Micro Persuasion

Media's Rising Digital Acuity Puts Agencies at Risk

The following is also my column in next week's issue of Advertising Age...

It wasn't the most talked about session at the IAB Annual Meeting this week in Phoenix, but it should have been.

In a series of fascinating frames peppered with statistics, Christopher Vollmer from Booz Allen Hamilton laid out how media companies have increased their digital skills, added new services and are winning over marketers. In the process, they're disintermediating agencies - even as they all downplay it.

Three data points from the joint IAB/Booz Allen Hamilton study are particularly noteworthy:

* By 2010, 53% of media companies surveyed expect to do more business directly with marketers. The majority of marketers (52%) feel the same about publishers

* Only 27% of marketers expect to be doing more business with agencies two years from now

* Today nearly every media company (91%) offers some kind of "agency-like" services. This includes former untouchables like idea generation (88%) and creative development (79%)

The image of media companies as lumbering dinosaurs lingering toward extinction in a world of infinite content is downright wrong. They are more in sync with consumers than any other contingency in the marketing ecosystem. Their entire DNA is digital.

Consider too the bubbling innovation taking place across the Chinese Wall on the editorial side. Almost every single media brand has embraced a spirit of openness and collaboration that was unheard of a few years ago. New York Times Tech section editors curate and link to relevant posts from the blogosphere. Reporters at BusinessWeek are re-writing three-year-old cover stories with the help of readers. CNN's new iReport.com site solicits contributions from around the world, all without filters.

The digital rallying cry that started in the executive suite is being executed flawlessly across almost every media business. Digital editors and salespeople are fully integrated with their print/broadcast counterparts. However, the same cannot be said for agencies. During his keynote at IAB, Group M CEO Rob Norman outlined how the company just recently became more digitally integrated. (Note this related story on agency Web 2.0 skills that ran in AdWeek)

Still, Group M can't be blamed for starting late since the clients too are behind. The Booz Allen Hamilton study found that only 26% of marketers believe their organizations are "digitally savvy." Nevertheless, as the media remain in the vanguard and closest to the ever-changing habits of consumers, it's clear that as they get smarter the risk to agencies has never been greater.

Spring Conference Line-Up

Spring is around the corner and so is the peak conference season. Here's a run down of events at which I will be speaking. Here's hoping that I get to meet some of you at these.

Euroblog 2008 (March 13-15 in Brussels)

This symposium features communication academics and professionals for a discussion of social media and the future of public relations. Edelman is co-sponsoring the event. I will be participating on a few panels. You can register here.

AdAge Digital Conference (March 18-19 in New York)

Great line up of speakers and case studies. This includes a keynote by Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of NBC Universal. I will be moderating a panel on "the next new thing."

PSFK Conference (March 27 in New York)

A day-long event dedicated to trends, ideas and inspiration. This includes a In a 'new guns' versus 'marketing gurus' debate on how the social web will change in 2008 and how companies can best leverage digital.

Next08 (May 15 in Hamburg)

Features entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, consultants, founders, bloggers and venture capitalists and 1,000 participants talking about the future of the web. I will be a keynote speaker.

Mediabistro Circus (May 20-21 in New York)

A two-day summit about the digital platforms and trends that are changing media.

The IABC International Conference (June 22-25 in New York)

Features a great line up of speakers, including Nicholas Negroponte and Seth Godin.

links for 2008-02-29

• The Rise of the 'Citizen Paparazzi' - WSJ.com
  "Hunger for Celebrity Gossip Helps Create a Market"
  (tags: CitizenJournalism Photography)
• Hill Library Blog: The Entire Communications Industry, in Less than 200 Pages
  Great resource on all things digital.
  (tags: Stats 2007 Reference Technology Trends)
• How to Be a Classy Leader - Harvard Business Online's HBR Editors' Blog
  Five points from historian David McCullough
  (tags: leadership history)
• Please Step Away From the In-Box - Advertising Age
  How Writing and Reading E-mail Detracts From Thinking
  (tags: Creativity Email attention Productivity lifehacks)
• loose wire blog: The New Newswire: a Dutch Student Called Michael
  The recent earthquake in England was reported first by Twitterers
  (tags: twitter CitizenJournalism microblogging Mobile Journalism)
• Half of Enterprises Use Web 2.0 Media Technologies
  "Some 54% of enterprise-size organizations use Web 2.0 technologies, as do 74% of companies with fewer than 500 employees"
  (tags: enterprise2.0 Stats workplace Web2.0)

Comparing SMM SEO and PR Tactics is Pure Poppycock

Last week I wrote about how some in the search engine optimization profession (not all) are openly espousing how to basically turn social media sites into heat seeking missiles for Google Juice - and not much else. Apparently there is a whole cottage industry called "Social Media Marketing" (SMM) that analyzes how to use social media for SEO purposes. That should give anyone pause.

Given my accusations, immediately and understandably many commenters jumped on the public relations industry for also trying to use social media to pull the wool over people's eyes. That's complete poppycock. There is no comparison. The reason is that over the last several years the PR industry has largely learned its lessons - often the hard way.

Call me an optimist, but in 2008 most in the PR business take a clean approach to social media. A key reason is that when our clients engage, their participation needs to be transparent for it to be credible. If they fail at following the common law of the community, which has happened in the past, you'll be the first to know about it. You can't always say the same so-called SMM SEO types. Their work is sometimes far harder to sleuth.

I want to discuss this a bit more by addressing some of the comments about PR that came back in response to my post...

Danny Sullivan: "the next time you're dealing with some client asking for visibility, just tell them that hey, if they have a great brand, good PR will be a byproduct."

Positive PR is definitely an outcome of good products, but not always. Public relations professionals play a key role in helping brands identify their core genius and to tell that story. The ultimate arbiter here is the public - either directly or through the media.

We always need to convince people of a product or service's worth, no matter how good it is. If we're encouraging brands to participate in social networks, blogs and social bookmark sharing sites then the bar is even higher. They must add their value before anyone will care.

Social Media Marketing through SEO, on the other hand, often aims to game the system for Google's sake. It can be difficult for someone to discern the role it played in generating Google Juice.

Aaron Wall: "Since when is a PR guy concerned about how wrong it is to game media? I mean...I spoke at a PR agency once, and their walls were plastered with framed media articles that favored their clients. How is that any different then a blogger linking to my content because they like it?"

Public relations professionals - the ones who do their job well at least - never game the media. In fact, every journalist would take issue with that statement. In the social web, the bar is even higher. If good content attracts legit blog links, then that's a completely valid approach.

Chris Kieff: I think the PR industry is just as dirty as the SEO industry. For every 8 of us good ones in both PR and SEO there are 2 lousy ones who give us all a bad name.

Every profession has people who are white hats and black hats. However, my contention is that it's very hard to uncover the nefarious SEO types while it's pretty easy to do so in PR. Fear of humiliation is acting as a deterrent in PR.

Andy Beal: "What about the multitude of PR firms that flood social media with company profiles of their clients–all with the sole intent of building their brand recognition. They want to 'appear' as if they’re engaging their customers, but really they’re just jumping in so they can figure out how to push their brand on users."

I believe these people will all be exposed if they are not adding value - period. We (the community and the industry) need to police these egregious programs, no matter where they come from. And that's happening.

links for 2008-02-26

• Popular Social Networking Websites Around The World
  (tags: SocialNetworking Stats)
• The Associated Press: Internet Ad Revenue Exceeds $21B in 2007
  " Online advertising revenues exceeded $21 billion for the first time in 2007, although preliminary data compiled by an industry trade group also suggest growth is slowing."
  (tags: Stats Advertising IAB)
• How to Change the World: Avenue A Razorfish 2008 Digital Outlook Report
  (tags: Marketing Trends Advertising Microsoft Stats)
• What Are You Worth in a Free Economy? - Advertising Age - MediaWorks
  Interview with Chris Anderson
  (tags: Advertising economics Trends)
• Customer Service Champs – BusinessWeek
  BusinessWeek takes a closer look at customer service and customer vigilantes.
  (tags: CustomerEvangelism CustomerService Marketing BusinessWeek)
• YouTube - Star Wars according to a 3 year old.
  (tags: Video starwars)
• Why short is tweet for the blogging community | Media | The Guardian
  (tags: jeffjarvis twitter Journalism microblogging Blogs)

Book Excerpt: Online Marketing Heroes

On March 10 WIley & Sons is going to publish a new book by Michael Miller called Online Marketing Heroes: Interviews with 25 Successful Online Marketing Gurus. The book features interviews with a host of digital marketing experts, including yours truly.

Wiley has graciously approved the posting of the chapter that features an interview with me. It covers my background, thoughts on blogging, PR, digital marketing and my work at Edelman. You can download it here as a PDF.

Sound bites...

* Technology works best when it takes on a do-it-yourself character—and when it becomes free

• Google’s free search has replaced the PR professional’s traditional paid research tools.

• Generation Y is abandoning earlier technology, such as email, in favor of text messaging, instant messaging, and social network communication

• To take advantage of social networking, figure out where you andyour community overlap and how they want to communicate

• Going forward, the concept of community is the common element running through all online media and technologies

An Experiment in Lifesourcing

What if you could tap into your social net (or even strangers) and ditch time intensive information tasks that you have to do in favor of the higher value stuff that you're best at? After an experiment in "lifesourcing" some work to India, I believe such a scenario might become common in the business world or even more widely - one day. Here's my story and where I think this could lead.

I first heard about lifesourcing - e.g. personal outsourcing - last summer when I read Tim Ferriss' runaway bestseller, The Four Hour Workweek. His mantra is to free yourself up to do the stuff you and only you are best at. Seth Godin covers a similar theme in The Dip.

Though it's very early, my gut says that it's conceivable that as people cope with the Attention Crash, they will zero in on their core competencies and seek to offload the rest in order to become more productive and remain competitive in the workplace. There are several forces at work here: the massive and independent-thinking Gen Y workforce, big time disruptions in IT, the growing ubiquity of social networking and peer-to-peer platforms and the rise of a giant talent pool in Chindia.

Back when I read Tim's book, I didn't see an immediate fit for lifesourcing in my day-to-day as an executive at Edelman. In fact, given that so much of what I deal with is confidential client information, it's darn near impossible.

Still, I remained extremely intrigued to run a pilot. It seems to bridge to a growing "digital nomadism" movement. For more, check out what my former colleague Mike Elgan and folks like Lea Woodward and Skellie are writing about.

My blog seemed like a natural place to dabble in lifesourcing since since pretty much everything I do here eventually enters the public domain. So, on Tim's recommendation, I posted a job on Elance. I searched for someone who could take my raw reader survey data and convert it into percentages and nice charts. This was a rather trivial assignment. However, for an Excel-challenged dude like me it was a major timesaver.

Even though the job was small, I was stunned when dozens of bids flowed in within the first few hours. The bidders seemed extremely aggressive and hungry for the job. After 24 hours of fervent bidding, I selected Sri from India based on his feedback rating, correspondence, experience and price. I also selected him because I was eager test a project with someone based in India.

After some back and forth and a bit of clarification in what I was looking for, Sri got to work. The amazing thing is that almost all of his emails came during my workday, not his. Sri turned around the job quickly and professionally and it cost me all of $50 - the Elance minimum. (I will share the charts in a subsequent post.)

Granted, this was a very simple assignment that probably anyone (but me) can do in an hour or two. Still, I was impressed. And it gets me thinking about where this might go when you combine lifesourcing and social networking - especially if the costs come down.

Social networking and online real-time communication/collaboration tools are a way of life for many Gen Yers. They already use these systems to get stuff done both inside and outside the enterprise.

Over the next five years I believe that lifesourcing will become a core part of every social network, be it b2b or b2c. Like IM or corporate blogging, social lifesourcing will start as a bottom-up movement as workers tap into the Net to get work done in the most efficient way possible, no matter where these resources may be. A groundswell may build as word spreads and workers try hard to compete with those who are farming out work elsewhere.

Still, there are big pitfalls. It's a guarantee that companies will try to put the kibosh on such activities as their information seeps beyond their virtual walls. This is already happening on social networks. Many employees have water cooler groups on Facebook. Others are dabbling in using LinkedIn to get questions answered.

It's conceivable that these interactions will migrate from simple collaboration to peer-to-peer transactions over the next few years. The implications here - if this happens en masse - are huge. People will focus on their core competencies. This in theory will make everyone more productive and prosperous. However, it remains to be seen if this will become a mass trend given all the inherent risk.

SEO Shenanigans Pose a Clear and Present Danger to Social Media

As someone who reads a lot of blogs about search and social media (a term I am still not nuts about but has stuck), I have recently witnessed a disturbing trend. Some respected experts are advocating launching social media marketing programs solely for the purpose of influencing search engines, rather than with the intent of fostering collaboration and genuine communication.

This represents a clear and present danger to the fabric of the community. If you care about the social web, then you should be alarmed.

Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals of late seem poised to take over blogs, digg, StumbleUpon and other sites with a range of tactics, some legit, others more questionable with the intent of building Google Juice and nothing more. Read these blogs and you'll see it's often all they're talking about. I am not the only one out there who feels this way.

Consider some of the following blog posts that I found in my Google Reader database...

Boost Organic Results. Link Build with Social Media (Search Engine Watch)

The Inconvienent Truth About Social Media Marketing (Search Engine Land)

Building a Company With Social Media (Search Engine Land)

Realizing SEO benefits through blogging (HitTail)

How to Use Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis and Other Social Media Tools to Find New Clients, Make Money and Create the Lifestyle of Your Dreams (Conference)

To be clear, I do not object to the way that blogs, digg links and Wikipedia rank highly in search results. What does get me hot and bothered is when consultants and bloggers propose launching such an initiatives solely for influencing search. SEO, like word of mouth, should be a byproduct outcome, not a primary objective. Any brand that plays in this space should be aiming to create value. Do that and the other stuff will follow.

But the SEO shenanigans for the sake of SEO has to stop. If you're going to play in our sandbox, follow the community's (unwritten) rules.

Newsrooms Struggle with Wikipedia Citations

The Editors Weblog reports on the mixed attitudes of newspaper editors citing Wikipedia articles. Some, like the LA Times, are liberal. Others, like the Journal, use it for research. The American Journalism Review goes into more depth. A Google News search shows the practice is rampant.

The big question in my mind is this: when journalists cite Wikipedia articles, what happens when the facts they reference from the wiki entries change (assuming they do)? Do the reporters go back and update their articles? The news reports call more attention to the articles, potentially opening up a can of worms each time they source WIkipedia.

Seems like a big vicious cycle. Perhaps in the future these stories will carry some of the same disclaimers that WIkipedia lists.

Three Bookmarklets for Happier Mobile Browsing

With smartphone sales soaring and Citigroup projecting year-over-year growth of 50-60%, it's a safe bet that a lot of you are increasingly surfing the web from your mobile devices.

Still, even with the iPhone, the mobile browsing experience leaves lots to be desired because of the bandwidth and reception issues. Enter bookmarklets. These utilities add one-click functionality to your mobile device and they're terrific time savers.

Here are three such links I use constantly on the go. Drag the first two to your bookmarks/favorites and sync them to your device and you're all set. For the final bookmarklet, you need to first visit each service to configure them.

Mobilize This!

Google, Mowser and Skweezer are mobile transcoders that take any URL you throw at it and strip away the graphics for faster browsing. I prefer to use Google's version since it also gives me the option to browse the feed. The next time you want to get to a page quickly and your browser keeps loading the page. Stop it mid-stream and simply tap your Mobilize This! bookmarklet.

Wikipedia This!

Need to settle a bar bet like the name of Boba Fett's dad? Wikipedia of course has all the answers. Access this bookmarklet, enter your search term and you'll be whisked away to the answer.

ToRead and Instapaper

The great thing about the mobile web is that it's always with you. The downside is that sometimes it's hard to read a long story. Enter ToRead.cc and Instapaper. Both of these sites help you bookmark articles for the future. In the case of ToRead, it will email you the full text of the page. Instapaper assembles a reading list you can access from anywhere.

Happy browsing, travelers!

links for 2008-02-18

• eMarketer: Online Buyers Seek Out User Reviews
  "Nine out of 10 US online buyers surveyed in February 2008 read customer reviews at least "some of the time" before making a purchase."
  (tags: Stats reviews peertopeer)
• eMarketer: Podcasts Aren't Just for Young Nerds
  Good overview of the demographics of podcast listeners.
  (tags: Podcasting Advertising demographics Stats)

Media Jobs Sink as Marketing Services Jobs Rise

Adage:

U.S. media employment in December fell to a 15-year low (886,900), slammed by the slumping newspaper industry. But employment in advertising/marketing-services -- agencies and other firms that provide marketing and communications services to marketers -- broke a record in November (769,000). Marketing consulting powered that growth.

Is there a disconnect in the data here (PDF)? Yes, on the surface. However, it's also possible that more advertising and marketing programs are going direct-to-consumer, bypassing the media altogether. The upshot is to watch as pros who spent their entire careers in media start landing jobs at digital, PR and ad agencies. The need for content specialists is rising, not abating. Many of the jobs are still around but they may simply be migrating industries.

Also noteworthy, AdAge also reports that the local business sections of many newspapers are drying up.

links for 2008-02-11

• Poynter Online - Blogging Best Practices for Journalists
  Tips from Sree Sreenivasan
  (tags: Blogs Journalism Writing)
• MediaShift Idea Lab . Why I Love Forums -- and Not Blogs | PBS
  Interesting POV but I disagree that blogs are not communities.
  (tags: Blogs forums community)
• t|w|i|t|t|e|r|m|e|t|e|r
  Enter a word to graph its use on twitter's public feed.
  (tags: twitter visualization Stats)
• eMarketer - What Can Widgets Do?
  Widgets explained with statistics.
  (tags: Widgets Marketing Stats)
• How not to get sued for bloggers : Real Lawyers Have Blogs
  "An online course for bloggers and media practitioners with the 10 things you need to know to stay out of court"
  (tags: Blogs law CitizenJournalism)
• loose wire blog: Computers: Right Back Where We Started
  A variation on the same theme I wrote about yesterday. Clearly Jeremy and I are on the same track.
  (tags: attention Trends culture Technology Overload)

Could the Interruption Economy Sack Prosperity?

Sensory Overload by dav

Conventional wisdom says that technology - and nowadays the Internet - will always continue to advance and bring with it productivity gains and prosperity. That's certainly been the case for years. However, historically there are pauses. After the benefits of the Industrial Revolution were fully realized it took awhile for the next big era to begin. I wonder if we're about to enter a similar lull now that the Information Age is arguably almost 30 years old.

Mark Cuban argues that the Internet is now becoming a hinderance to our productivity. Idris Moote makes an even stronger case. He notes that productivity growth has gradually slowed since 2004. Moote cites statistics showing that interruptions from e-mail, cell phones, instant messaging, and blogs take up nearly 30% of each day; on an annualized basis, this represents a loss of 28 billion hours for the entire US workforce.

The United States - and other pockets of the developed world - are hooked on two drugs: information and busyness. As I've written many times, our rush to keep up with inputs can't scale and this may cause a sizable number of people to eventually cut back on info-crack, perhaps drastically.

The runaway success of my good friend Tim Ferriss' book, the Four Hour Workweek, is a direct manifestation of a desire that millions secretly have. If enough people get the willpower to say "enough" then spending on gadgets and time spent online could decline. In a worst case scenario, companies would retrench R&D spending and slow innovation. That's just one possibility of many, of course - and the most extreme (and unlikely).

The X factor here is actually a Y factor - Generation Y. They grew up in an age of information saturation. Gen Y'ers crave what psychiatrist Edward Hallowell calls screen sucking. The Internet is in their veins. They know no other way.

I am hopeful that as every successive generation emerges that never knew a world without the Net, the possibility for such a doomsday scenario decreases. That's not to say there won't be pain however. An informal digital divide has emerged between geeks and those who are blissfully and decidedly low tech. However, it's clear that we need new tools for managing interruptions - and they may not be technological, but social. Our prosperity may depend on it.

Reader Survey

This blog is going to be four years old in April. I have always viewed it as a work in progress and am eager to learn how to make it even more valuable for you. So, using the new Google Forms feature, I have set up a quick survey that I hope will guide content going forward. I would appreciate it if you fill it out. It's anonymous and all of eight questions, most of which are multiple choice. Thanks for reading as always.

links for 2008-02-07

• Twitter Blog: Highlights from Superbowl Sunday
  (tags: twitter 2008 Sports TV Advertising Stats)
• Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li's Blog): Why Social Applications Will Thrive In A Recession
  Interesting perspective. However, as marketers move to higher ground will cause pain for a lot of Web 2.0 startups.
  (tags: Advertising Forrester Trends recession economics 2008)
• LiveNewsCameras.com - Beta Version
  A live look at local news.
  (tags: Journalism Video TV Fox)
• Old media meets empowered customers - Jan. 24, 2008
  "European companies like Germany's Burda are driving toward a software-powered future of blended professional and amateur content."
  (tags: Media digitalcurators curation Journalism Trends)
• Instapaper
  By far one of the most useful sites ever. I constantly bookmark articles throughout the day and read them on my phone. Good complement to del.icio.us because it's private.
  (tags: bookmarks Mobile Timeshifting Bookmarklets)

The Digital Curator in Your Future

Credit: Met by jesst7

Content: it's everywhere. Content is in your inbox, your feed reader, outdoor media, your living room, your pocket and, increasingly, on every web site you visit. It also increasingly resides on sites built and managed by your favorite brands, which are bypassing the media and going direct.

The democratization of publishing is without a doubt a revolution. When we're all dead and gone, the 21st Century will be remembered as a Digital Renaissance - one that rivals the original that preceded it by 700 years.

The Internet has empowered billions of people and is distributing their creativity across millions of niches and dozens of formats. Quality and accuracy, of course, can vary. However, virtually every subject either is or will be addressed with excellence - by someone, somewhere.

However, the glut of content as we all know also has a major downside. Our information and entertainment options greatly outweigh the time we have to consume it. Even if one were to only focus on micro-niche interests and snack on bite-sized content, demand could never ever scale to match the supply. Content is a commodity. The Attention Crash is real and - make no mistake - it will deepen.

Enter the Digital Curator. A curator, in a cultural institution context, is a guardian or an overseer. According to Wikipedia, he/she "is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and their associated collections catalogs. The object of a curator's concern necessarily involves tangible objects of some sort, whether it be inter alia artwork, collectibles, historic items or scientific collections."

Museum curators, like web users, are faced with choices. They can't put every work of art in a museum. They acquire pieces that fit within the tone, direction and - above all - the purpose of the institution. They travel the corners of the world looking for "finds." Then, once located, clean them up and make sure they are presentable and offer the patron a high quality experience.

Much the same, the digital realm too needs curators. Information overload makes it difficult to separate junk from art. It requires a certain finesse and expertise - a fine tuned, perhaps trained eye. Google, memetrackers such as Techmeme and social news sites like digg are not curators. They're aggregators - and there's a big difference.

The call of the curator requires people who are selfless and willing to act as sherpas and guides. They're identifiable subject matter experts who dive through mountains of digital information and distill it down to its most relevant, essential parts. Digital Curators are the future of online content. Brands, media companies and dedicated individuals can all become curators. Further, they don't even need to create their own content, just as a museum curator rarely hangs his/her own work next to a Da Vinci. They do, however, need to be subject matter experts.

Curators are not editors either. The notion of an editor inherently implies that space is finite. Online it's not. Curators don't need to necessarily be trained in cutting, but in knowing where and how to unearth those special high-quality "finds" and to make them presentable. It's just as much about the experience and the way the information is presented, as it is the content.

If you look for them, curators are everywhere. Mahalo is a thriving community of curators on virtually dozens of subjects. The tech section of the New York Times web site and the My Times site, both of which highlight blogs, is another. Last but not least is the IAB Smartbrief. If you're interested in online marketing and have time to read only one source, this is the one to turn to because they curate.

As content universe expands and floods niches, there will always be a market for Digital Curators. The key for brands, individuals and media companies will be to identify those niches where they have deep expertise and to become the best in the world at serving them. I guarantee if you do this well and consistently, your long-term success is essentially guaranteed. And even if you do not have the energy to become a curator, you will certainly be influenced them.