Micro Persuasion

Three Ways to Mitigate the Attention Crash, Yet Still Feel Informed

The following is also my column in next week's AdAge.

One of the most important skills executives need today is the know-how to manage and harness their personal information flow.

The Attention Crash is a crisis in global business that is getting worse every day. By 2009, the Radicati Group predicts that we’ll spend 41% of our time managing email. Now add to that the IMs, documents, Facebook pokes, RSS feeds, Twitter tweets and text messages coming at us and we’re officially way oversubscribed.

Unfortunately, the problem will not abate. Human attention is finite. It doesn’t scale. Worse, the pace of change today is so rapid there’s a huge need to stay digitally savvy.

The key is in wrangling your information flow. Here are three of my best tips.

Inbox Zero (www.inboxzero.com) - Blogger Merlin Mann has created a simple way to effectively manage email. His approach involves setting aside blocks of time for “email dashes,” quickly triaging messages and automating some of the processes with search folders – a powerful Outlook feature that most never use. Be sure to watch the video on Merlin’s site.

Invest in Search – When in doubt, let search tools - either on your desktop or online - do the work for you. The time you invest to set up these systems can pay huge dividends.

For example, I subscribe to around 500 RSS feeds in Google Reader. The great thing about my reader is that it’s searchable and acts as a personal database. So recently when my colleague asked me for March Madness online video statistics, was able to pull them up in seconds by searching my archive.

Make Unusable Time Usable – I read a ton. However, I have mastered how to stuff it into pockets of time that are normally “unusable.”

I get through about one business book a week by listening to them when I commute, travel and run errands. Most of the key books are available from Audible.com or iTunes. I am currently "reading" Groundswell by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li.

In addition, I use Instapaper.com to bookmark articles I want to read. I can access this site from any computer or mobile device. I also keep a reading folder in my email nerve center that syncs up with my different devices. It’s even available when I am offline.

These are just a few of the best tips. For more “lifehacks”, check out my bookmarks.

links for 2008-04-30

• The Science of Thinking Smarter: A Conversation with Brain Expert John J. Medina
  "Neuroscience can show managers ways to improve productivity."
  (tags: science Productivity attentioncrash)
• Morgan Stanley’s March Internet Trends Report: Social Applications Dominating
  (tags: Trends Stats Web2.0)
• Who do people trust? (It ain’t bloggers)
  (tags: Forrester Marketing research Blogs trust)
• Edelman Studios ::
  We're partnering brands with innovative ideas from content producers.
  (tags: Edelman Video crowdsourcing Advertising Marketing)
• In search of a GTD solution - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)
  Mail/iCal with IMAP are still working for me.
  (tags: GTD OSX Leopard Mail.app)
• A workout for sitting at your desk
  Five exercises you can do in your office while sitting by your desk.
  (tags: Fitness workplace)

Even if Twitter is Just a Geek Haven, It's Still Very Influential

There's been an interesting discussion over the last few days about Twitter's reach. WSJ reporter Kara Swisher surveyed her dinner party and found out that no one there uses the micro-blogging site. Meanwhile Gina Trapani on Lifehacker is running a survey asking if Web 2.0 benefits only the tech elite.

Now let's look at the data. According to figures just out from Hitwise, Twitter is the 439th largest social networking site and 4309 overall. To be sure, growth is booming. But the site is still niche.

So all of the signs generally point the same way. Most of the social networking and online communities are definitely geek havens. MySpace, Facebook and YoutTube are three that have gone mainstream. So does that mean these smaller sites, like Twitter, are not worthy of a brand's time? Hardly.

Geeks are by far more influential than any other online contingency, except the big media. Geeks pass the puck from Twitter to blogs back to Twitter. Eventually it hits Techmeme, Saul Hansell at the Times takes notice and then the whole world knows.

That's why smart companies like JetBlue and Zappos are legitimately engaging on Twitter. It's becoming a front line for customer service. At a minimum, every consumer facing company should be monitoring the chatter. Even better, participating can cut problems off at the pass or even better foster evangelists. The numbers may never tell this story. For more, see Chris WInfield's mini case study.

Three Emerging Digital Careers to Watch

About a month ago, I wrote about three career tracks that won't exist in a few years - at least as I see it. Now let's take a look at three emerging digital jobs that will become increasingly important in the years ahead.

The Chief Customer Experience Officer (and those who work for her)

Want to know if a company is a good witch or a bad witch? It's easy. The web knows. Google, the media and online communities are littered with tales of companies that have exemplary products and customer service. However, it's often easier to find those that have been vilified for the opposite. That's the thesis of Pete Blackshaw's forthcoming book - Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000.

Here's an experiment. For fun, enter any company into this special Google search engine I set up and let me know what you find.

Brands are increasingly recognizing that customer experience is everything. They will follow the model that Zappos and others set in optimizing online and offline channels. Digital touch points, for many companies, will be the most critical. Since August 2006, customer experience job listings increased 57%, according to simplyhired. (User experience is directly related and equally important and I believe will increasingly become more integrated with the total customer experience.)

"customer Experience" trends

"customer experience" jobs

Digital Storytellers

Harvard Business Review last month noted that most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement. "If they can’t, neither can anyone else," HBR posits. That's not good.

Remember, much of the developed world is coping with The Attention Crash. If a company can't tell pithy, authentic stories in the right places at the right time to the right people, someone else will. For more on this, I highly recommend the book Made to Stick.

Search may change that. Google is downplaying SEO and increasingly rewarding those who create quality content. This includes the pros/media, amateurs and brands. Blended Search - which integrates noteworthy videos, news and images with web results - is winning over users, according to Jupiter Research.

Net, as Jason Calacanis notes, there is a big market for people who know how to create or cultivate compelling content that pulls in people. To that end my employer is starting up Edelman Studios - a virtual content house that will identify online talent and pair them with brands. Many in the Hollywood community, ex-journalists and advertising/PR creatives will orient their careers in such a direction. Don't be left behind. There's plenty of need here.

Super Crunchers

Here's another book recommendation for your summer reading list (sorry, I read a lot so my clients don't have to). It's called Super Crunchers. In the book, the authors explain through case studies how companies that are able to mine through mountains of data and make it work for them usually win. Another great book on this topic is Moneyball, which I have written about before.

The digital space is the most addressable media and marketing platform ever. However, most marketers are not “quants” and data is largely under utilized by many companies.

Data mining and visualization tools reduce risk, make business more efficient and measurable. Great rewards will come to those who know how to dig into data and make sense of it all and can parse that into insights that help companies optimize the dollars they put online. Be that guy or gal.

Those are three emerging careers on my list. What's on yours? The one topic I did not cover is developers, who I suspect will continue to remain in high demand for years to come.

links for 2008-04-24

• Are You Spending Your Time the Right Way? - Harvard Business Online's Conversation Starter
  "A three-step plan for allocating your time wisely—and strategically."
  (tags: timemanagement Productivity timeboxing lifehacks HBR management)
• Consumers Using Social Media to ‘Vent’ about, Research Customer Service
  (tags: Stats PR Blogs socialmedia)
• Remember Podcasting? Listeners Do. - eMarketer
  "Although the audiences are small, each listener or viewer is very interested in the subject, and the audiences should therefore carry commensurately higher ad pricing."
  (tags: Podcasting Podvertising Advertising Stats engagement)
• Management by Baseball Fundamentals
  "Like a baseball player trying to score a run, a manager has to touch all the bases and do it in sequential order."
  (tags: baseball Sports leadership management)
• The Internet Goes Green (comScore Voices)
  "As buzz continues to grow around the green movement, the Internet has become a place for the growing environmentally-conscious population to congregate"
  (tags: environment goodpurpose Stats)
• 10 killer texting tricks
  "t's not just for kids. You can track flights, get driving directions, transfer files to your phone and much more."
  (tags: sms lifehacks Mobile)

links for 2008-04-23

• Inside Windows Live Messenger:: i’m Initiative donates $1.3M in its first year
  (tags: Collaboration IM CaseStudies Marketing Microsoft)
• Lessons from GE's Approach to Productivity - HBR Editors' Blog
  (Note - GE is an Edelman client)
  (tags: Productivity GE)
• Trendpedia (beta)
  " Compare trends in blogs (type in brands, products, people, or topics)"
  (tags: Trends Tools Search Blogs Stats insights)
• Ross Mayfield's Weblog: Putting People in the Wiki
  Socialtext turns its wiki into an enterprise social network.
  (tags: SocialNetworking Socialtext enterprise2.0 Wikis)
• Twist - see trends in twitter
  (tags: Trends twitter Stats microblogging Tools visualization insights)
• twitter.zappos.com
  Love this approach - shows tweets from Zappos employees and you.
  (tags: Marketing curation zappos CustomerService CustomerEvangelism)
• Beginner's Quick Start Guide and Tutorial to Using Twitter
  (tags: twitter tutorial microblogging)
• Passed vs Past
  "Too many get these words mixed up."
  (tags: Writing)
• Welcome to Webware 100 Awards 2008
  CNET's 100 top Web apps for 2008
  (tags: 2008 awards webapps Web2.0 CNET)

A Few Tips for Managing Information Overload

Last week I appeared on the Brian Lehrer show talking about my role with Edelman Digital and how I track trends. We cover marketing pollution and tips on how to manage information overload with desktop search, RSS, simplified GTD and the Gmail Personal Nerve Center.

This topic of "Information trapping" is one I plan to write about more. This is becoming the most critical skill that information workers need to survive overload and The Attention Crash. This is especially true for all of us who are addicted to the social web. Enjoy. If you're scanning this in a feed reader, the video is here.

Marketing Guru Steve Rubel Talks with Brian About Info Overload from Brian Lehrer Live on Vimeo.

Ad Trade Associations to Set Digital Measurement Guidelines

The following is also my column in this week's AdAge.

Every conversation about digital marketing invariably raises the "M word" -- measurement. Everyone knows the Internet is the most addressable medium. However, there is no single standard that clients and agencies can use to benchmark their programs against each other.

The industry is crying out for a standard, but don't wait around for a single number. It's not coming anytime soon. The current alternative is chaos as every agency and marketer scrambles to concoct its own recipe. Some of those -- like page views and uniques -- are based on outdated models.

The lack of a standard is a big problem. It's creating confusion and an aversion to spending. According to Booz Allen Hamilton, 98% of media executives say this deficiency is inhibiting marketers from spending more on digital.

The American Association of Advertising Agencies (e.g. the 4 A's) and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) are about to try to change that. The leaders of the two trade organizations announced at last week's Forbes Online Brand Forum in St. Maarten that they are working together on an initiative to identify the "metrics that matter." Four A's President-CEO Nancy Hill said their intent is "to develop a common language" for digital-marketing metrics.

"We are further than nowhere, less than somewhere (on measurement)," said Randall Rothenberg, president-CEO of the IAB. "Everyone is hoping for a magic metric -- a [gross-rating point] equivalent. That's not going to happen."

During a panel that also included ANA CEO Bob Liodice, all three execs stressed the need for uniformity. Rothenberg and Hill said they have convened a small working group that will take the first step in establishing a set of metrics that aims to be relevant 80% of the time for 80% of marketers. The ANA has not joined the initiative yet but may at some point.

The Four A's and IAB plan to open up the process to a larger group for input as the plans progress. Ultimately, however, for this initiative to be successful, it's entirely up to the agencies to embrace their recommendations. Hopefully they will, because standards that span both reach and engagement are the quickest path to getting clients more comfortable in investing more.

links for 2008-04-19

• More than Worthy: Create an online dashboard for your creative project « Creative Liberty
  "Ways to keep your passion in front of you while you’re online."
  (tags: Widgets RSS lifehacks Creativity iGoogle)
• How I Use RSS To Make My Life Easier | The Edublogger
  (tags: rss)
• Official Gmail Blog: 9 reasons to archive
  (tags: Gmail Email lifehacks Tips)
• Research Brief » Blog Archive » What’s A Blogger?
  "Bloggers are younger and higher percentages are Hispanic & African American than the general population. A higher percentage of Democrats than of Republicans are blogging."
  (tags: demographics Stats Blogs)

Study: A Billion Dollars in Internet Advertising is Wasted

Advertisers continue to plow a ton of money into Internet advertising, even in the face of an recessionary environment. At the Forbes Online Brand Summit this weekend, Citi projected 20% year over year growth. eMarketer is calling for a 23% increase.

Search remains the big daddy. According to eMakreter it will account for 40% of the $25 billion that marketers will spend online this year. Right behind it at 21% (or $5.1 billion) is display advertising. However, according to a new study, a giant percentage of these ads are wasted because they fall below "the fold"

The Eyetools/MarketingSherpa eye tracking study, released last week, found that about 60% of web site visitors see the ads that are 100% visible and "above the fold." Below the fold - e.g. the part of a web page where users are required to scroll - the situation is grim. These ads are visible to roughly 70% of web users, but only about 25% actually see those ads.

Let's do some back of the envelope math here. Assuming that all of the above data is accurate and that 50% of display ad impressions fall below the fold (this is a conservative guess - it might be significantly higher) that means that nearly a billion dollars in online advertising - $937M based on these calculations - is below the fold and ignored by 75% of web users.

The situation is actually be a lot worse when you factor in trust. A Nielsen study released late last year found that only 26% of consumers trust banner ads. So even if your display ads are visible and seen, they're not trusted by the vast majority of the public. That aint good news.

The conventional wisdom is that online display ads are good for branding. Well, this appears to be a myth for lots of impressions. Now factor in that they also continue to be a disaster when it comes to direct response.

This is a train wreck waiting to happen. Scoble called it back in 2006. And it further illustrates that marketers are polluting the web.

What this means - especially in this climate - is that at least $1B of what's spent on online advertising is completely wasted and is unsustainable. Advertisers are going to eventually wake up and recognize that unless it's a highly visible placement, banners get you largely nowhere.

links for 2008-04-11

• Authentic Communications - 2008
  I will be speaking at this event on April 22 in NY.
  (tags: authenticity Events NYC 2008 PR Web2.0)
• MarketingCharts: Number of Social-Network Users in Latin America Doubles in ‘07
  (tags: SocialNetworking Stats latinamerica)
• All This Connectivity Is Killing Us - Advertising Age - Small Agency Diary
  In business today, the reality is that we are almost always "on."
  (tags: workplace culture Trends attention)
• Seven Tips for Making the Most of Your RSS Reader
  (tags: rss lifehacks)

Twitter Quitter Not Bitter

Over on Authenticities, the Edelman Digital weblog, I wrote about Hugh Macleod's abrupt, yet cordial departure from Twitter and whether a mass exodus is brewing. If you're not subscribed I highly recommend it. We're blogging daily. I and I have been posting there weekly. You can get the feed here.

(On an unrelated note, I picked up this great book on how the New York Post writes headlines. I want that job in my next life. The headline on this blog post was my first attempt. Like it?)

An All Too Convenient Truth: Many Marketers Pollute the Web

Photo credit: Copenhagen Industry Pollution #1 by Miguel A. Lopes "Migufu"

Earth Day is around the corner and a lot of marketers are thinking about the sustainability of our planet. Some are recognizing that doing good also helps business. Edelman's Good Purpose study found that 73% of consumers are prepared to pay more for environmentally friendly products.

However, it's not just the environment that is endangered by toxins. The atmosphere we breathe online is too is being threatened by pollution - from marketers. The all too convenient truth is that it's very easy for advertisers to pollute the web with their garbage. Most often, that's not their intent. But it's the end result and it's reaching an epidemic proportion. Now business needs to take the same approach online as it has done offline through corporate social responsibility (Jason Calacanis echoed a similar theme recently.)

First let's look at the the obvious ways marketers poison the web. These all intend to game the system ...

• Spam: 94% of all email is spam (Postini)
• Splogs: 53% of all blog pings is spam, including 64% of those in English (UMBC)
• Click Fraud: Increased last year by 15% (Click Forensis)

Still, there's more. In subtle ways marketers are contaminating the Internet without even knowing it by spewing millions of meaningless messages across thousands of sites. This may be contributing to the slow down. They're not adding value to your experience or working to help you meet your goals in a very meaningful way.

Consider these popular techniques ...

• Banner Ads: A lot of money is going here but click-through rates remain abysmal and their overall branding value is being questioned. Many of them just litter the web and get in the way of what you want to do. Eye-tracking studies in the past have revealed "banner blindness."
• Social Network Advertising: eMarketer predicts advertising on social networks will reach $2.2 billion this year. However, traditional display approaches to date have not performed. As Ian Schaffer from from Deep Focus noted, marketers need to dig in and figure out how to make the experience better. This means what does work is creating authentic content, widgets/applications and more that people pull because they add value to the community. (Note: MySpace, a major social network, is an Edelman client.)
• Social Media Optimization: This needs to be watched like a hawk. As I have said before, if you participate and add value you are rewarded with Google Juice - and so much more. If you just set up sites and spam social nets to get links, then I am sorry, you're bad.

Despite all the money that's flowing online, most marketers completely miss the boat on what the web really can do for them. As I have talked about before, the Internet isn't just a communications medium. It works best when it's used as a platform for open collaboration. This means taking a PR-centric approach.

This means companies and consumers need to partner toward shared outcomes. This can be as simple as "we want to be entertained" to "we want to find the best world-changing idea." The latter is what American Express will unleash again later this year with its Members Project.

The web is facing it's own global warming crisis as marketers continue to pollute it. Consumers are voting with their clicks and eyeballs by engaging with authentic content that adds value, while ignoring the rest. That's good news that shows maybe we'll solve this crisis, even as business continues to tackle the larger issues that impact our planet.

Later:: Bryan Person asks if clueless PR pitches are part of the problem. Heck ya.

links for 2008-04-07

• Getting things done (simply) in Leopard | Dennis Best
  (tags: GTD Leopard mail.app OSX)
• The News Business: Out of Print: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
  Analyzes the state of the newspaper industry - what's left of it.
  (tags: Newspapers Media Trends)
• Relax, Chill and maybe Blog - GigaOM
  Om is right. Invoke his namesake and feel the need to get off the treadmill.
  (tags: Blogs trends lifestyle workplace CitizenJournalism)
• Doc Searls Weblog · What comes after blogging
  My take? Smaller stuff - Twitter, Friendfeed, etc. It's here.
  (tags: Blogs Trends)
• Terry Heaton’s PoMo Blog » Informing each other of Heston’s death
  The change to (Charlton) Heston’s Wikipedia page that occurred ahead of major news outlets is "a stunning example of how people are able to sidestep the gatekeepers in the quest to be informed."
  (tags: CitizenJournalism Wikipedia Journalism)

Trust in Peers Trumps the "A-List," Study Finds

There's an ongoing debate online and in marketing circles as well over who "matters": the super node influencers or basically anyone that a particular peer group looks to for information, entertainment, inspiration and more.

This meme got kicked around in the 'sphere a few weeks back when Duncan Watts released some research that contradicts Malcolm Gladwell's theory outlined in The Tipping Point. Today, however, there's new data that to me may just reveal that Watts is right. The key factor, once again, all comes down to trust. This comes as more of the action shifts to micro communities like Twitter or Friendfed and the quality of blog content, some say, slides downhill.

Mediapost reports that a new study from Pollara found that people who engage in social networks and communities put far more trust in friends and family who are online than in popular bloggers, or strangers with 10,000 MySpace "friends." Nearly 80% said they were very or somewhat more likely to consider buying products recommended by real-world friends and family, while only 23% reported being very or somewhat likely to consider a product pushed by "well-known bloggers."

This new batch of data largely backs up what my employer's Edelman Trust Barometer found earlier this year. Some 58% of opinion elites 35-64 in 18 countries said they trust "a person like me." Meanwhile, only 14% trust bloggers - a figure that has largely remained flat since 2006. (See chart below from our latest study.)

Source: 2008 Edelman Trust Barometer

On a similar thread, Louis Gray, who's blog by the way is amazing, crunched some numbers and he found that the top tech blogs extended their reach in feed subscribers as well as on the TechMeme leaderboard. That may be true, but who cares?

The question of targeting super nodes vs. smaller groups is all coming down to trust. While the marketplace - both marketers and publishers - continue to focus on reach, they are missing the big picture. Trust is by far a more important metric, one that clearly rules when it comes to influence.