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nixonthedark · 4 years ago

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Trump by 10m

Prediction. Trump Win by 10,000,000 Votes

by Nixon the Dark

I know there's a few days left, but I'll predict and risk: Trump wins popular vote by 10,000,000. I see his support in subtle ways on Twitter. And it’s huge despite Twitter doing everything it can to suppress that idea from getting out.

I don't trust Twitter polls. But I believe anecdotal Twitter comments are a barometer of truth. They are resistant to "comm-botification" (commodified bots). They have the feel of conversation. And they take a bunch of different forms. If they are mimetic (viral), they have the same message, but no two are alike. They're phrased uniquely.

On political Twitter, the vast majority of voting anecdotes go one direction: people who didn't vote Trump in 2016 but will vote for him now.

By a factor of at least 50 to 1, I see these comments as opposed to the reverse (people who voted for Trump in 2016 but now will vote for Biden). And they come in all varieties. It is not just "I voted against Trump in 2016, I'm voting for him now." Commenters only occasionally refer to themselves. As often, they also mention their relatives, neighbors, coworkers, etc. (people who may not be on Twitter).

Are these a reliable barometer? Yes.

Here was my clincher. In early October, a scientist (definitely not a conservative) with 1.2m followers recently tweeted that his life-long Republican relative decided to vote for Biden. Whenever I see these comments, and I looked a lot of places for them, I ready every comment available.

One of the reply comments caught on: this scientist was fishing for replies of agreement ("low key Biden polling"). Why? Because people copy each other. We’re mimetic. If we hear about a Trump defector, and we are one, we chime in. How could we not? Trump is the most hated president since Lincoln and his haters online have no fear of repercussion. So if Twitter was filled with Trump defectors, his is how you’d find them. Tease them out via mimicry.

There were a few. Obviously. But only a few? This guy has 1.2m followers and it's three weeks to the election! What are these people waiting for? The Trump-converted folks, the ones who do fear social repercussion, have not been shy about sharing their anecdotes.

The same people who have been talking shit about Trump on Twitter non-stop for 5 years couldn't be bothered to share their own stories of people who they also know who abandoned Trump since 2016? Why not? Where is the uncertain suburban housewife or girlfriend? Is she keeping quiet? Why doesn’t this anecdote go viral?

Because Trump is so hated by Twitter users, who are commenting and saying all manner of mean things about him. The defector is always welcome when he or she does share their story. Welcome with open arms.

But in fairness to them, suppose they are shy. They’re voting for Biden. There’s no enthusiasm for him. It is a little embarrassing. I have no doubt there are some Trump defectors who are keeping quiet. But why aren’t they represented as “my wife” or “my husband” by some other Twitter user? There are. But it’s always only a handful among thousands of comments.

If this scientist, among the many other parts of anti-Trump Twitter I’ve visited, can’t generate a viral anecdote, it doesn’t exist. Keep in mind, Twitter is an information war battlefield filled with lies and truths. Despite that, these Trump haters, who would do anything to get him out of office, can’t even be bothered to simply make up fake Trump defectors. There is no army of anecdote Twitter bots sharing their stories of leaving Trump.

Trump lovers, en masse, are not creating false local anecdotes by the thousands. And Trump haters aren't either. This phenomenon, the impulse to echo an anecdote, is very “lie resistant.”

Obviously, much of the scientist's thread was filled with "liar" memes (pro-Trump people saying the Trump defector comment was a lie) and many varied strains of Trump hate. Also, even worse for Biden, plenty of the comments again told the opposite story. The comment thread designed to trigger people to come out of the woodwork to proclaim they’ve walked away from Trump did the opposite. Trump won the thread by about 2-to-1.

He wins most such threads. Only on a few comment threads I found specifically by partisans bragging about Trump defection, did Biden win the anecdote battle. On the rest, Trump won bigly.

The people who hate Trump say things like "He'll finally lose" "landslide Biden" "worst thing for our country" etc. But they don’t mimic the anecdote. In other words, the people who proudly proclaim Biden will win never volunteer anecdotes about voters they know. They reflect their Trump hatred/Biden optimism by point to polling data. And think that their own echo chamber of Trump hate confirms the polling.

Yes, this is unscientific. It’s a hunch. But to accept that there may be some nefarious information war afoot, I’ll concede there’s a few pro-Trump bots making all these unique comments. If you cut the number in half, Trump converts outnumber Trump defectors by 25 to 1.

In my personal life, people I know, unrelated to anything on Twitter, including myself, Trump is net 15 votes ahead. Of everyone I know and speak to anecdotally, I fit this profile. I was anti-Trump in 2016. Pro-Trump now. I know several others like me and I do not have a single known Trump defector in my social circle. I know plenty of people that hated him in 2016 and hate him now. Nobody who loved him then and hate him now.

Other supporting reasons.

Separate twitter anecdotes that don't qualify as polling but serve similar purpose: many anonymous/disaffected liberals now stating the obvious, that their vocal minority is out of control with rioting and terrorism. And as many of us notice, the vocal Dems are now at Nazi-level open hatred and disgust.

Other observations in support of this prediction.

The weekend of October 10, I watched a handful of Joe's recent campaign stops. Turned the sound down and fast-forwarded through them. Only looked for one thing: citizen supporters. I don't see them. He gave a recent speech in an AZ or NM shopping plaza. Based on what was on-screen, there were ten times as many handlers, media, and photo-op human props (like a kid wearing a sombrero doing a lasso trick) as citizen supporters. The attendance is so sparse and the energy so lifeless, that my lying eyes tell me the general public doesn't care, at all, about Joe.

If there were throngs of people, the cameras would show them, even if doing so had a "superspreader" implication. They know the value of seeing energy and excitement for the candidate is way more important than looking like COVID hypocrites. The benefit drastically outweighs the cost, especially considering rank hypocrisy has never stopped the Left before. So there's no basis to assume thousands of people came to hear him speak. He gets "dozens".

The counterargument: Biden supporters are enthusiastic, but respect the danger of COVID and are staying indoors. If so, the media would reflect the enthusiasm in other ways. I'm exposed to a lot happening on the left. I NEVER see anything about a Biden speech go viral in a good (for him) way. CNN/MSNBC kiss Kamala's ass and are pro-Biden, but do they ever even show clips of Biden making a compelling point in a campaign speech?

Are the MSM airwaves dominated by Biden on the stump? Barely. You have to look for his speeches. MSM’s coverage ranking: 1. about Trump, 2. about Biden (positive only), 3. about Kamala, and finally, 4. (almost never) coverage of Biden. They had to stop showing coverage of Trump because it was persuading away too many of their viewers. The difference between coverage about and coverage of is massive.

If there was anything worthwhile coming from Joe's mouth, it would dominate the MSM and YouTube would shove it down my throat. Instead, they hide it. It is a hollow coalition. I see about 50,000 voting for Joe Biden. About 30,000,000 will vote against Trump. And another 20,000,000 will vote Democrat because they always do. And maybe 10,000,000 dead people also vote Biden.

Scott Adams recently noted that every metric that can be rigged favors Biden and every metric that can't be rigged favors Trump. I would add: all the reasons suggesting a Biden win are abstract. All the reasons suggesting a Trump win are tangible.

Abstract: Leftists say Trump will lose, DUH, because he's a terrorist, racist, incompetent, etc. Abstract: other random people on twitter say they hate Trump. Abstract: "look at the polls." Abstract: MSM's eternal "walls are closing in" narrative about Trump.

Tangible: 10x as many Trump parades around the country as Biden (all better attended). Tangible: the above-referenced anecdotes (25x over the reverse). Tangible: massive red shift in voter registrations all over the place. Tangible: Trump's campaign has been knocking on doors for over a year while Biden's team has just started. Tangible: huge numbers of Trump trolls frequently showing up at Biden events. Tangible: Warren, Dr. Jill, Bernie, etc., speaking to miniscule crowds while WalkAway crowds are massive. Tangible: the Reign of Terror by the hard-left scaring ordinary citizens into silence or preference falsification ("Yes, I'm voting for Biden, please don't murder me too").

I still allow that my own bubble may be shielding me from Biden supporters despite my efforts. Thus, I keep looking. I like the comedy of Trump winning big electoral and losing by 20,000,000. But I suspect the citizens in these blue enclaves will finally let the Dems have it.

There are several massive Trump gatherings in California, of all places. Thousands of citizens, in the bluest of blue states, marching just to show love for Trump. They weren't there to see Don Jr. or Pence or some surrogate. Just Trump love. Even though for many their votes won’t count electorally. But they’ll pull the lever for him anyway.

There were two big Trump sign in my area (a nice neighborhood). Both defaced. A Denver news channel hired someone to murder a Trump supporter on October 10. Supporters know they're at personal risk in any Trump gathering, yet they go anyway. Brings tears to my eyes. If this is the visual for "out of the closet" Trump support, the closeted Trump support is also massive, and much bigger than 2016.

Not predicting the deepest blue states go red. But the eye test tells me that even these states will have way more red turnout than usual.

I helped one of my non-voting friends register. He wants to vote for Trump just as a middle finger to LeBron for shoving leftist garbage down his throat as an NBA fan.

The curious silences.

First, Obama. He gave a ho-hum Zoom speech at the convention. To my knowledge, he hasn't given any big speeches since. If he has, the MSM isn't covering it. There are three weeks left and he's MIA? Extremely suspicious. Fear of "superspreader" stigma is not enough of a reason for him to be so quiet.

Second, no Clintons? A few sound bits and quotes and that's it. They are really old. Maybe legit COVID risk. And being so unpopular, there are at least real reasons for them to not make big appearances.

Third, what about celebrities? I understand they can't do huge, "star-studded" concerts with COVID. But nothing is stopping them from putting on a show or grabbing headlines. Yet they're quieter than usual. I don't think it's because they finally, humbly, realized they are doing more harm than good.

From all I observe, the only people really campaigning for Joe and Kamala are Joe and Kamala (plus some of their foot soldiers like Bernie, Liz Warren, Peter Mayor). It's rather quiet on the Left establishment front. They've been talking about how awful Trump is for 5 years. But now, when it matters the most, they aren't really acting like it the way they usually do.

I expect in the last couple weeks we'll see some big names on the stump. But why the wait? Isn't it crunch time already? Trump is the most hated Republican by their establishment ever. And it's not even close. Yet aside from pundits, NBA/SNL/Colbert/etc., and people talking shit on twitter/podcasts, it's like the big names are keeping a low profile. The dark money is flowing big time, and big tech is doing it's thing. But I see none of the normal "final push" noise you expect to see.

As of October 29,2020, more celebrities have come out to campaign. Obviously. But the energy isn’t quite there. At all.

Finally.

There are other metrics working in Trump’s favor. College campuses are a ghost town. There will not be the normal election day parties at the polls. College kids overwhelmingly vote liberal. But they don’t overwhelmingly vote. If not at college, where guys can possibly use a trip to the polls as an opportunity to get laid, he probably won’t do the same from his high school bedroom. Will 19-year-old girls be rushing to the polls to yank a lever for Joe Biden?

Conclusion.

Trump will be re-elected. Trump will win the popular vote. Trump will win it by a shocking margin. Shocking to people who put their faith only in their own hatred of him and the polls constructed by people with equivalent hatred.

Donald Trump’s initial nomination as the Republican candidate in 2016 had more impact on America than the prior four presidencies combined. His initial victory had more impact than the four before that. His full first term had more impact than the four before that. His legacy is already, in one term, on par with that of Franklin Roosevelt.

Joe Biden campaigned like he was running for Mayor of Scranton, PA. Donald Trump campaigned like he was running for President against Abraham Lincoln. The result on Tuesday will reflect that, but not as much as it should. Barring tragedy, it will take at least 10 years from the date he leaves office before it becomes clear that he should have won by 100,000,000.

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stefancheplick · 8 years ago

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Here’s What I Learned After Reading Jeff Bezos’ Letter to Investors

Don’t come at Bezos with your Conjoined Triangle of Success. Or your Porter’s 5 Forces.

He’s on another level.

You need to read Bezos’ 2016 letter to shareholders. You can see the entire thing right here. I just finished reading it and below I’ve highlighted some of my favorite parts. If you work in tech, run your own company, or just like learning you will find what he says interesting. Or maybe even a little delusional. But perhaps that’s what makes him so successful. He says it and does it how he sees it.

Amazon has grown its annual revenue from $15 million in 1996 to $135 billion today. With growth like that you might think it’s time to celebrate. Pop some bubbly. Bring in the trays of sushi. Not for Bezos.Here’s how he still thinks about Amazon:

“I’ve been reminding people that it’s Day 1 for a couple of decades. I work in an Amazon building named Day 1, and when I moved buildings, I took the name with me. I spend time thinking about this topic.

Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”

Bezos loves the customer. At times it actually sounds kind of creepy. He loves you that much. He knows that’s what drives everything Amazon does. Without the customer he is finished.

“Even when they don’t yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf. No customer ever asked Amazon to create the Prime membership program, but it sure turns out they wanted it, and I could give you many such examples.”

Routines are fun and sometimes really efficient. So are processes like workflows, schedules, and deadlines. But let’s be real for a second and admit they can get out of hand. People become slaves to them. Bezos gets that. Read this right now and thank me later.

“The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp. It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, “Well, we followed the process.” A more experienced leader will use it as an opportunity to investigate and improve the process. The process is not the thing.It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us?”

Here’s one of those little Bezos-isms we kind of talked about earlier. It’s when he starts going off on little poetic spurts about his one true love.

“Good inventors and designers deeply understand their customer. They spend tremendous energy developing that intuition. They study and understand many anecdotes rather than only the averages you’ll find on surveys. They live with the design.”

Bezos follows the big trends. He’s like a business hipster, strutting around the playground showing what all the cool kids are up to.

“These big trends are not that hard to spot (they get talked and written about a lot), but they can be strangely hard for large organizations to embrace. We’re in the middle of an obvious one right now: machine learning and artificial intelligence.”

Side note: I am little shocked he did not talk about robotics here. I don’t know if you’ve seen this video but…

Stop making slow decisions.

“Day 2 companies make high-quality decisions, but they make high-quality decisions slowly. To keep the energy and dynamism of Day 1, you have to somehow make high-quality, high-velocity decisions. Easy for start-ups and very challenging for large organizations.”

How do you make fast decisions? Get just enough information and go get it.

“Most decisions should probably be made with somewhere around 70% of the information you wish you had. If you wait for 90%, in most cases, you’re probably being slow.”

Certain conflicts need a leader to drop the hammer. No number of meetings will solve certain problems.

“Recognize true misalignment issues early and escalate them immediately. Sometimes teams have different objectives and fundamentally different views. They are not aligned. No amount of discussion, no number of meetings will resolve that deep misalignment.”

Want to take a stance on something? Do this.

“Use the phrase “disagree and commit.” This phrase will save a lot of time. If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there’s no consensus,it’s helpful to say, “Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?”

I hope you all enjoyed this post. Once again the original link to read his entire letter to investors is in the first few sentences above. Admire him or despise him, you just learned a little bit more about Jeff Bezos. And hopefully each insight will help you in some way.

If you enjoyed this post, or really did not like it, share it with a friend! The comments section below is also always open and I respond to everything. You can also reach out to me at any time on Twitter and StockTwits

#Stocks #Amazon #Tech #Jeff Bezos #Investing #technology #machine learning #robotics #$AMZN #$QQQ

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warninggraphiccontent · 3 years ago

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4 June 2021

Not feeling 100%?

This is more anecdote than data, but I feel like I've been seeing a lot of clustered bar charts (where you have a number of bars, for different series, bunched together in each category) with quite a lot of bars per category recently.

This sort of thing:

Lest I risk being stripped of my Peston Geek of the Week badges, there isn't anything particularly wrong with this - it just happened to be one example I noticed this week! But personally, I find four bars per category a bit much - I don't think the key stories are as easy to read as they might be. (I should confess my own sins at this point.)

In instances like this one - where the results for a single age group will add up to 100% - I think there's an obvious alternative: a 100% bar chart.

I think this makes the same point - that attitudes to lifting lockdown divide along age lines - more clearly. The thing you might lose is being able to easily compare should/should not for a particular age group, but that's not the main point being made and (personally) I think that takes some time with the original anyway.

Again, there's nothing particularly wrong with the original in this instance. But I've definitely seen more egregious examples, where the number of clustered columns becomes a bar to understanding the data.

Some initial thoughts on other subjects:

DB I thoroughly enjoyed last night's Data Bites geo-special, which you can watch as-live here (and will appear in slightly edited form here). I even included a chart-based quiz - question here (it does get there eventually), answer here. We'll be back on Wednesday 7 July with the next one, and then back on 8 September after a short summer break.

VPs Reports (Meta data, below) suggest the government has backtracked on many of its 'vaccine passport' plans for domestic use. (Rumours government will leave much to the free market are still a concern - government needs to provide clarity and be wary of harms, whoever is developing such systems.) Here's the Ada Lovelace Institute report on vaccine passports I was involved with.

GPDPR Also below are many links about the planned General Practice Data for Planning and Research, a new NHS Digital initiative to use patient data, which is now starting to become A Thing in the press.

LN If you're interested in data sonification, a new podcast - Loud Numbers - is launching with a whole festival on the topic this Saturday. Here are my collected sonifications for the Institute for Government podcast (which I've been saying I'll write up for about a year and a half now...)

ODI There are some great jobs - including researcher and senior researcher roles - going at the Open Data Institute, where I'm a special adviser (but don't let that put you off).

OGP NAP If you'd like to get involved in shaping the UK's next national action plan for open government, remember you can sign up here.

CogX And last but not least, I'm delighted to announce I'll be chairing a session on 'AI Governance: the role of the nation in a transnational world' at this year's CogX at 1pm on Wednesday 16 June.

W:GC will be taking a break next week, and perhaps the week after if I'm feeling really decadent. Remember there are 100+ other data newsletters, podcasts or event series you can sign up to here.

Have a great weekend/week/fortnight

Gavin

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Today's links:

Graphic content

Viral content

Peru has world’s worst per capita Covid toll after death data revised (The Guardian)

Pretty big validation... (John Burn-Murdoch)

Covid-19 deaths in Wuhan seem far higher than the official count (The Economist)

This is an analysis of the rate of growth of the "delta variant" (Alex Selby)

COVID-19: Indian variant now dominant in a fifth of areas in England - do you live in one? (Sky News)

How the Indian Covid variant has surged in England* (New Statesman)

Side effects

Covid catch-up plan for England pupils ‘pitiful compared with other countries’ (The Guardian)

How England’s school catch-up funding falls £13.6bn short* (New Statesman)

Concerns about missing work may be a barrier to coronavirus vaccination* (Washington Post)

COVID-19 passports: Britons are still in favour even as government scraps plans (YouGov)

Most people in UK did not work from home in 2020, says ONS (The Guardian)

UK's culture war divisions exaggerated but real, say public – as shown by views on equal rights, cultural change and class, and online bubbles (The Policy Institute at King's College London, Ipsos MORI)

Lewis Baston: London voting patterns 2021. Not so much a doughnut as a swirl (On London)

Labour, not the Conservatives, was the largest party among low-income workers in 2019* (New Statesman)

The Greens are on the march. Who should be afraid?* (New Statesman)

Gender in public life (IfG)

Is this the beginning of the end of marriage? (Tortoise)

Small share of US police draw third of complaints in big cities* (FT)

Biden Targets Racial, Social Inequities With Vast Spending Push* (Bloomberg)

Hunger has declined dramatically across America in the past year* (The Economist)

NYC’s School Algorithms Cement Segregation. This Data Shows How (The Markup)

The Persistent Grip of Social Class on College Admissions* (The Upshot)

Building a Home in the U.S. Has Never Been More Expensive* (Bloomberg)

Nature, environment, energy

Cicadas, insecticides and children* (The Economist)

Corporate-led $1bn forests scheme is ‘just the beginning’* (FT)

European Banks’ Next Big Problem? The CO2 in Their Loan Books (Bloomberg)

How an Insurgency Threatens Mozambique’s Gas Bonanza* (Bloomberg)

Everything else

English clubs are dominating European football once again* (The Economist)

Unpacking the 2021 Digital Government Survey (FWD50)

#dataviz

A collection of visualization techniques for geospatial network data (GEOSPATIAL NETWORK VISUALIZATION)

Reconstructing the Neighborhood Destroyed in the Tulsa Race Massacre* (New York Times)

Meta data

Viral content

NHS Covid app signs £10m six-month contract extension with developer Zühlke (Public Technology)

The UK’s response to new variants: a story of obfuscation and chaos (BMJ)

Exclusive: UK vaccine passport plans to be scrapped* (Telegraph)

Introducing Covid certificates is a ‘finely balanced’ decision, says Gove (The Guardian)

SCOTTISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT DURING COVID-19: DATA NEEDS, CAPABILITIES, AND USES (Urban Big Data Centre)

Sharing data to help with the Covid-19 vaccination programme (DWP Digital)

How Modi’s fraught relationship with pandemic data has harmed India* (FT)

All those pub apps you’ve downloaded are a privacy nightmare* (Wired)

Losing patients?

Our perspective on the new system for GP data (Understanding Patient Data)

Helen Salisbury: Should patients worry about their data? (BMJ)

Your NHS data will be quietly shared with third parties, with just weeks to opt out – GPs like me are worried (i)

Dear #research, People are opting out in droves – Matt Hancock’s data grab, facilitated by NHSX, is damaging your work (medConfidential)

Matt Hancock has quietly told your GP to hand over your health data. Why? (openDemocracy)

Plans to share NHS data must be reconsidered* (FT)

GPs warn over plans to share patient data with third parties in England (The Guardian)

The Guardian view on medical records: NHS data grab needs explaining (The Guardian)

Your medical records are about to be given away. As GPs, we’re fighting back (The Guardian)

UK government

Government Digital Service: Our strategy for 2021-2024 (Strategic Reading)

Geospatial Commission sets its 2021/22 priorities (Geospatial Commission)

Office for Statistics Regulation Annual Business Plan 2021/22 (OSR)

Office for National Statistics: the number-crunching whizzes keeping Britain afloat are the unsung heroes of the pandemic (Reaction)

Digital Strategy for Defence: Delivering the Digital Backbone and unleashing the power of Defence’s data (MoD)

Introducing a Head of Digital role to DfE (DfE Digital and Technology)

Why we’ve created an accessibility manual – and how you can help shape it (DWP Digital)

Working in data, insight and user research roles at GOV.UK (Inside GOV.UK)

How to make hybrid or ‘blended’ meetings work for your team (MoJ Digital and Technology)

AI got 'rithm

How soft law is used in AI governance (Brookings)

The race to understand the exhilarating, dangerous world of language AI* (MIT Technology Review)

Can AI be independent from big tech?* (Tortoise)

Sentenced by Algorithm* (New York Review of Books)

Google says it’s committed to ethical AI research. Its ethical AI team isn’t so sure. (Recode)

Facebook’s AI treats Palestinian activists like it treats American Black activists. It blocks them.* (Washington Post)

Privacy, people, personal data

Privacy group targets website 'cookie terror' (BBC News)

EU to step up digital push with digital identity wallet (Reuters)

ICO call for views: Anonymisation, pseudonymisation and privacy enhancing technologies guidance (ICO)

Data isn’t oil, whatever tech commentators tell you: it’s people’s lives (The Observer)

Everything else

In big tech’s dystopia, cat videos earn millions while real artists beg for tips (The Guardian)

Rescuers question what3words' use in emergencies (BBC News)

Gadgets have stopped working together, and it’s becoming an issue (The Observer)

German Bundestag adopts autonomous driving law (The Robot Report)

Code is cheap; ignorance is costly (Matt Edgar)

The internet is flat. (Galaxy Brain)

Opportunities

EVENT: AI Governance: the role of the nation in a transnational world (CogX)

Full programme

EVENT: Special Topic Meeting on R/local R/transmission of Covid19 (Royal Statistical Society)

EVENT: Deploying algorithms in government (Global Government Forum)

EVENT: Emerging approaches to the regulation of biometrics: The EU, the US and the challenge to the UK (Ada Lovelace Institute)

SURVEY: Help to shape the National AI Strategy (AI Council, supported by The Alan Turing Institute)

JOB: CEO (Advanced Research and Invention Agency)

BEIS seeks chief for research agency championed by Cummings (Civil Service World)

JOB: Chief Digital Officer for Health and Care for Wales (Health Education and Improvement Wales, via Jukesie)

JOB: Head of Data Strategy (Companies House)

JOB: Head of Data Policy Analysis Team (DCMS)

JOB: Data Architect (GDS)

JOBS: Open Data Institute

JOBS: Open Data Manchester

JOB: Manager, Data and Digital Team (Social Finance, via Jukesie)

And finally...

Baked in

We collected data on 1,500 politicians' favourite biscuit. Here's what we found. (Democracy Club)

NYC Mayor Race: Ranked-Choice Ballot Explained, With Bagels* (Wall Street Journal)

Maps

Countries coloured by the number of other countries they border (Helen McKenzie)

An orange or an egg? Determining the shape of the world* (The Spectator)

I'm planning to cycle around London looking at bits of internet infrastructure and general sites of interest in computer history (Reuben Binns)

"How much of Scotland is further south than the most northerly part of England?" (Alasdair Rae)

Cartoons

'It's just counting!' (Scott Murray)

Help a Computer Win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest (The Pudding)

Everything else

Can you make AI fairer than a judge? Play our courtroom algorithm game (MIT Technology Review)

Behind the painstaking process of creating Chinese computer fonts* (MIT Technology Review)

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ralphlayton · 4 years ago

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6 New Rules for B2B Marketing in the COVID-19 Era

I was supposed to go to an Alanis Morissette concert this July. When the pandemic hit hard in March, I wasn’t ready to cancel my ticket yet. Surely, surely we would have it sorted in time for an outdoor concert four months from now. I held out hope. Then, in June, she rescheduled for July, 2021. And now I’m wondering if that will be enough time. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think? All of which to say: This pandemic has been around for longer than we thought it would, and is looking to linger far longer than we would like. What seemed like a brief, surreal interlude to be gotten through has now become a reality to live with, at least for the time being. As B2B marketers, we need to reassess how we are adapting our marketing to our buyers’ current situation. We’re no longer scrambling to cobble together short-term fixes — we need to be out of reaction mode and into strategic planning mode. Our marketing agency has been helping clients revise their marketing plans for months now, from messaging and audience to tactics and measurement. Here are a few rules we’ve picked up that other marketers should follow:

6 New Rules for B2B Marketing in the COVID-19 Era

Rule #1: Always Be Relevant

Okay, this is less a NEW rule than a timely reminder. I’m sure most marketers who read our blog (as smart, skilled and beautiful as you are) don’t need to hear it. But just in case: You should never come to an audience without something of value. Corollary: “Something of value” can not equal “Knowledge of how our product/solution can improve your life.” People are distracted and stressed. They’re dealing with a new crisis every day. They’re spending way more time with their children than is psychologically healthy. And they have more content than ever before to occupy their free time. If you’re asking for their attention, you must reward it. Be entertaining, be useful, be both if you can. [bctt tweet="'Be entertaining, be useful, be both if you can' in your #B2B content marketing, says @nitewrites." username="toprank"] After you deliver, then you can ask for a next step. But make sure your content is intrinsically valuable.

Rule #2: Encourage Interaction

The pandemic lifestyle is, to put it lightly, isolating. Who would have thought you could miss hearing co-workers rock in their chairs, play music a little too loud, or bump into you in the hallway? Most of us are craving social interaction. If you’re used to broadcasting with your content, it’s time to consider how you can start conversations. How can you interact with your audience on a human level? How can you encourage them to interact with each other, too? Think how much your audience would value a lively, thought-provoking conversation with their colleagues and peers. You can encourage interaction with content in a few easy ways:

Host a LinkedIn Live chat

Run a Twitter chat

Sponsor a topic-themed chat in a video conferencing app

Run an interactive webinar

In general, look for ways you can call out a subset of your audience and get them talking, both to each other and to your brand representatives. We can all use a little more social interaction right now.

Rule #3: Keep Messaging Empathetic

I don’t know about you, but I cringe every time I see an ad about something “going viral.” We are 6 months into a viral pandemic and marketers are still running ads about going viral! How can this be? This is just one example of how completely innocuous messaging pre-COVID can seem tone-deaf now. Does your content have an anecdote about a dinner party with 15 people? Does your header image feature a crowd of people? Are you talking about “going into the office” or “thinking about this on your commute?” If so, you’re alienating your audience. Not every piece of content has to be about the pandemic, or being nostalgic for the world that once was. But there needs to be a baseline of empathy: Working from home, social distancing, and mask-wearing are all facts of everyday life.

Rule #4: Experiment with Formats

In the time before the pandemic, we all spent hours looking at screens every day. It’s just there were different screens, in different environments. It was easier to differentiate between the office and home, work and play. Now, our surroundings are homogenous throughout the day — and the content we consume feels same-y, too. Think about content fatigue as you plan your calendar. Is your audience looking for another wall of text? Do they want to look at another grid of talking heads? Our agency is finding more success right now with multimedia, interactive content. Our B2B Influencer Marketing report is an example. The content includes case studies, influencer participation, and original research, presented in an animated, dynamic way. Essentially, keep in mind that idea of efficiently delivering value. Can your blog post be a quick video or audio interview instead? And can that video be five minutes long instead of 10? [bctt tweet="Can your blog post be a quick video or audio interview instead? And can that video be five minutes long instead of 10? says @nitewrites." username="toprank"]

Rule #5: Collaborate on Content

For me, one of the stranger elements of pandemic life is learning how similar I am to everyone else. I had an urge to do puzzles in March — all the stores were sold out. I wanted to make bread in April — the stores ran out of flour. In May, everyone bought bikes. Right now, every B2B business is missing their trade shows and in-person demos. So most of them are doubling down on content. The best way to differentiate your content is to bring your audience voices they can’t hear anywhere else. Co-create content with influencers. Feature subject matter experts in your organization. Tap your current and prospective customers to get their take. The more voices you can bring to your content, the more it will stand out to your audience.

Rule #6: Re-Align Measurement with Current Goals

Per rule #1, people are less interested in promotional content right now. Businesses may have put their purchasing plans on hold, or at least tightened budgets. Marketing’s chief goal right now is likely to be establishing brand credibility, creating thought leadership content, and building relationships for the future. As your goals change, your measurement must change as well. You can’t measure an awareness campaign in SQLs, or relationship-building in number of demo requests received. That doesn’t mean giving up on measurement or accountability — it just means making the metrics match your goals. For example, you could measure:

Brand share of voice

Email/Blog subscribers

Social media audience/interactions

Content consumption metrics (time on page, scroll depth, links clicked)

Content resonance (backlinks and social shares)

How New Are These Rules?

So here’s the $100,000 (adjusted for inflation) question: At what point should you stop producing relevant, interactive, empathetic, dynamic and collaborative content? When can you heave a sigh of relief, stop listening to your audience, and start broadcasting promotional messages? When you put it that way, it’s obvious: These rules are best practices for content no matter what’s going on in the world. The pandemic didn’t create the need for these rules; it just amplified how crucial they are. Back in January, we might have had the luxury of ignoring one or more of them. Now we have the joyous necessity of being forced to do better. And that’s the good news: Making your marketing better for the pandemic will make you a better marketer now and for whatever comes next. Need help creating content? We’re here for you.

The post 6 New Rules for B2B Marketing in the COVID-19 Era appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

6 New Rules for B2B Marketing in the COVID-19 Era published first on yhttps://improfitninja.blogspot.com/

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samuelpboswell · 4 years ago

Text

6 New Rules for B2B Marketing in the COVID-19 Era

Rule #1: Always Be Relevant

Rule #2: Encourage Interaction

Host a LinkedIn Live chat

Run a Twitter chat

Sponsor a topic-themed chat in a video conferencing app

Run an interactive webinar

Rule #3: Keep Messaging Empathetic

Rule #4: Experiment with Formats

Rule #5: Collaborate on Content

Rule #6: Re-Align Measurement with Current Goals

Brand share of voice

Email/Blog subscribers

Social media audience/interactions

Content consumption metrics (time on page, scroll depth, links clicked)

Content resonance (backlinks and social shares)

How New Are These Rules?

The post 6 New Rules for B2B Marketing in the COVID-19 Era appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

from The SEO Advantages https://www.toprankblog.com/2020/08/new-rules-covid/

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