A great read from the MIX team. Nice work.
150 Relationships
So how many relationships can you maintain – and for how long can you maintain them without face-to-face contact. 150 and six are the numbers. The Dunbar Numbers:
For Dunbar, there’s a simple explanation for this: In the same way that human beings can’t breathe underwater or run the 100-meter dash in 2.5 seconds or see microwaves with the naked eye, most cannot maintain many more than 150 meaningful relationships. Cognitively, we’re just not built for it. As with any human trait, there are outliers in either direction—shut-ins on the one hand, Bill Clinton on the other. But in general, once a group grows larger than 150, its members begin to lose their sense of connection. We live on an increasingly urban, crowded planet, but we have Stone Age social capabilities. “The figure of 150 seems to represent the maximum number of individuals with whom we can have a genuinely social relationship, the kind of relationship that goes with knowing who they are and how they relate to us,” Dunbar has written. “Putting it another way, it’s the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.”
Are Books Dead?
I really struggle with this one. At the low-end of the market, for sure. And all those self published eBooks and their cousins are unlikely to make it into print. But for the rest of the market, there are plenty of opportunities to stay in print and win. Cooking, art, boats – all categories I buy in and all in print.
E-books, in other words, may turn out to be just another format—an even lighter-weight, more disposable paperback. That would fit with the discovery that once people start buying digital books, they don’t necessarily stop buying printed ones. In fact, according to Pew, nearly 90% of e-book readers continue to read physical volumes. The two forms seem to serve different purposes. – WSJ
At the same time, I think we need much better packaging of music. Reading Paul Kelly’s incredible biog made me realize it. Chapters begin with a set of lyrics that are just amazing. It made me realize how much we’ve lost when we can’t sit and revel in the words and story behind them.
What do you think?
Up And Atom!
Get up early.
Get up at the same time every day.
Adjust the time you go to bed if tired. Not the time you get up.
Do the most important thing first. Do not do email.
Invest in yourself first – meditate, work-out, journal, walk…
Make it a habit.
Pretty straightforward really. Do this and good things happen. Building rewarding habits are life changing.
You can read more on this, or you can test it for yourself.
The Social Media Metrics Muddle
Social Media Metrics are the (or at least “a”) new black. As a CMO I get at least two calls a week from some start-up that is tracking, researching or trying to cook-up some new way of measuring social.
Most efforts are muddled. Here’s why. They muddle tracking and monitoring (critical if you are looking to listen, understand your reputation and serve customers better) with measuring the performance of marketing investments in social. The reality is that most of these investments are a fraction of the total marketing spend. Think less than 2%. So why bother?
Ron’s most recent blog is right on the mark:
The most important question to address isn’t “what social media metrics should we be tracking?” but “should we even spend time and money developing social media metrics to track?”
Assume that a company’s marketing budget is $100 million, and that 50% of it is spent on TV advertising, 20% on print advertising, 20% on direct mail, 5% on online advertising, 4% on events, and 1% on social media.
Of the six approaches that marketing invests in, which of the six would you want to have the most accurate marketing ROI metrics?
My top three would be TV, print, and direct mail. Cuz that’s where 90% of the marketing dollars go.
If the CMO of my fictional company doesn’t have the “right” social media metrics in place, so what? Does it really matter that much?
Not really.
That doesn’t mean social isn’t important. I’d argue it is THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE MARKETING MIX.
Here is what marketers can’t ignore. We need to be clear on how we are creating value for our respective businesses. Social can significantly reduce the number of calls to call centers saving millions. That is value creation. Marketers can use the power of social networks to win new customers fast and at a fraction of the cost of other mediums. That is value creation.
Perhaps the HBR story that Ron takes issue with is semi-right here – although I am with Ron, you can’t just assume that social impacted sales. Correlation is a lousy means of proving impact.
The key here is to do social with intent. What this means is running programs and iniatives that are specifically social and at scale. Programs that lead with social.
Start measuring what you create for the business and you’ll be on the right path. Get caught in the social media measurement muddle and you’ll end-up going nowhere.
Critically, just do social. Do it now. The most effective social programs I’ve seen never started with a metric – they started with a great idea that got executed well against a clear customer need and social opportunity. The rest is history.
