The Steve Rubel Stream

Marco Arment captures how John Gruber and Merlin Mann consistently create compelling online content...

Gruber says that when he’s writing Daring Fireball, he’s picturing his ideal reader — a copy of himself — and conceptually writing just for him. With everything he writes, he’s writing to and for that one ideal reader, not trying to boost his SEO for target phrases or appeal to an ever broadening demographic.

Simple formula, but it's rare people follow their interests so obsessively that they want to create content around it. Be that guy or gal before someone else is. Walk in the footsteps of giants. Give a listen to the full podcast that Marco links to as well. It's worth the hour spent. #

1. Define the keywords that people use to find your business
2. Find out how many people are actually using the keywords you have selected
3. Define your competition and make sure the keywords you have chosen are relevant
4. Finding the best keywords
5. Breaking keywords into pages

Great advice. But swap out the word website and substitute any content that ends up online - blog posts, videos, press releases, journalism. Everyone who aims to be creating findable stuff needs to sweat the data.

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Recently I had a chance to spend some quality time with the folks at Bitly, getting to know more about their terrific service. There's a wealth of data there if you dig in. Not all of my Twitter clients integrate with the Bitly API yet, but I find myself seeking out apps that do allow me to enter my account info since it gives me rich analytics and (hopefully) insights into how I can be more effective.

If you like Bitly, here's a killer tip that Andrew Coen, Bitly's co-founder, recently shared with our team. You can actually shorten a link in just one step right from the address bar in any browser, even a mobile one. All you need to do is either enter "j.mp/" or "bit.ly/" before the address of the page you're on and Bitly will then automatically shorten it for you. What's more, if you're logged into Bitly and it's integrated with your Twitter account, you can tweet right off the page it refers you to.

This has been a real time saver for me and also has me using their service even more.

Image Credit: Jay Leno carrying on with Taylor Hicks (by Techbirmingham via on Flickr)

I am a big believer in using stories and visuals to convey a message. My teammate David Armano is helping me with the latter. Here's a metaphor that I have been using with our clients that might be helpful to you.

Some businesses have a Twitter or Facebook presence or a blog, yet they're not getting the kind of activity or engagement they hope to receive. This is understandable and a common problem. There's a lot of competition for attention. But one night I was watching the Tonight Show and it hit me. From that point on I started talking about "The Jay Leno Rule of Social Media." It's simple and it works.

If you think about it, the celebrity slots on The Tonight Show are pretty formulaic: guest walks on; guest engages/yucks it up with Jay about broad human interest topics (life stories, current affairs, etc.); guest promotes his/her book, movie, TV show, event, shows a clip, etc.; guest moves down the couch; rise, repeat, wash. This has been the script for decades, going all the way back to Jack Parr.

It struck me that this is a great model for any company hoping to build relationships through social media. The "Jay Leno Rule" is deceptively simple and easy to implement. Basically, here's how it works...

If you want to get people to care about what you're selling, you have first to get them engaged by being informative and/or entertaining. In short, you need to get us interested in what you - a brand, an NGO, an individual - have to say beyond your domain. Such pathways to engagement include stories, humor, links to interesting information, ideas, questions and participating in other discussions (e.g. Follow Friday, etc.) Then, once you get us hooked, it's easier talk about what you want to sell us. We'll be more receptive.

This isn't rocket science. In reality, it's human relations 101 - but it's something a lot of companies forget. After all, most marketers focus on themselves and what they want to say.

Mint is a company that does this quite well. They embrace the Jay Leno Rule. Mint has a great blog that shares lots of tidbits that encourage financial well-being. Then, once in awhile, they interrupt the flow with product news. It's simple and gets me reading more.

Simple enough, yet effective, right?