Evan Carmichael argues that market research kills the passion needed for social media success. He points to Steve Jobs, who ignored data and built Apple by pursuing what he felt mattered. Post with genuine excitement, not what the numbers say people want.
I'm going to maybe offend some people with my next comment. We don't have a lot of speakers here, so that's good. I'm not a big believer in making quantitative decisions, and that applies to social media campaigns. I'm not the guy who's going to look at all the market research and say, "Here's what people are talking about, so here's what we're going to tweet about." The problem with making quantitative-only decisions is that there's no passion in it. There's no emotion to it. You don't feel excited by it. It's like people who start a business just trying to make money. If you are trying to start a business just trying to make money, you're never gonna make it. Money is important. I'm not saying you start a business or in your company now you ignore the quantitative stuff, but it's not the reason to do something. One of my favorite entrepreneurs is Steve Jobs. You guys like Steve Jobs? No? Come on, guys, Steve Jobs? All right, good, hands up. I love Steve Jobs, okay? Now, Steve Jobs' story. This guy was a multimillionaire in his early 20s. Multimillionaire in his early 20s. He had enough money to live the rest of his life in happiness. And yet he worked until the day he died making amazing products for Apple. Why did he do it? It wasn't for the money. And people told him he was crazy. People told him at the beginning of Apple, "Nobody needs a personal computer. What are you, stupid? Nobody needs a personal computer." When he launched the iPad, when he launched the iPod, people thought he was crazy. People thought, "This will never sell because there's no data to prove it." There's no quantitative data. Why did he do it? He did it because he felt like this was needed. He did it to do it. That's why he did it. He did it because it was important, because he wanted to change the world. And for Steve Jobs, the number one criteria was never the money. It was never the quantitative stuff. And yet, he built Apple to become the number one most valuable company in the world by market cap. That's the power when you inject your own passion into your business. So I'm not saying completely ignore the quantitative stuff, but you don't make decisions in this context, social media campaigns, only on quantitative stuff. You have to get excited and feel it in your heart of every single post that you're putting on your social media campaign. And you'll post stuff on there even ignoring the quantitative stuff because it's the right thing to do. And if you do that, then you'll gain a loyal following, and people will— can't wait to see your next tweet. And then they're gonna buy from you and tell everybody about you. That's my view.
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