Do Be Data Driven-but Don’t Let it Consume Your Decision Making!

I used to coach baseball at the little league, travel, and high school level and one of my biggest decisions always came down to who was going to pitch. In baseball, regardless of the level, pitching will always be and has always been a critical aspect of the game. It can, in many aspects, decide the outcome of the game. As such, many baseball purists will say that the game is a statistically driven sport that starts and ends on the pitching mound.

Essentially, baseball coaches, regardless of the level, when deciding who will pitch, will pour over the data of their previous performances. What did they do in the last game? How many innings did they pitch? Did they give up a lot of runs? Did they strike anyone out? Could they throw a strike? How many players did they walk? All of those data points are crucial to making an educated and informed decision on whether they will pitch again and when.

Here’s the wrinkle though. Sometimes I selected pitchers based on my gut feeling. Sometimes I focused on soft metrics and sometimes my decisions were based on anything BUT the data.

Tying this back to the world of social media, we always say that the data doesn't lie. In fact, in our world, social media practitioners are data-driven creatures. We're always looking at CTR’s CPC’s CPM’s and yes, the number of leads as well as the number of likes, shares, and comments. You know, the typical metrics that matter in social media. As my old friend David Baron likes to say, “We eat data for breakfast.”

All that being said, I have some questions for you.

1)      Have you ever looked at a piece of content that you were getting ready to push out and you just knew that it was not going to work?

2)      Have you ever pushed out a piece of content that you thought would not work or that you were not wild about and it pleasantly surprised you?

3)      Have you ever pushed out a piece of content that you were positive that it would do well, and it didn’t?  

4)      At what point do you ever overlook the previous or potential metrics of a content type and come to the conclusion that; this will work? Or simply say, this isn’t going to work?

Here’s my point. Yes, data tells the story and yes, it can provide invaluable insights, but our decisions should always be based on multiple, broader, contextual factors as well. I always like to consider, and you should too, market trends, global events, customer sentiment, direct and indirect feedback, the channel of course, and the audience. I’m not married to those factors 100% but when you are getting ready to post something the last thing you want to be called out for is being tone-deaf, insensitive, a day late, a dollar short, or just completely whiffing. Trust me, it happens a lot more than you think.

One last thing that I need to impart to you is this. Your audience is super fickle. They are moths to a flame. and as much as we think we know them, we don't. Their consumption habits- what they like and what they dislike, change every day. It evolves and so must we. Always be aware of that fickle-ness.

As a group of social media practitioners, we should always be aware of the fact that in our digital world, things are moving at a blinding speed. That includes consumption habits and content expectations.  

Sure, there's always going to be a risk of over-analysis, where we're relying on data points that tell us to do X and everything else is saying not to. Yes, the paralysis by analysis is a real thing. That being said, I want to be crystal clear. I'm not saying that being data-driven is not important. I'm just saying that it's essential to strike a balance between the data and your gut feeling for what you know works and what doesn’t. Don’t let being “data-driven” in social media consume all of your decisions.

In closing, here’s some food for thought. Not too long ago, we were playing in a baseball tournament. The format dictates that you need all the pitchers that you can scrounge up as it’s a lot of games in a small window of time. Thus, a kid might pitch even though they are not a “pitcher.” Case in point, I had a kid named Michael on my team who looked like a baseball player, talked like a baseball player, and hit like a baseball player. And he had a great arm. But he wasn't a pitcher.

So, Michael is warming up, he’s looking sharp and I had still not decided who was going to pitch. I walk up to him and say, you know, you've been impressive in practice, and I love your arm. I've seen you throw off the mound a few times even though you haven't thrown in a game, and I'm thinking this might be a good opportunity for you to start on the mound, and let's see what you can do. Michael has this shocked look on his face. I couldn’t tell if he was pumped up or scared. He pauses for a second or two, looks at me, and says he’s willing to give it a shot. I’m thinking, I might have my next starting pitcher. I’m super excited.

Long story short, he never made it out of the first inning. He got rocked. He gave up 7 runs and never recorded an out. In the end, my gut decision turned into a gut-wrenching decision, and needless to say, Michael never took the mound again.

Though my baseball story was a contrarian view of utilizing data, I have many more stories in which my gut decisions turned out positively. So, while being data-driven is always going to be important, it's essential to strike a balance and consider it as one of several factors in decision-making rather than letting it consume the entire process.