The Steve Rubel Stream

The following essay is also my column this month on Forbes.com.

The following piece was also cross-posted on Forbes.com.

Social Luxury is Personal

Social networking started out as "things" - destination sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that we browse to and use to connect with our friends, family and co-workers. Now, however, it is poised to become "everything."

Just like water blankets the Earth's surface area (and sustains life), social networking technologies will soon cover 70 percent of the web. This will breathe ubiquitous global social connectivity into once solitary experiences. The impact for luxury brands will be dramatic. For decades, luxury brands have appealed to an insatiable emotional need that millions share. As a society, we aspire to purchase products and services that make us feel wealthy, either financially or emotionally. This often changes with the times - and it's steered by local cultures as well - however, the trend spans centuries.

This raises a key question: in an era of ubiquitous social networking - one where every online and mobile experience is enhanced by the lens of our friends - how will luxury be defined?

Where once a single TV show or a celebrity could define luxury, that's no longer the case. The media environment is too fragmented today and it's increasingly personalized by the connections we keep. This means that luxury is fractional. A brand that's achieved luxury status among thirty-something moms in LA could be considered taboo by the same demographic in NY - all because of the types of social connections we keep online and how they shape our worldview.

With this dynamic in mind, here are three steps that luxury brands should consider to either maintain or grow their iconic status...

1) Make every online experience a social one

Every day consumers are talking about luxury brands online. This means we form opinions based on what we see/hear from our friends. To succeed, luxury brands will need to turn once static experiences into social ones that are personalized so that the right message is communicated at the right time to the right group of individuals in the right context - all while appealing to their higher emotional needs.

Facebook's new social tools, introduced last month, are a great first step in this direction. Levis (an Edelman client) have deployed them across their web site, turning every experience into a social one that's filtered through our friends.

2) Develop coveted social objects

Luxury goods are coveted. Many of us want to be seen carrying our Louis Vutton handbag or wearing a Coach watch. This could translate online as well. Just as millions hope to one day be able to afford luxury brands, they also might want to achieve some level of similar status online within their social network.

Enter luxury brands. Every single one of the iconic companies on this list has the opportunity to create and launch social objects that consumers can earn the right to embed and/or share on their social profiles.

3) Map and tap networks

Every individual has role models. It used to be, however, that celebrities dominated this space. Today, however, it's possible that our view of role models is changing, perhaps moving closer to the company we keep online. Luxury brands that can understand how role models are formed, map these networks and tap into their power will be in the best position to capture attention in a highly personalized environment.

Image via Snorgtees

Do you "cross the streams?" In other words, do you co-mingle your personal and professional social networks? This is a tough question to answer. In this essay (which is also my Adage column next week), I present the pro-side of the argument. I also opened up this discussion on Facebook.

As I travel the world, however, I am hearing distinct argument for keeping these separate. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and I discussed this yesterday. He (correctly) called me "an edge case." So with this in mind, consider this Part I. In Part II I will look at the case against "crossing the streams."

As always, I am eager for your views. Help me learn. This is a very confusing topic for many people.

Professional, Personal Social Circles Converge...and Confuse

About a year ago I became Facebook friends with Rob, the dealer sold me my car in 2007. Now I don't have any connection Rob other than this single transaction. Yet whenever I bring in my wheels for service, he is able to recall some nugget from my activity stream. You see, Rob is smart. He is using social networking to maintain a level of "ambient awareness" about his customers' total lives and he lets us do the same about him. This instills trust. And trust is the future of business. In all likelihood this helps him drive more sales.

Social networking is rapidly blurring the edges between our professional and personal spheres. Many of us co-mingle colleagues, clients, friends and family within our social networks. Others do not.

While the long term effects are uncertain, this convergence is creating mass confusion among marketers and other corporate types who for years have worked to ensure these circles remain separate. They maybe fighting a losing battle since this train left the station long ago.

The days of us yelling "yabba dabba doo," sliding down the dinosaur's tail and leaving work behind at five are long over. Thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices, we are constantly connected to our work. On the flip side, we don't hesitate to stay close to our personal networks while we're in the office.

Social networking is amplifying and accelerating this existing trend. It's forcing all of us to make choices about how public we are willing to be - and what, if any boundaries we want to maintain between our networks. Regardless of your individual stance, this subtle, yet important change is going to reshape how you and your colleagues do business.

The societal norm, it seems, is tilting more toward what thinker Jeff Jarvis calls "new publicness." This is especially true among younger workers. And while there are certainly major pitfalls - ask anyone who lost their job over questionable Facebook photos from a weekend party - there are clear benefits as well. Caveats aside, I believe that that those who allow these circles to overlap will build stronger ties all around. At our heart, we're all human beings, not automatons. If we open up and let our customers, colleagues and partners see even just a little bit of our total activity streams, we will break down barriers, instill trust and more lasting business relationships.

This isn't black and white of course. Each individual will have to decide just how public he/she wishes to be and to what end. This is why Twitter, a public channel, may not be right for everyone. Yet Facebook, which allows the user to tailor his/her specific updates just to a single network, could be.

The good news, however, is that publicness is not an all or nothing equation. You can start small, as many are. Some employees, for example, are solely using internal social networking tools like Yammer to update their colleagues on their day-to-day activities. Other more extroverted types, meanwhile are tweeting their passions. Some even log their total lives on FourSquare, all in full view of their professional and personal networks.

Ultimately this is an individual choice and it must take into account a lot of factors, including corporate policies and industry norms. But in an age where transparency begets trust, there's a lot to be gained on an individual and institutional level for those who decide in some way to live some of their lives in public and converge networks. Just ask Rob, who I will definitely buy from again.

Photo credit: Karen Wickre via Danny Sullivan

The following was cross-posted on the new Edelman Digital web site. 

Another month, another visit to Silicon Valley – my home away from home – and, with it, another visit to the Googleplex in search of insights. This time I chatted with Karen Wickre, who oversees Google’s growing armada of blogs and Twitter embassies.

Google, perhaps more than any other company, has a culture of openness. Often a company’s culture shapes its communications strategy. And that’s certainly the case with Google. So social media comes naturally.

Karen first launched Google’s corporate blog back in 2004. Today the company has digital embassies for virtually every product. This armada spans dozens of blogs, Twitter profiles, YouTube and more recently Facebook.

Back when the Official Google Blog launched, posts were conservative. Wickre, a former tech journalist, told me over breakfast that early items were almost whimsical, focusing on the food at Google (which I can assure you, rocks).

While the blog still features some trivial fare, no one could call it – or any of Google’s other digital assets – a light weight. In fact, the opposite is true. Google uses its armada to take on hard issues likeChina, public policy and privacy. And it largely eschews press releases, unless they are financial or material to shareholders.

While Wickre doesn’t oversee all these embassies, she serves as a beacon for the teams that manage them – subject matter experts like product managers, engineers and marketers. Like a good coach, she provides templates and best practices and answers questions as they come up. Wickre, in the meantime, is turning her attention to how the company can strategically use its own Buzz product.

Wickre is one of an emerging breed of professionals that companies hire to manage/lead companies down the social media path. Not nearly enough credit goes to people like her. These individuals are often the ones who have to effect change – with the help of partners like us.

Google, perhaps more than any other company, is a model of social media success. One reason is that they tap into the three key trendsthat I wrote about earlier. They are real-time, visible and data driven. However, what they do best is embrace using multiple messages, formats and stories.

I subscribe to a fire hose feed for all the Google blogs as well as their Twitter and Facebook embassies. On any given day you will find a wealth of news, tips and stories that are tailored to specific interests. Only care about Gmail? There’s an embassy for that. How aboutpolicy? That too.

However, Google’s social media success goes beyond just having lots of teams engaged. Each venue slants the content to the reader/viewer’s needs and utilizes different formats – short form, long form, video, images and more. The end result is that Google creates massive surface area that make them hard to miss in an age where information choices are ubiquitous.

The takeaway here for companies is that, when possible, they should consider creating several blogs and – more likely – digital embassies inside existing communities. One Twitter presence might not be enough. The same goes with Facebook. (Note that this is just one approach and not the only one. Some advocate centralizing content into a single place. There are pros/cons to each.)

Businesses today need to consider having multiple streams that are mapped to high priority interests. This creates surface area and lots of entry points for stakeholders to get engaged. What’s more, the content should be “hand crafted“- eg tailored to each community. And these spaces should be managed by identifiable employees who are subject matter experts.

This is how I am tailoring my own content. I use Twitter for sharing/conversing around links and news. My new Facebook community is for discussions and sharing insights and observations. While my Posterous blog site is for essays, videos and the occasional digital doodles.

Now scaling might intimidate some. According to a recent Smartbrief survey, time is the chief obstacle to engaging in social communities. However, if a business makes social media a team sport, as Google does, anyone can succeed.