{"id":1302,"date":"2015-02-19T20:41:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-04T20:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/?p=1302"},"modified":"2023-11-06T15:56:12","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T15:56:12","slug":"why-is-150-the-most-magical-number-for-marketers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salesforce.com\/eu\/blog\/why-is-150-the-most-magical-number-for-marketers\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is 150 the Most Magical Number for Marketers?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I am in the middle of a social experiment on twitter<\/a> that has resulted in quite a few heated debates. Up until last week, I was following almost 3,000 people – many of whom I\u2019ve met personally at conferences or virtually via twitter chats. The problem I was finding was that I was getting increasingly frustrated at being unable to keep up with the sheer volume of conversations with my followers. (I worked out that I would need to swipe my newsfeed 14,400 times a day just to keep up). Challenged by one of my friends, I decided to un-follow everyone and start again – but this time I was only going to follow 150 people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me explain why 150 is a very significant number for marketers.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Commonly referred to as Dunbar\u2019s Number,<\/a> 150 has been proven to be the maximum amount of relationships that any one person can sustain. The original research was done back in the 1990\u2019s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar who found a correlation between brain size and the average social group size. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can only comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships. He then turned his attention to humans to see if his assumptions were correct. They were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it turns out, 150 is also the maximum size of farming communities before they split, or need to be governed and policed. 150 employees is also the optimum size of an organisation’s workforce before it needs to split into departments, and historically it is the basic unit size of Roman armies. Basically, Dunbar argued that 150 is the perfect size for a community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing about communities in his book A Different Drum, M. Scott Peck explained that a true community is one where each member loves and supports each other, helping make big decisions together, for the good of the group, where no one person is in charge. When you consider that a community is a group of people who love and support each other, coming together in times of need and celebrating together on happy occasions, it makes you wonder if the communities that marketers think they are building are really communities at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The communities that some marketers build are owned by brands. The marketing team is actually the one in control of the group, and any conversations\/content shared between members is usually dictated by social and content teams. This is not a community. I have always liked marketer Chris Brogan\u2019s description of a community:<\/p>\n\n\n

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The difference between an audience and a community is which way the chairs are facing.<\/p>\n@ChrisBrogan<\/i><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n