Edelman Digital’s latest London recruit is Robin Hamman, Director of Digital. Robin’s career has seen him work in mobile, as an Executive Producer for Granada at ITV and as a head of social media. As well as this, Robin has worked for the BBC (twice!).

A Non-Residential Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Journalism at City University, London, Robin has had articles published in several books which focus on community and social research.

Matt Churchill: How did a former Non-Residential Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society find himself in leafy St. Albans?

Robin Hamman: The project I did, as part of my non-residential fellowship, was aimed at raising the awareness of how libel law could potentially impact upon bloggers and other users of social media. It seemed the natural thing to do after I finished a part-time law degree whilst working at the BBC, where I saw hundreds of examples of participants in online discussions posting content that could land them with a massive legal bill – which would be a real quick way to get a legal education. Thankfully, there are now moves to rationalise libel law in the UK which is tipped much more in the favour of the person or organisation making the complaint than it is in many other countries, leading to the rise of what some have termed “libel tourism” – basically, people who normally reside in other countries coming to the UK to file libel claims.

MC: You’ve worked twice for the BBC in different roles, what did you do and how did each job differ?

RH: The first time around, I was one of maybe 50 people who worked online at the Corporation and was one of the first two “online community” specialists – this was back in late 1998, before we called it social media. The BBC, like most organisations getting their toes wet in social media at the time, or even today, was very nervous. Our editorial policy team, for example, took quite a long time to be convinced that not everyone who posts should have to use their real first name and surname when they did so. We were able to, however, find out way through the nervousness and launched a range of massively successful propositions, including message board based communities and a live chat service. There were no platforms or policies in place before we started, so it really was early days.

I left the BBC for a few years, first to join a wireless start up that had a service very similar to Twitter but many years too far ahead of it’s time, and later at ITV. Eventually I ended up back at the Corporation and, in terms of internet and social media, it was a dramatically changed place. There were nearly a thousand people working on the website, for example, and at least a dozen people with jobs almost exclusively related to social media – and that’s not including the large moderation team that helped keep things safe and legal. There was still some nervousness about social media, but also pockets of innovation that would spring up out of nowhere. In my final act at the BBC, I ended up growing the BBC’s initial trial with blogging into a full blown service, with around 100 blogs when I left and unique visitor numbers of around 7 million a month. That was hugely exciting.

MC: Given the close ties you have with the BBC’s digital offering, what have you made of the recent website layout changes which incorporate more sociable features?

RH: There were, even as far back as 5 or 6 years ago, those of us within the BBC who thought that, rather than always trying to provide social media spaces for audiences, sometimes we should simply monitor and reflect the best content people were creating on the web. This sort of aggregation approach came with reduced costs and risks for the BBC, but also made a lot of sense to audiences, some of which preferred to participate around a programme brand away from the branded, and fairly heavily controlled, environments we could provide. I love seeing more linking, aggregation and opportunities to share on BBC websites – it’s what audiences want and, to some extent, helps validate what some of us pushed for, for a long time.

MC: What motivated you to become part of the Edelman team?

RH: Social media is rapidly moving towards the centre of forward thinking businesses and organisations. Whereas it used to be a fringe activity, perhaps a small viral advertising campaign or an attempt to monitor and engage with key influencers on third party social media websites, it’s increasingly becoming possible to align social media with wider business processes and practices. That is, social media is now making it possible for customers and stakeholders to become involved in business processes, such as product and service innovation, co-creation, and customer service.

There are great opportunities for those at the centre of this revolution – people with strong communications skills – but it also requires great business acumen, with a deep understanding of the strategy, goals and ambitions of the business. Reading through some of the thought leadership pieces, such as the Trust Barometer, and writing by David Brain and Robert Phillips, made me realise that Edelman was observing the same thing I was – Communications becoming more central, and increasingly driving organisational change. That’s exactly what I’d been doing with social media so we had some conversations and here I am today.

MC: What does your day-to-day job involve?

RH: I have the pleasure of working out how to align social behaviours online with the business objects of our clients. I say it that way around, putting the behaviours first, because I think it’s important to understand how audiences, consumers and stakeholders wish to be engaged with online before it’s really possible to come up with great ideas to help harness that. Getting it right in social media requires the deliberate creation of meaningful participatory frameworks that help people, and businesses, achieve something together. Their motivations and goals might be different, but that doesn’t mean the engagement can’t be positive for both.

MC: What do you see as the main opportunity for brands as social media and digital culture evolves?

RH: I think there is a massive opportunity for organisations to improve the way they communicate internally, and collaborate behind the firewall, using social media – and then linking this up with the social media engagements they’re having with customers and stakeholders.

MC: In your recent Reputation Online guest post you said that “Not everyone is a natural communicator, nor can every member of staff be expected to feel comfortable participating socially online.” Do you think this is likely to change over time and what do you perceive to be the impact on the comms industry in either case?

RH: We’re still in the early days with social media, although increasingly, people entering the workforce have social media skills that will be useful in their professional lives in future. So yes, I think more people can be expected to understand the value of social media to businesses, but I don’t think we’ll ever see a situation where it’s something that absolutely everyone wants to do. Compelling people to do something they don’t want to do is rarely a good idea, regardless of the industry.

MC: And finally, what’s your tech tip for the next 12 months?

RH: People have already spent time and effort building a presence on social networking platforms, so engaging there, rather than trying to build awareness of, and audiences for, entirely new propositions is going to become increasingly difficult for a lot of brands. For this reason, I think the idea of “digital embassies”, where brands and organisations set up shop on third party networking platforms where there are already large audiences, will gain a lot of traction this year.

I’m also starting to see a lot of businesses thinking about how they can create a wider interface between consumers and stakeholders outside the business with people inside the business. There are already some great examples of crowdsourcing initiatives, where audiences get involved directly in business or organisational processes that were previously hidden from view. We’re going to see a lot more of these over the coming year, with measurable results.

Image credit: Lars Plougmann

I met Phil Gomes about four years ago when I was still working on the traditional PR side at Edelman. We worked together on a number of accounts and he played a big part in pushing some great (and very traditional) brands out of their comfort zone and into the social media space at a time when it was not quite as in vogue as it is today. Needless to say, he quickly earned the respect of both the client and myself (and aside from his digital brilliance, he’s kinda fun to work with!).

I recently got to pick Phil’s brain and among other things, I got some more information on the much buzzed about Edelman Digital Belt System which Phil pioneered. Today is the kick-off for a new belt: the Black Belt…read on for more with Phil.

Zeenat Subedar: I’ve heard that you were one of the first employees to join the “Edelman Digital” brand. How would you describe the recent growth, and what contributed to it?

Phil Gomes: Well, Edelman Digital (known as “Edelman Interactive Solutions” or “EIS” at the time) was around for a whole decade before I showed up in 2005. I was certainly one of the first to be brought on because of the public attention I had received surrounding my early writings about the intersection of social media and PR, though.

As to what is responsible for the group’s growth and success? To quote Richard Edelman from his 2007 AdAge interview (PDF) “our thesis around social media actually works.” The market sees this and the great work of our very talented group speaks for itself. If we were simply growing as fast as the market or the general interest in digital, we wouldn’t be in the great position we are today.

ZS: There seems to be an industry shift in folks abandoning personal blogs and focusing their energy on Twitter, why do you think that is? Also, I’d like to know exactly when and where you were when you made that decision yourself.

PG: You’re talking to someone who just shuttered his old blog and started a new one, to say nothing of the blog I’ve dedicated to Brazilian cachaça (with companion Twitter account, natch) and the one that my wife and I use as a family newsletter.

My old blog suffered from a kind of benign neglect that, frankly, became somewhat less-benign over time. I know that a lot of folks went through that same experience. Part of it could be explained by the Twitter-killed-my-blog theory but, to be perfectly honest, other factors include:

• When I started blogging in 2001, I made some truly bad technology decisions. Then again, how many decisions were actually available to me at the time?
• Some stuff I was giving away for free online via my blog had value. Back then, who knew? Today, I have a very thorough process for determining what goes on the blog and what stays within Edelman and its clients. Does it mean that my blog doesn’t have a whole lot of output? Perhaps, but I don’t make my living from my blog.

I’m really happy with where things are going on my new blog, Where the Fishermen Ain’t. It has some stuff up there that I just don’t see in a lot of other places within the PR blogosphere.

Everyone likes a horserace, though. Lots of self-styled influencer types like to stoke the non-debate about which platforms are “dead” and which implementations of a technology “killed” them. They’ll keep doing it as long as people fall for the linkbait, I suppose. If reed-etched clay tablets are what A) my audience reads and B) makes sense for me to publish on, I’ll use those. Folks get way too hung up on that kind of thing.

ZS: Let’s talk about the Social Media Belt System. For people who are not yet familiar with the Belt System, what is it and what was your thinking behind creating this system?

PG: The Belt System is a way we develop, deliver, and certify social media education and training for every employee worldwide. Available via our intranet, the several dozen learning modules are divided into “Belts” a la martial arts—about six to twelve modules per Belt with no single module taking longer than four minutes. To earn a Belt, you have to pass a quiz. The content covers everything from conversation search and basic online citizenship, all the way to planning and strategy. Belt status is tied to promotion and advancement, and we have the capability to track progress by individual, market, region, and practice.

Our path to the Belt System was a windy one but, suffice it to say, we’ve explored every form of training from week-long lock-you-in-a-purple-windowless-room immersions to distance learning and everything in between. Each has its place, of course, but the economics and cost/benefit ratio of the Belt System when looking at the sheer number of people to be trained—well over 3,000—work out very, very well. This has been a very successful partnership between Edelman Digital and the firm’s MIS department and we continue to improve the content and delivery system.

ZS: We’ve passed the one-year anniversary of the Belt System launch in North America and it has since been deployed globally. In social media years, a lot has changed. How do you plan to keep content up-to-date?

PG: Well, the first and most obvious way to do this is by adding more modules and Belts. In our first year, we developed and deployed the White, Yellow, Orange, Green and Blue Belts worldwide. Brown Belt (a simulation-based set of modules) was released last month and Black Belt came out today.

The team is particularly proud of Black Belt. For this, we went to our global experts all around the world and asked them “What does everyone need to know about digital PR in your country?” We launched with modules representing nine countries and more modules are coming in the next quarter or so. Since Belt Status is tied to promotion and advancement, the message that the Black Belt sends is a very powerful one—it’s the Belt that sits between the VP and SVP titles, essentially saying that people at that level need at least a basic familiarity with global digital PR.

As with previous new Belts, we dropped Black Belt into employees’ intranet learning-dashboards as a kind of “easter egg” ahead of the official launch, which was today. In less than two hours, two employees earned their Black Belts. Three days later, the number jumped to 27. This isn’t surprising considering, on average, someone in Edelman’s global network views a lesson every eleven minutes or so.

Within the older Belts, we’ve altered and removed some units and added a few more. This necessarily means that people with a certain Belt status will have to re-certify if they want to keep that status—a concept that really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

Recently, we just launched “Badges”, which are Foursquare-like recognitions for achieving certain specializations—both digitally related and otherwise. Interest from the global network in this concept has been highly encouraging.

ZS: Edelman expects all employees, Digital or not, to have a level of social media expertise, why is that? Do you anticipate that eventually, every Edelman employee will be a Digital employee?

PG: Well, I look at it this way. Every employee is expected to develop a strong degree of aptitude in media relations, however, we also have a Media Services group that specializes in national media campaigns. Every employee we hire should possess more than just basic research skills, but we also have our research subsidiary, StrategyOne. In other words, there will always be room for specialists and experts, but the well-rounded agency consultant will have touched and absorbed some degree of skill in those specialist disciplines. Digital is very much going the same way.

As I’ve joked before, my business card says “Edelman Digital”, though my responsibility is “digital Edelman.” I think that, to some degree, the firm’s success relies on how good we are at both.

ZS: Once you complete the Belt System, are you a social media expert? (Or can you at least claim to be?)

PG: Completion of the Belt System means that you meet the minimum knowledge standard we expect from our employees with regard to social media. True expertise, like with anything else, comes from keeping your hand in the field.

Also, I strongly believe that people in this business should strive to be communications experts first, with a strong facility in social media and online community principles. The marketplace is chock full of folks who mistake the latter as all that’s required to be competent in the former—that would be irresponsibly wrong.

ZS: You thought you were special, and then Edelman Digital hired a doppelganger named Rian Merrill [Edelman Digital, Portland]. Is it true? Is he your brother from a different mother?

PG: Rian wasn’t born from a “different mother” or any mother, per se, but was actually grown from a hair follicle I left behind in Portland’s Hollywood Theater during the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in October 2001. This was evidently part of an odd form of DMCA enforcement: I found out later that the bootleg DVD of The Dunwich Horror I bought said “COPYRIGHT WARNING: If you bought an illegal copy this disc, we will clone you.”

Anyway, Rian reached full adulthood in about three days thanks to a solution composed of peppar vodka, rare lichens, ambergris, giraffe spinal fluid, and about a thousand Airborne tablets. He requires a regular infusion of this solution in order to maintain the photovoltaic efficiency of his hairless dome, which is in reality solar panel to a digital PR machine!

We do look a lot alike, so much so that (and this part is true) a colleague in our Silicon Valley office managed to carry five minutes worth of a conversation with him before finally realizing it wasn’t me. God bless Rian, true gentleman that he is, for not using the moment to its fullest advantage.

Joking aside, he does a great job over there. Tell him I said “hi.”

ZS: What is your favorite latest and greatest social media tool/discovery?

PG: I like Plancast a lot. I see it as a location-based service for the fourth dimension (that is, time as first-order variable), whereas FourSquare is the service for the third dimension (space). I don’t use it nearly enough. It’s probably just as well, since I’ve generally sought to roll back my conference appearances quite a bit since 2009. I guess it’s more interesting for me to see where influencers with more aggressive conference schedules are going to be.

Anyone I introduce to HootSuite ends up looking at me as if I reached into the space/time continuum and stuffed their Outlook calendar with a few extra minutes.

Pouring my Yahoo! Pipes experiments through Google Reader has been illuminating in terms of information management. My favorite Pipe is also the simplest: mashing together the tech and business channels from Fark, Digg, plus all of Gabe Rivera’s TechMeme sites (e.g., Memeorandum, WeSmirch, etc.) into a single reverse-chrono feed.

Earlier today, we announced that Michael Slaby was joining Edelman as the new head of our global digital practice. He actually started on Tuesday, but he and I, along with more than 100 of our colleagues from Edelman’s global leadership team have been locked in a hotel conference room since then talking about the fiscal year that was (ours ends on June 30), and our plans for the year ahead. We snuck out to make the video above. Needless to say, we’re thrilled that he’s joined the firm; Mike’s inheriting an amazing leadership team that actually runs the digital businesses in each region, and a big challenge to work with that team, our clients and the firm’s total leadership to chart the next chapter of our digital journey at Edelman, worldwide. I couldn’t be leaving the business in a better set of hands.

In the world of digital specialists, pundits and journalists, one person always stuck out to me. Before joining Edelman, I was an avid reader of this person’s commentary and analysis of the online developments around us. I enjoyed his writing style and bird’s eye view into the new firms that were helping to shape the way consumers interacted with each other online.

It’s my pleasure to present my interview with Edelman’s very own, Steve Rubel. Serving as SVP/Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, Steve ensures that we all stay on top of the latest and greatest when it comes to the world of PR, social media and digital communications. I try my darndest to keep up with him and his quick mind, but there is only one Steve Rubel.

Blagica Bottigliero: Let’s start with the basics. Your last name. Is it pronounced like the Russian currency? I’ve heard multiple versions, so help us set the record straight.

Steve Rubel: Actually it isn’t – it’s pronounced Roo-Bell, rhyming with “blue bell.”

BB: As a lifestreamer, you spend quite a bit of time online digesting content. How much time per day do you spend doing this? How do you break up your day to consumer such a large amount of data?

SR:I would say that on average I spend two-three hours a day “studying.” How and where I fit this in really depends on my schedule in a given week. If it’s a particularly heavy week and I am traveling or in lots of meetings, it’s whenever I can steal a few minutes during the day. If it’s a “normal” day then it’s often over breakfast, lunch or at night when I get home. But I make it a commitment to keep current since our teams and clients look to me to help them do the same.

My workflow here, however, has changed a lot over the last few years. Until fairly recently I was a heavy user of Google Reader. Now, however, I find myself relying more on Facebook, Twitter and reading email newsletters from my favorite blogs. Also, I am increasingly using my mobile device to consume much of it as well.

BB: In the last few weeks, you’ve put a stronger emphasis on utilizing Facebook as your epicenter for news and communication. With Facebook’s history of sharing its TOS, along with concerns around privacy, do you think more users will shift their attention to Facebook? The addition of Facebook’s new settings come in handy, but do you feel that users don’t feel like adding privacy settings to every single action?

SR: Facebook is at a pivotal moment in its history. All of the data points are trending up – time spent (a staggering seven hours/month in the US), total users (400M worldwide), mobile use (100M users), traffic patterns (one of the top drivers of views to news/broadcast sites), etc. This makes it impossible to ignore.

What’s more, I believe we have passed a key tipping point where a network effect takes over. Randall Stross summarizes this nicely in his New York Times column, comparing it to similar situations like Microsoft Windows. So I don’t see the train slowing down here in any way.

Still, there’s no doubt many have privacy concerns. Facebook needs to make this easier to manage so that an individual can really more easily separate personal and professional circles – if he/she chooses. The settings they have now help. But they have a long way to go.

The other trend to note is how businesses are starting to use Facebook as a hub. There are more than 1.4M Facebook Pages. Some 700,000 are small businesses. This also creates a network effect the way that Google did with Adwords. Also, I have noticed that more brands and movies are prioritizing their Facebook page in ads over their own web site. This is controversial, but in many ways it makes sense.

BB: You just created a fan page on Facebook. How will you decipher information that appears in this stream versus your blog?

SR:I have been on Facebook since 2007 when they opened it up to all users. At first, I was skeptical of their prospects for success. I saw a scenario similar to what AOL did back in the 1990s – e.g. a walled garden. So while I have been on Facebook for years and I was engaged there, I didn’t see a real opportunity, at least for me, to use it to connect professionally with our customers.

However, the statistics I mentioned earlier and my own use recently have evolved my thinking. I began to see that, professionally, there is a real opportunity there for any business to deeply engage their customers in a way that perhaps is not as easy to do elsewhere – and to build thought leadership. One key reason is that clearly people I care most about like our clients are spending time there. It’s easier to go where the people are than to get them to come to you. What’s more, it’s a broader audience than the people who subscribe to my blog or follow me on Twitter.

So as of right now I am largely creating exclusive content there. I am finding Twitter is better for link sharing but that Facebook is more ideal for short bits of insights that spark a larger conversation. My blog will probably evolve into just a place for essays. But I am syndicating the posts into Facebook as well. It’s all evolving right now.

In short, I believe that Facebook will become my primary content platform in the next few months. But I will continue to do it all. As should businesses that have stakeholders scattered on other networks like Twitter.

BB: Your opinions on Google Buzz are pretty strong. What do you think they could have done differently at launch? Do you think it was wise they launched the tool in Gmail?

SR: Google Buzz suffers from complexity because they only tested it within Google, which has a very tech-savvy engineering driven culture. Facebook and Twitter are simple. You get it right away. Buzz feels like something Google is forcing on millions of users to catch up in an area it’s not strong in – social. It would have been better if they launched in in beta or Labs.

Still, I see Buzz remaining an important niche player for the time being. But I would never count Google out. They can get it right.

BB: It seems that there are new tools popping up every second. Whether it’s checking in at a local bistro with Foursquare or taking a picture of a sunset and sending it to a larger network via Yfrog, there is a hefty amount of information to keep track of. Will there come a time where a mini social ‘revolt’ will occur?

SR: I feel there’s way too much focus in marketing on the venues and the technologies – even in the recessionary climate. Businesses must focus first on their stakeholders and the trends and then figure out how to leverage the technologies. Many still go about it in reverse.

In terms of the consumer, I believe we’re already seeing a winnowing down. Facebook is tops for the broadest group. Twitter is loved by a smaller, yet arguably more influential crowd. And YouTube meanwhile sits in the middle. The others, even FourSquare, are more niche.

In the end there’s only so much time in a day and everyone will need to make choices on where to invest. I see Facebook being the big winner and Twitter sitting in neutral for now. The others may eventually just become features of the big sites rather than stand alone entities.

BB: In the 90s, consumers may have sent a complaint via written letter or email to one of their favorite brands. Today, it may be a Facebook status message, YouTube video or tweet. What do you think this says about consumers’ expectations when it comes to corporate two-way dialogue?

SR: I don’t see it being an expectation around dialogue as much as it is power. People now know they have it and that some businesses will bend over backwards to meet the legitimate gripes in real-time. This creates a virtuous or some would argue a vicious cycle that just exacerbates the situation further.

This means that every business needs to understand what they will address and when – with the expectation that it will scale.

BB: With web sites incorporating tools like Facebook connect, video and real-time tweets, do you see social media being more ingrained in a digital strategy, instead of being an after-thought?

SR: Yes, I believe that we’ve passed an inflection. Everyone is looking at the data and the hype in the media and they realize that this is where our time and attention are flowing so they need to front-load social networking into their budgets. This is not just limited to consumer marketing but b2b as well.

BB: You are a big gadget fan and need to be connected a good portion of your day. How do you plug in? What is your go-to gadget that you can’t leave home without?

SR: Without a doubt my mobile phones. I switch back and forth between the Blackberry (a client) and the iPhone depending on what I plan to do in a given day. There are days or even weeks when all I use is a mobile device. I often travel without a computer – sometimes for 10 days at a time and internationally as well. It’s amazing what you can do with these devices. And both fit the bill nicely.

BB: You are a man on the move, visiting many up and coming tech start-ups. ExacTarget recently purchased CoTweet. Do you see more consolidation happening?

SR: Absolutely, I believe that integration between various systems will be key – especially for those providers who serve enterprise customers. It’s no different than how we saw similar consolidation in the desktop/enterprise software markets and for web-based platforms in the early 2000s.

BB: I know you are a big Yankees fan. If you could be a Bat Boy for a day, would you do it?

SR: Wow, I definitely would. I would love to travel with the team and and ask Derek Jeter all kinds of questions about his work ethic and efforts to be a better ballplayer every day. That’s what I hope to do too in my field. Jeter is a rare yardstick of professionalism and quality in a sports word that increasingly lacks such role models. And I find lots of metaphors in sports to inspire me in business.

BB: What is your newest tech obsession?

SR: I would have to say any tools that I an use for free that give me data. My favorites are Google Insights and Ad Planner, Facebook Insights and YouTube Audience Insights.

Image credit: Laughing Squid