Playbook for social research and marketing
- Content — things people can observe and interact with to generate engagement. Key is high quality to add value to people, who then start to reference it (share links etc.)
- Reference — as people start to reference your content, you start to get active feedback and see what people like / don't etc. As you continue to interact with people around your content you start to get fast feedback on where to go next. Good feedback loops with "OP" (Original Poster) builds trust that content and reference will continue to get better over time.
- Advocacy — as people build trust they start to share your content with their networks, so you become a node within many broader networks. Your inbound starts to become primarily from your "first listener" audience.
- Community — now people are interacting within and around your content, and are bringing their best content and people to your community. This becomes incredibly difficult to disrupt. Has offensive (community says/shows where to go and brings resources) and defensive (community will warn you of threats and defend you).
Write a paper > share with network > people feedback into it > builds network for research > repeat. Best digital method for scuttlebutt.
Constantly take online interactions offline, and offline interactions online. Builds communities and, most importantly, ability to observe things in real time.
What are the key decision points in the future that are not knowable to anyone? Once it plays out (if favorably) then invest in business. Typically not quarterly financial data...typically e.g. engagement and tipping points.
Whole point of building social community = grow community of people you can collaborate with.
Best and cheapest way to develop an information edge. These are enduring assets.
"Mandate arbitrage" (once you know all the players on the field)
- Goal: build the best information network possible over the next 50 years...therefore must be altruistic and not focus on timing of payoffs
- As you talk to more and more people, you realize there are so many smart people in the world...the idea of information edge becomes preposterous...information edge is circumstantial...so more important to understand why people with information are not acting on it
- ...often the answer is from the perspective of one's mandate the security doesn't offer any utility (e.g. for Buffett, most great securities are too small to move the needle...e.g. for shorts if short opportunity isn't big enough not worth effort, etc.)...for some big firms, any securities under $20 billion are too small to matter
- Long way of saying: open mandate with small size is a competitive advantage
- Many correlated constraints in the market (e.g. many asset managers have same size, ESG, etc. amongst major asset managers. Strategy: for securities, understand major players and their constraints...e.g. "no win" situation for most managers to put on oil trade when they are position-size constrained so can't get enough size to matter even if a good trade, but also if trade doesn't work then have to answer to BOD who was trying to stay green...therefore "no win" position even if a fantastic opportunity
- Long way of saying...once company gets to a certain size, investability opens up (e.g. if growing revenue 50%+ but at scale this has far more investability than smaller firm growing at same level.
- Understanding investability of business is key to investing well. i.e. who are the marginal investors? At what level(s)? At what size(s)?
The Franklin effect: best way to get people to like you is to (1) admit a fault or (2) ask for a favor.
Mike Rowe: entire content has been sourced from audience. Explain products. Try dirty jobs. Etc.
Steakums has done this well (frozen Philly cheesesteaks...hired comics to run Twitter accounts)
If you continue to put out content, it will protect you from past mistakes. (e.g. Trump/AOC...put out so much that past foe pas sink away...latest precedents are dominant precedents).
Look for areas seemingly unrelated to what you are doing...that come back to help...e.g. build audience through blog/podcast, later that audience becomes attractive for trying to get into VC deals, etc.