A belated welcome to all the folks who have landed here from elsewhere to see some awesome PR and Social Media blogging. I am pretty stoked to have been mentioned on PR Web’s:  Public Relations Blogs – 25 Essential PR Bloggers You Should Be Reading.

What this will shortly result in is a renewed commitment to blogging on new media, new technology, monitoring, metrics, innovation, marketing, social media, and digital PR.

Forgive me but I guess I have been doing way too much working as president of Abraham Harrison and not enough generous, thoughtful, and insightful analysis of what I know.

So, in the upcoming days and weeks, I will aspire to re-activate.  I am pretty motivated after spending a couple days with industry experts and marketing gurus at the North American Alterian Engaging Times Summit 2010 in Chicago over the last few days.

Public Relations Blogs – 25 Essential PR Bloggers You Should Be Reading

Keeping up with what’s new and interesting in public relations news is important – vital strategies, tips and trends are shared each day that can impact your business. Whether you’re looking for best practices on press release distribution or simply how to take advantage of social media, these blogs will prove invaluable. To keep up with the hottest and highest quality content, below are 25 essential public relations blogs you should be reading:

PR Squared — PR Squared is a blog by Todd Defren, a principal at SHIFT Communications, which focuses on conversations about social media and marketing.

Brian Solis — Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks, gives insights into the convergence of PR, Traditional Media and Social Media at his popular blog.

Peter Shankman — Peter Shankman’s blog looks at thinking about Social Media, PR, marketing, advertising, creativity, and customer service.

Dave Fleet — DaveFleet.com is about communications, public relations, marketing and social media, and the areas where those topics intersect.

Danny Brown — This blog by Danny Brown, co-founder of the SRM group, focuses on the use of social media, PR and marketing,

Conversation Communications — This blog by Arik Hansen, principal of ACH Communications, covers all things related to digital PR strategy and community building.

Social Media Explorer — A blog by Jason Falls, Social Media Explorer, covers public relations, social media, search marketing and many topics in between.

Chris Abraham — Chris Abraham, President and COO of Abraham Harrison LLC, writes this blog on developing news and updates in the world of public relations and social media.

PR in Your Pajamas — A blog about integrating using public relations and business coaching for results, Elena Veis, tells how integrating these areas will lead to success for your business.

O’Dwyer’s PR Blog — O’Dwyer’s blog covers PR, public affairs, marketing and the world of communications.

TopRank Online Marketing Blog — The Online Marketing blog maintained by the team at TopRank Online Marketing provides helpful information on areas such as SEO, social media marketing, business blogging and online PR.

Influential Marketing Blog — Rohit Bhargava maintains the Influential Markeitng Blog, a site that focuses on information and resources on creating compelling marketing, advertising and public relations strategies.

AimClear Blog — The aimClear blog is a resource for search engine marketing for advertising agency, in-house and public relations professionals.

A Take on Tech PR by Drew Benvie — A blog by Drew Benvie, managing director of 33 Digitial, that gives insights and information on tech public relations and how it can help you.

Media Culpa — Media Culpa is a blog about media and public relations – with a focus on social media – written by Swedish PR practitioner Hans Kullin.

The Buzz Bin — The Buzz Bin provides a point of view on integrated communications, including PR, social media, interactive and general marketing topics.

Spin Sucks — Spin Sucks is the agency blog of Arment Dietrich and covers social media, online PR and all things in between.

PR Couture — PR Couture explores the ever-evolving role of public relations, marketing and social media in the fashion industry.

PRSA ComPRehension — PRSA ComPRehension is a blog on PR best practices from Public Relations Society of America members.

Beyond the Hype — Beyond the Hype conveys the opinions, insights and experiences in public relations and advertising from senior communications counselors at Lois Paul & Partners.

Adam Sherk — Adam Sherk is a Search and PR strategist, helping news and content sites with enterprise SEO and audience development, including social media marketing and other forms of online public relations.

Measurement Matters — Measurement Matters gives insights and information on the areas of public relations, social media and how media analysis and evaluation relates to them.

College Web Editor — College Web Editor is a helpful resource with information about the Web, marketing, and PR in higher education.

Deirdre Breadenridge PR 2.0 Strategies — Deirdre discusses social networking, blogging, microblogging, podcasting, streaming video, RSS technology and how communications is changing the way that businesses need to think.

Journalistics — Journalistics is a blog dedicated to covering all topics at the intersection of public relations and journalism today.

Be sure to check out the original post.

Abraham Harrison. LLC: True experts in online PR, not just old-media PR doing an add-on
There is a misconception among many old-media PR shops that online PR is pretty much like the old-school stuff, just in a different place. This could not be further from the truth. New media online PR is a very different world, a totally different culture, and an entirely different approach. It’s not easy, and there are lots of potential pitfalls, but it is extremely effective when done correctly and with enough commitment.

Results by True Online Experts
We’re completely confident in our ability to produce results with clients who are willing to commit the resources and focus to online efforts – we know our way around this space like few others. We also know that there is far more to being a surgeon than reading how an operation is done, far more to being an engineer than having the blueprints in your hands, far more to being a chef than being able to read a cookbook. That is why we are willing to give away the shop in this proposal, and willing to provide even more detail to anyone who asks for it – indeed, we publish all this openly on our website.

Securing you Trust, Endorsements, Top Search Results Ranking, and Ubiquitous Presence of Message
We can get your brand out in front of the world, right in front of the eyes of exactly the people you want to reach. We can drive your search engine and general online visibility so that your brand is ubiquitous in the places where your potential clients live online and at the tops of search results – not only having your brand promoted on your own sites, but getting them endorsed and promoted on the sites and under the names of the influencers in the online worlds where your customers are waiting for you to meet them.

We’re happy to help you connect to the online influencers who are speaking to the communities you’d like to reach, and whose posts will further bolster SEO and the presence of your brand in the search results.

Mark Harrison, CEO & Chris Abraham, President and COO, Abraham Harrison, LLC Via Abraham Harrison

Earlier this week, I guest lectured on digital PR at the American University and reported on the experience, Public Relations and Communications’ Future is Bright!. I said that I would not write anything nice unless someone sent me a thoughtful email from the class.

Well, I received two nice notes, one from Juliana Serafini (who promises to email me again next week) and one from Kari Elam, who had a lot of great question.  I will not expose her questions, but the long story short is that Kari is writing for music, culture, arts, and society blogs and wonders if that it good enough as a way of writing herself into a smashing agency job in PR and I told her that while it couldn’t hurt, it is also essential for her to go a little further.

Well, here is the ‘sage’ advice I give to Kari:  Kari, what you’re doing for your current blogs is more editorial writing.  While editorial and column-writing might very well help you with a publishing career in the future — and doesn’t hurt your portfolio — I must underscore the fact that while blogging about music — being a blogger — is super-important when it comes to being a respected part of the community — the “who the hell are you?” factor, there is another more important blogging strategy to pursue if you want to end up in a top-ten national PR firm.

What you need to do, in addition to blogging is “meta blogging,” — blogging about social media, about digital PR, about public relations, about advertising, etc…  It is really important to make sure you’re always taking a step back and think not only about the what of social media but also about the why and how.

What this could look like is a blog about your studies of PR at AU and what you’re learning and how it contrasts with what you’re learning at your PR Internship. If you’re interested in music, society, the arts, and culture, explore it in the context of the Internet, of online branding, ads, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and even television and radio.  How do you see what you’re learning about traditional PR dovetailing into social media marketing and digital PR?  Can you see a continuum?  Can you maybe help the fogies of traditional PR find their way to digital PR?  If you can light the path and maybe even map the way, you’re golden.  Move to NYC and start shopping for apartments, you’ll be on Madison Avenue in no time.

However, don’t forget the basics. As a PR consultant, you will be required to know how to not simply consume content (read blogs), not only produce content (blog), but analyze and understand how to conversation works, how best to leverage and participate in conversation, and also how best to manage conversation and manage reputation.  Being a PR professional is about knowing how things work behind the curtain. And, since you are young and “cyber,” people assume that you have a valuable and important insight into the future.

PR firms are beginning to realize that “all kids get the Internet” may be true, but not in the way they thought — that “kids” get the Internet with only the level of sophistication that people from 35-50 get television — as a source of entertainment and information.

So, it is your job to publicly and prove, on a daily basis, on a blog, that you get what’s going on, that you’re current with the movers and shakers, that you have a passion for that space, and also that you will be able to prevent the future from blindsiding your PR VP and your client by keeping on top of technology, social media, new PR, and new and important channels through which you need to use to promote and protect your clients.

Your music blogging and your trend blogging and your other blogging means that you can now think like a blogger and that you’re accepted into the blogosphere — which is an important first step.  The second step is proving you can strategically and even tactically make the Internet work for your clients and your agency.

Not to insult us marketing, advertising, and PR bloggers and blogs but there is a lot of room in the Power 150 for more voices, that’s for sure.  If you start today, you may very well shoot up the list. A new voice is always welcome. Also, don’t be intimidated by what this sort of blogging means.  You don’t have to act out of your focus.  Take what you already love and then just spend some time getting meta on it — spend some time playing.  Spend some time taking the articles you’re writing elsewhere and slice them and dice them a little academically.  Do things like create your own case studies and give away the sort of campaigns you might recommend yourself.  Feel free to critique or compliment campaigns and brands and firms and agencies — especially the ones you’d like to work with.

I swear to God, you can write yourself into this business.  You can write yourself into a very fine career as a PR professional. You’re good as gold if you can prove that you’re both someone who has been trained in traditional PR and who gets digital PR; that you’re someone who gets both theoretical social media as well as practical social media.

And, good luck to you, Kari!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Krishna De just wrote an article called How Not To Pitch A Blogger and it is brilliant and useful — “here are three of the many mistakes they made in the pitch:”

• there was no personal connection in the email to me about why the story may be of interest to me and my readers
• they did not give me anything of value to bring to my readers – no inside scoop so to speak or an offer of speaking to me to answer any questions
• they made me click through to read the article in the press – many bloggers won’t take that extra click – and what’s more the article in the press was at best boring and certainly not newsworthy.

Busy blogger’s are like journalists – they want an inside and unique story that is going to be of value to their readers and they don’t have time to have to go into hours of research.

I personally don’t agree with the third bullet point if what Krishna is saying is that the entire pitch has to be inline.  We find that all of our most successful pitches are as long as three brief paragraphs and as brief as one, with an “extra click” in the form of a Social Media News Release (SMNR). Here are some examples we have for I Will Not Be Broken, Survivor Corps, and Life Changing Box, for example.  When it comes to email pitches, you have to have the blogger “at hello” and the trouble with big, annoying, inline content (inline in the body of the email or, egad, offered as an attachment) is that it is stuck in the INBOX and isn’t readily available to the blog — inline graphics can’t be copied and pasted to a blog post, but if you copy and paste something from a web page, it easily posts.

Offering content in an attachment or an inline pitch makes it impossible for simple posting — images and graphics break because they’re often locally hosted and not available online.

If you off-link to an SMNR, the blogger can readily copy and paste the content and also, in the copy-and-paste, include the inline graphics, images, and links in the blog post itself.

When we create a pitch and then link off the blogger pitch to an SMNR, we try to KISS — every extra link and extra paragraph and extra “rich text element” such as HTML and inline graphics that a pitch includes increases the change — the probability — that the pitch isn’t even going to get to the blogger and will end up either in the SPAM box or, even worse, stuck in the maw of the ISP itself.

The more brief and plaintext the pitch is, the better.  We absolutely refuse to include more than one link from our pitches, even killing all hot links from the signature or anything else.

If you don’t have the blogger at hello, you’re done for, no matter how you do it: inline or linked-out.

Via Krishna De’s BizGrowthNews

I just posted an article onto Marketing Conversation called Gifting Bloggers Doesn’t Mean Pushing Swag and within minutes Stevie Wilson of LA-Story wrote the most amazing comment on the culture of swag that is commonplace in Los Angeles, California… (via Marketing Conversation)

Swag is the name of the game in Los Angeles– in a city that lives and dies by celebrities getting swag and quite frankly are the least needy for that – because they have the $$ to pay for anything given to them.

Swag has a bad connotation because it smacks of pandering and quite frankly payola. However when it comes to blogging– depending on the topic of course–one can hardly blog about a skincare line if one hasn’t tried it — or has tried it for only one week and doesn’t own up to the fact.

Gifting is somewhat different. Sometimes it’s a holiday or birthday gift that really is a “gift” between a corporate entity and the blogger for the support (if there has been support and I don’t mean Perez Hilton type support that has been advertised) that the blogger may have given. Or it can be something that the corporate entity has done to gain the attention to the brand in such an unusual and interesting way that it definitely gains the immediate attention and enthusiasm of the blogger– like a video iPod that has videos of fashion shows or make-up tips from NY Fashion Week .

In LA there is a gifting process that is quid pro quo but typically for the more visible press— which means stylists who bring in celebrities to a suite whose promoter gives them a trip or a great big fat goody bag of stuff (the same goody bag given to the celebrities)

However that being said, even the stylists get shunned despite bringing or sending in celebrity friends, clients or contacts.

Some PR and brands don’t think that bloggers count. Trust me– we can reach people faster if you are kind, polite and friendly.

Agreeing with Chris here that offering me some worthy information is well worth it — whether it’s to be written about or giving me some heads up on a trend or event that’s about to launch.

I have PR people who slip me the 411 on celebrity clients wearing the brands they represent before anyone else has it. You can bet I run that information and pronto!! Others tell me about new things just because they know I can help support that when it launches– because I can “plan” for blogs around it.

It all depends on how and what you value. I have yet to see anyone gift me something so amazing that I would jump .. Been promised things (cars to come get me and other trinkets), but they never come through– suddenly bloggers are persona not so grata.

This morning, Norman Birnbach wrote an article wherein he suggests that I emphasize giving swag:

One of his tips is to “Give swag” — a point that Chris Abraham emphasized in a recent interview. The reason is that blogging is often a second career and there are few perks so swag can make a difference to get bloggers to respond.

He is not wrong, but I think I need to clarify my definition of “gift-giving.” I don’t emphasize giving away swag, necessarily — what I do emphasize is gifting — and giving ’til it hurts, “What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception.” The following excerpt is from Be Generous, Not Stingy, When Engaging Bloggers:

“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.”

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

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.

I just discovered that Because the Medium is the Message placed a distant second (to Technosailer) on The Buzz Bin’s Top 12 DC Area New Media, PR & Marketing Blogs list.

I was flattered very much by Geoff Livingston:

“Looking around Technorati, I found the top ranked new media/pr/marketing blogs in the Greater Washington region. These are ranked by Technorati’s very subjective authority system. We have an A-lister, Chris Abraham, and then a bunch of indies floating between 41-86.”

I am very proud, and hoping that this blog, Marketing Conversation, starts to rise in the ranks. I am proud to see my friend Alice Marshall‘s blog, Presto Vivace, on the list at number 7! Also, congrats to The Buzz Bin for making number 5.

“Top 12 DC Area New Media, PR & Marketing Blogs
- Technosailer – 874
- Chris Abraham – 191
- Technosight – 86
- Destination Creation – 67
- Buzz Bin – 59
- Alex Rudloff – 58

- Presto Vivace – 56
- Potomac Flacks – 53
- Four Labs – 49
- Maryland Media – 48
- Mike-O-Matic -48
- 21st Century Public Relations – 41″

“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

I was talking to Andrew Peach this morning about memes.org and he popped me the news story you’ve all heard about, McDonald’s seeks ‘McJob’ rewrite, and sagely added, “memetically, McDonalds have scored an own goal with this one…..I personally had never heard of the term McJob until yesterday……Now that I know it I will surely be using it all the time.” Too true.

McJob wasn’t a thing since Douglas Coupland mentioned it in Generation X. I haven’t used it at all in ten-years and I haven’t heard it being used at all during the entire minimum wage war.

McDonalds is using the argument that 80% of McDonalds’ managers came up from their McJobs but I don’t buy it because if you’re at a cocktail party and you drop that you’re a manager at McDonalds, you’ll still get ridiculed because that is still a McJob, perceptions-wise, and you are still a loser.

The only people in the McDonalds world who get any respect are McDonalds franchisees and executives. (The same with car salesmen are losers but if you own all the Cadillac dealerships in New Jersey, you are god.)

A manager at McDonalds who doesn’t own a franchise is still considered a loser. So, I think this is just going to make bad into worse for McDonalds. The concept of McJob was dormant as a meme until yesterday.

Firstly, I don’t think that the OED delists words; secondly, who is McDonald’s PR agency? This is a case of letting sleeping memes lie because the truth is is that my friends no longer use McJob and the media no longer uses McJob.

Well, they sure as hell do now…

Look at all of this coverage: UPI, Sun-Sentinel, Chicago Sun-Times, STL Today, The Sun, Boston Herald, Chicago Tribune, News24, BBC, Boston Globe, SkyNews, Daily Record, WIFR, Daily Southern, ABC News, My Fox NY, Manchester Evening News, The Post IE, The Sydney Morning Herald, and the Los Angeles Times… and more…

I guarantee you that everyone is going to start using the term McJob again after this….

Doh!

Now, there are even Prediction Markets based on the McJob

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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shel Holtz wrote on Strumpette, “Amanda also attacks PR practitioners who can’t write. On this point, we’re in complete agreement” (and I take out of context). I responded, I think it is important to speak like the locals. I was told, during my short stint at Big Agency, to keep it 7th grade reading ease. I think that is a good point-of-reference.

Here is what I wrote with regards new PR:

“Every community has its own tone, its own voice, and its own way of communicating. Traditionally, gamer sites are rude and sarcastic, backpacker sites are young, liberal and well-educated, tourism sites are older and square, and drinking sites can be cheeky. In order to be most effective in every community in which you message, it is important to get a sense of the way people talk to each other, and talking that way while still maintaining your authenticity.” Via Talk Like the Locals, http://cabraham.com/ideas/talk-like-the-locals

Well-written, scholarly, transcendent, and writerly copy isn’t the answer: clear, concise, and targeted is key. In the beltway, one needs to speak wonk, in the Valley, one needs to speak geek, and in Langley, one needs speak spook.

Snark to gamers, slogans to alcoholics, and Umbuntu to diggers.

If we base the beauty of our tongue on some sort of objective measure — say the New Yorker — then we will be perceived as insufferable and inaccessible as poor little Gore and Kerry were back in 2000 and 2004.

So, what is good writing? How is it defined? Am going back now to read the rest. Brilliant work, Shel!

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

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

Here is the comment from Charles Edward Frith in full:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blogger Ethics Coverage:

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

Caveat Emptor et Lector Repost

Bloggers Can Ignore Basic Journalism Ethics

Bloggers do not Aspire to be Journalists

Pay Per Post Coverage:

Vanity Advertising on PayPerPost is Addicting

Edelman Ethics Coverage:

In Defense of Edelman over Bribery Charges

Not a Bribe with Disclosure and Transparency

BL Ochman Gets the Vista Edelman AMD Bribery Scandal

I Think I May Have Jinxed Edelman PR

Andy Sernovitz of WOMMA Blames the Victims in Edelman Controversy

What I Would Have Done if I Were Edelman Me2Revolution

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

Microsoft Did Not Bribe Bloggers Reports Microsoft

Journalism Gods Agree with Me on The Bribe