Edelman’s Steve Rubel is publishing a series of ‘insights‘ into digital trends.
I’ve read the first one (17 Feb, pdf 2mb) and it’s a pretty good overview.
Edelman is particularly strong in digital PR, illustrated by its recent paper on Obama’s social media toolkit (pdf), which describes the integration of digital channels into the general campaign (which Edelman was part of). It’s more or less set the standard (or best practice in business-speak) for digital campaigns and mass participation.
Despite laboured analogies, some proofing issues and nonsense sentences — “He has firmly established himself as an authetic, credible human face” (p22) — the digital trends essay is worth a quick read.
There’s plenty of information out there from companies such as Edelman, Deloitte and so on that has value beyond the firms themselves drumming up business by showing off expertise (what they’re supposed to do).
For instance, there’s a tendency for company marcomms people to try everything as it comes up (or is demanded of them). Such a scattergun approach just dissipates energy by ensuring people are bogged down in detail (eg, keeping up with the brand’s mentions on Twitter).
So, such info is good for corpcomms people who need to keep sight of the big picture so they can design online comms strategies, against which they can make tactical choices.
Keep reading: it makes you smarter than the average bear.
