![The Big Lebowski (Limited Edition) [Blu-ray Book + Digital Copy]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512F90yEqdL._SL75_.jpg){kind=small}
Tuesday
Feb032009
links for 2009-02-03
Young Urban Professional- "Among North American CEOs, 62% said that they think digital will grow this year, while 39% of non-North American CEOs said the same."
Monday
Feb022009
Marketing Authentically with Personal Brands as Corporate All-Stars
In my role with Edelman Digital I am curating and writing white papers for clients about key trends. The papers provide clients actionable insights and strategies they can apply in PR and marketing programs.
We're making one available to everyone the week of February 16. The 30-page paper covers Five Digital Trends to Watch. Here's a preview of one of the trends - what we're calling "Corporate All-Stars." It's also my column this week in Advertising Age.
Personal branding, while not new, is hot. In these uncertain times, many workers are flocking to social media in an effort to build their own brands.
But just as perennial all-stars Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez help the Yankees sell more tickets, businesses also recognize that having a few "corporate all-stars" on staff can help them market in an authentic yet cost-effective way. (This is one of five trends we at Edelman have identified for 2009; the full list will be available on our website Feb. 17.)
Dan Schawbel is one example. Online he has established himself as an expert on personal branding. However, Schawbel is also a social-media specialist at EMC Corp., one of the world's largest tech companies.
Drawing on his personal branding experience, Schawbel has revolutionized the way EMC communicates and collaborates with its stakeholders. He is driving the company's Twitter, Facebook, social-media press release/newsroom, social bookmarking and blogging strategy all by leveraging its corporate all-stars.
Not every company will want corporate all-stars on the team. But those that cultivate them will be in a strong position to be heard in the noisy social sphere. Here are three considerations:
Use blogs to connect customers and corporate all-stars
Blogs are fast becoming a key part of many brand communication plans. However, according to Forrester, only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them. To mitigate this, turn boring product blogs into communities that connect customers and corporate all-stars around their shared passions.
Give all-stars independence, yet ensure they stay focused
To be successful, employees with personal brands need to carefully balance their roles as semi-independent thought leaders while maintaining a clear connection to their employers. The ideal situation is when the individual's and company's goals are aligned, the subject matter overlaps, and transparency reigns.
Equip and support personal brands in becoming active listeners
The advantages of having authentic online all-stars go beyond relationships, branding and overall visibility. These people also become active listeners. Equip them to act on potential crises and issues, and enable them to identify new ideas and unmet needs.
Thursday
Jan292009
Is the Google Cookie Tracking Everyone's Surfing Habits?
Photo: Google Cookie by Massless on Flickr
Note update from Google at the end of this post.
Google tonight made an important change to the Google Ad Planner that - at least as I read it - means they are now tracking every site you visit via a Google cookie and serving the aggregate data up to advertisers. If I am wrong I hope someone will tell me. (If this post is wrong I will correct it - but this is how I am interpreting what Google has put out there so far.)
Let's take a look at the facts.
First, Google yesterday made some subtle changes to its privacy policy. Coincidence? Maybe.
Second, according to the Google Adwords blog, the search engine has now added a new site traffic metric in Ad Planner called Unique Visitors (cookies). This, according to Google is a new cookie-based metric that "help(s) you cross
check and compare metrics, similar to Google Analytics unique visitor metrics."
check and compare metrics, similar to Google Analytics unique visitor metrics."
The help page goes a little bit further, saying that unique visitors (cookies) is "the estimated number of unique cookies on a site. The unique visitors (cookies) metric is more similar to data from server logs, analytics applications, and ad servers."
Google does not provide any additional details on how they are gathering the data from cookies. Is it possible that this means that as long as you have visited Google once and get cookied that they are now tracking every single site you visit, even if you didn't get there via a search? It's unclear. But it sounds like it. I hope they will be more transparent.
However, if this is true, given the huge number of people that have done at least one Google search (e.g. everyone) that sounds like they are collecting a staggering amount of data. And something that might alarm privacy advocates while at the same time creating the largest consumer panel on the web - e.g. everyone, except those who delete their cookies.
UPDATE 1/30:: A Google spokesperson emailed in the following statement in response to my post...
"Google does not track users in the manner described in the article. We do not track every site every Google user goes to, nor do we have the capabilities to track in this manner.
The updates to our privacy policy made on Wednesday refer to data collection only for the purpose of detecting and preventing fraud or other misconduct; Google Ad Planner is not using any of this data in our enhanced features. There is no relationship between our updated privacy policy and our updated Ad Planner features."
Seems to make sense. However, it doesn't explain where the cookie data comes from. Others point out in the comments that Google has a lot of cookies sprinkled across the web through Doubleclick, etc. and that - in theory - they could triangulate the data. I have emailed Google to see what I can find out.
Saturday
Jan242009
links for 2009-01-24
- Corporate blog of BofA.
- Bank of America is using Twitter as a customer service tool.
- APAC accounts for 41% of Internet users; China has the largest Internet population in the World.
- Conference Board: Marketing executives are under increasing pressure from CEOs to show ROI.
Friday
Jan232009
Friendfeed is the Next Great Blogging Platform, Here's Why...
Friendfeed continues to astonish me. While so much attention is focused on Twitter lately, particularly by the press, Friendfeed is the little site that could. And quietly it's poised to become the next great blogging platform.
Don't believe me? Then keep an eye on what Robert Scoble is up to on Friendfeed. Like him or hate him, he's a trend setter.
A few times a day he will post thoughts on Friendfeed, often followed by the phrase "here's why" and then he'll expand on it with the first comment. These little thoughts generate hundreds of subsequent comments, often in minutes plus lots of "likes."
Yesterday I essentially blogged on Friendfeed on this topic and generated a level of engagement you just don't see anywhere else - with the exception of Twitter. But I find Twitter increasingly frustrating because the conversation is so hard to follow. These days, I would rather post to Friendfeed and let Twitter scoop it all up. I love that I can more easily follow the conversation, moderate it and contribute to it via IM. Also, I l can add photos to my Friendfeed postings, which brings in even more people.
It seems to me that if Friendfeed adds a few features - longer posts, custom domains, and design tweaks - it's basically a blogging platform... on steroids. It will be attractive to bloggers for at least two reasons.
First, we will be able to use it to build a branded presence (and thus SEO) just as we can now with TypePad or Wordpress. This is something you can't do now on Friendfeed - or Twitter for that matter.
However, more importantly, we will be able to instantly plug our full blog posts right into a fervent, real-time community that attracts a highly engaged audience. It's blogging on speed thanks to the real-time web. Why try to get the conversation to come to your site when you can go to it?
I also think that Friendfeed can add an optional Adsense program make it easy for people to monetize their Friendfeed blogs.
Stay tuned.