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April the mixtape Giraffe (Spotify Playlist)
Here is the April playlist. I hope you enjoy it and I want to say again if Feel it Still isn't a huge hit this summer, Top 40 radio will have their first big miss of the year.
Occam's Razor
One of the questions I get asked every day when it comes to social and content marketing is, "how do I know what to do" or put another way, "how do I know what to boost?"
In marketing, these might be the two questions marketers struggle with the most, however, the answer, it turns out might just be Occam's Razor.
William Ockham (the law is sometimes referred to as Ockham's Razor instead of Occam's) was a 14th-century friar who postulated that in the case that there are two explanations for something, it is the simplest that is usually the correct explanation.
In your life, this might be that your satellite dish went out.
One explanation could be that a man-sized eagle from Pluto is mad about no longer being from something classified as "a planet" and has decided that stopping you from watching Dancing With the Stars will be the best revenge.
A much simpler explanation would be that the wind has taken your dish down.
How does this work in content?
This past week I was speaking to a friend who is a pastor at our church, the week after Easter is a tough one because it almost has to be a stronger message than the Easter message since there tends to be a large influx of people to church that doesn't normally go.
In a surprising turn of events, if you get Easter right, they might come back. If they come back, you can't suck.
So, he was saying how it wasn't sure what he should do, I pointed out that there was a Facebook Live video from 6 am on Easter morning that had been seen by 1000 people and had reached nearly 3000.
This church has about 250 active members.
I said to him, I think that video has "raised its hand" and told you what you should speak about on Sunday. Because for me, the answer seemed obvious, but to him, he was struggling. He was struggling because he couldn't see it. You see, we all get far too close to the thing we care about and when you are that close, you can't make out any of the detail so you invent explanations that complicate your marketing.
Content is more ubiquitous than ever, every brand, every marketer, every agency will tell you that you need content.
They will tell you that you need to promote that content and they are not wrong.
But you need to know what type of content and that is where content moves from banal to sublime. You need to know when to promote it and to whom.
How do you define that type? You listen, you watch, to market to your customers instead of yourself.
When I worked in radio we spent a lot of time talking about what records to play - our demographic was 23-year-old females and at the time I had one female employee on my staff. This isn't unique, in the 2016 best Radio Program Directors in America there are only 2 females in the top 30 and 4 on the whole list.
It was vital that I wasn't playing records for me, I had to market to our customer or we would lose. We did that by listening to them, asking questions, taking the feedback and making marketing decisions. I learned early that I am not a paying customer, you might pay to keep the lights on, but your actual customer is the one you need to reach and they are talking all of the time these days.
We just need to listen.
Once you start listening, you will see Occam's Razor everywhere. Once you understand that the trick isn't to gain an audience, it is to keep and convert them - discovering what they want to see/hear/read/consume will become second nature.
In the digital space, there is a new interface, new platform, and new data point about every hour and that can distract you. That distraction can become a din and that din can push you into a deadline. Once you are running against the clock, you have already lost the ability to sit and listen because you need to react, not to act.
I have a friend who paraphrases the infamous "paralysis by analysis" or the idea that you are going to investigate every possible variable to make sure you don't miss anything - and then you miss everything.
The simplest answer is usually the correct one.
Or put on with a bit of southern charm...
Keep it simple, stupid.
Who Doesn't Read?
I was served a study from the Pew Research Center in my inbox Sunday. It went on to say that 26% of Americans had not read a book in the past 12 months and that 20% of America has not visited a library in the past year.
There are some other interesting stats about income levels and how they attach themselves to the data — people with lower income levels tend to not read at a greater level than people in higher income brackets. But the issue is bigger than income levels can measure.
In March I read 9 books. This year I have read 18 already. I do that in part because I love books and in part because there is research that it may fight against Alzheimer’s which took my Grandmother and has ravaged my uncle — needless to say, I am actively working all my options.
Reading long form pieces, like books, tends to boost intelligence, makes people more empathetic, and more importantly in 2017 — it increases your ability to think critically.
Fake news is a real issue, but it isn’t a new one. In 1835 the Great Moon Hoax may seem preposterous to modern humans but 25% of that population was illiterate. Maybe that seems like a high number but in 2017 14% of adults read below a 4-grade level and cannot make sense of complex ideas. In a 2015 study by the department of education, only 37% of 12 grade students can read at a proficiency level appropriate to their age.
So if you wonder about how fake news spreads or false stories take hold in the social space — maybe we should buy our friends books this year for birthdays?
Think what would happen if everyone read ONE book this year — then think about a time where people who read 50–60 books in a year aren’t special. Now one more, think about a world where books don’t exist because we stopped using them and your sources of information come only from mass or digital mediums owned by entities that don’t have our best interest in mind…
I am off to the bookstore.