The Daily Numbers, Paused

The Daily Numbers, Paused

Me

289: The number of editions of The Daily Numbers that have been published since I first pressed the Send button at 4:26 CST PM on November 17, 2010.

THOUGHT: The Daily Numbers email newsletter was begun as an experiment and an experiment it has remained. I never removed the statement at the bottom of each email stating it was an experiment and allowing myself an out should I feel the need for the experiment to come to a close.

Today is that day.

The Daily Numbers is going on hiatus, and, along with it, the companion Daily Numbers Podcast. Whether or not it returns and in what form if it does return, remains to be seen. I will continue to publish my thoughts on marketing and communications at my e-Strategy blog and I’ll continue to share content I find interesting at the companion e-Strategy After Hours blog but for now the Daily Numbers will cease.

So, as a parting shot, as it were, I’ll leave you with what I’ve learned from publishing a daily email newsletter for a little more than a year.

1. The topic of your newsletter–especially if it is published by a single person–must fascinate you endlessly. If it is a topic you could never grow tired of discussing, then it will not, for the post part, feel like work.
2. People are more interested in what you think than what you report. I began The Daily Numbers by simply publishing a set of statistics that I found interesting until people told me they don’t really care about the numbers, they care about what I thinkabout the numbers, what I think they mean.Had I ignored that advice, The Daily Numbers would’ve quickly become a chore. By sharing my interpretation of the numbers I’ve published–the very act of writing those thoughts down–helped to clarify and crystallize my own opinions. And that’s fun.
3. Therefore: You must be opinionated. Not in the sense that you’ve got your opinion and no-one’s going to change it but that you’re curious enough to have an opinion on most things and are not afraid to share them, regardless of whether they may ultimately prove foolish.
4. It is a lot of work. Even if your topic is fascinating to you, publishing five days a week is a ton of work. Even if your topic is fascinating, sharing five fairly well-formed opinions can be challenging. It requires quite a bit of discipline.
5. It’s a great way to stay on top of your field.

Thank you so much for joining me in this experiment; thank you equally for your words of encouragement and for your critiques, each has been invaluable; and I’d like to thank my friends and colleagues at Tunheim for their encouragement and, sometimes, for their patience.

This is not goodbye.

You’ll still be hearing from me. For now, it will simply not be in the form of The Daily Numbers.