Recommended Reading on Community, Growth, and Marketing
Recommended Reading on Community, Growth, and Marketing
When community becomes a commodified buzzword, how do we stay connected to one another?
In the past couple of years, those of us in startups (especially those adjacent to or anywhere paying attention to Web3 / crypto) have heard a lot about “community.” As a company, how do you measure advertising ROI or direct CAC when you need to invest in less tangible value-add efforts for your community? As a CMO with a community vision, how can one truly communicate the business case for the investment in community (which is really about customer retention and why your customer chooses you and your product, repeatedly, over the competition)? How can you measure it?
Over on the awesome Femstreet Substack, Sarah Nöckel wrote a great piece back in November 2021 (that’s how long we’ve been talking about this!). Go read Community-Led Growth Nirvana - Five misconceptions and tactics to triumph over community-led growth roadblocks. Here’s a key excerpt:
Marketing initiatives = community initiatives.
Building a community is a manual process and requires a lot of human time and attention. Some of your efforts today and the impact of them could take months or years. Companies often view community as a nice-to-have addition to GTM efforts. They hire a community leader in the marketing team, and then measure their success based on the goals of everyone else in that team. Community and marketing however, have different inputs and outputs.
Tactic: Treat community as a separate organizational entity, with its own measures, budget, and people. Define and test hypotheses on how your GTC plan affects your GTM. Configure your own CQL model.
Results for go-to-community must be measured by the growth and retention of the community itself, and by less tangible qualities, such as the number of new relationships or the degree of trust developed. Unlike GTM, GTC focuses on creating value, educating, entertaining and equipping individuals independent of their business relationship. Define and test assumptions about how your GTC plan affects GTM. For example, "Active community members retain 50% longer in the product than non-members." and communicate it to other departments. In addition, keep track of your Community Qualified Leads (Mary Thengvall coined this term) to attribute value to the activities in which your community team is involved: your introductions between community members and your colleagues (in marketing, sales, product, engineering, BD, HR) and your introductions between community members. Community leaders can also help identify new patterns in your audience that can inform the personalities on which marketing and product teams work. All this has business value, and you can measure it.
At any rate - community has been commodified, like everything else these days of course. But let’s be intentional and mindful about maintaining the VALUE in those communities. Whatever they may be.
Read on for the rest of what I’ve been reading.
IN PRINT: The New Yorker Magazine (Issue: April 15, 2024) I highly recommend the piece this week, “Maggie Rogers’s Journey from Viral Fame to Religious Studies”
INTERACTIVE: This is a Teenager Alvin Chang [Interactive Map] (March 2024)
RECOMMENDED READING - Top of Mind
I Loved “Barbie” and “Poor Things” but Neither Film Is a Feminist Masterpiece
Calling either a feminist triumph is like saying “WAP” solved misogyny in hip-hop or “Lean In” defeated systemic sexism Jun Chou (March 2024)
Art in the Age of Crypto Reproduction Aura, value, and politics in the age of crypto art Li Jin (April 2024)
Fake Authenticity Is Toxic, and So Are Iowa-Style Writing Workshops
A lack of concern for other people’s feelings doesn’t help anyone grow
Laura M. Martin (April 2024)
Measuring Personal Growth Chip Huyen (April 2024)
The Man Who Remembered Everything—and Thought It Was Normal
Charan Ranganath on the Famous Case of Solomon Shereshevsky (Feb 2024)
Examining the growing movement against the algorithms that control our lives Bobby Allyn (Feb 2024)
What’s the Price of a Childhood Turned Into Content? In the unregulated world of vloggers, children are, for the most part, not entitled to a single cent they help earn. We spoke to creators—and a former kid influencer—to understand how this unusual family business actually works. Fortesa Latifi (March 2024)
Community-Led Growth Nirvana - Femstreet Substack
Five misconceptions and tactics to triumph over community-led growth roadblocks
Sarah Nöckel (Nov 2024)
Also in Femstreet, written & published by Yin Wu - 3 Parts on Equity (July 2021)
Keeping your slice of the pie - The Startup Founder's Guide to Equity - Part I
What is equity, and why does it matter
Keeping your slice of the pie - The Startup Founder's Guide to Equity - Part II
A straight-talking deep dive into the equity terms that matter for founders
Keeping your slice of the pie - The Startup Founder's Guide to Equity - Part III
Is your cap table broken? Mistakes to avoid.
NEWS / LONG-FORM JOURNALISM
Social media algorithms ‘amplifying misogynistic content’ Researchers say extreme content being pushed on young people and becoming normalised Sally Weale (Feb 2024)
The psychology of sugar dating: New research dives deep into the realities of sugar arrangements Eric W. Dolan (Feb 2024)
Netflix trivializing teenagers' pain, says study University of Bath (March 2024)
Researchers find lower grades given to students with surnames that come later in alphabetical order Jeff Carob (April 2024)
What the Upper-Middle-Class Left Doesn’t Get About Inflation Liberal politicians and economists don’t seem to recognize the everyday harms of rising costs. Michael Powell (April 2024)
Confessions of a Moll: A Boston Gangster’s Long-Time Girlfriend Speaks Twenty years ago, Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi pled guilty to 10 counts of murder. Now, for the very first time, the notorious mobster's former companion tells her story—and what she’s realized in the decades since. Dave Wedge (March 2024)
BUSINESS / STARTUPS / INVESTING
The Sober-Curious Movement Has Reached an Impasse No one can decide on the drinking age for “adult” drinks that don’t contain alcohol. Haley Weiss (April 2024)
Why brands are taking a less-is-more approach to marketing Sofia Zwieglinskaa (April 2024)
Venture capital dry powder has nowhere to go As the start-up downturn continues, it has become difficult to persuade investors to part with their money Elaine Moore (April 2024)
Welcome to the Golden Age of User Hostility They don’t make ’em like they used to! Charlie Warzel (April 2024)
How to get started as an interim CMO - Part III The good, bad, and ugly of doing interim and fractional work Hema Pad (Jan 2024) Truly resonated with me:
"I have only one main goal with my practice — 100% reference from founders and VCs of startups I’ve supported. My practice depends entirely on WOM and the relationships I’ve built in the tech community. Besides this newsletter and occasional LinkedIn posts, I don’t do any “marketing” of my services. The tech community is small. Founders and VCs know one another. If you do good work, your founders and VCs will think of you when they come across a startup that could use your expertise."
How To Unleash The Power Of Hyperlocal Influencer Marketing Michael Kuzminov (March 2024)
Soho House was always doomed to fail Josiah Fogarty (Feb 2024)
The parable of Soho House The most important social tensions are within the elite, not between the elite and the people Janan Ganesh (Feb 2024)
Bumble to relaunch as Gen Z breaks up with dating apps Kerry Flynn (Feb 2024)
Psychology Of Product Packaging, How It Plays Into Profitability Cheryl Robinson (Feb 2024)
Drop In Venture Funding To Black-Founded Startups Greatly Outpaces Market Decline Chris Metinko, Gené Teare (Feb 2024)
Catalog is building the B2B commerce platform for small companies Romain Dillet (March 2024)
Chinese retailers like Shein have offered Americans deep bargains on clothes for years—but that could soon change How can stylish imports from the other side of the Pacific be so cheap? The answer has much to do with a trade rule known as the de minimis exception. Didi Tang (March 2024)
It’s Time to Give Up on Email Four steps for getting over a very bad relationship Ian Bogost (March 2024)
AI / WEB 3 / CRYPTO
AI IS ABOUT TO MAKE SOCIAL MEDIA (MUCH) MORE TOXIC
We must prepare now. Jonathan Haidt and Eric Schmidt (May 2023)
Women in AI: Sandra Wachter, professor of data ethics at Oxford Kyle Wiggers (March 2024)
Top 8 ChatGPT Prompts That Will Make You More Productive Than a Team of 20 Employees Anish Singh Walia (Jan 2024)
Elon Musk, Notorious Man-Child, Outdoes Himself Yet Again The temperamental billionaire abruptly ended his interview with Don Lemon after being questioned about his outlandish social media antics, calling the journalist a “stupid asshole.” Eric Lutz (March 2024)
BRAIN / MIND / HEALTH
New technique sheds light on memory and learning The Rockefeller University (April 2024)
How to Have More Meaningful Conversations Charles Duhigg (Feb 2024)
How to Become a Supercommunicator at Work Charles Duhigg (Feb 2024)
The Art of Asking Smarter Questions Arnaud Chevallier, Frédéric Dalsace, and Jean-Louis Barsoux (May 2024)
How to master the art of small talk A guide to having actually interesting conversations with strangers. Allie Volpe (March 2024)
Move More, Sleep Better, UT Study Finds UT Austin (April 2024)
Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of Control The private and public seductions of the world’s biggest pop neuroscientist. Kerry Howley (March 2024)
Why isn’t dental health considered primary medical care? Ailments of the mouth can put the body at risk for a slew of other ills. Some practitioners think dentistry should no longer be siloed. Lola Butcher (March 2024)
Forget Work-Life Balance How are you spending your choices? Samantha Boardman (April 2024)
ART / LITERATURE
Mystic Without a Church Werner Herzog’s new memoir provides a look back on the magisterial and occasionally maddening career of a cinematic visionary. Jaspreet Singh Boparai (March 2024)
Mark Rothko’s Eternal Search for the Sublime An expansive retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, in Paris, shows why the visionary artist continues to turn heads. William Middleton (Nov 2023)
The Dark Clouds Closing In on Mark Rothko A retrospective exhibition in Paris holds so much beauty that visitors may miss how the artist, exhausted, painted himself into a corner.
Anthony Majanlahti (March 2024)
Mercedes de Acosta: The poet who had affairs with the 20th century’s most famous women An unpublished book has emerged by the woman best known for her liaisons with Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Isadora Duncan David Barnett (March 2024)
Eimear Walshe on Decolonial Irish Folk Songs The artist representing Ireland at the Venice Biennale discusses songs that subverts the country’s history of linguistic oppression Eimear Walshe (April 2024)
I Don’t Have To Choose Between Writing About Myself And Writing About The World How navel-gazing fits into the politics of personal authority Erica Berry (March 2024)
Contemporary Literary Novels Are Haunted by the Absence of Money Naomi Kanakia (April 2024)
Cutting Class: On the Myth of the Middle Class Writer Alissa Quart (April 2024)
"The more work provides actual meaning in people’s lives, the more it’s denigrated as hobby or vanity project."
Marvel at Hundreds of Mathematician Max Brückner’s Remarkably Precise Models of Polyhedra Kate Mothes (Feb 2024)
Who Gets to Tell a Love Story? 'Love Songs' at International Center of Photography, New York, suggests that queer art is inherently allergic to telling a representational story of intimacy Daniel Felsenthal (Aug 2023)
Through Porcelain Shards and Hundreds of Threads, Helena Hafemann Shatters Notions of Value Jackie Andres (April 2024)
Short-story master George Saunders: ‘Social media instantly turns you into a ferocious version of yourself’ The American author is back with a new anthology that highlights the struggle against algorithmic ‘mind control’ Laura Fernández (Feb 2024)
FICTION / POETRY
Your Horoscope for the Year of the Dragon Aaron Hwang, author of "The Chinese Zodiac," uses astrology to divine the future that awaits writers this year (Feb 2024)
From the Book Waiting to Be Read on Your Bedside Table
Slide between my pages and get to know me better Sue D. Gelber (Feb 2024)
FILM / SCIENCE / OTHER / PERSONAL INTEREST / RANDOM
We Finally Know What Turned The Lights on at The Dawn of Time Michelle Starr (March 2024)
I’m Watching Xena: Warrior Princess for the First Time, and My Wife Is What Makes It Special Sa’iday Shabazz (March 2024)
Against Trendbait: TikTok has seen a bizarre (and annoying) explosion of language as creators rush to coin terms. Rebecca Jennings (Feb 2024)
When Will the World Give Millennials a Break? Rhiannon Lucy Cosset (Feb 2024)
Something's Gotta Give at 20 years old: Charming, progressive, and all-too relevant Eleanor Danenberg (April 2024)
The director Yorgos Lanthimos says is “doing something different with cinema”
Swapnil Dhruv Bose (Feb 2024)
I Left A Man I Love To Pursue A Truer Life What am I supposed to do when someone wants all of me? “AM I A LESBIAN?” Rachael Marie Walker (March 2024)
Sometimes I wish I were a man. No—not quite—something outside of it all. Neither man nor woman, something in-between and bigger and more nebulous and mine.
This question will take time to unspool, to learn that gender is a question that asks itself again and again. I walk through the world and I am “yes, girl”-ed and “hot girl”-ed and “yes ma’am”-ed and none of these are right and none of these are wrong and none of them are mine. My gender can be more than how I move through the world; a way of relating to the self. Nonbinary-ness allows for that flexibility, that movement. It takes time to get here.
The Reddit pages that investigate influencers Feven Merit (March 2024)
Hitmakers of the late '90s and '00s are touring together. Why experts say ‘nostalgia tours’ are a ‘win-win’ for the whole family. Get ready to party like it's 1999 — again! David Artavia (April 2024)
Melting polar ice is slowing the Earth's rotation, with possible consequences for timekeeping A new study found that ice loss caused by climate change is redistributing mass on the Earth enough to alter its spin. Evan Bush (March 2024)
Law & Order’s Identity Crisis The Dick Wolf extended universe is falling apart under the pressure of trying to have it both ways. Scaachi Koul (Feb 2024)