Are you guilty of using junk food metrics in your business?

Transcript

Hi there! It’s Peter Winick. I’m the Founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage. And here’s an idea I’d like to share with you today and that’s this: Far too many people that I work with: authors, speakers, academics, thought leaders, etc. are using what I would call junk food metrics to justify some of the things that they do in their business.

What do I mean by this? Well, the parallels are this: in the world of computer programming. There’s a concept called garbage in and garbage out. You know. Bad data in equals bad information out, which leads to bad outcomes and decisions. In the world of health and nutrition, it’s you are what you eat. If you eat healthy, you’ll be healthy. If you eat junk food, you’ll feel crappy.

So my idea, my thinking around junk food metrics is this: Is that if you are using the wrong metric, so for example, in social media: likes, retweets, number of followers, etc., you’re gonna invest in things that aren’t getting you the outcomes that you like.

So, most of the folks that I work with they’re intent when they use something like social media – be that LinkedIn, be that Facebook, be that YouTube, whatever, whatever it is, is to do something, do something positive for the business. It could be elevate the brand, it could be stay connected to the communities that matter, it could be net new client acquisition. Whatever the case may be, you have to have the appropriate metric to measure the outcome that you’re looking for.

And unless you can prove that there’s a direct connection between some of these other sort of vanity metrics and the outcome that you’re looking for, then I think they’re junk food metrics. They’re empty calories. They’re numbers. They are metrics but they’re not metrics that give you anything of value as it relates to the outcomes and the efforts that you’re putting in.

Anyway I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thank you.