Power BI service, embedding reports into other applications, and exporting reports to other formats.
Scheduled Refresh: Set up scheduled data refreshes to ensure that your Power BI reports and dashboards are always up to date with the latest data. Power BI can automatically refresh data from your data sources on a predefined schedule, keeping your metrics current and accurate.
Advanced Analytics: Explore advanced analytics capabilities within Power BI, such as predictive analytics, clustering, and machine learning integration. These features allow you to uncover deeper insights and forecast future trends based on historical data.
By leveraging Power BI's features and capabilities effectively, you can track and analyze metrics efficiently, gain valuable insights into your business performance, and make data-driven decisions to drive success.
Thanks for joining this very long workshop. If you feel like you learned something, leave a tip!