The Steve Rubel Stream

5 Jan 2010

Email Newsletter Subs Trump RSS - Study

An unsurprising study out of Hubspot this morning reveals that email subscribers to many blogs factor in 12x larger than those who read through RSS. I am not seeing this in my own stats however. Only 1.5% of you read site feed via email. Still, I keep thinking about where RSS reading is going these days. I love the technology but have begun to explore other opt

Borrowing a page from Matt Cutts, for January I am trying a 30-day challenge - to reduce my use of RSS. I am trying to only dip into Google Reader as a data warehouse. I am finding that email newsletters, Gmail filtering and Twitter lists/Listimonkey maybe all I need. It simplifies my streams.

Anybody else seeing a shift to email newsletters? E-marketer reports that companies are increasingly integrating email and social media.

2 Jan 2010

The Digital Decade in Stats

Image by marcopako  via Flickr

Josh Bernoff What you can learn from consumers' digital decade, reminding us that...

"As I look back on all this from the perspective of media and marketing, it's clear that consumer lead, media stumbles along behind, and marketers follow along behind."

Some stats of Josh compiled:

Broadband homes: 2.6 million (2000), 80 million (2010)
HDTV: virtually zero (2000) to 51 million (2010)
Mobile phones: 51 million adults (2000) to 270 million (2010)

27 Nov 2009

Most Searchers Use Three or More Keywords

According to Experian, the majority of US searches (at least those that generate clicks) incorporate more three or more keywords. This is likely being driven keyword suggestions, a feature that's now the default for virtually every search engine and every browser. To get a sense for what this means from a PR point of view, all you need to do is visit Question Suggestions. Even better, try Google Suggest yourself on topics related to your brand. The results are sometimes eye opening.

25 Nov 2009

Nearly All Inc. 500 Companies Are Engaged in Social Media

Inc. magazine is out with a new study that tracks the Inc. 500 - the fastest growing private companies in the US:

According to the study, social media usage by companies on the Inc. 500 has grown in the past year, with 91 percent of companies reporting that they use at least one social media tool, compared with 77 percent of companies surveyed in 2008. Of the six social media categories covered in the survey, the one that continues to be the most familiar to Inc. 500 companies is social networking, with 75 percent saying that they are "very familiar with it."

The small are using social media to arguably outmaneuver the larger companies that are taking more time to get it together. This is not to fault the multinationals. It's just taking time to peel back the onion layers to prepare their culture for a new era of real-time engagement and the age of the über-connected organization.

6 Nov 2009

Moms More Influenced Offline, While Kids Are Online

Two new studies point to a growing divide in how moms and kids communicate and are influenced...

First up, Nielsen/Pete Blackshaw's Pocket Guide to Social Media and Kids:

"In the hands of children and tweens, today’s cell phones are primarily used as text messaging devices, cameras, gaming consoles, video viewers, MP3 players, and incidentally, as mobile phones via the speaker capability so their friends can chime in on the call."

And, via AdAge, parents are relying more on offline conversations to make decisions:

"A study due out next week from the Parenting Group found that while moms are avid web and social-media users, they still turn to family and friends first, whether by phone, e-mail or in-person, when making decisions about product purchases."

Email Newsletter Subs Trump RSS - Study

The Digital Decade in Stats

Most Searchers Use Three or More Keywords

Nearly All Inc. 500 Companies Are Engaged in Social Media

Moms More Influenced Offline, While Kids Are Online

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