The Steve Rubel Stream

What URL Should You Emphasize? For Me, It's All About Relationships

For the last four years I had two URLs on my business card - my employer's web site and my blog. But recently, when I went to order a refill, I changed the plan.

I of course kept the link to EdelmanDigital.com. However, with space limited, rather than directing people to yet another web site (this one) I indicated where they can find me on the sites where I know they are already spending time, Twitter and Facebook. So far, I am glad that I did.

Blogs aren't dying anytime soon. In fact, the New York Times today has an article today about how they are great personal branding vehicles for moms. However, I have started to put a greater emphasis in growing my community where you already are. The reason is, it's easier to build and manage relationships and measure them. I mentioned that some companies are already going this route, but it's worth considering as a strategy for individuals as well.

For the last two weeks I have been really putting my focus on building deeper relationships through Twitter and my Facebook page. I particularly like the latter because I get all kinds of data about the people who subscribe to the page. And I expect this will only improve. For example, I can see that my demographic split is not where I would like it to be, so I am making an effort to try to bring more women into the conversation. I continue to do it all (which, ironically, is why I am posting this here), but I am finding the conversations in my "spokes" deeper, more rapid and more rewarding at times than here on "the hub." But the data helps me get smarter.

I believe that this year we're going to see a lot of bloggers come to the same realization that Facebook is an awesome tool for building relationships - something that many bloggers crave. Most traffic to blogs, I suspect, comes in through Google. This is great traffic of course, but in many ways it's devalued since bounce rates are high. Now I see many bloggers continuing to do it all - Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and their blog. However, some may start to slowly favor Facebook for the same reasons I am if the social network continues its growth track. In some ways, this is already starting.

One of my favorite blogs is MakeUseOf. I subscribe to their email newsletter and every now and again they send out a reminder to readers to fan them on Facebook. That's smart. They're up to 13,000 fans. Here are the reasons they play up: likes, comments and social sharing. However, I also believe that relationships and data play a role here as well. This isn't just about Facebook. If they can give us similar stats, Twitter too will be a larger focus for many. Subconsciously, I suspect it is for many. I am seeing that people are blogging less than before.

What primary URLs do you give out these days? Do you send people to your blog, Twitter, Facebook or your company site? How has this changed in recent years? You may have them all on your card but I bet there's one or two that you prioritize. For me, it's my company's web site and now my Facebook page. However, I will continue to do it all. In many ways, I think you have to since not everyone likes or is even on Facebook.

Filed under blogs branding Facebook marketing social networking Twitter

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Posted 6 days ago

Ads Drop Dot-Com URLs in Favor of "Facebook Us"

The following is also my March Forbes.com column.

Today it seems that many marketers are literally tripping over themselves to invade social networks in force. There's almost a land grab underway as businesses rush to set up hubs on the "big three": Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. You can definitely sense that we've passed a tipping point.

All at once, businesses large and small are increasingly recognizing that they need to go where the people are. And with 100 million Facebook users in the US who spend an average seven hours on the site each month (Nielsen), it's surely a no-brainer. When your local pizzeria is promoting their Facebook page at the register, as mine does, then you know that marketing has changed. The same applies to Twitter and YouTube.

However, with this land grab, a controversial shift is underway. The trusty dot-com URL, at least its role in marketing, maybe dying.

Some companies are de-emphasizing spaces they own, like their web site, in all of their ads. Instead, they're pushing people towards spaces they rent where people are spending time - e.g. their Twitter, YouTube Facebook hubs.

Case in point: UniBall. During the Winter Olympic games I was surprised to see the pen manufacturer use its TV ads to point people to its Facebook page. There UniBall is giving away 10,000 pens. Nowhere in its ads does Uniball promote its own web site. It's all about Facebook. Clever.

Much the same, I noticed the New York Knicks basketball team in its outdoor ads had only three calls for action - an SMS code, Twitter and Facebook. Again no URL. A dot-com was nowhere to be found.

Finally, during a recent Mashable event in New York, Columbia Journalism professor Sree Sreenivasan pointed out that this is becoming the norm in the motion picture business. Perhaps this is a function of living in a world where people hardly use bookmarks any more and just Google.

If this all sounds familiar, it should. It's all reminiscent of the mid-1990s when URLs started popping up in TV ads and billboards. Or worse, when AOL keywords first surfaced in the early 1990s. These were curious at first, then later, welcome. Now I guess a URL is just boring.

However, this time it's different.

For starters, when marketers promote their social network hubs over their URLs they risk that more savvy consumers will see right through it. People could perceive it as a flat attempt to look cool and hip. Consumers already skeptical of advertising and this just adds to it.

Second, the use of "heavy artillery" - e.g. advertising - to round up more fans and followers is equally controversial. This would be fine if it lead to true person-to-person engagement. However, many brands are just using their Twitter and Facebook presences to spew out updates, without any thought to how consumers will benefit by essentially opting in. UniBall is providing value but others don't go to such lengths.

Finally, much the same, very few businesses treat social networks as personal, conversational spaces. Hardly any feature real employees. And a scant few aim to advance shared interests.

So while it's welcome that marketers are beginning to promote the hubs they rent in all of the relevant communities, few are really optimizing them into true relationship builders. Most are devoid of humans - e.g. employees - and many look like faceless companies that are trying to check off boxes or slap shiny logos on their site.

In some ways, it makes sense to me that marketers are emphasizing their spaces where people are spending time and where they can be easily found. However, at the same time, with so few understanding what it takes - people - to really build credible relationships, I wonder how long this trend might last and if a backlash is the works.

If I were a dot-com URL, I wouldn't write my will just yet.

Filed under advertising Facebook marketing search socialnetworking trends Twitter

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Posted 18 days ago

AP is Visionary: They See a "Siteless Web"

TechCrunch reports that the Associated Press is using their Twitter account to push their followers to their Facebook page. On that hub they syndicate many stories blog posts and dispatches as full text. Unlike Danny Sullivan (here and here), I think this is a downright brilliant and visionary move. What's more it's a natural for a wire service like AP. Here's why.

AP sees that the future of media is headless, which I wrote about here six months ago. Paul Gillin echos my thoughts and calls this the siteless web.

Wire services like AP and Reuters have in one sense flourished since the dawn of the consumer Internet. You can't visit a news site without running into one of their stories. Often, some of the featured and more popular stories on Yahoo News (an underrated news giant) are from wire services. However, there's an inherent problem today with that model and this approach tries to solve it.

As wires like AP and Reuters syndicate their content everywhere, they have struggled to build any kind of meaningful relationship with readers. In some ways they've become so ubiquitous they're commodity. Others, like the New York Times, have done a much better job by offering benefits to registered members - but also with a lot more investment and infrastructure.

The AP is now changing the game for news by not only going where attention spirals are taking us but by also using their content to curate a conversation on Facebook and - above all - build relationships.

As of this writing, the AP page on Facebook has 9,400 fans. I bet this will grow over time as people spend more time on Facebook and slowly become more accustomed to getting their news there, in addition to friend updates, games,etc. Swap out the word fans and replace it with subscribers and suddenly you can see where I am going and why this is a smart idea. It's CRM for news!

Over the weekend Robert French from Auburn and I have been debating on Google Buzz the value of Facebook as a news source. It does have a ways to go but it's coming. Six years ago, as an experiment, I lived off blogs as my sole news source. I might try that again with Facebook. I continue to be impressed with how media companies are starting to experiment and the utter richness of the conversation that occurs in a very navigable, digestible format.

LATER:: In response to this post, Viki asks on Buzz if I see a similar future for Google Buzz. In a word, yes. With content infinite and attention finite, the media will go where people are. This includes Twitter, Buzz and YouTube. The media is already all over Buzz - case in point, the Huffington Post. However Facebook is the 800 pound gorilla - for now.

Filed under CRM Facebook journalism media social networking Twitter

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Posted 25 days ago

Three Ideas to Rock Your 2010 Part I: Correspond to Connect

Happy New Year and welcome to the next decade - "the teenies," as some in the UK are calling it. Today is great day to take inventory and think about what you want to accomplish in the new year - or even the new decade. Over the next three days I will cover a few ideas that anyone can ride to new heights in 2010 and beyond. These can help you no matter what line of work you're in. Of course, given my world view, they apply most to those interested in social media, marketing and communications. Here's the first...

Correspond to Connect

Thomas Jefferson's polygraph was used to keep identical copies of the 20,000 letters he wrote in is life. (Photograph by Jim Merithew/Wired.com via "Tommy J’s Crib Is 18th Century Palace of Gadget Geekery")

In 2010 to succeed as individuals and businesses we need to embrace connecting with people globally on three levels: one-to-one, one-to-few and one-to-many. As dancer Twyla Tharp describes in her new book The Collaborative Habit, great work comes through collaboration. Success requires thinking and acting on all three levels. And it means listening too.

Today Twitter, Facebook, Google Wave and the next big things in connecting socially will allow us to innovate in how we connect with stakeholders, colleagues and friends - and on all three levels. But some things never go out of style. I get more email than ever - and I love it. Businesses should too. Connecting offline remains important. Rosabeth Moss Kanter calls this Management by Flying Around. So my advice is in 2010 vow to correspond to connect as much as you realistically can.

Need inspiration? How about Thomas Jefferson. Sure he connected with and inspired millions with the Declaration of Independence's "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." But he also answered his mail thousands of letters - connecting with countless others. He even devised a clever polygraph machine to keep copies of all correspondence.

From the Monticello web site...

"From sun-rise to one or two o'clock," he noted, "I am drudging at the writing table." Jefferson wrote almost 20,000 letters in his lifetime, among them, scholarly musings to colleagues, affectionate notes to his family, and civil responses to admirers. He wrote John Adams that he suffered "under the persecution of letters," calculating that he received 1,267 letters in the year 1820, "many of them requiring answers of elaborate research, and all to be answered with due attention and consideration."

This year, vow not to lose sight of the art and importance of daily correspondence. Reach out to new people - even those you don't agree with or those in other countries. Solicit and share new ideas.

As for me, I try to answer any correspondence that deserves a response. Sometimes it takes me time but I do so on three levels: my one-to-one communications (email and Twitter direct messages), one-to-few (Facebook comments, Twitter replies, etc.) and one-to-many (blog comments, interview requests, etc.) I also reach out to new people as well who I want to get to know better. Don't begrudge the volume of communications, focus on it - but the right messages.

Wouldn't it be great if organizations and the people who work for them all aspired to live the same, just as Jefferson did.

Filed under correspondence email essays Facebook Ideas marketing PR Social Networking Thomas Jefferson Twitter writing

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Posted 2 months ago

Google Prioritizes Real-Time Results Over Official Twitter Accounts

It used to be easy to find an official Twitter account. You'd go to Google, type in the name of the company or celebrity or product and the official (or squatted) Twitter account using that proper noun came out on top. Not any more.

As of this writing if you Google up any company name or celebrity - even a dead one - and also include the word Twitter, Google will now prioritize a real-time stream of results over the official presence. This basically bumps anyone down slightly who was hoping to set up a Twitter account for SEO. A gallery of examples follows.

Oh and it's not just big names either. It applies to me as well.

Click here to download:

Google_Prioritizes_Real-Time_R.zip (321 KB)

Filed under Google PR real-time search SEO Twitter

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Posted 2 months ago

As the Decade Closes, Has RSS Faded Too?

The decade is coming to an end. And with it, so has the era of feeds too faded - though you can argue it never got off the ground. Even with real-time technologies like pubsubhubbub, RSS today feels slow and it's clear its best days are behind it. Feed reading, like blogging, feels "very 2005." I wasn't convinced until recently, however.

Until a few weeks ago, this die-hard techie was clinging to Google Reader like a disco maniac might his eight-tracks. I felt like the last hold out; the guy still dancing to the Bee Gees when everyone else had gone punk - and maybe I was.

Now, however, slowly but surely I am moving more of my consumption out of RSS and into the Twitter stream. Twitter, not blogs, long ago became the focal point for reading and conversing around news for many. So it's natural, as this report on Read Write Web indicates, that most of us who were even using RSS readers to begin with have ditched them and have moved to tracking news in the stream instead. And we're not alone. According to Forrester, eight percent of US online adults post and read updates on Twitter at least monthly.

Personally, this is something I resisted for three reasons: a) I like full text feeds, b) there was a lack of organization/lists and c) Twitter remains very dependent on "now," making saving and digesting information at a later date in a Tivo-like way all the more difficult. That all changed with the advent of Twitter lists.

Nowadays I am bringing it all into Gmail, which other than my corporate email account is my sole productivity and social Ginsu Knife. I already publish to my Posterous-powered lifestream site via email. Couple that with Twitgether, a full-blown real-time Gmail Twitter client, NutshellMail for tracking social network interactions like replies and Listimonkey to bring me Twitter lists every hour via email (pictured above), my Google Reader is starting to get lonely.

How about you? Are there any die-hard RSS users out there who have not succumb to the stream?

Filed under Gmail RSS streams Twitter

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Posted 2 months ago

Three Observations from Le Web

Earlier this week I attended Le Web in Paris. It was my first time at the conference. Loic and Geraldine Le Meur did an awesome job bringing together a mix of Americans and Europeans for what, as far as I can tell, is the only truly global Internet industry event. Here are my three takeaways coming out of Le Web...

One of the great untold stories is just how much Facebook and Twitter are growing off-site. Facebook announced they reach 60 million through Facebook Connect. Meanwhile nearly half of Twitter's activity takes place away from Twitter.com - they reported. Both platforms are quietly becoming a social operating systems for the web, not just their own sites.

Second, nowadays no two people see the same Internet. This was a key point that Facebook made, saying that we increasingly discover online content not just by algortihms but via the "lens of friends." Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd brought this to life through rich, moving stories. Google's Marissa Mayer went a step further saying that the future of news is a "personalized news stream." This trend has major implications for marketers and PR pros who are accustomed to reaching everyone the same way - it's simply not possible anymore.

Finally there's a ton of energy around the live web. It feels like everyone from Google to governments gets its import. Perhaps Queen Rania of Jordan summed it up best when she said: "real time is the new prime time."

Le Web was a great conference. If you can, I recommend trying to go at least once. Not only was the content good but the networking was too. I got to meet many European startups that are all quietly innovating.

Filed under events Facebook google real-time web Twitter

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Posted 3 months ago

How Twitter is Rewiring My Brain - and Maybe Yours

These days - perhaps a function of my lifestyle - the mobile device is becoming my primary content reading and browsing tool. This is slowly changing my habits and I wonder if this is part of a larger trend.

With the advent of Twitter lists, I find myself dipping in and out of the stream to catch up not only on news but blog posts from friends and companies whose products and services I use or have more than a passing interest. However the changes in how I interact with media go deeper than news.

I am an avid reader. Each year I read several dozen books - exclusively nonfiction (call me boring, it's ok).

Where I used to finish one book before picking up the next, nowadays, I keep a virtual shelf of books on my iPhone and dip in and out in Twitter-like bursts of time. This could never work for fiction but it suits me fine.

So Twitter is definitely reconditioning this 40-year-old toward a new way of living. How about you?

Filed under ebooks media mobile trends Twitter

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Posted 3 months ago

Taking Brainstorming to the Twitter Hive

Jeff Kirvin is open sourcing his novel by turing to Twitter (the hive) to help. I bet this will become even more common going forward...

"But because I was too close to the source material, I couldn’t think of another way to do it. So I asked Twitter.
jeffkirvin
How would you kill something that had nanites in its blood that repair damage (injuries, aging) almost as fast as they happen? #research"

Link: Brainstorming with the hive mind on jeffkirvin.net

Filed under crowdsourcing Twitter writing

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Posted 3 months ago

What To Watch In 2010: Social TV

Although it's been years in the making, 2010 is poised to finally be the year that social networking and TV will converge, allowing consumers to connect through their big screens. My latest Forbes.com column addresses what to watch for in the coming year. (Note: XBox is an Edelman client)

A race is underway to turn social networking into an engaging 10-foot experience--one that we interact with via TVs. The technology has been in place for years. However, the price of Internet-connected HDTVs was, until recently, out of reach for most. No longer. High-definition TVs were among the top sellers on Black Friday, according to ShopperTrak RCT Corp. And just in time, the major social networks are racing to make the entire experience more interactive via number of channels--not just cable TV, but gaming consoles too.
Television inherently has been a social experience for decades, dominating water cooler conversations worldwide. But as social networking enters the living room via embedded Twitter and Facebook streams and more, some observers see it changing the live experience, which has largely remained passive. This potentially could shake up the millions of dollars spent on TV advertising, while ushering in new ways to reach both women and men.

Story link: What To Watch In 2010: Social TV - forbes.com

Filed under Facebook gaming Social Networking TV Twitter

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Posted 3 months ago

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What URL Should You Emphasize? For Me, It's All About Relationships

Ads Drop Dot-Com URLs in Favor of "Facebook Us"

AP is Visionary: They See a "Siteless Web"

Three Ideas to Rock Your 2010 Part I: Correspond to Connect

Google Prioritizes Real-Time Results Over Official Twitter Accounts

As the Decade Closes, Has RSS Faded Too?

Three Observations from Le Web

How Twitter is Rewiring My Brain - and Maybe Yours

Taking Brainstorming to the Twitter Hive

What To Watch In 2010: Social TV