Data, Influencer Marketing, Pinterest Popping & Living in an Era of Dysregulation
Welcome to my newsletter. Part psychology, part analysis, Narrative in Numbers is a newsletter podcast that discusses how to decode your data, unearth behavior patterns, and understand what people think, desire and want.
It’s about using the art of story to turn numbers into narratives that fuel the relationships between you and your customers. It’s also sprinkled with trend review, with a healthy dose of snark, that looks at current trends in culture that are absurd, dangerous, hilarious, or can be put into a deeper context.
June 2024 Insights
I can’t believe it’s already June. But here we are. Here in Washington, summer has been ebbing and flowing, moving between rain and sunshine. So what’s got my attention in terms of data and analytics this month? Let me start by pointing out that the Google Core Algorithm Update I mentioned last month turned out to be one the largest ones they’ve done to date. It not only addressed scaled content (thanks AI), but also filtered out low quality content and abandoned sites. So if you missed that issue, head over to look at how these changes may affect website SEO and content optimization practices.
Data is Starting to Play a Critical Role in Influencer Marketing
In the next few months, I’m really going to be focusing on writing about strategy, analytics, and how the insights that you have can be used to strategically assess how you spend your time and money when it comes to marketing. Let’s start off with a video about one the most important strategies in most brands’ toolkits – influencer marketing. In March, after several years away from speaking, I took the stage at ASD Market Week with Tiffany Hardin, the founder of Gild Creative Group, to talk about how brands should be creating content with influencers. In our talk we discussed the role of data, as well as:
Empowering content creators.
How setting clear goals and collaboration are essential for successful influencer marketing programs.
Utilizing custom tagging on shared links to track influencer performance and gather valuable data.
Understanding influencer marketing dynamics and leveraging data to create a next-level content marketing strategy.
The importance of relational influencers as the next group of content creators.
How balancing qualitative and quantitative metrics is crucial for successful campaigns.
Enhancing influencer campaigns through audience feedback for more successful outcomes.
I am not at all surprised about the lack of understanding around campaign tracking, different KPIs, and strategically assessing your efforts. Data can be scary, but it’s important to start understanding what your data says. If you haven’t gotten my guide to creating UTMS, please do. Using UTM is critical for accurate tracking and my template is FREE.
What I’m Watching: How the US Is Destroying Young People’s Future
In his TED talk, Scott Galloway discusses the challenges young people in the US face in terms of decreasing prosperity and opportunities compared to previous generations. He criticizes the strategies of universities and the wealthy that have led to increasing tuition costs and a wealth gap. Additionally, Galloway discusses the rising rates of gun deaths, obesity, and deaths of despair among young people.
He suggests investing in programs to address these issues, increasing spending on child care and housing, raising the minimum wage, and implementing a negative income tax. He argues that the resources and money are available to make a difference, but the will to do so is lacking. Overall, he emphasizes the importance of addressing these issues to ensure a better future for young people.
What I’m Reading: When Did Everyone Become Obsessed with Dysregulation
Has our collective need to fix what we perceive as “wrong with us” led to us living in collectively dysregulated states? This month, THE CUT published an article that delved into the concept of emotional dysregulation, which refers to difficulty regulating emotions, often associated with various mental health conditions like ADHD, BPD, and PTSD. The article looks at how dysregulation moved from being a clinical term to a cultural trend across all areas of mental and physical health (and social media).
Ultimately, it underscores the dynamic nature of dysregulation as a state rather than a fixed feature, offering a sense of hope and potential for change in addressing emotional struggles. As author Rachel Sugar writes, “There is a kind of longing in dysregulation. People were struggling not to change, but to recapture an idea of who they’d been before.” While I found THE CUT’s perspective on trends in therapy worth reading, many therapists feel that the coverage of mental health re-stigmatizes therapy.
What I’m Assessing: Pinterest: Popping Off in Ad Revenue, Users & Sales
Pinterest is back on my radar as a visual search engine, a shopping discovery tool, and an advertising platform given its latest earnings report. The company had a stellar first quarter, blowing past analysts' expectations. Revenue was up 23% to $740 million, compared to the $700 million projected. Not only that, the company surpassed the half-billion user mark for the first time, boasting 518 million global monthly users — a 12% increase from a year ago. The platform is particularly popular among users aged 18 to 49, with a significant portion falling within the 25 to 34 age range. Additionally, Pinterest tends to attract users with higher education levels and disposable income, making it an attractive platform for advertisers looking to target this demographic. Who represents the bulk of these users? More than 40% of "pinners" are Gen Z, of which over 50% view the platform as a shopping destination. Pinterest should probably be up for reassessment if you don’t utilize it.
Food For Thought
Emotional labor is essential to our society and economy, but it’s so often invisible. Nearly every day, we find ourselves forced to edit our emotions to accommodate and elevate the emotions of others. Too many of us are asked to perform this exhausting, draining work at no extra cost, especially if we’re women or people of color. - Rose Hackman, Emotional Labor
What I’m Celebrating
Many of you know I’ve worked with, and been in love with horses for decades. Since March, come rain or shine, I have been riding my horses up a mountain regardless of the weather. I’m now up to 25-30 miles per week, and we’re going to keep going, until I reach 50 per week. In health and wellness, I feel like we’re always supposed to be striving, dieting, building and accomplishing something when it comes to our physical bodies. But not all of us can be iron men or super women for a number of reasons. For me, I chose one activity to help me balance my physical and mental health, and it was riding outdoors. When it comes to your well-being, choose one thing that can serve you in more than one way , it’ll lead you to what comes next.