#54: A door closes (but wait, there's more!) -- also, Facebook is ruining our lives.
Hi friends, and happy Saturday.
If you ever want an unexpectedly riveting activity, assign your friends roles in a murder mystery cocktail party. Martine and I are hosting one next weekend, and our casting is absolutely perfect. I can't wait.
In this week's edition of The World's Best Newsletter:
1. Celebrating a three-peat on LinkedIn Top Voices
2. The Future of Marketing is Contextual
3. Burnout - the other life of "influencers" speakers and celebrities
4. Note the hierarchy of engagement
5. Loving this resource: Crunchbase's features list
6. Facebook is ruining our lives
7. How not to advertise plus-sized tights
8. Quote of the Week -- when a door closes, but wait there's more!
1. Celebrating a three-peat!
This year I was again added to a list of people who apparently have a lot to say on LinkedIn.
Of course I'm honored to be recognized for the writing I do (see all articles here) but MOSTLY I am excited to funnel the added attention to my most recent topic; feminism as a marketing commodity.
Fun fact: Every year, LinkedIn mails a physical gift to the winners, and this year's is, well, highly metaphorical - a literal megaphone.
2. The Future of Marketing is Contextual
How often do you hear marketers and entrepreneurs say "we are ahead of the market" or "nobody seems to get what we're talking about" or "we're creating a category?"
Matt Sweeney, in his series on 2018 marketing trends, says context is everything in 2018 and beyond. I couldn't agree more. "Advertising is designed to distract away from the consumer's task at hand, while context seeks to match it," he writes.
Context (AKA relevance, timeliness) is one of the 3 elements of a buzz-worthy POV.
3. Burnout - the other life of "influencers" speakers and celebrities
This EXTREMELY vulnerable story of burnout from Lindsey Boggs, keynote speaker in sales, tells a story of divide, pressure, and the friction between our personal brands and our real lives.
It's got a great title, too: "From the Ritz to a Padded Cell: A Workaholic’s Lesson on Love and Loss"
She describes her journey beautifully and honestly, and I am so glad she admitted the BS pressure we put on ourselves, and often put on our industry "celebrities," to maintain a non-sustainable lifestyle. Get more non-traditional speakers on stage, book more diverse voices, and help to solve this problem.
4. Note the hierarchy of engagement
Sarah Tavel, General Partner at VC firm Benchmark, reveals a helpful framework she uses to evaluate non-transactional consumer companies she's looking to invest in.
She calls it the Hierarchy of Engagement, and it has three levels:
Growing engaged users
Retaining users
Self-perpetuating
Read the full piece as it's massively helpful and practical for anyone thinking about their product roadmap, going for funding, or planning the future of their growth.
5. Loving this resource: Crunchbase's features list
This week I stumbled across a very cool resource from Crunchbase (I'm sure many knew about this already but I didn't, and now I am addicted, whatever.)
Their "featured" lists rounds up great subsets from their massive database, rankings like "cloud companies funded in the last year" and "acquisitions of the past week" and "Women CEOs located outside the US" (of which there are 2,063!)
Dig through it, bookmark it, it's really fun to look through and helpful to discover what's happening.
6. Facebook is ruining our lives
Former VP of user growth at Facebook, Chamath Palihapitiya, said:
"I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works... The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works... No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth."
The article goes on to say:
"In November, early investor Sean Parker said he has become a 'conscientious objector' to social media, and that Facebook and others had succeeded by 'exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.'"
Read more in the Verge.
7. How not to advertise plus-sized tights
Did y'all see this one?
People are criticizing the e-commerce company Wish for using images of smaller women who are literally engulfed in plus-sized tights to, wait for it, convince plus-sized women to buy those tights.
Hilarious. Except, not.
(Also $3 pantyhose are likely never a good investment.)
8. Quote of the Week -- when a door closes... but wait there's more!
The saying “when one door closes, another opens" is well known, but do you know the rest of it?
"When one door closes, another opens... but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”
It's a fantastic reminder for those of us in high-growth businesses (fail fast, learn, and move on) and life (be present, and open your eyes to opportunities.)
PS: Thanks to Tessa for including my POV in an article on measuring social ROI, to Onalytica for calling me an influential woman in tech! Do you feel influenced?
Thanks as always for reading, and have a great weekend.
Katie
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