http://adage.com/ Steve Rubel is a marketing strategist and blogger, here he gives his thought on what works in social media and marketing. en-us 120 144 25 http://adage.com/ http://adage.com/img/adage-logo-sm.gif
One of the most important skills executives need today is the know-how to manage and harness their personal information flow.]]>
The online advertising industry is crying out for a measurement standard, but don't wait around for a single number. It's not coming anytime soon.]]> To date, it's been darn near impossible to characterize bloggers as lackadaisical. It takes a lot of work to consistently create high-quality content that people want to link to. But the essays, in-depth analyses and spirited debates that permeated the blogosphere during its early days have fallen off dramatically. Enter the Lazysphere.]]>
For now, display and search ads both remain unidirectional paradigms. However, there are some early signs that they may also start to open up to feedback.]]>
The image of media companies as dinosaurs lumbering toward extinction in a world of infinite content is downright wrong.]]>
Conventional wisdom says the internet will continue to become more central in our lives, bringing with it productivity gains. And for more than 15 years, internet innovations have revolutionized marketing. Culturally, however, there are some signs of a backlash against technology -- even among the most addicted. This trend is worth watching because it could slow down or even derail the digital-marketing train.]]>
One of my colleagues posed a thought-provoking question during a recent exchange: "What new digital-business models might take hold in the next four to five years?"]]>
The e-mail pitch seemed almost too wacky to be true. Barry Williams (aka the actor who played Greg Brady on "The Brady Bunch") started blogging two weeks ago at thegregbradyproject.com, and his hired PR help wanted to set up a meet and greet.]]>
The new year is when people like to make predictions. However, I find it more valuable to look at the bigger picture -- the trends that will play a role in shaping digital media and marketing over the next 12 months.]]>
Search is broken. Of course, with Google at more than $600 a share, 91% of us using search engines and studies showing we're largely satisfied with their results, it's easy to discard this statement. The problem, however, is that search engines can bring back too much information.]]>
The conventional wisdom on Madison Avenue is that reach rules. In the digital realm, you can't go wrong making a buy or launching a campaign on a site with scale. However, that's going to change as money flows online, competition rises and marketers find they need to pay more to drive sales.]]>
Nearly every online start-up you can think of is basing its business model on advertising. It's as if your digital budgets are a bottomless pot of money with more than enough to go around for everyone.]]>
Glenn Wolsey is a 15-year-old from New Zealand who writes about the Macintosh as a productivity and photography tool. I recently interviewed him via e-mail to get a sense of how someone without media experience can come out of nowhere to compete for U.S. ad dollars.]]>
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to meet some of the pre-eminent thinkers on search from Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and up-and-comers such as Like.com. This has profoundly shaped my thinking about how the web giants are so much more than big stadiums that aggregate eyeballs. They are an end-to-end suite of brand-reputation management and measurement services -- many of which are free.]]>
For years now pundits have been talking about technology that's able to automatically surface content that matches our interests precisely when we need it most. That vision is now closer to reality as several underlying technologies converge in a powerful way.]]>
With the lazy days of summer officially behind us, now is when many start thinking seriously about their career plans. For those who are deeply interested in both technology and marketing, this is your time. A new kind of career is emerging: Enter the Geek Marketer.]]>
The Long Tail of content and increasing demands for our attention have created a perfect storm where traffic to brand sites may soon shrink. It's simple supply-and-demand economics at work. Long-form online content has been usurped by all things bite-size, whether it be widgets, YouTube clips, or micro blogs powered by services such as Tumblr, Jaiku and Twittergram. This column offers three simple steps marketers should consider to thrive in a web that is increasingly becoming decentralized.]]>
Some have chalked up the micro-blogging boom to what a friend of mine calls "shiny object syndrome" -- our fascination with all things new. However, I believe that the rise of these emerging micro-media sites mirrors three significant cultural shifts.]]>
The art and science of influence measurement is a debate for the ages. However, as the recent demise of the page view revealed, these days trying to figure out how many you're reaching and who they are is more complicated than ever. (The irony is that media overall is far more addressable.)]]>
Community is the glue that unites us all as humans. It has for thousands of years and mostly via offline venues. More recently, thanks to the rise of Web 2.0, communities are becoming an equally huge part of our online lives. Technology and broadband are giving rise to thousands of micro global villages where people find each other, talk and collaborate around shared interests or goals. Where there's an interest, there's a community.]]>
The state of the Web 2.0 economy is an evergreen topic in the blogosphere. Pundits like to check under the hood to examine if this era is anything like the Web 1.0 bubble. So far, indications are that the excitement around Web 2.0 is different from last time. Entrepreneurs aren't minting paper millions on Wall Street -- the companies being sold are real businesses with real revenue. Dig deeper, however, and there are troubling signs of overindulgence.]]>
Twenty-nine-year-old Timothy Ferriss is not a marketer. Still, on his own, he has landed squarely on the best-seller list with his first book, "The 4-Hour Workweek." The case is worth a deeper examination because it points to a very real do-it-yourself digital-marketing future where the landscape is essentially flat.]]>
The Chinese wall that separates the editorial and advertising sides of the media remains vital to its sustainability. However, as the landscape becomes dotted with millions of citizen publishers who take ads to generate a second source of income, it relies more on reputation than infrastructure.]]>
In the past few years, a crop of advertising networks, including BlogHer, Federated Media, FeedBurner, B5 Media and BlogAds, have helped a handful of the more active publishers find a magical nexus in between. Some of these companies, all of which are still small, have achieved a certain level of success as advertisers dabble in buying space on blogs. But the dynamic online-advertising landscape is shifting once again and will force all of these companies to adapt their business models to meet the needs of brand marketers and media buyers.]]>
For thousands of years, information was centralized with a few subject-matter experts. Now, thanks to search, broadband and instant publishing tools, everyone in the global village can contribute to the collective body of knowledge. This reduces the need for middlemen.]]>
This week, like thousands of other early adopters, I picked up an Apple TV for my living room. If you haven't tried one of these devices, invest $300 and get one. Apple TV is a small set-top box that connects to any flat-screen TV -- but it might be easier to think of it as a smart iPod attached to your TV. If set-top boxes take off, Apple and others will change the medium and, with it, advertising.]]>
Twitter, a "micro blogging" platform/mobile social network, last week rocked the web with an avalanche of buzz, peaking at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference in Austin, Texas. The year-old site, co-founded by Blogger.com vets Evan Williams and Biz Stone, is a giant real-time stream of 160-character haikus. They can be uploaded by SMS, instant messenger, the web or dedicated desktop applications such as Twitterific.]]>
Yahoo, perhaps more than any other major portal, has done a phenomenal job of barreling headfirst into the Web 2.0 world. In addition to acquiring the "twin towers of tagging," Flickr and del.icio.us, it has launched the wildly successful Yahoo Answers Q-and-A site.]]>
If you read this column regularly, you know I believe the page view is on life support. It fails to capture the myriad ways consumers engage in online activities without ever leaving a web page. To get a feel for this, spend some time playing at yourminis.com. So what will replace the page view and when will that happen? Let's handicap the field.]]>
Sometime in the next few days, perhaps by the time you read this, Walt Disney Co. will unveil the next iteration of its flagship website. CEO Bob Iger touted the relaunch last month during his keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show. The centerpiece of the new Disney.com will be something called Disney Xtreme Digital, which will enable greater personalization and community within the site. But Disney's corporate culture may prevent it from fully embracing a Web 2.0 world where consumers are in control.]]>