Yesterday, Mike Moran and I were invited to be on The Voice of Russia to discuss Google+with their two charming hosts. We really geeked-out and didn’t dumb it down at all.

Google’s new online social network called Google Plus first hit the web. A lot of people thought this was Facebook or Twitter. But as tech insiders continue to dig deeper into its features and capabilities, they are finding it does more than just refine popular networking tools found on other sites. It also streamlines the social media experience.

Joining us on the line to talk about Google Plus are Mike Moran, Chief Strategist at the Converseon social media consultant agency and Chris Abraham, President and Co-Founder of the Abraham-Harrison, a digital PR and social media marketing company.

Via Marketing Conversation and The Voice of Russia

Liza Peiffer, our intern, is interviewing all the members of the management team of Abraham Harrison LLC, starting with me, Social Media Marketing: The lovechild of work and play? With some thoughts from Chris Abraham and then moving on to today’s interview with our Director of Client Services, Some about one of our own, Dan Krueger:

After a decade of working on television shows you’d think a career shift to internet marketing would be quite the change.  However, Abraham Harrison Director of Client Services Daniel Krueger says there are certainly similarities between the two.

Dan produced, edited, filmed and directed shows for networks such as HGTV, CBS, TLC and ABC Family.  He says the profession allows you to either “feast or famine,” jumping from contract to contract when a show doesn’t cut it—which is more often than not.

But what happens when a show survives the grueling initial stage of winning over critics and roping in audiences? That’s when the magic happens, when the raw ingredients bake into the delicious dessert of a hit TV show.  Admitting he’s always been computer savvy, Dan says that this “conception to completion” mindset translates perfectly to digital marketing and especially to what he does for AH.

“The virtual realm is similar [to TV] because you’re taking clients’ ideas with your own ideas and bringing them to reality.”

So with all this vague talk about ideas becoming final products, let’s give you an idea of some of those projects Dan has been working on.  In the past 6 months Dan got English, Portuguese and Spanish campaigns up and running for the international classifieds site OLX.  He is now heading a new one in Russian and says it’s “pretty crazy to be managing campaigns in different languages.” Uhh, yeah it is!

“It’s completely different than anything that we’ve ever done, dealing with a language you don’t know,” Dan says. “It’s all about trusting the people you’re working with.” Trust is important in most if not all aspects of sales and services.  AH is lucky to work with such great people who make challenges like venturing outside of the English language a business reality. Just like the same TV crew can produce different shows, the AH team is able to execute services tailored to each unique client.

As the intern, I was asked to help with the OLX Russia Twitter page and follow some of the Russian community.  Let me tell you, they should change the saying to ‘It’s Russian to me’ because it was hard.  I couldn’t imagine producing a project in a different language, let alone one that doesn’t use our alphabet.   OLX Polish may also be in the works for fall … good luck!

Dan also works closely with the Fresh Air Fund, a company that gives inner-city children from New York the chance to have a fun-filled summer vacation with volunteer host families and at Fund camps.  He gets the word out to potential host families and creates a general awareness of the program by using a method Abraham Harrison knows oh too well–it’s the monthly blogger outreaches that help get donations, find host families and recruit counselors.

Dan says AH blogger and journalist outreaches are so successful because a media post “basically lives forever on the Internet” unlike paid ads that come down after a certain time.  “We’ve gotten it to a science, utilizing the blogosphere is huge,” he says.  “Everyone is their own journalist if they want to be.”

His history in TV producing and working in so many different positions shows Dan is an expert at handling whatever is thrown at him.  And because of this, AH is thankful that he is now applying such skills to Internet marketing—and that he left that other form of media.

Our very own Jonathan Trenn was recently interviewed at part of the PBS MediaShift blog article, How PR People Can Tactfully Locate, Pitch Influential Bloggers, which you should go check out. (Via Marketing Conversation)

Jonathan Trenn, a consultant for Abraham Harrison, a digital marketing company in the DC area, said that if he’s starting from scratch with a client he’ll use free tools like blog search engine Technorati to locate the bloggers he wants to contact. Specifically, he searches for the tags that the bloggers use with their posts, because this is an indicator of whether the person writes regularly on a particular subject.

“It’ll give you a list of blogs to look at,” he told me. “You basically start clicking through, and it’s essential that you read the blog and get to know it a bit, maybe start categorizing it or put it in a database. But essentially you want to get to know what they are about, see if they’re updated frequently.”

Technorati and other search tools allow him to then rank the blogs by authority. He said he begins with focusing on the most influential blogs. But he hastened to add that this is only a starting point, and that he can then begin clicking through these blogs’ blogrolls or even approach the bloggers directly to ask them for more recommendations.

“Late last year I was doing some work with a company called ooVoo,” he said. “They’re a competitor to Skype, only they use video. They can have six screens at once…We came up with the idea of having a ‘political day.’ We reached out to prominent political bloggers to essentially hold their own chats for a day, or a series of days. With that I wanted to make it diverse, from political philosophy to demographic, so I reached out to different types of blogs. I asked them who else I should contact. We had 15 to 18 bloggers — left, center, right, African American, Latino, what have you — and they each had their own sessions.”

Part of having an intern is trying to figure out what cool things she gets to do every day so we have Miss Liza Peiffer writing for Marketing Conversation.  Now we’re conspiring to fill her CV with lots of cool experience — my entire team is conspiring!  Tonight, though, I got a gift in the form of the interview that Liza did of me last week.  What I love about this post is that while it may be her interviewing me about social media, it is also a pretty awesome analysis in its own right — she really groks it!  I am very happy to have her on our team! Learn more about Liza here.

Social Media Marketing: The lovechild of work and play? With some thoughts from Chris Abraham

Where is social media going? Everyone has their opinions, but no one really knows. Still, it sure is fun to predict.  I took some time to talk to Chris Abraham, your favorite Marketing Conversation blogger,  about a little of what he sees in his crystal ball for social media.

But before you can reach the future, I suppose you begin with the past and present.

Chris was part of an online community back in 1984. We’re talkin’ when Ghostbusters premiered, Madonna was still “Like a Virgin” and when we were first introduced to the Macintosh computer.  He continued to work on online community development in the 1990s with The Meta Network (TMN), an offspring of the pioneering Caucus Systems, and basically watched online networking grow from a baby into what it is today.  As President and Founding Partner of Abraham Harrison, LLC that specializes in Digital PR and everything social media, I think it’s safe to say Chris Abraham has earned his expertise. (Find out more about Chris Abraham in his official bio).

Recently, Chris has been personally invited by Bob Garfield, co-host of NPR’s “On the Media”  and writer of “Ad Review” on Advertising Age, to blog about his third book: The Chaos Scenario, released this past spring.  Because of his innovative and creative approach to marketing, Chris is one of a select few that will have the chance to speak about the book.  Keep an eye out for his posts: http://thechaosscenario.net/blog/.

Ok. Now the future.

The strategy of product/service promotion through social media is becoming contagious among businesses everywhere.  However, with so many companies taking advantage of such marketing, the line between business and pleasure becomes blurred on the Internet. When I questioned if social media culture would eventually merge the two realms for good, Chris noted that the best business people wear both their “bowler hats and baseball caps”–so this fusion is somewhat probable.

In other words, it will become more difficult to maintain two distinct work-home personas if you want to utilize social media marketing to its full potential.

“We hit a point when you put on your suit of armor then have a private, personal life,” he said. “It’s harder to keep that separation for those who embrace social media.”  Chris stresses the importance of being a ‘person’ online as well as in the business world, and without putting yourself out there through means such as social media, “it’s hard to remain relevant” in the workplace.

Chris also says that “portable” sites like Twitter and Loopt (one of his new favorites) are both socially fulfilling and surprisingly good at forming business connections. “It’s strange. Twitter has encouraged more face to face meetings with me.”  He also says that there is “a constant urge to share your narrative,” and asks the question, “how is that going to become easier?” To answer this, Chris suggests it may not even be computers that revolutionize social media, but rather the mobile phone.

Well I completely agree.  We love to tell everyone else exactly what we’re doing at any given moment via Facebook statuses or Tweets or whatever– not to mention the heavy sharing of personal pictures.  Does anyone necessarily care if you just ate really good macaroni and cheese? Maybe if you’re Miley Cyrus they do? Hmm.  But regardless of who you are, real time sites satisfy people’s need to instantly connect to the world.  If this is what people crave more of, then this is what they’ll get.

Read one of Chris’ blogs comparing Twitter and SecondLife if you haven’t yet:

He sates in the blog: “The biggest mistake that social network services and online virtual communities make is being too invested in the outcome of how the community will grow and develop. To be successful in community development and community creation, one must be committed to the communit y and meeting their needs versus being committed to giving them what the community producer thinks the community wants and needs — often very different things.”  So considering this, I’d say that the future of social media is in the hands of those who use it.  If portability and simplicity are what works, then that will be what sticks.  If people find it beneficial to wear both their “bowler hats and baseball caps” from a business perspective, then that will become the growing trend.

And this is why marketing through social media flat out works—it targets people.

So when the dawn of technology fed the public with fear that humans would eventually become too impersonal, it seems it will cause just the opposite to happen. Or who knows, maybe in 100 years we will be marrying robots…but that’s a different story.

Whether it sets out to distort the distinction between what is professional and what is personal (the value of which is subjective) or continues to make people bigger and our world smaller, the online community is one hell of a place to live.

Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz

My business partner, CEO Mark Harrison, sent me a link to Yahoo’s Bartz drops the F-bomb with the comment, “Wow, think we could get global press for our conference calls? One f-bomb?  Amateur hour.” He was talking about me. Oh, for shame.  Anyway, why is Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz my hero?  Well, here’s her quote — I love it for content and style!

“We sort of had one product management person for every three engineers,” Bartz explained. “So we had a lot of people running around and telling people what to do, but nobody was fucking doing anything.”

Fresh Air Fund not only needs host families, donations, and children every year, FAF also needs camp counselors to staff the summer camps every year. The Fresh Air Fund and Abraham Harrison LLC reached out and over 120 bloggers and Twitterers responded to the call.  We thank you all very much and we appreciate all of your hard work on Fresh Air Fund’s behalf!  Much obliged!

1. Fresh Air Fund Looking for Help via Three Rivers Episcopal
2. Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via The Abraham & Harrison Blogger blog
3. Fresh Air Fund via All Said and Done
4. Fresh Air Fund via Reflective Ponderings
5. banner via Spectrum, Apex College
6. Now Hiring: Fresh Air Fund Summer Camp Staff via Assertagirl
7. Old-School Fun via Half the Sins of Mankind
8. Fresh Air Fund Looking for Summer ’09 Counselors via Best View in Brooklyn
9. Wednesday, February 11, 2009 via Ghana for a While
10. Fresh Air Fund, Non Profit, Now Accepting Applications from Gen Y for Summer Jobs via The Orrell Group
11. Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors for Summer 2009! via Chris Abraham
12. The Fresh Air Fund via Brilliance or Madness
13. Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via Chris Abraham Social Media PR & Blogging Expert
14. Hiring For Camp Counselor Jobs via Chris Abraham’s Weblog
15. The Fresh Air Fund! via Around the World in beautiful Shoes
16. the fresh air fund JOBS via Around the World in beautiful Shoes
17. Information via Because I’m Cool Like That…
18. Fresh Air Fund Now Accepting Applications for Counselors via Danny Fisher
19. Fresh Air Fund via Chen Chow
20. Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via April 24th Blogging Basics
21. Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer via My Blog
22. Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via Chris Abraham
23. Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer via Chris Abraham Ceci N’est Pas Un Blog
24. Help inner-city kids enjoy a summer vacation via Christifideles
25. Fresh Air Fund and saying no to buracracy via My Time in Cape Verde with Peace Corps
26. Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via Official Colexica Blog
27. The Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors for the Summer of ’09 via Make it Happen
28. Senator John Cornyn;Texas’ Embarrasment! via Dicky’s Doodles &Scribbles
29. Michael Steele; The Putney Swope Of The GOP via Dicky’s Doodles &Scribbles
30. From the Mailbag: Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors for Summer 2009! via Epluribus Media
31. Rethinking Fresh Air via Rethinking Life
32. The Fresh Air Fund: Needs Counselors for the Summer of ’09! via Faithful Progressive
33. Your Money: The Fresh Air Fund via Cute, Cuddly, and Cannibalistic
34. Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via Fresh Air Fund
35. Hiring Camp Counselors for the Summer via Fresh Air Fund Blog
36. Do Something Good: The Fresh Air Fund via Gingerbread Latte: The E! True Hollywood Story
37. 2009: THE FRESH AIR FUND: VOLUNTEERS NEEDED via Tom Glover’s Hamilton Scrapbook
38. 2/4/09 PRESS RELEASE: Fresh Air Fund via Greenwich Roundup: This Just In ……
39. From Ashton Kutcher to Soup: Super Bowl Giving via Have Fun Do Good
40. Fresh Air Fund via The Common Room
41. Fresh Air via The Hosanna Road
42. Link via Whole
43. Fresh Air Fund via Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good
44. Wednesday, February 11, 2009 via In the Direction of my Daydreams
45. The Fresh Air Fund via About.com Internships
46. A Peal via Jakartass
47. Wednesday, February 4, 2009 via Happy at HFC
48. The Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors via Jewels of My Heart
49. The Fresh Air Fund via Following My Heart
50. THE FRESH AIR FUND 2009 via Whykay’s Happenings
51. Fresh Air Fund via Keokuk Radio News Blog
52. Kill Jill Turns One! :D via Kill Jill Goes to College
53. Volunteering= Good for the Soul via La Petite Fashionista
54. The Fresh Air Fund Wants You! via I Say Hella
55. Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via Memes.org
56. Looking For A Summer Job? Give Back! via Micah Jesse Blog
57. via Mind Warriors
58. Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors for Summer 2009! via Blah Blah Babycakes
59. Fresh Air Fund via Money Amulet
60. Philanthropy: The Fresh Air Fund via Movable Hype
61. The Fresh Air Fund via Beyond the Clouds
62. Fresh Air via Neringa’s Corner
63. The Hot Club of San Francisco takes audience to a simpler time via Ocolly.com
64. Make a difference this summer: leave home via Our pdx Network
65. Monday Afternoon Dept of Failures & Such via Page One
66. Long overdue… via Fijate que…Life of an El Salvador RPCV
67. My Favorite Links via Peace Corps Diary: Botswana 2008
68. Link via Pine Ridge Reflections
69. Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors: Summer’09 via Pro Equestrian World Edition
70. Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors: Summer’09 via REVISTA PROEQUESTRIAN ROMANIA
71. Get a Job! The Fresh Air Fund via Punk Rock
72. Fresh Air Fund Looking for Counselors via Ned Resnikoff
73. Hot fun in the city… via RoadTurn: Reflections on Life
74. Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via The Russell Pike Blog
75. Banner via Salamu Kenya!
76. FRESH AIR FUND COUNSELORS via Samotalis
77. Make a Difference – Support the Fresh Air Fund! via In The South, We’re Not Crazy…We’re Eccentric!
78. The Fresh Air Fund via Shamazing
79. Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via SMNR Social Media News Room
80. Wanted: Counselors who enjoy Fresh Air via Star City Harbinger
81. FYI – summer camp counselors needed via Steph in Burkina Faso
82. Volunteer as a Fresh Air Fund Counselor via System 13
83. Banner via Tangocherie
84. Link via Livin’ la Vida Loca: Peace Corps DR!
85. Sure, I’ll Support Your Camp, As Long As It Isn’t Jesus Camp via The Political Blog For Cynical Millennials
86. “Fresh Air” for Children via The Buddha Diaries
87. LINK via Third Mom
88. Fresh Air Fund is looking for a few good counselors via Left of Centre
89. Tweet via Blog Business World
90. Who says there are no jobs? Get a summer one! With Fresh Air Fund. http://tinyurl.com/6qkwwp via Young Manhattanite
91. Tweet via Lindsey Pollak
92. Tweet via Thoughts from Meggie Poo
93. Tweet via Deb’s Search and Rescue Stories
94. Fresh Air Fund Job Opportunities via Volunteer Boston: Get On Your Feet
95. Fresh Air Fund via Winny & B
96. Fresh Air Fund Camp Counselor Opportunities via Boarding School Blog
97. The Fresh Air Fund via Novel Inspiration
98. Camp Out & Change Lives! via Bare Essentials
99. The Fresh Air Fund needs Summer Counselors via Blogging for Business
100. banner via Bloody Brilliant
101. Counselors for 09 Summer Camps Required via Cop Recruiter
102. Change a Young Life this Summer via Everyday Giving Blog
103. The Fresh Air up There via Laura in Botswana
104. HIRING CAMP COUNSELORS FOR THE SUMMER! via Peter Geisheker’s Small Business Marketing Blog
105. For the kids… via Golfgal
106. Banner via Gotham Unleashed
107. Fresh Air Fund Is Hiring Counselors via Granby 01033
108. banner via Jewish Donor Blog
109. Doesn’t Everyone Deserve a Breath of Fresh Air? via Mamanista
110. The Fresh Air Fund is Looking for Camp Counselors via Math Me Thinks
111. So…what are YOU doing this summer? Here’s an idea…that pays! via The Online Degree Dorm Room
112. Fresh Air Fund Needs Camp Counselors via Outskirts:Life and Times in Charlottesville
113. General Discussion Message Board via Ram Nation
114. THE FRESH AIR FUND IS SEEKING COUNSELORS FOR THE SUMMER OF ’09 via Republica Update
115. Summer jobs with Fresh Air Fund (now accepting applications) via Secrets of The Job Hunt
116. Fresh Air Fund Counsellors via Servant of Chaos
117. A Breath of Fresh Air via TMT
118. Fresh Air Fund Needs Camp Counselors via The Diva Network
119. The World Needs Camp Counselors via Thoughts from Meggie Poo
120. SUMMER OPPORTUNITY: FRESH AIR FUND via Writing on the Mall
121. Hiring Camp Counselors for This Summer! via The Xyience Diet Resource
122. Fresh Air Fund via Yoga and Judaism Center
123. Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors for Summer 2009! via Young Manhattanite

There is a misconception among many old-media PR shops that online PR is pretty much like the old-school stuff, just in a different place.  This could not be further from the truth.  New media online PR is a completely different world, a totally different culture, and an entirely different approach.  It’s not easy, or anything for amateurs, but it is very effective when done correctly and with enough commitment.

Results by True Online Experts
We at Abraham Harrison are completely confident in our ability to produce results with clients who are willing to commit the resources and focus to online efforts — we know our way around this space like few others.  We also know that there is far more to being a surgeon than reading how an operation is done, far more to being an engineer than having the blueprints in your hands, far more to being a chef than being able to read a cookbook.

Securing you Trust, Endorsements, Top Search Results Ranking, and Ubiquitous Presence of Message
The staff of Abraham Harrison can get your brands out in front of the world, right in front of the eyes of exactly the people you want to reach.  We can make stars of your key staff members and position them as trusted experts before the world.

We can drive your search engine and general online visibility so that your brands are ubiquitous in the places where your potential clients live online and at the tops of search results — not only having your brands promoted on your own sites, but getting them endorsed and promoted on the sites and under the names of the influencers where your customers are waiting for you to meet them.

We’re happy to take you there.  Your future customers are waiting out there online for you.  We will help you find them, make sure they trust you, and establish you as the people they want to come to.  We’re looking forward to working with you!

Contact: Mark Harrison, CEO & Chris Abraham, President and COO, Abraham Harrison, LLC

If you Google the name of our President and COO, “Chris Abraham“, you will see what it means to dominate the search engine results and own a position as an expert in a field.  We can do the same for your key staff.

Methods: Blogs — Yours & Others: Dominating the Online Space as an Expert & Generous Contributor. We will get your blog infrastructure and your content production policy established. This involves installation, set-up, and design of the blog software. To drive SEO it is important to get the relevant social bookmarking, ping server, etc. accounts and plug-ins set up and installed.

To further drive SEO, a powerful additional methodology is to mirror your blog content across multiple other blogs on highly-ranked blog hosting sites like blogspot, wordpress.com, etc., or under additional aggregation blogs you may set up under your own domain names.  This process will be automated at the outset and run without human effort thereafter.

Blog Content Creation Policy
We will help your team get the blogging policy right, following best practices in line with the informational guidelines of your company.   There is a clear culture of blogging and respecting and adhering to its norms and expectations will make the difference between you being welcomed as a respected contributor and being mocked as a soulless corporate shill (or an embarrassment and danger to your company).

It is essential to have a clear policy for your company’s bloggers, particularly in terms of outlining and reserving their freedoms as writers.  With a clear understanding by the blogger and by the company of what freedoms are allowed, you avoid cramping, overly-careful, stuffy-sounding, self-censoring while also avoiding cringe-inducing embarrassments of inappropriate disclosure and language.

Blog Content Creation System
The best system of content creation is to have the key staff members whose reputations are to be built writing the blog content themselves — that leads to the most honest, transparent, and bi-directionally informative information exchange. However, sometimes those key staff members simply don’t have the time, inclination, or writing talent to create that content.  In that case a content creation system and methodology must be put in place:

• Hiring or assigning professional bloggers or staffers with good writing abilities to produce the content under their names or
• Establishing a ghost-writing system where topics are suggested (by the writer or the key staffer), concept outline given by key staffer, posting written by the professional writer, posting edited and approved by key staffer, posting proofed by editor (optional), and article posted.

If this route is taken, there are workflow blog softwares that can be put in place and set up to manage this process.

Appearing on Others’ Blogs
By generously contributing to the community via bloggers in your spaces, you can get broad coverage and enjoy the implicit (or explicit) endorsement of these influencers.  We would help you get these content contribution requests by executing a Blogger Outreach. This is done by:

• Giving of yourself in the form of interviews, etc.
• Interviews are excellent relationship-builders that give you direct, personal access to the bloggers and builds up a connection for the future.  Interviews can be given via:
  • Email
  • Chat
  • Phone
  • Podcast (voice)
  • Vlog (video — either onsite or via video VOIP)

This list is by order of “live-ness” of the interview with email being very asynchronous, allowing time to reflect and gather info and Vlog interviews being very live.

Guest blogging by the key staff
Guest blogging is very warmly welcomed since it gives bloggers good content that they don’t have to write themselves, and it makes them look good because they are being honored as a valued platform.

Being a guest blogger gives you coverage on another site, increasing the number of locations you are appearing while giving you total control over your message and while driving your SEO by adding link-backs. Additionally, you get the implicit (or explicit) endorsement of the blogger in front of his readership.

It is important to be writing interesting, engaging content as a guest blogger and avoid presenting something that sounds like a callow pitch.

If the key staff member is not interested or capable of doing the guest blogging, then the ghostwriting approach outlined above can be followed

Podcasting and Vlogging (video blogging)
Podcasting is very much like blogging, but in audio format.  While it is not as SEO-friendly as text-based blogging, it has a stronger “star-quality” effect, as the listeners develop a stronger human connection to the podcaster.    The lower SEO-friendliness can be counteracted by posting transcripts of the podcast along with the podcast itself.

It can be done very simply, but generally it is good to have quality raw audio, a polished intro and outro, and good tone balancing so that the podcast sounds somewhat professional and is auditorily a pleasure to listen to.

We can guide your staff in setting up the recording mechanisms, get your intro/outro composed, and have the raw audio balanced and cut into a finished podcast.

It is also good to have clear, interesting concepts to speak about and an effective style of delivery.  It’s easy to be boring or irritating.

While the ghostwriting approach outlined above can be followed, much more responsibility lies on the key staff member who is recording, since it is a very “live” experience — you cannot read a pre-written article and come across as a compelling Podcaster.

The staff of Abraham Harrison, LLC, can get the transcripts written and assist in the posting of the podcasts and the maintenance of the podcast blog website.

Vlogging follows the same rules as podcasting in regards to production and quality, but the pressure on the “star” is that much more intense.

Abraham Harrison’s staff can guide your staff in getting the recording and production infrastructure set up.

An advantage of vlogging is that it has the even higher “star” effect upon the key staff member doing the vlogging, and the videos can be posted on all the video-sharing sites (dozens) to get more coverage and dominate search results.

We at Abraham Harrison can handle the video asset distribution for you, or train your team in the method.

Contact Mark Harrison, CEO of Abraham Harrison, for more information

We at Abraham Harrison, LLC, can win you tremendous respect, gratitude, and powerful word-of-mouth promotion from the very word-of-mouth driven online communities. The staff of Abraham Harrison can be answering the questions people are asking and providing needed information to make you a valued, respected, and trusted members of the communities.

Our goal is to ensure that your brands are perceived as trusted member of society, contributing more than they are taking. Such good citizenship is rewarded in the online community by word-of-mouth endorsements, both at the influencer and at the grassroots level, both of which we will seed, encourage, and amplify.

The staff of Abraham Harrison, LLC, can be present for you in the forums, social networking sites, (SNS’s), and comment-based conversations and use these contributions as “gifts” for both the influencers and for us to leverage in spreading the “good news” about your brand.

In addition, the staff of Abraham Harrison will set your key staff members up as influencers themselves with their own platforms via a blog, and potentially via podcasts and video blogging. The information they present can be made to be valuable, desired, and will make them trusted and honored go-to people.

Contact Mark Harrison, CEO of Abraham Harrison, for more information

Online Conversation Engagement involves going into untold thousands of conversations already happening on the Internet where your brand can and should contribute.

Every day, millions of people are tapping into these conversations, either as active participates, or passive “lurkers” (generally ten to 100 times the number of the active participants).

We at Abraham Harrison will make sure that everywhere experts and influencers are congregating as communities they are seeing your brand and your positive and competent contributions to the conversations surrounding your products, services, and issues.

The places where Abraham Harrison speaks for you will have your contact information and links back to your website, blog, online profiles, etc. The channel to your sales systems can be present, encouraging both people and the search engines to find you.

Contact Mark Harrison, CEO of Abraham Harrison, for more information

There is a misconception among many old-media PR shops that online PR is pretty much like the old-school stuff, just in a different place.  This could not be further from the truth.  New media online PR is a completely different world, a totally different culture, and an entirely different approach.  It’s not easy, or anything for amateurs, but it is very effective when done correctly and with enough commitment.

Results by True Online Experts
We at Abraham Harrison are completely confident in our ability to produce results with clients who are willing to commit the resources and focus to online efforts — we know our way around this space like few others.  We also know that there is far more to being a surgeon than reading how an operation is done, far more to being an engineer than having the blueprints in your hands, far more to being a chef than being able to read a cookbook.

Securing you Trust, Endorsements, Top Search Results Ranking, and Ubiquitous Presence of Message
The staff of Abraham Harrison can get your brands out in front of the world, right in front of the eyes of exactly the people you want to reach.  We can make stars of your key staff members and position them as trusted experts before the world.

We can drive your search engine and general online visibility so that your brands are ubiquitous in the places where your potential clients live online and at the tops of search results — not only having your brands promoted on your own sites, but getting them endorsed and promoted on the sites and under the names of the influencers where your customers are waiting for you to meet them.

We’re happy to take you there.  Your future customers are waiting out there online for you.  We will help you find them, make sure they trust you, and establish you as the people they want to come to.  We’re looking forward to working with you!

Contact: Mark Harrison, CEO & Chris Abraham, President and COO, Abraham Harrison, LLC

We at Abraham Harrison, LLC, have built our entire company around enabling our team members to live and work from anywhere in the world; as long as they have a good internet connection and their laptop.

In fact, Abraham Harrison, LLC was formed three years ago while our CEO, Mark Harrison, was living and volunteering in a small fishing village on the southern tip of Zanzibar.  His thatch-roofed hut had no running water, but it had electricity and a 3G mobile internet connection.

Chris Abraham, who was then running AbrahamPR.com, called up Mark, who had run a successful virtual consulting firm over the turn of the millennium, and asked him if he would take over the CEO role of Chris’s rapidly growing PR company.  Mark agreed, but on the condition that the firm would be built as a virtual company that would allow all co-workers to work from wherever they happened  to be in the world.

Mark now has a proper roof and even running water in his houses in Mauritius and Berlin, but the ethos of the firm has remained the same: our company lives 100% on the internet, and our people can live anywhere.

Abraham Harrison operates smoothly around the clock, spread across 14 time zones, with all of our documents, systems, and information in the cloud, being accessed and collaborated upon by our team members via their laptops, Blackberrys, and iPhones, under the shade of a palm, in the powdery snow of the Rockies, or in the bustle of Berlin or Washington, DC.

Abraham Harrison, LLC is an online PR and Brand Promotion firm that not only knows the online social media lifestyle like no other PR shop worldwide but lives the traveler and expat experience every day.

Abraham Harrison is a 18-person shop with team members spread across the world – the United States, Germany, Holland, South Africa, India, Nepal, and Mauritius.  Our CEO, Mark Harrison, who has been an expat for half his life and a traveler for far more, splits his year between Mauritius, and Berlin, Germany.  Our President and COO, Chris Abraham, splits his year between Germany and Washington, DC.

Our head of technology is an expat in Nepal, our Director of Operations lives between San Francisco and Capetown, and one of our project managers is currently spending two years in Holland, another works from Brazil when she is there volunteering.  Together, the members of our team have lived in or visited 52 countries.  We speak not only English, but German, French, Spanish, Afrikaans, Swahili, and Hindi.

I am not willing or able to say that the following 91 blog posts about social media, blogging, new media, social networking, etc, are the definite top-91 posts because I didn’t have the time or attention to go through all of my 5,437 blog posts:

1. Social Media Reputation Management
2. The Social Mediasphere is Truly Global
3. Real PR Takes Real Relationships, Really
4. Imagine Meeting Someone in a Bar
5. What Motivated You to Learn About Social Media?
6. Strong Community Demands Strong Leadership
7. Three Mistakes PR Folks Make Pitching Bloggers
8. What in the Heck are Twitter Hashtags?
9. Do Social Media Solutions Stagnate After Acquisition?
10. What is the Difference Between Marketing and PR Online?
11. Should Your Business Tap Social Networks?
12. Comprehensive Online Conversation Marketing Campaigns
13. Marketing in the New Millenium is PR
14. Blogger Outreach is PR and Not Marketing
15. Only Public Diplomacy Can Heal the U.S. Brand Perception Crisis Abroad
16. PR Needs Geeks
17. Corporations Do Social Media Wrong
18. Online Field Marketing
19. Web 2.0 Mirrors America as She Actually Appears
20. Live Commercials are the New Black for Television
21. Online Outreach and Online Engagement Primer
22. Do PR Execs and Lawyers Have the Same Bad Rep?
23. The Gap Between the Geeks and the Wonks Needs to be Mended
24. Old PR Needs to Learn to Love Not Loathe the People
25. What is a Vertical Blog?
26. Online Communities are Real Communities of Real People
27. Caveat Emptor et Lector
28. Long Tail PR Requires New Media Marketing and Online Outreach
29. Control the Language and you Control the Mind
30. PR A-List Bloggers are Alexa Amateurs
31. Online Communities are Not Virtual
32. Bloggers Can Ignore Basic Journalism Ethics
33. What I Would Have Done if I Were Edelman Me2Revolution
34. The New York Times Code of Ethics is Mandatory for Journalists Not Bloggers
35. In Defense of Edelman over Bribery Charges
36. Online Publicity
37. RSS Feed and Syndication Strategy
38. People Talk Online Like They Do Over Coffee or Across the Cubicle
39. Hill Holliday is an Expert at Textual Healing Flash for SEO
40. Repost: Blogs the Main Stream Media Read Redux
41. Online Reputation Management
42. Ping Servers and Wire Services Converge
43. Prospect Bloggers Before Blogger Outreach
44. New Press Releases Need Not Be New Media
45. How Many Influencers, Influencials, and Opinion Leaders are There?
46. Effective PR Blogging
47. Search Engine Optimization Works like a Champ
48. Magical Misdirection in Public Affairs and Politics
49. We Bloggers are Kingmakers
50. Authentic is as Authentic Does in the Blogosphere
51. Your Key Online Influencers are a One In A Million
52. MSM is Losing Control of the Press via Blogging, the Next Gutenberg Revolution
53. The Gender Divide in the Blogosphere is Actually a Literacy Divide
54. How Can Main Stream Media and Bloggers/Citizen Journalists Collaborate to Produce Better News/Information?
55. Is There a Widening Gap Between Mainstream Media and Bloggers/Citizen Journalists?
56. What is the Diff Between Advertising, Media Relations, PR, Marketing, Selling, Branding, and SPAM
57. The Definition of Medium as in “Because the Medium is the Message”
58. Why I Blog What I Blog on this Particular Blog
59. Brand Protection on Blogs
60. Articles About Blogging for Business, Professional Blogging, Corporate Blogging and PR Blogging
61. A Sample of the Best Blog, Blogging, and Internet Articles
62. Online Advertising’s Tipping Point Approaches
63. PR Blogging for Brand Promotion
64. The Interconnectedness of the Blogosphere and Mediasphere
65. Top Ten Rules for New Media Branding
66. An Argument for Online Market Intelligence
67. Virtual Communities v Blogosphere
68. Caveat Emptor et Lector
69. Always Remember the 95 Theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto
70. Effective PR Blogging
71. Control Your Google Listing
72. Quick Blog Search Engine Optimization Tips You Can Control
73. Don’t Worry You Didn’t Miss the Height of the Blogosphere
74. The Blogosphere Exists and it Can Include MSM
75. Comprehensive Online Conversation Marketing Campaigns
76. Three Mistakes PR Folks Make Pitching Bloggers
77. Earned Media for SEO and Profit
78. Using Twitter for Branding and Engagement
79. Social Media Reputation Management
80. The Powerful SEO Benefits of Blogger PR Outreach
81. Always Remember the 95 Theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto
82. Should Your Business Tap Social Networks?
83. Blogger Outreach is PR and Not Marketing
84. Live Commercials are the New Black for Television
85. All About Word-of-Mouth Marketing AKA Buzz Marketing
86. Journalism Gods Agree with Me on The Bribe
87. Marketing Online
88. What to Do When Your Decide Your Company Should Blog
89. Fake it ‘Til You Make It Repost
90. Purina ONE is Role Model for Word-Of-Mouth Marketing
91. What Networking is Versus What Networking Should Be

When I sell Abraham Harrison‘s blogger outreach and blogger PR services I tend to focus on the initial promotional and profile benefits associated with having hundreds of highly targeted organic earned media blog posts show up almost overnight on behalf of our clients.  If you would like to know what this sort of campaign looks like, check out our case studies.

That’s not it, there’s more. As I have mentioned before, unlike SEM, these blog posts, reviews, and mentions are permenant and not ephemeral.

Finally, there is the issue of the powerful and amazing SEO benefits associated with having over 100 bloggers choose to write about your brand, product, campaign, or service.

Unlike pay-for-play services like Review Me, PayPerPost, or IZEA, the blog posts written by the bloggers we reach out to are not pay per post, they are earned media.  When my team and I reach out to our A-Z list bloggers along dozens of verticals targets, it is up to each blogger to choose to accept our message and decide that what we’re offering is worthwhile to post or Twitter.

There is real power associated with this sort of thing. Like any journalistic or consumer-generated promotional pitching, results are not guaranteed; however, we have done this for over two yearsd and our penetration, success, and results have improved over time.

If you want to see the sort of posts that are associated with this kind of blogger PR pitch outreach, here are some examples:

• Thank You All Who Supported International Medical Corps!
• Thank You Operation Survivor Bloggers
• Thank You International Medical Corps Bloggers
• Thank You Again Survivor Corps Bloggers
• Thank You Fresh Air Fund Bloggers
• Book Promotion with Blogger PR 

I am always to allow these things to be as transparent as possible.  What’s more, linking back to all of the fine blog posts that bloggers have shoehorned into their busy days is sort of a link love thank you.

And, to be honest, Google thinks were the bees knees because the content that our messaging drives real content. In all cases, we’re at the mercy of the blogger — if we’re not smart, generous, engaging, charming, positive, responsive, and even supportive, we’ll get tarred and feathered, and so will out client.

We’re better than that.

With each blogger outreach that results in a hundred or more organic earned media, highly-textual, brand-centric, keyword-dense and diverse, and often times almost completely based on the Social Media News Releases (SMNRs) we create for the client, the level of powerful Google, Live.com, Technorati, Ask.com, and Yahoo! love is not only formidable, but, over time, and much sooner than you think, both our social media new releases as well as our blogged content can challenge our clients for top-spot, which is OK because we’re not their competitor.

Here are some examples of client SMNRs we especially like, feel free to check them out:

• http://anamigo.smnr.us
• http://freshair.smnr.us
• http://banclusterbombs.smnr.us
• http://freshairfundcounselors.smnr.us
• http://survivorcorps.smnr.us
• http://iwillnotbebroken.smnr.us
• http://internationalmedicalcorps.smnr.us

I have almost ten-years of SEO experience and have always done things the right way, and Social Media and Blogger PR is the right way. None of us coerce any of our bloggers into blogging, we’re just able to figure out how to appeal, how to give, how to engage, how to message, and how to ask for what we want from our long tail list of upwards of 500 A-list blogger and 30,000 B-Z list bloggers.

Anyway, if you’re interested in learning more or getting on a call with my Director, Dan, my CEO, Mark, and/or me, pop me an email and we’ll sort it out.

(Via Marketing Conversation)

In an effort to really get to know the folks who are “in my space” and in the space of my firm, Abraham Harrison, I downloaded the AdAge Power 150 OPML and hacked it into a spreadsheet.  Then, I had my team look up the names and emails behind the 781 blogs of the Power 150. Then, I reached out to all of them, looking to see if we could maybe do something together, may be get to know each other a little bit better. I offered the list I collected for free and offered to help put together some sort of community.  Well, who knows if these things ever work or not; however, we at Abraham Harrison LLC have had a lot of practice at reaching out to bloggers via email on behalf of our clients and earning hundreds of supportive and awesome “earned media” blog posts.  Jon Burg’s Future Vision agrees in his article The difficult art of cold pitching – Chris Abraham’s pitch to the AdAge Power 150.  Thanks, man — I really appreciate the kudos!

the difficult art of cold pitching – Chris Abraham’s pitch to the AdAge Power 150

Call it ePR, blogger outreach/relationship management, networking, social media activation or social marketing…  at it’s heart, this is the practice of speaking with the community;  enlisting bloggers and the community at large, to speak about your efforts and on behalf of your brand.

• If you have a relationship with a blogger, you can leverage this relationship to drive your brand/client.
• If you do not yet have a relationship, you have to start building one.
• If you need something done today, and don’t have a relationship, you need to resort to the daunting cold pitch: pitching your product or service without any prior interaction.
  

Chris Abraham, a noted blogger and popular twitterer, recently sent out a private email message to many of the bloggers on the Ad Age Power 150 list, asking them to register their contact information.

His note was personal, personable and extremely well written.  It felt like he was really speaking to me.  No, he didn’t mention any of my previous posts.  And yes, there is a strong likelihood that this letter was a form letter.  Nevertheless, this letter feels somewhat warm, an incredible accomplishment for a cold pitch.

The Pitch

Hi there Jon

I wanted to reach out to you since you’re a current fellow member of the AdAge Power 150 with Future Visions. Please excuse the form email but there are over 780 current Power 150 members. I am popping you this note for two reasons: first, I would like your help to do something with this list; second, I just want to update you as to what I am up to.

To create this list, I collected the OPML file free off of the Power 150 page on Adage and expanded it into a list with names and emails. I would love to share the list with you so please pop me an email if you would like a copy. I was hoping we might figure out a way to keep in better touch as a group of marketing, PR, and advertising bloggers. Please shoot me any ideas you have. I was thinking we could create a community group to share news, ideas, and opportunities to work together. On that note, I am the president and COO of Abraham Harrison LLC, a firm specializing in social media PR, blogger outreach, online engagement, and online reputation management. I would love to schedule a call so that we can explore possibilities to collaborate.

On a personal note, I have started blogging for AdAge and have had so much fun with that that I am looking to find as many opportunities to blog as I can. Please let me know if you know of anything or if you would like me to guest blog. Also, if you’re in the DC area I would love to get together. To be honest, I would love to meet you the next time I am in your neck of the woods.

Thanks so much and I appreciate your time and attention.  I wish you a very fine 2009 with much luck and success.

Cheers,

Chris
<note: Lots of contact information was provided, but I have deleted it out of concern for Chris’ privacy>

So what do we think?  Is this a cold pitch done right? 

Note: After reading this letter, I’m still unsure of what will be done with my contact information.  Is this being gathered as a closed list/community for AdAge?  Is this a contact list for his firm?  Will my contact information be shared with anyone outside of this community?

Here are some photos of my CEO, Mark Harrison, working from the Mauritius offices of Abraham Harrison. What a gorgeous land, what a gorgeous island. I love these photos. Thanks to Lasse Manthei for taking them.

We have been using Central Desktop now for a while and really love it. It allows Abraham Harrison’s entire distributed team to collaborate and work together. We love it. Well, Abraham Harrison is being featured as one of Central Desktop’s case studies, Successful Global Task Management Across 3 Continents 

Abraham & Harrison’s Biggest wins using Central Desktop:

• Ability to manage a global team across 10 time zones and 4 continents
• Found it to be an unbeatable value and unbeatable workspace system after an extensive 4 month comparison of over 60 tools
• Easy customization for business critical campaign management needs
• 50% faster at finding documents

“We spent 4 months looking and tested 60 different tools before choosing Central Desktop.”- Sara Wilson

What Abraham & Harrison does:

• Online Public Relations
• Online Reputation Management
• Social Media Consulting
• It is an internet based virtual company – everyone works remotely from home

The Problem:

• Could not assign tasks to different groups of users with Basecamp
• Finding documents proved to be nearly impossible before Central Desktop

How Central Desktop Helped:

• Project Workspaces are created for each project
• Wiki Workspaces are created to share information with other team members internally

Central Desktop – Benefits:

• The ability to assign tasks streamlined daily business processes
• Crucial campaign organization can now be done inside the Central Desktop workspace
• Customization options allowed Abraham & Harrison to associate tasks w/milestones
• Task-management tools increased productivity
• Easier search functions and simple email integration saved precious time