The Steve Rubel Stream

Insights on emerging technologies and trends.
Steve Rubel
Steve Rubel (bio) is SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, a division of Edelman - the world's largest independent PR firm.

He is charged with helping clients identify emerging technologies and trends that can be applied in marketing communications programs. Rubel also explores these topics on his site, a monthly Forbes.com column and in a bi-weekly AdAge column. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook as well.

Steve can be reached via email at steverubel@gmail.com.

Note: Everything posted on this site is Steve's personal opinion. It does not represent the views of Edelman or its clients.

               

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Forbes Study: CMOs More Bullish on Social Media than Apps

During a recent meeting with Forbes they shared with me a summary of their recent survey of Chief Marketing Officers (embedded below). There are two notable trends here - which Forbes isn't connecting, but I am.

First, social media is seen as the single most promising marketing vehicle amongst all respondents and those who oversee more than $5M in annual spend. Note how social media surpasses other tactics that get a lot of attention - notably mobile applications and search engine marketing.


Second, some 73% of CMOs surveyed oversee PR. I don't have the data, but I imagine this is a new trend. In the past, PR would sit in all kinds of other departments. Now it seems to be more closely aligned with marketing.


Now the Forbes study doesn't say this, but I fundamentally believe that other than placing ads, PR is in the best position to manage a business' social media endeavors. The reason is that engaging in social circles requires an understanding of psychology and also it is an uncontrolled discipline. Both of these play well to the skills of PR practitioners. If I were a CMO controlling $5M in spend with an interest in social media and I oversaw PR, I would connect these dots. I suspect that's what many are doing.

(download)

Filed under  marketing   PR   social media   stats  
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Posted 1 month ago

Video Interview: Scott Monty, Ford Motor Company

One of the great people I run into everywhere is Scott Monty, who heads social media at the Ford Motor Company. In this four and a half minute video, which I shot yesterday, Scott talks about what he does in his day job, how social media is integrated into Ford's communications engine (pun intended) and how he works with his executives.

Filed under  case studies   interviews   social media   video  
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Posted 1 month ago

Video: The Future of Social Media

via vimeo.com

Late last year I was interviewed by The Social Media Examiner on the future of the medium. In this nine-minute interview we discuss: why you need to have a presence on all social networks where your customers are spending time, how to use mixed messages to tailor your stories to different venues,how to measure social media metrics, why the different vectors of reach, engagement and reputation lead to trust and why it’s important to understand people & understand business.

Filed under  interviews   measurement   PR   social media   trends   video  
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Posted 2 months ago

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.
Filed under  research   social media   stats  
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Posted 3 months ago

Defining Media, Cross-Mating Elephants and Zebras

Five years ago there was media and social media and the two were distinct. You know what was what. It was like there elephants and zebras. You knew the difference. 

Today all media is social, all social is media. It's impossible to separate the two. 

The media all actively use social technologies to innovate, converse and collaborate with their audiences. Meanwhile, social content from friends - be it tweets or status updates or videos - all should be considered media. Yes, the elephants and the zebras have cross-mated.

My colleague overheard me say this and he drew this little doodle for me a few months ago. I keep it handy and refer to it often when thinking about big topics, like this one: just what is media? I don't have an answer any more. But it's important we have one. Google has a bunch of definitions here, but none of them seem to apply any more.

The reason we need a new definition for media (as opposed to a definition for new media - a topic for another day) is because entire industries depend on it. People say "I work in the media business." There are "media buying" agencies. And so on.

So in asking this question, I turn to you. How would you define media today? Maybe we can begin to crowdsource a definition.
Filed under  insights   media   social media  
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Posted 4 months ago

Studying the Evolution of Social Media to See its Future

I was a history minor in college - and, for awhile, it was my major. I am glad I was because the experience has framed how I view the development of the Internet and specifically online communities. (I have been online since 1988 when all we used were text-based online services.) 

We need to see where we've been to understand where we might be going. Webdesigner depot has a great post that takes us down memory lane with some thoughts on what's next. Remember, that there will always be hype in this space. Yahoo bought Geocities for $3.65B and now, about ten years later, they shut it down.

Filed under  community   history   social media  
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Posted 5 months ago

William Martino on Who Owns Social Media

A solid analysis from William Martino on who should "own" social media agency assignments...

"The reality is, CONSUMERS own social media, not brands and certainly not agencies. Whether we like it or not, we now must market our brands in a landscape where consumers have the tools to make their voice heard, and the technology to hear what everyone else is saying."

The hard part is even putting a box around just what is social media.
Filed under  advertising   PR   social media  
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Posted 5 months ago

Stat: Corp Marketing Adds Clout as Social Media Rises

via marketingcharts.com

Interesting set of stats from The Creative Group finds that the influence of the marketing organization in a company has increased as social media begins to dominate and marketers start talking directly and openly with their customers online. (I would love to see a further breakdown of the data to see how much of this is split between marketing and corp comm.)

Filed under  marketing   PR   social media   stats  
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Posted 7 months ago

Photo: The Social Media Book Bubble

I shot the photo above last weekend at my local bookstore. Barnes and Noble is featuring a special table of titles devoted to social media. 

When I first spotted the table I did a double take. Wow, is there a social media book bubble? From the looks of it, maybe. Apparently, publishers left and right are going hard after reputable consultants who I have met, like Tamar Weinberg. 

This got me wondering: is this demand creating supply or is supply creating demand? Who knows. All I know I am happy for everyone who scored a gig.

So what about yours truly? Well, actually over the years I have been courted several times to write a book about social media. I actually got very far with one publisher about a year ago. They offered a lucrative six-figure advance and more. 

In the end, I always declined. I felt that a book would steal time away from my work and also what I love, which is quickly curating new technologies and incubating them with our teams and clients.

More importantly, however, I felt that a book on such a topic is, well, old school (at least for me). Much of what I would have put down on paper in January would have been yesterday's lunch by June. I decided it was better for me and my career to put this energy more into participating online and I haven't looked back.

Still, when I saw the table, I was amazed that even a year later the books keep on coming. Maybe I am missing something. What's your view?

Filed under  books   social media  
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Posted 7 months ago

Column: How to Build Social Capital - Innovate Early and Often


Last week the Altimeter Group, run by former Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li, and online marketing firm Wetpaint released a study that analyzed the 100 most valuable brands (according to BusinessWeek/Interbrand) and how they engage across 11 different online social-media venues, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The study was billed as creating an "engagement database" and ranked Starbucks No. 1, followed by Dell and eBay, based on their breadth and depth of social engagement. Google, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, Nike, Amazon, SAP and Yahoo/Intel (a tie) round out the top 10.

What was eye-popping was the correlation they made between social engagement and financial performance. In my view there are a lot of factors that influence a company's financial performance, which makes such a correlation questionable. But good use of social media could be seen as a proxy for an innovative culture, eagerness to engage with consumers and take risks, a net positive for any business.

The bigger takeaway from the research is in examining how these companies were able to build their social networks. They all innovated early, often and, sometimes, incrementally. Consider that:
  • Dell and Starbucks were some of the earliest adopters of corporate crowd-sourcing. They launched ambitious sites on Salesforce.com's platform in 2007 and 2008, respectively
  • Many embraced Twitter early and in innovative ways. EBay, for example, was the first to live-tweet earnings calls in 2008. Amazon started offering deals on Twitter back in 2007
  • Several were quick to build out robust communities that connect customers and employees. Microsoft, for example, launched its inventive Channel 9 platform for developers back in 2004. It followed up with similar sites for other key stakeholders
  • A few of these companies were among the first to let employees openly blog. "Microsofties" began blogging in the late 1990s. Yahoo and Google debuted corporate and product blogs in 2004.
Social capital goes to those who innovate early, often and with excellence -- and repeat this process over and over. That, to me, is what the research spells out.

(Note: Starbucks, Microsoft and eBay are all clients of Edelman, my employer.)
Filed under  AdAge   clients   essays   innovation   social media  
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Posted 7 months ago
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