In late 2012, I pre-ordered Daniel Pink’s book To Sell is Human. One of a set of five gifts/thank yous for pre-ordering was a Field Notes memo book, stamped with To Sell is Human on the back.
I read To Sell is Human, and I used the memo book. I am a journal keeper, and I like Moleskine journals (among others). I like to take my journal from start to finish, and I resist starting other notebook-y things and diffusing my writing efforts.
As a consequence, I haven’t always known what to do with little memo books, and yet I found a use for this one. I carried it in my purse. It served me well at those times I needed to jot something down on the run – especially when taking out my phone to add a task/send a message would have been awkward.
I use it differently than my journal. The memo book is a temporary holding place. It’s kind of like a written RAM that gets cleared away. I won’t keep the old one, and I keep journals forever.
My new Field Notes pack!
Daniel Pink’s cobranding/partnership/product-placement/whatever-it-was worked. Now I’m hooked on Field Notes’ graph-ruled memo books. I just received my re-up, this time I chose the kraft paper cover.
And I think of Daniel Pink and how we’re all in sales every time I reach for it, even though “To Sell is Human” is not stamped on the back of this one.
“The deeper you go inside, the more general a place you reach.”
Yes.
I read My Struggle Book 1 and now am 3/4 of the way through Book 2. I am loving these books and his writing. His description of the mundane and his internal monologue is riveting, addictive, and moving. Listen to his own reading of his work and see for yourself.
I orient by water. Apparently I have to keep it on the east. If I don’t I have a hard time finding my way around the land. This is one of the many reasons I don’t live in California.
I grew up on the east side of Michigan, in a town pressed up against Lake Saint Clair. Lake Saint Clair is part of the Great Lakes, it’s just not a great lake, more like a pool in between the two straits that connect Lake Huron with Lake Erie.
My family has a cottage up on the east side of the Bruce Peninsula, the Peninsula defines Georgian Bay stretching off to the east.
I spent a lot of time on the east side of south Florida. There again, the seemingly limitless Atlantic stretches off to the East.
And I went to school in New Jersey – once more on the eastern side of the continent.
Basically, all of my most familiar and beloved places have had “big water” to my east, and even when it hasn’t been in sight, I’ve known it was there.
When I go to a place like California that has its ocean to the west, I get my cardinal directions completely backwards, and I find myself stumbling over the fact that away from the water is indeed East, not West, when driving and planning routes. I have imprinted my mental maps on the entirely subjective assumption that the “big water is to the East”.
The clear, cold water of Georgian Bay, which I like to keep to the East of me.
Learning about my own mental shortcuts helps me see that the categories I create about the world aren’t the world.
I’m pondering the intricacies of nonfiction and fiction writing and interpretation. I heard this on the radio and recognized its truth immediately.
When you’re writing fiction, everybody thinks you’re secretly writing about real people and things. But if you write an autobiography, they think you’re lying as one does.
Last fall, I listened to Dawn of Midi‘s Dysnomia on repeat as I drove, as I wrote, as I cooked. I found it via the RadioLab podcast. I loved the sense of driving seemingly-electronic music slowly morphing, and I loved to hear that it wasn’t electronic at all, but humans playing to sound like machines. The layering of sound and story was what caught me, but the music kept me.
This summer and fall, I’ve been listening to the xx‘s two releases on repeat. I discovered them via the New Yorker’s profile, Shy and Mighty.
Two different artists and sounds, but both triggered my play daily on repeat response and I thought I’d share. Both are good as foreground or background, which is a hard thing to do.
I know making music and getting paid for it these days is tough going, so if you like these songs, go support the artists and buy their music!
I just completed some go-to-market research for a scientifically-oriented business-to-consumer company. In this research, one of my tasks was to assess consumer sentiment and project possible customer loyalty for a new product launch. Things like customer-lifetime-value, ecommerce conversion rate, and loyalty would be wonderful to have from our competitors, but these KPIs are closely-guarded secrets.
While I loved spy novels as a teen, I am not up for corporate espionage. I do not need to break into competitor website analytics to uncover insights into consumer behavior. I asked consumers about their buying habits and loyalty directly, online.
My research on online consumer surveys turned up two options – Survata and Google Consumer Surveys. I believe I had heard of Google Consumer Surveys and then found Survata by searching for competitors of Google in the consumer survey space.
Similarities
Both show a short survey to give a reader access to gated content. Both offer a handful of questions for a buck or two a completed survey. Both help publishers monetize their visitors. Both offer geographic, age, and gender targeting, which happens, I imagine based on the target demographic of the content on the gated sites.
Both survey engines offer visualization help to understand your survey answers, including visualization of subsets within your answers. Both survey engines provide some sense of statistical significance of any trends in the data. Both require prepayment to run the survey.
Differences
Qualifying Question – Advantage Survata
When I started earlier this summer, Google Consumer Surveys did not offer the chance to have a qualifying question. So if the website visitor met your demographic criteria (say a certain age, your specified gender, maybe your region of interest) they answered your surveys. If you wanted males under the age of 45, great. If you wanted males under the age of 45 with small dogs, not so great.
Since then, Google has added a qualifying question option. The survey client (me in this case) only pays for respondents who answer the qualifying question correctly (e.g. people who answer yes to having a small dog).
Google’s restriction is they need the qualifying question passed at a minimum amount, otherwise they bounce the survey back to you. Apparently, my qualifying question was too stringent. Google kept my payment for the survey and issued me a coupon in lieu of a refund. However, since I don’t want people who don’t meet my criteria to answer my survey, I’m a little stuck as to how to use the coupon.I would have preferred a full refund, so I can get my questions answered at Survata! [edited 10/22 – Google issued me a refund for the incomplete survey].
As far as I can tell, Survata does not have a minimum response goal for the qualifying question. In fact, I used the same qualifying question for both the Survata and the Google Consumer Survey so I anticipate its success rate was similar in both environments. Survata did not bounce my survey.
Cost – Advantage Survata
The two survey engines are both inexpensive, but Survata is less expensive. For a 5-question survey, I paid about $1/response for US respondents from Survata. The qualifying question was not included in the question count. Google Consumer Surveys includes the qualifying question in the count, and I paid about $2/response for US respondents for 4 questions after the qualifier.
Support – Advantage Survata
I had a great experience with Survata. Prior to each survey launch, I got feedback on my questions and setup from a survey analyst. The analyst edited my survey, and I got to see the before and after version and approve it before launch. My analyst was available to me via email, in my survey dashboard, and via IM throughout the process. I also had a follow up call so that I could understand the survey results and get a quick orientation to their visualization engine when the survey was complete. I ran a handful of surveys and was able to work with the same analyst rather than starting anew each time.
Survata – Analyst review before and after
Google Consumer Surveys did a review of my questions ahead of launch as well, but the experience was less caring. I got a basic email detailing what was wrong with my survey and telling me what to do to fix it.
Google Consumer Survey edit request email.
Survata’s help was more helpful – they did the work for me and asked for my approval. Google made me their admin.
Data/Results Visualization – no Advantage
I liked the user interface, question previews, and results analysis engines for both survey vendors.
Publisher Network – Advantage Google?
I imagine with Google’s reach and reputation, Survata has stiff competition. I have not encountered a Survata survey on a website. I did see my first Google survey yesterday, on the Christian Science Monitor website. In case it’s not obvious, this is not my survey, though it is relevant to my home state, Michigan.
Google Consumer Survey encountered on the Christian Science Monitor website.
I prefer Survata
The survey engine (user interface, options, everything) for both Survata and for Google Consumer Surveys changed during my project. So, this review is a snapshot of an evolving set of features. Right now Survata has a strong edge in customer service. I had a good relationship with my survey analyst and a positive experience with the company. My experience with Google was more at arm’s length (only email, always from someone new) and ultimately unsatisfying due to their rejection of my survey after taking my money. [edited 10/22 – Google issued me a refund for the incomplete survey].
Short version: I strongly preferred my interactions with and the results I got from Survata.
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