How to Defend and Protect Your Brand Reputation Online

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.

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 took 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

This is for those of you who attended the free ORM webinar from last week and for those of you who missed it and want to catch up — I will post the video of the free webinar when I get it.  Here’s the description of the event:

Free Online Reputation Management Webinar 7 May

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.

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.

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.

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.

(Reposted from September 24, 2007, An El Al Jumbo Jets Chaffing and Flaring the Skies Analogy)

We do brand reputation and online reputation management and the number one thing we tell our clients is that if you don’t amplify your brand online — add some signal to the noise, if you will — then someone else will.  And, you can do this before you’re attacked or you can do it afterwards as an ORM campaign, which, like going to a plumber when your pipes burst, is generally much more expensive.  Better to maintain than to repair.  Here’s a great article from over on Online Publicity Journal that you should check out, Be Proactive – Don’t Wait Until Negative Press Finds You!:

The internet has allowed people who have normally been quiet to now have a voice, and sometimes a loud one. That voice can easily cripple your business model and stop or slow down revenues coming like a wrench thrown into the gears. One online complaint can send ripples very quickly through your business model.

Whistle blowing websites are everywhere and frustrated clients and customers are waiting for a reason to shout and make noise if things go sour with their experience. If you haven’t’ done any proactive online marketing and your reputation has not been tarnished yet than that is great. But all it takes one angry customer to ruin that good luck streak and you just never know when it could occur.

Many times it will be from an angry customer you have never even heard from who just didn’t even bother contacting you first to try to fix the problem. If you take a proactive approach right from the beginning you can allow yourself to build up a barrier and wall against new, fresh new negative publicity coming in. It is much easier to build a barrier for you business of positive information before negative press finds it way to your search results.

With consumer confidence down and online customers becoming more and more savvy each day more and more online shoppers want to see a squeaky clean online image. If they see any angry clients or customers it could easily trigger them to purchase or do business with a competitor. Online publicity is a very quick and easy way to start building a clean online reputation.

As others pick up your releases you will effectively add more content to your search results. As these links sit and age they become anchored into the search results making it much more difficult for any Rip Off Report and Pissed Consumer listings to make their way to your search results generated by someone search for your personal or business name.

Jeremy Pepper just wrote a blog post entitled Can I can get a big cup of STFU please? that you should read.  The long story short is that  social media is just one part of public relations and that everything really hinges on relationships and connections (Via Marketing Conversation and POP! PR Jots):

The fact is that social media is ONE part of public relations. A SMALL part, if you are a good PR person or firm. The other parts are traditional media (while it might be shrinking, it still reaches that middle part of the country), analyst relations, events, and more.

PR is about relationships. It’s about relationships so much that Lowe’s went to Abraham Harrison for it’s recent project because of its relationships with people at Lowe and because of their relationships with bloggers. See – it’s about relationships.

It’s also about writing, about talking, about conveying a story. But, without those relationships, there’s nothing there. And, unfortunately, with the industry’s reliance on technology – let’s email, let’s launch a blog, let’s get Twitter, let’s do this and that … well, you’re failing in PR.

PS: thanks for the shout out, Mr. Jeremy Pepper. Oh, and thank you Lowe for giving us a go.

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

If you are interested in an online reputation management, defensive SEO, reputation defense campaign, please call us at +1 202-657-4769 or email us at info@chrisabraham.com, and we’ll be more than happy to help you!

Abraham Harrison Online Reputation Management and Defense Services

When it comes down to it, reputation defense and crisis management demands engagement: resistance is futile. Here’s some excellent advice from Local Advertising Journal about the risks and rewards of Online Reputation Management: Eliminate the Negative:

A negative review of your business or product is detrimental to your online reputation, but if it is managed correctly you can negate some of its worst impacts. When you find a negative review about your business, under no circumstances should you knee-jerk a reply defending your business. This can quickly devolve into a nasty thread of replies that will in perpetuity online, for anyone to read. You would not want have a heated argument in front of your customers in public, and make no mistake, an online post war is public indeed.

This is an excellent addition to what I have written in the past about online reputation defense and management:

Some things to consider when you’re cleaning negative returns on Google and the other search engines: cleaning is easier after the body has been removed. If you are in the middle of a maelstrom of bad press and online vitriolic hatred, then you probably need to weather the storm for a while before the counter messaging and the defensive SEO strategy starts working.

That said, messaging, controlling your brand, your reputation, and your results on Google — promotional SEO — should be started well before you ever get smeared online. Getting your message, your intent, your true self, your words, you interests, your true bio, your positive images, your press packets, and everything you have ever published online well before sladerous things happen is essential.

Otherwise, you will be too vulnerable. The best defense is a fantastic offense, to be sure.

One thing that one really needs to consider before entering into a reputation war is whether or not to engage at all.  One thing that I learned during my short stay at Edelman was that the very best PR consultants know when not to engage.  That’s the magic.

Also, if you have a choice, to not engage the attack unless it is in your own terms. If you enter into an engagement in the other party’s terms, you are doomed to failure. Most often, no matter how tempting it may be, do not try to do crisis management in a blogger’s comments unless you have an attitude of mea maxima culpa and a strong solution — a solution that will seriously win hearts and minds — and that does not include being defensive or fighting back.

What I recommend in cases like this is counter-messaging, using either a platform you control or a neutral platform, such as YouTube, Twitter, Digg or whatnot.  In this way, you will be able to convey your truths and the truths of your company and brand without getting to wrapped up in the tarbaby of the commenters and supporters who will, undoubtedly, flock around you like Piranha.

Otherwise, as I said before, no time like the present to start working up your online brand reputation with some of your own energy, positivity, passion, case studies, bios, experience, sharing, teaching, participating, engaging, and learning well before anything happens in your space, online or otherwise.

When it comes down to it, it all comes down to whether you’re known or unknown. If you are attempting to defend your reputation as an Internet unknown against an Internet Celeb, you’re toast and you probably need to quickly contact me and my firm right away — things are going to get ugly fast.  Even if you’re known but not necessarily adored, you will still be part of the accountability loop. People tend not to attack someone they know. If you can make sure your “captors” know your face and know who you are, you’re more likely to survive any sort of slander and online attack much more than a nameless, faceless, and detached corporate globalist.

I don’t know if you’ve been online much, but the worst thing ever to be online is a detached corporate globalist. Even if you and your brand has a history of tending towards detached corporate globalism, you can at least become an engaged corporate localist with the name Jack or Phil or Mike or Sheila, and that’s better that just being a Trademark, a Copyright, and a pack of hungry lawyers!

Abraham Harrison LLC’s Online Reputation Management Defense Services

You are not helpless in the face of negative search results. A directed, well-executed, diligent campaign will place your desired results high in the list, pushing undesirable results down to irrelevant pages where the majority of Internet users do not bother to look. 90% of searchers never look past the first page — i.e. the first 10 results. 99% of searchers never look beyond the second page. We will work to get the undesirable results as far from those first two pages as possible.

At Abraham Harrison, LLC, our proven and well-refined methods as well as our long-established credibility gives us particular efficacy in influencing top search results. We don’t engage the negative results, as this actually makes them more attractive to the search engines. We employ an assortment of tactics to chaff and flare, to draw the search engines’ attention to positive and neutral results, and away from the problematic negative results .

It is not possible to make information on the Internet disappear unless the people who put the information online in the first place take it back down again — even then, the data is often mirrored elsewhere or cached and re-served by the likes of Google and The Wayback Machine. The method is to make the undesirable results needles in haystacks — it can be there, but only people really intent on finding it will come across it.

An online search results sanitization campaign is a long-term commitment, much like treating a cancer. It begins with a period of intense assault on the problem to beat the negatives down followed by a on-going low-level maintenance regime to keep them down. A campaign is heavily front-loaded with the ongoing maintenance being very low cost — we can also turn those maintenance operations over to you, together with any infrastructure, content, and domain names we may have set up during the campaign.

Unlike many other companies in this field, we have no interest in holding you hostage over the years by keeping control of the mechanisms of the treatment. We are happy to turn that over to you once we get you in the clear, or if you prefer, provide you the service of keeping up the defense, however you prefer.

An online search results sanitization campaign requires subtlety convincing the search engines that what they previously believed — i.e. that the currently highly-ranked negative results are indeed some of the most valuable and relevant results — is no longer true, and that the neutral and positive content that we identify or create is far more valuable and relevant and therefore should rank highly, pushing the negative results down into the obscurity of lower rankings.

This requires a bit of time, 6-8 weeks of concerted effort generally, to get results moving away from where the search engines have long believed them legitimately to stand, toward the new state that we desire, with those negative results far below the neutral and positive ones.

Once we get the results moving and out of stasis, we keep them moving until we are happy with the results, then maintain them in place, so that the negative results (which naturally have their own legitimacy in the eyes of the search engines) do not move back up again. It is a bit like braces on a child’s teeth which are then followed by a retainer that keeps them straight and prevents them from slipping back to their original crooked state.

Even the largest, well-known companies have used defensive SEO tactics in the face of crisis and unfavorable publicity. It works for them, and it will work for you. Negative search results are a controllable problem that can be solved with diligence and know-how. Unlike other common types of crises, negative search results will not disappear without action. However, unfavorable publicity that you may have received years ago that is still affecting perceptions about your brand can be dealt with and have its negative impact neutralized.

We have resolved difficult SEO solutions — probably far worse than yours – in the past and come out on top. With our vast network and effective systems, we are able to provide an viable, permanent solution to most online reputation problems, and we will help with yours as well.

Generally, campaigns run a year, with the bulk of the effort in the first 4 months. After the first five to six months have passed and we have achieved a stable new order with the negative results well-buried, we will be happy to turn the maintenance over to you, if you wish, or we can continue to maintain the defensive systems for you until the end of the year.  After the first year, we’re happy to continue monitoring your online reputation and maintaining your defensive systems for as long as you choose to retain our services.

That said, all of the work, all the domain names, and all the IP we generate for you is yours and we’re happy to turn it over to you if you like, after the year-long contract is completed.

Abraham Harrison, LLC, bills on a retainer basis, i.e. at the beginning of the month before beginning operations. As mentioned, the effort, and the billing is front-loaded to allow an aggressive attack to beat down the negative results soundly, then backing off over time focusing over more on the lower-resource work of stabilizing the results in order to allow you to save money.

Abraham & Harrison offers its clients comprehensive Online Conversation Marketing campaigns based on the core fundamentals of effective Marketing Communication techniques. We integrate Online Publicity, Online Grassroots & New Media Marketing, Business Intelligence and Search Engine Services to ensure that our clients’ message, the right message, is being portrayed in every corner of the digital space. Additionally, we offer our expertise in the areas of profiling, intelligence, forensics and crisis management. Although Abraham & Harrison offers its clients the ability to cherry pick the services that best suit their needs, we strongly suggest customized, tailored packages of services for most clients, as our experience has proven the power of an integrated, comprehensive approach.

Please see our website for further information: http://www.chrisabraham.com/

Abraham Harrison LLC Services

Online Publicity and Blogger Relations

Not unlike traditional public relations, the Abraham & Harrison Online Publicity and Blogger Relations strategy not only identifies the right people for you to be talking to, but also connects these people with your brand and your message. In targeting the true online opinion leaders, we are able to not only hone in on the demographic communities that matter most to your brand, but also promote your products and services in a favorable light. Online Public Relations is an ideal brand awareness and brand promotion solution for small to mid-sized businesses looking to increase their visibility online. In leveraging the constant flow of online chatter, the Abraham & Harrison team creates and fosters relationships based on like-mindedness, or the opinion leader’s likelihood to be receptive to your brand and messaging. It is the relationship building aspect of this program that makes Online Publicity an optimal solution for prospective clients that have the infrastructure to support and maintain relationships with interested parties.

Examples of typical Online Publicity campaigns include: Event Publicity, New Product Launches, Crisis Communication, Brand Re-Information Campaigns, Overall Brand Awareness/Promotional Efforts.

Online Grassroots and New Media Marketing

Also referred to as Online Advocacy or Online Guerilla Marketing, Online Grassroots and New Media Marketing is an integrated approach to identifying and reaching your targeted demographic from the bottom up. These programs are a quick and effect means of spreading news and information to a targeted network of online influencers within the blogosphere, message boards, video communities, social bookmarking sites, listservs, etc. This strategy involves the development of key creative and general messaging by the client and allowing our team of Online Grassroots experts to run with it, determining the best way to roll that up into what the demographic audience would be most receptive to. As opposed to the much targeted approach of Online Publicity, Online Grassroots Marketing allows us to capitalize on the “long tail,” or the complex nature of online chatter in which dialogue about our client’s brands isn’t always localized within its primary, secondary or tertiary demographic targets.

Examples of typical Online Grassroots Marketing campaigns include: Social Network Marketing, Asset Distribution, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing.

Business Intelligence

Collectively, the Abraham & Harrison Management Team has over 5 decades of global branding and marketing communication strategy experience. It is with these years of experience that we have learned that for some clients, their bottom line is most affected by having real-time, accurate business intelligence information about market landscape, trends in their overall brand perception and valuable online opinion about their competitors. The deliverable on these initiatives is a comprehensive, detailed report, evaluating and analyzing trends within the mediasphere; blogosphere; user generated content outlets, message boards and forums. The Online Business Intelligence service also gives the prospective client to determine which demographic communities about which they are most interested in gaining information. These reports can be delivered as a one-time State of the Union analysis or as an ongoing trend analysis, depending on the client’s needs.

Search Engine Services

Brand of the world, large and small, know that visibility of favorable content within key search engines can make or break your marketing and public relations initiatives. In addition to offering tailored marketing communication and business intelligence solutions to our clients, Abraham & Harrison is also a full-service Search Engine Marketing agency. Programs falling within this department include: Traditional Search Engine Optimization (Promotion), Defensive Search Engine Optimization (Protection), Domain Name Protection and Domain Name Services.

Online Reputation Clean-Up and Defense

Despite providing Internet users with a wealth of accurate information, some brands have faced the hard reality of the adverse affects that negative online chatter and mis-information can have. Fortunately, the majority of these trends can be reversed, if treated early and in the right way. By providing clients in need of Online Reputation Clean-Up and Defense services, the Abraham & Harrison team harnesses the power of an integrated approach to attach negative opinions and misinformation from all sides. In combining our Search Engine Services (including Domain Name and Defensive SEO), Online Public Relations, Business Intelligence and our Online Grassroots and New Media Marketing Programs, the Abraham & Harrison team is able to deliver quick results. In the past, we have proven effective in minimizing the visibility of unfavorable content online, countering misinformation with real information and creating valuable allies among online opinion leaders on behalf of our clients.

About the Founding Partners

Mark Harrison, Founding Partner and CEO

Mr. Harrison’s unique history of professional experience blends technology, education, business, and international affairs. Trained as a diplomat, Mr. Harrison has worked with UNHCR, the IMF, and the World Bank Group. He has served as a political functionary, technologist, and journalist in the US, Europe, Thailand, Israel, Tanzania, and Guatemala.

He has served as CTO and Technical Counsel to a companies ranging from Fortune 500′s to start-ups, and has guided projects across the globe. He served as a technology adviser to Primedia, the US media conglomerate, Channel One, the world’s largest in-school education and television news network, and largest minority-owned TV network in the US. He has built systems and infrastructures for the afore-mentioned organizations as well as a number of other major corporations including Booz, Allen & Hamilton, and Bell Atlantic/Verizon. Mr. Harrison currently acts as CTO and marketing adviser to Techcelerator, the Silicon Valley venture development firm headed by tomandandy.com’s Tom Hajdu. He is also an associate of Joseph Jaffe’s New York based new media marketing company, crayon LLC.

Over the past 15 years, Mr. Harrison has taught at the secondary, university, and post-graduate levels in the US, Canada, Germany &Tanzania, and has developed curricula in business, academic methodology, languages, and technology. Mr. Harrison has lived and worked in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America and speaks English, German, French, Swahili, and Spanish.

Chris Abraham, President and Founding Partner

Chris Abraham is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant, and adviser to the industries leading firms, specializing in web2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media. Chris is a leading expert on corporate and PR blogging with a focus on citizen journalism, new marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO).

In addition to his roles as consultant and analyst, Mr. Abraham currently acts as Chief Marketing Officer and technology adviser to Techcelerator, the Silicon Valley venture development firm headed by tomandandy.com’s, Tom Hajdu. He is also an associate of Joseph Jaffe’s New York based new media marketing company, crayon LLC.

Mr. Abraham is one of the internet’s social media pioneers, having entered the scene in the early 1980′s in the days of BBS’s via dial-up over 200 Baud acoustic modems. Throughout the 1990′s, he was a core member of the ground-breaking, Washington, DC-based Meta Network (TMN), and its parent company, Caucus Systems where in 1999 what is today known as “Web 2.0″ and “Enterprise 2.0″ was defined in colleague Tom Mandel’s whitepaper “How Companies Think – Creating Collaborative Intelligence Online” and executed on a daily basis for companies, universities, and organizations via the seminal social media platform, Caucus Software. For more than a decade, Mr. Abraham laid the groundwork for today’s modern social media as an online facilitator with Caucus Systems clients serving such clients as IBM and the US Government, and teaching with the University of Kalamazoo in the Education for the Arts project – the world’s first accredited online high school course in creative writing.

Before moving to his current position, Mr. Abraham was a Senior Account Supervisor and a member of the Interactive Team at Edelman in Washington, DC, doing online public affairs. Before joining Edelman, Chris was Technology Strategist for New Media Strategies, a pioneer and industry leader in online brand promotion and brand protection. At NMS, Chris directed the technology strategy for the firm, including the development, deployment, and launch of client and internal corporate blogs, marketing blogs, vertical industry blogs, PR blogs, promotional blogs, public affairs blogs, social networks, and podcasts.

Prior to joining NMS, Chris was a Washington-based technologist for over a decade. As Managing Director for Berlin-based beehive North America, Chris focused on developing web applications and offering training for corporate clients such as Pfizer. As GNU/Linux SA and online facilitator for Caucus Systems, Chris hosted virtual online events and communities of practice for clients such as IBM and eForum 2000.

Chris Abraham maintains the PR and marketing blogs, Because the Medium is the Message and Marketing Conversation. The blogs were originally designed as a laboratories in which to explore the media, the mediasphere, the blogosphere, marketing, PR, and buzz marketing but has expanded to become a media filter, including technology, blogging, pop culture, memetics, news, and analysis; meaning just about anything. Chris recently spoke about the main stream media and citizen journalism on the BBC World Service radio program World Have Your Say during the We Media conference in London.

Mr. Abraham is an active member and attendee of former US Ambassador Phil Lader’s Renaissance Weekend conference where together with other industry leaders, US Senators and Congressmen, former US Presidents, renowned artists and writers, and other cultural, political, and business leaders he has spoken on topics ranging from new media to technology futurism to virtual company management. He is an experienced sailor with thousands of blue water miles to his credit, an impassioned rower with his own single shell housed on the Potomac River, an avid bicyclist, a trained and qualified dive master, and an accomplished photographer with over 20 years of professional experience and thousands of images with the world’s top stock photo agencies.

Abraham & Harrison Vision Statement

In the rapidly changing world of marketing and public relations, the lines between traditional strategies and new media strategies continue to shift as the line separating the two is constantly moving. What was once viewed as impossible, is now quickly transforming into more and more of a science, with the Internet emerging as a unique and remarkable platform for consumer and business communication. Faster now, more than ever, people around the world are able to communicate with rapid fire quickness. Formerly “untappable,” obscure word-of-mouth is now a medium that many brands are leveraging to disseminate information; promote their products and services; as well as protect their namesakes. In this day and age, we don’t need to remind you of the Internet’s effects (be it favorable or dismal) on many popular brands. It is this phenomenon that has made Online Conversation Marketing an ideal solution for a variety of notable brands, ranging from Internet start-ups to public interest groups to major consumer brands.

Abraham & Harrison is comprised of a trained team of media, marketing and public relations experts working together to drive positive online presence on behalf of our clients. Operating in a “virtual office,” the Abraham & Harrison team is spread across four continents, representing more than 10 time zones and almost a dozen languages. This dispersion has given us a notable competitive edge, allowing us to quickly and effectively employ comprehensive Online Conversation Marketing Campaigns within more than 50 countries. Despite its benefits, the “virtual office” does not provide for the ideal environment for rapid response communication, in a traditional sense. Though Abraham & Harrison has proven its ability to provide crisis communication and react to changes in campaign strategy and messaging, we do not operate in a newsroom and are unable to collectively stop on a dime and refocus in the same way that traditional PR houses are able.

Online Conversation Marketing grew out of the increasing importance of relationships as it relates to effective branding via the Internet. Despite the wealth of information and opinions “out there,” Abraham & Harrison understands that an elite few lead sweeping trends in Online Conversation tone, volume and reach. These Online Opinion Leaders or Influencers continue to break news and share opinions that reach hundreds of thousands, if not millions of consumers everyday. Thus, the overarching strategy of Online Conversation Marketing is influencing the influencers – much like securing online endorsements on behalf of our clients. Unlike the formalized world of traditional marketing and PR, an effective Online Conversation Marketing Program takes much longer to develop, as Abraham & Harrison is in the business of securing positive relationships with often busy Opinion Leaders. We have been able to complete campaigns on behalf our clients in as little as 6 weeks, however, the turn around for the majority of brands is generally several weeks, if not months, longer. The “public” that we relate to is not the mainstream media, whose relationships can often be bought and sold; the “public” that we do relate to are the online influencers, who oftentimes, are no more than regular Internet users with a well crafted, interested blog or website that has drawn in its own audience. Although Abraham & Harrison already has a sundry of these influencers in pocket, we often have to develop new relationships on behalf of our clients, given their diverse demographic targets and needs.

Abraham & Harrison leverages email to conduct the majority of relationship building with online influencers, however, we are not a direct or email marketing agency. Often times, the opinion leaders that we contact on behalf of our clients are being reached “blindly,” meaning that they have not opted into any particular program. In order to effectively carry out these campaigns and still remain CAN-SPAM compliant, we pick and choose our targets carefully, ensuring that we provide them with relevant messaging and “gifts” or promotions or information that would be of interest to them. At the end of the day, much like traditional PR, a poorly thought out Online Outreach campaign (the facet of Online Conversation Marketing most like traditional PR in which we build relationships with popular bloggers and influencers on behalf of our clients) can result in little to no positive outcome for the client. It is for this reason that the ramp up time on these programs typically runs anywhere from one to three weeks, as we prepare lists of appropriate, likeminded targets that will likely respond well to our clients’ brands as well as development of appropriate, effective “messaging.”

All things to considered, it is also worth highlighting that unlike other Online Marketing and Advertising agencies, Abraham & Harrison does not thoughtlessly disseminate links and off-topic messaging throughout the user generated corners of the Internet. We value relationships and act as persuaders, storytellers and attractors on behalf of our brands. In working individually with online influencers and Internet users as both a macro (Online Outreach) and micro (Online Engagement, Grassroots Marketing) level, Abraham & Harrison builds relationships and drives favorable, organic conversation in a compliant fashion. The Abraham & Harrison methods reflect the natural progress of organic word-of-mouth – starting small and progressively growing to reach a larger and larger audience. In respecting the online community, the Abraham & Harrison team stands firmly against online solicitation (SPAM) of any kind. Both in Online Outreach and Online Engagement, we are fully transparent, or “open kimono.” We have found these methods to be the most effective when working with the “online public.”

As common conceptions of marketing relate to Online Conversation Marketing, Abraham & Harrison does operate neatly into the bucket of branding, as our methods are a combination of Search Engine Optimization, Grassroots Marketing and Online Public Relations. Clients in the past have likened us to online brand ambassadors. Such being said, we do not fit any pay-per-performance or CPM model. Our metrics are based on conversation and relationships rather than conversions and impressions, much akin to tradition grassroots and brand ambassador strategies.

To conclude, Abraham & Harrison is pleased to offer its unique Online Conversation Marketing services to an array of brands and organizations. Our past clients have found the mix of SEO, Online PR and Grassroots Marketing to be exceptionally effective in achieving their overall marketing objectives. Millions of people are talking online everyday – are you listening?

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?