Francesca Boffini - wbsdigital

How to make a decision when you are afraid to choose

Francesca Boffini — Sun, 10 Apr 2022 19:15:56 +0000

Do you ever feel like you have too many alternatives to choose from? And, do you ever feel like no matter what you decide, you will end up regretting your choice and wondering whether another option would have been better? Well, the good news is that you are not alone. Many people indeed experience the so-called paradox of choice, which is a consequence of what Barry Schwartz defines as the official dogma of Western industrial societies [1].

According to this dogma, maximising individual freedom is crucial for boosting citizens’ welfare since individual freedom is not only invaluable and indispensable to each of us as human beings but also allows us to make decisions for ourselves on our own, without anyone intervening to choose on our behalf. Therefore, to put it simply, maximising individual freedom means maximising individual choice.

This idea that the greater choice people have, the more freedom they have is deeply embedded in our everyday life. Just think of when you go grocery shopping: no matter the size of your local supermarket or the goods you need to buy, you will always face a plethora of alternatives to choose from. On the one hand, being granted access to so many options makes you think you will have a better chance of finding the one that most suits and satisfies your needs. On the other hand, however, being presented with multiple alternatives actually implies a greater effort when you need to come to a decision, leading you to feel both overwhelmed and, in the end, unsatisfied as you may end up believing that you could have picked a different and better option [2]. And it is precisely here that FOBO arises.

FOBO (Fear of a Better Option)

If you are not familiar with FOBO, it is best to start with a better-known term, that is, FOMO. This acronym, invented by Patrick McGinnis, is short for Fear Of Missing Out, and it refers to the anxious feeling that is created and repeatedly fueled by social media that something better out there is happening than what you are doing at the moment and also to the constant fear of being excluded from group experiences [3]. Nowadays, this feeling is quite common. As a matter of fact, every day, whenever you check your social media feeds, you come across your friends eating out at some fancy restaurant or famous influencers going on holiday in some exclusive location, that is, content that leads you to believe that you are falling behind since, while everybody else is enjoying their life, you are just laying in your bed and looking at your phone screen.

Sadly though, there is another fear you need to be aware of, a fear that can be considered the evil twin of FOMO and that could be even more harmful. It is called FOBO, an acronym that is still Patrick McGinnis’ brainchild and that is short for Fear Of a Better Option [4]. To experience it, you must, by definition, have plenty of options, which is no big deal since, as previously mentioned, we live in a choice-rich world where even simple decisions, such as buying groceries, are fraught with overthinking and overanalysis.

The Internet and the massive success of e-commerce websites have further exacerbated this issue as, online, we are able to discover and access an endless number of different versions of any product or service. For instance, if you wanted to purchase a body sponge, you would have to scroll through thousands of items and look into hundreds of customers’ reviews, so an excessive amount of information just to buy such an ordinary object. Consequently, chances are you experience FOBO on a daily basis as, every single day, you need to make decisions that force you to choose one option out of a boundless group of perfectly acceptable alternatives.

The question, therefore, arises spontaneously: is having endless choices bad? Well, even though it may seem counterintuitive, since we are generally led to believe that being able to choose among many suitable options is a privilege, FOBO generates such extreme analysis paralysis that it can negatively affect every aspect of our life. Indeed, when you fail to make decisions rapidly and firmly, you waste precious time and energy that you could have devoted to other worthy activities.

Such claims might sound a bit pessimistic. However, luckily, it is possible to overcome FOBO. As perfectly explained by Patrick McGinnis himself in his How to make faster decisions TED Talk, the secret is to determine the stakes with any choice you have to make so that your decision-making process will be more informed and, above all, smoother. Notably, by adopting this approach, you will manage to effectively split any decision into three main categories:

- No-stakes decisions
- Low-stakes decisions
- High-stakes decisions

No-stakes decisions

No-stakes decisions are those that, most of the time, do not have a wrong answer and, therefore, are easily forgotten within a few hours after making them. An example is deciding which movie to watch on Netflix. Obviously, with hundreds of movies available on the streaming platform, it is easy to get overwhelmed, yet no matter what you select, negative long-term effects are fundamentally nonexistent.

From this perspective, spending plenty of time deciding whether to watch The Wolf of Wall Street or Catch Me If You Can is pointless. But how to move on? Well, considering that, in these cases, the stakes are at their lowest, the best solution is to leave decisions up to chance [5]. For instance, you could simply flip a coin, assigning one of the options to heads and the other to tails. By doing so, you would not only get rapidly over your decision but also avoid blaming yourself if the elected movie is not to your liking.

Low-stakes decisions

Low-stakes decisions demand a bit of reasoning as they can lead to many different acceptable outcomes and have some sort of consequences on our lives, even if not dramatic ones. This category encompasses daily decisions in the office, such as purchasing laptops for employees working from home or booking a venue for a meeting, that is, decisions that, although requiring some thinking, will slip your mind in a matter of weeks as no one will get hurt if, with hindsight, it will turn out that you could have chosen a better option.

Therefore, when faced with these types of choices, you can still outsource your decision-making process. However, since a little bit of critical thinking is involved, it is wiser to count on another person rather than on chance [5]. For example, you could set out your alternatives and arguments to a trusted person and then accept their recommendation immediately, whatever it might be and without any second thought.

High-stakes decisions

High-stakes decisions are those that have a considerable long-term effect on our lives, such as enrolling in university or accepting a job. In other words, we are talking about decisions for which we do not want to make any mistakes as they carry significant risks.

For this reason, when facing such crossroads, it is crucial to establish some basic principles and concentrate on what truly matters to you [5]. Then, after setting out your decision-making framework and your objectives, you need to collect relevant facts about your options. This data gathering can simply result in a list of pros and cons, but, in order to avoid unnecessary second thoughts, it must be focused on your core values. For instance, if you are sensitive to issues like animal abuse, you will turn down a job from a cosmetics company renowned for testing products on animals and take into consideration job offers from cruelty-free organisations, even if it means missing out on a higher salary. Thereby, this decision-making method allows you to only contemplate alternatives that are already perfectly acceptable to you, meaning that any possible inconvenience or drawback will be limited.

Once you have defined your ground rules, the actual decision-making process can begin. It can be conceived as an elimination round as, to make it smoother, it is best to trigger it by selecting a front-runner option based on your instinct and then start comparing it with the other alternatives until you get down to one final choice [5]. The key to avoiding FOBO is to remember that whenever you get rid of an option, it is gone for good as, if you keep dwelling on what you have discarded, you will undoubtedly get stuck and end up never making a decision.

If you adopt this approach, you will generally manage to come up with independent decisions. However, if you still sometimes find it challenging to choose on your own, you will need to get help, outsourcing the final choice to a small group of qualified and trusted people [5]. On these occasions, the trick is to reach out to an odd number of people so that you can always be sure to have someone able to cast the deciding vote.

Once you have finally made your choice, the last thing to do is to commit as you will never know whether you have made the perfect decision, but you will undoubtedly feel more rewarded if you have put a lot of effort into reaching a certain aim. Furthermore, as Patrick McGinnis himself suggests, whenever we feel overwhelmed by the huge amount of choices we have to make daily, we should remember that many people in the world will never have to worry about FOMO or FOBO at all.

“Unlike the billions of people who have few options, if any, due to war, poverty or illness, you have plentiful opportunities to live decisively. You may not get everything you want, but the mere fact you get to decide is powerful. In fact, it’s a gift. Make the most of it.” [6]

If you enjoyed this, you should check out FOMO Sapiens, Patrick McGinnis’ podcast focused on the importance of making decisions firmly and finding the courage to miss out on the rest.

Moreover, I suggest the following TED Talks to learn more about how we choose.

- How to make hard choices by Ruth Chang
- The art of choosing & How to make choosing easier by Sheena Iyengar
- Our unhealthy obsession with choice by Renata Salecl

References

[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_the_paradox_of_choice

[2] https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/economics/the-paradox-of-choice

[3] https://www-sciencedirect-com.uow.idm.oclc.org/science/article/pii/S0040162521003632

[4] https://patrickmcginnis.com/blog/meet-fobo-the-evil-brother-of-fomo-that-can-ruin-your-life/

[5] https://medium.com/illumination/this-is-what-happened-when-i-tried-to-break-free-from-fobo-a95f38d54355

[6] https://www.ted.com/talks/patrick_mcginnis_how_to_make_faster_decisions

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SaGG (Sponsor a Gambian Girl) Foundation – Social listening

Francesca Boffini — Wed, 30 Mar 2022 18:08:52 +0000

The SaGG (Sponsor a Gambian Girl) Foundation is a non-profit organisation that aims to empower Gambian girls and women through education. To enable them to express and reach their full potential, it promotes gender equality and a society where women’s education is granted and not up for discussion, assists in matching disadvantaged girls with sponsors that, with just £10 a month, can support their access to schooling, and strives for the implementation of more progressive policies for girls’ education [1].

With these goals in mind, the charity has been able to support 120 girls so far [2]. However, nothing is ever enough when it comes to such a worthy cause. Therefore, the SaGG Foundation must keep track of its initiatives and collect data and insights about both its micro-environment and macro-environment. Here is where the so-called social media listening comes into play.

Social media listening, often referred to simply as social listening, is the process of tracking social media platforms for mentions and interactions relevant to a brand in order to analyse them, extract actionable insights, and build reports capable of supporting the development of a plan or strategy [3]. Thereby, for any organisation, this audit is of great value for assessing its social media assets and conversations, examining its competitors’ social media efforts, and investigating its target audiences [3].

Company audit

To promote its cause, in addition to its corporate website, the SaGG Foundation relies on four social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. On all these platforms, it mainly employs visual content, such as images and short videos, usually complemented with hashtags and CTA like links to its website and blog in order to increase traffic and boost participation.

Its social media initiatives aim to provide potential sponsors with educational and informative content focused on women’s empowerment and girls’ education, encouraging them to visit its other digital properties to find out more information. Additionally, each platform has a more specific focus. For instance, Facebook, which gathers more followers, serves to create awareness and promote actions, such as donations, while Twitter and Instagram are primarily used to reach big audiences, especially by the use of relevant hashtags. Lastly, LinkedIn is leveraged to raise awareness among professionals and build thought leadership and reputation, benefiting from its networking opportunities that allow organisations to demonstrate their expertise and start valuable conversations within their industry’s community.

The SaGG Foundation regularly updates its profiles, posting around three times a week and with a higher frequency on special events such as Women’s International Day. Moreover, its content is well integrated and coherent across all its digital platforms. However, it lacks diversification as most of its posts are published on each social media page without any change. This repetitiveness could be the reason for its low engagement rates that, as can be observed in the underneath images, are below the average recorded by non-profit organisations on Facebook [4] and Instagram [5]. The foundation reaches above-average engagement rates only on Twitter [6] and LinkedIn [7], even though these outcomes have little relevance when considering the small number of followers that the two platforms gather.

Competitors audit

The need for the SaGG Foundation to enhance its social media efforts is even more noticeable when taking into account some of its competitors, that is, other non-profit organisations that fight for women’s rights and women’s empowerment. For instance, as can be noticed in the underneath images, CAMFED (Campaign for Female Education) records an above-average engagement rate on Facebook, similarly to AWDF (African Women’s Development Fund) on LinkedIn. These better results are certainly due to the greater reach that the two institutions have, but above all to their choice to provide content diversification across all the different digital platforms on which they are active.

On the other hand, when compared to Together Women Rise and Leading Ladies Africa, the SaGG Foundation scores better in terms of engagement rate on Twitter and Instagram, respectively. These poor results obtained by the two competitors may be due to the lack of diversification in content publication and the lack of interaction with users, as the administrators of their profiles generally reply only to activists’ and partners’ comments. Nevertheless, the lower performance achieved by these two non-profit organisations is offset by their higher reach and update frequency, as stressed in the underneath images.

Consumers audit

The SaGG Foundation‘s primary target audience consists of women aged between 21 and 40, with a university background, and interested in gender equality, women’s education, and activism. The charity manages to reach this audience on Instagram, where the percentage of female users is much higher than that of male users (72.9% vs. 27.1%) [8]. The same cannot be said for Facebook, where men claim a slighter greater presence (52.3% vs. 47.7%) [8]. However, both platforms address the right audience in terms of age, as most followers are aged between 18 and 44 [8].

Even though the organisation cannot boast outstanding engagement rates, the few comments that it receives are always favourable and encouraging and underline how crucially important its cause is. Indeed, its primary audience is sensitive to discrimination, gender biases and stereotypes, and, consequently, gains satisfaction from seeing women overcoming challenges and making great strides in male-dominated sectors.

This sensitivity comes to light also when looking at users’ search behaviours. For instance, relying on AnswerThePublic, it is possible to notice that, as regards the keywords “Girls’ education” and “Girls’ education Africa”, most people search for information about women’s education and its relevance, in order to understand what educating girls means and how providing education to women can have a more than positive impact on society, especially in terms of reaching gender equality. Moreover, many searches point out users’ intention to learn about inspirational people that fought or are fighting for women’s right to education and their potential interest in supporting the cause through sponsoring.

These trends can also be observed in Buzzsumo, where the top articles for the keyword “Girls’ education Africa” mainly revolve around activists and organisations that strive to provide women with better educational opportunities.

Recommendations

Based on the collected data, the main suggestion for the SaGG Foundation is to pursue content diversification across its social media platforms, as each one of these is populated by different types of users with specific needs, preferences, and behaviours. In other words, the charity should keep focusing on its worthy cause with a more strategic approach to each platform to provide its potential donors with what they need according to where they are.

On Facebook, where people are more inclined to read [9], the organisation should concentrate on raising awareness and inspiring actions through posts with longer captions that explain why women’s education is vital and how ordinary people can concretely contribute to the cause by becoming sponsors. Similarly, on LinkedIn, where users usually browse their feed first thing in the morning to catch up with the latest news [10], the charity should opt for posts with longer captions focused on the world’s need for more educated women and aimed at professional women that desire to take action and, hopefully, become SaGG champions.

On Twitter, where characters are limited to 280 and people tend to look for bite-sized news [11], the SaGG Foundation should instead prioritise infographics and short videos, that are easier to digest, and make use of relevant hashtags, especially those related to special events like Women’s International Day (#WomensInternationalDay), prying their ability to reach bigger audiences and increase the chances of being noticed in the so-called Trends section. Likewise, on Instagram, where people usually do not have time to read, eye-catching and brief formats should be preferred [12]. For instance, Reels and Stories could be used to give access to real testimonies and behind-the-scene content, leveraging their ability to offer a full-screen experience and their peculiar features, such as question stickers, in order to catch potential donors and sponsors’ attention and encourage their participation.

To conclude the analysis, it is essential to underline that, despite the need for content diversification, the SaGG Foundation should always bear in mind that diversifying does not mean forgetting about consistency. Therefore, it must continue to guarantee a relevant and coherent experience across all its digital platforms as each one of them might have its own focus, but all of them need to work towards a common goal, that is, educating about women’s empowerment and supporting Gambian girls throughout their educational path.

References

[1] SaGG Foundation (no date, a). Sponsor a Girl Child The Gambia. SaGG Foundation. Available from https://www.saggfoundation.org/about-us.html [Accessed 25 March 2022].

[2] SaGG Foundation (no date, b). Benefits and Impact of Girls’ Education. SaGG Foundation. Available from https://www.saggfoundation.org/our-impact.html [Accessed 25 March 2022].

[3] Lee, I. (2018). Social media analytics for enterprises: Typology, methods, and processes. Business Horizons, 61 (2), 199–210. Available from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2017.11.002 [Accessed 25 March 2022].

[4] Rival IQ. (2021). Average engagement rate with brand posts on Facebook in 2020, by vertical. London: Statista. Available from https://www.statista.com/statistics/204067/daily-facebook-content-net-page-likes-by-vertical/ [Accessed 25 March 2022].

[5] Rival IQ. (2022). Average engagement rate with brand posts on Instagram in 2021, by vertical. London: Statista. Available from https://www.statista.com/statistics/795367/most-popular-verticals-instagram/ [Accessed 25 March 2022].

[6] Rival IQ. (2021). Average engagement rate with brand posts on Twitter in 2020, by vertical. London: Statista. Available from https://www.statista.com/statistics/798414/daily-twitter-brand-audience-mentions-by-vertical/ [Accessed 25 March 2022].

[7] Cucu, E. (2021). [STUDY] LinkedIn Engagement Rate: 39,465 Business Posts Show How Visual Oriented Content Gets Ahead on LinkedIn. Socialinsider. Available from https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/linkedin-engagement-rate/ [Accessed 25 March 2022].

[8] SaGG Foundation (no date, c). SaGG Social Media Audience Report. Blackboard. Available from Blackboard (Social Media and Content Marketing module) [Accessed 25 March 2022].

[9] Beam, M.A. et al. (2018). Context collapse and privacy management: Diversity in Facebook friends increases online news reading and sharing. New Media & Society, 20 (7), 2296–2314. Available from https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817714790 [Accessed 25 March 2022].

[10] Li, X., Cox, A. and Wang, Z. (2018). How do social network sites support product users’ knowledge construction? A study of LinkedIn. Online Information Review, 42 (3), 304-323. Available from https://www.proquest.com/docview/2031409083?accountid=14987&pq-origsite=primo&forcedol=true [Accessed 25 March 2022].

[11] van de Velde, B., Meijer, A. and Homburg, V. (2015). Police message diffusion on Twitter: analysing the reach of social media communications. Behaviour & Information Technology, 34 (1), 4–16. Available from https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2014.942754 [Accessed 25 March 2022].

[12] Carlson, K. (2021). Here’s Why It’s Not Too Late to Start Using Instagram Reels for Your Business. Special Events Magazine. Available from https://www.proquest.com/docview/2522565490?accountid=14987&pq-origsite=primo&forcedol=true [Accessed 25 March 2022].

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