My Director of Client Service, Daniel Krueger, wrote an insightful blog post over at Abraham Harrison’s PR and marketing blog, Marketing Conversation, called Marketing in the New Millenium. The story is in growing response to the fine article from Norman Birnback over at PR Backtalk, including Spread The Word: Blogs Matter We Just Can’t Measure It!!, Blogger Outreach is PR and Not Marketing and On Survivor Corps’ Blogger Outreach. Check it out:

TV & print are soooo 1900’s ;). Welcome to the new millennium. We’ve been here for some time now, but I think all of the social media and new initiatives for marketing – like blogger outreach and online campaigns – are really just starting to flourish.

I am currently managing a project for Abraham & Harrison for a non-profit company called Survivor Corps. The purpose of this campaign has been to promote the transition of the Landmine Survivors Network into Survivor Corps and to promote the book, ”I Will Not Be Broken,” written by Survivor Corps co-founder Jerry White. The book is a fascinating story of Jerry’s own personal tragedy of losing his leg in a freak accident and then the rebuilding of his life. Jerry has interviewed thousands of victims and in this book shares what he and they have learned about living and thriving after a tragic event.

The main way we have handled this campaign has been through an online blogger outreach to demographics we thought would be receptive to the message that Jerry and Survivor Corps are trying to spread. Each blogging demographic we reached out to, was crafted a message for that particular group. Norman Birnback wrote a very insightful post about the method we used for this campaign and I think he hit the nail right on the head. While his article was focused on how to establish metrics in a blogging initiative, he saw that we didn’t cookie cut a mass email, but crafted our message to the particular group we were reaching out to. Two other very important parts of this campaign were the creation of multiple social networking groups and presences along with the creation of two social media news releases which basically give a “who, what, why” in a neat and tidy format.

Some companies and agencies, like Survivor Corps, are starting to look outside the box at alternative methods of reaching targeted audiences. As the blogging communities continue to grow, outreaches like this one are essential to make sure that the the group you are targeting is aware of your campaign.

Via Marketing Conversation

“Okay, you have a blog and consider yourself a blogger. The next step is how to build your prestige, your readership, and your reputation. This class will demystify the process of taking your personal blog and developing it into a popular resource. Being brilliant, funny, insightful, and inspired is just the beginning; learn how to help your hungry audience find you. 1 session,” Advanced Blogging Workshop

Advanced Blogging

Writer’s Center Workshop Bethesda, May 1^st, 2007

Description

Okay, you have a blog and consider yourself a blogger. The next step is how to build your prestige, your readership, and your reputation. This class will demystify the process of taking your personal blog and developing it into a popular resource. Being brilliant, funny, insightful, and inspired is just the beginning; learn how to help your hungry audience find you.

Instructor

· Chris Abraham, Founding Partner, Abraham Harrison LLC

o www.abrahaharrison.com

o cabraham@chrisabraham.com

o +1 202-657-403

· Blogging since 1999 www.chrisabraham.com

Short Review of Blogs and Blogging

· Ease of publishing.

· Discoverability (Pings weblogs.com or technorati or another ping server)

· Conversationality (Trackbacks or as-they-happen referer logs, or now being part of Technorati and other blog search engines)

· Linkability (All posts should have permalinks)

· Syndicatability (All content should be available in RSS feeds)

· Commentability (All posts should welcome comments)

· Okay to be subjective and opinionated (encouraged!)

· Blogs can influence culture and mainstream media

· CGM, citizen journalism, citizen marketing, new PR

Blogging Best Practices

· Short, pithy, entries

· Constantly updated

· Only one long work a week

· Shameless, assertive, opinionated, unapologetic

· Shows respect, dignity, reciprocity

· Give more than you take

· Join the conversation and community

· Assumes good intent

Reputation as a blogger

· Techniques for building prestige and influence

o Reciprocal links and linking

o Blogroll and blogrolling

o Citations

o Comments

o Pinging ping-servers

o Press releases

o Email requests

o IM and email relationships

o Drinks, dinner, lunch, or coffee

Introduction to Viral Marketing

· Word-of-mouth, buzz, viral, and grassroots

· Authentic, transparent, conversational, honest

· Ask for what you need, give what others need

· Tell people who you are and why you are there

· “Astroturfing” is not worth the short term benefit

· The blogosphere is conversational

· Message, client message, messaging

· Network of weak blogs generally win over a powerful media

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization

· Google loves blogs (because Google loves text because it can “see” text)

· Google favors sites that are constantly updated (one a week at minimum)

· Make sure your blog pings: www.pingomatic.com/

· Make sure Google knows you: www.google.com/addurl

· Social bookmarking on Newsvine, Netscape, Digg, and Reddit

· Categories, tags, and tagging: del.icio.us, furl.net, spurl.net, reddit.com

· Be careful how you use pronouns (he, she, and it says nothing)

· Learn about Google Sitemap: www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps

· We aware of how you use keywords in your blog (density and diversity)

· Optimize your blog like a website (meta tags, alt tags, keywords)

Introduction to Online Brand Promotion

· Blogger advocacy and outreach – top-down,

· Develop a list of blogs appropriate to your campaign

· Mommy blogs, A-Lists blogs, marketing blogs, sports blogs

· Keep a spreadsheet of all the blogs you might want to contact

· Dig into each blog looking for their contact info (not easy at all)

· Develop general message (called a message model)

· Send an bespoke email of introduction and message

· Always give more than you take: gift is key

· Keep record of all blogs and bloggers who respond well

· Delete (remove) bloggers who request it

· Make explicit opt-in request from friendly bloggers

· Don’t assume they want your message

· Reputation is based on trust and fairness – never trifle or lie

• Blog messaging and engagement – bottom-up, grassroots, organic
  • Go to a blog search engine (Technorati, Ask.com, Blogsearch, etc)
  • Type in a topical keyword, phrase, or topic
  • Visit the blogs that are talking about your market, topic, or interest
  • Where appropriate, leave a short note
  • Come back tomorrow (or as often as you can) and do the same thing
  • Make sure to message only where people might be interested
  • Inform, don’t spam

Introduction to Online Brand Protection

• User Google Alerts and other keyword email alerts to track online conversation
  • Other tools exist, such as TruCast, TruView, Buzzlogic, and other tools
• Reputation management should start long before any crisis needs management
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is always an essential consideration online
• The last word counts most (especially on blog search engines like Technorati)
• Recent posts get indexed (the current conversation counts the most)
• Everything lasts forever on Google (make sure your side of the story is on record)
• Request – never demand – bloggers and blogs remove defamatory content

Important reading

· Naked Conversations by by Shel Israel & Robert Scoble www.redcouch.typepad.com

· Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542

· Applied Blogging Workshop www.appliedblogging.org

· Abraham Harrison LLC Marketing Conversation www.chrisabraham.com/our-insights

If you want to become a better bloggers, monetize your blog, and create and build your personal brand then I recommend attending the PostieCon ’07 in Orlando, Florida, on June 1 & 2, 2007. Register now because PostieCon ’07 is cheap at $199.95, but only until May 18th. Even without PostieCon ’07, Orlando is cool, inexpensive, warm, sunny, and seriously entertaining. There is no way this Con is going to be either lame or geeky. It’ll be rock star.

PostieCon ’07 promises to be a fun, informative, educational, and important event, and if you register early, you can save money. So, what are you waiting for? A pop-up window?

PostieCon ’07 is a two-day event that will be held from June 1-2, 2007 in Orlando, Florida. By registering, not only will you be getting to take a mini-vacation to one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, you will receive:

* VIP access to all conference sessions, workshops, and extra-curricular events
* Breakfast (with eggs) Lunch, Drinks and Snacks on Friday and Saturday
* Saturday early evening open bar with hot and cold appetizers
* Sit down dinner with open bar at the award banquet on Saturday evening
* Cool swag to take home

Registration Special: If you register today, you will receive your “backstage pass” for the low, low cost of $199.95. Act soon, because after May 18, 2007, registration costs go up to $249.95.

PostieCon ’07 attendees will get something that no one can put a price on, namely the networking opportunities, blogging tips, business tips, and time spent with some of the best and brightest in the business to bounce ideas around.

I have been blogging since 1999 over at “Because the Medium is the Message“, http://www.chrisabraham.com. Part of what has always been tough for me is figuring out how to take something I am passionate about, blogging and social media, and actually make a bit of a living from it. I have done an appalling job of it and have made all the mistakes. Only now am I finally at the point where my blogging basically pays my car payments. My goal is to help the new kids get their voices out there with fewer and fewer boundaries. I want to make sure my mistakes benefit them.

The second event is called PostieCon ’07 http://www.postiecon.com. It’s a blogger convention down in Orlando, Florida, on June 1 & 2. I want to draw your attention to it in the hopes that maybe you’ll consider speaking at it, or spread just spread the word with your readers

I think PostieCon ’07 is cool because it is for the rest of us bloggers who have yet to ascend to top-200. While TED and SXSW and VON are super-cool, they’re also super PhD-level. PostieCon ’07 is all about the training up the bush league.

As I see it there are three reasons (probably many more) why your readers should know about this Con, and perhaps attend:

a) Let super-serious B-, C-, D-List bloggers meet each other, put a name to a face, conspire on ways to get better, and trade war stories and

b) Let some serious experts and A-Listers, like us, share their experience, hope, and joy as well as leading them by the hand to monetization strategies, how to build brand, how to attract readership and traffic, and all the stuff you need to do (and seems obvious to use) in order to go from D- to C- to B- to A-List!

c) To quote the site: “Why should you attend PostieCon ’07 ’07? Two words: Rock Star.”

That said, I hope you consider speaking at PostieCon. Your voice would be very welcome. If you can’t make it, I was hoping that you might share the love with your readers (as attendees) or other folks who might be really into speaking at PostieCon. And, as you know, I am not asking for any particular coverage. You are free to say or do anything you like with this email and the content herein. That’s the way things work. So, just consider this an official love note.

Why Should I Attend PostieCon ’07?

Why should you attend PostieCon ’07 ? Two words: Rock Star. Bloggers and Internet personalities are the Rock Stars of the information age. Bloggers reach millions of dedicated fans on a day to day basis, it’s easy to see why today’s humble blogger could potentially be tomorrow’s Rock Star. That’s why PostieCon ’07 ‘s theme is “You’re A Rock Star”. We are here to educate bloggers on how to build traffic and readership, and use your notoriety and unique brand to create value and monetize your voice. It’s not all about money and fame, our conference is designed to help you become a better blogger. We have invited some of the world’s biggest bloggers to share their knowledge, perspective and experience with PostieCon ’07 Attendees. We provide the peeps and the knowledge, you use it to better yourself and build your blog.

Want to be a Speaker?

PostieCon ’07 will, have numerous opportunities for speakers. From individual presentations to group discussions, the event is open to speakers who represent the diversity of our bloggers. PostieCon ’07 ‘s theme is You’re A Rock Star, and its goal is to introduce bloggers to methods of making their blogs better, more known, and more profitable. This event is open to all bloggers from anywhere and everywhere, from the most seasoned to the greenest of the greenhorns. (For rookie bloggers, we have a special featured event: Blogger Boot Camp.)

Currently, PostieCon ’07 is searching for the best speakers to share their knowledge with the attendees of this exciting, one-of-a-kind event. So, who are we looking for?

- Does your blog or new media site lead the industry?

- Does your traffic make your friends and competitors frothing-at-the-mouth jealous?

- Does your expertise in this competitive industry earn you a good income?

- Is your format the envy of your friends, peers, and competitors?

- Have you come to the realization that in the new media universe, your content is king?

- Are you the owner of a unique, compelling success story?

- Are you at the forefront of the blogging/new media industry?

- Are you an advertiser looking to reach out to bloggers?

If your answer to any or all of these questions is “yes,” then you’re exactly the kind of person we’re looking for. Our attendees deserve to hear from the best, and sometimes the best person for the job isn’t the most famous or well-known. We need to hear from you, so don’t be shy — we don’t byte.

If you’re an advertiser with a product you feel would be useful to our target audience, and wish to get your product in the hands of tomorrow’s notables of the blogging scene, this is an excellent opportunity for you as well. Please contact us and explain to us what makes your product or service essential for our industry’s niche needs.

For more information or to become a speaker contact our Event Coordinator Britt Gustafson

Robert Scoble

Robert Scoble is an American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. He is number 9 on Forbes Top 25 Web Celebrities. Scoble is best known for his popular blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technical evangelist at Microsoft. He is married to Maryam Ghaemmaghami Scoble, and has a son, Patrick, from a previous marriage. He and his wife currently work at PodTech.net, a video-podcast startup. He is also the co-author of Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers with Shel Israel.

* Session: Living in a Google World

David Ponce

David Ponce is a 26 year old web entrepreneur who took up blogging as a hobby over three years ago. Quickly realizing the potential of the niche-marketed micro publishing business, he quit his full time job as a computer salesman to devote to full time blogging. His articles, written on OhGizmo.com, have been linked to from a plethora of sites, including Gizmodo, Engadget, Yahoo’s The 9, Slashdot, Digg and BoingBoing. David himself has been interviewed by several mainstream publications, such as PC World Magazine and SmartMoney Magazine. He currently serves as Executive Editor of the site, managing a small team of 5 rotating writers, and has plans for launching several other sites to form a network.

* Session: Turning Visits into Cash

Michelle Madhok

Michelle Madhok is Founder of SheFinds.com and SheFindsMom.com, online publications distributed via e-mail and blogs that help busy women everywhere shop the web for the latest beauty and style finds.

A widely regarded expert in online shopping, Michelle is also the style columnist for and a contributing editor for MSN Shopping, Cotton Incorporated and the American Heart Association. Her style and shopping tips have been featured in numerous newspapers and magazines, radio and television interviews, including Metro newspapers in New York and Boston,Women’s Wear Daily, The Tyra Banks show, NBC, Investor’s Business Daily, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Post, and the Washington Post.

Prior to launching SheFinds, Michelle enjoyed a career in new media. First, she was the Director of Entertainment Marketing for CBS Broadcasting New Media and then she was the Group Director of Editorial Products for women and oversaw all content for women at AOL. Michelle has a BS in Communications from UC Berkeley and a MS in Marketing from Northwestern University. She currently resides in New York City with her husband, Michael Palka.

* Session: Turning Your Passion Into Dollars

Nancy Shenker

Marketing Guru, Blogger, and Former Hippy Girl Nancy A. Shenker is Founder & Principal of theONswitch, a firm specializing in start-ups, business transformations, and non-traditional growth solutions. She frequently consults on “smart” marketing spending, PR, and branding and has written several “how to” guides for business owners. Her “business blog” is “The ONblog” (http://theonswitch.typepad.com/theonblog/) and her newest blog, about the ways in which communication and life have changed (and yet stayed the same) is “Hippy to Wiki” (http://theonswitch.typepad.com/hippytowiki/). “I encourage all PostieCon ’07 attendees to get in touch with me before June and tell me what they want to hear about when I speak!”

* Session: Hippy to Wiki: How Blogs and “Traditional” Communication Can Live in Peace (and make $$)

Sherry Heyl

Recently nominated for Women in Technology “Woman of the Year” Sherry Heyl is the CEO and Idealist for What a Concept! Her responsibilities include business development and inspiring ideas and communication strategies. Sherry has been involved in the technology industry since 1998 when she developed her own curriculum at FSU to study ecommerce. Currently she creates strategic plans for integrating streaming video, blogs, podcasts, RSS, and virtual worlds into communication plans for B2B, B2C, Non-profit and Higher Education organizations. Sherry has been a guest speaker and keynote speaker for the Project Management Institute (PMI), a panelist for the 400 Technology Connector, TechLINKS, and Customer Relationship Management Association (CRMA), and is on the board of directors for the Atlanta Electronic Commerce Forum (AECF) as the programs director and has participated in putting programs together for the Atlanta Media Bloggers Group and AeA and is a member of the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) and the Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association. Sherry is a graduate of Florida State University with undergraduate degrees in Marketing and Creative Writing.

* Session: Why Live Life Online?

Jim Kukral

Jim is a veteran online marketing expert and award-winning blogger who focuses on helping businesses, or bloggers, make money or find publicity online through creative marketing ideas and strategies. Jim has been blogging since 2001 and has participated and worked on over 30 blogs since that time and has written thousands of blog entries. He is the publisher of ReveNews.com, the leading online revenue group blog that focuses on the billion dollar industry of Internet revenue. Jim is also the founder of BlogKits, a blog advertising network that focuses on helping bloggers find creative ways to generate revenue.

* Session: The Secrets To Long-Term Blog Success & Profitability

Lena West

Lena L. West is the CEO & Chief Strategist at xynoMedia Technology. Affectionately known as the “geek with speak”, Lena understands complex technology concepts and distills them into easy-to- understand strategies. xynoMedia helps mid-market companies make sense of their place in the online world by developing customized, progressive Internet strategies that consistently increase thought leadership, online revenues and visibility. West communicates her expertise about social media, web 2.0 and online technologies through regular writing for Jupitermedia, her InfoWorld.com blog and her Entrepreneur.com column and blog. She is also on the BlogHer Business Advisory Board and a member of the Women’s Presidents’ Organization, TENG-NY and the Downtown Women’s Club. Currently, West is conducting research for a book she’s authoring about the role of women in technology. xynoMedia’s mission is to help 10,000 mid-sized businesses grow 25-50% by 2010.

* Session: Building Blog Value

Shirley Frazier

Shirley George Frazier is an excavator who digs up smart marketing solutions for individuals and business owners looking to increase their revenue through effective promotions and collaborations on and off the Web. She’s president of Sweet Survival®, owner of three popular blogs, and author of two best-selling niche industry books. Shirley has more than 16 years of experience conducting seminars on business topics and consulting with a range of clients from home-based professionals to Macy’s. She has appeared on CNBC, The Food Network, and The Discovery Channel, and her expert opinion and articles have been featured in Entrepreneur, Business Start-Ups, Black Enterprise, and Opportunity Magazine.

* Session: Building Your Niche Blog

Kristie Tamsevicius

Kristie Tamsevicius turns authors and speakers into the lavishly paid in-demand experts in their field. She is the host of Speaker Success Talk Radio, the founder of Webmomz.com, a community for work at home moms, president of Branding on the Net and author of several books including, I Love My Life: A Mom’s Guide to Working from Home. A sought-after branding expert, Kristie creates branded websites that position you as a mini celebrity so you increase sales, book more presentations and become headline news.

* Session: Building Your Niche Blog

Dan Rua

Dan is an experienced early-stage venture capital investor with a technology foundation and product design, development and management experience. Inflexion Fund is his third early-stage venture capital fund. Prior to Inflexion, Dan was a Partner with Draper Atlantic, the east coast fund of Silicon Valley’s highly successful early-stage venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Dan has participated in funding and building thirty-two companies and managed funds totaling over $140 million.

* Session: Blogging for Business

The Blog Squad

Known as The Blog Squad, Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff, Psy.D., are authorities in helping independent professionals and small businesses to grow and prosper through optimizing their blogs. Between them, they have 10 blogs they post to on a regular basis covering topics like Internet marketing, business blogging, ezine marketing, writing and marketing books with a blog, plus several private blogs for clients and programs they teach. The Blog Squad are co-authors of “Build a Better Blog: The Ultimate Guide to Boosting Your Business with a Professional Blog” and “Confessions of a Reluctant Blogger: From Boring to Brilliant in 30 Days”, and keepers of the blog site “Build a Better Blog.” They also host a weekly Internet radio show, “Blogging and Beyond.”

* Session: Blogging for Business

Jim Turner

Jim Turner began blogging in early 2004, and began posting about life as a father and husband. He became one of the top Daddy bloggers, and used his expertise to found One By One Media, LLC, a social media consulting firm. While consulting companies on using the new social media for their marketing and advertising needs, Jim then founded Bloggers For Hire, a company that provides professional bloggers to companies. Jim continues to be a well respected professional blogger and has mentored many bloggers to become professionals, and has lead companies to be successful in their online campaigns. Jim is a contributor to Business Blog Consulting, and also writes his personal blog at Genuineblog.com, and is the founder of the The Best of Blog Awards. When he is not blogging, Jim is busy being a husband and father of 4 kids 7 years old and younger.

* Session: Blogging for Business

Paul Lewis

With more than 20 years experience in marketing and information technology, Paul Lewis has gained recognition as a leading visionary and author in the field of modern marketing strategy. Through his expertise, Paul has served on the Advisory Board for the Direct Marketing Association and spoken at numerous marketing conferences worldwide such as DM Days, the Power of eMarketing and UFI Open Summer Seminar in Finland, presenting on topics including Generation Y and the digital generation, cross-media campaigning and relationship marketing. He is currently the co-author of the upcoming publication Y: Outside the Polls and Inside the Minds of the Millennials and is the President/CEO of Interactive Agency MindComet.

* Session: Connecting with Advertisers

“Tonight I am teaching Advanced Blogging for the Writer’s Center at Glen Echo tonight. To follow is the syllabus.” Via Applied Blogging Workshop

Shel Holz is smart and insightful in his response to the bad rap that PR gets these days: “The lying profession? Please. … And who, in this era of like-it-or-not transparency, believes they can get away with a lie anyway?” Via Strumpette. My response? I feel the same way about the reputation of the defense attorney as I do about PR. Defense attorneys have appalling reps. “How the hell can you represent him? He’s a murderer! He’s a rapist! He’s a scum!”

Well, the problem is is that since the PR profession is, in a lot of ways, a neutral solution, PR tends to begin to pick up the tastes, the coloring, and the aroma of the additive, the client.

Most attorneys wish that they could “cherry pick” their clients and so do most advertisers and PR professionals. I hear, all the time, that taking on so-and-so a client would be bad for brand and I am appalled by that.

My friends over a TickleKitty, a sex shop, need New Media Marketing and WOM PR as well, but lots of folks are either too uptight, too puritanical, or too judgmental (or too attached and afraid so as to have lost some requisites: shamelessness and fearlessness, a competitive advantage in an industry that is afraid of its collective shadow).

What I love about Edelman and their respective practice heads and VPs+ is that they’re pretty shameless (though they don’t quite have fearless under control and their hubris and arrogance is off the charts).

So, since PR is itself so neutral — some call it shape-shifting or chameleon-like (there is no there there) then we take a lot of the brunt for the actions of the client. We suffer for the sins of the father…

I responded in-depth to a question from Charles Edward Frith that was asked over at Strumpette, in response to my long comment,

“a huge portion of the population that are social media averse; gadget allergic even. How do you propose to get your message to this group?” I misunderstood his question and replied as though he asked, “a huge portion of the PR, advertising, and marketing population…” as opposed to the “general” population, and so my response is based on that misunderstanding and premise… “You really can’t — the main reason that I only lasted at Edelman for 90-days is because they never used me for my expertise in Linux, RSS, SEO, geek culture, geek cred… they really just wanted someone else who “got blogs” Blogs are also the Web 2.0 platform, too. The gulf between Communication School and the MIT Media Lab is too deep.”

Here is the comment from Charles Edward Frith in full:

“I’m not sure if you’re responding to me Chris. It is OK to address people directly in orums; we call it the conversation. If you are, I am saying that there is a huge portion of the population that are social media averse; gadget allergic even. How do you propose to get your message to this group?

And here is my long, ranting, and misdirected response:

“You really can’t — the main reason that I only lasted at Edelman for 90-days is because they never used me for my expertise in Linux, RSS, SEO, geek culture, geek cred… they really just wanted someone else who “got blogs” Blogs are also the Web 2.0 platform, too. The gulf between Communication School and the MIT Media Lab is too deep.

They didn’t even see what I was, which was a geek first, a marketer second. I don’t know if I can share this here, but here are some of my ideas on the subject… http://www.cabraham.com/ideas — to me, it is really about both the community and also the platform.

One needs to blog — message — at both the people in the blogosphere but also to the semantic web. When I realised that www.edelman.com was anti-SEO-optimized (it didn’t care at all about search engine optimization at all!), and really didn’t care (and they were afraid of upsetting IT and the people who ran the site) I was pretty sure I had made a terrible decision.

New Marketing needs to understand ping servers, online communities, cirtual worlds, RSS, RSS2, ATOM, GData, tags, labels, Google juice, the semantic web, gadgetization, what “slashdotted” is, why del.icio.us and digg and reddit and Newsvine and Stumbleupon are important. They need to grok Revver and Vox and Facebook and they need to know what “WordPress, Movable Type, Drupal, Xoops, Joomla, phpBB, etc” are.

This isn’t just “how to IM Kos” — this is about Internet Forensics and fisking and unintended consequences and blowback and counter-messaging.

There is a lot more going on than just “activating email lists” and “creating a blog.”

And we have not even talked about Prediction Markets, we have not talked about message boards, we have not talked about YouTube (it is a community, not a video site, at its heart), or Flickr (same thing, it is a community and it is not Photobucket).

New Media Marketing and New PR needs to know what Web 2.0 is, not as a buzz word or as hocus pocus. It is a platform, it is an emergence, it is a honey pot. It is “build it and they will come,” but only if it is cool and and compelling, and always in beta, and never loses focus of the users’ needs.

Actually, Yahoo and AOL are getting their game on again. Google gets it in its source code. Why are PR and marketing firms so risk averse? Why, to quote you, Mr, Charles Edward Frith, why is there a “huge portion of the population that are social media averse; gadget allergic even?”

And when I say that, I am talking about Edelman, I am talking about NMS, I am talking about Ogilvy. It is our responsibility as media professionals to be so expert in the technology, the protocol, the culture, and the passion (called passion chamber, as another term for the blogosphere’s echo chamber — and I own www.passionachamber.com, actually) so that this population doesn’t have to.

A population that universally adopts iPods, Plasma HDTVs, and DirecTV with TiVO is not gadget allergic.

What Old PR and Old Media might be really great at is taking an ubergeek like me and working with me to translate all of this cool stuff to the 7th grade reading ease so that new media and web 2.0 can better connect. This will be more and more important.

Unfortunately, when it comes to influencing the influencer, that person is not the “population” — that is a person who thinks that “salesmen” and “PR executives” and “advertising folks” are a bunch of wankers who don’t get it, wouldn’t know cool if it hit ‘em in the face, who are too focused on what people think about them to ever allow people to get to know them, to be authentic, and to be open.

The bad PR that PR has felt for years: snake oil salesmen, hustlers, pretty boys, spin-doctors, and inauthentic, opportunistic liars is exacerbated in the rarefied web where all of these things are not tolerated at all — and to be honest, nobody has to.

Lots of PR people I know tell me that they have to be risk-averse and they have to pull punches because the PR world is incestuous and to be honest, burning bridges is a death blow to one’s career. I am told the same thing by folks in the Valley who are afraid of insulting the silicon Gods.

Coming from a place of fear is just plain unacceptable. At the end of the day, I am a Linux SA who loves to hack PHP and MySQL and so really, I am neither a Valley wag nor am I am PR lifer. Most of my consulting deals with my niche of genius and I don’t see myself as ever getting too tarred or feathered — never to the point where people will cease hiring my counsel… even if it is on the down low after my name is mud.

So, I am not really tolerant when it comes to this PR sycophantism. The Internet and the bloggers and the people who matter now don’t play that. I know reporters and they do surely covet and protect and are jealous of their career arcs. And this fear for career and for immortality is easy to coerce and control.

Web 2.0 is not about control. The X factor in new marketing is that people really have no career arc, people online really cannot be kept in the kind of sycophantic blackmail that is common on Capitol Hill, on Madison Avenue, on K Street, and also in Silicon Valley.

When Edelman has to block Strumpette from 2,000 laptops and desktops held in their worldwide network, then maybe Edelman and the like aren’t as new media and new public relations as they would like to preach.

You can’t have it both ways. The only two things that the Internet doesn’t suffer: fear and hypocrisy. And from what I have been seeing, there seems to be a lot of both of them, both in Old PR and Marketing as well as in “new marketing” and “new media PR.”

Anyway, I am ranting. I have a call soon so I am going to stop now and click on “Submit Comment.” Thanks in advance for indulging me. I am going to rewrite this a little and post it on my blog… cheers for making me thing and making write! I have been way too busy to take the time to really download.”

I teach blogging workshops for the Writer’s Center and four of them are coming up. They all have spots still available. On Thursday, March 1, I teach Blogging Basics at Glen Echo from 7:30PM-10PM; Blogging Basics at Arlington Arts Center on March 6 from 11AM-1PM; Advanced Blogging at the Arlington Arts Center on March 13 from 11AM-1PM; and Advanced Blogging at Glen Echo on March 15 from 7:30PM-10PM. Come join me.

People ask me what I think about “full disclosure” and “blogger ethics.” My answer always is, there is no obligation for any blogger to follow the ethical standards of journalists or public officials. Bloggers are bloggers because of the true freedom of speech. Freedom of speech doesn’t demand truth. But, if bloggers want to keep the trust they’ve been given by their readers, then they had better be open, honest, authentic, and transparent.

That said, the trust relationship bloggers have built and enjoy with their readers is quite a powerful feedback. That relationship is the market force that keeps bloggers honest, not ethical standards or requirements. Ultimately, I demand rigorous reader discernment — caveat lector, let the reader beware — and do not suffer morons gladly.

Here are some previous articles that I have written about the topic:

Blogger Ethics Coverage:

The New York Times Code of Ethics is Mandatory for Journalists Not Bloggers

Caveat Emptor et Lector Repost

Bloggers Can Ignore Basic Journalism Ethics

Bloggers do not Aspire to be Journalists

Pay Per Post Coverage:

Vanity Advertising on PayPerPost is Addicting

Edelman Ethics Coverage:

In Defense of Edelman over Bribery Charges

Not a Bribe with Disclosure and Transparency

BL Ochman Gets the Vista Edelman AMD Bribery Scandal

I Think I May Have Jinxed Edelman PR

Andy Sernovitz of WOMMA Blames the Victims in Edelman Controversy

What I Would Have Done if I Were Edelman Me2Revolution

Paul Mooney on and the New York Times’ Silence about the Edelman Bribe

Microsoft Did Not Bribe Bloggers Reports Microsoft

Journalism Gods Agree with Me on The Bribe

I spent nearly three-years living the life if an “NMSer.” It is where I got trained up in the art of new media strategy and new media marketing. I had an amazing experience working there and I am also happy to share the latest post-Meredith purchase in the form of a very nice article, Tracking Who’s Saying What About Whom: New Media Strategies’ ‘Online Analysts’ Scour the Web for Mentions of Opinion-Sensitive Clients, by Kim Hart, on the Washington Post. Simply put, co-founders Pete Snyder and Aaron Earls are truly visionaries, deserving of their notable success.

Tracking Who’s Saying What About WhomNew Media Strategies’ ‘Online Analysts’ Scour the Web for Mentions of Opinion-Sensitive Clients

By Kim Hart

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 29, 2007; Page D01

Moira Curran starts her day at the office by skimming several dozen blogs, occasionally firing off instant messages to her co-workers with links to juicy bits of celebrity gossip.

Then she listens to podcasters chatting about the latest episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” or “Lost.” In the afternoon, she keeps an eye on soap operas on the television set that hangs above her desk.

Ashley Duncan, left, Carrie O’Malley, center, and Jenni Collins are among the New Media Strategies employees who comb the Web for clients that want to protect their brands and public images. (By Ricky Carioti — The Washington Post)

About 70 colleagues, scattered across two floors of an Arlington high-rise, spend eight hours a day doing much of the same. Some of them are also playing video games, watching movies and cruising around MySpace.

That’s exactly what the clients of New Media Strategies, an online marketing company, pay the employees to do. Companies ranging from movie studios and television networks to automakers and burger chains hire these professional Web surfers to scour the Internet for any mention of their brands. Over the past few years, the “online analysts” have helped the companies track their reputations, found ways to get their products noticed and joined online conversations to help steer them the way clients want them to go.

More recently, as the explosion of blogs, social networks and video-sharing sites has driven big companies to recognize the role of Internet image in protecting their bottom lines, traditional media companies and private investors are seeking to buy Web-savvy start-ups that have a toehold in cyberspace.

That’s what happened to New Media Strategies this month, when it was acquired — with two Los Angeles-based online marketing firms — by Meredith Corp., a Des Moines-based media company known for its sturdy lineup of traditional magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies’ Home Journal.

“I see the Internet as the world’s largest focus group,” said Pete Snyder, a former media consultant and political pollster who started the company out of his Capitol Hill apartment eight years ago. He had received a few casual offers to buy the company, but interest spiked in the past year. “So many companies have been so deeply entrenched in old media. . . . Now they’re looking to plow into the Web 2.0 world.”

Evidence of that world abounds in the Arlington office, brightly painted in red, orange and yellow. A podcast studio occupies a corner office, and conference rooms are named “.com,” “.net,” “.gov” and “.org.”

Posters from the movies the company has helped promote line the walls — so many that passersby sometimes ask if the office doubles as a theater. Framed albums from Black Sabbath and several seasons of “American Idol” hang next to a flat-screen television reserved for “product viewing.”

Many of the online analysts wear headphones all day and chat with bloggers via instant messages. Their job is to be the clients’ eyes and ears online, said Clay Dunn, 28, a brand manager who monitors what is said about video games and movies.

He watches for rumors and alerts his Hollywood clients if online coverage goes awry. Once, for example, backstage photos from a movie set surfaced and spoiled a sneak preview already in the works.

Curran, another brand manager who trolls the Web on behalf of television clients, corrects errors published in blogs. If rumors spread that someone’s been fired from the cast of HBO’s “Entourage,” for example, she’s there to set the record straight. If an angry viewer bashes a network for a violent scene in a prime-time show, she’s there to post a rebuttal. She watches soap operas so she’ll be able to chat knowledgably with the rest of the online audience.

“Every day, I’m an absolute sponge,” said Curran, 25.

Curran said she is careful to acknowledge her connection to clients when it’s required. All online marketers have to walk a fine line when they work the blogosphere. Federal Trade Commission rules require them to identify their roles when they’re making a point on behalf of a client, but if they’re gossiping about the latest episode of “Desperate Housewives” they can legally be as anonymous as anyone else.

Ashley Duncan, left, Carrie O’Malley, center, and Jenni Collins are among the New Media Strategies employees who comb the Web for clients that want to protect their brands and public images. (By Ricky Carioti — The Washington Post)

The New Media Strategies employees are young, self-identified tech geeks whose goal is to know the Internet inside and out — an increasingly daunting task as hundreds of new blogs and Web sites crop up every day. They try to stay a few strides ahead of online developments — or at least only a step or two behind.

“The Internet used to be our oyster,” Curran said of the days just a few years ago when there were only chat rooms and message boards to monitor. “It still is, but we have to reassess the things we pay the most attention to.”

New Media Strategies’ entertainment practice was the first to take off; Hollywood has long been willing to spend money to influence the online world. Over the past few years, Coca-Cola, Burger King, AT&T, Dodge and Ford joined the client roster. Most recently, public affairs has become the fastest-growing area for the company.

“Before, we could barely get a politician to spend money on a Web site, let alone a massive Web campaign,” Snyder said from his Arlington office. “The world across the river is waking up to this.”

So are buyers and investors. Media companies are starting to show strong interest in adding interactive firms to their portfolios, said Seth R. Alpert, managing director of AdMedia Partners, a New York investment bank that facilitates deals between advertising and marketing companies. AdMedia represented New Media Strategies in its recent acquisition.

“Serving advertisers is now seen as being more broad than putting ink on paper or building Web sites,” Alpert said.

British marketing giant WPP Group, which includes established advertising firms Ogilvy & Mather and Young & Rubicam, has acquired several interactive-media firms. Nielsen Media Research combined three online-research companies to create Nielsen BuzzMetrics, which analyzes online markets.

In the Washington area, private investors recently put money into another start-up — Clarabridge, a Reston company whose software crawls Web sites, recording what people say about specific products or brands and tabulating the occurrence of positive or negative words to help clients assess their cyberspace images. For example, it tracks recommendations and criticisms about certain airlines on travel sites.

The company calls the process “online intelligence.” It is currently working for pharmaceutical companies to get a sense of how consumers feel about the drugs the clients make.

“This can shape how they spend that million dollars to launch a product,” said Sid Banerjee, co-founder and chief executive of Clarabridge. “There are enough mainstream consumers making decisions on the Internet that they represent a meaningful sample of the market.”

Last week, the company took in $7.2 million in venture capital funding from Intersouth Partners, based in Durham, N.C., and Reston, bringing its total financing to $10 million since it started in 2005.

Cymfony, a Boston interactive-media firm and a competitor of New Media Strategies and Clarabridge, has received $24 million in venture capital cash in the past seven years.

Cymfony got its start doing research for intelligence agencies but decided to use its text-mining software to monitor the consumer-generated Web. Its business has doubled as advertisers take to the Internet, said chief executive Andrew Bernstein.

“There’s too much media online and no one knows where to turn,” he said. “So they turn to us.”

“Pete Snyder, Founder and CEO, New Media Strategies, Inc.: Pete is the Founder and CEO of New Media Strategies, the industry pioneer and market leader in online intelligence, brand promotion and brand protection, headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. Drawing on his background as a pollster and media consultant, Pete founded New Media Strategies in 1999, establishing a new industry in market research, brand marketing and communications. New Media Strategies uses technology to tap into the power of the Internet and the blogosphere, helping leading corporations and causes, including some of the biggest Hollywood brands, to promote and protect their brands and bottom lines, online. As CEO, Pete has guided New Media Strategies’ success and rapid organic growth. Over the past six years, New Media Strategies has built a blue-chip client base that features some of the best known brands and corporations in the world, including among others: ABC, AOL Time Warner, Atari, Boston Beer Company, Burger King Corporation, Dodge, Disney, EA, Elektra Records, HBO, Levi’s, McDonald’s, Monster, Northwest Airlines, Paramount Pictures, RCA Records, Red Bull, Reebok, Revlon, Sci-Fi Channel, Sony, USA Network, and Wyeth. Pete was recently honored as a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards, and New Media Strategies was recently recognized on the “Inc. 500″ listing of the Fastest Growing Companies in America. Proving that a company can focus on fast growth, profitability, and fun, New Media Strategies has been recognized by Washingtonian Magazine as one of “50 Great Places to Work” in Washington, and the Washington Business Journal recently honored New Media Strategies as one of Washington’s Best Places to Work. A former political media consultant and a pollster to New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Pete regularly appears as a commentator on the Fox News Channel and has served as a marketing and political expert on CNBC, The News with Brian Williams, CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, and Fox News Channel’s Your World with Neil Cavuto, Hannity and Colmes and Fox and Friends. New Media Strategies has appeared in national media publications including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and the Hollywood Reporter.”

My good friend George Brett sent me to read Long Tail PR: how to do publicity without a press release (or the press) and I have to admit that the article is an excellent question but there is no there there. In fact, the article might just opening Pandora’s box. I have some answers . . .

“What do you do? Stick with the world you know, and continue calling and emailing releases to the traditional press (trying not to notice that their ranks are shrinking and influence waning)? Start spamming bloggers, too, and hope for the best? Or just treat alpha bloggers like traditional press and shower them with love, while ignoring the rest?” asks Chris Anderson.

A Step-By-Step Guide to Online Brand Promotion AKA Long Tail PR AKA New Media Marketing by Chris Abraham

Firstly, do not abandon traditional methods. Even in a world of virtual online communities, the telephone, the IM, the Press Release, and the email still have their place.

Secondly, There are two methods for locating Topical Online Communities, a Top-Down Approach and a Bottom-Up Approach. Generally, a hybrid approach is most effective, but many promoters prefer one over the other.

The Top-down Approach

The Top-Down approach assumes that the influential conversations happen in online communities with a focused purpose and stated topic. For example, if you want to reach travelers you should first focus your outreach on travel blogs, travel wikis, travel portals, in travel newsgroups, and travel bloggers. This strategy is an essential part of online marketing.

Finding online communities using the Top-Down Approach is easy. Several sites can aid in helping you find topical online communities. Here’s how to do it:

Go to Google and search for your topic. Be sure to place your topic phrase into quotes to limit your results. For example, “travel blogs,??? “travel Wiki,??? “travel forums,??? “travel podcasts,??? Google uses algorithms that help the tops sites show up at the top of the listings, generally favoring blogs, communities, message boards, wikis, and portals.

Go to Technorati and use the above topic phrases to search for topical blogs in the directory, http://technorati.com/blogs/; try the same phrases by searching in tags, http://technorati.com/tag.

Go to BlogPulse and explore their list of top blogs, http://www.blogpulse.com/06_09_18/topWeblogGroup.html, for on-topic blogs
Go to Technorati and take a look at their list of top popular blogs, http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/ with an eye to finding blogs with topical content that jibes with the mission of the online marketing campaign.

Visit Truth Laid Bear’s Ecosystem, http://truthlaidbear.com/ecosystem.php, to explore the top blogs and scroll for blogs that are on-topic.

Visit Share Your OPML to see what the most popular sites are, http://share.opml.org/: Top feeds, http://share.opml.org/rankings/, Top podcasts, http://share.opml.org/toppodcasts/, and top subscribers (I am currently 34th), http://share.opml.org/prolificsubscribers/. There is a loose correlation between top subscribers and most influential bloggers.

Get ready to bookmark the sites you find compelling as you will need them later. Go through the listing and take note of the sites you find that are interactive online communities, including blogs, message boards, forums, wikis, and so forth.

The most influential blogs, forums, and wikis are also the most difficult to influence. The owners, bloggers, moderators, and administrators are busy and used to being contacted. Many of these sites are corporate-owned and unlikely to be receptive to messaging. In the few cases when they are receptive to messaging, they would be even more receptive to messaging were that message to be perceived as popular and organic.

In other words, the most influential blogs are loud, busy, noisy, and fully-funded. They have defined roles, queues, workflows, and advertising packages. They’re also interested in being perceived as being editorial, objective, and discerning.

It is entirely possible to build a relationship with a major player, a major influencer, over time, but I recommend that until a online brand promoter gets some experience, some hours in the cockpit, and starts building real, organic, and intimate relationships online (like getting them in your address book and on your IM list where you feeling comfortable emailing or IMing them) then there are better ways to get your message into delivered into online communities, specifically, the Bottom-Up Approach.

The Bottom-up Approach

The bottom-up approach can be started today. Yes, today. The bottom-up approach doesn’t care at all about who is talking or where they’re talking, just what they’re saying.

For general results, check Google, MSN, or Yahoo; for blogs check Technorati.com (http://www.technorati.com), Ask.com (www.ask.com/?o=333#subject:bls|pg:1), Google Blogsearch (blogsearch.google.com/), IceRocket (http://www.icerocket.com), Feedster (http://www.feedster.com), or BlogPulse (http://www.blogpulse.com)
Type in either a relevant topic phrase or search for sites that link to Your company.com (technorati.com/search/www.your company.com and www.ask.com/blogsearch?q=your company.com)

Go to the blogs that are talking about or linking to your topic or your company
Where appropriate, leave a short note about your take on their article or post in the comments field and maybe mention what you’re doing at your blog. Lead with comment and content — give the blogs the gift of your insight rather than go around promoting yourself… the latter is SPAM!

Record the URL of each comment in a spreadsheet in order to be able to return. Return to the comment the next day to see if there has been any response to your comment. If there has been, it is important to be responsive. Be conversational – a member of the community – and answer any and all questions or queries that may arise about your company, video blogging, or traveling.

Return daily to Technorati and Ask.com and do the same thing.

Please be considerate, and make sure to leave comments, content, and conversation only where people might be interested (i.e., “inform??? – don’t “spam???).

Collecting Online Communities

Whether you use the top-down approach or the bottom-up approach, your searches should be collected, organized, and aggregated into a master document. By far the most important and useful document you will create is your collection of online communities. The first time you build one, it will be a time-consuming pain the ass.

In the case of the Top-Down Approach, it will be easy to do, since these sites are generally focused on a single topic and easily categorized. With the Top-Up Approach, it is important to not add all of the sites you have recorded in your spreadsheet of comment URLs above. Be sure to only add sites to your universe that have proven to mention your general campaign topic more than once. For example, although my blog, Chris Abraham, http://www.chrisabraham.com, is a general blog, I have blogged a lot about automobiles, http://www.chrisabraham.com/automobiles; and, in the case of BMWs, I am devoted with http://www.chrisabraham.com/bmw/ and http://www.chrisabraham.com/e39_5series/. Even though my blog isn’t about either autos or BMWs, it is a safe bet that I, as a blogger, would be very open and receptive to automotive messaging. And in the case of GM, I have indeed been messaged, http://www.chrisabraham.com/cgi-bin/mt-search.cgi?tag=GM.

Choose your sites wisely, well, and selectively. It is okay to start off small and build out over time. Alternately, you can load every community and the kitchen sink into the document and then prune based on the effectiveness of the online messaging and outreach is on a per-site basis.

The document that you create will never be set in stone. It will be dynamic and always changing as online communities come and go every day. The document can be as simple as a notepad document or as complex as a database-backed application. I use Google Spreadsheets since it is an online service and I can share it with a client and access the spreadsheets anywhere.

They can be very simple documents and kept in one big lump or broken into separate documents based on the type of online community, such as Blog, Forum, Portal, Newsgroup, Social Network, or based on the topic of the online community (communities of interest, practice, action, circumstance, position, or purpose), such as travel, drinking, gaming, file sharing, or cars. I prefer to organize all of my communities into lumps based on interest or purpose (travel and tourism). My collections of topical online communities, or universes, live in spreadsheets, one-per-topical focus.

At this stage, you only need Name, URL, Type, and Focus. That said, spending extra time to figure out the full name and email address behind the blogger, message board, or Wiki, is worthwhile when you define online influencers or an online advocacy and outreach campaign.

Defining Online Influencers

It’s easy to figure out which blogs, portals, and forums are highly popular and highly influential; it’s harder to figure out which of these communities may be receptive to your marketing efforts. By looking at the Internet through the lens of the Top-Down Approach and the Bottom-Up Approach, you will start to formulate a realistic understanding of the online community landscape as it pertains to your company. You will also learn which communities and which bloggers consistently blog favorably about your company. Once you have this sorted out, you can start building a relationship that becomes personal and builds over time. Before long, they’ll be on your IM list, in your Address Book, and you’ll know all of their birthdays and the name of their spouses and kids. You, a corporate shill, are becoming part of the online conversation and you are building online equity and real online trust. You will be able to ask favors and grant favors. You will even eventually meet one for lunch. It will happen. It happened to me.

Prospecting Bloggers

While exploring the blog search engines for relevant company-related content, take note of particularly friendly blogs and bloggers. Also take note of any blog and bloggers who are actively embedding your company code into their blogs. If a blogger consistently uses your company, comments on blog posts, or has ever given a positive or neutral review of your company, consider asking the blogger to be part of a select list of folks who will receive news, updates, upgrades announcements, and other company news with the understanding that when the news is received by the blogger, the blogger can do whatever they want with it. This is why it is important to make sure the blogger (or message board owner) is committed to liking your company. If you have an agency to conduct blogger prospecting and the online advocacy, be sure they know the form and content of the messages you would like to be conveyed. The prospect may or may not blog about the news. The hope is that the prospect will decide to blog about the news, either positively or neutrally. Once the email goes out, however, you have no control of what is done. If you have any second thoughts about the prospect being a friendly, don’t do it.

Reaching Out to Online Influencers

Every day, go through the universe to each blog, message board, social network, and social bookmarking site and use either the built-in search form to search for discussions about your company, your competitors, or choice keyword phrases, looking for relevant content.

Consider joining the conversation only if there is something worthwhile to contribute. Only enter the conversation if you can answer a question, clear up a misconception, announce news that would be considered interesting to the members, offer a promotion or discount, or contribute to the conversation with expertise or insight that would add true (and not just promotional) value to the conversation.

Activating Bloggers

One a list of friendly and like-minded bloggers have been assembled, organize them in an Outlook Contacts folder. don’t hesitate to reach out to individual bloggers and friendlies informally in order to build a connection and a conversation. It is important to make sure any formal outreach is carefully considered before moving forward.

When it is time to reach out and message to the list, there are several things to consider before emailing. The most important thing is to make sure you have something important to share or a gift to give. This can be in the form of something simple, but there always has to be a reason for reaching out.

One way to make the connection feel more intimate is to use Outlook’s fine email merge to send out an email. Listservs and mailing lists can be seen as too impersonal, as are formatted newsletters-looking missives. After sending out one of these group activation emails, be sure to respond quickly and personally to each and every personal query and response you may receive.

The primary goal is to build a relationship between other bloggers and your company’s community. The secondary goal is to have the community blog about your company organically on their own; saying whatever it is they want to say.

Ideally, if everything is done above board and transparently, and the prospects are tried and true, then any and all coverage will be either very positive or at the very worst, neutral in tone.

Anyway, this is a work-in-progress so please pop me an email to cja@well.com or leave a comment below if you have any feedback.

I believe that Edelman, on behalf of Microsoft and AMD, was completely transparent with all the blogger-recipients of those gifted sexy Ferrari laptops; I also don’t believe that Edelman, AMD or Microsoft demanded good reviews, merely hoped for the best. Via Wired, digg, MSTechToday, Laughing Squid, Scobleizer, istartedsomething, Slashdot, BL Ochman, Robert Scoble, Crunch Gear, WebPro News, WebMetrics Guru, Marketing Canapes, Tech Crunch, notgartner, and Ed Bott.

Edelman is in the business of promotion and Microsoft is in the business of sales; influencing the influencer is key in a new media Cluetrain market economy of tipping points and markets as conversation.

If you Don’t Have the Latest Hardware with Tons of RAM then Vista is a Pig

The biggest techies don’t often have the best gear. These Ferraris show off Microsoft’s pig of a bloated OS, Vista, in the light both Microsoft and Edelman demand. They may be guilty of trying to load the deck, but I doubt they’re guilty of bribery.

Although I only worked on the Online Advocacy team in Washington for three months, I was alway instructed to engage bloggers thusly, “Hi, my name is Chris Abraham, and I work for Edelman on behalf of Wal-Mart.” My responsibility was to be transparent to the blogger. After that, it was the blogger’s responsibility to pass it forward.

Edelman Needed to be Hands-Off Once the Delivery Was Made of the Laptops

One might say that it was Edelman’s responsibility, a la noblesse oblige, to review the bloggers and their blogs and to remind those bloggers who had yet to disclose their gift (the way that PayPerPost does now).

If Edelman did all the follow-up due diligence then the gift would be tainted. It wouldn’t be a gift. The product, software, and the chip wouldn’t be speaking for themselves. It would be as if the gift was, in fact, a bribe. Additionally, bloggers are not journalists. Although Edelman is required under their WOMMA and industry responsibilies, bloggers can do whatever we want. We’re not held to disclosure requirements since we’re private citizens.

The blowback here has less to do with Edelman, AMD, or Microsoft. It has to do with the bloggers. The bloggers who failed to be fully transparent broke trust with their readership. I discuss this in my article, Whether Journalist or Blogger, Honor the Trust You Have Been Given, “so, what he means is that the writer, be he a proper journalist or an improper blogger, is judged of course what he writes but also by what he does.”

If you demand transparency and disclosure, you could also require any number of things. I think, in terms of strategy, it is a better strategy to identify the influencials, the make the offer of the gift, to be completely transparent, and then to allow the recipient to either disclose or not. It is such a tar baby. Edelman would have been damned if it did or damned if it didn’t.

I Believe that Edelman did Exactly the Right Thing in the Case of the Acer Ferrari Laptops

What is Edelman’s responsibility when it comes to enforcing transparency? My responsibility to bloggers was to be transparent on three levels: my real identity, my real company, and the company for which I worked. The expectation here was that the blogger just might post my entire email online, so no funny stuff. (Yes, that example was shameful, that’s for sure. But I made all of those mistakes so that you don’t have to.)

Here’s another, another, and another.

UPDATE: Microsoft wants their laptops back.

Street Team Promotion.com offers Online Marketing and Brand Management solutions to bring your influence directly to the people that are buying, or considering buying, your products and services.

They are online everywhere in the world. They are your customers. They surf, they play, they shop, and they chatter. It is viral and the stakes are high.

Street Team Promotion.com offers online outreach to consumers using brand advocacy teams, discussion, messaging, blogger relations and more. We work to help you start and control the buzz or just eliminate the noise. We provide online expertise in community technologies, blogs, wikis and message boards.

We work with clients to develop targeted “word-of-mouth” marketing strategies, as well as tactics used on Usenet, message boards, social networks, and blogs. We work strategically to develop online advocacy programs and outreach campaigns to protect your brand.

The chatter and communication online that is shaping perceptions for many trends and consumer buying habits is at it’s all-time high…and going higher. With online competition looming close by, you cannot afford to let others define your message or your brand.

- Community Outreach
- Blog strategy
- Online Buzz Marketing
- Social Networking
- Youth Marketing

According to Louise Story, “consumer brand companies have long wished they could find a way to eavesdrop (legally) on customer conversations. Marketers can easily read Internet blogs, chat rooms and social networking sites, but what people say over coffee or across their cubicle remains largely unknown.” Conversation over coffee or across the cubicle isn’t special and here’s why…

After doing word-of-mouth marketing and brand intelligence — and having spent over ten years invested in online communities — I can say that online conversation is as intimate, honest, and revealing as it may be “over coffee or across the cubicle.”

In fact, I would posit that online conversation, in general, is more authentic because either anonymity is possible or people have a false sense of security when they are in bunny slippers and jammies all comfy at their computer.

Online, people feel safe and are relaxed and spending some time with people they are really intimate with — coworkers and and coffee dates are never that close, really.

Leveraging the Intelligence, market research, and collected polling data culled from “Internet blogs, chat rooms and social networking sites” is almost like researching chimps and apes from the point of view of Jane Goodall — close, without barriers and walls, accepted in the tribe — instead of in a nature reserve, a zoo, or on the dissection table.

Want me to paint my analogy against the wall, well, check this out:

My Online Brand Intelligence Analogy

Let’s consider the chimpanzee. There are several ways to learn more about the chimpanzee: through dissection, in captivity, and in the wild.

Although dissecting the chimpanzee to see how the physiology works is essential as a form of training and education, dissection doesn’t help with knowing the behavior of the chimpanzee.

You might be able to make assumptions about how intelligent it is or what it eats, but in terms of behavioral studies, its irrelevant. This is similar to posthumous studies of market data — there is no life there, only corpse.

Polling and focus groups are like observing the behavior of the chimpanzee in capacity — you have a living, breathing, chimpanzee, but you have one that is under stress, duress, and has been partially acclimatized to appeasing its handlers — it wants to keep safe, it wants to be fed, and it wants to get out — so observing chimpanzee behavior in captivity is like observing consumer or market behavior in focus groups — you have real-live response, but you have the response of something that is beholden to you, that is wondering what’s in it for me — you have corrupted behavioral data.

If you want to really know the true behavior of the chimpanzee, you need to observe it in the wild. And to get the best concept of the behavior of the chimpanzee, you need to become — or at least be accepted as — a chimpanzee.

Jane Goodall was a pioneer in the behavioral study of primates because she was accepted over time into the community of chimps. Online brand intelligence can study and report on brand and consumer behavior in the wild, in the wilderness.

Where behavior is true, honest, and living.

Edelman and the Flogging of America by DIGITAL STREET JOURNAL is the finest analysis of the Edelman-Wal-Mart joint that resulted in the Wal-Marting Across America fiasco.

If you don’t have time to read the article, here is your take-away warning,

“This is not about public relations. This is about public affairs. There’s a difference. Public affairs is decidedly more political and comes with a different set of standards and values.”

Military-grade fisking — ruthlessly detailed point-by-point criticism that highlights errors, disputes the analysis of presented facts, or highlights other problems in a statement, article, or essay — is generally only aimed at public affair campaigns.

In the current political climate, Wal-Mart is political, which is why the Wal-Mart campaign is run out of Edelman’s Public Affairs office in DC and not in New York or Chicago.

To help you a little more with how things work and to help you get up to speed before you attend my Writer’s Center blogging classes, I have created free step-by-step online video tutorials for blogging on Blogger, WordPress.com, VOX, and TypePad. I hope these are useful to you.

Blogger Tutorial – Joining and Blogging Step-by-Step Video Workshop

WordPress.com Step-by-Step Tutorial on How to Blog Using WordPress.com

VOX Tutorial – How To Join and Blog on Vox.com

TypePad Tutorial – How to Blog using the TypePad Blogging Service

Via The Applied Blogging Workshop

BizHack posted a response to a blog post I posted and then deleted (oops) from the main page of my blog.

I didn’t delete the page, though, and John Keotsier nailed me, “Talk about good timing – Chris Abraham jumped ship from Edelman just before the proverbial sh*t hit the proverbial fan … Reputation is hard to gain, easy to lose. Good timing!”

Well, I didn’t jump ship so much as walked the plank. I mean, the blog post was Out of the Firing and into the Frying Pan, after all. Full transparency!

The Internet may have a latency of 24-hours but the Blogosphere is realtime.

I have been on VOX since its launch but only last week did they open it up to anyone who wants to join.

So, watch my VOX step-by-step online video tutorial and then go ahead and join VOX and get involved. My VOX address is chrisabraham.vox.com — come say hello.

In order to be effective, blogger relations (BR) and online advocacy (OA) needs to be fully opt-in. Any PR firm who wants to engage the blogosphere should prospect for new bloggers individually and not en masse. I am surely a fan of the GM Fastlane blog. That said, I received an unsolicited email (some fancy that SPAM) from Melanie at Hass MS&L PR. Here’s some “dos” and “don’ts” of online advocacy and blogger relations.

Bravo for embracing online advocacy and BR, bravo for being transparent — transparency is key — and bravo for having an actual PR executive, Melanie, send the email from her firm, Hass MS&L PR, and not from GM

GM and Hass MS&L PR, you get points off for not sending me an email letting me know that you are aware of my blog — and my love of automobiles and corporate blogs — and then asking me if I would be willing to receive future emails.

That would have been ideal.

That said, I am pretty excited to be on the list, either way; although I guarantee you you’re going to get a lot of accusations of spamming. The rules are, in order of importance: transparency and opt-in. You failed to ask first.

The email to follow:

—–Original Message—–
From: melanie.xxxxxxx@hassmsl.com [mailto:melanie.xxxxxxx@hassmsl.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 1:29 PM
To: cja@well.com
Subject: General Motors Extended Warranty Announcement

Hi, Chris.

This afternoon General Motors announced that it is extending its powertrain warranty on all vehicles. GM came to this decision in large part due to customer feedback it received on its Fastlane blog.

We thought this use of new media might interest you and/or your readers.

To learn more visit:

http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/archives/2006/09/because_we_can.html

Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Thanks for your time,
Melanie

Melanie xxxxxxx
Assistant Account Executive
HASS MS&L
115 W. Liberty, Ste. 200
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
P: (734) 214-xxxx, ext. xxx
E: Melanie.xxxxxxx@hassmsl.com
————————————————————————
Disclaimer
“The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged.. It is intended solely for the addressee and access to this email by anyone else is unauthorized. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. When addressed to our clients, any opinions or advice contained in this email are subject to the terms and conditions expressed in the governing client engagement letter or contract.”

It is important to get traffic to your site. By whatever means necessary. That’s where Quality Traffic Supply comes in. They “guarantee that you will get the visitors you have purchased delivered to your site.” Lowest price is 5,000 visitors for $30. What is there to lose?

Lots of folks use Google AdWords to drive targeted traffic. Sometimes, folks use Blogads network. Well, if you want to gain sales, leads, new customers and increase your marketing on the internet you might want to try Quality Traffic Supply.

According to the site, “Quality Traffic Supply is a part of one of the largest online advertising networks in the world, comprising of 112,000+ webmasters and content publishers. They are indexed and categorized for quality, relevance and specific interests, and generate millions of unique visitors each month for our clients. We offer an industry-first network of web traffic that can be delivered directly to your website.”

Advertising is a numbers game and I know that there is an industry expectation of a .5%-2% success rate. More traffic equals more customers, bottom line.