It’s no secret that information is exploding, but just how much may shock you.

Americans consume 100,500 words a day, according to a study by the University of California at San Diego – and that doesn’t include any information at work.

What’s worse, as more content is digested digitally, we now scan and skim. Usability expert Jakob Nielsen found that on the average web page users read at most 28% of the words.

While both of these studies focus only on the US, the “Attention Crash” is a global problem – and it’s not going to get any better. This means that the single biggest challenge PR professionals will face in the next 10 years (and perhaps beyond) is in how to secure enough “surface area” to create behavior change.

The good news is that we’re not alone. The media too is struggling to capture fleeting attention spans. Consider this: the average Internet user spends six hours a month on Facebook, according to Nielsen (no relation to Jakob). Most news sites are lucky if they get 20 minutes of a user’s time per month.

However, the media, more so than the PR industry, is successfully coping with these changes by increasingly turning to traffic-generating search engine optimization tactics. Page-view journalism, like it or hate it, is the new reality. And we can learn from the media.

Writers and editors at Hearst Media, for example, use a tool that suggests relevant Google-friendly keywords. The Huffington Post runs two different headlines on a story as it’s published to determine which is stronger – and then it abandons the weaker one. Bloggers change their headlines weeks later to cater to Google. And a rising assortment of content mills (AOL’s Seed.com, Demand Media and Yahoo’s Associated Content) assign thousands of stories to amateur scribes. Payment rates are based on keyword volumes/search demand – i.e. their traffic potential. (The image below shows how AOL uses Seed.com to recruit writers for its network.)

With this in mind, here are three simple tips to help you implement a more traffic-friendly PR campaign.

Use search data to inform message development/story ideas

Google knows more about me than my own mother. The same is true for you. If you’re thinking about breaking up with your significant other, Google knows. Looking for a new car? Google knows. You get the idea. Put your sailboat into these winds and your programs will go further.
 
Start with Google Insights. On this site you can see how the world thinks and searches. This information can be used to help shape messaging strategies and program that increase the likelihood that any earned media will find its way into high-value search results. View Google as media.

Write web-friendly copy

Brevity rules online. Web users are very mission-oriented. This means that any messages that are meant to be consumed/reverberated by others via screens need to be very clear and literal. This is especially key for content that you hope to see spread on Twitter. Write headlines like tweets. For more, see this forthcoming book from Yahoo.

Create and generate socially connected content

Content is king today. If a company isn’t creating or effecting content on a regular basis, they will be invisible. However, in a world where everyone can create, it’s becoming critical that all of the content we generate be socially connected.
 
Three great resources here are rich media sites like Flickr, YouTube and SlideShare. Consider prioritizing these sites over traditional press rooms and/or turn to emerging services like Presslift that already have strong SEO.

Originally posted on The Steve Rubel Stream.

Experian Simmons is out with a new package of stats that document the incredible growth of social networking in the US. (Experian is an Edelman client.) Here are some of the notable highlights…

First, some 66% of online Americans use social networking sites today, up from just 20% in 2007. This has been covered a lot before. However, what’s notable is that it’s an increasingly additive activity – 43% visit multiple times each day.

Second, social networking is largely synonymous with Facebook. This doesn’t bode well for others that are positioning themselves as a social network since it could confuse consumers. (Since it does not require mutual friending, Twitter to me really isn’t a social network but a continuous public communications channel.)

Third, social networking is largely viewed as a way to connect with friends, not co-workers or business partners. This may show that people are splitting up their personal/professional networks. This was something LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and I recently discussed and it flies in the face of edge cases like me who have co-mingled the two. (LinkedIn is an Edelman client.)

Last but not least, social networking appears to be more predominant in the western and mountain states, even more than in the east.

Originally posted on The Steve Rubel Stream.

Have you tried mind mapping? I am a mind mapping fanatic. I find that it really helps me think through challenges and develop innovative solutions. Chris Brogan too is a fan. He uses it to plot out his projects and ensure he’s on target.

I have been giving a talk recently on the three key trends that marketers will need to adapt to in the new decade: 1) the move from a a web of pages to a web of streams, 2) the challenge in becoming more digitally visible in an age of too much noise and 3) the need to become more data driven in everything we do – and with a do-it-yourself attitude (DIY).

Recently I gave a talk on this topic at a conference in Amsterdam and the folks at World of Minds created a mind map of it, which you can find here (PDF) or on Scribd.

What do you think of these? I love when others mind map my speeches and also large events because you get to see how others interpret your thoughts. I have long wanted to create more mind maps here. If I did, what kind of maps would be valuable?

Originally posted on The Steve Rubel Stream.

Later today Klout, an influence tracking tool, is going to launch a new Facebook app called Facebird that helps you understand overlaps in influence between your Twitter and Facebook friends. Facebird will be live later today over on the Klout Labs site. The team gave me a preview yesterday, which you can watch above or over on YouTube.

Originally posted on Forbes.

As I write this column it’s the morning after the long Memorial Day weekend and the web is brimming with activity. Google searches are spiking for Ted Koppel, who’s 40-year-old son was tragically found dead. Twitter, meanwhile, is abuzz over WGM – short for the primetime Korean reality show “We Got Married”. This is perhaps a direct reflection of the service’s growing global appeal. Finally, over on Facebook word is spreading of a scam featuring what’s deemed as a “hilarious video”. A CNN news story on the hoax currently has over 10,000 shares.

All of these are disconnected events; a Polaroid snapshot of our psychology at a single moment in time. Some of these memes are ephemeral. Others may be lasting. However, our success as marketers increasingly hinges on having a deep, real-time understanding of our networked environment and how these themes can impact our programs. Enter situational awareness – an essential skill every CMO-level executive and their staff must build and evolve.

Situational awareness, according to Wikipedia, is “the practice of being aware of what is happening around you to understand how information, events, and your own actions will impact your goals and objectives, both now and in the near future”. It’s common throughout the intelligence community. The White House Situation Room, for example, operates a 24/7 Fusion Center that pulls together 3,000 sources of information into three daily briefings for the President. For more, see this fascinating short video.

What’s important to note is that situational awareness is not a substitute for client/brand monitoring, reporting or measurement. Rather, it’s a complementary set of processes that help you form gut insights that make marketing, public relations and/or digital engagement more efficient and effective.

Most CMOs will not need the intricate web of systems that the White House employs. Yet every marketer should be required to make situational awareness part of his/her daily workflow. It all needs to happen in a focused way, at every level and in both client and agency organizations. The good news is that situational awareness can be quite simple. The bad news is that very few people have created the daily systems or habits required to succeed. Here are three simple tools to add to your workday to get started.

Google Trends

Many marketers look first to Twitter and Facebook for consumer insights. However, they often overlook Google. This is a mistake. Far many more people search than those who engage on social networks. Therefore, Google knows more about you than your own mother. And, much the same, day in and day out it can tell us a ton about what we’re thinking as a society. The Google Trends home page is about as good a barometer as any for what the US and the world is thinking about right now. I try to check into this page several times a day. In many ways, it’s like a 24/7 supermarket checkout line.

Seesmic Web

One of my colleagues described Twitter as the new daily newspaper. A blogger who I met recently at a client event described it as “Google with a brain”. While Twitter’s audience pales in comparison to Google or Facebook, there’s no doubt it’s a critical treasure trove of information for what’s top of mind among opinion elites like the media, celebrities and influencers.

One of my favorite situational awareness tools is Seesmic Web, which only requires a browser to run and can sync with mobile device clients that the company has created for every platform. I keep the site open in a tab in my browser with various lists of people who serve as my window into the online world. Over time, this helps me build a deeper understanding of what makes this entire network and its micro communities tick.

ItsTrending

While it doesn’t have the same ecosystem of tools that Twitter supports, as Facebook slowly opens up its data it’s ushering in all kinds of new tools. Some of these are invaluable for helping us shape aggregated insights into the mindset of those who have elected to live more public lives on Facebook.

ItsTrending is one such tool. The free site data mines Facebook for the most popular links, images, news stories and videos on an array of topics. Several visits a day are all you need to develop a deeper sense for how Facebook themes and memes can impact your programs.

These are just three – there are hundreds of others, many of them are free. What’s key, however, is to find the right tools and package them into your workflow so that you have a gut feel for the various online environments you are engaging in daily and how the macro themes can play a role in success or failure.

Image credit: Laurence Tucker

Originally posted on Forbes.com.

Social networking started out as “things”–destination sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that we browsed through and used to connect with our friends, family and co-workers. Now, however, it is poised to become “everything.”

Just as water blankets the Earth’s surface area (and sustains life), social-networking technologies will soon cover 70% 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 Los Angeles could be considered taboo by the same demographic in New York–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 and 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. Levi’s has deployed them across its website, 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 Vuitton handbag or wearing a Rolex 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 Forbes’ list of Platinum Brands 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.

Originally post on The Steve Rubel Stream.

Last week in LA I had a chance to visit Idealab, an incubator that pioneered pay-per-click advertising a decade ago. The purpose of my visit was to meet CEO Bill Gross and his team and to learn more about TweetUp, an innovative new service that, I believe, has a great shot of creating a demand-driven ad network around Twitter.

(Idealab, not TweetUp specifically, is an Edelman client.)

Unlike Twitter’s own ad platform, TweetUp will surface not only tweets but tweeters. What’s more, they will be integrated as widgets/columns in key ecosystem apps like TweetDeck and contextually via large sites like Business Insider.

To me, TweetUp’s greatest appeal lies in that it’s a mix of paid, earned and social. In order to receive the best position for your tweets, the TweetUp system needs to perceive that you are an expert in the topic/keywords you are bidding for.

Originally posted on The Steve Rubel Stream.

Over a year ago, I published an essay on Media Reforestation. In a nutshell, it’s my belief that all tangible forms of media will be in sharp decline or extinct in just a few years. I followed that up this week with some more thoughts for the folks at WeMedia, which you can read in full or view as a PDF above.

Media Reforestation Part II: Algorithmic Journalism

It’s a quiet April Saturday afternoon in Long Island, NY and I am holed up on the second floor of the Book Revue, writing this essay on my iPad. I could have not chosen a more ironic venue or a more ironic device to pen a think piece about the impact mobile devices will have on media consumption and creation. The Book Revue is one of the last independent bookstores on Long Island, a sprawling New York City suburb. However, it remains a popular hangout for local book lovers, families and singles. The store even attracts a who’s who from the literary world for big book signings. That said, I know that my writing days here are numbered. You see, the Book Revue, just like countless of video rentals stores, arcades and newspaper printing presses, will one day fall victim to Media Reforestation.

In less than five years, all tangible media – everything you can see, touch, taste and smell – will be in sharp decline or extinct. This includes printed books, magazines and newspapers but also DVDs and disc-based video games. With connectivity slowly becoming ubiquitous and devices like the iPad, smart phones, the Kindle and netbooks becoming popular and relatively affordable, it’s far less likely that we’ll be consuming media in anything but a downloadable form. Every day a newsprint reader dies and she isn’t replaced.

Media reforestation has been well chronicled. All of these devices are a runaway hits. And all one needs to do is look at the sorry state of newspaper industry financials to see that digital pennies are not, in the words of former NBC exec Jeff Zucker, ever going to replace analog dollars anytime soon. But the changes to come will be even more destructive. That’s because they will involve algorithms.

Last decade the big story was how technology enabled all of us to become publishers. However, the reality is quality content remains work. Many people don’t have the time or the motivation to consistently churn it out. Truth: those who did manage to attract large followings all worked their tails off to get there. People like Gary Vanyerchuck, Chris Brogan and Jeff Jarvis, just to name three, attained and scaled their influence thanks to a mix of talent and elbow grease. But that was the first chapter of media reforestation. Chapter two is about to begin and tablets and smart phones will take center stage, enabling us to all subconsciously publish and media to form like magic out of algorithms.

Content creation today still requires intent – thought then action. However soon we will be able to put our gadgets on autopilot and have them automatically contribute to the process even when they are safely tucked away in our pockets, pocketbooks and backpacks. When these millions of gadgets become powerful, always-on servers it will revolutionize media.

FourSquare is the beginning. Although the emerging location based service “only” has one million users, it is able to spot trends in data and surface news. When I checked in during the 140 Character Conference earlier this month, Foursquare was able to detect a swarm of check-ins from this one location and determine that news was breaking here – and it awarded me a special badge. Now imagine that our gadgets collect and publish automatically and on a mass scale. FourSquare could turn that data into a news service on the fly. It’s services like these that will totally reinvent media, yet again, by opening up to the masses.

Servers – yes, servers – in our pockets will collect data automatically (and anonymously). Cloud services will aggregate this information and – on the fly – create media, some of which we will consume on the go. These consumption patterns will create more data and start the cycle all over again. Rich devices like iPads, iPhones, Blackberries (client), Kindles and their successors will collect, serve and assemble media on our behalf and in a very personalized way.

Here’s what this might look like…

Novelist John Grisham recently made news when he became one of the last holdouts to make his books available on the Kindle. It’s a one-size-fits-all experience. He writes. We consume – and on connected devices.

In the near future however, Grisham (or whomever is his successor) will write just the beginning of a novel and then publish it electronically – omitting the ending. Those who purchase it will determine the ending, but not in a manual, Choose-Your-Own Adventure way but in a much more personalized fashion. Ebook devices will spot trends among these Grisham readers and shape the ending based on data they’re willing to share in exchange for a more personalized experience. Books won’t be seen as static creations but living breathing things. Novels will have several endings that are based on the speed, physical location and duration of our collective reading habits.

It’s not just books that will be reshaped by always-connected devices. As more of us consume video on the go, the same algorithmic model could reshape all storytelling, including TV and motion pictures as well.

Just as during the rise of social media, however, the news business will be the first to feel the impact of algorithmically generated media. As our devices begin to collect and share information in aggregate about our habits and environment (privacy concerns not withstanding), local and topical news sites will seamlessly form on the fly, curating torrents of tweets, news stories, images and videos about breaking news.

Tablets and smart phones are powerful, connected devices that we tote everywhere. But as more of them multitask and publish what we allow them to, automatically, it will further revolutionize media and perhaps one day make editing a relic of the past.

Image credit: sublime

Originally posted on The Steve Rubel Stream

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.

Image credit: Snorgtees

Twitter today launched Sponsored Tweets – its first foray into paid advertising. In a Q&A with Forbes.com, Steve Rubel, SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, details the potential impact of the platform for marketers.

What’s most surprising about Twitter’s Ad platform?

What’s most surprising about the rollout is how conservative it is. It’s clear that Twitter thought a lot about all three of its primary audiences – users, developers and advertisers – and devised a system that seems to respect the needs of all three. They could have been a lot more aggressive by focusing only on display or rich media but they chose a more measured, contextual approach which I think will help them in the long run.

What do you see as the most significant component?

The most significant component is resonance – the nine factors that Twitter will use to measure the performance of the ads. If an ad isn’t performing well across all of these key performance indicators, then the ads will be taken out of rotation. It’s very similar to Google’s model, which has helped the ads maintain a high degree of relevance.

What about it will be most useful to marketers?

The most intriguing aspect of the platform is that it allows businesses to add a degree of permanence to their tweets. This means that they can maintain some degree of visibility, long after they they have floated downstream.

The reason this is significant is that the “destination web era” (where we browse from site to site) is over. Today, more of us are consuming content in stream form. If you’re not in the stream when a tweet hits, you’re likely to miss it. With this new program, advertisers can now pay to get around this – which is significant – and target their tweets accordingly.

Working for a public relations firm, I am particularly intrigued by how Twitter is positioning it as a reputation management service for companies in crisis.

What could Twitter have done better with its ad platform plans?

It’s a bit early to tell, but so far nothing. It might have been better if they opened up the process a bit to developers and power users to weigh in, but I am not seeing any kind of backlash so far. I believe that Twitter’s audience wants to see them monetize in a way that allows them to maintain and grow the platform they love. The trick is to do so in a way where the advertising adds value to the experience and doesn’t get in the way. This seems to hit this nail on the head but time will be the ultimate jury.

What will happen to all the other paid Tweet platforms?

Twitter is at a crossroads right now. It is starting to add some of the features that have allowed some vendors in its ecosystem that filled voids to thrive. The trick for these platforms will be to stay ahead of the game. Ideally, Twitter will open a dialogue with them to give them a sense of the markets they plan to enter and those they plan to avoid so that the ecosystem can build viable business models without having to worry about them being disrupted by the mother ship.

Is there anything about this ad platform that is disruptive either to other social ad platforms or to the way that marketers interact with social consumers?

It’s a bit early to tell how disruptive this will be. It all depends on how well the ads are received by the community and how well they perform. It could potentially create a nice direct response platform that complements other, brand-oriented models like those that have made ads on Facebook and YouTube successful.

And for my own curiosity: do you know anything about pricing?

I don’t right now.