Hear Chris Abraham of Abraham Harrison LLC and Jay Jaffe of Jaffe Associates about how to look after your online reputation and why it is important to do so. Be sure to register now!

As the saying goes, your good name is everything.  Every individual, and brand, needs to know what their online reputation is and how to protect it. When your online reputation is in disrepair, whether because of bad behavior on your, or your brand’s, part, or because of intentional attacks by competitors or someone with a grudge, you sometimes have legal recourse.  But you always have tactics you can undertake online to protect your reputation.

Find out how to determine what your online reputation already is, how to promote and maintain a good reputation, and how to protect and defend it in the future.  We’ll cover issues like:

• What are people saying about me online?  And Why Should I Care?
• Crisis Management
• Proactive Steps to Defend Against Future Attacks
• How to activate Google and other search engines in your favor

and more.

Speakers

Jay Jaffe of Jaffe Associates
Jay Jaffe is CEO of Jaffe Associates (www.jaffeassociates.com), the leading public relations firm serving law firms in North  America and Europe. Working only in the legal industry, Jaffe offers a broad range of classic PR and PR 2.0 services, crisis communications, strategic marketing consulting, creative branding, and web/technology services. Our goal is to ‘Make It Happen’ for our clients with efficient implementation that goes far beyond goal-setting, strategy and planning.

Chris Abraham of Abraham Harrison LLC
Chris Abraham, President and COO of Abraham Harrison, is a leading expert in online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet reputation management. Chris is a pioneer in online social networks and an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and advisor to the industries’ leading firms.

This webinar will take place live on Thursday May 7th at 1 PM EST and 10AM PST. It will include audience participation and a live question and answer session.

I got trained up in marketing and evolved into PR and there is a convergence going on. Not just between PR and marketing but also with advertising and … SEO (yes, I said it). David Hargreaves of Bitemarks agrees that there is a strong convergence — and so does the originator, Jeremiah Owyang:

Jeremiah Owyang produced an interesting piece earlier today asking what will happen to PR firms in a recession based on research among 200 PR agencies. I must confess I am not surprised to see that a small majority of firms are predicting that PR budgets were smaller than they were in fiscal 2008, but then if you if you look at any operating cost, I would be surprised if this wasn’t pretty much tracking the downward pressure on all operating costs.

Having said that I think cost reductions fall into two categories: reducing costs because in this climate ‘you can’ and ‘you need to be seen to’ and then there are those companies that are having to reduce costs because ‘they must’. I wonder what if the PR budget reductions are greater or smaller than comparable ad budgets?

I both agree and disagree with the second point Jeremiah makes when he says that “things don’t look too rosy for the PR industry.” If you are a traditional PR agency doing the same old stuff then I would be worried. However, if you accept that the world has changed and embracing social media is neither an option or an add on to your traditional offering then the world looks rosier.

By putting social media at the centre of what we do, we have a fantastic opportunity to extend our remit more broadly into the world of online marketing. Far from being gloomy, as someone who has been involved in the PR industry for 20 years and who has always embraced technology, the future for the industry has never been more exciting.

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

I am not telling you anything you don’t already know since you’re reading this. Since you’re reading this, you’re either my friend or you follow one of my blogs — so I have probably chewed your ear off about the benefits of both social media marketing as well as social media public relations.  Here’s another example that this trend is growing and becoming mainstream. Lauren Cook hooked me up with this article from the Houston Business Journal, “Online strategies, responsibility are becoming marketing ‘musts’” (Via Marketing Conversation)

The latest trends in getting company names into the public eye are catching on quickly, and marketing professionals say those who don’t adapt may be left behind. The following are examples of marketing that experts say companies can no longer afford to ignore:

Using ‘social media’

Blogs, forums, chat rooms, Flickr, Twitter, Youtube.com, Facebook.com and MySpace.com are emerging as powerful marketing tools.

“People who are experts on or passionate about a particular topic or interest may start their own Web site, generate a blog or post videos online,” says Cindy Marion, president of Marion, Montgomery Inc. “Over time, bloggers and social media contributors continue posting more subjects, articles, videos or sound clips related to their specific interests. This is good for conversation and for search engine optimization.”

According to a recently released Cone Business Survey, 93 percent of Americans believe companies should have a presence on social media sites, and 85 percent believe these companies should use these services to interact with consumers.

“The people have spoken but the wheel hasn’t been reinvented,” Marion says. “Because although the medium may be new, proven marketing strategies remain. Consistent messaging and frequent communications are key to creating perception, influence and persuasion.

“When people want to know about something, they typically ask their friends,” she says. “Now they often search for it online. If a company has a Web site, that’s a good start to gain a base knowledge of the product, but if an unvested third party touts that company’s products and services, then the company’s reputation gets more credit. If an online friend or trusted source touts it, all the better.”

I have been going through Google Docs and discovered an internal document I would like to share with you from back in the beginning of 2007. Taylor Donlan wrote it to explain to our new staff how best to reach out to and engage online on behalf of our clients and in general. I was inspired to share it based on this comment by Jonathan Crawford from the article What motivated you to learn about social media? Check it out and tell me what you think:

When we approach someone online, we need to approach in the same way we would in the real world. If our goal is to develop relationships, we cannot “go for the kill” instantly. Instead, we must engage in some small talk first. We must engage the blogger and his or her post first, well before any discussion of our client or their related services.

To use Chris’s metaphor, in a professional context, we want them to ask us for our business card. We want to get them so interested in whatever service or client we are touting that they are asking us for more information. This does not mean we air drop business cards everywhere or give one to every person on the street – those cards are thrown away. In the real world, it is much more effective to develop some kind of individual connection before exchanging business cards – they are much more likely to keep the cards, and remember you. In the future, they are more likely to be open to doing something for you.

For a more basic metaphor, imagine meeting someone in a bar. You don’t go right up to someone and jump into a conversation or ask them for favors. Instead you ease into conversation by engaging something that you notice about them or that stands out about your general surroundings. You need to build some rapport in terms that are common to both parties before you can get to any deeper level.

In the blog world, we are trying to do the same. When you make a comment on a post show that you have paid some attention to their post and add something meaningful – feel free to Google the subject matter and share some additional information or just share your general feelings on the subject matter. Then and only then is it acceptable to broach the subject of our client or their services.

Whenever possible, we pose our engagement campaigns in terms of offering “a gift” – usually a service or piece of information that will likely prove useful to the blogger and/or their readers at no cost. While this “free gift” approach reduces the appearance of any spam quality to our engagements, it is still necessary to ease into the gift offering. We are not in the business of spamming, and it will not be tolerated.

Another important point is that we believe in transparency. We are not interested in being deceitful. Admit proudly that you work for Abraham Harrison and whomever the client might be. Our engagement campaigns aim to offer a gift to bloggers, and there is no shame in our business.

My business partner and CEO, Mark Harrison, boiled our, Abraham Harrison’s, elevator speech down into bullet points.  Let me know what you think!

• Abraham Harrison, LLC is a Public Relations company dealing solely in online media
  • AHLLC has two practices: Promotional online PR, and Defensive online PR
    1. Promotional online PR is about getting the client’s message out
       1. Three methodologies:
          1. Top-down Online Influencer Outreach
             • Blogger and community gatekeeper outreach in order to get those influencers to be the mouthpieces for our clients.
               • We do the elite A-lister high-touch, personal relationship management
               • And B-Z lister “long-tail” outreach
          2. Social Networking Site (SNS) presence creation and management
             • Creation, development, and upkeep of profiles, groups, and friend relationships
          3. Bottom-up Online Conversation Engagement
             • Going to where the conversations are happening online (in forums, newsgroups, blog comments, etc.) and directly engaging the conversation that is happening online.
    2. Defensive online PR is essentially crisis management
       1. Two methodologies:
          1. Making bad stuff disappear: Online Reputation Clean-up/Search Results Cleansing
             • Establishing client’s hegemony over their search engine results and making the negative content a “needle in a haystack”
          2. Countering bad stuff too big to make disappear: Direct Misinformation Correction via Online Conversation Engagement
             • Finding negative conversation online and engaging it in order to bring the client’s message into the dialogue
             • Quiet and/or neutralize vitriol by bringing the detractors into positive relationship

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

My Director of Operations, Saul Wainwright, wrote a very fine blog post, Spread The Word: Blogs Matter We Just Can’t Measure It!!, over on Marketing Conversation today in response to a blog post by Norman Birnbach of PR Back Talk titled How Do You Establish Metrics for a Blogging Initiative? Take A Page (Via Marketing Conversation):

Another day, and another blog post thanks to our efforts at Abraham & Harrison. Norman Birnbach over at PR Back Talk wrote this great post, How Do You Establish Metrics for a Blogging Initiative? Take A Page from the Campaign for Jerry White’s Book”, which talks about our successful blogger outreach efforts on behalf of our client Survivor Corps.

The goal of every outreach campaign is to get the “conversation” started and help keep it going. How do you do this? Norman shows some of the elements that we have used to promote both the Survivor Corps brand and the book, I Will Not Be Broken, written by the co-founder Jerry White.

First: craft messages that are specific to the demographics you are trying to talk to – no cookie cutting here!!

Second: make it easy for bloggers to blog. In other words create an SMNR – check out the two we created for the campaign here & here.

Third: be passionate about the conversation. This, in my opinion, is always the most critical element – get your team excited, get them talking, get them thinking. Excitement is infectious!!

Norman mentions an article that was recently written by Business Week called, Beyond Blogs: Thee years ago our cover story showcased the pheneomen. A lot has changed since then. I am not going to to into great detail about the article but what I will say is it highlights how things have changed. How powerful a blogger outreach campaign coupled with utlizing social networks like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Digg are in the world of PR.

The return-on-investment on a social media campaign is huge. Once you get the message out there it can keep propagating and spreading and you get to watch this happen. You get to see the blog posts go up, you get to count the visitors to your site, you get a sense of what people are thinking and feeling about your product. You never got this in traditional media – you sent out your message and then….well, that was the end of that.

What so many companies are still wanting though are metrics – how many people will “read” the posts, visit the blogs – how do you measure a conversation? How do you track where a story goes – where an email is sent, who read the post and then went home to tell their kids about the book? We can’t put numbers on this – it is “out of our control” just like the whole concept of social media – it is about loosing control and letting go. Ultimately it is a trust game. Trust your product, trust your social media team trust your demographic. Don’t get me wrong – we can give you certain measurements but in the end this is only a slice of the much bigger pie, and no one has truly figured out how to measure the much big network effect.

We are very stoked with the response that we have garnered so far for our clients. We know that we have done a good job getting the message out there and bringing it to people’s attention. I hope all of you get a chance to check out the book and ask any questions you have about all that we do over here (wherever that might be for a virtual company) at Abraham Harrison.

When clients come to us asking for conversion rates, metrics, CPM, penetration, eyeballs, and all of the rest of the numbers that are de rigeur in the world of advertising and marketing, we do our best to oblige. We really do. People want to speak numbers and they really want to be able to strictly quantify the spending of a budget with a nice solid number.

Truth is, as an insider, most of these numbers are sort of bullshit. Not because any firm is bullshitting, but because all the tools suck and because all the good tools are aimed squarely at easy-to-define web1.5 portal and ecommerce sites. Truth is, the influence of blogs and bloggers is generally not directly associated with how many folks visit but who.

Blogs are news sources. And, likes water sources, they’re generative dribbles that coalesce into mighty rivers, the portals and mainstream media. Bloggers and blogs are the source from which all downstream media trade is buoyed. New media bloggers, mainstream media columnists and pundits, and talk radio hosts have disproportionate influence on both the mediasphere in particular and on culture in general.

In my world, it isn’t a game of how many eyeballs, but whose. And since this is essentially a B2B campaign — PR exec to blogger and not PR exec to consumer — it is almost impossible to extract the kinds of metrics one expects from B2C campaigns. We’re not direct marketing, we’re doing pitches to folks who are in possession of their very own platform or organ: a blog or a forum. It is apples and oranges.

We use many of the same standards of success that traditional PR firms do: Are we getting coverage? Are we getting articles placed? Are we getting buzz? Is is the buzz good?

Are people picking up our news releases? Is the coverage directly connected to our outreach? Those sort of things. Also, is the tone of the coverage good, bad, neutral? Is the conversation infectious? Are we winning hearts and minds?

As part of our reporting we show volume, tone, penetration, influence, and trending; additionally, we offer analysis of the campaign as well as deeply consulting with the client in order to make sure our messaging is consistent with both who they are as well as steering towards who they want to be! See!

This isn’t marketing, this is PR stuff!

Norman Birnbach just posted the first part in a series of articles about a recent blogger PR outreach that my company, Abraham Harrison, did on behalf of Survivor Corps. It is a very generous article and everyone here is very pleased.

Our goal for the Survivor Corps campaign was to promote both the introduction of Survivor Corps, formerly Landmine Survivors Network, and Jerry White’s new book, I Will Not Be Broken. Jerry, the co-founder of LSN and Survivor Corps, has been the perfect client and we are so lucky that they have allowed us carte blanche. Of course, the products sell themselves.

Another part of our campaign that Mr. Birnbach didn’t mention is social media outreach. We have created over 40 profiles on behalf of Survivor Corps, including very popular Facebook Groups for both I Will Not Be Broken and Survivor Corps, MySpace profiles for Survivor Corps and I Will Not Be Broken, as well as videos on YouTube. Please check out Norman Birnbach’s article, How Do You Establish Metrics for a Blogging Initiative? Take a page from the campaign for Jerry White’s book:

[...] I got an email from Jerry White’s organization, the nonprofit Survivor Corps., asking whether I would review his book, “I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis.” It provides a terrific perspective that has a number of different elements to it — and that’s one of the first lessons I took away, after talking with Chris Abraham, who is handling the outreach to bloggers.

According to Chris, the book appeals to many segments, including cancer survivors, veterans and their families, Christians and leadership. They’ve developed outreach for each segment. While that makes sense, too often organizations do a one-size fits all approach, and miss out working with individual segments.

What they’ve also done is make it really easy for bloggers to write and post about the book with a download page that provides:

• Facts about the books’ publication schedule (including availability as an audiobook).
• A synopsis of the book.
• Sample chapter downloads.
• Reviews and testimonials.
• About Jerry White.
• An overview of The Five Steps.
• Various Excerpts.
• About Survivor Corps.
• Contacts.
• Multimedia Elements.
• Additional Resources.
  
• Social Media and Tags.

They even made it easy for people to join Survivor Corps’ mailing list.

I will continue to explore other elements about blogging relations, based on an interview with Chris Abraham over the next week.
I will continue to explore other elements about blogging relations, based on an interview with Chris Abraham over the next week. [...]

Andy Sernovitz‘s blog’s name says it all, and definitely reflects my response to reading this: Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That!, especially in his post Instant Word of Mouth for Restaurants. From our experience doing blogger outreach and blogger gift-giving, this is on-the-money advice you should all consider:

Give every lunch customer 6 desserts to take back to the office.

Give them one desert and they will eat it.

Give them 6 and they will to announce to everyone that they just ate at your restaurant and you gave them snacks to share.

Lesson: One free sample is interesting. Lots of samples turn customers into evangelists.

Firstly, while we at Abraham Harrison do online publicity and blogger outreach exclusively, this advice rings true. First, let me define what we mean by “free samples” and “gifts” in our context.

Gifts don’t have to be free stuff — like books or iPods — gifts can be in the form of knowledge, intellectual property, insider access, or blogger exclusives; gifts can be informational, gifts can solve a community problem, or customer service issues.

What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception. You need to be willing to give the gift that the blogger wants and not the gift you are prepared or want to give.

What is not cool is half measures or crappy, throw-away gifts, the Internet version of key rings and a bowl of candy. Offering throttled, limited or restricted demos (without access to the full version when it is released); offering a single book chapter (without the whole book being an option); or granting “exclusive” access to something that is already released is just plain lame and will result in severe negative consequences.

It is pretty bad to not give a gift when you reach out to bloggers just because you feel entitled or represent a fancy client but it is worse to be stingy about the gift you do give. Make sure the gift is generous — give until it hurts.

For example, with Survivor Corps, not only did we make lots of full-chapters available for download and sharing, but we are making paper hardcover copies available to anyone and everyone who wants one — and the offer is transferable.

While the wide selection of chapters may be generous, offering only a partial book would easily be considered to be stingy and cheap if we were not willing and able to drop-ship complete copies of the book at a moment’s notice without ever demanding a quid pro quo.

Most of the bloggers might very readily blog about I Will Not Be Broken were I to only send a smattering of chapters; even so, the risk associated with not making copies freely available would be intense and is not worth it.

The cost of a hundred books sent to important niche online influencers who have promised to blog about Survivor Corps, whether they ever do is negligible compared to being pegged as cheap and ungrateful.

Even a blogger who has an advertising rate sheet and who would never consider doing a review without being sponsored or paid are often willing to blog on behalf of our clients — when we get the right balance between influencer-targeting, message-modeling, gift-giving, blogger activation, and following-up.

It works because this is relationship and conversation marketing. There are real people behind those blogs who are sick and tired of not being treated like people and if you can get the mixture right, magic happens.

When we do blogger public relations (often called blogger relations or BR), blogger messaging, or online outreach, it is essential to do everything possible to make sure that the blogger’s free spirit is appreciated and also realize that the blogger is under zero responsibility to blog about your client at all; and, for the same reason that bloggers are pursued by us PR and marketing professionals — their influence, platform, and voice — bloggers are fully capable of turning against you and your client.

Luckily, bloggers are people, marketers are people, even PR professionals are people; therefore, even if something goes wrong during an aggressive messaging and PR compaign, which they often do if you’re being aggressive and passionate, a human touch and human engagement usually does the trick to smooth feathers, clear the air, and make things nice.

Even when clearing the air isn’t possible, it is important to be brave and a little shameless: when you’re in this sort of business, 1% or more of all recipients will have a cow and there is nothing you can do about it, no matter how much attention, love, adoration, and mea culpas you’re willing or able to invest.

For the Survivor Corps campaign, we have been pretty aggressive. Even before we have delivered our first copy of I Will Not Be Broken to a single blogger, we have received almost 50 blog mentions and posts. Even if we had suffered a couple negative posts as a tithe for the 50 positive mentions, I believe it would still have been worth it.

If you need more proof you can read the mentions that bloggers have written so far about Jerry White’s book, I Will Not Be Broken, collected well before any actual books arrived via Fedex to the bloggers’ door, you will see that Blogger PR is well worth all of the time and trouble required to make it work right.

Let me know if you have any questions about what we do or how we do it. I would be very happy to tell you more if you contact me at Abraham Harrison.

What makes all of this very cool and very cute is that there are 5 body-types that you can try stuff out on and then have the models do a little fashion show for you, which is a double-threat: this sort of thing is practical for women who order online and want to see how these garments ride while also being irresistible catnip to every single geek online as well, the sort of men who will probably end up making an order at their very first opportunity.

I am not a client but I am happy to contribute to the company’s success. I live in Berlin now but I appreciate the cheekiness and sauciness of the Brits when it comes to their marketing and ad strategies — the US is so impossibly prudish when it comes to ad campaigns.

Three cheers for Knicker Picker!

Let me first reveal that Abraham Harrison LLC, my employer and my company, is an online reputation management company — online reputation protection, promotion, defensive SEO, domain name strategy, and crisis management. That said, I could not be happier because online reputation management is apparently the new black, at least according to Techdirt, Forget Publicists, All The Cool Kids Have Online Reputation Managers…

It’s been well-documented that Google has become something of the mythical permanent record teachers warned you about as kids. There are plenty of stories about people losing jobs or discovering dubious information about dates using Google. A few years back, services popped up claiming that they could scrub your online record clean — though, how successful such services could be was certainly called into question. However, it appears that those services have morphed into a new, somewhat scary, category called online reputation management. While it’s to be expected that corporations might have people monitoring online reputations, it’s quite another thing to have individuals hire firms to do the same thing.

(Tip of the hat for the article to Scott Burns, via Marketing Conversation)

I have tried to explain defensive SEO to clients on pitches and here are a couple examples and analogies I have used in the past. I promise to come up with better analogies, but this is what I have at the moment!

Rockets on Israeli Settlements

Most of the time, defensive SEO is sort of like cleaning up a crime scene. There is a lot of manual labor involved in that cleaning. It requires pressurized water hoses, clorox, mops, panes of glass, lots of spackle, and some paint. The goal after a crime has been committed, is to return the scene to normalcy — as if nothing happened here.

Unfortunately, during a crisis situation, the crime is ongoing. I compare it to the daily rocket fire from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip falling randomly on Jewish settlements. Bombing of this sort is random and destructive and done not as a targeted attack but is known as “firing for effect,” which is to say as terrorism and a way of unsettling the settlers.

When it is the security and confidence of a community that is at stake and when there is no way to be sure that the attacks are ever over, returning these settlements in a state of destruction is unacceptable. There are Israeli task forces that have the single-minded job of responding to any and all rocket attacks immediately after the emergency responders leave. The trucks are mobile housing contractors. They have the ability to actively and quickly clean up any and all signs of a destructive attack within hours of the event.

All shrapnel pock marks are spackled, all burn marks are painted over, and all broken glass is replaced. While this may just be a futile act, it is essential for this kind of defensive strategy to continue and continue. Why? Well, this is a game of hearts and minds. This is a game of keeping up appearances to make sure that all the settlers feel safe in their every day life, day after day. This perceived safety is better than none at all. The reality of the day-to-day is enough; however, living in a home with broken windows and the pock marks of shrapnel is too close, especially for neighbors and new settlers.

Cleaning up these attacks daily and footing the bill and resources is the cost of doing business. It is a budgeted line-item, equally important to actually finding ways, both diplomatic and military, to stop the attacks some day.

If one were to wait for the attacks to be over, strategically, ignoring the tactical, then those same hearts and minds might very well decide that living in the settlements, living in Israel, or even moving to Israel is an unacceptable decision.

One must never underestimate perception of safety and its power over both settlers, government, citizens, visitors, tourists, and immigrants; same may be said with a company’s or person’s reputation: investors, employees, relationships, opportunities, and families may become insecure enough to abandon ship.

El Al Jumbo Jets Chaffing and Flaring the Skies

Unfortunately, one cannot hide El Al’s new Boeing 777, the world’s largest twinjet, when it takes off and lands. Not yet anyway. The 777 is a sitting target. One cannot do much about it. What can one do? Well, there are several things: you can have sensors that check to see if there are any service-to-air missiles either locked on or inbound — that’s a start. You can also make sure that your pilots have been trained in evasive maneuvers, which, unfortunately, are limited in jumbo jets. At the end of the day, however, you need to just make sure that the jet isn’t accessible to any SAMs.

El Al commercial aircraft are outfitted not with cloaks of invisibility but with “softkill” countermeasures. A countermeasure is a system (usually for a military application) designed to prevent sensor-based weapons from acquiring and/or destroying a target. Softkill measures generally interfere with the signature of the target to be protected. One or more of the following actions may be taken to provide softkill: reduction of the 777′s signature, augmentation of the 777′s signature, and the cloning or imitation of the 777′s signature. These techniques are used to generally prevent lock-on of a threat sensor to the commercial aircraft.

It is based on altering the signature of the target by either concealing the platform signature or enhancing the signature of the background, thus minimizing the contrast between the two. Some of these techniques include IR-decoy flares, serving to counter infrared-guided missiles (SAM), and radar decoys, in the form of chaff.

The Internet is very similar. Search engines are doubly so. It is impossible to stop flying. It is impossible to disappear the aircraft. And, it is impossible to delete, kill, or remove all threats in advance. Even if it is possible in the Internet to have an attack site brought down, it is simple enough to duplicate content, is simple for the attackers to create rally points, regroup, and then attack again. In fact, bringing a site down oftentimes results in redoubled enemy efforts.

Some of the only effective tools one can use to use “softkill countermeasures” — make sure there is enough chaff and there are enough enough flares in the search results so that when someone tries to attack your brand, their attack ends up getting lost on page 5+ of the returns while still allowing friendlies, “passengers,” and clients to easily and safely find their way to you.

How about them apples?

It is indeed possible to directly and heavily influence search engine results using a variety of white hat techniques. There are two forms of SEO: promotional SEO and defensive SEO, with promotional being the more common of the two. Neither strategy is limited to simply optimizing your site, although that is indeed important if not essential, but also includes messaging, linking, promotion, reciprocal linking, blogrolling, viral components, etc; that said, there is a lot that can be done if you are open to some very creative site optimization site revision. (Via Marketing Conversation)

Promotional SEO

The improvement of the placement of a brand’s search engine results and general SEO for a client’s websites can and should be constantly pursued and managed in a holistic, concerted, intentional campaign. For this there are many techniques including proper site design and meta-tagging, conscientious management of content for SEO, careful submission management, SEO-conscious linking, etc.

A major side benefit of an online outreach and online engagement campaign is that such activities raise the awareness of your message not only among humans, but amongst the search engines as well. The increased relevant, linked, and fresh content with your message will make that information and the associated and linked sites that much more attractive and highly-rated within search engine results.

Defensive SEO

Defensive SEO is a much less common technique, though powerful and effective, used to manage and improve client reputation online. The strategy of being able to remove unwanted search engine results, over time, from the first page of Google (and at times, past page ten) can be intensely valuable to clients who have blemished search results.

SEO isn’t a panacea – it is a lot of work, especially if the topic is volatile or political, such as current news, scandal, or if there is someone else out there who is directly counteracting your campaign.

There is no true secret; however, it is a very complex, sophisticated, and sometimes dangerous game that requires a lot of time, energy, expertise, experience, and a commitment of at least six months. SEO is 1% inspiration and 99% persperation; SEO is about elbow grease plus time. Generally, Google and the other search engines are more like battleships than patrol boats and time is a very important component of the equation.

Although not a panacea, a long-term combination promotional and defensive/protective SEO campaign is a powerful and organic solution to the ephemeral contextual ad and is very durable, armored, and fortified against unforeseen attacks.

The best defense is indeed a good offense.

In Abraham Harrison LLC lingo, we would call the “tracking online chatter” executing an Online Conversation Audit and then maintaining ongoing online intelligence-gathering and analysis. (Via Marketing Conversation)

An Online Conversation Audit is a thorough analysis of a client’s brand perception and reputation online, with particular focus on the client’s conversation in question (e.g. what are they saying about me, what are they saying about my product, what are they saying about my service) in all the relevant blogs, forums, websites, etc. and gives the clients and us a baseline understanding of where online conversation stands at the moment — where the conversation is happening, its intensity (or non-existence), its tone (positive, negative, neutral), its momentum, who is involved in these conversations, who the leaders in the community are, and what the language and “culture” each community having these conversations is.

This is important because it lays out where the conversations are happening, what the conversation are about, and offers a less-focused map of general, topical, conversation that can then be made more precise based on the keywords and topics that are most interesting and useful to you.

After this initial analysis is made, and an understanding of the situation is established, decisions can be made as to what parts of the conversation you wish to focus and invest the resources to track and analyze on an ongoing basis. This would be the ongoing intelligence-gathering and analysis.

Boiled down, this is all called Online Brand Intelligence, which can go hand-in-hand with operational campaigns such as blogger outreach and blogger engagement in the form of online brand promotion and protection, including crisis management.

As word of mouth marketing has proven to travel further, faster and more effectively than traditional marketing, the development of a comprehensive online advocacy program is vital to promoting any idea, product or person. (via Marketing Conversation)

A Guide to Online Outreach and Online Engagement

As word of mouth marketing has proven to travel further, faster and more effectively than traditional marketing, the development of a comprehensive online advocacy program is vital to promoting any idea, product or person.

It is popularly understood that highly-influencing opinion leaders are capable of influencing between 100 and 1000 consumers; obviously, influencing the influencers is a more effective strategy in terms of time, money, and staffing.

One must break the Internet down into communities and conversations, breaking them down further into influencers and opinion leaders, and then delivering a marketing message in such a way that is relevant and appealing enough to not only be received by these taste-makers but to be impressive enough for them to tell all their friends about what you have to offer as well.

Online advocacy requires a series of key steps, which are derived from two basic strategies: top-down and bottom-up.

Despite the simplicity of the terminology, the strategy itself isn’t this simple, it largely reflects two very separate approaches to targeting and reaching a given audience. In essence, these terms relate naturally to the picture that they paint – top-down buzz marketing being the strategy in which taste-makers or community leaders are defined, targeted and appropriately messaged to (online outreach); bottom-up buzz marketing, on the other hand, targets the everyday consumer via online engagement.

While Online Outreach (OO) is a structured approach to marketing to a given demographic, Online Engagement (OE) is much more organic and relies upon the natural echo chamber of the Internet – or the ability for messages to virally spread from community to community naturally. Additionally, online outreach requires the development of a topical and category-based Affinity Site Index (ASI) which be defined as a collection of Birds of a Feather (BoF) blogs, forums, and websites.

Affinity Site Index Development

Marketing to the entire Internet is impossible as it is a constantly growing and changing entity – one cannot broadcast to the Internet given its scope of millions of sites creating billions of pages.

For this reason, it is important not only to define an audience that can reasonably be reached, but also to be mindful of the constant evolution of the Internet.

Do not limit your concept of the Internet to the “blogosphere;” Instead, adopt a more Web 2.0 approach to marketing by allowing the community to include message boards, Wikis, social networks, social bookmarking sites, email lists, podcasts, vlogs, forums, IRC, SMS, IM, MMORPGs, Webcasts, Skypecasts, groups, online video games, 3-D virtual worlds (such as Second Life).

To kick off any Online Advocacy Program, our team spends considerable amounts of time researching and developing your BoF Affinity Site Index. This research is devoted not only to finding out where your current audience lives online, but also to finding like-minded communities that may be interested in your message. This includes thorough investigation within blogosphere; collecting hundreds to thousands of message boards, usenets and forums; scouring social bookmarking, social media and photo and video sharing communities.

Online Outreach

Following campaign and client research and Affinity Group Index development, online outreach officially begins by collecting contact information for community taste-makers.

Deciphering individuals from taste-makers is a key task within this processes. The Affinity Group Index is also vetted for appropriateness and for communities that tend to be receptive to the marketing message as well.

It is also important to note that while online engagement is very heavily focused towards reaching out to consumers within message boards, forums, usenets and other communities where the nature of online dialogue is participatory, online outreach is geared toward reaching out blogs, sites and online media outlets in which the tone is online dialogue takes a more editorial tone.

The primarily goal of any Online Advocacy Program – to build relationships between the you and the community leaders and taste-makers that will help shape perceptions of your brand.

The secondary goal is to have the blogger blog about you, your mission, your vision, and you, 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.

The tertiary goal is to seed Google and other search engines – the real Internet – with a permanent message – your message. Talks, podcasts, time on Second Life, interviews, and meetings are ephemeral and don’t endure online longer than a moment; as a result, it is essential to be aware of the enduring nature of text online.

Getting blogged about online is one of the best ways to enter into immortality; that said, whenever anyone else, who isn’t you, adds to the online conversation about you, you lose control of the message — of your message. You will have to be okay with releasing your message, your product, your services, and your insight into the wilderness. Think about it — if you, your product, or your services suck, then the blogosphere will quickly reflect that.

Online Engagement

Contrary to online outreach in which specific individuals are targeted and messaged to, online engagement involves finding and joining relevant participatory conversations that are already occurring within online message boards, forums, USENET and blogs.

In some cases, in which relevant conversation is not already occurring, online dialogue is initiated within communities that would be most receptive to your specific message.

Please note that relevant conversation implies online dialogue either speaking specifically to your brand or online dialogue centered on similar themes, implying the like-minded nature of conversation participants, thereby allowing messages specific to your brand to be seeded in a natural, seemingly organic fashion.

A powerful technique for building community on blogs is to find a compelling item about your industry, products, and services, then search for blogs that are already talking about it on Technorati and similar search engines.

It is much easier to message on blogs that are already having friendly conversation, evident in the tone of the comments section under each blog post.

Online engagement needs to flow and appear as responsive and organic as natural conversation. When preparing to infiltrate any piece of online dialogue, talking points are more preferable than preparing a script as the flexibility of these talking points allow for seemless entry into these discussions.

Engaging in online conversation as a member of an online community requires your language, delivery, humor, and tone to mirror that of the community. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Although it is likely that a number of these communities may already be included in the ASI (or within the demographics outlined in the ASI), the reality is that an even greater number may not pertain to these demographics. In targeting online conversation that is already happening, you are able not only to effectively reach your primary demographic, but also secondary and tertiary demographics which may also be interested in your brand and your message. Additionally, in seeking out online conversation that is already happening, we are able to better find and counter any negative dialogue that maybe occurring.

After posting a marketing message in any community, be it a blog, message board, usenet, listserv, etc. that conversation is constantly monitored for new activity. Online engagement at this point requires responding to any questions, concerns or criticism of your brand resulting from messaging. It is important to note that a vast majority of online consumers actively participating in these communities are often times as curious as they are skeptical – at times it is required to further inform these users about your brand before they are essentially “sold” on the idea.

In continuing to following up with messaging threads, we are able not only to maintain online engagement, but also provide you with real-time information about your brand and how it is perceived online.

Extensive use of ASI to discover new communities and new consumers that will likely be receptive to your message.

To spread the word online organically, tell them about your company, your culture, your history, your story, your products, and the services you offer – and do it openly and honestly and place your own name, your own email, and either the URL of your web site or the URL of the blog itself.

In a word where online consumers are very savvy to and and very sensitive of spam, it is as important to maintain the appropriate tone as it is to be fully transparent.

“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

One of my students, Michele Capots, from last week’s class, Blogging Basics, did a review of her experience of the class that I was very interested in reading.

I just wanted to remind everyone that the Blogging Basics Workshop is super basic, such as “what is a blog” and “how to I join Blogger?”

Anyone nearly as rock star as Michele Capots really needs to attend the Advanced Blogging Workshop or have your company hire me to come over and talk turkey, strategy, integration, promotion, marketing, outreach, SEO, optimization, social outreach, etc.

Otherwise, it is a simple introduction to blogging 101 for folks who still use quill pens and parchment. That said, I did post an amazingly defensive comment about which I am very ashamed.

So ashamed am I that I have included it below for your amusement! (Because I am shameless as well, of course!)

Blogging for Basics April 27th, 2007 by Michele Capots blogs

“Earlier this week I sat though Blogging for Basics, a course at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda. Being a writer, I’ve taken many courses at the Writer’s Center over the years and was thrilled that they offered one on blogging. But what I learned is I’m not a beginner.

I’m not an expert by any means, but I knew Technorati. I knew some of the buzz words. The lingo. The class touted that I would learn how to leverage my own personal passion, my own personal artistic voice and my unique perception of the world into this online organ.

But I didn’t. I learned how to construct a blog. Literally, through WordPress. Step by step. I learned a blog should be short. And to write a lot. I could have found that out online. I didn’t learn about the words. The power of the medium. As a PR blogger, I didn’t learn what I should or shouldn’t say and the women who were there to launch a blog for their company didn’t learn how to do that either.

Apparently, I could have gone on instructor Chris Abraham’s blog and saved myself $65. All of the necessary tools are on there. And then some. There’s Bloggers Can Ignore Basic Journalism Ethics and Blogging Needs a Code of Honor, Not a Code of Conduct. This would have been helpful when I first started blogging. The class wasn’t.

He could have said, ‘so I want to be a blogger,’ ‘here’s how to do it, what to write, rules of writing,’ and finally ‘how to be successful at it.’ Personally, that would have been helpful to me and probably to the stay-at-home mom who wants to blog about her sick child and the traveling woman who wants to blog about her exquisite journey. Instead, he was all over the map.

There’s an intermediate class next month, but I think I’ll sit that one out. I’ve decided the only way to blog is to get out there and do it. Going to other blogs, seeing what they’re doing right will teach me more than a brick and mortar class. Although I will say, during the class, I couldn’t keep my eyes off Naked Conversations by Shel Israel and Robert Scobel on corporate blogging. From the looks of it, I just might read that.”

My amazingly defensive response, worth of shame and lots of weeping:

“I agree with everything you say. And you’re far from being a beginner. And I would rather eat broken glass and dance to ABBA than teach a beginning class that literally slows down to “how do I set up a Blogger blog” but you have to admit that the Writer’s Center is not the bastion of the bleeding edge. So, here’s some advice: in a world of education and training, Blogging Basics does literally mean “blogging basics.” Yeah, it maps directly. And, unlike, a class called Writing Basics, I also have to talk about “what a blog is” and “what makes a blog” and “what are some blog tools” and “how do I sign up for a blog” and “can you walk us through joining Blogger and joining WordPress?”

That said, I also want you to check out some other free resources:

Ideas of Chris Abraham & Abraham Harrison LLC

That is basically wherein I give the entire shop away!

Cheers for the review!

If you have ever made a blog, know what a blog is, etc, I would recommend you attend only the Advanced Blogging class.

Also, although this is a gorgeous blog, I would recommend going to http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/wp-admin/options-permalink.php and consider changing your permalinks from “web URLs” to the “custom URL structure” which could change this article from http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/?p=252 to http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/2007/04/27/blogging-for-basics/ which might be longer but is a) easier to understand, URL-wise, as to its topic and it is also b) Google-nip. Also, you have lost an amazing opportunity to offer Meta tags (description, keywords, etc) and a number of other missing pieces.

Anyway, sorry to be showing off here but there is a lot more to blogging than learning how to blog and I would highly encourage you to consider attending the Advanced Blogging class.”

Blogging Basics One-Day Workshop: “Writing for online consumption is much different from writing for the page. Learn how to write for the Internet and the blogosphere in this one-day class focused on the unique and powerful way the blogosphere communicates and how you can best leverage your own personal passion, your own personal artistic voice, and your unique perception of the world into an online organ that could change the world,” via The Writer’s Center

Blogging Basics Course at Bethesda
4/24/2007 Writer’s Center Workshop

Description

Writing for online consumption is much different from writing for the page. Learn how to write for the Internet and the blogosphere in this one-day class focused on the unique and powerful way the blogosphere communicated and how you can best leverage your own personal passion, your own personal artistic voice, and your unique perception of the world into an online organ that very well could change the world!

Instructor

Chris Abraham, Founding Partner, Abraham Harrison LLC
Blogging since 1999 www.chrisabraham.com
cabraham@chrisabraham.com +1 202-657-4063

Blogging defined
A blog (short for web log) is a user-generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual and are part of a wider network of social media

What is a blog?

· An online journal (as in “periodical”)

· A web application (as in “program”)

· Easy to use (as easy as webmail)

· Communicative

o Syndicated (RSS, ATOM)

o Link aware (Trackback)

o Comments

o The “search engine advantage”

· Okay to be subjective and opinionated

· Blogs can influence culture and mainstream media

What isn’t a blog?

· A blog is not “just a website”

· A blog doesn’t require editing or oversight

· A blog does not offer privacy

o True anonymity is a myth

· A blog is not a great American novel

o Be brief and to-the-point

o Keep each post to a single topic

Why is a blog different than a website?

1. Ease of publishing

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

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

4. Linkability (All posts should have permalinks)

5. Syndicatability (All content should be available in RSS feeds)

6. Commentability (All posts should welcome comments)

Types of blogging

· Web logs – provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries

· Collaborative blogs – A collaborative blog is a type of weblog which publishes posts written by multiple users. The majority of high profile collaborative blogs are based around a single uniting theme

· Corporate blogs – A corporate blog is a weblog published and used by an organization to reach its organizational goals. Although there are many different types of corporate blogs, most can be categorized as either external or internal.

· Political blogs – A political blog is a common type of blog that comments on politics. In liberal democracies the right to criticize the government without interference is considered an important element of free speech

· Flogs – a marketing tool designed by a professional advertisement company to promote a product in a fashion one might find on a fan site or in regular blog entries

· Splogs – artificially created weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated websites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites

Popular blogging fields

· Political – Daily Kos, Red State, Instapundit, Wonkette, Michelle Malkin

· Gossip – Perez Hilton, Gawker, Wonkette, Defamer, Stereogum, Valleywag, TMZ

· Advocacy – Boing Boing, Lifehacker, Treehugger,

· Fashion – The Superficial, Go Fug Yourself, Manolo Blog

· Tech – Techcrunch, Ars Technica, Scobleizer, Joel on Software, Engadget, Gizmodo

Variations on the blog

· Photoblog – a form of photo sharing and publishing in the format of a blog, but differentiated by the predominant use of and focus on photographs rather than text

· Video blog (vlog or video podcast) – a blog that includes video. Regular entries are typically presented in reverse chronological order and often combine embedded video or a video link with supporting text, images, and other metadata

· Audio blogs (Podcasts) – a digital media file, or a series of such files, that is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers

Where can I blog?

· Free blogging services

o Blogger www.blogger.com

o WordPress www.wordpress.com

o Friendster www.friendster.com

o MySpace www.myspace.com

o LiveJournal www.livejournal.com

o Vox www.vox.com

· Subscription blogging services

o TypePad www.typepad.com

o iWeb www.apple.com/ilife/iweb/features/blogging.html

· Install your own blog software (requires web host)

o WordPress www.wordpress.org

o Movable Type www.movabletype.org

Who is a blogger?

· Everyone!

Why blog?

· Zero barrier to entry

o Technology is no longer a restriction to entry

o Blogging is often free but is always “cheap.”

o Any type of blog host makes you a blogger

· Participate in global conversation

· “Jump the rails” to mainstream media (MSM)

What is a good blog?

· Short, pithy, entries

· Constantly updated

· Only one long work a week

· Shameless, assertive, opinionated, unapologetic

· Give more than it takes

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

Important reading

· Naked Conversations by by Shel Israel & Robert Scoble

o redcouch.typepad.com

· The Cluetrain Manifesto by Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger

o redcouch.typepad.com

· Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents by Reporters without Borders

o www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542

· Applied Blogging Workshop is a collaborative blog for all of us

o www.appliedblogging.org

In response to Do PR Execs and Lawyers Have the Same Bad Rep?, Amanda Chapel responded, “Your logic is flawed at the outset (with all due respect) . . .”

The key word is ‘neutrality.’ We sell belief in things we do NOT necessarily believe in or are even believable. By definition, that’s a lie. Good people doing an honest days work promoting lies… does not make it true. You not knowing the difference between right and wrong doesn’t make stealing a car okay.”

I replied, “When you are a neutral solution, you don’t lie, you just pass through client message. That is like saying that it is the amp that is tone deaf and not the singer! It is like saying that the defense attorney is guilty and not the alleged perp, and it like saying that one should blame the soldier and not the war.”