Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big believer in being concise. Some of the most successful content I’ve created features short, punchy copy. Short content paired with striking visuals should be the foundation of your content strategy. But might I suggest it not be the sum total of it?

At its heart, social media marketing is about communicating to humans in a human way. People crave variety, in almost everything. Take, for example, this excellent illustration from Gary Provost:

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”

The same principle goes for content.

• Everyone loves animated gifs and YouTube videos – BUT, they still binge-watch hours of a series like The Walking Dead or Jessica Jones on Netflix.
• Everyone loves quippy, inspiring Instagram posts – BUT, platforms like Medium, which are built around long-form articles, are also growing in popularity.

As marketers, we’re familiar with the visual metaphor of a funnel. What if you flipped that visual? What if you thought about your content strategy as a Storytelling Pyramid?

Imagine the USDA’s Food Pyramid. The wide base – the “foundation” of your Storytelling Pyramid – would be many pieces of short form content and visuals. These are the “starches” of your content strategy. Not terrifically filling, but they provide a quick boost of energy to your audience. They’re light, addictive snacks.

Above that, you’ve got the “meat-and-potatoes” middle of your Storytelling Pyramid. This would include things like infographics, how-to blog posts, YouTube videos and email marketing. They require a little more time to create and consume than the content in the base. But they’re also more satisfying. They give your audience something to consider, share and possibly re-use (with proper attribution, naturally).

At the very top of your Storytelling Pyramid you’ll find a very few pieces of rich, decadent long-form content. These are lengthy, well-researched and cited articles. It could be a series of half-hour or hour long podcasts, a webinar or even a feature-length documentary. It could be a full-length nonfiction book. The time required to consume this content represents an investment on the part of your audience. So you must ensure they don’t feel cheated. The quality of your long form content needs to be outstanding. But if it is, you’ve built tremendous trust with your audience.

A healthy diet requires variety, and so does an effective content strategy. By varying the length (and depth) of your content, you can build a healthy, long-term relationship with your audience.

And that could keep your business bottom line healthy for a long, loooooong time.

The post Making the Case for Long-Form Content appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

There’s no question that working in social media can be a soul-crushing experience at times.

For bloggers like O’Neill whose business is inextricably linked with their personal social media image, the pressure to appear perfect at all times is intense. Agency and brand marketers may have a greater degree of separation between personal and work-related social accounts, but in some ways that can cause even more negativity. It’s often unclear whether you can still have a true “personal” presence on social media that doesn’t have to be filtered in light of your career. That ambiguity (do I have a “private” social life or not?) can be similarly stressful.  

As a recent post on Convince and Convert attests, there is a personal price associated with being a successful marketer. Instead of validating your hard work by looking at a single Instagram, Twitter or Tumblr account’s stats, your efforts are dispersed across dozens of client or employer brand accounts. You’re caught in a double bind, feeling like your personal accounts never get the attention you should give them, but also feeling awkward when those accounts get better numbers than those you manage for others.

It’s a lot of psychological stress, any way you look at it.

Once you start measuring and quantifying human interactions, it’s hard to stop. You become the mirror image of Cypher from the movie The Matrix. Instead of seeing a set of numbers as “blonde, brunette, redhead,” you start seeing blondes, brunettes and redheads (including yourself) as a set of numbers. When you can’t stop measuring “success,” you lose the ability to be spontaneous, human and authentic; ironically, the attributes that most often attract the very success you seek.

And if you’re not sure those really are the attributes that attract people, you probably missed The Bloggess’ beautifully transparent “embarrassing moments” conversation this week. Probably because you were measuring something.

A recent article in The Atlantic argues that making tweets searchable and indexable has lead to the “dehumanization” of Twitter, which once closely mimicked live conversation. In our zeal to measure and quantify Twitter, we may well have killed it. If we’re not careful, those of us who earn a living on Twitter and other social media channels might end up killing ourselves. But it’s not a foregone conclusion.

Setting limits is possible – even if the dominant industry culture is stuck in an unhealthy “always on” mentality. Good marketers are capable of pushing back against strong resistance to achieve our career goals. There’s no reason we can’t do it to maintain our personal wellbeing. Striving for a more balanced, grounded perspective is possible. If a person whose full-time vocation is social media marketing can take a month-long personal Facebook break (yes, I did it, last month), then anyone can take steps towards a healthier level of screen-time.

The alternative is career burnout – and burned bridges in our personal lives. Which is nobody’s idea of a good ROI.

The post Avoiding Burnout as a Social Media Professional appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

With over 70 billion page views and 55 million posts across over 8,000 active communities in 2014, Reddit represents a passionate collection of online communities. Activity is based on sharing, voting and commenting on content covering a diverse set of topics. These communities, called subreddits, attract users who share similar interests with focused conversations.

Unlike most social platforms, brands don’t have an official presence on the Reddit community. Users are aggressively resistant to overt marketing, and advertising opportunities are limited. But don’t be fooled into believing the channel lacks strong value for brands. While it requires a deft touch, there is an opportunity to participate by adding value, and Reddit boasts a high volume of brand and industry fan discussions which can provide rich insights to marketers.

Help the community with answers, insight, and advice

According to the detailed report, there are rich collections of subreddits for major auto brands, including Ford. In addition to discussions centered on specific makes and models, subreddits dedicated to more general automotive topics like “WhatCarShouldIBuy” also include a high volume of brand mentions.

A Ford representative well-versed in their culture and information could earn a place in the community by adding real value to these conversations, as long as he or she was willing to be transparent and act with integrity. If you can answer questions with authority, you have the chance to meet members at critical decision points where your point of view can have a real impact.

Tap into organic fan community discussion

Looking at the number of subscribers for brand-related subreddits isn’t the only way to measure value on Reddit. Another useful metric is daily average posts per subscriber in those subreddits, which measures content creation rate.

This is where you can really see the value of Reddit as a fan activation channel. Similar to Tumblr, the Reddit community is adept at creating, curating and critiquing user-generated content. Stories within your fan-base are very likely to surface first on Reddit. Use this knowledge wisely, and dip into these conversations only when your brand can be of genuine service to its fans.

Monitor posts for patterns, trends and issues

While some industries don’t feature as many subreddits dedicated to brands, they can still contain a high volume of brand mentions within more general topical discussions. Fashion is a good example, which the report examines in detail. These conversations provide a rich source of insights into consumer attitudes towards your brand, as well as competitors and the industry in general. For example, the men’s fashion advice subreddit includes mentions of brands like J Crew, Van’s, GAP and REI. These conversations are worth analyzing to discover what trendsetters really think.

We’ve just scratched the surface of how brands can better leverage this channel, which many have written off as too difficult to approach. You can learn more about best practices for leveraging Reddit by downloading the FREE Spredfast Social Report: Volume 2. It features examples of how major brands are using this notoriously tricky social platform, as well as unexpected insights into the international social media landscape.

While Spredfast is a sponsor for this post, all opinions are true and our own

The post Using Reddit to Inspire Fan Activation for your Brand appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

3 Steps for using content to optimize your visuals

1. Identifying your core customers and building personas around them.
2. Targeting their emotional hot buttons with striking images.
3. Framing those images artfully with brief, snappy copy to get them to share and click.  

When you think about using text and images together in social media, you probably think of layering text over an image. While the classic “quote over image” still gets strong engagement on some channels, a recent post gave the surprising statistic that text on image isn’t the strongest presentation for content on Instagram.

Don’t forget the framing copy that accompanies your image posts! If you’re treating the text surrounding your image as an afterthought or throwaway, you’re missing an important element. In addition to being machine-readable text, which is useful from a search marketing perspective, this copy can be a powerful way to set up or pay off the image for your audience.

This is a particularly effective technique when it comes to employing humor in your posts. Think of the image and it’s framing text as the set-up and punchline of a joke. It’s a powerful way to humanize your social media content, avoiding a too-salesy approach while making a big impact. Here’s an example from when I was handling social media at CafePress:

Writers tend to ramble; we love the sound of our own words. Shorter is often more effective.

The case for copy in a visual world

Part of social media content is being engaging with very few words or characters, so wordsmithing talent is still incredibly relevant, despite the current focus on visual assets. When your copy and image work together, it’s possible to get as many or more shares as likes. That’s the key to virality. It’s not enough to get people to read and click. You have to make it something they have to share with their whole network.

In a couple of cases, I managed to get 25-50% reach for posts, organically. With a fanbase of 400k-500k, reaching 100k-250k people without paying for Facebook ads is pretty impressive. I accomplished that by knowing my audience, getting deeply familiar with my catalog of visual assets, and framing those images with copy designed to provoke a strong reaction.

The post Using Clever Copywriting to Enhance Social Visuals appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Tumblr skews young and passionate, and is well known for active fan communities surrounding books, television series and movies. While Gen-X fandoms congregated on forums and discussion boards, millennials geek out over their shared passions on Tumblr. Typically, using an extensive number of animated GIFs. Sharing content (aka “reblogging”) is the primary activity on Tumblr, which makes it both extremely viral and a perfect platform for fan activation.

So, to better understand the nature of Tumblr we’re going to dive into how major television networks are utilizing the network to their advantage.

Start with a question

When I was digital marketing manager at CafePress, I quickly discovered our fan-created content related to hot television and movie properties like The Hunger Games and Supernatural met with a warm welcome on Tumblr. But would fans appreciate or resent direct engagement from “official” accounts for these properties? That’s the big question Spredfast sought to answer.  

Is it worth the time for television shows to engage with the Tumblr community, if their fans are already proactively sharing content?

“Is it worth the time for television shows to engage with the Tumblr community, if their fans are already proactively sharing content?” Media brands need to know if having an official presence boosts fan activity, or inhibits it.

Arriving at a clear answer was more complicated than you might think.

The time and place for being original

The report analyzed almost 300 Tumblrs dedicated to 85 current television shows, from traditional broadcast, cable, and streaming services. The key metric for engagement on Tumblr is “note counts.” “Note counts” measure how many times a post has been liked or reblogged. However, attribution for shared content is cumulative. In other words, original content shared by official network accounts adds to both their own note counts and the fan accounts who share it.

Because fan Tumblrs function as curators, they pull the best content on a topic from multiple sources. Network Tumblrs post more original content — they’re half as likely to reblog content than fan Tumblrs. But those fan Tumblrs are incredibly prolific, posting from four times as many sources as network Tumblrs.   

This means that looking at note counts alone makes the fan Tumblrs appear more popular than network accounts. By diving deeper and looking only at original content, it turns out network Tumblr accounts get 32 percent more reblogs than original fan-made content.

The key to fan activation

Clearly, the presence of official TV show accounts is a vital source of the original content, which fan accounts use as a springboard. The Tumblr community of superfans doesn’t just engage with official TV show accounts, they do so enthusiastically. Official accounts have much bigger interaction rates than fan accounts.

The key to fan activation on Tumblr is creating a centralized, dependable source of original content for fans to enjoy and share. These findings showcase a clear opportunity for media brands to take advantage of the high volume of activity on Tumblr to create deeply-engaged, passionate fan communities around their IP.

Image content is the most popular shared content type on Tumblr, and there’s no question the popularity of animated GIFs has helped it grow as a natural fit for television and movie fandoms. 

We’re only skimming the surface of the potential for Tumblr. If you want to really learn the in’s and out’s of this dynamic channel we recommend Downloading the Free report from Spredfast. Who knows, you might just find your place among the Tumblr stars.

Huge shoutout to our friends at Venngage for helping create these stellar infographics.

While Spredfast is a sponsor for this post, all opinions are true and our own. 

The post Using Tumblr to Inspire Fan Activation appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

It’s ironic (and a little tragic) that right about the time a platform reaches critical mass, develops the infrastructure to support advertising, and accumulates enough data to provide useful business intelligence, we’ve moved on to something else.

So it’s encouraging that the latest deep dive report from Spredfast embraces the maturing social media landscape with open arms. The Smart Social Report takes a high-level look at the state of social media marketing, and benchmarks the social maturity of top platforms and brands. Some of the findings are what you might expect, and others are actually quite surprising.

Whaddya mean, “Mature”??

The report used a combination of publicly-available metrics to determine Social Maturity. These included audience size, responsiveness (time to respond to inbound communication), posting volume, use of rich media, and audience engagement. They plotted the metrics on a matrix (say that five times fast) to determine maturity level.

The networks included were Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+ and Snapchat. The report looks at 50 leading brands from ten different industries: Retail, Media/Entertainment, Sports, Electronics/Tech, CPG, Financial Services/Insurance, Automotive, Telecom, B2B, Travel/Hospitality.

Reaping the benefits of maturity

At a high level, the report found that the oldest platforms saw the most sophistication. Brands have had time to master these more established social spaces. Thanks to their relative stability and more robust business features, it’s easier to get budgets and resources approved and measure ROI.

It’s also not surprising to learn that different industries have reached maturity at different speeds, arriving in “herds.” And just because a brand has mastered one platform, that doesn’t mean they own the social space.

Spredfast found a high degree of variance across channels, even for the same brand. In fact, it’s possible the most mature brands in a given platform achieved that dominance by maintaining a tight focus on it. The payoff of that focus is accelerated success on that channel, but the cost is fewer resources and less time to devote to others.

Overall, the report provides an interesting overview of the state of social media marketing, with some unexpected (and actionable) insights. For example, they discovered a clear opportunity for brands in one vertical in particular to seize an untapped opportunity on one of the most popular social platforms: Pinterest. You’ll have to download and read the report yourself to find out where that opportunity lies.

There was too much good information in this report for us to fit in one blog post, so look out for our follow-ups that drill down to their findings on two up-and-coming channels: Tumblr and Instagram.

While Spredfast is a sponsor for this post, all our opinions are true and our own. 

The post How Brands are Adjusting to the Maturing Social Media Market appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

According to Bryan Segal, CEO of Engagement Labs, “People still love the touch and feel of print magazines. They’re still a great medium, even if they’re past their heyday. Let’s face it, content is still king and queen. Social just serves as a new distribution network. Magazines have already mastered developing great content, now their challenge is parlaying it into a great digital experience.”

According to the report, many have already achieved that goal.

Measuring Social Media Performance

Engagement Labs measured social media performance for several top men’s and women’s lifestyle magazines using their eValue tool. The eValue score is composed of Engagement, Impact and Responsiveness metrics.

• Engagement is the level of interaction content receives on a specific social network

• Impact is the reach content receives on a specific social network

• Responsiveness measures how much, how fast and how well a brand responds to actual conversations amongst its users.

The Results from the Study

Perhaps it shouldn’t be that surprising that these print magazines have adapted well to social media. For years, bloggers have used Cosmopolitan as the ultimate guide for creating attention-grabbing headlines. Prompting someone to make an impulse purchase at the checkout line demands the same understanding of human nature as getting them to click a link. Perhaps not surprisingly, Cosmo had the best performance ranking on Twitter and Facebook, and ranked #2 on Instagram.

From Then to Now

Prompting someone to make an impulse purchase at the checkout line demands the same understanding of human nature as getting them to click a link.

As a marketer, analyzing the options for your paid media dollars is more complex and nuanced than it’s ever been. Fortunately, we also have more hard data than we’ve ever had. It’s just important to think through the implications of that data holistically. What do the numbers represent, in terms of value to your brand?

What lifestyle magazines have to offer marketers now is intrinsically the same thing they’ve always had to offer. Not just eyeballs, but the positive association with their brand, which consumers emotionally relate to leisure, enjoyment and their personal passions.

That sense of loyalty and community is a natural fit with social media, and it looks like many men’s and women’s magazines have successfully translated their passionate community of readers to the social space.

The post How Lifestyle Mags Are Killing it on Social appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

So, what’s considered a “link click”?

• Essentially, any click that takes you off Facebook, or clicks that lead to a direct conversion like installing an app, including Facebook apps.

• Clicks to view a website off Facebook, like YouTube, will count.

• Clicks on a video uploaded to Facebook won’t. This move aligns their ad offerings more with Google’s Adwords model, which is well-suited for generating direct response.

What does this change mean for Marketers?

This doesn’t mean marketers won’t be able to set up campaigns where the goal is greater engagement on Facebook. The marketing funnel still applies.

Some brands will continue to need Facebook as a display advertising channel, to build awareness and get their message in front of an audience to spark consideration. You’ll still be able to bid for engagement clicks by setting your optimization options. The difference is, those clicks won’t be measured when calculating your CPC.

The social advertising ecosystem has matured a lot in the relatively few years it’s been in existence. As other platforms follow Facebook’s lead, marketers will have more power to optimize their campaigns, and more options for tailoring their objectives towards real business goals.

And that’s a development we can all “like.”

The post This is Why You’ll Never Pay for a ‘Like’ Again appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

So why did we tackle this project in the first place? Well let’s just say we kind of care about our followers… a lot.

You deserved a simpler user experience

Our primary goal was to improve navigation and user experience for our audience. This new layout has received outstanding feedback on our agency site for a while now, so we knew it would be an improvement for our blog readers, too.

You deserved a more modern design

Our previous design was eight years old. It didn’t perform to our standards for mobile or search. We needed to make sure you’d have a great experience however you reached our website. We also needed to ensure that you could find our great content on Google without having to dig through a pile of outdated links. This design is intended to give new users a chance to experience as much of our content as possible. The sleek condensed approach is optimized for sharing our articles in a streamlined and accessible format. We hope that this will ultimately make it easier to navigate our site and understand what we’re about right from the get go.

You deserved clarity and transparency

Even after three years, we were surprised to find people were still unsure about the relationship between Social Media Explorer and SME Digital. The new design gives us a cohesive brand, and makes it explicitly clear that Social Media Explorer and SME Digital belong to the same organization. Having a connection between brand and blog is extremely important and we implore other agencies running a blog to take a step back and decide if they need to do the same. Readers want to know the story and humans behind your blog.

We hope the new design achieves all these goals. The only way we can know for sure is for you to tell us. If you have a minute, we invite you to give us your opinion of the changes in this survey. We want Social Media Explorer to be your straight-talk source for ideas and inspiration. The only way we can make this site perfect is with the help of our amazing followers like you.

We still believe there’s still a lot of ground to cover and new territory to explore in social media. Thanks for joining us on this exciting journey.

The post Why We Blew Up Our Blog appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Agencies and marketers create plans, run simulations and train their front-line employees. All this effort, exerted so that they’ll be prepared when a tsunami of negativity smacks them upside the Facebook page.

 But are these efforts worthwhile? Is it possible that we’re spending an extraordinary amount of energy worrying about something that doesn’t actually exist?

What is a social media crises

There are really two different kinds of scenarios people refer to when they talk about a “social media crisis”:

• A business operations or customer service problem which attracts a viral level of attention on social media. In other words: “You screwed up in real life, and people are talking about it on social media.”
• A communications gaffe that happens on a business’ official social media account, or the account of an owner or high-level staff member. In other words, “You screwed up on social media, and people noticed.” 

But are these real examples of a crisis? According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of “crisis” is “an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending; especially one with the distinct possibility of a highly undesirable outcome.”

When do they even matter

Think about the most memorable examples of “social media crises” you can recall. Do any of them represent a crucial time demanding decisive change? Possibly, in the case of a business operations or customer service problem, a decisive change is needed. But no communications strategy has the power to enact that change. In this case, social media isn’t the fire; it’s the alarm.

 What about a highly-visible communications fail? If you’re an individual, a social media fail can have serious personal consequences, like losing your job. If you’re a digital agency, it can cost you a client relationship and seriously impact your reputation. If you’re a brand or business, it can stress out your PR team for a few weeks. I’m not sure that qualifies as a bona-fide, business-wide crisis.

Alarmist language like “social media crisis” creates unnecessary fear around something that should be a normal part of doing business.

 Even the most egregious brand flubs on social media have failed to have a lasting, significant impact to the company’s bottom line. While it’s embarrassing, a questionable Tweet has yet to be the root cause of any company’s stock values dropping. Jobs lost due to a social media fail are the result of personal accountability, not accounting concerns about profitability.

How they should be viewed

Crisis communications is a standard part of any business marketing toolset. It’s simply a cost of doing business. Your front line staff and social media team should absolutely be prepared to respond when something goes wrong — if only because feeling prepared will reduce their stress level and enable them to serve your customers better. That’s just being a good employer.

Heightened, alarmist language like “social media crisis” creates unnecessary fear and drama around something that should be a normal part of doing business. It supports the unrealistic expectation that nothing negative will or should ever be said about your company online.

Unfortunately, managing the fallout from mistakes is a part of every business. But the odds are, unless your situation is truly unprecedented, business will soon get back to normal.

The post Do Social Media Crises Actually Exist? appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

The Leader

An inspiring communicator with clear vision and the ability to convince people to follow them even when it seems crazy or impossible. (CEO)

The Genius

The inventive, tech-savvy problem-solver with a bird’s-eye-view of the battlefield, all the best gadgets, and a gleeful desire to try them all out.  (Strategist)

The Spy

 The mysterious behind-the-scenes agent, able to get inside the head of your target, provider of crucial intelligence. (Analyst)

The Sniper

Similar to the spy, the sniper identifies obstacles, and methodically eliminates them, clearing a path and finding an open way forward. (Project  Management)

The Muscle 

Handles the heavy lifting without breaking a sweat. Enjoys blowing off steam during off hours. Intimidating despite a relative lack of personal ambition. (Content Producer/Creative)

The Handler 

Greaser of wheels. Controller of damage. Obtainer of resources. Enforcer of sometimes-grudging cooperation. (Client Services)

At SME Digital, we’ve got trained professionals in all these roles. But we’re always ready to expand the roster with fresh talent. Do any of these descriptions sound like you? Then check out our current positions and see if you’ve got what it takes to join our team.

The post Assemble the Ultimate Marketing Team appeared first on Social Media Explorer.

Here are three simple stories that show how focusing on just one question can lead to making data matter.

Seth Godin’s question: Will people miss you if you are gone?

If you ask most marketers about the state of content marketing, a lot of them are going to wince. Let’s face it, right now “content marketing” gets translated as “article spam.” That’s the reputation it’s developed, despite the best intentions of those who coined the phrase.

One of those founders of content marketing is Seth Godin. In a recent interview on Contently, he had a lot to say about how to get content marketing back on track. He stood by his statement that “content marketing is the only marketing left,” but with the caveat that his definition of content marketing was “people talking about what they care about.”

To succeed at branded content, Godin suggested companies need to “set people up in an office down the
street, only visit them once a month, and give them really significant metrics—not about pageviews, but about mattering. And give them the resources—not too much, just enough—to go do work that matters.”

When asked what metrics measure whether you’re doing work that matters, Seth Godin replied “I think the only one that I care about is: Will people miss you if you are gone?” And just like that, Godin identified the fulcrum-point question for any content marketer (or media maker) in the world.

Rachel Aaron’s question: What are the best conditions for maximizing my creative output?

Science fiction and fantasy author Rachel Aaron is known for her successful “Eli Monpress” series, published by Orbit/Hachette, as well as the critically-acclaimed Paradox Trilogy. She’s also known for writing incredibly fast.

Why does that matter? In the modern publishing world, the data shows a clear correlation between publishing more often and making more money. When Rachel started writing fiction full time, she needed to maximize her creative output. So she set about an experiment.

In the first part, she adjusted her process so she was more prepared when she sat down to draft. That small tweak doubled her daily word count, without increasing the amount of time she spent writing. Then, for two months she recorded the conditions of every writing session. She checked the data for patterns and was surprised by the results.

Her best time of day to write was not mornings, as she’d expected, but afternoons.
She wrote twice as much in coffeeshops as she wrote at home.
When she had at least 5 hours, her words-per-hour was three times higher than when she had only an hour.

Armed with this information, she arranged her schedule so that all her writing time was her best writing time, and saw huge gains in productivity. In the third part of her experiment, she learned that by cutting scenes she wasn’t excited about writing, she not only wrote faster, but the end product was a book readers enjoyed more. After the experiment, Rachel took what she learned, and created the nonfiction book 2K to 10K: How to Write Better, Write Faster, and Write More of What You Love. It’s currently in the Amazon Kindle Top 10 list for books on writing skills.

Bret Parker’s question: Can small changes affect my Parkinson’s symptoms?

As wearables like FitBit become more commonplace, it’s natural to wonder what power these devices and their data have to revolutionize healthcare. Unfortunately, this data isn’t necessarily all that useful to doctors. In an NPR story from earlier this year, a Dr. Paul Abramson described a patient who showed up with multiple Excel spreadsheets full of data — and no good way to make use of it. “Going through it and trying to analyze and extract meaning from it was not really feasible,” he says.

But for Bret Parker, the problem was more urgent. Parker suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, a progressive illness that affects movement and causes tremors. The New York resident enrolled in a pilot study to find out if an activity tracker could help measure the severity of his tremors, and to see if they were affected by small changes in diet, sleep patterns, or even the time of day he takes his medication.

While it’s difficult for an individual to meticulously log these kinds of details, a wearable device can help make it easier. “This is going to be a battle between me and Parkinson’s in the years to come,” he says. “As it advances, it means I’ve got to be better and smarter at my role in it.”

Your takeaway: What one question should you be asking?

What do Seth, Rachel and Bret have in common? Each one has identified a “fulcrum point question,” a point of leverage where relatively small efforts can produce huge gains.

For Seth, answering his question creates a simple yes/no test capable of elevating the morass of content marketing from a spam-fest to storytelling nirvana.
For Rachel, answering her question allowed her to not just realize a fivefold increase in creative output, but build a replicable system to help other writers.
For Bret, the answers he’s seeking will enable him make the absolute most of his life while wrestling with a chronic, debilitating illness.

As these examples demonstrate, finding your fulcrum point question often means identifying your biggest pain point. More often than not, they’re the same. This may be why so few people and organizations focus on finding a fulcrum point.

Another reason we avoid seeking fulcrum point questions, is that we fear the answer.

As individuals and institutions, we often avoid thinking about our most difficult problems, which can seem overwhelming and impossible. Instead, we focus on bucket-and-bailing optimization, instead of fixing the hole in the boat. That way, we can feel like we’re doing something and making progress, without having to address bigger, scarier issues.

Another reason we avoid seeking fulcrum point questions, is that we fear the answer. In business, a fulcrum point question might require rethinking your whole business model. In life, it might mean overhauling your lifestyle and habits. That’s pretty intimidating stuff.

Archimedes once said “Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth.” Or at least something like it, since he was speaking ancient Greek. The courage to ask the right questions and to act upon the answers gives you tremendous power.

Are you ready to wield it?

The post Making Data Matter Means Asking the Right Questions appeared first on Social Media Explorer.