In response to How to make an awesome Social Media News Release, Jonathan Rick asked me, “Isn’t this essentially the same thing that Pitch Engine offers?” Jason Kintzler then added, “Yes Jonathan, exactly! Did I mention you can do it all for free?!” (See Socialmedia.biz‘s earlier writeup on PitchEngine: A social PR platform for the new era.)

Well, my response is the topic of this post today: “The article is only about the what and why of the Social Media News Release and not the how. Pitch Engine is a how!” I then added, “Pitch Engine doesn’t take away the work: writing/collecting compelling copy and assets. You do that work” and then “Our SMNR is just a platform and structure. 90% of one’s time should be spent writing amazing content” and then, finally, “Installing WordPress, an amazing platform, does not an amazing blog make; Pitch Engine is amazing but content is king”

So, let me explain. Pitch Engine and WordPress are best-of-breed application platforms that make creating a Social Media Release and Blog seamless, removing the technology hurdle from the process. Those are good things, to be sure. However, after re-reading my SMNR post, I was reminded that it wasn’t about technology at all, it was about the collecting and presenting of relevant assets, copy, images, and videos; it was about organizing and branding an ease-of-use “steal all this content, blogger, and please post on your blog” microsite.

In fact, I made a point of showing how one doesn’t even need to spend all your time installing WordPress or some other database-backed website or web app — one can hack together a very valuable SMNR with just the most basic HTML, an inexpensive hosting plan, and a $12/year domain from a domain name registrar.

Why humanity trumps technology

It’s not about the technology, people! Hire and train people based on their ability to write and their ability to connect and engage people — who like people and care about personal, human, relationships. Signing up for Pitch Engine won’t write your SMNR for you, creating a profile on Twitter doesn’t make you an influencer, and installing WordPress doesn’t put you in the AdAge Power 150 or Technorati’s Top 100. These are all essential steps, but they’re no panacea.

If you’re spending more money on tech than talent, don’t. If you’re intimidated by technology, don’t be. If you think that Social Networking and Social Media is about apps and sites and smart phones and Twitter and Facebook and Google+, then you need to get past that and remember that it’s about people. Real fleash-and-blood folks who hunger to connect and relate. Yes, with each other, but also with you and your brand, products, and services.

Pitch Engine’s job is to make Social Media Release-making as easy-as-possible, tech-free, as possible. And they do an amazing job of it. The same goes for WordPress and Facebook and Twitter. If an app doesn’t make it easier for you to connect with other people, the app doesn’t work. At the end of the day, all these web applications are top-drawer, but they just make it easier — effortless — to do your job. They do not do your job for you and they often make folks lazier, more careless, and less concise. They tend to be enablers, enabling bad grammar, poor spelling, and just good enough editing. People should always write as though going to press and being printed on paper instead of just assuming you can always edit it later.

If you’re intimidated by technology, that’s OK. Social Media News Releases and Blogger Pitch Emails are more about the quality, simplicity, efficiency, and targeting of the writing, structure, and presentation of the page. Some of the most popular blogs online are Blogger and MySpace blogs, even though there are more sophisticated platforms. Why? Because what it is to be a blogger is to be a writer and not a technologist or programer. The same thing with digital PR and social media marketing. The most effective marketing campaigns combine the ability to write clear, compelling copy; understanding the target audience and their associated wants, needs, desires, and hunger; and knowing where the sweet spot in the market is — it is not about the technology. The tech is a necessary evil that must be transcended in order to ensure that the messaging is able to seamlessly reach the market without barrier.

Reporters don’t need to know how to run a printing press, news anchors don’t need to understand how a picture makes its way, as if my magic, to my LCD HDTV, and radio hosts surely don’t need to go out to get their Ham Radio License. And you don’t need to become an iOS developer, a web application developer, or a CSS guru, either.

Too many people in this space get stuck behind the technology barrier. They spend all their budgets on building the perfect web application, the best Facebook App, and on graphic design and architecture, leaving very little if anything on the best writers and the best marketers. Don’t get stuck in that trap.

Your social media presence, digital PR strategy, and social media marketing campaigns are only as good as your writers, marketers, PR professionals, community managers, designers, and creatives — the artisans — and not on the technologies — the tools. When I teach young college marketing and PR students in their communication schools, I remind them every day that all the things they’re learning in class, though possibly dated and old school, are still relevant because human nature is human nature and people are people and technological platforms are ephemeral and fleeting.

Learn the tools, surely, but don’t become obsessed with them. Shine the spotlight where it matters: people. Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology.

Related articles

• Social media success demands talent above technology (socialmedia.biz)
• Social media success demands talent above technology (biznology.com)
• How to make awesome Social Media News Releases (chrisabraham.com)
• Detailed analysis of the perfect blogger pitch (socialmedia.biz)
• The Social Media News Release explained in detail (socialmedia.biz)
• Inside a Social Media News Release (biznology.com)
• WordPress 2.5 – So exciting I can hardly contain myself… (theresabloginmysoup.com)
• How to write an irresistible blogger pitch email (chrisabraham.com)
• 5 Types of Sites You Can Build With WordPress (thetechscoop.net)
• How To: Add Customer Reviews To WordPress (wpjedi.com)

This morning I found a link on Facebook that linked to Corporate Social Media Is Not Social — It’s Sales Media by Tom Foremski and came away with a comment that I will share here, though I am pretty sure didn’t respond directly to the post so much as just wrote what the post inspired me to. (Via Marketing Conversation)

I have reread the story and yes, the ultimate theme is “So let’s be honest about corporate use of social media — it’s really all sales media — let’s not dress it up as anything else.” That said, I can’t help but interpret the tone as scolding.

You can check out my comment here:

Although I think the tone and theme of this post will be popular, I believe it is also naive. I have found that if your message is targeted and generous, people are grateful to be identified, recognized, and then engaged with where they’re already spending their time.

Someone who inelegantly brings up Avon or Tupperware at a cocktail or dinner party does make the whole thing untoward; however, clubs, gold courses, the ball park, and any number of places have long been the sites of the initial conversation that have lead to quite a bit of very important business and quite a number of sales.

The biggest deals happen on the links.

Anyway, cheap people sans couth are a dime-a-dozen, but even these people are indeed rewarded — sometimes handsomely monetarily — for their aggressiveness, dedication, and shamelessness even though they dismantle their reputation and burn their bridges along the way.

Also, peddling crap is always unforgivable — please keep those Cutco knives the hell away from me!

Here’s the original post over at Silicon Valley Insider:

When it comes to corporate use of social media I have problems with the use of the word “social” because it’s not accurate. It’s not social.

When most people use Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace, they use it for its social qualities. Yet when corporations, and many professionals use social media, they are using it for commercial purposes, they are using it for sales.

This is an important distinction because it affects how businesses should use social media.

I was moderating a panel earlier today on how businesses can use PR to leverage social media, and Louis Gray said something that was very wise. He said that people create their Facebook pages in a specific way because that’s the way they like it, they are comfortable there. If you come along and engage with them you need to approach them as if you were a guest in their home.

That means businesses have to be cautious about how they sell on social media sites.

All that relationship building and engagement is not because a business wants to get to know Jane or John better, as a friend or relative would, it wants to sell more of its product or service. That’s a far different agenda from most people’s engagement in social media.

Like at parties, people will avoid that person that is selling something. Friends that invite their friends to tupperware parties, or similar, are tolerated for a while, but not for long. Similarly, companies that use social media as sales media must understand there is a time and place for it, or they risk alienating people.

Sir Martin Sorrell, the head of WPP, the world’s largest marketing and communications group, has similar concerns about the commercial use of social media. The Financial Times recently reported:

Sir Martin warned on Tuesday that social media sites are ”less commercial phenomena, they are more personal phenomena,” more similar to ”writing letters to our mothers” than watching television.

”Invading these [social] media with commercial messages might not be the right thing.”

So let’s be honest about corporate use of social media — it’s really all sales media — let’s not dress it up as anything else.

What do you think?  How appropriate was my response?  Was the article a bit of pandering?  I am a huge fan of open, transparent, and honest engagement with the express aim of brand- and relationship-building.

How inauthentic would it be for a bunch of folks from a PR, marketing, or corporate to enter a social network and not talk about clients and campaigns and the office?

Please let me know what you think in the comments.

My friend and Abraham Harrison’s client, Fabrice Grinda of OLX, has been recognized as one of the 2010 Game Changers in the May, 2010, issue of The New York Enterprise Report:

Fabrice Grinda, 2010 Game Changers, New York Enterprise Report

How he’s changing the game: “Throughout most of my life, I’ve been inspired by looking at things that work and making them work better,” says Grinda. Back in 1998, Grinda co-founded Aucland S.A., a European version of eBay, and it became one of the top three auction sites on the continent. He subsequently founded Zingy, a mobile ringtone company, that he grew to $200 million in content sales and sold four years later for 80 million dollars. An avid user of Craigslist, Grinda saw a lot of business potential in creating a free classified site with an improved interface that made it possible for users to search at a global level, embed videos, and post in different languages. “Classifieds are too expensive in many markets around the world, especially emerging countries,” says Grinda. “I wanted to share the free community aspects of Craigslist with the rest of the world,” says Grinda. OLX earns revenue by selling space on the site to advertisers. Grinda got the start-up running in about three months for an initial investment of $30,000. Some of OLX’s features that have changed classified, if not e-commerce as a whole, include a distance field allowing you to see postings within a certain geographic range; the ability to post items in virtual worlds (e.g., SecondLife); the ability to include videos in listings; RSS feeds; the ability to display ads on social networking profiles (such as Facebook and Twitter), and the ability to access the site from mobile phones.

Recent Highlights: According to Grinda, OLX’s recent highlights include “breathtaking growth.” The site is now available in 91 countries and 41 languages.OLX gets 100 million unique users to the site each month—more than Twitter or MySpace—making it one of the largest sites in the world. “Not everyone has heard of us in the US, but we’re much bigger in Brazil and India,” says Grinda.

What’s Next: In addition to continuing to grow OLX around the world, Grinda and his team are in the process of releasing an iPhone app and refocusing their mobile business. Grinda also is an angel investor in 28 start-up Internet companies.

Lots of my friends and family ask me what I do and when I tell them they often look at me glassily.  I try to communicate but I don’t even think my mom knows what I do for 12-18 hours/day, seven days-a-week.

That said, I have been trying to brainstorm some of our lesser-know services.  Abraham Harrison is globally known for being able to engage thousands of bloggers in 5 Continents, 12 Countries and 11 Languages.

That said, we also offer Social Network management services and social media solutions and all of that — here’s a list of some of them along with my interpretation of what each of them offers.  Please let me know if I have done a clear job with the copy — I think it still may be too dense.

Online Business Intelligence
Tracking and monitoring the online reputation of your brand, company, product, and services on your behalf, as a way of keeping track of conversation real-time.  Unless reporting is explicitly agreed to, this “open source intelligence” will be monitored for content, friendliness, and threat. Any and all threats are triaged and reported to the appropriate client point of contact.

Online Media and Social Media Metrics
Abraham Harrison maintains a suite of tools, algorithms, and strategies that allow us to provide you and your client with bona fide measurements, including reach, tone, and sentiment.  This suite of tools allow us to create illustrative proof, over time, of the efficacy of the campaign from the launch and over time.

Campaign Metrics and ROI Reporting
Intelligence plus metric plus time equals reports. Client and campaign reporting is something that needs to be defined and agreed to in advance of the campaign because reports are not built into the campaign but are a la carte and you get to define the specificity and granularity of the reporting.  Generally, reports are done bi-weekly or monthly, usually interspersed with weekly updates and “as needed” alerts.

Twitter Community-Building Services
Twitter is not a broadcast medium, it is a community-prospecting platform.  In order for the entire community to take shape and take bloom, one needs to not simply register an account, one needs to design, populate, and then prospect followers before there can be any real growth.  This community-building leverages both our collected contacts and current community relationships as well as several tools that we use to help promote and grow online reputation and growth of your Twitter online reputation.  In other words, like everything online, if you build it they won’t come.  Building it is a start, if course, but unless you’re Oprah or Ashton Kutcher, there is a lot of work and a lot of building, promotion, and prospecting required, and that is what Abraham Harrison LLC can do for you.

Twitter Posts and Posting Services
Twitter has become an essential part of online branding. Companies, celebrities, brands, and even fictional entities have been leveraging the ease-of-use and the simplicity of Twitter to both communication with current and potential customers as well as being able to engage and respond to user question, user requests, and user responses.  However, it isn’t as simple as posting status updates to Twitter regularly.  In our process, we work with the client to come up with 25-100 pre-approved “tweets” that the client can approve, veto, or edit.  Over time, AHLLC is able to message on behalf of you, the client, with messages that are consistent with client vision. After that, the messages are delivered to the Twitter stream with an approved frequency, from once-per-day to a couple posts to multiple-posts-per-day, with the frequency according to the scope of the contract.  During this process, it is also important — essential — to trust the Twitter team to be able to triage all replies and direct messages on behalf of the client — or, there needs to be a rapid process to triage replies and direct messages through the client.  As the campaign moves forward, the evolution of the campaign can change to offer more and more independence to the Twitterer.

Twitter Retweets and Retweeting Services
The secret sauce of Twitter is retweeting (retweet (RT)): a) to copy a tweet and then send it again on Twitter. b) passing along of messages in Twitter) Retweeting is the epitome of what makes Twitter such a powerful tool.

Retweeting allows Twitterers to repeat content from one Twitter stream they’re following onto all of their own followers.  Writing compelling tweets is what organically can result in retweets down the Twitter stream; however, it is also important to use Retweets as a form of reciprocal currency. Retweeting someone else’s tweet can engender attention or connection and build social equity within the “Twitterverse.”

In addition to intentionally retweeting on a client’s behalf, one of the benefits of running your Twitter campaign through Abraham Harrison LLC is that you are able to instantaneously have all of your client tweets retweeted through not only our staff’s Twitter accounts but through all the status-update social network sites our staff is a member of.

This allows our clients to automatically enter the conversation well in advance of their earned reputation online.

Twitter Message Modeling and Copywriting Services
In our process, we work with the client to come up with 25-100 pre-approved “tweets” that the client can approve, veto, or edit.  Over time, AHLLC is able to message on behalf of you, the client, with messages that are consistent with client vision. After that, the messages are delivered to the Twitter stream with an approved-to frequency, from once-per-day to a couple posts to multiple-posts-per-day, with the frequency according to the scope of the contract.

Active and Reactive Tweeting, Real-Time Twitter Customer Serives Services
Twitter is more than messaging and updating the Twitter status, Twitter offers the opportunity to use the real-time web to discover conversation around your products, services, and brands and either collect the intelligence for reporting or action or to engage the conversation, be it through use of @replies, Direct Messages (DMs), Retweets, or even the addition of hash tags.  The Twittersphere is considered real-time so it is essential to keep up-to-the second with a constant flow of twitter mentions.  The best thing about Twitter is that one may also easily engage real people who are mentioning your brand or the brand of your competitor.  You can also mention these people, retweet them, or help them with any sort of problem they may well be having with you, your produces, your services, or your general customer support.

YouTube development
While it is simple to join YouTube, there are quite a few important steps one must take before launching. First of all, there is a lot of customization that one can do to make sure a client’s YouTube channel blends well with the client brand identity, mirroring the parent brand.  In addition, structuring the channel, making sure the channel name is appropriate, and also make sure that if there needs to be content that plays for more than the standard 5-minute limit the ways to extend that (even to hours) are implemented. There are ways to make revenue as well, through Google AdSense.

Since Abraham Harrison LLC staff has been using YouTube since it was launched in 2005, we understand it well – most of all that, unlike television channels, YouTube is not simply a broadcast medium but rather primarily a community platform.  Like Twitter and other online communities like MySpace and Facebook, YouTube allows, and is most powerful with, a very deep level of participation.  Many companies, looking for the next viral hit or just a YouTube land-grab tend to forget this.

It is important to not simply create the YouTube channel and make it pretty, it is important to also upload all of the videos required as well, knowing what the most appropriate file type, file size, and file quality it appropriate for each particular application or requirement.  It is also important to customize the set-up based on how the client wants to share the content and with whom.

Online Video Distribution Services
Sometimes the community maintenance required for YouTube channel creation is too much for a particular client requirement or campaign and what is needed, instead, is a complete and comprehensive video upload to all of the current video sharing sites.

This video distribution service offers a quick and comprehensive upload to over 30 video upload and social network sites, including the usual suspects but also including many other less-popular and less well-known social networks; however, in order to best cover all possible opportunities for brand video sharing, it is always a good idea to make sure the client brand experience and client video assets always exist exactly where and when people are looking for them.

In addition, one of the largest ways people choose their video content in today’s market is through word-of-mouth and sharing, which we can help you ignite; however, a more predictable and common way of discovering content online – and the only way of discovering the content if the word of mouth does not include sharing links – is search. Doing a comprehensive video upload and distribution is a way of stacking the deck towards the discovery of the content organically by flooding the search engine indices with client content — which can result in the ownership of the content.  Video distribution is an important strategy towards controlling and promoting brand perception online – the secret sauce of the social web.

Facebook Page Creation
In the past, there were many methods for promoting on Facebook; however, Facebook is clamping down on Terms of Service (TOS) violations.  As a result of – and in response to – people creating profiles that do not reflect authentic people but brands, products, services, or fictional entities, Facebook has replaced business profiles and business groups with Facebook Pages.  Pages are entities not unlike profiles, and are becoming more and more like profiles. Like profiles, Pages have walls, updates, videos, events, and all the rest. Additionally, they interact with peoples’ statuses in much the same way that Facebook Profiles do.

When creating a Facebook Page or Group or Cause, it is important to remember that these Facebook Apps are community-oriented and need to be fed and watered.  The tools support community, conversation, and collaboration and many people develop these Facebook Pages as if they were a published brochure instead of a dynamic, developing, conversational community.  These communities are needy, more like a blog or like Twitter than anything like a page. A MySpace profile can be developed more like a proper web page, but Pages offer the opportunity to share Events, Conversation, Links, Discussion, Photos, Videos, etc. While they don’t have to be completely open and interactive, they do need to be responsive and there needs to be a certain level of maintenance and content creation committed to the Facebook Page.

There is a lot to know about the Pages, however, and there are many 3rd party tools and services that can be used to expand brand, including doing Facebook Ads and the like, to help promote the brand.

In order to best promote “fan” membership of a Facebook Page, one needs to be creative as to the reason why being a fan is worthwhile.  Some easy “gifts” can include exclusive content, Facebook-only offers, “live” interviews, access to celebrities or notables, etc.  When an online brand reputation

One of the things that makes Facebook Pages better than either Facebook Profiles or Facebook Groups is that the content is not hidden behind the Facebook Authentication Membership Wall.  More like MySpace profiles and groups, which are completely visible and partially accessible when not yet a registered member of the site, Facebook Pages are one of the few “rooms” in the mostly “gated community” of Facebook proper.  Facebook Pages can be indexed by search engines like a normal web page and found using simple keywords through Google, Live.com, Ask.com, and Yahoo!

One of the beautiful things about Facebook Pages is that Google loves Facebook more than just about any other web site (Google loves Twitter more) so brands that have a Facebook Page are often surprised by how quickly the Page turns up on the first page of search.

There are other ways of promoting brand on Facebook, which can include cross promotions with other Social Networks (have all of the networks aimed at the Page), organic SEO strategies, Facebook Ads, as well as incorporating a strong blogger outreach campaign aimed at brand promotion.

However, that said, it is hard to start a Facebook Page and we generally recommend starting with a Facebook Group.  It is much easier to prospect new memberships, invite new members, and get everything started from zero, so we often start with a Group, build that up to over 1,000 members, and then have the Group converted into becoming a Facebook Page, which is what we have the connections to do.  We call it the one-two sling-shot punch!

The advantage of a Facebook Page is that you can use it as a proxy web page for marketing and a proxy online community in support of your brand instead of developing or hosting your own; however, aside from being a “fan” of your company, brand, product, or service, there is little incentive, or “gift,” associated with ever returning to your Facebook Page unless you spend some time and resources developing unique content for the Page — Facebook Pages support photos, events, videos, message boards, a wall, etc –  as well as for responding to questions, queries, comments, and the like.

One of the strong advantages of smartly-but-aggressively developing messages, updates, photos, videos, and exclusive content is that the New Facebook Pages have evolved into me a lot more like the Original Facebook Profile, which includes status updates that scroll down each fan’s status update stream in exactly the same way their friends and family’s statuses update.

This is a very powerful method for brand messaging and distribution.  One of the past lacks of Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages is that it was too easy to join and forget, becoming a Group member or a Page fan and then never seeing hide nor hair of it until there was an explicit admin message to all members — a member update.

Even so, with Facebook Groups in the past, one was penalized by success because when a Facebook Group grow above 1,000-1,200 members, the ability to send a message to all members was revoked.

With the new Facebook Pages, it is easy to keep “fans” engaged and updates, through the regular status update stream that all users; unfortunately, as I mentioned above in the section about Facebook Groups, it is easier to prospect and collect new members on a Facebook Group and a Facebook Cause because it is very possible to easily invite personal Facebook “friends” to Groups and Causes.  When creating a brand profile on Facebook, it behooves one to develop all three: Facebook Page, Facebook Group, and Facebook Cause.

The reason why I insist on attending as many podcamps as possible is because I always learn something. I also get to share of myself. Case in point: I am currently attending Podcamp Philly.

The most valuable part, though, is discovering what people do and don’t know and do and don’t care about — we all tend to be so in the bubble that we don’t even really know any more where the market is.

Since we’re in the advance guard, many of us assume that Twitter, Second Life, Facebook, MySpace, blogging, and everything are already over in a time when people are just, still, in discovery mode. I can highly recommend attending. And, even more, they’re generally either free or about $40.

Posted via web from Chris Abraham

I just finished reading FT reporter David Gelles‘ article about Facebook, What friends are for, and I was really taken by one particular paragraph, which pits Google and Facebook in the war of “if you had to choose one, which would you choose:”

Certainly, those seeking to profit from Facebook are convinced of its prospects. “If you asked a 20-year-old today to give up Google or Facebook, they would give up Google,” maintains Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, which makes applications that run on Facebook, and the founder of Tribe Networks, an early social network. “The social web is more personal and is more relevant to you.”

Which one would you choose?  If you had to?  I know that I spend a lot of time on Facebook and it has reconnected me very powerfully to all the people I have know since before high school; however, Google is become as important to me as as plumbing, tap water, electricity, or dial-tone.

What do you think?

I heart Facebook. This morning I awoke to Yet Another Facebook Innovation (YAFI). Facebook amazes me because they are driven to make things easier for me — or at least give it a go. Facebook is willing to suffer constant backlash in order to improve usability and efficiency. Case-in-point below:

New Friends Facebook Check Boxes

In this particular case, the innovation is what I call a “Twitterish” innovation — stealing something directly from Twitter. A couple weeks ago, I stayed up until 12:01AM to secure another hype-drenched Twitterish innovation: vanity URLS: facebook.com/chrisabraham — I am such a sucker!

However, Facebook is an equal-opportunity thief and also quite creative as well. Next innovation inspired by Utterli, FriendFeed, or LinkedIn?  Who knows!

I hate to admit it but I am used to lazy web applications.  I am used to apps like Flickr, Delicious, Craigslist, Ebay, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube — sites that are pretty much the same as they were when they were born. Facebook, on the other hand, innovates almost constantly. In fact, Facebook tends to innovate so aggressively that there are millions of members who constantly picket Facebook to revert itself to the way it was when it was a college-only service. The reason why most apps don’t innovate is because of this vocal minority — the change-averse.

Another thing I love about Facebook is that they’re not wed to their innovations.  When Facebook Beacon pissed off the world, they scaled it back. The developers at Facebook are smart — land grab with ten new innovations, throw them agains the Wall, and then see what people adopt and then, over time, remove the fails.

Facebook is willing to spitball, Facebook is willing to steal ideas shamelessly from other platforms, and Facebook is willing to fail fast and move on.  That’s what you’re supposed to do!  That’s why I love Facebook.

Cem Sertoglu read through my rant about why Twitter hype is not Second Life hype and asked me this question, “@chris – thanks for the comment here. very insightful. how about the issue with kids not using twitter?” I responded in a comment (and here):

Well, “kids” don’t blog either.  Kids won’t blog until they feel empowered enough to start creating on their own accord or until they find it useful — hell, “kids” might never ever take to Twitter, except that they will want to engage with TMZ Staffers on Twitter (@harveylevintmz @daxholt @ninaparkertmz @lmharris70 @carolynafenton @frankvelardo) because there will be loads of kids who will get on board to be able to stalk their favorite celebs and stars.

But who knows.

Rockers and fans are still on MySpace and the “kids” have yet to bail on Facebook (yet) so we’ll see what happens.

It is very odd to see how the median age for blogging and twittering is much older than you would think: “the median age of a Twitter user is 31. In comparison, the median age of a MySpace user is 27, Facebook user is 26 and LinkedIn user is 40.7,” according to Pew.

In the past, there were many methods for promoting on Facebook; however, Facebook is clamping down on Terms of Service (TOS) violations.  As a result of — and in response to — people creating profiles that do not reflect authentic peoeple but brands, products, services, or fictional entities, Facebook has replaced business profiles and business groups with Facebook Pages.  Pages are entitities not unlike profiles, and are becoming more and more like profiles. Like profiles, Pages have walls, updates, videos, events, and all the rest. Additionally, they interact with peoples’ statuses in much the same way that Facebook Profiles do.

When creating a Facebook Page or Group or Cause, it is important to remember that these Facebook Apps are community-oriented and need to be fed and watered and Abraham Harrison offers products and services in support of your Facebook brand, including Facebook Page creation, Facebook Page Management, and Facebook Page Community Development.

The tools support community, conversation, and collaboration and many people develop these Facebook Pages as if they were a published brochure instead of a dynamic, developing, conversational community.

These communities are needy, more like a blog or like Twitter than anything like a page. A MySpace profile can be deceloped more like a proper web page, but Pages offer the opportunity to share Events, Conversation, Links, Discussion, Photos, Videos, etc. While they don’t have to be completely open and interactive, they do need to be responsive and there needs to be a certain level of maintenance and content creation committed to the Facebook Page.

There is a lot to know about the Pages, however, and there are many 3rd party tools and services that can be used to expand brand, including doing Facebook Ads and the like, to help promote the brand.

In order to best promote “fan” membership of a Facebook Page, one needs to be creative as to the reason why being a fan is worthwhile.  Some easy “gifts” can include exclusive content, Facebook-only offers, “live” interviews, access to celebrities or notables, etc.  When an online brand reputation

One of the things that makes Facebook Pages better than either Facebook Profiles or Facebook Groups is that the content is not hidden behind the Facebook Authentication Membership Wall. More like MySpace profiles and groups, which are completely visible and partially accessible when not yet a registered member of the site, Facebook Pages are one of the few “rooms” in the mostly “gated community” of Facebook proper.

Facebook Pages can be indexed by search engines like a normal web page and found using simple keywords through Google, Live.com, Ask.com, and Yahoo!

One of the beautiful things about Facebook Pages is that Google loves Facebook more than just about any other web site (Google loves Twitter more) so brands that have a Facebook Page are often surprised by how quickly the Page turns up on the first page of search.

There are other ways of promoting brand on Facebook, which can include cross promotions with other Social Networks (have all of the networks aimed at the Page), organic SEO strategies, Facebook Ads, as well as incorporating a strong blogger outreach campaign aimed at brand promotion.

However, that said, it is hard to start a Facebook Page and we generally recommend starting with a Facebook Group.  It is much easier to prospect new memberships, invite new members, and get everything started from zero, so we often start with a Group, build that up to over 1,000 members, and then have the Group converted into becoming a Facebook Page, which is what we have the connections to do.  We call it the one-two sling-shot punch!

The advantage of a Facebook Page is that you can use it as a proxy web page for marketing and a proxy online community in support of your brand instead of developing or hosting your own; however, aside from being a “fan” of your company, brand, product, or service, there is little incentive, or “gift,” associated with ever returning to your Facebook Page unless you spend some time and resources developing unique content for the Page — Facebook Pages support photos, events, videos, message boards, a wall, etc –  as well as for responding to questions, queries, comments, and the like.

One of the strong advantages of smartly-but-aggressively developing messages, updates, photos, videos, and exclusive content is that the New Facebook Pages have evolved into me a lot more like the Original Facebook Profile, which includes status updates that scroll down each fan’s status update stream in exactly the same way their friends and family’s statuses update.

This is a very powerful method for brand messaging and distrobution.  One of the past lacks of Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages is that it was too easy to join and forget, becoming a Group member or a Page fan and then never seeing hide nor hair of it until there was an explicit admin message to all members — a member update.

Even so, with Facebook Groups in the past, one was penalized by success because when a Facebook Group grow above 1,000-1,200 members, the ability to send a message to all members was revoked.

With the new Facebook Pages, it is easy to keep “fans” engaged and updates, through the regular status update stream that all users; unfortunately, as I mentioned above in the section about Facebook Groups, it is easier to proespect and collect new members on a Facebook Group and a Facebook Cause because it is very possible to easily invite personal Facebook “friends” to Groups and Causes.  When creating a brand profile on Facebook, it behooves one to develop all three: Facebook Page, Facebook Group, and Facebook Cause.

While it is simple to join YouTube, there are quite a few important steps one must take before launching. First of all, there is a lot of customization that one can do to make sure a client’s YouTube channel blends well with the client brand identity, mirroring the parent brand.

In addition, structuring the channel, making sure the channel name is appropriate, and also make sure that if there needs to be content that plays for more than 5-minutes there are ways of extending that to hours. There are ways to make revenue as well, through Google AdSense.

Since members of the Abraham Harrison LLC staff has been using YouTube since it was launched in 2005, we understand that unlike television channels, YouTube is not simply a broadcast medium but it a community platform.  Like Twitter and other online communities like MySpace and Facebook, YouTube allows a very deep level of participation, which is what many companies, looking for the next viral hit or just a YouTube land-grab tend to forget.

It is important to not simply create the YouTube channel and make it pretty, it is important to also upload all of the videos required as well, knowing what the most appropriate file type, file size, and file quality it appropriate for each particular application or requirement.  It is also important to consider how the client is willing to share the content and with whom.

Via Abraham Harrison