Micro Persuasion

Search Engine Visibility and PR - An Edelman Digital White Paper

Regular readers here know that in addition to focusing on emerging technologies, I also have long taken an interest in how search engines are evolving. Fundamentally, I believe that Google is media and also every brand's home page. Therefore, search engine visibility (and all of the reputational concerns that go with it) are front and center an opportunity for the public relations industry to shine.

With this in mind, my colleagues and I have co-authored a 13-page position paper on Search Engine Visibility. We released it to our clients last month but now we are making it available to the public today at the Edelman New Media Academic Summit in Washington. You can download it here (PDF). It's also embedded below. This is the second in a series - the first is here.

In the paper we posit that today there are two primary search visibility tactics: Paid Search (more widely known as search engine marketing - SEM) and Optimized Search (e.g. SEO). Both of these are generally not managed by public relations professionals.

Now, however, there are two new disciplines emerging. And both sit squarely in the public relations professional's domain...

• Reputational Search - The premise and promise of Reputational Search is that any company, NGO or brand can apply a search mindset to tried-and-true PR tactics and, in the process, influence the search results around certain keywords.

• Social Search - With Google and competitors increasingly prioritizing social content from Flickr, blogs, Twitter and others in result pages, it is imperative that brands build out "embassies" in all relevant networks – places where employees work to serve the interests of the community, as well as their company.

If you read the paper you will see that we are convinced that search engines for the foreseeable future will have a critical impact on how brands are perceived - far more so than any single social network site, which tend to come and go. As always, we're interested in your views. Please share them below or on Twitter or Friendfeed.

Open publication - Free publishing - More steve rubel

Visits to Twitter Search Soar, Indicating Social Search Has Arrived

Twitter's growth over the last several months has been well chronicled. But there's another story line here that's even more interesting - visits to Twitter Search are also soaring.

According to data from Compete.com visits to the Twitter search page grew more than 400% in the last six months. This sub-domain alone recorded 2.7M unique visitors in April, up from just shy of 536,000 in October. Even more remarkable, traffic to the site, which is tucked away, grew 24% in April.

The data closely mirrors the overall growth of Twitter, which saw unique visitors increase from 3.4M in October to 19.4M in April. However, the search subdomain seems to be following its own trend line.

There's more. Now that Twitter has added search functionality into the main interface, the compete.com data doesn't account for the full spectrum of users that might be executing queries off the main page. In addition, the data doesn't accurately account for the power users who are searching Twitter from inside clients like Seesmic Desktop, Tweetdeck or Tweetie.

However, I think there's something fundamentally new that's going on here: more technically savvy users (and one would assume this includes journalists) are searching Twitter for information. Presumably this is in a tiny way eroding searches from Google. Mark Cuban, for example, is one who is getting more traffic to his blog from Twitter and Facebook than Google.

For over a year now I have been saying that social search could be disruptive to Google. It seems now that, for some, habits are beginning to shift. I know that on Easter Sunday when I wanted to find out if my local Walmart store was open (Walmart is an Edelman client), Twitter Search was the fastest way to find out.

As long as it can maintain its community, search will remain pivotal to Twitter's future and probably one of the first places it will monetize. But the bigger story here is that some users are clearly getting value out of searching social content. This space will only get more interesting once Facebook gets serious about search and Google races to transform itself into more of a live search engine, rather than a static one.

Also, let's not forget that right Friendfeed is the king of social search. It lets you do something no one else can - search just your friends' content. That's a big deal.

Technorati Tags:
Twitter, Social Search, Facebook, Friendfeed

The End of the Destination Web Era

Photo credit: Décoration du château de Versaille by Djof

For the last 15 years marketers lived like kings online. We built ornate palaces in homage to ourselves in the form of web sites and micro sites. Each acts as a destination that embodies our meticulous choice of aesthetics, content and activities.

We still put a lot of time, effort and money into erecting these palaces, much as Louis XIV did in planning Versailles. And, for the most part we have been rewarded handsomely for our efforts. For years consumers flocked to our sites, reveled in all we had to say, played with our toys and, sometimes, were motivated enough as a result to buy our stuff.

That's what life was like in the good old days. But now we're in the age of online enlightenment. People (rightfully) have reasoned that they too can be creators, not just consumers. Content choices became infinite and peers are trumping pros.

After years of erosion it now it appears the destination web era is drawing to a close. This a trend that digital thinkers like Om Malik have long noted. In fact, the numbers prove it.

In March the average American visited a mere 111 domains and 2,500 web pages, according to Nielsen Online. What's worse, our attention across these pages is highly fragmented. The average time spent per page is a mere 56 seconds. Portals and search engines dominate, capturing approximately 12 of the 75 hours spent online in March. However, people-powered sites like Wikipedia, Facebook and YouTube are not far behind, snagging nearly 4.5 hours of our monthly attention.

In the post-destination web era the secret to breaking through won't be advertising. A new study from ARAnet in conjunction with Opinion Research Corporation confirms what PR execs have known for years - we are far more likely to take action when reading online articles that include brand information (51%) compared to search engine advertising (39%) or banner ads (25%).

Unfortunately, digital marketing is still wired for the destination web era. To succeed going forward we have to change our thinking. "Earned media" through direct public engagement in the venues where our consumers spend time will become the only way to truly influence a behavior change. The greatest advantages will go to the first movers who embrace this shift. It's not too late.

Google's New "What's Popular" Feature Aims to Clone Digg

Google's personalized home page, iGoogle, added a new feature that basically clones the core features of Digg and StumbleUpon by embedding them into a gadget that is easily accessible from right within the web desktop.

The feature, which Google started highlighting in its directory this week, is called "What's Popular." Using the widget consumers can submit links either anonymously or publicly and rate whether they like or dislike other submissions.

According to Google's description, the What's Popular gadget "uses algorithms to find interesting content from a combination of your submissions and trends in aggregated user activity across a variety of Google services, like YouTube and Google Reader." 

That's just the half of it though. When you click on the maximize link the gadget expands into a canvas view that sorts submissions into different categories - e.g. stories, videos and images.

This won't be the last we see of Google adding social services to iGoogle. They are slowly adding such features to many of their products. Eventually I expect they will also follow Microsoft's lead in rolling up your friends' social content from around the web on Windows Live. (Microsoft is an Edelman client)

AOL, ESPN, Others Seek to Bypass Google with Address Bar Searching

Above: AOL's relaunched Love.com builds curated, vertical sites all on the fly from the address bar. 

For years, when consumers wanted to find specific information they would go to a major vertical site like ESPN.com and execute a search. Google's growth, however, is changing the game. 

Today when consumers turn to Google to say, search for say Shaq, there's a ton competition their attention. It's coming from everywhere - Twitter, Google News embedded links, SEO-optimized brand sites, news sites and more. This doesn't bode well for major media companies that have built vast databases of content.

Several sites, however, are now looking to snatch their traffic back from Google by letting consumers easily execute searches from and curate content on the fly, all from the address bar. Three such sites include AOL's newly relaunched Love.com, ESPN and IceRocket. The goal is to make it easy to search from the address bar by tacking on a word to the domain.

Last week, AOL quietly launched an alpha of Love.com - a portal to topical content from around the web. Now, of course, you can search directly on the home page for any topic you want to track. AOL will build a site that curates content from you from across the web. However, the beauty of Love.com is that you can enter any term as a sub-domain and Love.com will build a site for you on the fly - even if it doesn't exist. For example, try shaq.love.com or twitter.love.com or even steve-rubel.love.com. The pages pull up news stories, YouTube videos, tweets and more.

According to an AOL spokesman, this is part of the company's effort to become an aggregator of content - a strategy that some feel is the future of media. Currently, there are 100,000 love.com sites live. AOL has plans to launch 250,000 in the next few weeks. The technology is being powered by Relegance, which they acquired in 2006, and is rolling out across its Mediaglow brands.

ESPN, meanwhile, now has an ad campaign running on air that encourages sports fans to search by adding a term at the end of their domain. The ad showcases that searching for former NFL star and now commentator Bob Golic (ESPN.com/bobgolic) turns up different results than for Serbian ping pong sensation Biba Golic (ESPN.com/bibagolic). The technology works nicely for pretty much any team or star - e.g. ESPN.com/yankees.

IceRocket's Big Buzz social search feature, which I am a fan of, also offers similar URL-based searches,according to founder Blake Rhodes. Simply add any su-bdomain and it will pul together a curated search. For example, try advertising.icerocket.com or easter.icerocket.com and IceRocket will build a nice site that includes blogs, Twitter, Friendfeed and more.

I suspect that Google will easily copy this feature very soon. They have the technology and I am sure don't want to see vertical sites grab any of their traffic, no matter how small. Still, this is a smart approach and I am sure that we will see more of it not just on media sites but in social networks (via redirects) and on corporate and brand sites too.

How to Become a Super Tweeter in Just 15 Minutes a Day with iGoogle

Do you want to become a Super Tweeter that everyone is dying to follow? Who doesn't? The good news is that it's really easy. Here's the formula: find stuff that people don't have time to on their own, link to it, talk about it and engage in interesting relevant conversations around it. That's all there is to it and this is a snap using iGoogle.

First, if you don't have an iGoogle page. Go sign up here. Then add a tab for Twitter and bolt on these four Google Gadgets to your page: Google Mini Search, Google News, Google Reader (assuming you're a Reader user) and TwitterGadget. If you click on the "edit this tab" link in the sidebar you can reformat the page so it's two columns. 

If you look at the above screenshot you will see what my page looks like. The left-hand side is where I graze for content. The right side is where I share. I have customized my gadgets so that they cover topics that both my followers and I are interested in.

Now here's where this gets fun. 

All you need to do is use the left to find stuff and the right to share and comment on it. The mini search widget lets you search the web for related links. The Google News and Google Reader let you track topics. And the a-mazin' TwitterGadget is for searching for Twitter topics (type a word and it ctrl-q to search for it on Twitter), tracking the people you follow and for re-tweeting. You can even drag links from the left into the right, as I did in the screenshot above.

That's all there is to it. Do this for 15 minutes a day around a topic that people are passionate about and you will be on your way.

Google Preferred Sites Option Now Available to All Users

Google's experimental "preferred sites" option allows users to overweight certain web sites in the search engine result pages. It debuted in January but at the time was not available to all users. Now anyone can sign up for the feature via Google Labs.

Once you sign up, Google recommends pages from your history that you tend to visit when searching. You have the option to make these sites (or any other) a preferred destination. Further information is available here as well as on the Google Operating System blog, which first reported on the feature earlier this year.

Bring Twitter Right Into Gmail with the Amazing TwitterGadget

I have tried TweetDeck a number of times but I keep uninstalling it because it puts a drain on my system and I find it distracting. Still, I want fast access to my Twitter account and to be able to track my replies, direct messages and to also quickly glance at what my favorite users are posting. Enter the amazing TwitterGadget for Gmail.

I always keep Gmail running in a tab in my browser. As I have written, I use Gmail for far more than just communications. The TwitterGadget embeds a powerful Twitter client right into your Gmail account. The instructions for adding it are here.

When you first add TwitterGadget, you get a miniature Twitter app that sits in your sidebar. But that's only the half of it. Click on the double arrows in the gadget's title bar you get a full blown Twitter client that looks like the photo at the top of this post. In many ways TwitterGadget is the best client out there. The app also can be added to iGoogle or run stand-alone in a browser tab.

Here are some things worth exploring. If you tweak the settings, the gadget will auto refresh every three minutes (hopefully the developer will make it real-time soon). You can also easily click on a tweet to reply or even re-tweet it. All short URLs will turn into the full links if you hover over them. In addition, you can change the colors and more in the settings.

Where TwitterGadget gets really interesting, though, is with its kller keyboard shortcuts. They add a ton of functionality. For example, if you type a phrase, select it and then hit "control Q," it will pull a Twitter search right in the app (see photo below). Also, you can easily pull up tweets for an individual user and/or see statistics about them.

Finally, if you have the "go to label" and "quick links" features enabled in Gmail Labs you can bookmark the TwitterGadget and then pull it up with a keyboard command.

There's another Twitter app for Gmail that's out there that looks promising, but it's a bit buggy and not as feature rich. For now, however, TwitterGadget is a game changer and I highly recommend it to anyone who uses Gmail and or iGoogle.

Customer Service is the New PR

Four years ago I wrote this...

"One day CRM systems will bolt in blog monitoring functionality so these posts automatically get funneled to the right place. For now, they need to be handled onesie twosie - but handled nonetheless."

Now today Salesforce.com has added Twitter customer service tools to its already formidable suite. Forrester Analyst Jeremiah Owyang sees Twitter's future as social CRM.

However, I don't think Twitter will be the only game in town. There will be lot of venues to vent, all of which can have an impact on brand reputation as journalists discover all of this conversation through Google, Twitter Search and other search engines. GetSatisfaction.com is growing. I wrote about this in our most recent white paper (see trend one).

In addition, I cover this in my first vlog on the Edelman Facebook page (forgive the acting!). My takeaway is that this isn't just a CRM concern, but rather it requires close coordination between customer service and PR. There's a great study on this from SNCR. What's your view?

Media Companies Ask Google to Favor Their Content Over Blogs

Nat Ives reports in AdAge that a number of major media companies have asked Google to give it favorable positioning over blogs...

Many publishers resent the criteria Google uses to pick top results, starting with the original PageRank formula that depended on how many links a page got. But crumbling ad revenue is lending their push more urgency; this is no time to show up on the third page of Google search results. And as publishers renew efforts to sell some content online, moreover, they're newly upset that Google's algorithm penalizes paid content.

"You should not have a system," one content executive said, "where those who are essentially parasites off the true producers of content benefit disproportionately."

What year is this? I thought it was 2009. But when I read this I felt like it was 2004 all over again. Although there may be two sides to this story, the way that AdAge is reporting it, there are number of major flaws with the media's argument here...

First, the lines between media and blogs have been obliterated. What's TechCrunch or Engadget? Sure they are blogs but they run ads. So are they social media or media? To me, we don't have zebras and elephants anymore. They have mated and we're all one species.

Second, corporations are now creating their own media. Some are calling this trend content marketing. Take a look at what Intel or Wal-Mart (a client) are doing. So should Google not favor their content either? I will eat my hat if that happens.

Finally, there's no greater friend to media companies than Google and bloggers. Witness, for example how Google is partnering with Life Magazine. Google has found a way to unlock the value in old content. These media companies need Google to help it monetize in an age where digital advertising as it stands now is not working. Further, in a world where links rule, the media companies need bloggers as well for traffic, credibility and more. Take a look at this recent data from Technorati.

A neutral Google is a good Google. They should continue to deliver an algorithm that rewards the highest quality sources that have earned a following, interest and links from other sources. If the media companies don't want Google to favor bloggers, why not just stop linking to them or use no follow tag? That may over time, erode their Google Juice. However, I suspect most realize it's too late to put the genie back in the bottle.

This argument will die on the vine I suspect. That's the way it should be.

Twitter is Peaking

Twitter traffic data from comScore (via TechCrunch)

I have been active Twitter user since January 2007. And it's been remarkable just how much it has changed since.

In the last six months, Twitter has gone nuclear. There are three reasons why and I explore them in this post. However, they also point to why Twitter is about to jump the shark and we should begin asking ourselves what's "the next big thing."

As long as Twitter maintains a following I feel every business should join it and converse with their customers - just as I said a year ago. Still, it's always important for everyone to see the big picture. That's why predicting a market top is something I thoroughly enjoy doing. In part, it's what I am paid to do - think about what's next. This disicipline keeps me and others like Robert Scoble like from getting stale.

In December 2006 when Evan Williams first showed me Twitter in the back of a cab in Seattle, I thought it was going nowhere. But after I played with it, I got hooked. My early fascination with Twitter began because, like now, I was scanning the horizon for what's next. I sensed that in late 2006 that blogging was cresting. Twitter replaced it for me and, later, millions. Now the same can be said about RSS, which many of the early adopters who first embraced it have also now ceremoniously dumped. (More on RSS in a subsequent post.)

As I have written before, no community has ever had staying power. Twitter right now is poised to fall victim to the same trend. Let's take a look at three reasons why Twitter has witnessed incredible growth, all of which point to why the service is peaking right now. (Note: Many of you will disagree. Daniel Terdiman today wrote that at SXSW, Twitter was the new Twitter.)

1) Celebs Flocked to Twitter - Just six months ago, the list of the top 100 users on Twitter read like a who's who of geeks. That's what made it a draw, for many, initially. Now, however, the list looks like People or US Magazine. Twitter is losing it's geek creds as celebs flock to the service.

Historically, as the geeks go, so goes social media. I believe that the Founding Fathers and Mothers of Twitter - people who gave the service it's wings, will soon tire of it and seek the next shiny object. Already, Dave Winer is playing with Jaiku. Scoble is deep into Friendfeed. I am finding a lot more value these days in both Friendfeed and Facebook, which leads me to my next point.

2) Twitter is Disorganized - Twitter attracted a following because it's disorganized. Since replies are not threaded, celebs and corporations do not feel they have to respond to every Tweet. It's a tree in the forrest thing. There are no comments to moderate. And this makes it more attractive than blogging.

However, what was once "a feature" could begin to be seen as "a bug" and lead us to seek more organization. As Jeff Jarvis explains in his book What Would Google Do, other services like Facebook and Google provide elegant organization. This is something Friendfeed does well too. It's also a big reason why Tweetdeck is succeeding. Twitter would be wise to acquire Tweetdeck now before someone else does, especially as it adds more social tentacles.

3) Twitter is a Mile Wide but an Inch Deep - Brevity rules on Twitter. And this has encouraged time-starved celebrities and corporate types to jump into Twitter much more so than blogging. It also supports anonymity. You can be "a corporation" on Twitter, which you really can't do with a blog. Here people want to see the faces.

However, as Twitter grows and people begin to crave reading Tweets from personalities and others they trust, I wonder if they will want a deeper relationship - one with less anonymity. This is something other services, notably Friendfeed and Facebook, do well. You can use either to create a community around all your stuff, not just 140-character tweets. Also, I suspect they will want to weed signal from noise. Right now that's tough to do.

So you heard it here first, folks. Twitter is peaking. Now I believe Twitter can get through "the dip" that stares them in the face, but it will need to adapt by: keeping its core users intact, remaining attractive to corporations and celebs and by becoming more organized. Search will help with the latter, but expect a battle as Facebook and Friendfeed both make a concerted push to become the place for all your social stuff.

Google Makes Submitting News Comments a Little Easier

Google has added a link on the Google News home page that encourages sources quoted in stories to submit comments. The link directs people to a form to fill out. Previously, this was all done via email.

In addition, they have also added a bit more detail into which comments go up on Google News and why. This includes the following video, which the team added last week to YouTube.

Unfortunately, as far as I can tell the entire process still remains slow because it's mired in human authorization.

Twitter Search Traffic Poised to Eclipse Google Blog Search

The search engine landscape is quietly under going a major revolution. There are two major forces at work here: our growing hunger for real-time information and the coming convergence of search and social networking. The latter adds a much needed layer of trust to traditional search that helps us qualify sources.

While some feel such shifts in search patterns potentially pose a short-term threat to Google, I don't quite see it that way. Google latest "Vince" update shows they clearly get the trust issue. However, Google does not have nearly the same depth in social networking as others and that's an issue longer term.

Instead, more immediately, these two trends will likely spur the growth of a new class of "live web" search tools that are tightly embedded inside social networks. This will almost certainly seal the demise of dedicated blog search sites. In addition, it's conceivable, though far less likely, that both these trends could erode news search sites as consumers seek out filtered information from people they trust.

Consider this nugget. According to compete.com (an account is required to view this subdomain data), traffic to search.twitter.com tripled in the last six months. Meanwhile, Google Blog Search traffic is flat and, only until just recently, the same can be said for Technorati. More importantly, Twitter Search has just about eclipsed Google Blog Search. As of February, Twitter Search attracted 1.35 million users while Google Blog Search, which has been plagued by relevance issues, sits at 1.38 million users.

Twitter's growth in search has been aided by its girth in the press. According to news volulme data from Daylife, Twitter's weekly media mentions rocketed from 2000 per week last year to nearly 8000 today. However, I see this all as just the beginning.

Right now Facebook and Twitter only let you search for content from across the entire network. You can't limit your search to only what your trusted circle have shared. On Friendfeed, however, you can. Still, as bullish as I remain about Friendfeed, I feel the utility of its social search feature will pale in comparison to what Facebook and Twitter could do if they were to enable the same functionality. The reason is reach.

Keep an eye on the social search space. It's not a short-term threat to Google, but it certainly represents a major shift in where and how we will search for relevant news and information by layering in trusted sources.

Ads in Google News Turn it into a PR Playground

The Google News team blogs that contextual ads are now running alongside of news search results...

"What this means is that when you enter a query like iPhone or Kindle into the Google News search box, you'll see text ads alongside your News search results--similar to what you see on regular Google searches or Google Book Search."

Read between the lines and guess what that really means: Google News is now a PR playground. Given the relative ease of launching a simple Google Adwords campaign we're going to see a lot of companies - some legit, others not - buying up real estate on Google News solely for influence, not clicks. Google may bounce these ads if they don't perform - time will tell.

It's already happening. Here's a case in point. Last week an eagle-eyed reader alerted SEO blogger Barry Schwartz that one advertiser tried to use Google News sponsored links as a way spread fake news - in this case a false rumor that President Obama was killed. The ad, Schwartz notes, was pulled down. But you can bet there will be more. And clearly some people saw it.

On the whole, I am bullish about ads in Google News. The PR industry largely missed the first search engine marketing wave and I believe that, at least when it comes to smaller campaigns, we still have time to catch up. Richard Edelman, our CEO, is also thinking the same way (see point #3). For more, see this post from my colleague, Marhsall Manson, on how good SEO is an outcome of good PR. Ads on Google News will serve as just another log on the fire that will encourage PR pros to boost their search knowledge. 
However, the ethics issues around contextual news ads and search overall are huge, particularly on sites like Google News. It will fascinating to see what Google deems as kosher/not - and to what degree people in PR and outside may try to push the boundaries.

Three Ways the Media is Innovating with New Interfaces

Several months ago I had lunch with a major media company executive who told me that, in the future, content will not be subsidized by banner ads splashed liberally on news pages. This is something that the current economic situation is hopefully accelerating as display ad quality plummets to new lows. I remain convinced that the media must innovate their way out of this situation from both editorial and sales, but no one seems to be really doing so on the advertising side.

If you want a glimpse of what's next for media then you need to really look to the editorial side of the house. As we've seen, that's where all the innovation is happening these days - and its changing how we engage with content. Here a look are three promising approaches and their potential implications.

Throwback Interfaces

Most news web sites all pretty much have the same look and feel - the same one they have utilized since 1994. The interface in some ways closely resembles a traditional newspaper. Usually, the most important story is at the top and it carries the largest headline. Other, less important stories, follow. However, that's where the similarities to old media ends.

Some media brands, though, are dabbling in new models that are a throwback to print - and with some success too. Take the Sporting News, for example. The venerable sports daily, which to some degree sits in a commodity market, last summer launched Sporting News Today. The free, opt-in service attracted 75,000 subscribers by the time it launched and probably has a significantly higher circulation today.

Sporting News Today delivers to your inbox either via RSS or email a beautifully designed virtual newspaper - and on weekends too. The content is fully searchable and it is supported by full-page ads similar to what you would see in the print publication. You can also bookmark and share individual pages. The reading experience is terrific.

Watch for more magazines to try a similar approach and to port this to sophisticated mobile devices like the iPhone or Amazon Kindle.

Hyper-Vertical Navigation

In the old days newspapers and magazines were limited by space in the number of sections they could legitimately offer - e.g. news, sports, business, entertainment, etc. However, that's not true anymore as the Long Tail and infinite space of web allows millions of niches to bloom.

Media companies are recognizing that some readers/viewers want to drill down deep into very specific areas of interest. They are slowly adding topical navigation features or creating APIs that allow independent developers to do so.

The New York Times is among the more notable innovators here. Times Topics classifies and categorizes every single article (even older ones) into thousands of topical pages. Some of these get very specific. For example, you can track a single company- like PepsiCo or GE, two of our clients.Every page has an RSS feed too. Here's the feed for the PepsiCo page.

In addition, through their developer network, the Times offers a rich library of APIs that are spawning all kinds of new creations. The latest is the NYT Explorer (above). This tool not only makes it easy to search the Times archives but then to do so by drilling down further using the same topical taxonomy.

Mobile Apps

Finally, while the web browser remains our primary entryway to digital content, some power users are particularly attracted to applications. This is particularly true among smart phone users. Many media companies are filling the void with own smart phone applications. Variety, for example, just launched an iPhone app powered by Newsgator (below). People magazine will roll out one powered by ScrollMotion later this spring.

As a next step I would expect media holding companies to roll up several of their premiere brands into a single app so that you can say get content from Entertainment Weekly and People via one interface. In addition, I bet they will let you subscribe to RSS feeds as well.

These are some of the editorial and user interface innovations that are on my radar. What's on yours? What have you seen that's novel when it comes to news delivery? So far it seems like the editorial side is way ahead of anything on the advertising front these days. At some point they may catch up. However, if they don't it could spell trouble for ad-supported content.

Five Digital Trends to Watch for 2009

This has also been cross-posted on the Edelman Digital blog.

In my role as Director of Insights for Edelman Digital I am writing monthly white papers for clients on key trends. Sometimes we will release these broadly. For the first one, I drew on members of the Edelman team, as well as third party research, to highlight five digital trends to watch for 2009. Each includes specific recommended actions.

Even though the economy is slowing, all signs show that audiences are still spending a lot more time on the web. Marketers need to invest to meet them there. However, what's changed today they are smarter about where they focus their time, dollars and energy. Experimentation is giving way to tactics that deliver ROI. These include public engagement, search and social networking — three themes that connect the major macro trends.

There are five trends covered in this white paper...

Satisfaction Guaranteed - Customer care and PR are blending as consumers use social media to demand service

Media Reforestation -  The media is in a constant state of reinvention as it transitions from atoms to bits

Less is the New More - Overload takes its toll. Gorging on media is out. Selective ignorance and friends as filters are in

Corporate All-Stars - Workers flock to social media to build their personal brands, yet offer employers an effective and credible way to market in the downturn

The Power of Pull -  Where push once ruled, it’s now equally important to create digital content that people discover through search

You can download the full paper here(PDF) or simply browse or read it below. I look forward to hearing your feedback.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Research Business & Legal marketing media

Is the Google Cookie Tracking Everyone's Surfing Habits?

Photo: Google Cookie by Massless on Flickr

Note update from Google at the end of this post.

Google tonight made an important change to the Google Ad Planner that - at least as I read it - means they are now tracking every site you visit via a Google cookie and serving the aggregate data up to advertisers. If I am wrong I hope someone will tell me. (If this post is wrong I will correct it - but this is how I am interpreting what Google has put out there so far.) 

Let's take a look at the facts. 

First, Google yesterday made some subtle changes to its privacy policy. Coincidence? Maybe.

Second, according to the Google Adwords blog, the search engine has now added a new site traffic metric in Ad Planner called Unique Visitors (cookies). This, according to Google is a new cookie-based metric that "help(s) you cross check and compare metrics, similar to Google Analytics unique visitor metrics."

The help page goes a little bit further, saying that unique visitors (cookies) is "the estimated number of unique cookies on a site. The unique visitors (cookies) metric is more similar to data from server logs, analytics applications, and ad servers."

Google does not provide any additional details on how they are gathering the data from cookies. Is it possible that this means that as long as you have visited Google once and get cookied that they are now tracking every single site you visit, even if you didn't get there via a search? It's unclear. But it sounds like it. I hope they will be more transparent.

However, if this is true, given the huge number of people that have done at least one Google search (e.g. everyone) that sounds like they are collecting a staggering amount of data. And something that might alarm privacy advocates while at the same time creating the largest consumer panel on the web - e.g. everyone, except those who delete their cookies.

UPDATE 1/30:: A Google spokesperson emailed in the following statement in response to my post... 

"Google does not track users in the manner described in the article. We do not track every site every Google user goes to, nor do we have the capabilities to track in this manner.

The updates to our privacy policy made on Wednesday refer to data collection only for the purpose of detecting and preventing fraud or other misconduct; Google Ad Planner is not using any of this data in our enhanced features. There is no relationship between our updated privacy policy and our updated Ad Planner features."

Seems to make sense. However, it doesn't explain where the cookie data comes from. Others point out in the comments that Google has a lot of cookies sprinkled across the web through Doubleclick, etc. and that - in theory - they could triangulate the data. I have emailed Google to see what I can find out.

Frustration with PR Sites Kills Media Stories, Usability Studies Say

In his latest newsletter, usability guru Jakob Nielsen studies corporate newsrooms and found that, generally, they aren't doing a good job to say the least.

"As 3 studies of journalists show, they use the Web as a major research tool, exhibit high search dominance, and are impatient with bloated sites that don't serve their needs or list a PR contact."

The most fascinating passage in Nielsen's report, though, is this one...

Another journalist described what he'd do if he couldn't find a press contact or the facts he needed for his story: 

"Better not to write it than to get it wrong. I might avoid the subject altogether."

The press, much like consumers with customer care reps, want to be able to get a hold of corporate PR contacts quickly and easily, otherwise they won't bother doing business. That should be a wake up call for most. Bloggers, meanwhile, all expect us to be present in their spaces and I suspect don't even bother going to our immaculate corporate PR sites. So PR pros increasingly need to be present and available all around.

If you think it's just big companies that are at risk here of being forgotten, Nielsen debunks that myth. Startups, he says, pepper their sites with buzzword-filled, fatty text. Also, he makes it clear most newsrooms are built for push not pull.

In the near future all corporate media/PR sites will need to emulate the more progressive customer service sites. They will need to showcase how someone can get a hold of you in a hurry, either via IM or Twitter and not just email or phone.

I bet we'll see IM boxes like the one below from Google Talk making their way into corporate newsrooms. Access to humans begets trust and many companies are not prepared to engage 24/7. SImply put, that's the way we increasingly need to operate in a globalized world.

Inside Obama's Social Media Toolkit

Edelman's Digital Public Affairs team in DC has authored an awesome white paper that takes you inside the Obama campaign. You can download it here (PDF). The white paper imparts several lessons: start early, build to scale, innovate where necessary and more. You can find other Edelman white papers on our site. This includes 9 on 9 - key consumer trends for 2009 (also in PDF format).

IceRocket Live Web Search Rolls Up Twitter, Blogs, News and More

IceRocket is a jewel of a site that has slowly been improving. I highlighted it recently in my post on the state of blog search. Today they unveiled a cool new feature that blends tweets, blog posts, news stories, videos and images. The feature is called Ice Rocket Big Buzz. Founder Blake Rhodes pinged me about it earlier today. (A larger view of the above image is here)

IceRocket Big Buzz fills a void that we desperately need - a real-time view of news events and memes. This feature gets us closer to such a utopia by pulling together live web sources into a single page. Take, for example a newsy search for plane crash. As I write this post it's filling up with lots of very current information all about today's top news story. This includes videos from YouTube and images from Flickr. Plus you can track all of it via RSS with a link at the top right. Sounds like a dream for journalists.

This is a great first start. I would love to see the page automatically refresh and have a mobile version. In addition, an open API would be helpful too. That way, should I wish, I can add a feed from Friendfeed for items that users are only sharing there. 

Still, I am glad to see that someone is out there trying to solve the live web search problem because, as Scoble shows today with the plane crash story, it's where the action is. Google is sleeping at the wheel here.