Chris Abraham » Promotion

Five Things Bloggers Hate About PR Pitches

Chris Abraham — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:09:30 +0000

The following list is adapted from an article written by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, that I have edited a little bit — well, I just did a journalist/blogger find/replace with a few changes to make it more apropos:

1. You don’t respect their time – Bloggers have this thing called a real life, a family, and a full-time job. And guess what? Those responsibilities aren’t flexible, and they certainly aren’t going to get met if you try to talk their ear off on the phone or via a long-winded pitch. When messaging bloggers, get to the point, and if they tell you now isn’t a good time, be respectful of that and try to schedule another time for your chat. However, if you don’t have them in 5-minutes, you’ll probably never have them.
2. You send poorly written, spammy press releases – If you had to guess, how many press releases do you think are sent out each day that are actually well written and useful? I suspect it’s probably less than 10%. Don’t believe me? Just go read any online news wire. Yikes! (Chris: I didn’t change a word on this one, bloggers are exactly the same in this regard)
3. You’re difficult to contact – Your company’s PR contact needs to be easy to contact. Contact info should always be on every social media news release you send out, and it should also be somewhere on your website. And when the blogger actually tries to get in touch with the PR guy, he should be able to do so easily.
4. You send stories completely irrelevant to what they cover – Don’t just send out your social media news release to every blogger on your email list. That’s an easy way to make a lot of bloggers hate you. You need to have your email list segmented according to the type of stories the bloggers cover. This helps you make more targeted pitches so you can get the best results.
5. You don’t know when to take ‘no’ for an answer–There’s something to be said for perseverance, but there’s also something bad to be said for people who don’t know when no means no. (Chris: many bloggers just get quiet instead of saying no. But you can never tell. We reach out three times in every blogger outreach — each time only to the people who never reply. When we tried a 4th outreach, people definitely tell us no, but in a terribly negative way. Be sure to outreach several times but don’t push until you get a NO! because then it is too late and you have surely hurt your reputation and have probably burnt a bridge.)

Otherwise it is the same except, as I comment below, bloggers feel this ten-times more intensely and are ten-times more likely to show their unhappiness and frustration in the form of a unflattering blog post, wall post, or tweet.

I was reading through my Google Reader‘s interpretation of the AdAge Power 150 OPML file and came upon eReleases’ article 10 Things Journalists and PRs Hate About Each Other and realized that it is exactly what we at Abraham Harrison have found that bloggers hate about PR but to the 10th or 100th power, primarily because bloggers are not paid to dance well with public relations and are generally not well-versed in the world of news releases, press releases, and PR pitches.

Via Marketing Conversation.

Leveraging Online PR to Build Your Brand

Chris Abraham — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:50:22 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

Social Media Promotes Your Business

Chris Abraham — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 04:44:37 +0000

: Image by luc legay via Flickr

You are not too late to enjoy the benefits of social media — you will never be too late — because the spoils in social media marketing go to the company that can maintain its social media participation over the long haul over the long term. Start now, start later, and I guarantee that if you’re a lion-hearted social media marathoner, you’ll probably best your competition. Anyway, Joseph Ratliff did a brilliant job getting you motivated in How The Social Media Promotes Your Business:

The great thing about social media marketing is it offers a place to talk about your business in a new setting that is a lot less threatening than many other types of advertising. Social media is not about the hard sell. Instead, it focuses on creating relationships with people. Social media allows business people to share some of their personal lives with others. This helps to overcome any fear or reservations connected to buying from people online.
If you’ve started a blog for your business, you already have your foot in the water. The next logical step is to begin commenting on other blogs related to your business. Spend some time searching for a few blogs that you enjoy and subscribe to them via an RSS feeder to manage your time. This will allow you to follow several blogs without having to go to each one every day. When you find a post you can contribute a useful comment to, go to the site and offer your thoughts. Leave a link, if you can, so the audience can link to your own blog. Make this a part of routine at least three times a week.
Next, choose one or two social media communities to join. There are dozens and dozens out there, so do not try to become visible everywhere. Two of the most popular social media communities for business networking are Twitter and Facebook. Both of these are effective sites to increase your relationship building skills with prospects. Combine some personal tidbits with some business information until you discover the perfect mix of both. Do not just focus on building big numbers of friends or followers. It isn’t all about the numbers. Instead, build a little slower and spend your time interacting with the people you meet.

Advice to a PR Professional of Tomorrow

Chris Abraham — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:19:51 +0000

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!

Lee Hopkins on Email Marketing in Digital PR

Chris Abraham — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:40:31 +0000

When I realized that I could download the OPML file from the Power 150 site and then hack it around into a contact list of over 900 of the top advertising, marketing, PR, and SEO bloggers on the planet, I did so.

Ever since, I have been scheduling calls with all of the folks I have been admiring on a daily basis. Two days ago I spent an hour on the horn with Lee Hopkins, “one of Australia’s leading thinkers on communication strategy in an online environment,” who is, in fact, one of the World’s leading thinkers on communication strategy in an online environment. We had a great chat — and amazing talk!

At the end, Lee asked me if he could blog the conversation and I jumped at the opportunity and late last night Lee published Is email marketing still relevant in a 2.0 world? which is not only the most complete description of what we at Abraham Harrison LLC do on a daily basis but it is said in a better, more comprehensive, way than I could even conceive of doing myself. Here it is, in full. Be sure to visit (and subscribe to) Better Communication Results, Lee Hopkin’s blog.

Is email marketing still relevant in a 2.0 world?
G’day – thanks for returning!

I just finished a fantastic conversation with Chris Abraham, the President and COO of AbrahamHarrison.
If you’ve been around the internet for a while, especially in the ‘marcoms’ (marketing communications) space, you would certainly have heard of Chris; if not of the man himself then certainly of one of his marketing and outreach programs.
Chris is one of those select few online marketers who’s text doesn’t read like a traditional online direct mail piece – you know, with LOTS OF CAPITALS and heaps of bold text and yellow highlighting and italics and
bullet
points
a-
plenty
and testimonials by the kazillion…
I could point you to a zillion of those sites – which is not to say that the style of marketing they use is not successful; it is, otherwise they wouldn’t keep doing it. But you know as soon as you see the huge, bold, bright red and often in CAPS headline what to expect for the rest of the (very) long toilet roll of a page.
Chris takes a much softer approach, always has done, and it seems to work for him and his style of copywriting.
Video, the radio star and plain ol’ bandwagon idjuts
With the advent of Web2.0/Social Media there were many ill-informed and just plain ‘bandwagon’ pundits who hailed the death of traditional communication tools such as email, web1.0 sites and – gasp – newspaper, magazine, radio and television.
Much as television didn’t kill radio as force it to rethink its place and find its niche, so too with Social Media. Every new technology platform or societal change brings with it a change in how all that came before it must view themselves and continue to offer relevancy.
Radio didn’t die, newspapers haven’t been killed off, I can still pick up plenty of magazines that appeal to all demographics and both genders from my local newsagent, and email hasn’t disappeared off the radar (if my bulging inbox every morning is anything to go by).
So it was fantastic to finally chat with someone who, like me, believes that email is STILL a fundamental part of the marketing toolkit.
In talking with Chris today, he was genuinely flattered that a fellow copywriter would find his material engaging; I thought it was brilliant reading and his deployment strategies for his clients brilliantly executed.
You see, Chris, like me, believes that email won’t go away, but WILL have to change in order to survive in the new communication landscape. Our shared view is that it will have to evolve in a couple of ways:
Shorter emails will be the best way of getting people’s attention
Long-form emails are best saved for newsletters; trying to ‘sell’ via email will become even harder to excel at.
If you’ve ever received one of Chris’ emails, you will be stunned by several things:
They are short – only 2-3 paragraphs
They link off to a SMNR (Social Media News Release) that gives a far more in-depth level of information (and all the material you might need to help you spread the word or get involved)
If you email Chris or anyone of his team back you WILL get a response, usually within 24 hours (Chris says they try to get back within the hour, but time zones can sometime defeat them)
The emails ‘read’ like they were written by a human being, not by a ‘PR’ flack or a ex-journalist hack; they aren’t full of ‘me, me, me’ stuff telling you how wonderful I (the company) am, but neither do they ‘strip-tease tantalise’ you so that when you do click on the link you end up feeling cheated
You get the very real feeling that there’s someone real at the end of the email.
Here’s an example (taken from my post about the Fresh Air Fund):
Hello again, Lee
On Sunday I asked if you would kindly help me spread the word about 200 inner-city children I have yet to place with host families in August. I apologize for following up so soon, but time is of the essence and you know how funny email can be. To make things simple, everything is collected into an online resource page http://freshair.smnr.us
This appeal comes straight from the top, so please do not hesitate to contact me directly.
Yours sincerely,
Sara
–
Sara Wilson
Fresh Air Fund
sara@freshair.org
www.freshair.org
Sara is a real person, not a ‘fake’ character. I sent her an email yesterday, wondering if her ears were burning, because Chris and I were talking about her:
G’day Sara,
Just finished the phone call with Chris — oh boy! Were your ears burning? They should have been!!!
Kindests,
Lee
From: Sara Wilson [mailto:swilson@chrisabraham.com]
Sent: Tuesday, 24 February 2009 2:02 AM
To: Lee@leehopkins.com
Subject: Re: Fellow Power 150 blogger
Hello Lee,
Just a quick note to re-confirm that Chris will be calling you at 10 am, your time, tomorrow (Tuesday).
No need to reply unless something has come up on your end, otherwise he will speak to you in about 7.5 hours!
Best,
Sara
In reply, Sara said,
Lee,
And I thought it was just hot where I was last night …
It’s very kind of you to mention it, thanks. Chris is a great guy to work for, and generous with compliments, but it’s always nice to know that someone appreciates you, isn’t it?
Cheers,
Sara
Controversy
Because Chris and his team start any campaign with an email-based blogger outreach, some of the ‘holier than thou’ social media purists occasionally give him ‘stick’, or snicker behind his back and call him a ‘spammer’. Not true – the team are very hot on ensuring only a good taste remains in the mouth of any blogger they contact, and of only offering bloggers something of actual value to the blogger.
Which is a behaviour totally unlike the hapless, clueless and insulting PR flacks who regularly show up on The Bad Pitch Blog and who attempt to fill my inbox with material about electronics, or sanitary napkins, or (ahem) extension kits, or pharmaceuticals shipped from Canada. Thank goodness I have SpamArrest to filter them out before they hit my inbox!
Chris and his team have painstakingly built up a list of nearly 35,000 bloggers across several different demographics and topic areas of interest. Visiting their blogs, they harvest their email address. They then politely email them once to offer them something of interest – if the blogger likes it, they very often blog about it; it they don’t then they don’t. What is fascinating is the response rate Chris gets for his clients.
Word of mouth and gossip-sharing amongst internet marketers has the average rate of sales of anything (be it a blog post or an ebook or a ‘course you cannot live without’) as around 0.01-0.05% from an initial mailing, with the follow-up mailings increasing that to, perhaps, 1.0-2.0%…
Chris and his team regularly get a takeup in the order of 5%, which is phenomenal. In addition, once you start developing an email relationship with anyone in their team (as I have with Sara Wilson) then all future mailings will receive much more attention than would otherwise be the case. A case in point is my own, later, post on the illegal cluster bombing being carried out in South Ossetia and The Survivor Corps run by activist and author of the very powerful book, I Will Not Be Broken, Jerry White. It is only because Sara had taken the time to develop a relationship with me over previous months that I read and responded to the material from Jerry White. Without that relationship I would never have bothered with a topic outside of my normal areas of interest.
It is the classic ‘relationship marketing’ that Social Media Marketing pundits claim to aim for but rarely achieve.
Goodness, if I could have a dollar for every new ‘expert’ that’s popped up in the Social Media space I would retire a very rich trillionaire (and at the same time wondering how you could be a trillionaire and not be very rich – I guess if you were living in Zimbabwe you wouldn’t be…).
You wouldn’t believe the number of ‘leading social networking and social media marketing experts’ who have suddenly come out of the woodwork and set up communities in places like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, etc. Curiously, I’ve never heard of these folks before. Most of them don’t even have blogs, or if they do those blogs have only been around for less than a year. Curious, hey?
But Chris, on the other hand, has been around for a long time, has figured out what works and what doesn’t, and as evidence offers the following case studies:
Energy Bill 2007 Case Study
Financial Services Reputation Defense Case Study
Firebrand TV Case Study
Fresh Air Fund Case Study
International Medical Corps Case Study
Movie Producer Reputation Defense Case Study
Snapple Antioxidant Water Case Study
Survivor Corps Book Promotion Case Study
If you want to see the sort of posts that are associated with Chris’ kind of blogger PR pitch outreach, here are some examples:
Thank You Operation Survivor Bloggers
Thank You All Who Supported International Medical Corps!
Thank You Again Survivor Corps Bloggers
Thank You International Medical Corps Bloggers
Thank You Fresh Air Fund Holiday Bloggers
Thank You Fresh Air Fund Bloggers
Thank You Fresh Air Fund Camp Counselor Bloggers!
The Powerful SEO Benefits of Blogger PR Outreach
Happy Thanksgiving from Abraham Harrison
Here are some examples of client SMNRs from Chris and his team that I especially like:
http://anamigo.smnr.us
http://freshair.smnr.us
http://banclusterbombs.smnr.us
http://freshairfundcounselors.smnr.us
http://survivorcorps.smnr.us
http://iwillnotbebroken.smnr.us
http://internationalmedicalcorps.smnr.us
So what???
The whole point of this post is NOT to fawn at the feet of someone who clearly knows what he is doing.
The whole point IS to let you know that you don’t need to throw out your baby with the bathwater:
Don’t jump on the Social Media bandwagon without educated advice
Don’t take advice from a pimply 17 year old fresh out of high school
Don’t take advice from a less-pimply 23 year old fresh out of university
Don’t ditch all of your understanding of how ‘people’ and networks work
Don’t take advice from someone who doesn’t even blog themselves, or Twitter, or Facebook… (see my post about Social Media Gurus)
Don’t take advice from someone who has been blogging less than 24 months
Instead:
Download Todd Defren’s absolutely superb ‘Brink’ guide to Social Media and Richard Meyer’s great presentation, ‘Social Media : What you’re afraid to admit you didn’t know’ (he also has a great pharma and biotech-focused pdf presentation). Download and read Trevor Cook’s and my ‘Social Media Report’.
Talk to someone who actually knows what they are doing – in Australia that means folks like Stephen Collins, Laurel Papworth, Trevor Cook, Darren Rowse, Gavin Heaton and, humbly, yours truly. If WE can’t help you, we can certainly put you in touch with someone who can. Unlike the USA, where there seems to be a spirit of “You’ll prize my rolodex out of my frozen dead fingers!”, there is no fierce spirit of competition here in Australia – we have ‘co-opertition’ wherein we all help each other out if the ‘fit’ seems better for the client.
Stick to reading the seasoned ‘pros’ of the online marketing and/or business communication space: you cannot go wrong if you start at folks like any of the above, or Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson, Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, Mitch Joel, Joe Jaffe , Laura Fitton and Chris Abraham himself; see who they link to. Follow your nose from them – all the way along the path you will be reading ‘the good oil’ as we say here in Australia
Examine Chris’ examples above and see for yourself how simple but effective your online marketing can be if you do it with the right intention – of helping out the blogger, not flogging stuff for your client. Get the relationship right and you will flog stuff for your client anyway, trust me!
Technorati Tags: chris abraham, laura fitton, joe jaffe, mitch joel, darren rowse, chris brogan, neville hobson, shel holtz, gavin heaton, trevor cook, laurel papworth, stephen collins, richard meyer, todd defren, sara wilson, fresh air fund, chrisabraham, bad pitch blog, social media, blogger relations, social marketing, email marketing, email, spam, spam arrest, spamarrest, business communication
Currently listening to ‘Next’ by The Necks from the album ‘Next’. Superb jazz funk from one of Australia’s great cult bands.

Does McKinsey Indicate a Social Media Tipping Point?

Chris Abraham — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:41:01 +0000

The advance guard of the blogosphere were afraid that they missed the blogging and social media wave back in 2006 when I wrote Surfing as a Metaphor for the State of the Blogosphere and Don’t Worry You Didn’t Miss the Height of the Blogosphere, which assured folks that the height was nowhere in sight (forgive me, I am from Hawaii):

Truth is, in terms of the height of the blogosphere, it isn’t even a wave yet. A few people have caught the wave already, but it is just forming. It certainly hasn’t crested! It is far from curling. The wave is still only accessible to the top 10%, but the real market is always in that 80%.

Well, maybe we have come upon the tipping point, according to Jay Deragon in his article, Has McKinsey Created A Tipping Point? In this article, Jay says,

“There has been plenty of discussions throughout the social web about how businesses can gain from the use of social media. marketers from every corner of the earth promote their services to businesses and proclaim “expert status”. However their is only one name in the globe that has the power of getting business leaders attention. That name is McKinsey.”

This may very well be true because McKinsey is, in fact, the living gospel of big business. You, too, can read this article, Six ways to make Web 2.0 work: Web 2.0 tools present a vast array of opportunities—for companies that know how to use them.

Over the past two years, McKinsey has studied more than 50 early adopters to garner insights into successful efforts to use Web 2.0 as a way of unlocking participation. We have surveyed, independently, a range of executives on Web 2.0 adoption. Our work suggests the challenges that lie ahead. To date, as many survey respondents are dissatisfied with their use of Web 2.0 technologies as are satisfied. Many of the dissenters cite impediments such as organizational structure, the inability of managers to understand the new levers of change, and a lack of understanding about how value is created using Web 2.0 tools. We have found that, unless a number of success factors are present, Web 2.0 efforts often fail to launch or to reach expected heights of usage. Executives who are suspicious or uncomfortable with perceived changes or risks often call off these efforts. Others fail because managers simply don’t know how to encourage the type of participation that will produce meaningful results.

What say you? Are we at the tipping point? Can we all start making money now instead of just being gurus, mavens, connectors, and early-adopters? Well, hopefull. Again, from Jay:

This article should be considered a tipping point. When McKinsey speaks business leaders listen and you can bet this article will stir more engagement in social media activities from businesses around the globe.

If You Build It Will They Come?

Chris Abraham — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:21:39 +0000

My clients and I have found that building apps, widgets, and online communities is not nearly enough — it is really and truly about the network, the promotion, the publicity, the advertising, the marketing, the salesmanship, and the public relations outreach. Well, Robin Grant from We Are Social makes a smashing argument that there is a huge gap between being a toymaker and getting your toys into the hands of children, Build it and they won’t necessarily come:

There’s a phenomenon whereby normally intelligent people at both digital and traditional agencies decide that people will embrace their new widget or app simply because they’ve built it. It’s as if the Internet were a giant cornfield in Iowa and the mere presence of yet another branded widget or app is enough to get thousands of people clicking.

My buddy Mike Obraitis of Telecom Management used to be a toymaker and he and his partner made toys. Thing is, there’s an infinity between designing a toy and having it played with, including getting your toys sold in Wal-Mart and making sure kids know about your toy and that their parents buy it for them. All of this requires mad brand promotional skillz.

Long story short, if you brand it they will come!

All Your Data is Belong to Us, Says Facebook

Chris Abraham — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:19:30 +0000

I received a call from CNN news this morning asking for my sage insight into the issue that Facebook has changed its Terms of Service (ToS) to expand its ownership of data to include your first born. Well, I didn’t have any time this morning to know much about it so I was no good to Amanda over at Turner. Well, I am finally back to my desk and I did all of my reading. If you want to learn more, read Mashable, Consumerist and the New York Times for more information. Here’s the evil excerpt of the new Facebook ToS for your appalled amusement — hurts so good!:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

I know how Facebook works. What Facebook does, historically, is make an assault on three privacy hills fully expecting to have to return one or two. This was illustrated by the initially over-aggressive privacy invasion posed by Facebook Beacon, Here’s Why Facebook Beacon is Uncool for User Privacy, which ended up being mellowed in response to outrage (see, they took three hills and really only gave back one — this is their strategy).

This is what Facebook is doing again. They’re demanding Copyright of all of your consumer-generated content and media through their new ToS; however, I bet you they’re going to do a little Mea Maxima Culpa “the lawyers made us do it” bullshit before loosening it all up.

Mark my words, this is how it is going to work from now on. And, based on how addicted all of the student I met today at UMD are, I daresay that Facebook might very well be able to keep possession of all three hills this time. We’re all addicted. We’ll do anything for our Facebook!

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The SEO Benefits of Blogger Outreach and Earned Media

Chris Abraham — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:21:09 +0000

After I wrote The Powerful SEO Benefits of Blogger PR Outreach, I looked around Google a little bit under the keywords “blogger outreach” and on the first page I discovered my new friend and partner, Stephen Davies of 3W PR and blogger for PRBlogger, and look what I found: corroboration! According to Stephen, “In fact, the SEO benefits could out-perform all of the other benefits of blogger outreach,” which we at Abraham Harrison, LLC, are discovering more and more every day! Check out The SEO benefits of blogger outreach:

The SEO benefits of blogger outreach
Blogger relations, or blogger outreach as I like to call it, is a relatively new concept in the PR and marketing arena. Prior to blogs and other forms of social media, people working in our industry have never had such direct access to influential people from all walks of life. The advent of these new platforms has also enabled us to tap into real insights, views and opinions on various products, brands and issues which in-turn have allowed us to have open and transparent *relations* with the *public* (public relations, get it?).
As proved by Edelman, Forrester and Nielsen, the opinion of the every-day person is increasingly becoming a more trustworthy source of information. The public is more ‘media savvy’ than ever before meaning marketing messages no longer have the same effect as they once did. If they ever did. Is it any wonder that PR people, marketers and the respective companies they represent are increasingly seeing the value in blogger outreach?
Using myself as guinea pig and my involvement in the O2 blogger outreach campaign. The company working on the initiative, VCCP, probably looked at this blog and classified it with having a niche audience. With around 1500 RSS subscribers I can safely assume that I don’t hold great powers of influence. Not to say this blog doesn’t hold *some* level of influence; it does. To what extent, though, I really don’t know, but I’m sure the guys working at VCCP have their own reasons for including me in the outreach.
So let’s assume that after I wrote both posts on the O2 Xda Orbit 2 I ‘influenced’ some of this blog’s readers. By “readers” I mean people who are subscribed to the RSS feed or email alerts and are updated as and when I publish new blog posts. How I actually influenced them is another matter. Did they rush out and buy the phone as soon as they read my review? Maybe not. Did I at least increase awareness of the phone to some of the readers? I presume so. Either way, some level of influencing was in play.
Job done? Maybe not.
What’s struck me the last week or so is the amount of traffic I’ve received by people looking for information on the Xda Orbit 2. Quite a lot in comparison for this itty-bitty blog. So-much-so that since I wrote the two posts about the phone on the 20th and 27th February they’ve proved to be the top two most popular blog posts from those dates to present time. Take a look:
Note: The Homepage and About page have higher traffic but these are static pages and not blog entries.
Again, if you look at the top ten keywords used to get to this blog since I wrote the two posts you’ll see that four out of the ten are related to the Xda including the most popular two keywords:
This, to me, is pretty impressive and it puts blogger outreach in a whole new different light. In hindsight, it’s pretty obvious that SEO plays a part in all of this but maybe I was too caught up in the ‘direct approach’ and ‘two-way conversation’ ways of thinking that I didn’t give it any thought.
In fact, the SEO benefits could out-perform all of the other benefits of bloggeroutreach. Two reasons:
Relevance – You can see by the keyword data that people who landed on either post through a search engine were actually looking for information on the Xda. The people who subscribe to my feed weren’t necessarily – I published it and they may have read it. No guarantee there, though.
Volume – If the search engine traffic to each post continues which, chances are, it will then those two posts will have received a lot more attention from Google and the like than they did through an RSS feed.
These two reasons make the point that SEO should not just be considered when initiating of blogger outreach campaign but should be high on the agenda. The measurement and evaluation process of the campaign should include any traffic and SEO data that are available to gather. They could be the most valuable results you’ve achieved!
The underlying objective of a blogger outreach campaign is, of course, to generate positive and authentic opinions on your product or brand. But if what you are promoting is a lousy, useless or even mediocre product, however, then the next title of a blog post could be “The SEO nightmare of blogger outreach.”
It’s all about the quality of the content or product you’re promoting at the end of the day.
Stephen is managing director of 3W PR, a UK based online PR consultancy. You can connect with him on Twitter or check out his LinkedIn profile. | Email Stephen

Social Media and Blogging Ethics and a Code of Conduct

Chris Abraham — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:55:07 +0000

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

A web of deception By David Gelles
An overenthusiastic employee from the computer supplies maker Belkin posted an offer online last month – $0.65 for anyone willing to write a positive review of Belkin products on Amazon.com. Several people took up the offer, producing gushing appraisals of Belkin products they had never used.
After a blogger exposed the scam, news organisations jumped on the story. The offer was removed and Belkin’s president weighed in with an apology.
The incident was a public relations disaster for Belkin. It was also a prime example of “Astroturfing”, the unsavoury marketing practice of generating fake grassroots enthusiasm for a product.
Given the anonymity afforded by the internet, it is hardly surprising that deceptive marketing is on the rise. Consumers are spending more time online and companies are seeking new ways to reach them.
But now, in an effort to regulate how employees behave on the web, companies and industry groups are developing their own online codes of ethics. They want to ensure that when staff do engage with social media, they act ethically.
Last year, Coca-Cola established its own set of social media guidelines and distributed them in a memo to all employees. The policy emphasises the need for transparency and encourages employees to use common sense when discussing the brand online. “We’ve always had very diverse channels to reach consumers,” says Adam Brown (pictured), digital communications director. “Wherever they are, that’s where we go. That’s now evolved into the need for a social media policy.”
So when Mr Brown went online to promote Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl advertisements, he followed the guidelines. On Facebook, Mr Brown announced that he was a Coke employee and pointed other users to the Coke ads on YouTube. On Pittsburgh Steelers fan forums, Mr Brown, who is from Pittsburgh, named his employer and then directed fans to the Coke blog, which had an interview with Steelers’ defensive star Troy Polamalu.
Mr Brown said more deliberate engagement with online conversations was a necessity for a global company such as Coca-Cola. “We’re mentioned several thousand times a day on blogs, and there are several hundred tweets about us on Twitter,” he says. “There is a lot of conversation taking place about our brand without us. Where appropriate, we wanted to start getting involved.”
Companies began interacting with social media years ago. But only recently have those involved with the industry perceived a need to develop ethical standards. Among the first to do so was The Word of Mouth Marketing Association, an organisation for the viral and buzz marketing industry. Womma published an ethics code in 2005, emphasising honesty of relationship, opinion and identity.
Since then, many companies have used the Womma code as a blueprint for their own guidelines. “Companies are learning every day that there is a right way and a wrong way to engage with social media,” says Paul Rand, vice-president of Womma’s board and head of its ethics project. “Some companies are learning by touching the burning pot; some companies are learning from the mistakes of others.”
One company that “touched the burning pot” is Shelfari, a social networking site for book lovers, owned by Amazon. As it battled for market share in late 2007, it came under fire for its poor design and clunky user interface. Soon, comments appeared on more than 50 blogs attesting to Shelfari’s greatness. “I have been on Shelfari for a couple of months now and absolutely love it,” read one. “Shelfari is such a great site. I joined a couple of months ago and I have been hooked on it ever since,” read another.
But all the comments were posted by the same user, “schaufferwaffer”, who was soon exposed as a Shelfari employee. Shelfari’s chief executive admitted to the Astroturfing (he blamed it on an intern who knew no better), and promised it would never happen again.
Such behaviour is declared out of line in the “disclosure best practices toolkit”, an ethics code drawn up by the Blog Council, an organisation for heads of social media at big companies. The document advises employees and agencies to announce whom they work for when communicating with blogs or bloggers. It also encourages employees to provide a means for contacting them directly, if someone they interact with via social media wants to follow up with a two-way conversation. The toolkit also warns against using pseudonyms.
IBM was one of the first companies to develop its own social media policy. In 2005, it published its “social computing guidelines”, which insist that employees write under their own names, using the first person, and make it clear they are speaking for themselves and not on behalf of IBM. It also prohibits employees from referencing clients, partners or suppliers without their approval.
UPS is developing its own online ethics policy after recognising how damaging Astroturfing and other online misbehaviour can be for a company’s reputation. “If one of our airplanes goes down, we have a very clear plan for getting information to the media,” says Norman Black, director of global media services. “We realised we did not have a good plan for responding to a crisis on the internet.”
In some countries, deceptive marketing practices are not only frowned upon but also illegal. In the UK, the law identifies “falsely representing oneself as a consumer” as a punishable offence. And in 2006, the US Federal Trade Commission issued regulations stating that word-of-mouth marketers must disclose their relationships. But in spite of these new rules there has been little enforcement of the measures.
Even without prosecution, Belkin seems to have learnt its lesson. Melody Chalaban, speaking for the company, says Belkin will soon be holding seminars to teach employees how to interact ethically with social media, and is also considering joining Womma. “We want to stress that this is an isolated incident,” says Ms Chalaban. “We don’t endorse or condone unethical practices like this.”
Side Bar: The last post: underhand tactics can end in a PR disaster
* Flogging. Fake blogs can help companies get a personal voice behind a marketing campaign – but they risk a PR disaster if they are uncovered. When Sony tried to boost sales of its PSP portable gaming unit, it started a blog supposedly by two boys who wanted PSPs for Christmas. When it was revealed as a fake, Sony apologised and took it down.
* Astroturfing. A technique that gets its name from the practice of generating fake grassroots enthusiasm. One Florida company, PayPerPost, serves as a matchmaker between companies willing to pay for good press and bloggers willing to plug products that they have never used. After receiving criticism, PayPerPost now requires bloggers to disclose that their posts are sponsored.
* Comment spamming. Flooding the comment fields of blogs with enthusiastic notes about a company, even with full disclosure, is not welcomed by web users. When a Motorola employee commented on dozens of posts on a technology blog – each comment a plug for the new Motorola Krave – bloggers responded with snide criticisms of his spamming, which duly ceased.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

True Experts in Online PR, Not Just Old-Media PR

Chris Abraham — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:34:26 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

Online Community Involvement and becoming a Respected Hero

Chris Abraham — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 03:18:55 +0000

We at Abraham Harrison, LLC, can win you tremendous respect, gratitude, and powerful word-of-mouth promotion from the very word-of-mouth driven online communities. The staff of Abraham Harrison can be answering the questions people are asking and providing needed information to make you a valued, respected, and trusted members of the communities.

Our goal is to ensure that your brands are perceived as trusted member of society, contributing more than they are taking. Such good citizenship is rewarded in the online community by word-of-mouth endorsements, both at the influencer and at the grassroots level, both of which we will seed, encourage, and amplify.

The staff of Abraham Harrison, LLC, can be present for you in the forums, social networking sites, (SNS’s), and comment-based conversations and use these contributions as “gifts” for both the influencers and for us to leverage in spreading the “good news” about your brand.

In addition, the staff of Abraham Harrison will set your key staff members up as influencers themselves with their own platforms via a blog, and potentially via podcasts and video blogging. The information they present can be made to be valuable, desired, and will make them trusted and honored go-to people.

Contact Mark Harrison, CEO of Abraham Harrison, for more information

Abraham Harrison. LLC: True experts in online PR, not just old-media PR doing an add-on

Chris Abraham — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 02:38:40 +0000

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

Abraham Harrison, LLC: an expert global PR team of travelers and expats

Chris Abraham — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 02:21:28 +0000

Abraham Harrison, LLC is an online PR and Brand Promotion firm that not only knows the online social media lifestyle like no other PR shop worldwide but lives the traveler and expat experience every day.

Abraham Harrison is a 18-person shop with team members spread across the world – the United States, Germany, Holland, South Africa, India, Nepal, and Mauritius. Our CEO, Mark Harrison, who has been an expat for half his life and a traveler for far more, splits his year between Mauritius, and Berlin, Germany. Our President and COO, Chris Abraham, splits his year between Germany and Washington, DC.

Our head of technology is an expat in Nepal, our Director of Operations lives between San Francisco and Capetown, and one of our project managers is currently spending two years in Holland, another works from Brazil when she is there volunteering. Together, the members of our team have lived in or visited 52 countries. We speak not only English, but German, French, Spanish, Afrikaans, Swahili, and Hindi.

My Top 91 Social Media Blog Posts

Chris Abraham — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:30:11 +0000

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

The Powerful SEO Benefits of Blogger PR Outreach

Chris Abraham — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:06:05 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’re better than that.

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

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

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

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

(Via Marketing Conversation)

38 Articles About Social Media Strategy and Techniques

Chris Abraham — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 05:41:48 +0000

I have collected a number of thoughts I have had on social media, blogging, social networking, blogger outreach & engagement, blogger activation, astroturfing, and other fun stuff I call Insights — 38 in all — that I just stumbled upon and I thought it would be lovely to share:

Social Media Reputation Management

Chris Abraham — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:32:53 +0000

My buddy David Gelles writes for the Tech section of the FT, my favorite paper. Check out his latest article, New corporate firefighters. Sadly for me, he can’t shamelessly promote my company, Abraham Harrison LLC, because he has ‘journalistic integrity;’ however, it is awesome he works there because he writes awesomely-accessible articles about my space, including social media marketing, social media PR, blogger engagement, Twitter, and also the world of online and social media crisis-response. It is amazing! I beat up Pepsi Max over on AdAge and a couple weeks later, Gelles writes an article about the space. I am both amazingly proud and a little paranoid!

New corporate firefighters By David Gelles

When advertisers launched a campaign last September for the pain reliever Motrin, they hoped to attract the attention of mothers whose backs might be sore from wearing baby-carriers. The advertisements implied that while baby-carriers might be fashionable, hauling a child around could be painful.
Mothers were not amused. Soon after the ads were released, anti-Motrin campaigns appeared on Facebook and blogs. Outraged mums, furious at the suggestion that their babies were a hassle, posted rebuttal videos on YouTube. Through Twitter, the micro-blogging service, thousands of people attacked the company.
Motrin was caught off-guard. For days, no company representative replied. Critics accused the company of being not only insensitive but also unresponsive.
Eventually a marketing executive at McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson that markets Motrin, e-mailed individual bloggers to apologise for the campaign. But the damage was done.
Jeanette Gibson of CiscoThe “Motrin moms” episode illustrates the power of social media — the expanding network of websites that allow users to interact with each other and, increasingly, with companies. It also demonstrates the perils for enterprises that are unprepared to interact with social media.
But now a growing number of companies, including Ford Motor, PepsiCo, Wells Fargo and Dell, are creating new high-level jobs to ready themselves for engagement with social media, with titles such as director of social media, head of communities and conversation, vice-president of experiential marketing and digital communications manager. The role of these new executives is to monitor and influence what is being said about their companies on the internet.
Johnson & Johnson made its own appointment in the wake of the Motrin debacle. Having already dabbled in social media, in December the company promoted Marc Monseau, a 10-year company veteran and former director of media relations, to director of social media. “My responsibility is to work with the corporate office and the individual companies to better interact online,” Mr Monseau says. “It underscores the fact that we realise this is an important audience and one that we need to develop relationships with.”
These new jobs represent a broad shift in media relations strategy at large companies. “Corporate communications has radically changed,” says Andy Sernovitz, chief executive of the Blog Council, an organisation for heads of social media at big companies. “It’s no longer just companies talking to the press, and customer service talking to customers. All these other people showed up in the middle. They may not be press and they may not be customers, but suddenly their collective voice is bigger than the traditional channels.”
The essence of social media is conversation. Rather than a one-way stream of information, where companies make announcements to the press and customers, social media enables a great deal of interaction, where companies are in constant dialogue with the public. “We’ve seen a shift from doing things the old way to now having conversations with our customers,” says Jeanette Gibson, director of new media for Cisco Systems (pictured).
Ms Gibson, who began her job in 2007, says there is now a mandate at Cisco that all staff be attuned to what is being said about Cisco online. “It has definitely shifted how we’ve done communications,” she says. “Our executives are video blogging every day. Everybody’s job is now social media.”
Dell, the computer maker, has one of the most robust corporate social media programmes. Bob Pearson, former senior vice-president of corporate communications, became vice-president of communities and conversation for Dell in 2007.
He now has 45 people working for him. The core team works on “blog resolution” — trawling the web for dissatisfied customers, then attempting to contact them to make amends. Others on Dell’s social media team manage the company’s 80 Twitter accounts and 20 Facebook pages. Still others manage IdeaStorm, Dell’s forum for customer feedback.
Dell is taking its customer feedback seriously. When the company launched the Latitude laptop last summer, six of the features, including backlit keyboard and fingerprint reader, were ideas that came from IdeaStorm. “It’s always worth talking directly with your customers. It’s always worth listening to them,” says Mr Pearson. “It’s the wisdom of crowds.”
Peter Shankman, a social media expert and founder of Help a Reporter Out, a service that broadcasts reporters’ requests to a network of experts, says many companies are still reluctant to get involved: “Companies are slow to adapt because they’re still not 100 per cent sure they can make money with social media,” he says.
Yet Dell, for one, has made a business of it. By broadcasting discount alerts on Twitter, it says, it has generated more than $1m in sales. And in the US, 59 of the 100 leading retailers, including Best Buy and Wal-Mart, now have a fan page on Facebook, according to Rosetta, an interactive marketing agency.
Other savings can be realised through the Web’s ability to reach many people at once. “If you solve someone’s problem on the phone, nobody knows,” says Mr Sernovitz. “If you solve that same problem in writing on a blog, it costs you no more, but thousands of people are satisfied. And then, if 100 people never call because they found the answer, you very, very quickly get to multimillion-dollar savings.”
Other companies are using Twitter to douse public relations fires before they erupt. Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motors, used Twitter to appease users who were angry after the carmaker sued an enthusiast website that was selling unauthorised Ford merchandise. When fans of the enthusiast site posted angry messages, Mr Monty “tweeted back” to explain the company’s position.
Bonin Bough, who was appointed director of social media for PepsiCo last year, also used Twitter to defuse a brewing crisis after the company released a series of advertisements depicting a cartoon calorie character committing suicide.
“Social media is much more than getting out there and having conversations,” says Mr Pearson of Dell. “It transforms a business if you use it correctly.”

Twitter Services from Abraham Harrison LLC

Chris Abraham — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:34:58 +0000

Abraham Harrison has been at the forefront of the Twitter phenomenon since its public offering, successfully leveraging the power of micro-blogging for many of its clients. (Via Abraham Harrison LLC)

Services include:

Twitter Consultation: Abraham & Harrison often works with clients to help them understand what micro-blogging means, the impact it can have within their industry, and the ways in which it can be utilized to implement customer service, improve customer loyalty, promote the brand, and protect a company’s reputation.

Twitter Profile Creation: Abraham & Harrison has successfully created and populated Twitter profiles for a number of clients. Profile creation includes:
- Twitter Brainstorming: An initial consultation with the client that outlines the goals, challenges and Twitter strategy prior to profile creation
- Profile Creation: Abraham & Harrison will create a Twitter profile that mirrors the branding, marketing, and messaging currently utilized by the client. All messaging “tweeted” through Twitter will mimic that of the company’s branding.
- Constant Population: Once the profile is created, Abraham & Harrison will either train or populate the Twitter profile with valuable information that connects with fellow users on Twitter. Population will include daily “tweets” throughout the work week to boost followers and community engagement.
- Valuable Team “Retweeting”: Not only will a skilled team member help with the population of the Twitter profile, but the entire Abraham & Harrison team will be behind the client, “retweeting” their content which in turn means an exponentially larger audience seeing the company’s message. For instance, Chris Abraham, Abraham & Harrison’s President and COO, who is known as one of the top Twitterers of Social Media news (having over 2,700 followers) will “retreet” every client messaging. What does this mean? A Twitter veteran will be promoting your company, brand, and message…and people will listen. At least three Abraham & Harrison team members with high profile Twitter profiles will be able to retweet each client “tweet” at a time.
- Continual Re-Evaluation: Abraham & Harrison will continually connect with each client to ensure the messages disseminated on Twitter stay fresh, valuable, and relevant.
Abraham & Harrison Twitter Case Study: A fantastic example of Abraham & Harrison’s knowledge of Twitter is illustrated by our work with the client, The Fresh Air Fund, a non-profit agency providing free summer vacations in the country to more than 1.7 million New York City children from disadvantaged communities.
- Twitterers Who Will Change The World: With Abraham & Harrison’s help, The Fresh Air Fund created a Twitter profile to communicate with other NPOs, current volunteers, potential families interested in The Fresh Air Fund, and donors. In just three months of tweeting, The Fresh Air Fund Twitter profile has over 600 followers and has reached thousands of individuals who they otherwise would never have been in contact with. Not only does Abraham & Harrison help guide The Fresh Air Fund on how to best utilize Twitter in a respectful and value-driven way, Chris Abraham is also eager to help “retweet” The Fresh Air Fund’s Twitter content, meaning that over 3,000 users are seeing this non-profit’s messaging, creating a critical relationship with The Fresh Air Fund that results in support of the NPO. Even more impressive, The Fresh Air Fund was recently nominated to be a part of the “Top Ten List of Twitterers Who Will Change The World” — a fantastic feat for an NPO who has only been a part of the Twittosphere for three months.

Twitter PR from the Financial Times

Chris Abraham — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:42:22 +0000

My buddy David Gelles is now a Technology reporter and blogger for the Financial Times and I was so happy to see David writing about Twitter PR, something very dear to my heart, Companies use Twitter to pack PR punch, including Scott Monty of Ford as well as the gang from PepsiCo’s Pepsi Max controversy:

Companies use Twitter to pack PR punch
By David Gelles in San Francisco
Published: December 30 2008 19:16 | Last updated: December 30 2008 19:16
Twitter, a booming micro-blogging service, is inspiring business to manage its message in 140 characters or less.
Its streams of short text messages, publicly broadcast over the web, are being treated as the new frontline of internet conversation. Companies including Ford and PepsiCo have been dousing public relations fires with pithy communication bursts to the Twitter community.
“There’s a rapid-fire element to Twitter that causes conversations to go viral when something bad happens with a company,” says Jackie Huba, co-founder of the Society for Word of Mouth, an organisation that monitors social media. “Companies that have a Twitter account are prepared. If something goes wrong they can respond.”
PepsiCo turned to Twitter this month after users began posting criticisms of a Pepsi Max advertisement, which depicted a cartoon calorie committing suicide.
Huw Gilbert, communications manager for PepsiCo International, “tweeted”, or posted a public message, in reply. “Huw from Pepsi here,” he wrote. “We agree this creative is totally inappropriate; we apologise and please know it won’t run again.”
Critics saw Mr Gilbert’s post, with one “tweeting” back: “Thank you?.?.?.?for having the guts to get on Twitter on behalf of Pepsi and give us an update on the suicide ad.”
Such personal interaction from a company representative helps defuse a crisis, says Ms Huba. “People like feeling like they’re being heard,” she says.
Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motors, used Twitter to deflect criticism away from the carmaker after it filed suit against an enthusiast website that was selling unauthorised Ford decals. Fans of the site posted angry messages but Mr Monty used Twitter to explain the company’s position.
“Part of my job is to humanise the company – you want to interact,” Mr Monty says.
Starbucks, Comcast, JetBlue and Home Depot are among companies using Twitter accounts to promote products and provide customer service.
Bob Pearson, head of communities and conversation for Dell, said his company had generated $1m in computer-related sales through alerts posted to Twitter.
San Francisco-based Twitter is also becoming a platform for a range of media and social networking start-ups using its tools to develop communities and content rapidly, and at low cost.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008