Micro Persuasion

Posterous is Changing How I Think About Blogging

I have been giving a lot of thought to what the future looks like for blogging and where it fits in my life. I have no plans to stop, but as more action moves to the statusphere and my world gets more mobile, I have been looking for a new publishing approach.

Louis Gray, Steve Gilmor and I had a rather deep discussion about this at the Friendfeed meet-up a few weeks ago. I have also had some good conversations about this with my contemporary, Jeremiah Owyang, as well as the folks who work for Six Apart, Blogger and Disqus.

Now that I have been at it for over five years, writing a weblog is starting to feel very slow and antiquated. It's like a singles tennis player who focuses solely on the baseline game, logging long balls back and forth. The statusphere, on other hand, is like playing doubles - and at the net all the time.

That's just one side of the story though. Another part of me feels strongly that in a world of "RTs" and "@s" a thoughtful blog post that adds value is downright refreshing. The right mix is a hybrid.

I have long been an admire of Jon Gruber, who writes the outstanding Daring Fireball weblog. He has the right model. All day long he's posting on his blog pithy comments with links to "finds." Occasionally, he writes a longer analysis as he did today about PR and journalism (a must-read by the way). He is also active on Twitter but for conversation. That's a great model to follow. But how do I do so when I am often on the go?

Enter Posterous. If you haven't seen it, Posterous is outstanding because it can serve as a front end for all of your out-bound publishing. It works entirely by email.

When I email Posterous the content immediately gets posted to my lifestream site, but it also goes to certain other venues depending on how I address the message. Posterous also has a ton  of other features that I love like easy tagging and also traffic statistics that you can see for every one of my posts. (For more browse this archive.)

Lately I have been shifting more of my reading/sharing to my iPhone. Some days I probably spend as much time or more time browsing the web from my mobile device than I do my laptop. Now that I have a new iPhone 3GS, I also want to do more with photos and video. Posterous seems like the great hybrid solution since I can share things in different places based on context and easily do so through via email.

So what does this mean for you as a reader? Nothing. You will get what you have come to expect from me right here on my blog. And if you subscribe my lifestream, you will get even more. My friends on Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook will get a mix. It appears to be the ideal front end for the active publisher.

How do you decide what to publish where and when? One medium doesn't replace the other but we need more hybrids like Posterous.

Posted via email from The Steve Rubel Lifestream

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

GigaOm Network Launches Syndicated Research Arm

Years ago I had a chance to work with Alan Meckler, founder of what was then Mecklermedia, now WebMediaBrands. Alan was one of the early pioneers of online media. Back then he developed a media business that was grounded in four pillars: print, online, research and events. It's a model many B2B media companies have followed since.

A lot has changed in 15 years. The Internet has unleashed the expertise that exists within us and in the process completely democratized media. Some things never change, however, and some bloggers are following the same course Alan did (without the print part, of course and at a far lower cost). There's no reason why they shouldn't.

The GigaOm Network is one such group. They already have a robust network of sites and events. Now, Om informed me last night that they are launching a subscription-only research arm today called GigaOm Pro. At an introductory subscription price of $79 it's a steal. The unit will rely on all-star, free-agent analysts and cover clean tech, infrastructure, "the Connected Consumer" and mobile. A subscription includes ton of original weekly content as well as reports.

When I asked Om Malik about his new venture last night and he made it clear that he is not trying to take on Forrester Research or financial analysts. Rather, he is trying to carve out his own niche. He feels (and I agree) that he can assemble a team of experts from within his network and the commons that creates a compelling value proposition for the technology industry.

Despite what Om says, however, I feel that people who are spending on research will make choices. A $79 offering might be more than suitable for many more casual buyers and begin to disrupt the syndicated research market if it proves successful.

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?

Social Networking Demographics: Boomers Jump In, Gen Y Plateaus

There's a common misperception out there that all of the blogging, Twittering and Facebooking is being done by twenty and thirty-somethings. That, in fact, turns out not to be true. Baby Boomers (those born 1946-1964) are the fastest growing users of social networking sites and are also increasingly reading blogs too. Meanwhile, Gen Y interest in these services has plateaued. This all according to the latest Consumer Electronics Usage Survey from Accenture.

According to the study, baby boomers...

• Increased reading blogs and listening to podcasts by 67 percent year over year; nearly 80 times faster than Gen Y (1 percent)
• Posted a 59 percent increase in using social networking sites—more than 30 times faster than Gen Y (2 percent)
• Increased watching/posting videos on the Internet by 35 percent—while Gen Y usage decreased slightly (-2 percent)
• Accelerated playing video games on the go via mobile devices by 52 percent— 20 times faster than Gen Y (2 percent)
• Increased listening to music on an iPod or other portable music player by 49 percent—more than four times faster than Gen Y (12 percent)

Meanwhile, Gen Y...

• Participation slipped in virtual worlds from 23 percent to 19 percent
• Consumed no more video online than they did last year
• Blogged and contributed to wikis less (it's down from 35 to 33 percent)

The baby boomer results don't surprise me. What does jump out at me is how the most technologically savvy generation we have seen to date is slowing their adoption. Could they be suffering from social fatigue or do they have enough technology in their lives already? Perhaps they are returning toward more face-to-face venues, which anecdotally, I have heard. It will be interesting to see how this progresses next year.

Additional data from the latest Accenture report is summarized here from TWICE.

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.

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.

The Amazon Kindle is the Great White Hope for Monetizing Print Media

Dear media companies,

Thank you for making so much content available for free online for 15 years. I am sure you're eager to monetize it all beyond ads. 

The good news is your great white hope has arrived. It's the Amazon Kindle. My unsolicited advice is to jump in now. This could be your last chance to monetize content. Please do so now before tangible media evaporates.

Let me share with you one media junkie's experience - mine.

As a huge fan of books, magazines and newspapers, I was enthralled when Amazon launched the Kindle digital reader in late 2007. However, unlike other occasions, I did not jump in as an early adopter. I was put off by the many negative reviews and I did not want another device to carry. When the Kindle 2.0 debuted last month, however, I decided it was time to get one. Even then I was skeptical it would stick with me.

Now that I have been a Kindle owner two weeks, I am sold. I believe the device and seamless user experience is a winner - particularly as it synchronizes across phones. However, more importantly, the Kindle 2.0's debut is a watershed moment for print media. You have one last solid shot to monetize your digital content - if you move quickly. 

The iPod was the last digital great white hope. And thankfully, the music and movie companies (reluctantly) jumped on board. 

The Kindle, like the iPod, is an emerging critical mass device that actually encourages people to pay for content rather than get it for free. When Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, people were skeptical that people would shell out cash for music they could snag for free from file sharing networks. They did. The same was true when Apple, and later others, rolled out movies. However, today millions rent or buy movies online.

The Kindle offers a similar experience in a much larger market - text. This one is tougher to monetize. In the digital age books have managed to remain premium content. However, beyond books, magazine and newspaper content is available in abundance online for free. Yet, I still believe that people will pay to receive some of their favorites on their Kindles or their Kindle-enabled phones. Meet them there now while you can.

Consider this piece in the Statesboro Business Magazine by a 43-year-old individual who bought his first newspaper subscription in 43 years. Or the fact that now Instapaper is available in a handy offline version for the Kindle. Both remind me of the early days of the iPod when it was still geeky, yet a game changer.

My advice to you is to offset part of the cost of the Kindle and get them into the hands of your loyal readers with your content pre-loaded. Imagine, TIme Warner, if you gave readers $100 off a Kindle that came with a year of digital subscriptions to Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune. I bet a lot of people would jump in and stay with you for years.

The Kindle, like the iPod, overcomes the hurdle required to get people to pay for content. The secret sauce is easy and instantaneous delivery of content as soon as it ships. This need not be limited to daily, weekly or monthly publication schedule but also for breaking news.

A little over a year ago, I converted all my media to bits. However, it's work. Even with RSS, I still have to go out and get the content I care about. Now with my Kindle, the media comes to me and it's available offline. I love that Fortune magazine shows up on my device whenever a new issue is published. The same is true for the New York Times. Eventually, Amazon will extend publications to the iPhone and other devices.

So, media companies, please jump in now. Embrace the Kindle. Subsidize it. Create value-added content for it, such as e-books. Or even partner with advertisers to offer advertorials. This could be your last shot at getting people to pay for your content. Don't miss the next iPod.

Sincerely,

Steve (a media junkie)

Forrester Says Paying Bloggers is OK Provided There are Disclosures

Forrester Research is out with a new brief this morning by analysts Sean Corcoran, Jeremiah Owyang and Josh Bernoff that says that sponsored conversations on blogs - akin to what how Chris Brogan partnered with KMart - are going to become more commonplace. Further, they recommend the tactic provided that there are clear disclosures all around.

Sponsored posts are nothing new. Although the tactic always raises a fair amount of controversy. Daring Fireball, one of the most popular Mac blogs, regularly runs sponsored posts inside its feed. Techmeme has them on the site too. However, where these are different is that they act more like advertorials. Where it gets prickly is when bloggers themselves write about their personal experience with a product (usually balanced) in exchanged for compensation.

Forrester makes five recommendations in the brief: mandate disclosure, ensure freedom of authenticity, partner with relevant blogs, don't talk and walk away. All good advice. Further, as you can see from the chart below they sit sponsored conversations somewhere between advertising and PR in the matrix.

Source: Forrester Research, Inc.

The report misses something, however. This is nothing new. Magazines have run advertorials for years. And radio stations run promotions where the DJ gets involved. What is new is that on many of these sites the editor and publisher are the same individual. There are no hard church/state boundaries as there are with other media.

The way to get around this is to write and submit your own content as a sponsored post. Have the blogger run the copy but with an advertorial label. This has worked in magazines for years. 

Further, I would suggest working with an organization that represents bloggers and has experience running such programs - such as Federated Media. In addition, sponsored conversations work best when you integrate tactics across the spectrum that Forrester has here. Sometimes, earning media can lead to additional opportunities to get to know the personalities behind a blog and then additional opps. down the road.

However, on the whole, I agree that we're going to see more of this in the future. I am hopeful that everyone, publishers and sponsors, will bring their ethical A-game.

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

The Newspaper Reporter of the Future is Here Today

The word newspaper is really a misnomer today. Or at least it will be soon. Increasingly news is delivered digitally and it's interactive. People are certainly writing newspapers off for dead, but I think they have a bright future (in digital form) and it's right in front of them.

Everyone's looking for a solution to the newspaper problem. But the answer is right under their nose. The picture is slowly evolving through the breakthrough work of individual reporters who are using social media to build a stronger connection with their audience (and their own personal brands in the process).

There are tons of examples. Dwight Silverman is one. But here's another that's also near and dear to my heart. It's so spot on that it's noteworthy as an example of where the news business is heading - or where it needs to go.

In the US baseball spring training is getting underway in full swing in Florida and Arizona. I am a Yankee fan and have been paying close attention to what Peter Abraham has been doing. He should win awards for breaking ground in sports journalism.

Abraham is the Yankees beat writer for the Journal News in Westchester county (a NYC suburb). According to Burrelles Luce, it's the 94th largest newspaper in the US with a daily circ of 100,000 readers.

Abraham is on the scene in Tampa where the Yankees are training and he's doing it all - in addition to filing regular reports for the paper that appear in print. Here's an inventory of his social media footprint....

First, he has a blog with a full-text feed that includes several posts/day and hundreds of comments/day from readers. It dates back to 2006.

In addition, Abraham has a Facebook group that has about 1600 members.

He is posting photos from spring training using his iPhone. Note the gear the others are using by comparison.

There is a podcast up on iTunes that right now is updated daily with audio.

FInally, today he was using both CoverItLive and Mogulus to have a live video/text chat with readers.

All Abraham is missing is Twitter, YouTube and maybe Flickr but he seems to be doing just fine with what he has here.

Now imagine for a moment that Abraham wasn't a Yankees beat writer but instead covering your company or industry for the business section. Or imagine she is the newspaper's food columnist. This multi-platform method of engaging is right for all of them. If every reporter did this on staff they can build not only a more engaged audience, but also redefine local media since it's all potentially global.

For PR professionals, this is a boon. More content creates more opportunities for us to tell our stories and to also engage journalists using these same channels. If we're not there as individuals and companies then we won't be top of mind.

What Abraham is doing represents not only the future of journalism but also what PR professionals themselves need to do to build connections in the years ahead.

Pew: 11% of Americans Read or Post Status Updates

The Pew Internet for the American Life Project is out today with a new study (PDF) that reveals that 11% of Americans share or read status updates via a micro-blogging social network service such as Twitter, Facebook or Yammer.

However, the brief is somewhat misleading since it seems to hook the story primarily to Twitter, when in fact it can cover lots of sites. I suspect Facebook looms larger here in the survey than Pew lets on. In addition, I would advise reading it closely since the data can be misinterpreted.

In December 2008 Pew asked more than 2700 consumers if they used "Twitter or another 'microblogging' service to share updates about themselves or to see updates about others." According to Pew, 11% responded yes, which is up from 9% in November 2008 and 6% in May of last year. However, read the question closely. Not all of these people are necessarily posting and if they are it can be anywhere, not just Twitter.

Other nuggets from the study...

• Users are young -  Twitter and "similar services" have been most avidly embraced by young adults. Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18 and 24 have "ever used Twitter and its ilk," as have 20% of online adults 25 to 34
• They're not necessarily affluent - Online Americans who live in lower-income households are more likely to use Twitter than more affluent Americans. Some 17% of internet users in households earning less than $30,000 update their status, compared with 10% of those earning more than $75,000 annually, Pew notes
• They are mobile - More than three-quarters (76%) of, again what they are characterizing as "Twitter users" use the internet wirelessly – either on a laptop with a wireless connection, or via PDA, handheld or cell phone

Regardless of the specific watering hole (eg Facebook, Twitter, etc.) I am less impressed with the 11% figure. What I do find more notable is the growth rate. An increase of two percent from a base of nine percent in just a month is quite impressive. But keep in mind, not everyone maybe posting and the base is wide.

The White House is Liveblogging

This isn't your father's White House. The Obama administration's communication team - as I write this post - is live-blogging a speech the President is giving in Florida today on the economy.

This is a big deal. The new administration, unsurprisingly given its history, is slowly opening up the White House to the new world of media. It's not that they don't get it. They do. It's just hard to turn around a giant institution like the government. But slowly, it's happening. Posting the weekly addresses and more on YouTube, inviting The Huffington Post to ask a press conference question (a first, which Obama did last night) and now live-blogging are all baby steps in the right direction.

I wonder if the White House will revive Obama's old Twitter account next.

All Media Is Social, All Social Is Media

The following is another excerpt from "Five Digital Trends to Watch," an Edelman Digital insights white paper that will be released on February 17.

Companies have done a decent-to-good job adapting to the new era of democratized media. For example, bloggers today are considered an important part of the ecosystem. The best in PR view them as a sounding board that can help shape or even re-shape strategies.

Unfortunately, some of what we’ve learned these last few years may need to be unlearned — or at least modified.

Where once journalists sat on one side, bloggers on the other, today all media is social and all social is media. Yet many, particularly in PR, still treat ordinary citizens, traditional journalism and branded content as distinct islands of media. Going forward, it’s best to see them as a contiguous archipelago.

Consider that in 2008 some 58 percent of newspapers featured some form of user-generated content on their sites, according to the Bivings Group. This is up from just 24 percent in 2007. The mix includes: user-generated photos (58 percent), homegrown video (18 percent) and articles (15 percent). Meanwhile, the number of newspaper sites that are allowing readers to comment on articles has more than doubled to 75 percent. 

On the other side of the coin, we've seen time and again that social networks like Facebook, Friendfeed and Twitter are now essential sources of news and information for millions. This is particularly true around big events and breaking news.

The upshot is that today it's impossible to draw a line between social media and traditional media - it's all one. We need to take a bird’s-eye view of the entire landscape and conceptualize it in the broadest context when planning, executing and measuring campaigns. Anything short and we're operating in a vacuum.

Marketing Authentically with Personal Brands as Corporate All-Stars

 

Photo credit: Orangeneko on Flickr

In my role with Edelman Digital I am curating and writing white papers for clients about key trends. The papers provide clients actionable insights and strategies they can apply in PR and marketing programs. 

We're making one available to everyone the week of February 16. The 30-page paper covers Five Digital Trends to Watch. Here's a preview of one of the trends - what we're calling "Corporate All-Stars." It's also my column this week in Advertising Age.

Personal branding, while not new, is hot. In these uncertain times, many workers are flocking to social media in an effort to build their own brands.

But just as perennial all-stars Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez help the Yankees sell more tickets, businesses also recognize that having a few "corporate all-stars" on staff can help them market in an authentic yet cost-effective way. (This is one of five trends we at Edelman have identified for 2009; the full list will be available on our website Feb. 17.)

Dan Schawbel is one example. Online he has established himself as an expert on personal branding. However, Schawbel is also a social-media specialist at EMC Corp., one of the world's largest tech companies.

Drawing on his personal branding experience, Schawbel has revolutionized the way EMC communicates and collaborates with its stakeholders. He is driving the company's Twitter, Facebook, social-media press release/newsroom, social bookmarking and blogging strategy all by leveraging its corporate all-stars. 

Not every company will want corporate all-stars on the team. But those that cultivate them will be in a strong position to be heard in the noisy social sphere. Here are three considerations: 

Use blogs to connect customers and corporate all-stars

Blogs are fast becoming a key part of many brand communication plans. However, according to Forrester, only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them. To mitigate this, turn boring product blogs into communities that connect customers and corporate all-stars around their shared passions.

Give all-stars independence, yet ensure they stay focused

To be successful, employees with personal brands need to carefully balance their roles as semi-independent thought leaders while maintaining a clear connection to their employers. The ideal situation is when the individual's and company's goals are aligned, the subject matter overlaps, and transparency reigns.

Equip and support personal brands in becoming active listeners

The advantages of having authentic online all-stars go beyond relationships, branding and overall visibility. These people also become active listeners. Equip them to act on potential crises and issues, and enable them to identify new ideas and unmet needs.

Friendfeed is the Next Great Blogging Platform, Here's Why...

Friendfeed continues to astonish me. While so much attention is focused on Twitter lately, particularly by the press, Friendfeed is the little site that could. And quietly it's poised to become the next great blogging platform.

Don't believe me? Then keep an eye on what Robert Scoble is up to on Friendfeed. Like him or hate him, he's a trend setter. 

A few times a day he will post thoughts on Friendfeed, often followed by the phrase "here's why" and then he'll expand on it with the first comment. These little thoughts generate hundreds of subsequent comments, often in minutes plus lots of "likes."

Yesterday I essentially blogged on Friendfeed on this topic and generated a level of engagement you just don't see anywhere else - with the exception of Twitter. But I find Twitter increasingly frustrating because the conversation is so hard to follow. These days, I would rather post to Friendfeed and let Twitter scoop it all up. I love that I can more easily follow the conversation, moderate it and contribute to it via IM. Also, I l can add photos to my Friendfeed postings, which brings in even more people.

It seems to me that if Friendfeed adds a few features - longer posts, custom domains, and design tweaks - it's basically a blogging platform... on steroids. It will be attractive to bloggers for at least two reasons.

First, we will be able to use it to build a branded presence (and thus SEO) just as we can now with TypePad or Wordpress. This is something you can't do now on Friendfeed - or Twitter for that matter.

However, more importantly, we will be able to instantly plug our full blog posts right into a fervent, real-time community that attracts a highly engaged audience. It's blogging on speed thanks to the real-time web. Why try to get the conversation to come to your site when you can go to it?

I also think that Friendfeed can add an optional Adsense program make it easy for people to monetize their Friendfeed blogs.

Stay tuned.

PR Pros to Get a Database of Twitter Users by Mid-Year

PR Newser reports that Cision, a very respectable company that runs a media database used by thousands of public relations professionals, will expand its reporter and blogger data to include Twitter user handles by mid year. It's unclear if they will only link existing profiles to their Twitter handles or if Cision will also replicate the broader set of tools that Twitter already offers.

Regardless, while this is hardly unexpected given Twitter's growth (and it's the right move for CIsion and the industry), it may mean changes for the more influential users of the micro-blogging service. For starters, Twitter users may soon see an influx of in-bound pitches from PR pros. Most likely these could come in the form of 150-character direct messages (DMs) since most Twitterati don't usually post their email address.

My advice to those of you in PR is to participate first, pitch later (this is counsel my colleague Phil Gomes regularly teaches). Ideally I would love to see everyone in PR be on Twitter but only if we add value. This means that we must transparently and openly participate in conversations, always respect the community and build relationships. Do this (and do this well) and most everyone will be happy to hear our pitches. 

Hopefully when Twitter data arrives on PR professionals' desktops by mid-year it won't encourage us to pollute Twitter with DM pitches. Rather, we'll use the info to be smarter. Then again, alot of this data is already out there so maybe this is all moot.

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.

Google Adds Time Stamps, Inches Closer to Real-Time Web Search

(UPDATE: Note comments from Google's Matt Cutts, which came in after I posted. It appears none of this is new but it is certainly worth watching and perhaps more noticeable to me than it was before.)

Google has quietly started posting a small time stamp next to news stories and blog posts that have been recently added to their main index. In the screen grab below note how one such search lists the hours that have transpired since my recent blog post and Robert Scoble's were first indexed. The same holds for news-related searches too, as you can see here.

As of right now you can't sort Google results by time. From the advanced search page, however, you can limit results just to those that have been indexed in the last 24-hours. You can't get more granular - at least yet. Date-filtered advanced queries are not a new feature but I believe the time stamps are.

 

As Louis Gray notes, the real-time web is going to be a critical trend to watch this year. As more content is generated from social networks, Google is going to feel heat from Friendfeed, Twitter and Facebook as they beef up their algorithms. Already, lots of people go to search.twitter.com to search for breaking news just as we did first when Google News launched a few years ago.

Real-time Google search is something I have been predicting would come for almost four years now. I think we're finally just about there. This will have a major impact on PR as companies recognize that Google is the primary lens by which they are judged.