Micro Persuasion

The Promise and Peril of Ubiquitous Community

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

Over the last five years I have been asked countless times: "Steve, what's the next hot online community?" It seems as though everybody is on the lookout for the successor to MySpace, Twitter or Facebook. Nobody, even in a difficult economic climate, wants to be viewed as a latecomer.

Perhaps as a defense mechanism to avoid being wrong myself, I now give a boilerplate answer that I believe can last. In short, the next big community is not a single destination. Rather, it is going to be everywhere. To paraphrase Forrester analyst Charlene Li, social networking is becoming "like air."

She writes on her blog:

"I thought about my grade-school kids, who in 10 years will be in the midst of social network engagement. I believe they (and we) will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to 'be social.'

"Instead, I believe that in the future, social networks will be like air. They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be."

This represents a significant shift. For the past 15 years, online communities have primarily existed as stand-alone destinations rather than the web's equivalent of running water or electricity.

The problem, however, is that this model can't scale. Tastes change and people are always migrating to trendier sites-especially as their friends do. As a result, the Internet amber is littered with fossilized communities that once dominated. These former stalwarts include AOL, Angelfire, TheGlobe.com, GeoCities and Tripod.

Community today is a different animal. People now expect it to be part of virtually every online experience. Most media companies now allow users to leave comments or even create profiles. Hundreds of thousands of brands, NGOs and individuals have set up their own social networks on Ning.com. The entire web is going social.

Now, however, connective tissue is emerging to bring these individual points of lights together as virtual constellations. Google and Facebook have each launched systems that allow sites to plug into their architectures to turn them social. The tools equip site owners to enable visitors to tap their existing networks and connections in a way that adds value to the total experience. So imagine a Facebook user who can easily see on Digg.com which stories his or her friends voted up. Or a non-technical site developer who, with a few small lines of code, can add utilities such as reviews, members' galleries and message boards to their sites or applications.

As exciting as this is, the transition of community from a handful of big reach sites to a ubiquitous platform is incredibly disruptive for marketers. It essentially makes social network advertising, which according to anecdotal evidence is already a mixed bag, even more difficult. (And thus monetizing social networks.)

The end result is that marketers will need to shift the way they approach communities. Static advertising is no longer viable. The solution is collaboration. Marketers will need to tap these emerging social operating systems to build meaningful connections through their sites and others before competitors do.

Participation is no longer optional and the fist movers who dedicate resources will win.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Future is Web Services, Not Web Sites

Remember The Graduate when Benjamin Braddock was advised to go into plastics. The clip is here. It seemed like a safe bet at the time - and it was.

Today the web maybe "the new plastics." It seems like every brand is building a new site or microsite. The Internet feels like Dubai. Some are big, ambitious projects. Others are smaller initiatives like a blog that a small group can manage themselves.

I don't expect organizations to stop building sites anytime soon. However, the Picture-in-Picture Web (what some would call the web services promise of "Web 3.0") is coming on strong. And I believe most brand web sites may not matter in 2012 - unless they have satellites that make the mother ship stronger. The Attention Crash (or what Iconoculture calls "choice fatigue") is accelerating the pace of change. Fred Wilson has a similar point of view.

The leading players on the web all see the train coming. They are wisely creating APIs and turning themselves into plug-and-play services, not just big destinations. YouTube is just the latest to do so today. Amazon has S3. Google has OpenSocial and an extensive library of APIs. As does Microsoft. Facebook is allowing its applications to live outside the site. Twitter is an API first and (eventually) a business model second. Finally, the booming widget economy shows the promise of small content that can go anywhere.

These are the leaders. But everyone - including marketers - will need to think of their online brands not as sites but as portable services that can go anywhere and everywhere the consumer wants. Without such appendages, no brand will ever be able to break through the online clutter such unlimited choice offers.

If Everything Else Asks for Feedback, Why Not Ads?

Asking for feedback is in.

Virtually every journalist solicits feedback by posting their email addresses. Some even ask overtly.

As Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang recently noted, companies are inviting comments - yet far more slowly. Notably, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer invited everyone at Mix 08 to email him directly. (Microsoft is an Edelman client.)

So what about for advertisers?

Advertising is not exactly known as a two-way paradigm. However, the web changes that. Digital creative can and should be able to not only solicit feedback but to adjust in real-time like mood rings to what people say back.

CNET and AOL Networks both invite consumers to give feedback on their banner ads. Above is one from American Express I found on AOL's site. The surveys ask respondents to rate ads for relevancy, emotive content and ability to move the user to purchase. However, that's as far as they go. The scant data I assume they collect somehow goes back to the advertiser.

Weblogs Inc. - before it was owned by AOL - took an even bolder approach with their Focus Ads. They allowed advertisers to solicit reader comments on ads. However, the program seems to have been abandoned.

There's a lot of room for innovation here. Advertisers can and should be opening themselves up for input. Further, the media companies should help them do so. Will they? I would be surprised to see it happens. Advertising is the last safe haven for one-way communication. Marketers won't rock the boat. Plus, it has a place in an emerging mix of strategies.

Historically, Most Online Communities Haven't Stuck

The following is cross-posted on a new blog I am contributing to called Authenticities. It's the official blog of my employer, Edelman Digital, which we officially unveiled yesterday.

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We're barely into the second decade of the the Net's development. Unlike the first ten years when corporations built the web, over the next decade the Internet will largely be created by the people for the people via online communities.

This means that the phrase "public relations" is (finally) taking on a literal meaning. It is our industry's charter to help clients navigate online communities and build authentic, meaningful relationships with their stakeholders. However, the challenge is if you blink, the entire vista will change.

Most marketers prefer to gravitate to the big hubs. These include Edelman clients like MSN Spaces and MySpace, as well as Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn and a host of others that have lots of eyeballs. Any of these sites can serve as strong venues for marketing programs.

What we take for granted, however, is that they will be around in the long term. On the Internet, churn is constant.

Historically, online communities have perpetually come and go. The Internet Archive amber is littered with fossilized communities that once dominated, much the way the T-Rex roamed during the Mesozoic era. These include former stalwarts such as Angelfire, The Well, TheGlobe.com, GeoCities, Tripod and Friendster.

Only a handful of community sites over the last dozen years have had staying power. If you study them you'll find moats to protect them from competitors and fickle users. These barriers to entry include peer-to-peer commerce (in the case of Edelman client eBay), robust user reviews (Amazon.com) and deep entrenchment in vertical markets (BlackPlanet.com).

The online universe is about to grow even more complex, making it harder for some sites to maintain their dominance. Over the next several years social networking and community will become less about specific venues and more of a river that runs through the entire web. As Cisco's Dan Scheinman says, community will define not only how content is created, but also how it is consumed.

This means that although it will get harder for marketers to achieve scale, community engagement will become a much more efficient and effective way to engage an audience. This requires a shift in thinking though as community becomes like running water. The takeaway here is never bet against change - it's constant on the web.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Three Digital Business Models That Could Rock Your World

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

During a recent exchange with one of my colleagues he posed a thought-provoking question that I hadn't quite pondered. "What new digital business models might take hold over the next four to five years," he asked.

This question should be on every marketing and media executive's mind. As we've seen, the Net is so disruptive that big ideas can come out of nowhere and reinvent advertising overnight - even in a recessionary climate. Google, for example, commercialized pay-per-click ads just after the dot-com crash in 2000.

Here are three models that might evolve over the next few years.

Advertiser-Supported Advertising: Brands are increasingly launching their own content platforms. Some, like Budweiser's BudTV, go it alone. Others partner with online media properties. P&G, for example, embedded Capessa inside Yahoo Health.

In the future some of the more successful marketer-sponsored content sites will accept advertising. The retail space is especially ripe here. Barnes & Noble's media site, in theory, could partially support itself by allowing publishers who they already co-market with to buy ads. Under such a scenario, transparency is critical.

Advertiser-Subsidized Devices: Content is a commodity. The barriers to entry are obliterated. Still, this means we all need to make choices - human attention doesn't scale. So how do you get consumers to choose your stuff? Simple. Use incentives.

Marketers will partner with consumer electronic companies to co-brand white-label gadgets. For example, a Gap-branded set-top box could come with exclusive video podcast subscriptions. Upstart device manufacturers that are looking to enter markets with entrenched players will be the first to dabble with this approach.

Just-in-Time Advertising: Digital advertising creative and planning, like any marketing discipline, follows an arc. It's planned, placed, measured and eventually evaluated, tweaked or tossed. However, in the digital world, brands need to be more nimble.

With the help of new technology, marketers will rely on "just-in-time" campaigns that adapt to conditions. Basically, this takes the Dell manufacturing model and applies it to advertising. Ad creative will morph based on certain triggers. This will include sales/ERP data, blog chatter/consumer feedback, weather/external conditions and more.

What Greg Brady Taught Me About Digital Connections

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

The e-mail pitch seemed almost too wacky to be true. Barry Williams (aka the actor who played Greg Brady on "The Brady Bunch") started blogging two weeks ago at thegregbradyproject.com, and his hired PR help wanted to set up a meet and greet.

Growing up in the '70s, I logged many after-school hours watching "Brady Bunch" reruns on TV -- an experience today's digital kids probably miss. This fanboy couldn't pass up the meeting.

In the process, I learned a lot about how brands can use the digital space to become more genuine. After all, Greg Brady is a mighty brand. Everyone knows who Greg is, and Williams has leveraged his fame into all kinds of ventures, including Broadway and satellite radio.

Going in, I was a bit cynical. I half expected to meet a celebrity chasing the latest web trend just to be seen as hip. Boy, was I wrong. What I found instead was someone who is serious about blogging for the long haul.

Williams does not have an agenda for the site. He simply wants to create a digital presence where he can share, learn and build connections -- and not just with his fans. The blog is about "being in the game with people who share common interests," he explained. "I want to listen, to engage and develop it."

Our meeting reflected this approach. Williams was more interested in learning about Twitter than he was about promoting the site.

His digital presence exudes the same sense of openness. The Greg Brady Project courts guest bloggers and carries little in the way of promotion other than links to Smiles Change Lives, a charity Williams supports. It's trustworthy because it's all about building connections.

The takeaway for brands is that it's OK to create a site that doesn't have agenda, messaging or shock and awe. A digital presence can be a port for conversations, connections and collaboration. The key is to keep it fresh and inhabited by real humans who want to share and learn.

So next time you're planning a digital strategy, channel Greg for inspiration.