A blog about smart marketing and conversion optimization.

I’m late to the social media party, but now I’m here, and I’m into it.

There’s a reason why Facebook’s stock is sky-rocketing, Twitter is about to IPO, Pinterest’s valuation is in the billions — and it’s not because there’s another tech bubble.

It’s because 1-2Many communication is an absolute human revolution. It’s enabling collaboration and innovation on a scale and at a speed that’s simply unprecedented, and my gut says that we’re still just at the very early preliminary stage of the explosion.

I spent a lot of time obsessing over v1.0 of this post where I wrote at length about all the things I can get by participating in social media. My wife, who is the most supportive and affirming person in the world, didn’t like it. At first, my ego was bruised, but then I actually listened to her criticism, and she got me to realize:

I’ve always thought about social media in terms of me: MY # of followers, how much people engage with ME, MY reputation … But it’s not about me. It’s about what we can accomplish when we work together — ALL OF US! Literally, the technology now exists that every single human on the planet Earth can be collaborating on a common cause.

Isn’t that just the most beautiful and inspiring possibility?

So for now, I’m not going to formalize any goals, make any huge promises, set any rules. I’ll keep you updated on progress with The Joshua Krafchin Social Media Experiment, but to the best of my ability I plan to follow the advice of my sage business partner:

“Why do you have to declare stuff? How does that help? Just go out & do your thing.” – Igor Belogolovsky, 7:18 PM PST 9/24/13.

Game on.

I’d love to hear from you and invite you to keep this conversation going with me on Twitter @joshuakrafchin.

We’re online marketers, not statisticians, so I’ve witnessed confusion from time to time when “statistical significance” enters the picture.

Statistical significance is a critical idea when it comes to A/B testing in the online marketing world because it distinguishes happenstance from real, tangible, actionable test results.

Whether you like it or not, as a marketer conducting an experiment, you’re suddenly part scientist. You have to prove the results of your experiment are worthy of further action and exploration.

Without further adieu — here’s what you should know about statistical significance as an internet marketer:

1. The statistical significance associated with your A/B test measures how confident you are that the results didn’t just occur by chance.

2. Statistical significance is described in confidence intervals. Typically, the “minimum” confidence interval to determine it’s very unlikely your test winner happened by chance is 95%.

3. If you can get a confidence interval of 97-99% you are in a very strong position to say your test results are not a coincidence.

4. Another way to think about what statistical significance means is this:

Your CEO: “How confident are you that the A/B test results here aren’t simply a coincidence?”

You: “I am 99% confident, statistically speaking, that it’s no coincidence.”

Boom. You are now empowered to sling the phrase left and right.

Here’s a really useful statistical significance calculator marketers can use.