Last week, Chris talked about how one of my favorite planning techniques is scenario-based. He’s right – I love scenarios because they force you to think outside of the boundaries. The next step is to figure out the actions you’re going to take.
When I worked in-house on a product line we were constantly wanting to make changes to the software, adjust things, and fix issues. In order to get the approval we, the product owners, had to draft up a business case for why make the change was a priority. I learned very quickly that the risk assessment part of the document had the most impact. Essentially, not just what action are you going to take, but what happens if you choose this action?
Do nothing.
Those two words would carry the most weight when trying to determine if what we were proposing should get approved.
“If we do nothing, this is the likely outcome”
This could be anything from, “if we do nothing, the problem will persist and we will lose customers”, or, “if we do nothing, customers who use IE9 will have no issues but any potential customers who are using a newer web browser will not have an optimized experience”.
By outlining the “do nothing” scenario and associated risks, we were likely to get something approved, even if it was a minor change. You can liken it to “we’ve always done it this way” or “status quo” – basically, we’re complacent and are not invested in doing more to keep our customers happy.
When you’re planning out your scenarios, the “do nothing” version is just as important as the other action plans that you’re putting together. You may not have the funds or the resources to do something so understanding the risk of doing nothing will help you make your case.
What are you going to do?
-Katie
This week’s Bright Idea is our session from Social Media Marketing World 2020 on social media ROI where we answer key questions about social media ROI:
- What is ROI?
- When is it appropriate to use, and when isn’t it?
- How do you compute it?
- What goes wrong most?
This week’s Rear View Mirror looks at Facebook brand engagement rates. How’s it looking out there, as the first quarter begins to wind down?
Here’s the headline: the overall median engagement rate for brands’ unpaid content on Facebook is 0.022%. Put another way, that’s 2.2 out of 10,000 people engaging with a brand’s content on Facebook. That’s an appallingly low number, but it has increased ever so slightly since 2019, when the rate was 0.0215%. In other words, for brands, nothing has changed for unpaid content – it’s still largely an exercise in futility. The smaller the audience, the better the performance, so avoid any campaigns to buy followers/fans – keep your organic audience small.
The bottom line for brands: Facebook is an ad channel only.
Methodology: Trust Insights used Facebook’s Crowdtangle software to extract 1,717,991 posts from 3,033 brand accounts on Facebook. The brand list was provided by Facebook and augmented by Trust Insights. The date of the study period is January 1, 2020 – March 3, 2020. The date of extraction is March 4, 2020. Posts were de-duped by post URL. Engagement rate is defined as (reactions + comments + shares) / size of page follower count at posting. Trust Insights is the sole sponsor of the study and neither gave nor received compensation for data used, beyond applicable service fees to software vendors.
- {PODCAST} In-Ear Insights: Data Science 101 at #SMMW20
- Training Your Machine Learning Model with Your “Day In The Life”
- Trust Insights in Brooklyn May 11th
- Trust Insights Marketing Bootcamp via Pre-Event Session at madconNYC
- 1 Question Survey from Trust Insights (January 2020)
- Instant Insights: The Video-First Transmedia Content Framework
- Marketing Analytics, Data Science and Leadership March 2, 2020 Week In Review
Shiny Objects is a roundup of the best content you and others have written and shared in the last week.
Social Media Marketing
- 10 Facebook Conversion Rate Strategies for Online Sales via ReadWrite
- Twitter for Business: Highlights From the Twitter Agency Playbook
- Social Media Influencers Find Novel Uses For Machine Learning
Media and Content
- How to Write a Great Feature Release that Reporters and Audiences Want to Read
- Supercharge Your B2B PR With Newsjacking via Crenshaw Communications
- BuzzStream Podcast Guesting – Why it Should be Part of Your Content Marketing Mix and How to Setup Your Pitch via BuzzStream
Tools, Machine Learning, and AI
- Faceting and Reordering with ggplot2 via Python and R Tips
- AI will revolutionize FinTech in 2020
- AI is the Light that Leads from the Past to the Future via ReadWrite
Analytics, Stats, and Data Science
- Women in Data Science 2020 Livestream via Data Science 101
- 13 Google Analytics Tracking Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)
- Untangling Seven Myths and Truths about Data Quality via insideBIGDATA
SEO, Google, and Paid Media
- The Rules of Link Building via Best of Whiteboard Friday via Moz
- Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: More & better data export in Search Console
- When Should You Insert Keyphrases Into Your Copy? via SuccessWorks
Business and Leadership
- An epic landscape of 2,427 European martech solutions via Chief Marketing Technologist
- Most Agencies Bet on This Distribution Model
- Are Candor, Humility, and Trust Making a Comeback? via Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
Got a “Silly” Question?
One of the things we’ve found with friends and colleagues is that you have questions you don’t feel comfortable asking in front of your peers for fear of appearing less knowledgeable. We all have those questions – they start with phrases like, “I really should know this but…” or “I’m so embarrassed to ask this, but…”
So we’ve put up a page where you can ask those questions anonymously, and we’ll answer them here or on our blog, podcast, YouTube channel, newsletter, etc. without ever naming names.
If you’ve got a question that you want to ask privately/anonymously, go ahead and ask it here!
Join the Club
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Upcoming Events
Where can you find us in person?
- MarTech West, April 2020, San Jose, CA
- ContentTech Summit, April 2020, San Diega, CA
- HELLO Conference, April 2020, New Jersey
- MadConNYC, May 2020, New York City
- Women in Analytics, June 2020, Columbus, OH
- MAICON 2020, July 2020, Cleveland, OH
Going to a conference we should know about? Reach out!
Want some private training at your company? Ask us!
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Stay In Touch
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Required FTC Disclosures
Events with links have purchased sponsorships in this newsletter and as a result, Trust Insights receives financial compensation for promoting them.
Trust Insights maintains business partnerships with companies including, but not limited to, IBM, Talkwalker, Zignal Labs, Agorapulse, and others. While links shared from partners are not explicit endorsements, nor do they directly financially benefit Trust Insights, a commercial relationship exists for which we may receive indirect financial benefit.
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