The Rosetta Stone Language Journeys blog just posted my latest article entitled Third Time’s a Charm:

In the middle of my German language learning travails, Rosetta Stone reached out to me and asked me to blog about my language-learning process in light of being able to try out their new solution, Rosetta Stone TOTALe. So, here I am.

What have I learned in the last couple months using TOTALe?  Well, I have learned quite a bit and it is working.  Seriously.  And I’ll tell you why.

I actually got to meet Duane Sider, Director of Learning at Rosetta Stone, and he pointed out something that now seems so obvious, which is that people don’t learn languages based on charts, irregular verbs, vocab cards, rote memorization.  I didn’t learn English that way when I was a child and Mark didn’t learn German that way either — we learn languages by learning like children, learning phonetically and over time, which phrase works best in which situation.

I guess in the past, what I had been doing is learning what each English word means in German and what each German word means in English. Then I would try to piece each sentence together based on subject, verb, object noun agreement, like a puzzle, that at the end of the day, would convey meaning and secure me a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk.

Here’s the hard truth: you can’t really have a conversation with someone if you’re trying to do real-time translation based on coming up with a sentence such as, “I would like a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk” and then try to sort out that German equivalent, while still trying to be charming at the grocery store.  What you need to be able to do is see bread and milk and automatically think “Brot” and “Milch”. And when you would like something, you had better be nice and say “ich möchte Brot und Milch, bitter.”

If your eyes are crossing from your German lessons at school or at the Goethe-Institut and you’re having an impossible time sorting out German grammar, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

This is especially useful for folks who’re learning German via Rosetta Stone, an awesome series of courses and levels that never ever teaches rote grammar or vocabulary, because you’ll sort out all of the amazing things you learned.

If you don’t need to read this book and don’t care why you learned so much on Rosetta Stone then don’t get the book; however, if you’re just the curious sort that “just has to know” then this is the magic book for you — an amazingly good investment: English Grammar for Students of German: The Study Guide for Those Learning German by Cecile Zorach, Charlotte Melin, Elizabeth A. Kautz

I am here in Berlin.  All of my German friends and most of my Expat friends speak German — except me.  So, I am doubling down by using Rosetta Stone‘s TOTALe product to really get me past all of my “language shyness.”

I tried Rosetta Stone’s online version (no longer available) of their CD-based German language program but I didn’t give it nearly the time and attention — immersion time — that I should have. You get out what you give in and, before, I would try to shoehorn a little time here and there.  The immersion method of learning a new language needs to be as complete as possible — not passive learning, which is what I had been doing, but a lot more active.

Now, I am spending lots and lots of time on the program.  In addition to the main program, called Rosetta Course — the stuff you get on the CD — there are live native language teaching coaches — via Rosetta Studio — you can schedule time with as well as many opportunities to interact and communicate with other students who are online and studying your language — in my case, German — through this thing called Rosetta World.

While I have spent a lot of time on the Rosetta Course, I have yet to do my first Studio appointment, on the 26th, and I have not explored World much — but I look forward to it.   What have I learned so far?  Well, like flying or SCUBA diving, language-learning rewards hours in the air or under-water.  I really want to and need to spend an hour or so/day, every day.

The good thing is that there are a team of folks, called the TOTALe Success team, who call, email, and even tweet me to make sure I keep focused, which is something I do surely need.

Introducing Rosetta Stone TOTALe^™

Our ultimate language-learning solution.

With access to TOTALe, you’ll learn, practice and play your way to a new language. It’s the easiest, fastest and most enjoyable way to learn—and it’s online.

• Learn naturally and speak immediately with our award-winning Dynamic Immersion^® method.
• Practice conversation with live native-speaking Studio Coaches.
• Connect and play with fellow learners, including native speakers of your new language.
• Get live guidance and support from our dedicated Customer Success Team.

TOTALe combines our revolutionary learning program and live interaction to deliver the world’s ultimate, online language-learning program.

Rosetta Course — Learn to speak, read, listen and write in our award-winning program.

Rosetta Studio — Practice in our live online sessions with a native-speaking Studio Coach.

Rosetta World — While I have been using their online version of the software on and off for a year, paid out of my own pocket, Rosetta Stone recently asked me to blog about my language-learning, German language-learning, and Rosetta Stone TOTALe experience — not on this blog but on a blog they’re putting together. Therefore, I thought I would disclose that since I am accessing TOTALe for free and getting some compensation as a writer.

Play games and practice speaking with other learners and native speakers in our online community.

While I have been using their online version of the software on and off for a year, paid out of my own pocket, Rosetta Stone recently asked me to blog about my language-learning, German language-learning, and Rosetta Stone TOTALe experience — not on this blog but on a blog they’re putting together. Therefore, I thought I would disclose that since I am accessing TOTALe for free and getting some compensation as a writer.

Berlin is surely the coolest city on earth. Erika La Tour Eiffel (AKA Erika Mauer) was my next-door neighbor for a while in Berlin.  She is an Objectum Sexual and here is her story! (You can watch all of the episodes here):

Don’t let the unique nature of her sexual orientation to turn you off to her.  She’s a badass and have accomplished amazing things in her 37+ years. She is coo, she is creative, and she is unique, for sure! I like her, she’s cool and doing cool things and definitely living her life her way.

Erika “Aya” Eiffel is authentic, amazing, and a world-class Olympic archer and was trained in Japan in the art of the Samurai sword and was actually conferred a world title in Soga-Ryu iai-batto-jutsu, san-dan (3rd level black belt) in Toyama-Ryu iai-batto-jutsu, and san-dan in the Zen Nihon To-Do Renmei:

From Erika “Aya” La Tour Eiffel’s Bio

I always had a fascination for weapons. Strange you say? Strange enough, that it lead me to start martial arts. I wanted to learn to use the Japanese katana. My plight eventually took me to Japan to study with the true masters of Japanese sword fighting. A few years ago my back nearly won the battle but after seven months of rehab, I returned and won a World Title and became the youngest instructor in the art of Soga-Ryu iai-batto-jutsu. I continued my love of the Japanese sword and earned the rank of san-dan (3rd level black belt) in Toyama-Ryu iai-batto-jutsu and also achieved san-dan in the Zen Nihon To-Do Renmei. I know, I know, I need start a webpage just dedicated to my other life as a swordswoman in Japan!

How cool is that?  Amazing!  Well, it doesn’t stop there… Erika “Aya” Eiffel transitioned away from swordsmanship to becoming an Olympic archer using her beloved recurve bow, Lance:

Archer Spotlight on Aya La Brie By Steve Ross

Having only started her archery career four years ago in 1999, Erika “Aya” La Brie had a tremendous year competitively in 2004. She was part of the Women’s Compound Team that took home a gold medal and new world record at the World Target Championships in New York City this past July. At the NAA Nationals, she shot both recurve and compound taking 10th and third place respectively. Aya also shoots the modern Longbow, traditional Japanese bow and is skilled in martial arts. I managed to catch Aya during an archery “holiday” due to a mountain bike accident.

USAA: I heard you recently had a serious mountain bike accident. What happened and will it impact your archery plans for the rest of the outdoor season?

Erika “Aya” La Brie: Well, I prefer to commute on my mountain bike as a form of cross training for my archery and last Wed. was no different. I was crossing a street on the walk signal and a truck came from the outside lane and turned in front of me. He sent me sailing when I tried to veer and brake. I flipped twice and crashed in a heap in the middle of the street. He paused only long enough to see if I was alive and sped off once I sat up.

I ended up with three mashed ribs, elbows, knee and ankle and large scrapes on my back. Fortunately, I always wear a helmet, which cracked. Otherwise, I have no crippling injuries. However, it did put a damper on the IBO Worlds, which I had to fly to the next morning followed by a five-hour drive. I managed to shoot but was in a lot of pain the whole weekend. Since my return, my training has been put on hold for the next few weeks to let my ribs and knee heal. I have never taken more than two weeks off from training and will have to rely on mental imagery until I can shoot again. Mental training helped me earlier this year when I was hospitalized for two weeks. All the experience gained from this year will help put together a good regimen until I’m ready to hit the range again.

USAA: I’m glad you’re ok and will only need a short break. You have had a fantastic year; shooting on the women’s compound team that shot a new world record must have been great.

Erika “Aya” La Brie: “Fantastic year” is more of an understatement to describe the year I’ve had! I started archery with recurve in 1999 and shot for one year before an injury forced me to shoot with a release if I wanted to continue shooting. So I picked up compound and shot for a year until last year when my hand healed and I could shoot fingers again. I switched back to recurve and made the U.S. World Field Team and alternate for the World Indoor Team. However, after shooting the Vegas Shoot this year with compound and recurve I decided I wanted to shoot both bows for NAA ranking. I had already decided I would shoot both bows at the Target Nationals, so I needed to divvy out the USAT events between both to meet the requirements. Indoor Nationals was the first step for my compound and decided the AZ Cup would be the second. The rest of the season would be recurve. Famous last words…

USAA: Tell me about shooting at the World Target event; do you treat it any different than just a normal FITA event?

Erika “Aya” La Brie: I was still in a dream-like state when I arrived in New York after making the U.S. Compound Team. I never ever imagined I would win the FITA and OR at the Arizona Cup, Texas Shootout and Gold Cup! Now I was standing on the shooting line at the World Target Championships!

All my FITA’s up to that point, I had trained myself not to fear the consequences of my shooting because I shot only for me. If I shot poorly, surely I would not shrivel up and die. Now for the first time I felt the weight of being on a team and representing the USA. My teammates were all experienced veterans and after having some difficulties on the first day of the FITA, I was afraid I would not be permitted to shoot the team round as the coach and other members questioned my experience. I pushed myself even harder and achieved several personal bests in the FITA and the matches. Now I felt that I had to prove myself to my team and to my country. To my greatest relief, the coach chose me to be the starting shooter in the team round. Since I was a rookie and had no expectations other than to shoot my best, I feel very blessed that I share a world record and have a gold medal.

USAA: Did you do any special training?

Erika “Aya” La Brie: Two weeks prior to the World Target, I moved to the Archery International Training Center in Carbondale, Ill. I worked on my backup bow and practiced shooting matches and having to deal with equipment failure etc. Good thing because I had to use my backup bow for one of the team matches. But not all my training was for the Worlds. I also had to train for the ESPN Great Outdoor Games, which was held just prior to the worlds. The Games required a speed setup and also a considerably faster shooting style than I use for target.

USAA: I don’t know of many archers who in the matter of just a few years are competing at the level you are. Do you credit some of this to your background in martial arts?

Erika “Aya” La Brie: I have made two world teams in four years with two different bows. I guess it is not common, but I have always felt my archery was a continuation of the martial arts I started many years prior to picking up a bow and arrow.

USAA: From what I understand you were a serious student of Japanese swordsmanship and Kyudo (Japanese archery). Can you describe this training?

Erika “Aya” La Brie: When I started martial arts, I quickly realized that contact martial arts was not a field I should explore if I wanted to preserve my kneecaps. So it seemed reasonable that I should fall in love with weapon’s work. The Japanese sword became my top choice from an arsenal of amazing traditional weapons. Along with training to draw, block and cut, I learned the value of becoming “one with your weapon.” This approach to fighting is where I found the most valuable tool for the mental game I currently use. Being so in tune with my katana definitely facilitated my way to winning the World Cup seven years ago. The katana was not a choice weapon for women. The training was rigorous and dangerous as we used live blades and actually cut in practice. Ask me how dangerous someday!

When I started Kyudo, I found myself getting very frustrated because of a handicap in my right shoulder. Regardless of how much I practiced, my shoulder refused to relinquish the flexibility I needed for certain motions in the shooting sequence. I shot four hours every day on a rooftop range at a Shinto shrine in Kamakura with my Japanese bow (yumi). Six months later I beat my entire school at a dojo tourney. I also was the first female non-Japanese to be inducted into the Ogasawara School of Mounted Archery. However, I knew that the beauty that made Kyudo an art would never be found with the imperfections in my form. I never even cared if I hit the target. I only wanted to shoot with beautiful style and form. I most definitely credit my training in martial arts to my advancement in archery. My bow is NOT equipment but an extension of my own being, just as my katana and my yumi were. My form, also unorthodox in many ways, is a style of my own and one that I am committed to.

USAA: You shoot Olympic style recurve, FITA compound, and various traditional bows. As for tournaments, you participate in NAA, 3-D, FITA and NFAA. Am I missing anything?

Erika “Aya” La Brie: I am still new to 3-D but have competed in a couple ASA and IBO tournaments each. I would like to shoot more 3-D but most are on the other side of the Mississippi. Since moving to Colorado, I have enjoyed shooting in CSAA (Colorado State Archery Association) tournaments and have broken nine state records since last December with all three bows. I am also new to the NFAA this year and was surprised to find a whole different organization with a different approach to target and field shooting as compared to the NAA.

USAA: Do you find it difficult switching between styles?

Erika “Aya” La Brie: This is the most frequently asked question. I learned recurve from a coach in Japan, but I taught myself to shoot compound and recently, modern longbow. Strange enough, my styles are so different from each other that I do not find it hard to switch, even in the same tournament and on occasion, the same shooting line. I find it a challenge to shoot all three bows at the same event, kind of like an archery triathlon.

USAA: Do you have a personal coach?

Erika “Aya” La Brie: When I started recurve archery in April of 1999, I had a wonderful coach for six months: Tastuo Nobori. He was my only coach and was very strict about mental and physical conditioning. But the foundations that he laid, I still use today. I’ve never had a compound coach. I just wanted to continue shooting so badly that I figured out how by applying what I learned with recurve to compound.

USAA:What is your training schedule like?

Erika “Aya” La Brie: I try to shoot four hours every day with focus on repetition of my shot sequence. At the end of training I usually do stamina exercises with my bow followed by a short run. I also cross-train by riding 30-50 miles or more a week on my mountain bike. I also jog 5 miles/run, a couple times per week. Every night just before bed I take a hot shower and stretch for 20 min. NO exceptions! I also do a lot of visual training using former pressure situations as the model.

USAA: Would you like to mention anyone in particular for giving you support this year?

Erika “Aya” La Brie: I never dreamed I would have the support that I do in archery. My greatest being from the Lord above. My sponsors are TechnoHunt, Doinker, Sure-Loc, Golden Key Futura, Carter and Specialty Archery. I would like to thank Hoyt USA for making great compound and recurve bows.

USAA: What are your compound and recurve setups?

Compound: 60# Hoyt UltraTec XT3000 Cam 1½, Easton X-10 500 Spin Wings, SureLoc Supreme, Specialty Super Scope 6X, Doinker² Stabilizer,

Recurve: 44# Hoyt Avalon+ and FX Limbs, Easton ACE 570, SureLoc FITA Extreme

She is also on the 2009 National Team for Archery, Recurve Bow:

The 2009 Senior USAT Team includes:

Recurve

Men       Women

Dan Schuller – Mercer, PA   Karen Scavotto – Enfield, CT

Joe McGlyn – Floral Park, NY  Erin Mickelberry – Bothell, WA

Jason McKittrick – Holton, IN  Stephanie Miller – Naperville, IL

Dakota Sinclair – Ridgecrest, CA  Lori Cieslinski – Howell, MI

Ted Holland – Westminster, CO  Kendra Harvey – Rio Rancho, NM

Jake Kaminski – Edgewater, FL  Erika “Aya” Eiffel – Suisun, CA

Timm Hines – Kent, WA   Amanda Nichols – Cheyenne, WY

Tyler Domenech – Holtwood, PA  *Jennifer Nichols – Cheyenne, WY

*Vic Wunderle – Mason City, IL  *Khatuna Lorig – Los Angeles, CA

Here are some more newspaper articles you can check out:

Woman with objects fetish marries Eiffel Tower

Erika La Tour Eiffel, 37, a former soldier who lives in San Francisco, has been in love with objects before. Her first infatuation was with Lance, a bow that helped her to become a world-class archer, she is fond of the Berlin Wall and she claims to have a physical relationship with a piece of fence she keeps in her bedroom.

But it is the Eiffel Tower she has pledged to love, honour and obey in an intimate ceremony attended by a handful of friends.

She has changed her name legally to reflect the bond.

Before returning to Paris for her first wedding anniversary, Mrs La Tour Eiffel visits the Berlin Wall, where her affection for what many Germans see as a symbol of repression leads to an uncomfortable encounter with a member of the staff at the Checkpoint Charlie museum.

She explained that she feels an affinity with the wall: “I am the Berlin Wall. Hate me, try to break me apart, but I will still be here, standing.”

‘I married the Eiffel Tower’

Imagine a world in which people seem hostile while inanimate objects appear friendly – even affectionate. Imagine dreading the touch of another human but longing for a passionate encounter with a large public structure. This is the strange world of the “objectum sexual”– a group of people, mainly women, whose intimate lives revolve around objects with which they say they share romantic and sexual love.

As a documentary film-maker passionate about exploring psychological aspects of human nature, I have made films about bigamists, domestic violence and co-dependent anorexic twins. Modern society is a never-ending source of these stories. It is still exceptional for a father to lock up his daughter for 24 years in a cellar, but scratch the surface and it seems that good personal relationships are rare. To fill their emotional needs, people are increasingly turning to a variety of substitutes: from internet virtual reality and food to… well, objects.

On first meeting, Erika La Tour Eiffel appears extraordinarily ordinary. An ex-US Army soldier, the 36-year-old lives in San Francisco. She is also a former world champion in archery – propelled to success, she believes, by her love for Lance, a bow. She now claims to be married to the Eiffel Tower, following a ceremony with friends last year in Paris, at which she promised eternal love to the iron monument and changed her name legally to reflect the bond. “There is a huge problem with being in love with a public object,” she says sadly. “The issue of intimacy – or rather lack of it – is forever present.”

She is currently married to the Berlin Mauer, which is why her name has changed to Erika Mauer.

One thing that I am not is touchy about the fact that I love what I love. And I love Moleskine notebooks.  And I love manual typewriters, especially the Hermes 3000, and I love quite a lot of other like-minded stuff.  Well, Moleskine notebooks are #122 in the list of Stuff While People Like. Sad but true.

This particular type of notebook is very expensive and was quite popular with writers and artists in the olden days.  Needless to say, these are two properties that are highly coveted in the white community.   In fact, it’s a good rule of thumb to know that white people like anything that old writers and artists liked:  typewriters, journals, suicide, heroin, and trains are just a few examples.

Let’s see what else I like that white people like — the bold ones I feel especially strong about:

• #122 Moleskine Notebooks
• #120 Taking a Year Off
• #119 Sea Salt
• #115 Promising to Learn a New Language
• #108 Appearing to Enjoy Classical Music
• #107 Self Aware Hip Hop References
• #106 Facebook
• #99 Grammar
• #98 The Ivy League
• #92 Book Deals
• #90 Dinner Parties
• #88 Having Gay Friends
• #81 Graduate School
  
• #80 The Idea of Soccer
• #79 Modern Furniture
• #78 Multilingual Children
• #77 Musical Comedy
• #73 Gentrification
• #72 Study Abroad
• #70 Difficult Breakups
• #61 Bicycles
• #58 Japan
• #57 Juno
• #56 Lawyers
• #55 Apologies
• #54 Kitchen Gadgets
• #53 Dogs
• #52 Sarah Silverman
• #51 Living by the Water
• #50 Irony
• #49 Vintage
• #48 Whole Foods and Grocery Co-ops
• #47 Arts Degrees
• #46 The Sunday New York Times
• #45 Asian Fusion Food
• #44 Public Radio
• #43 Plays
• #42 Sushi
• #39 Netflix
• #38 Arrested Development
• #37 Renovations
• #36 Breakfast Places
• #35 The Daily Show/Colbert Report
• #34 Architecture
• #25 David Sedaris
• #24 Wine
• #23 Microbreweries
• #21 Writers Workshops
• #20 Being an expert on YOUR culture
• #19 Traveling
• #18 Awareness
• #16 Gifted Children
• #14 Having Black Friends
• #13 Tea
• #8 Barack Obama
• #7 Diversity
• #6 Organic Food
• #5 Farmer’s Markets
• #3 Film Festivals
• #2 Religions their parents don’t belong to
• #1 Coffee

Holy fuck, I am pretty darn white!

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!

I just returned from guest lecturing for Chris Boesen at American University’s School of Communication’s Public Communication department. The class was full of seniors who aspire to join the PR workforce.  I didn’t talk gloom or doom because I told them a secret.  I told all of the fresh-faced smarties the secret that will make them competitive if they’re smart: become social media producers instead of being just social media consumers: start blogging yourself into Edelman, Ogilvy, Burson, Ketchum, Fleishman, and Qorvis.

So, hopefully they’ll write themselves right into an entry-level position in 9 months when they all graduate — if they’re smart (and they seemed like they were — a bunch of them already blogged and Twittered, some of them on their own and some of them because of a class — who cares how!).  I also told them that I would be happy to help them in any way they can now and in the future — with one condition: they they send me the link to their blog.  If they can provide me with a link to a blog that is about digital PR, new PR, PR, communications, marketing, or social media, I am at their service.  Otherwise, fuck ‘em! (it’s for their own good).

So, if you want to learn more about my experience guest lecturing around Washington, check out Chelsea Reviews My Comm350 Guest Lecture. I will plan on blogging about my experience at American University again; however, I am going to first see if anyone there has has much chutzpah as the lovely Miss Chelsea Clark did over at UMD.

Is it sort of like a Schrödinger’s cat situation: if Chris Boesen’s students reach out to me via a blog post, a tweet, via email, or via phone, I will follow-up with a very positive and adoring post (a total of two for American) but if it ends up being a dud (sorry Chris), then I will have to be more lukewarm in my follow-up review.

Oh, and if you’re curious as to what I went on about for 90-minutes, you can page through the below presentation at your leisure:

I spent three years working at New Media Strategies, from 2003-2006, doing buzz marketing and have spent from 2007-2009 doing some semblance of word-of-mouth and public relations.

As a result, I am fascinated by what Emanuel Rosen, dean of buzz, says 9-years after the publication of his book, The Anatomy of Buzz.  Thank you, Ben McConnell, for this interview!  Check it out at the Church of the Customer Blog.

1. Do you define a difference between word of mouth and buzz?
I use the word “buzz” as an umbrella term to describe all the person-to-person communication about something. I like the definition you gave in your first book: “Buzz = Word of Mouth + Word of Mouse” but I would add to this formula any other type of communication (for example: learning through observation). By the way, the first person to suggest the word buzz to me was Everett Rogers, the late diffusion scholar. I told him that I didn’t like this term, but over the years I grew to like it a lot.

I read your latest blog entry on word of mouth vs. buzz and, although we use different terms, I agree with the spirit of the things. The foundation of buzz is a great customer experience. No doubt about this. But even customers who love you sometimes forget and run out of opportunities to talk. My whole focus has been on ways to trigger and stimulate additional conversations, and there’s more than one way of doing this.

2. Network-theory scientist Duncan Watts disputes a lot of what’s in Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point,” specifically that if marketers just reach a few influential tastemakers then word of mouth should flourish. Where do you stand on Watts’s research?
My approach is practical: there are people who talk more than others. Whenever you can, cost effectively, identify these folks and work with them — go for it. Watts’s work is an important reminder that not all buzz is created by hubs or influentials, but it does not prove that connecting with these people doesn’t work. In the new edition of my book I dedicate five pages to this debate but the above is my view in a nutshell.

3. What’s your assessment of how social media affects word of mouth today?
Social media let text-based buzz explode, but perhaps more important is the effect it has on visual buzz. Buzz is not only about telling, but more and more about showing. My friend doesn’t have to tell me that he likes Lego Mindstorms. He just posts a video of the latest robot he built using these Lego bricks. My cousin doesn’t have to tell me that she supports a certain organization.  I see on Facebook that she’s now a fan of that cause. A lot of the value of social media comes from this type of implicit recommendation.

4. How prevalent is fake buzz, whether its agencies creating astroturfing campaigns for clients or companies comment-stuffing review sites like Yelp?
I didn’t investigate how prevalent it is but I’m sure that undercover marketing is out there and that’s such a shame. Anyone who cares about word of mouth should fight this type of manipulation. I like the approach of Zagat and Angie’s List, that see it as part of their job to ensure the integrity of their sites. On a related issue, I think we should encourage everyone to generate more experience-based buzz (“I read this book and I liked it because…) as opposed to secondhand buzz (“my friend says that his cousin read this book and it’s cool.”) With too much secondhand buzz, we’ll end up with what can be best described as a buzz bubble as illustrated by a review posted on Amazon: “I haven’t read this book, but judging from the online reviews below, I don’t think it’s a very good book.”

5. In the big picture, what do you think is more helpful in understanding buzz and word of mouth: marketing or psychology?
Psychology. I think that the first step is always to understand what motivates people to do certain things. Marketing techniques come and go, but if you understand why people talk about products, you can find new ways to motivate them to talk about your brand.

Rohit Bhargava from the Influential Marketing Blog just posted a very insightful article about how we entrepreneurs can learn from Twitter, 7 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Twitter’s Success — basically, make things easier, better, more open (as in API), and more insidious (all of Twitter’s competitors feel compelled to integrate with Twitter — how insidious is that — open API wins again):

By any measure, the growth and popularity of Twitter has been phenomenal. To say that Twitter has hit mainstream isn’t really the right metric to use. It’s more powerful to note that for a large group of Twitter enthusiasts, to spend even a day without using it would be as bad (or perhaps even worse) than not having email. It has become just that necessary. How did the site get to this point? And what are the lessons that any entrepreneur might be able to learn from how it got there? Here are a few thoughts on the real secrets behind Twitter’s success:

1. Focus on real time. For the socially connected online, there is little use for yet another place to talk to your friends. If anything, we all have too many of those to start with. But a site dedicated to RIGHT NOW stands out. It’s useful in a way that none of the other sites we use are.
2. Skip the extra step. Approving every friend request can be a lot of work – even if you’re not the most popular of people. It does make sense on most social networks, but when it comes to posting updates on Twitter, if you do it publicly, anyone can follow you without approval. The result is that any user’s audience on Twitter can grow exponentially without barriers.
   
3. Force your customers to do less. If you have ever heard the saying that “less is more” – Twitter is the ultimate proof of that. The forced 140 character messages have made us all refocus on brevity, and as a result of this volume decrease, those of us that are constantly overcommunicated look to the site as the one place where we can still feel that we are on top of the flood of communication that rules our lives.
4. Build enough evangelists to compensate when things go wrong. One of the most well known facts about Twitter is that the service has been notoriously unreliable and crashed frequently. Though it is much improved from those days, the site still goes down or loses functionality relatively regularly. Yet it has managed to build up enough power users and evangelists, that people forgive their down times and keep coming back.
5. Integrate with the most popular competition. The single most useful feature I personally uncovered from Twitter was the ability to integrate it into my Facebook page so that may Twitter updates also become my status on Facebook. This demonstrates a fact that many entrepreneurs already know – by integrating with your competition where your “customers” currently are, you make it easier for them to migrate over to your site.
6. Launch where your influencers are. A big reason for the early success of Twitter was their launch at the SXSW Interactive festival two years ago. It was a place where all the influencers that matters for Twitter were already going to be and putting the site in front of them there allowed them to become word of mouth ambassadors for the site following the event.
7. Offer a public ranking or authority. The final element that has helped Twitter to succeed is that it has a built in authority ranking with the number of followers you have. This is located right beneath your username on the site and it’s high visibility means that it is easily the ultimate metric for anyone using the site. And you can’t help but want that number to go higher. 

I spoke to two classes of communications majors today about digital PR and social media marketing. It was a wonderful experience. The University of Maryland undergraduate course was called Comm350:  Public Relations Theory and their communications professor, Sahar Mohamed Khamis, was amazing generous and welcoming, basically handing me the reins to her class, sight unseen.  The class is described as:

The historical development and contemporary status of public relations in business, government, associations and other organizations. Application of communication theory and social science methods to the research, planning, communication and evaluation aspects of the public relations process.

Everybody was super bright and super nice to me. One thing I was concerned about is that in both classes I taught today, both Comm350, only a couple people had Twitter accounts and I think there were just a couple folks who have a blog or who had every blogged.  And these are our future PR professionals.  Of course, when I asked, 100%  of the students in both classes were on Facebook.  Natch.

Well, I presented my A Guide to Blogger Relations slide show and then took questions.  I told them that blogging, Twittering, and participating in the wider conversation would almost guarantee them a good job at a local or national agency after college.  I told them that they should all, separately or in concert, start writing a blog about their take on communication, on advertising, on popular culture, on television, on PR, on social media — that the thing they learn in class every day would be interesting to the blogosphere, seen through their young eyes.  That there is no doubt in my mind that you can really and truly write yourself into the job of your dreams and if they didn’t blog, all of them, they were darned fools (well, maybe I didn’t say it — it was implied).

I receive quite a thank you note from one of student from the first class, Miss Chelsea Clark, who not only asked a question but also said the following nice things — a mixture of review, testimonial, and, I dare say, her first blog post once removed:

I walked into my Comm350 class on Tuesday expecting to sit there taking notes for an hour and a half like usual. Instead, our professor announced we were  having a guest speaker. I was thinking to myself that this could go one of two  ways: really interesting and way better than cramping my hand taking notes, or  really boring and put me to sleep.

Our guest speaker took the floor and introduced himself and described what his company does. I’ve learned about blogs in PR before, but I was never really able  to link the two together. Yeah, so blogs are a new media outlet, but how does  that help clients? How do businesses personally benefit from random people  around the country writing about their hobbies and interests? I never really  understood the connection until Chris’ presentation.

He described how he would have his team search for blogs that were written about topics that relate to his clients and then send out mass emails to the  bloggers to ask them to write about his clients. He was worried that we would  think he was a spammer, but, having made many annoying calls and emails to  reporters myself, I knew how he felt. He then showed us results of actual  bloggers that wrote about his clients. He got so excited! We all recognized this  feeling, for being PR people ourselves, we know how satisfying it is to have free  publicity.

I thought that Chris did a really good job with his presentation. I followed what he was saying the whole time and enjoyed some of his nerdy antics. I think  some of the people in the class were less interested or maybe didn’t follow what   Chris’ company is responsible for, either because they were pretending to take  notes while really checking their facebooks or because they are still a bit  unfamiliar with PR and got a little bit confused.

For me, the presentation was enlightening, exciting, and interesting and showed me new ways of getting publicity without necessarily resorting to TV and  newspapers. I would definitely recommend him to other PR college classes that  are looking for guest speakers!

That, Chelsea, really made my month.  I appreciate the kind words and thank you, again, to professor Sahar Khamis

who will soon be coming out with a really compelling new book you should all pre-order on Amazon,  Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace.  I look forward to it.

Also, if you’re curious as to the content of the slide show and the presentation I did, here it is inline for your enjoyment… however, I need to record one with my insight, wit, and wisdom one of these days soon:

Bloody great, best-in-breed, article about online PR and marketing ethics by my buddy David Gelles of the Financial Times — he is surely a golden child and new media journalist rock star… be sure to put this article in front of your boss, whether you are a PR flack or are a corporate stooge — I think this article is actually going to be printed into the pink pages of the FT on Thursday, February 12 — go pick it up and hand it to the members of the C-suite, Blogs that spin a web of deception:

A web of deception By David Gelles

An overenthusiastic em­ployee from the computer supplies maker Belkin posted an offer online last month – $0.65 for anyone willing to write a positive review of Belkin products on Amazon.com. Several people took up the offer, producing gushing appraisals of Belkin products they had never used.

After a blogger exposed the scam, news organisations jumped on the story. The offer was removed and Belkin’s president weighed in with an apology.

The incident was a public relations disaster for Belkin. It was also a prime example of “Astroturfing”, the unsavoury marketing practice of generating fake grassroots enthusiasm for a product.

Given the anonymity afforded by the internet, it is hardly surprising that deceptive marketing is on the rise. Consumers are spending more time online and companies are seeking new ways to reach them.

But now, in an effort to regulate how employees behave on the web, companies and industry groups are developing their own online codes of ethics. They want to ensure that when staff do engage with social media, they act ethically.

Last year, Coca-Cola established its own set of social media guidelines and distributed them in a memo to all employees. The policy emphasises the need for transparency and encourages employees to use common sense when discussing the brand online. “We’ve always had very diverse channels to reach consumers,” says Adam Brown (pictured), digital communications director. “Wherever they are, that’s where we go. That’s now evolved into the need for a social media policy.”

So when Mr Brown went online to promote Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl advertisements, he followed the guidelines. On Facebook, Mr Brown announced that he was a Coke employee and pointed other users to the Coke ads on YouTube. On Pittsburgh Steelers fan forums, Mr Brown, who is from Pittsburgh, named his employer and then directed fans to the Coke blog, which had an interview with Steelers’ defensive star Troy Polamalu.

Mr Brown said more deliberate engagement with online conversations was a necessity for a global company such as Coca-Cola. “We’re mentioned several thousand times a day on blogs, and there are several hundred tweets about us on Twitter,” he says. “There is a lot of conversation taking place about our brand without us. Where appropriate, we wanted to start getting involved.”

Companies began interacting with social media years ago. But only recently have those involved with the industry perceived a need to develop ethical standards. Among the first to do so was The Word of Mouth Marketing Association, an organisation for the viral and buzz marketing industry. Womma published an ethics code in 2005, emphasising honesty of relationship, opinion and identity.

Since then, many companies have used the Womma code as a blueprint for their own guidelines. “Companies are learning every day that there is a right way and a wrong way to engage with social media,” says Paul Rand, vice-president of Womma’s board and head of its ethics project. “Some companies are learning by touching the burning pot; some companies are learning from the mistakes of ­others.”

One company that “touched the burning pot” is Shelfari, a social networking site for book lovers, owned by Amazon. As it battled for market share in late 2007, it came under fire for its poor design and clunky user interface. Soon, comments appeared on more than 50 blogs attesting to Shelfari’s greatness. “I have been on Shelfari for a couple of months now and absolutely love it,” read one. “Shelfari is such a great site. I joined a couple of months ago and I have been hooked on it ever since,” read another.

But all the comments were posted by the same user, “schaufferwaffer”, who was soon exposed as a Shelfari employee. Shelfari’s chief executive admitted to the Astroturfing (he blamed it on an intern who knew no better), and promised it would never happen again.

Such behaviour is declared out of line in the “disclosure best practices toolkit”, an ethics code drawn up by the Blog Council, an organisation for heads of social media at big companies. The document advises employees and agencies to announce whom they work for when communicating with blogs or bloggers. It also encourages employees to provide a means for contacting them directly, if someone they interact with via social media wants to follow up with a two-way conversation. The toolkit also warns against using pseudonyms.

IBM was one of the first companies to develop its own social media policy. In 2005, it published its “social computing guidelines”, which insist that employees write under their own names, using the first person, and make it clear they are speaking for themselves and not on behalf of IBM. It also prohibits employees from referencing clients, partners or suppliers without their approval.

UPS is developing its own online ethics policy after recognising how damaging Astro­turfing and other online misbehaviour can be for a company’s reputation. “If one of our airplanes goes down, we have a very clear plan for getting information to the media,” says Norman Black, director of global media services. “We realised we did not have a good plan for responding to a crisis on the ­internet.”

In some countries, deceptive marketing practices are not only frowned upon but also illegal. In the UK, the law identifies “falsely representing oneself as a consumer” as a punishable offence. And in 2006, the US Federal Trade Commission issued regulations stating that word-of-mouth marketers must disclose their relationships. But in spite of these new rules there has been little enforcement of the measures.

Even without prosecution, Belkin seems to have learnt its lesson. Melody Chalaban, speaking for the company, says Belkin will soon be holding seminars to teach employees how to interact ethically with social media, and is also considering joining Womma. “We want to stress that this is an isolated incident,” says Ms Chalaban. “We don’t endorse or condone unethical practices like this.”

Side Bar: The last post: underhand tactics can end in a PR disaster

* Flogging. Fake blogs can help companies get a personal voice behind a marketing campaign – but they risk a PR disaster if they are uncovered. When Sony tried to boost sales of its PSP portable gaming unit, it started a blog supposedly by two boys who wanted PSPs for Christmas. When it was revealed as a fake, Sony apologised and took it down.

* Astroturfing. A technique that gets its name from the practice of generating fake grassroots enthusiasm. One Florida company, PayPerPost, serves as a matchmaker between companies willing to pay for good press and bloggers willing to plug products that they have never used. After receiving criticism, PayPerPost now requires bloggers to disclose that their posts are sponsored.

* Comment spamming. Flooding the comment fields of blogs with enthusiastic notes about a company, even with full disclosure, is not welcomed by web users. When a Motorola employee commented on dozens of posts on a technology blog – each comment a plug for the new Motorola Krave – bloggers responded with snide criticisms of his spamming, which duly ceased.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Othersource in Poland partnered with McKinney ad agency to build a Flash 3D engine with artificial intelligence for the McKinney website that’s launching this week.

Compared to other sites in the Semantics category, this one has an unusual level of interactivity. Users can ask the site questions, via the keyboard, using everyday language and expressions, and the proprietary “conversation engine” will decipher them and then fetch relevant results.

This means the user becomes liberated from the navigation. You no longer need background information to search the site – you just ask it a question.

Also, the site is completely index-able, bookmark-able, etc… from every page – even the video thumbnails have a unique URL. And every single page is a printable PDF, laid out for A4 or newsletter.I also found a nice blog post about it over at AdLab, Agency Site With a Chat Bot:

McKinney has built a Pandorabot-based chat bot (aka “conversation engine”) into its brand new site with a somewhat trippy interface. See if you can catch answers that were pre-scripted to make the machine sound particularly intelligent as opposed to the generic chat bot cop-outs like “Say what?” or “Come again”. – thank you, Michelle

Here’s the proper press release from McKinney.com:

McKinney.com – A Website You Can Talk To

Warsaw, Poland (February 10th, 2009) — Warsaw-based interactive agency Othersource announced today the launch of McKinney.com, a groundbreaking website created in partnership with the awardwinning advertising agency, in Durham, N.C.

Conversations with a website
Using cutting edge technologies, the new McKinney.com is reinventing the conversation had between the ad agency and its audience. Compared to other sites in the Semantics category, the site possesses an unusual level of interactivity. Visitors are able to ask the site questions, via the keyboard, using everyday language and expressions, and the proprietary “conversation engine” will decipher them and then fetch relevant results.

The functionality is groundbreaking. The back-end employs a 3D Flash engine with artificial intelligence, and the interface design is cutting-edge, making it one of the most experiential and unconstrained agency sites on the Web.

Unique tech mix
Othersource worked with linguists who understood, on a high-level, the structure of language. They also enlisted programmers familiar with semantics to help develop the sophisticated algorithm. “Creating the conversation engine’s ‘brain’ was quite labor intensive,” said Othersource Managing Partner Thomas Krotkiewski. “We enlisted two linguists (one a PhD from the University of Oxford), to analyze questions provided by McKinney, and to supply us with all possible ways the questions could be posed. If this search method fails, a backup proprietary tag search function will launch and search matching content. And finally, if the answer is still thought to be inadequate, the question is forwarded to McKinney for human processing. To be sure the conversation engine learns from its mistakes, there is a conversation history log on the proprietary Content Management System. This level of integration between conversation engine and website is completely unique,”

“We were looking for a production partner who would not only bring our vision to life, but enhance it,” added Keith Ciampa, who served as McKinney’s interactive creative director on the project. “Most true innovation happens on the fringes of the industry, by people who are passionate about what they do and willing to take risks. When we explained our vision for a conversational site, based on a completely open architecture, which could grow and become smarter the more it was used, Othersource knew we were asking for something that had never been done, and they couldn’t have been more excited to help us figure it out.”

Conversation-driven search
A proprietary tag search was built into the back end of the new site so search results can be presented dynamically, and not just direct visitors to a static page. For example, a visitor can ask a question like, “show me TV campaigns for client X from November last year” and an animated 3D tunnel will appear, with search results as moving thumbnail images, that the visitor can fly through. “As far as we can tell, this functionality is unique,” said Krotkiewski.

Like gas molecules
The site has an advanced 3D graphical interface. “The key to the 3D interface is the ‘cloud view,’ which shows a cloud of graphical thumbnails, moving like molecules in a gas, bouncing randomly off each other while also reacting to mouse input. The cloud can be filtered by the visitor to only show thumbnails representing certain types of content,” said Martin Ignaczak, Account Director at Othersource.

Flash without drawbacks
The site has overcome the limitations of Flash: “The site is fully searchable by Google, each page can bookmarked and linked to, and each view can be downloaded as a printable PDF,” continued Ignaczak. Working in the virtual

New technologies were key to organizing the project. Othersource used video-conferencing, VoIP, instant messaging, e-mails, and other electronic means of communication to coordinate the work with McKinney. “We only met face-to-face after the launch, which proves we are able to run even very complex projects completely in the virtual,” added Krotkiewski.

“We are honored by McKinney’s decision to partner with Othersource for the production — we were competing with some quite well-known US interactive agencies in the pitch. Being chosen in spite of being based overseas is quite a feat. We hope this project is the beginning of a long relationship with McKinney. We also expect it will generate more opportunities for us in the US overall,” said Krotkiewski.

“Partnering with Othersource on this project was both a rewarding and challenging experience,” said McKinney Interactive Technology Director Trevor O’Brien. “The biggest hurdle was taking existing technologies and customizing them to work together in ways they were not initially intended to. Othersource helped deliver a site that is an experiential and innovative place to interact online. It’s exciting to see what two like-minded teams can create together.”

About Othersource
Othersource provides interactive services from strategy to production to companies around the world. In 2008, the agency participated in projects for companies such as MetLife, The National Constitution Center in Boston, Accenture Poland, Puma, Imation Europe and others, in Poland, Sweden, Holland, the UK and the USA. The majority of its clients are Advertising and Interactive agencies that need support in creating campaign strategies, creative concepts and interactive production for their clients. About McKinney McKinney is an independent advertising agency that’s focused on reinventing the conversation between people and brands. Our goal is to lead the convergence of offline and online (today, 35% of our revenue is interactive and 88% of our frontline staff is actively engaged in the digital space), to identify relevant applications for new technologies and to deliver game-changing ideas that deliver extraordinary results for our clients, their customers and our people.

Founded in 1969, the Durham, NC-based agency’s clients include Coldwell Banker, Gold’s Gym, Major League Gaming, The NASDAQ Stock Market, Partnership for a Drug-Free America, ProShares, Qwest Communications, Sherwin-Williams, Travelocity, Virgin Mobile USA, Virgin Atlantic Airways, and Brown- Forman Corporation brands Bonterra, Chambord, Sonoma-Cutrer, Southern Comfort and Tuaca.

Most recently, Virgin Atlantic Airways and McKinney took top honors at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Awards that celebrate the “mixx” of creativity and effectiveness in digital marketing. Virgin Atlantic’s experiential launch, “Love from Above,” won a Gold MIXX in the Mobile Platforms category for the company’s first-ever WAP site.

For more information, visit our website at www.mckinney.com or the McKinney Newsroom by contacting Janet Northen at janet.northen@mckinney.com.

Additional information:
Thomas Krotkiewski
Managing Partner
Othersource
+48-601-145398
thomas@othersource.com
Timezone: GMT+1
Janet Northen
Partner & EVP, Director of Agency Communications

Janet Northen
Partner & EVP, Director of Agency Communications
McKinney
+1 919.313.4062
janet.northen@mckinney.com

The future of Social Network Services (SNS) can be discovered on High School and College campuses. I believe that topic-specific “vertical” SNS’s are very important, but I also think that the model needs to be University-like – a modularized SNS. There needs to be a campus “brand” (or University) within which the topic-specific “clubs,” “houses,” “fraternities,” “dorms,” and “interest groups” can interact – somewhere where crossovers, cross-fertilization, and aggregation are encouraged – no, needs – to happen. I hate SNS sites like boompa.com – a site devoted to your favorite cars – because I am not JUST a car guy.

I am a car guy for sure but I am also interested in rowing, in biking, in Thomas Pynchon, and in talk radio – Boompa might be successful in the short term, but in the long-term, the real power would come from creating a open, creative, resource-rich platform/campus/university/high school and maybe create a school of engineering, a liberal arts school, a law school, a dining hall, and so forth, but then allow the SNS to find itself.

To allow the SNS and its members to find their own voice, their own interests, and their own passions – which may well be very different from what is first assumed by the creator. Google gets this, though not yet within the construct of the SNS’s. What Google did do successfully was to buy USENET – the original newsgroups – and then build an superstructure on top of that – make it modern, sustainable, durable, and more readable.

Google returned USENET to relevance in a world that considered newsgroups and IRC to be dead or dying. Each and every one of communities on USENET is amazingly vertical, but they could all back up and back out to the larger USENET community – to the equivalent of the “welcome new students??? meetings and gatherings colleges offer to entering Freshmen.

Communities that are too vertical tend to shoe horn the “general topics??? conversations into hidden “off topic??? eddies. That is just the opposite of what should be done. The conversation should be general, cross-pollinating, and then move, after a conversation starts, into another room.

Start with an amazing platform, collect users, listen and watch them to see how they’re playing with the software application objects, widgets, and tools (are they playing with the toy or the box?), and then build for the users base, withholding judgment. Digg is a case study for this: start small, grow organically, and allow your members to find themselves.

The developers of Digg realized that after initial vertical growth based on the general members of Slashdot (techie, geeky, teens, boys), digg would suffer from the same sort of vulnerabilities that Slashdot suffered when Slashdot didn’t evolve and grow and broaden itself.

People love talking about Linux, but when happens when the Dow drops or the elections come? Where will the conversation happen? Where is the “kitchen??? at the party where every eventually goes to just talk about general interest stuff? Unless there are opportunities to express and share so-called “off-topic??? conversation right there, within the community in which members are already committed, with members to whom they’re already committed, then they are bound to go elsewhere.

Starting small and allowing the community to design itself is much different than starting big and losing one’s focus. Other mistakes happen when community builders make assumptions as to what participants, members, and lurkers want. Another mistake is putting a wall up around the community so that non-members cannot get a full feeling for the community from without.

The best SNS’s, virtual worlds, and online communities are honeypots. By honeypot, I am not suggesting, “a server that is configured to detect an intruder by mirroring a real production system. It appears as an ordinary server doing work, but all the data and transactions are phony. Located either in or outside the firewall, the honeypot is used to learn about an intruder’s techniques as well as determine vulnerabilities in the real system.” Although I am, sort of. The best SNS needs to be appealing, attractive, sweet, and compelling. Community-builders and SNS ASP developers need to be willing learn about member techniques, interests, processes, and needs, as well as determine “vulnerabilities” in the SNS platform that may repel, turn off, or limit the evolution and growth of the community.

To channel Chauncey Gardener for a second, one must do whatever one must to make sure that the earth in the garden is moist and well fed, one must seed well and completely, one must keep the garden in sun and water, one must encourage the garden to grow as it will for only in its growth will the garden be successful, and then, after rigorous growth, pruning and weeding must be done, only in order to allow the garden to be healthy, not to turn the garden into topiary. Okay, I am done.

Digg allows all of these things. Digg is perfectly useful and compelling even as an alien, but it is way more fun and interesting when you’re a citizen, that’s for sure. An SNS community needs to be as attractive as possible because exclusivity is no longer essential or even valuable. What is valuable is “useful,??? “interesting,??? and “authentic.??? They also have to have community buy-in and the best enjoy a certain fanatical devotion. Just like the best Universities and Colleges.

And Digg allowed its member to tell it when it was time to evolve past tech and geek news. Digg did not limit its scope or define itself too tightly with being “gear for geeks??? or “news for nerds.??? That would have ultimately been the death of Digg.

What the best Universities (such as Yale) understand is that it is not the student who is blessed and honored by being accepted by a top college (Yale College) but rather it is the college that should be blessed and honored (and should be grateful) that such a quality student is accepting its offers and actually attending – choosing – their particular school: Yale instead of Princeton, Brown, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Dartmouth, Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley, etc…

Harvard, too, is aware that although in the short-term Harvard makes the Harvard Man, over the long term, it is Harvard Men who made Harvard and continue to make Harvard. “Who have you graduated recently???? Unless the quality and character of its students and alumni remain top-drawer, Harvard is not guaranteed its position as “top three??? in USA Today alongside Princeton and Yale. No matter how grand its endowment.

So, Harvard and Yale spoil their students rotten! My friends who attended Harvard or Yale college swoon over those 4 years like I swoon over my first love.

Likewise, SNS’s, virtual worlds, and virtual communities need to realize that at any one point, their brand is only as good as the collective that is manifest in the users, the members, the lurkers, the stewards, and the alumni of the property.

This isn’t only true in SNS’s. The same thing can be said of the most successful message boards and online communities. The most important distinction, I think, is that all of these “rooms” and all of these “clubs” and all of these spaces where (and are) defined and created by the communities themselves. Sui generis. And this sort of ownership – “for us by us,??? as the slogan goes over as Howard Rheingold’s Brainstorms community – should never be underestimated.

The Well has Howard Rheingold as a member and alumnus, for example, and the credibility of all that he has made and done; over time, more and more virtual communities, virtual worlds, and SNS will be known for their members as well: who studies, who studied, and who wants to join.

“What’s in it for me??? (WIIFM) and the concept of pride of ownership are important – essential – ingredients of a sustainable, deep, thriving, and healthy community. The success of MySpace and of Facebook is that the verticals are not (were not) defined for them by their grand architects – they are self-creating, self-forming, and also self-destructing. They form, reform, mutate and disperse after they hit a limit of general conversation and then either break off and reform into an “interest group” or “club” or they self-check and work to “get back on topic.”

SNS’s and communities in general tend to be formed in one of two ways: like Paris or like London. Intelligence Design (architecture) or Emergent Design. The later never looks very beautiful or the way people – or the creators, investors, and architects – expect (or want) it to look, because investors and designers tend to not be able to control it – and when they do try to impost order, often in a heavy-handed way, they also tend to scare off all of their members, too.

This organic revolution has proven its success online time and time again. The Internet does not respond (well or at all) to command and control. The smartest Web 2.0 platforms allow the “masses of asses” (yes, the customer; yes, us) to define the platform and the experience – their own and collective environment and experience.

MySpace does this amazingly well and so does Facebook. Until recently, Friendster suffered from a vision and used command and control tactics to try to coerce its users that “it didn’t really want to do things that way??? and Friendster members abandoned in droves to platforms and experiences not so monitored by “mom and dad.???

A command and control grand vision doesn’t work when you develop an environment that needs to be truly both attractive and compelling much more than it needs to be informational or instructional. An SNS needs to be attractive, diversional, compelling, amusing, and entertaining – never limiting.

My analogy of college and high school never mentioned classrooms or classes for training or learning. People do enough of that at school and at work. An SNS needs to give its users a university campus without any expectations or concepts of dropping out, getting judged, doing homework, or being held accountable for anything.

A good SNS should be all late-night wine-influenced discussions of Descartes and Plato and the summer afternoons on the quad and the time playing Xbox with your roommates.

When I go onto my long-term online communities, the Well, The Meta Network, USENET, and Brainstorms, there are many very deep and very vertical communities, discussing things as frivolous as fashion and video games and as deep as how to survive cancer, how to get a post doc grant, and very deep discussions on “spirit,” “chaos theory,” and “world politics.”

What makes this amazing and sustainable is that there are an infinite number of ways to get along, to move into a space of intense conversation, and then to pull back into common areas, just to see who’s around. In a university setting, this could be the dining hall, the quad, the commons, etc. These spaces are very important.

If you think about all of this in terms of evolution, then we can think about the way things evolve in the most perverse ways when isolated from others of its kinds. So, if there are impervious walls – gaps or voids, mountains or ridges – between these vertical markets, SNS’s, and communities, then there may be an initial success, but there can also be a terrible volatility. One plague or drought can decimate a population completely.

Having a commons allows members and visitors to have a place to meet new people, have new experiences, and learn of new clubs, new opportunities, and new places – inbreeding versus crossbreeding. Ultimately, a diversity of visitors helps build a more resilient, invested, and self-identifing community. They will become “students for life??? at best and proud alums at worst. They will carry the brand awareness, even if their lives become too busy to participate any more.

They will become life long brand ambassadors for your community. Proud alumni.

And, in terms of “viral marketing,” it is also important when it comes to a member of an SNS “inviting his friends” – not all of my friends have the same vertical interests that I do… They could have very different interests – but as I explore the “commons” of an SNS, I can note that there are things happening online that “friend x” and “friend y” would love, and that would be my incentive to invite them on board.

Boompa? I am the only person I know in my entire community – that is not true, my buddy has an Audi S4 – who is into cars. My buddy is an Audi driver and I am a BMW driver. Does that mean we’re both drivers? Does that mean we love cars or our particular car? Do we cross over on performance sedans? On German cars? On luxury cars?

You have to offer the tools to allow the market to choose for itself, otherwise, you might never find out that the SNS needs all three, or none at all.

A “Modularized SNS” should be neutral like a university (unlike MySpace, which is pretty pre-defined as to what the demographic is), and there are lots of “vertical niche SNS’s” (e.g. car enthusiasts, gourmet cooking, travel, Rolex fans, Republican politicos, etc.) That way, everyone can form a SNS experience that actually fits them by modularly assembling the groups of people who have similar interests, (not just friends-in-common!)

It is just the time of year when The Fresh Air Fund begins preparing for the summer full of summer camps filled with happy faces and lots and lots of kids from the cities who get to spend their summer vacation out of the city and in the country. It is also a very important time for finding and hiring camp counselors for the summer as well as locating, vetting, and securing host families as well. All of this information is collected on a little informational web site you can check out, but I will excerpt some of this below.

Fresh Air Fund Needs Counselors for Summer 2009!

You love working with children, and that’s probably what we like most about you. Running across the ball field, washing off the glitter glue, or swimming in the lake – with your cabin group laughing around you – you’ll be in your element.

Are you going to be the counselor the children learn to paint with? The one they play soccer with? The one they want to hang out with? Or perhaps the one they read a bed-time story with? Whatever your role becomes, you’ll thrive on the challenge and commit yourself to the cause.

You’ve got to be 18 or over by June 20th to apply, and you’ll usually have completed at least one year of college by the summer. Any previous work with children should always be included on your application.

The experience you’re about to apply for will be like no other, and it’s going to take patience, flexibility, creativity, and a whole lot of self-motivation. But the rewards will be great… overcoming challenges, meeting new friends, playing games in the sun, jumping into the cool lake, painting face masks, hitting a home run, telling stories around a camp fire…

…and then seeing that smile brighten a child’s face.

We’re looking for counselors and program staff for all five of our summer camps – but places fill fast, so get your application in today.

We are now accepting applications for the 2009 season.

What I think the fine people at Fresh Air Fund are looking for Camp Counselors right now, so if you’re interested in applying to become a Fresh Air Fund camp counselor, please apply here. And, if you are on the fence, be sure to check out the below video, see through the eyes of some Fresh Air Fund counselors:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’re better than that.

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

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

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

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

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

(Via Marketing Conversation)

(By Lauren Cook) Never has the power of Twitter been more evident than in the last few weeks and months. Once known only by “techies” and early adopters, this micro-blogging site is now slowly infiltrating into the mainstream and more importantly, affecting the way many of us communicate, listen, and learn.

For those not familiar with Twitter, here’s a quick introduction: Twitter is a free social networking service that allows users to send and read each other’s updates (known as “tweets”) that are limited to 140 characters in length (think two sentences at most). At its inception in 2006, Twitter (then known as “Obvious”) was originally created as a tool to be used internally by the podcasting company, Odeo. Two years later, over 3 million individuals worldwide have Twitter accounts and the rate in which news spreads has shortened to, well, 140 characters.

Initially, the goal of Twitter was to allow users to share with their “followers” exactly what they were doing at that moment (ie: “It’s Monday morning and I’m having Cheerios for breakfast”). A common misconception among those who aren’t familiar with Twitter believe this is still the case with the micro-blogging site. In fact, Twitter has grown and expanded and its capabilities have far surpassed solely communicating the mundane details of everyday life.

For instance, take the recent Mumbai attacks in November, 2008. During the three-day battle that left more than 100 dead, social-networking services such as Twitter and Flickr were flooded with news, rumors and pictures of the tragedy by what is now termed as “citizen journalists” — users on Twitter that were tweeting breaking news faster than mainstream media could pick up the same information on the news wires. Many people now describe the situation in Mumbai as “Twitter’s moment.” As a result, major media outlets now uses Twitter to help communicate the real-time public sentiment on various issues, such as Presidential elections, natural disasters, and current events.

Abraham & Harrison has been at the forefront of the Twitter phenomenon since its public offering, sucessfully leveraging the power of micro-blogging for many of its clients. One only has to take a quick look at Abraham & Harrison’s President and COO, Chris Abraham, who is known as one of the top Twitterers of Social Media news, having over 2,700 followers, to understand Abraham & Harrison’s extensive knowledge of cutting edge social media tools.

A fantastic example of Abraham & Harrison’s knowledge of Twitter is illustrated by our work with the client, The Fresh Air Fund, a non-profit agency providing free summer vacations in the country to more than 1.7 million New York City children from disadvantaged communities.

With Abraham & Harrison’s help, The Fresh Air Fund created a Twitter profile to communicate with other NPOs, current volunteers, potential families interested in The Fresh Air Fund, and donors. In just three months of tweeting, The Fresh Air Fund Twitter profile has over 600 followers and has reached thousands of individuals who they otherwise would never have been in contact with. Not only does Abraham & Harrison help guide

The Fresh Air Fund on how to best utilize Twitter in a respectful and value-driven way, Chris Abraham is also eager to help “retweet” The Fresh Air Fund’s Twitter content, meaning that over 3,000 users are seeing this non-profit’s messaging, creating a critical relationship with The Fresh Air Fund that results in support of the NPO. Even more impressive, The Fresh Air Fund was recently nominated to be a part of the “Top Ten List of Twitterers Who Will Change The World” — a fantastic feat for an NPO who has only been a part of the Twittosphere for three months.

Are you thinking about joining Twitter? One word of warning: You can’t become a Twitter sensation overnight. As Chris Abraham says, “Growing a social media profile is like growing a coral reef: after seeding the reef, there are so many things that need to happen before a reef blooms ‘in its own.’” With Twitter, time and commitment are key in order to position yourself as a valuable addition to the community. “You need to be generous — give more than you take — and you need to be committed to the long term,” Chris advises. And it’s not all about your follower numbers.

For instance, once could argue that Lance Armstrong isn’t a valuable member of the Twitter community given that he has over 23,000 followers, but is only following approximately 40 other Twitterers (an improvement since the last time I checked, when he was following a mere 2 users: his Livestrong organization, and one other member of the Livestrong Executive Team).

Twitter isn’t about just talking about yourself, accepting every follower, and never engaging in actual dialogue. Like every other social networking tool, it’s about forming relationships, providing valuable content, listening and (like Chris said), giving more than taking.

There’s an unspoken code of ethics followed by well-respected Twitterers, and a strategy that can help you reach your customers and supporters on Twitter while not opening yourself up to criticism and in extreme cases, retaliation (ever heard of the Motrin Mommies ?). The power of Twitter is increasing daily — do you know how to harness it? Let Abraham & Harrison show you how. (Via Marketing Conversation)

I have been pinned by the coverage of #leweb down in Paris on Twitter, especially during all of the excitement as Dr. Helen Fisher talked about sex, attraction, and falling in love. So, since everyone else has been taking the Chemistry love personality test, I thought I would do the same. So, with no further ado, here’s my results. Is any of is surprising? You, too, can take the test for free (and sign up, as a result) over at Chemistry.com

Hello Chris,

Welcome to your Chemistry Profile. The following analysis is based on your responses to our questionnaire. Your results identify your major and minor personality types, as well as the types with whom you’re likely to be compatible.

Your Major and Minor Personality Types Characteristics of all four personality types can be found within each of us, but there is almost always one personality type that is dominant. We call this the major personality type. The Chemistry Profile also identifies your minor or secondary personality type. You exhibit some aspects of this personality type, though not to the same degree as with your major type.

• Your major personality type = Director
• Your minor personality type = Negotiator

You are a DIRECTOR/negotiator You are an innovator. You are an inventive, thorough, independent thinker with a deep interest in how the world works. You quickly grasp patterns and relationships. And when you focus on a particular work-related or social puzzle, you often come up with novel theories and ideas about it. You have a strong need to achieve. You want to make an impact on the world. And with your aptitude for theoretical thinking, your investigative rigor, your logic and your determination, you are likely to win the honors your hard work deserves. You are a complex person, outwardly assertive, logical and intellectual, yet likely to see the many sides of an issue, feel deep sympathy for others and enjoy the spiritual as well as the concrete. You can be friendly, insightful and eager to please. These attributes, combined with your love of challenges and knowledge, make you an exciting, and at times, very sensitive companion.

How your personality breaks out

Explorer – 23% of your personality - Known for high energy, high creativity and spontaneity. Seeks novelty, risk and pleasure. Intellectually curious and not easily swayed by opinion.

Builder – 19% of your personality - Usually very popular. Deep attachment to home and family. Calm demeanor and low anxiety. Often consistent, loyal and protective.

Negotiator – 27% of your personality – Excels at seeing the big picture, long-term planning and consensus building. An intuitive thinker who is flexible, verbal and socially skilled. Imaginative, empathetic and nurturing.

Director – 29% of your personality – Daring, original, direct and inventive. A non-conformist. Skilled at abstract thinking and short-term planning. Often assertive and quite competitive. Tough-minded and efficient.

Dating Tips for Directors

• Not everyone is as direct, focused and “to the point” as you are. So make sure you give potential partners the time they need to express themselves. You will probably be surprised at their logic and intellect.

• Your competitive spirit is useful in the office but it doesn’t work in dating–unless you find someone who likes to challenge and debate. When that happens, go for it. Otherwise, try to listen actively.

• Aim at investigating some of the “grey areas” during an invigorating conversation. Much of the world does not see in black and white.

• Separate work from play. Try to get your assignments out of your mind while on a date—so you can truly enjoy your “down time” with a partner.

• Make sure to schedule enough time to get to know someone.

• Try looking directly into the eyes of your partner during a conversation; many people find this “anchoring gaze” a powerful form of intimacy.

The answer, of course, is “it takes about ten years of suffering hard work to become an overnight sensation.” In the case of new media and Web2.0, you can so that in a lot less time. Being an early — the earliest — adopter doesn’t hurt, but it isn’t necessary, really. However, any way you slice it, with a few exceptions, becoming an overnight sensation on Twitter, YouTube, Plurk, QIK, Utterli, LinkedIn, Facebook, or MySpace is going to require a lot of your resources (time and/or money) and more time than you probably planned out for your boss or your client — or yourself!

I am pretty interested in seeing how my Twitter profile has gone from nothing to 2,511+ followers. Twitterholic has allowed me to figure that out in an easy-to-read format, which I appreciate. I joined Twitter on January 6th, 2007. By October 30th, I had 441 followers. It took until May 5th, 2008, to break 1,000 followers. It only took until September 11th for me to break 2,000 followers, and now, as of December 7th (a day that lives in infamy), I have 2,511 followers. I find that interesting to study but I don’t know what it means.

I think I will venture to explain its meaning: social media requires investment and time. Growing a social media profile is like growing a coral reef: after seeding the reef, there are so many things that need to happen before a reef blooms “in its own.” There are many things that can aid the reef: safety, cleanliness, warmth, nutrients, oxygenation, etc… however, one of the most important thing is time and commitment.

Social media cultivation makes most PR and marketing professionals cringe at the thought of trying to sell these solutions to their clients. A client generally wants metrics now and right away. Clients oftentimes spend tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a social network platform, a blog, or a spate of social media profiles that are world class and amazingly turned; however, when the six-month mark comes around and the community is not yet bustling, most clients get severe cold feet and oftentimes abandon all of the work-in (and money out) as a failed campaign — right before the reef blooms!

It kills me to see the number of corporate blogs, home-grown social networks, message boards, and social network profiles that are like those bare and barren rocks and wrecks that never in fact ever blossomed into an emergent community manifest in a coral reef. An ecosystem as delicate and hardy as any social media space, from Twitter to Facebook, from MySpace to your corporate blog.

I forgot to also add to the resources plus time equation: commitment, consistency, calmness, dedication, generosity, and compassion. When you invest in online community as much as I do (2,511 on Twitter with 11,200 tweets, 2,734 on Facebook, 1,496 on LinkedIn, and 5,321 posts on my blog, an online presence I have had since 1999, for example) then you need to be generous — give more than you take — and you need to be committed to the long term. You will need to learn what each community will allow, suffer, enjoy, or penalize. You will learn where the borders are and you will learn what works (and draws people in) and what doesn’t (making them flee).

Well, with no further ado, here’s a lot of work, time, creativity, hours, minutes, wit, mistake, missteps, business, play, Washington, Berlin, Slovakia, San Diego, and a hundred other places. If you want to have 2,500 followers and you’re not already famous, you’ll have to put in the work. If you can achieve tens of thousands of followers, you’re probably already somebody; in that case, it wasn’t just overnight: you just put in your licks elsewhere. Otherwise, put on those work-gloves and start working!

Visit Chris Abraham’s Twitter Page
Visit Chris Abraham’s Webpage

• Chris Abraham was the 608,473rd person to sign up for twitter!
• Chris Abraham is ranked 843rd on twitterholic! (by followers)
• Chris Abraham is ranked 1st in their location on twitterholic!

Bio: Web strategist and new media guru and president of Abraham Harrison LLC, http://chrisabraham.com
Joined Twitter on 2007-01-06 14:51:39

Here is a love note to “me” from David Plouffe, Campaign Manager for Obama for America. Barack Obama wants to personally keep me, ChrisTOPHER Abraham in the loop. I hope the Obama White House keeps up this sort of thing. If Barack Obama and David Plouffe are smart, they won’t make me resubscribe after the inauguration, they’ll just continue educating and informing me into the future. Please.

Christopher –

Yesterday, President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden announced key members of their national security team.

Barack and Joe have asked some of the country’s most experienced leaders on national security, foreign policy, law enforcement, and military matters to come together to renew America’s security and standing in the world.

Watch the video of Barack’s announcement and learn about the national security team.

Hillary Clinton, U.S. Senator from New York and former First Lady, will serve as Secretary of State.

Secretary Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense, will continue to serve in that role.

Eric Holder, former Deputy Attorney General and a former United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, will serve as Attorney General.

Janet Napolitano, Governor and former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, will serve as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Dr. Susan E. Rice, a Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Obama for America campaign, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, will serve as Ambassador to the United Nations.

General Jim Jones, USMC (Ret), former Allied Commander, Europe, and Commander of the United States European Command, will serve as National Security Advisor.

Barack’s national security team has been assembled to represent all elements of American power, diplomacy, and leadership that will be vital in overcoming the challenges of the 21st century.

Watch the video of today’s press conference:

These appointees will be tasked with strengthening current alliances and forging new ones, protecting our citizens at home, defending against our enemies, and promoting our values and moral leadership throughout the world.

While the challenges they are sure to face will be great, the opportunities to unify our country and our world will be even greater.

With your support, we’ll meet those challenges and opportunities with the hope and optimism that has brought us to this moment of change.

Thank you,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

]]> http://chrisabraham.com/2008/12/02/a-love-note-from-david-plouffe/feed/ 0