You’re Biased but That’s Okay

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Social Media Benchmarking and ROI

Aaaand we’re back! We took a few days off for America. Hope you didn’t miss us too much.

If the concept of social media benchmarking and ROI seems a little daunting, you’re not alone. Just another reason why Buffer’s Science of Social Media podcast continues to rock our world. Today’s Listen makes it much less intimidating by breaking down – into a digestible 9 minutes! – the four, industry-standard benchmarks and how to apply them to your own brand or biz.

Here are the four benchmarks to track what you want to accomplish on social media:

1. Aspirational – dream big by looking at the metrics of industry leaders, matching your goal to these influencers
2. Trended – use your own data to identify the standard you achieve, like increasing engagement based on historical results
3. Earned – previously successful campaigns and promotions are benchmarks for future campaigns and promotions
4. Inspirational – taking inspiration from direct competitors based on competitor data in your niche 

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Read

7 Cognitive Biases that Marketers Should Know

Psychological biases affect decisions we make without us even knowing it. That’s good news for marketers, because there are ways to use these biases to your advantage!

Today’s Read covers the 7 psychological biases that marketers can use. The cliff notes are below, but definitely get your fill of this post as the author includes examples of how marketers can actually use these biases.

1. Availability heuristic – when a person uses easily remembered information when making a decision
2. Representativeness heuristic – when people use stereotypes to make a choice, rather than actual data
3. Choice-supportive bias – people tend to think they always make the right choice because we’re hardwired to forget when we make bad choices
4. Halo effect – this bias explains why influencer marketing works
5. Information bias – more information is always better, right? Nah, not really, but marketers can use this bias in simple ways
6. Ingroup bias – people tend to value their group’s decisions more highly
7. The bandwagon effect – you’re likely familiar with this one from sports, but do you use this tactic in your marketing?

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Watch

Which One Won? A/B Testing Results

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison

An oldie but goodie notion by the master inventor himself – and it can easily be applied to marketing and A/B testing! Today’s Watch is slightly longer than Tom’s thought, diving into results of several conversion tests, like experimenting with different colors, headlines, and more and less complicated landing pages. See what worked for one savvy entrepreneur and investor, and what didn’t.  

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