My Ruger MkIII Target “678″ is way better than me. Reliable, hyper-accurate, solid, durable. You should get one. Even better with a Volquartsen trigger job and a set of ergo grips.

Sadly, they don’t make this tapered-barrel model anymore with the 6 7/8″ barrel, but since they’re bomb-proof, used is as good as new when it comes to an MK — some people actually swear to the MkII Rugers above the MkIII anyway, so get what you like.

Some say there’s nothing better than the MkII Government Target — it was professionally accurized and also came with a 6″ bull barrel, which supposedly does a better job at preventing muzzle vibrations and issues with rapid-fire-associated overheating which can temporarily warp the barrel just a wee bit.

That said, I will never be good enough to concerned with microvibration- or heat-related inaccuracy.

The problem with most social media marketing agencies is that we’re fickle. We tend to keep rushing into the future, adopting anything and everything hot and new and overlooking the rest. In our constant hunger for the latest and greatest, we have mostly abandoned working class heroes like forums and message boards, preferring exciting new money to boring old money. But isn’t any kind of money good?

Unlike Friendster and MySpace, these message boards are generally privatel -held and heavily sponsored. They’re also pretty well monetized, from offering membership levels to running raffles; from placing in-line textual ads to being framed by banners. Additionally, most of the more popular forums have over 5,000 active users and have been online for well over half a decade. Since they’re not tied to Facebook or MySpace, they’re safe from the fickle tide of funding or popularity. These forums don’t care about what happens at Facebook, they only care about whether they can pay their escalating server and bandwidth fees.

What’s even better is that forum application developers such as vBulletin have hungrily adopted all the best parts of all the blogging platforms, publishing frameworks, social networking services, microblogging platforms, photo sharing sites, and social graphic services. It’s pretty amazing how comprehensive and mature these message board suites have become.

How do I know this? About a year ago I picked up a new hobby: shooting sports. I knew nothing about it but I knew where to go: forums and message boards.

There has been a real renaissance in both blogs and message boards because of social media and the ability to share, cross pollinate, and make easy reference to not only boards but to threads and replies. Most message boards have adopted all of the modern conveniences offered by blogs, including RSS feeds, email reminders, email updates, social media share buttons for Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and others.

Additionally, if you happen to visit a message board or forum using your iPhone or Android, you’re likely to receive a pop-up that lets you know that there’s an app made especially for your device that will allow you to easily and simply read, post, and share on that online community site.

Mobile devices today can not only read and post to message boards but also help you discover other boards and forums. Mobile has opened up ease-of-access via smart phones, Androids, iPhones, iPads, and tablets. Not only that but access via mobile devices strips ugly advertisements, garish color choices, and a plethora of in-line and banner ads.

And if you thought that blogs are like catnip to Google organic search then you need to explore the prevalence of message boards and forums in the top results of their respective topics. This is important for several important reasons: first, it seems to me that while message boards and forums are still powerful platforms for sharing, conspiring, debating, and alerting, forums have gone out of favor among the digerati.

Unfortunately, if you look at the sort of topics that have popular forums, they’re generally not at the social media cutting edge, they’re less meta — social media about social media about social media — and more practical: What caliber should I get in my first hunting rifle? What protein supplement should I buy for my CrossFit obsession?

Even though these may well be places where you can just pop in, look around, and find what you need without even registering, they can also be decades old, and all associated protocol and terms of engagement must apply. These are tight communities and if you don’t know much about virtual communities and message boards, they’re real families and the mothers and fathers of these communities are the owners, the uncles and aunties are the members with the high post counts. And, you really should take post count and join date very seriously, too, because message boards and forums are one of the few places in today’s anti-anonymity Internet that still encourages being who you are while also protecting your identity.

How message boards became a nightly ritual

My first return to message board was RimFire Central because my first pistol was a Ruger Mk III “678″ Target. At that time, I was maneuvering clumsily via their web interface. It felt antiquated and it was tough to sort out my latest posts or responses I needed to engage. Later, after getting my first Glock, I joined Glock Talk via my iPhone and it offered me the ability to download OutdoorHub, the sponsored app for GT. It opened everything up for me because it became as easy to track new content, unread posts and replies, and engage both via the boards or via personal message from one single place.

However, I soon wanted to read Rimfire Central the same way. And local shooting boards like Maryland Shooters Forum and VA Gun Owners Forum. I then discovered Tapatalk, an app for my iPhone that does cost $4.99 but is well worth it. I just checked and Tapatalk has an app for the iPad, Android, Blackberry and Chrome. The only thing it doesn’t have is iCloud support, which supposedly is in the works — so all the boards I am registered with on my iPhone don’t translate over to my iPad.

Then, after I got to know Tapatalk better, I started exploring their Network directory of cataloged forums available and discovered and joined other shooting sports communities, including The High Road Forum, Remington Owners Forum, Elsie Pea Forum, The Original CZ Forum, Defensive Carry Concealed Carry Forum. Now, over time, these communities have become a rightly rite, and I have accrued 431 posts on Glock Talk. And, to be honest, nobody has really paid any attention to me at all on Glock Talk until now and I am really hoping that I am able to earn some awe and fear by the time I make my 1,000th post.

In next week’s post I want to go into how to market to message boards. I have recently seen a maestro in action in the form of Paul M. Barrett, author of Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun, a new book that is categorized by Amazon as a Company Profile involving social U.S. history, and conventional weapons & warfare. When Paul started promoting online, he didn’t limit his online pre-sales time and energy to just blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. He recognized that the most passionate owners, collector, and proponents of the shooting sports spend a lot of their time learning, sharing, bragging, and teaching on online message boards and that he needed to engage these communities before his book went on sale to the public if he wanted to get the kind of buzz and word of mouth he needed to be able to reach the least obvious but most important brand ambassadors.

It was really a beautiful thing to see, honestly, especially after I spent years marketing on message boards and forums when I was an online analyst and project manager at New Media Strategies. Things have changed a lot since I was promoting brand online in message boards and the state of the art has evolved, become more savvy, but is very ripe and very transparent.

Man, I have a lot to share with you next week, I can’t wait!  Actually, here’s that post now:  How Paul Barrett Won Over Gun Forums

Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology

Related articles

• Are forums & message boards making a comeback? (socialmedia.biz)
• Popularity Propels Free Forum Host ProBoards to 2011 Best-In-Class Award (prweb.com)
• You: Fan Forum: The Best AFC North Message Board Posts and Debates, 2/16 Edition (bleacherreport.com)
• AOL Message Board Archives? (ask.metafilter.com)
• New Carlton Mellick III Message Board (carltonmellick.com)
• New Message Board (briankeene.com)
• Social Media and Online Community Platform Usage by Inc. 500 Companies Detailed in Study (managingcommunities.com)
• Moreover Expands Its Coverage of Forums (moreover.com)
• Obtaining backlinks from all o… (totheprovinggrounds.com)

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

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!

MySpace is running out of surveys that still place it as the #1 social network in the US. After yielding the position to Facebook earlier this month in stats released by Compete, today, the social network slips to second place in the latest numbers from Nielsen Online.

According to data from January, Facebook saw 62.4 million unique visitors, besting MySpace and its 60.6 million uniques for the first time in the survey. At the end of 2008, MySpace still held a narrow lead, with 58.4 million unique visitors in December compared to Facebook’s 55.2 million.

As for those engagement numbers that MySpace likes to cling to? It can no longer claim a lead there either – engagement fell to one hour, 35 minutes per user in January, down 32 percent from last year and barely more than half of Facebook’s two hours, 50 minutes per user.

We’ve been documenting the ascent of Facebook versus MySpace on a monthly (if not more frequent) basis, but for some longer-term perspective, check out this post from mid-2007 to see just how big a shift this represents. Back then, MySpace claimed 3x more traffic, 3x more engagement, and claimed to not only be America’s most popular social network, but its most popular website.

Interesting new business book,  The Social Network Business Plan, is out, written by David Silver. It looks interesting because, in my humble experience, most people go into the world of Social Media and Social Networking with no business plan at all by either winging it or by reinventing the wheel:

In The Social Network Business Plan, social network expert, David Silver presents and explains 18 cutting-edge methods to create revenue for social network websites–none of which are advertising. He also predicts the demise of seemingly successful online communities such as MySpace and Facebook that rely on advertising as non-sustainable modalities. Silver describes and explains that in the future new products and services will be introduced, talked about, rated, reviewed and recommended – or killed – by online communities.

One example of the 18 new revenue channels that online communities are adopting is the sale to vendors of anonymized conversations of the community members concerning those vendors’ products or services. Another example is online communities who partner with the internet providers to receive payment when a particular online community’s information is downloaded using that providers service. The other sixteen revenue channels are equally head-turning!

Silver is the only angel investor, operating down where the rubber meets the road who is investing in online communities in their infancy, and writing about which ones will win and which ones will fail.

My friend Todd Tweedy popped me the following press release that I would love to repeat for him, back-scratching and all.  Don’t judge me!  For more information, check out the Audience Machine website!

Social Networking Pioneers Launch Audience Machine To Help Online Brands Leverage Shared Interests Across Social Networks

Audience Machine to provide unique social networking technologies and viral marketing services to Brands, Entertainment, Health & Wellness and Education Companies

Los Angeles, CA and Charlottesville, Virginia - February 17, 2009 – Social networking and viral marketing expert, VBMA (Viral & Buzz Marketing Association) board member, and Perceptions, Practices & Ethics in Word of Mouth Marketing author Todd Tweedy today introduced, Audience Machine Inc., a unique technology company helping online brands who want to identify, cultivate and mobilize communities of individuals with shared interest across social networking sites to build their businesses using Audience Machine’s online marketing tools.

Guided by Tweedy, and video technology pioneer and advertising veteran Dan Bates, Audience Machine helps brand and product managers, chief marketing officers as well as ecommerce executives to establish new networks of social networking connections and dialog in support of purchasing preferences and participation in word of mouth referrals.

“Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are relationship amplifiers for brands, products and services that can have a profound influence on preferences, referral behavior, information consumption and internet usage if advertisers are prepared to listen to, act on and match the right technology and community practices to support a desired purchase outcome or subscription,” noted Todd Tweedy, co-founder and CEO of Audience Machine. “There is a natural migration of dialogs from offline sources to online social sharing sites. Marketing executives want to embrace customer-facing ad strategies and incorporate social networking processes in their firm’s online marketing DNA that can boost product perceptions and potential sales but many enterprises lack the expertise and resources to realize those objectives. Audience Machine was founded to give online brands unique technology solutions, community development processes, marketing services, analytics, and expertise they need to engage and collaborate with audiences.”

Audience Machine also announced that is has signed a strategic business development consulting agreement that will be led by Provident Financial Management, a prominent established leader in entertainment and media business management.

“Audience Machine is at the heart of an evolving consumer-facing marketing phenomenon that is transforming connections on social networks into a powerful audience generation channel. Led by an experienced executive team and founded on concrete business fundamentals with a number of high-profile clients already on board, Audience Machine is a rising star among our media and communication clients,” stated Craig Sussman, Business Development Director at Provident. We’re excited to support Audience Machine as they grow their technology and services business practices with customers that want and need to expand and sustain business growth by creating networks of social commerce.”

Word of Mouth Communications Opportunity

The eighth annual Burson-Marsteller/PRWeek CEO Survey published in November 2008, which surveys CEO’s about the changing influence of different types of media as well as plans for digital communications including social networking, reported that 60% of CEO’s noted that word of mouth has the fastest growing influence on business in the past three years but that just one-fifth of firms have used social media to communicate with stakeholder groups.

The proliferation of social networking and community sites has transformed viral and word of mouth marketing practices into a practical and necessary communication solution due in part to research findings that note that nearly 80% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know over all forms of advertising and marketing. These authentic and trusted voices serve an important role by distributing compete information for others to act upon across search engines and into indexes of shared knowledge that people can access along with advertiser-generated experiences and evidence whenever 1,463,632,361 internet users from around the world – based on Internet Usage and Population in North American data provided by Internet World Stats – need to research a brand, product or service.

Audience Machine Team

Led by Tweedy, who’s career started in the political grassroots mobilization arena working on Presidential, Senatorial, Congressional, Inaugural and issue-based public relations campaigns, the Audience Machine team has 35 years of combined leadership experience in online marketing, real-time communications, ASP development, video ad technology, viral marketing, search engine optimization, and community development practices.

Dan Bates, co-founder, president and COO brings a vast wealth of knowledge in community technology development, online video, online advertising and a decade’s experience in filmed entertainment and music. Bates previous served as CEO of Avant Interactive, an object-based video ad serving technology provider.

About Audience Machine

With offices in Los Angeles, California and Charlottesville, Virginia, Audience Machine is a provider of unique community technology solutions and online marketing services. Audience Machine works with online brands to identify, cultivate and mobilize communities of shared interest to establish social commerce that CMO’s, brand and product managers, and ecommerce executives can enlist to grow their business. The company is privately held. For more information, please visit Audience Machine’s website – http://www.audiencemachine.com, email info@audiencemachine.com, or call 1.800.573.1536. Audience Machine is presently engaged with several beta customers and will release its first product in Q2 of this year.

About Provident Financial Management

Established over twenty-five years ago with offices in Los Angeles, Woodland Hills, San Francisco and New York, Provident has become a leader in various entertainment and media business management practices. Provident recently established a strategic and business planning department to assist mid sized and emerging entertainment and media companies with their growth and business development needs. Provident Financial Management is part of RSM McGladrey one of the largest and most prominent accounting firms in the world. For more information on RSM McGladrey, please visit http://www.rsmi.com.

Keyword Tags:
social networking, online marketing, viral marketing, audience machine, provident financial management

PR Contact: Todd Tweedy
434.996.6370
todd@audiencemachine.com

##30##

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!)

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

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

Using ‘social media’

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

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

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

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

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

Please enjoy my latest AdAge Global Idea Network blog post, Social Media Are Truly Global — Just Ask a Slovakian: Don’t Underestimate the Reach of Twitter, Facebook: (Via Adage)

Social Media Are Truly Global — Just Ask a Slovakian: Don’t Underestimate the Reach of Twitter, Facebook

Recently, I was a speaker at a conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, called Daily Web. Everybody there was super-connected. Everyone was on both Facebook and Twitter. While I was at the conference, I received invites from my fellow attendees get connected on Twitter, Facebook and even LinkedIn.

During a break, I was told that there are about 60,000 Slovakian users of Facebook, using a mix of the available Czech interface and the English. They were all much newer to Twitter, but the conference did have a Twitter profile and I chose to create the hash tag for the conference, #dailywebsk. I was told Facebook is beginning to bogart the populations of local Slovakian communities and there are plans to localize Facebook into Slovakian the way that it is localized in the Czech Republic and Germany.

This got me to thinking. All of the Brits I have been meeting in Berlin are more keen on getting my “Facebook e-mail,” the e-mail that would allow them to easily find me on Facebook, rather than asking for a business card. Are cards going obsolete? Or, at the very least, are your Twitter and Facebook credentials more important on your site, your business card or your name tag than your e-mail, phone and fax?

All of my German friends are on Facebook as well, sharing images and adopting the social network with as much dedication and abandon as we do in the U.S. Same thing goes with my friends from Mexico and Colombia. When I attend conferences these days, I am likely to be recognized as @chrisabraham as I am by my name.

However, I admit that I live in a rarefied air and so there might be issues of connectivity, class and access that I am not addressing here. That said, I am still amazed whenever I take some time to click on over to Twittervision to watch a global representation of the whole Twittering world.

Because of the nature of Facebook and Twitter, localization works very well. Since both social networks allow you to easily communicate with your friends, and your friends are generally a lot like you. There isn’t a lot of cross-talk between English-, German- and Spanish-speakers.

There are no barriers, of course, between the different locales and the different languages. The barriers are emergent. Since I have quite a few Facebook friends and Twitter followers, 2,707 and 2,374 respectively, I get a lot of cross-talk between languages, and that pleases me. What makes me even happier is when I visit someone’s Wall, sort of like the publicly visible whiteboard that lots of students hang outside their dorm room. I often see a mixture of Spanish, German and English, all mixed up, according to each particular relationship.

The feeling I have, however, is that Twitter and Facebook are not perceived, worldwide, as American imperialism. And I think this is fantastic. Why is that? I think it’s because Facebook and Twitter created relatively neutral platforms and then got out of the way. This is especially the case with Twitter, which is perfectly inert: 140 characters. No context, only essential conversation.

After being a part of the Twitter community for a little while, the whole nature of it falls away and it becomes invisible, a simple communications vehicle, disassociated from its origins: like the phone, texting, TV, electricity, e-mail, the internet! Who cares who invented these things, after all, when each nation, culture and people ultimately make it their own. And this is what is happening with Twitter and Facebook — people are making them their own.

I really don’t use MySpace very much at all. In fact, I embarrass myself every time I look at my MySpace profile. That said, every band in Berlin has a MySpace profile, just like every other band in the entire world. Globally, you’re likely to see a MySpace address if the band you’re digging on has an internet presence. Even if your favorite global brand has its own website, there’s a good chance that they also have a MySpace address. A couple weeks ago, I checked out three bands here in Berlin and they all has MySpace URLs: Orchestre Miniature in the Park and Tim and Puma Mimi.

None of these bands think about the gross imperialism associated with their decisions; they have adopted all of this American innovation with complete ease. Back in the day, Friendster had a terribly time sorting out its business model internationally. Its success in Asia bogged down its servers while confounding its salespeople on how to make any money from all these community members who were dedicated participants but not generating any local revenue. It was probably because the worldwide ad networks and the global sales of ads were not there yet, focused mostly on the U.S. market. Now times have changed. Here I am in Berlin being served not simply German ads but also geo-targeted ads based on exactly where my data is being served.

I have taken all of this in due course and just considered it normal; however, I realized tonight that it isn’t normal. It occurred to me that folks might not know how thoroughly adopted these Web 2.0 platforms are worldwide. How many people around the world refresh Facebook and Twitter many times an hour at their workplace, the same way everyone does it, even among an ever-growing population in the Slovak Republic.

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