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

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

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

From Erika “Aya” La Tour Eiffel’s Bio

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

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

Archer Spotlight on Aya La Brie By Steve Ross

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

USAA: Did you do any special training?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

USAA: Do you find it difficult switching between styles?

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

USAA: Do you have a personal coach?

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

USAA:What is your training schedule like?

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

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

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

USAA: What are your compound and recurve setups?

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

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

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

The 2009 Senior USAT Team includes:

Recurve

Men       Women

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some more newspaper articles you can check out:

Woman with objects fetish marries Eiffel Tower

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

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

She has changed her name legally to reflect the bond.

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

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

‘I married the Eiffel Tower’

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

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

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

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

There are now public bikes you can rent in DC. I am so proud!

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

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

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

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

Holy fuck, I am pretty darn white!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, good luck to you, Kari!

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

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

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

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

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

Audio discussion by Joni Wedderburn about the public relations industry’s slow acceptance of the new media phenomenon via the Internet Archive

Individual Files

Thanks, Simon Wakeman, for catching up with your RSS and Twitter feeds!  Love this one:

Stuart Bruce has a nice summary of a debate that’s been happening on Twitter and elsewhere about the relative roles of public relations and search engine optimisation (SEO). For me the two are very different beasts, although there is some crossover. Stuart hits the nail on the head identifying SEO as one of the many tools that a rounded public relations practitioner should have available for use, depending on the objectives of the public relations campaigns and the best way to achieve them.

Cory Doctorow talks about the new law in the UK that makes in a crime to take a picture of a police officer or a building, Britain’s no-photographing-cops law: even the cops hate it — and the US isn’t very far behind, to be sure — and be sure to listen to the CBC article about this law in As It Happens (MP3):

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s radio show As it Happens did a great job covering the new British law that makes it a crime to take a picture of a police officer or a building, where that picture might be useful in “planning an act of terrorism.” First, they interviewed Peter Murray, Vice-President of the National Union of Journalists, who, predictably, worries that his members will find themselves with arrest-records as terrorists for violating the law. But then, they talked to Peter Smyth, Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, who also thinks the law is ridiculous — and this is just stupendous. Smyth says that there’s no evidence that terrorists use photographs to plan attacks, admits that this is an invitation for scared officers to abuse the law, and says that it will needlessly create conflict with journalists and the public.

The program tried to locate someone — anyone — who supported the law, but no one was forthcoming.

Jonathan Trenn popped this insightful article about Yelp over on Marketing Conversation, The contorversy about Yelp (and be sure to check out David Gelles’ article on a similar topic over at the Financial Times, Yelp rejects claims of extortion):

Ah, controversy.

Now, it’s with Yelp, the mega online review site.  On Wednesday, the East Bay Express, an alternative newspaper that covers Alameda and Contra Costa counties in California, published a very provocative article , “Yelp and the business of extortion 2.0″ on the sales operations and tactics of Yelp.  The paper made some very pointed accusations, some of them seemingly legitimate while others sounding too nebulous.  They state that Yelp is both maniupulating the placements of restaurants reviews as sales tools and then using scare tactics to then solicit advertising sales from these same restaurants.

The accusations are alarming but, because I think the article was poorly presented, it’s left me thinking that Yelp perhaps had a major sales problem in one office as opposed to a company wide sleaze factor policy.

Yelp’s initial response, written on the company blog by CEO Jeremy Stoppleman is inept and insufficient.  He’s likely satisfied that his blog posts are enough…and it may appear to be just that for the time being…but controversies such as this, be they true or just speculation, have a way of undermining a company’s integrity in a hurry.  Especially a site that 1)  is about user generated online reviews, and 2) has trust as a hallmark of its standing.

Oddly, the Yelp blog doesn’t allow comments.  That’s not a good idea…especially for a site that’s about online reviews and citizen participation.

Here’s the gist of the article.  Writer Kathleen Richards talked to “dozens” of business owners over the “past several months” and found that six of them said that Yelp sales reps promised to remove or move bad reviews if the business chose to advertise.  And these businesses would often get sales calls from Yelp reps soon after they mysteriously started getting a rash of negative reviews.  The theory here is that Yelp employees would start to or enlist others to write negative reviews on a company, those reviews would then appear at the top of a company’s page, and the company would get a phone call from a rep looking for an advertising by so those reviews can “go away”…usually to the tune of $300 a month.

For those that declined, positive reviews seemed to begin to disappear.  For those that did manage to buy, negative ones began disappearing.

This is pretty damning stuff.  If true, it shows a coordinted effort between people in sales those on the back end tech team.  It made some establishments feel as if Yelp was acting as if it was the “mafia” in that Yelp was threatening establishments to pay (advertise) in order to not be damaged.  That’s called “protection money” in organized crime.

But as I red between the lines I ended up scratching my head.   Over several months, after talking to “dozens” of businesses, Richards found six restaurants that felt that either they were being offered a quid-pro-qo for advertising to reduce or eliminate bad reviews; or some felt that this extended to manipulative threats of the placement of poor reviews and the elimination of postive reviews.

“Dozens.  “What does that mean?  36?  60?  84?  How did Richards find these restaurants?  Did she talk to one and then ask the owner/manager if he or she knew of any others that had similar stories?  Both questions are important.   The first because it leads to how widespread the problem actually is in the Bay Area and the second, because if there is a lack or randomness to all this, then the sample restaurants are self selected by the reporter.

The article relies on the how some of the restaurant owners “feel”.  These feelings may be completely legitimate.  But it is hard to counter a “feelings”e of another is the one with the feelings remain anonymous.  I fully believe in using anonymous sources, but there should be greater evidence used.  That is, if one is trying to prove that this is a consistent sales tactic used by the company as a whole.

And speaking of as a whole.  This article seems to be focusing soley on the East Bay restaurant seen.  True, it is an East Bay pub, but the article is written as if it is a widespread problem and the issue here is “the business of extortion”.  It fully damns the Yelp based on a small sample of local business’ feelings.

Stoppleman has since written a few more blog posts, but he could use a change of attitude.  There’s been enough discussion on the net about this article denigrating Yelp.  Hundreds of tweets on Twitter, negative mentions on Technorati, and articles in substantial online pubs.

The reason why I say that Stoppleman could use a change of attitude is because he’s treating all of this as an illegitimate attack.  The accusations, regardless of their veracity, at least sound reasonable.  And his defensiveness doesn’t really address the issue.

He does have on post that does work, at bit, in my opinion.  “Nine Myths About Yelp” is designed to negate what he feels are falsehoods.  The most important one he lists is #3 (it should be #1, but he doesn’t seem to realize it).  It is stated here:

Myth #3: Yelp salespeople manipulate reviews for prospective advertisers (for example, offers to remove a negative review if a new client signs up, or a threat to remove positive reviews if the business owner does not choose to advertise with Yelp)

Reality: We have every reason to trust the smart, hard-working and ethical salespeople who work at Yelp.  Beyond this, to avoid even an appearance of impropriety, we’ve taken several steps to ensure no member of our team is tempted to game the system.  Specifically:
1. Yelp salespeople do not have access to the system that deletes reviews; only a few members of Yelp engineering and user support team have this access, and they literally work on different floors within the office.
2. Every Yelp salesperson signs an agreement that s/he will not write reviews of any business while employed by Yelp.  We trust our teammates in sales to live up to this commitment.  We also have several monitoring systems in place to ensure nobody (accidentally or otherwise) crosses this line.
3. Through our vigilance, we once did find a salesperson who encouraged a friend to write a positive review for a prospective client (that the friend had actually patronized). The salesperson’s role at Yelp ended that day.
4. When a new advertiser signs up with Yelp, the relationship is handed off to an Account Manager.  The Account Manager then takes the client through a 30 minute phone training session — and confirms that reviews have nothing to do with advertising.
5. After the training call, the Account Manager sends a follow up survey that asks each client how much s/he agrees with the following statement: “I understand that Reviews are completely separate from the Yelp Ad Program, and that there is an automated filter that may suppress some of my reviews whether or not I am a client.”  Any client who does not click “Completely Agree” in this case gets yet another follow-up call for clarification.

Myth #4: Yelp removes positive reviews from businesses its staff does not like, or from businesses that do not pay for advertising

Reality: A review you may have seen on Yelp previously is no longer there; this happens.  The review in question may have “disappeared” for one of three reasons:
1. The review may have been suppressed by Yelp’s automated Review Filter, which is always out there looking for suspicious reviewing activity (like those anonymous rants and raves you see on other sites).
2. The writer may have removed her own review; she has the right to do that at any time
3. Another user believed the review violated Yelp’s Review Guidelines and sent it to our customer service team for review. The customer service team agreed, then manually removed the review.

Both our customer service team and the Review Filter work exactly the same way for advertisers as they do for non-advertisers.

This is how he should have addressed the issue at the very beginning.  Blown opportunity and his company has suffered and will continue to suffer as a result.  And he has to go beyond stating that the sales people and the tech people with access to placement of reviews work on different floors.

My guess is what happened is that a few sales reps in that particular office would scour the reviews on Yelp, and when they found some recent newly written negative ones, they then picked up the phone and made a sales call, offering the package that places a selected postive review on top – one that is visibly marked as being sponsored.  Some pitches probably went far beyond this…saying that they could make the negative one “disappear”.  Sales people will say sleazy things.  Stoppleman should understand this and not discount this.  He should then conduct some sort of internal audit that would show the public that he is trying to address the problem and root it out if it exists.  Retrain.  Resolve.

Now is it possible that some sales types had relationships with the tech people.  Absolutely.  Different floors – HA!  So the problem may have been more than a poorly written article.  Yelp needs to look into that because, as Yelp knows, online reputations matter.

And to Jeremy Stoppleman…you should allow people to comment on your blog posts.

We do brand reputation and online reputation management and the number one thing we tell our clients is that if you don’t amplify your brand online — add some signal to the noise, if you will — then someone else will.  And, you can do this before you’re attacked or you can do it afterwards as an ORM campaign, which, like going to a plumber when your pipes burst, is generally much more expensive.  Better to maintain than to repair.  Here’s a great article from over on Online Publicity Journal that you should check out, Be Proactive – Don’t Wait Until Negative Press Finds You!:

The internet has allowed people who have normally been quiet to now have a voice, and sometimes a loud one. That voice can easily cripple your business model and stop or slow down revenues coming like a wrench thrown into the gears. One online complaint can send ripples very quickly through your business model.

Whistle blowing websites are everywhere and frustrated clients and customers are waiting for a reason to shout and make noise if things go sour with their experience. If you haven’t’ done any proactive online marketing and your reputation has not been tarnished yet than that is great. But all it takes one angry customer to ruin that good luck streak and you just never know when it could occur.

Many times it will be from an angry customer you have never even heard from who just didn’t even bother contacting you first to try to fix the problem. If you take a proactive approach right from the beginning you can allow yourself to build up a barrier and wall against new, fresh new negative publicity coming in. It is much easier to build a barrier for you business of positive information before negative press finds it way to your search results.

With consumer confidence down and online customers becoming more and more savvy each day more and more online shoppers want to see a squeaky clean online image. If they see any angry clients or customers it could easily trigger them to purchase or do business with a competitor. Online publicity is a very quick and easy way to start building a clean online reputation.

As others pick up your releases you will effectively add more content to your search results. As these links sit and age they become anchored into the search results making it much more difficult for any Rip Off Report and Pissed Consumer listings to make their way to your search results generated by someone search for your personal or business name.

Chris Garrett has a super-smart, “stop, think, breathe, write, review, share, rewrite, and then maybe don’t hit post,” list of things to consider before criticizing anyone or anything online, 10 Tips for Criticism Without Harming Your Reputation:

1. Calm down – Take a breath, walk away, posting emotionally could cause more trouble than cure.
2. Know what you want – Why are you doing this? What is it you want changed or to achieve?
3. Does it need to be public? – First the best approach is to contact the company or person in question directly. I often go buy the rule of thumb “Praise in public, complain in private“. We all slip occasionally, but worth to keep in mind.
4. Stick to the facts – If you only present the facts as you see them then you are normally safe as far as legal grounds are concerned (though I am not a lawyer), and only use relevant information.
5. Get a second opinion – Before making something public, ensure you have expressed the issue clearly – this is not a time to be misunderstood!
6. Keep to the issues – Personal attacks, name-calling, embellishments, posturing and exaggerations will just make you look nasty and foolish. The issues should speak for you.
7. Swearing – Some people swear because they think it is funny or just part of their brand, which is fair enough if this is what your audience expects. I find though more people are put off than engaged by swearing, particularly where the quantity seems excessive even for swear fans. While you might like swearing, and might even think it is warranted, you will lose the support of your audience who want to see your points articulated well without resorting to it. If you must swear, give fair warning in your introduction, particularly if you are using audio or video.
8. Balance? – Can you balance it out with any positive, empathy or second perspectives? Is it possible you just got the wrong idea? Show that you are a human being with an issue, not going after someone for links and traffic.
9. Don’t sell – Make your point and leave it. Do not use the opportunity to sell or pump up your own stuff otherwise your audience will question your motives and you will lose their trust and credibility.
10. Use a mirror - Is your own house in order before you go attacking someone else? And spare a thought for how you would feel if you were on the receiving end of your article.

Here’s a smashing list from Lee Odden over on Online Marketing Blog, Best and Worst Practices Social Media Marketing:

• Start with a plan, not tactics.  Research and build a Social Media Roadmap involving:  Audience, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Tools/Technology and Metrics.

• “Give to get” – Successful social media marketing programs involve listening and participation. That participation centers around giving value before expecting anything in return. This is not “sales” as you know it. But companies can definitely increase sales as a result.

• Commit resources & time to be successful or you may very well fail. It’s important to forecast labor hours, who, what, when, how and where with the intention of succeeding, not just experimenting. If a social media effort is successful, scalability will be an even bigger issue if you don’t plan for it.  Hiring a community manager for example, may not be justified when a social media monitoring program is started or with a new company, but a job req and understanding of the role should be ready in case it’s called for.

• Be transparent with intentions & your identity or you may alienate the very audiences you’re trying to connect with.  Objectives, strategy and doing your homework about a community should make it pretty obvious what types of commercial messages are appropriate.  Being transparent about intentions might come in the form of stating a purpose:  ”Brand XYZ has created this Facebook page to help consumers make better choices about Topic XYZ”.  It’s fine if goals are to increase sales, but participation should be focused on providing the kind of value that facilitates sales – not attempting to make sales directly. When is the last time you purchased something other than a virtual cupcake on Facebook?

• Understand, you do not control the message.  Old habits die hard and there’s a tendency to want to treat social media participation like advertising where the ability to control messaging is the norm. Once information or media is available on the social web, people will inevitably mash it up, stretch it, pull it and reshape it according to their interests. Brands need to protect their identities, copyright and intellectual property for sure, but rather than “controlling the message” marketers should encourage the mashup and creativity.

• Welcome participation, feedback and co-creation. As comfort levels rise with social web participation, companies will see opportunties to encourage participation with communications, especially with brand evangelists. Developing relationships and community within social communities on the web can facilitate buy in, provide invaluable feedback and crowdsourcing opportunities.

• Metrics should roll up to objectives and objectives should be relevant to the channel.  More than a few companies see evidence of other social media efforts ranging from Superbowl commercials on YouTube to social participation during and after President Obama’s campaign, and “want that too”.  Direct marketing is the lens through which many social media efforts are first viewed, with a tendency to focus on action “A” resulting in “B” outcome. Social media marketing is more like public relations than direct marketing. It’s more like providing resource “A” results in “action “B” that influences outcome “C”. Metrics for success need to consider the pre-goal performance indicators like number of “friends”, comments, links, etc as well as commercial outcomes influenced by social media participation.

Check out his worst practices as well over at: Best and Worst Practices Social Media Marketing.

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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##

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My friend Mike Signer is running for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia and has started his campaign. Please be sure to support this fine gentleman in his campaign — please check out Mike Signer’s web site and read the information I just received from him via email, announcing his campaign:

This weekend in Richmond, I’ll join Democrats from across Virginia at our annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner.  From the decade-plus I’ve been working in the trenches of Democratic politics around the Commonwealth, I know the JJ is one of Virginia Democrats’ favorite events.  But this year in particular – on the heels of the victories of President Obama, Senator Warner and Representatives Perriello, Nye and Connolly – the JJ will be a particularly exciting opportunity to share my vision for the future of the Commonwealth with activists from across Virginia.

As you may know, I recently decided to run for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia.  I’m running because I strongly believe that our problems today are so urgent they demand something more from the office of Lieutenant Governor.  If we turn this office into a public advocate for all Virginians rather than just a placeholder it’s been under the Republican incumbent, Bill Bolling, we can take on great challenges together, including:

• Strengthening our economy while cracking down on predatory practices,
• Getting our priorities on energy and the environment right and creating thousands of new green jobs,
• Meeting the sacred contract we have with veterans and their families and
• Strengthening our democracy here in Virginia.

Although the Lieutenant Governor candidates will not be speaking, I wanted to make sure you know about the event and – most importantly – that you’re invited to our reception afterward.  Immediately following the dinner, we’ll be hosting a hospitality suite with a great band and refreshments in the Greater Richmond Convention Center, room E22-A.

If you’re attending the dinner, I hope you’ll join us – and encourage others you meet at the dinner to do the same – to stop by, meet me, and make the acquaintance of other Virginia Democrats who will be joining our fresh, exciting new campaign.

After JJ Reception with Mike Signer
Greater Richmond Convention Center – Room E22-A
February 7, 2009 – Immediately following the conclusion of the dinner
RSVP today for the reception so that we know you’re coming

I hope you’ll join this cause.  I’d also be grateful for early investors in this exciting venture.  Even your $5 donation today will help with critical early steps such as purchasing lapel stickers and our banner for the convention hall.

                   

Thanks and hope to see you soon.  I’ll be in touch with more news about the campaign in the coming days.