Warren Brown wrote an article about the 2009 Chevy Cobalt SS this morning for the Post. His review of the Cobalt tangented into some of the most important lessons that Detroit’s big three need to learn, Zippy Affordability Blazes Better Trail for GM.

General Motors should stop trying to please everybody. It’s a strategy that embraces the lowest common denominator. It’s hard to make a favorable impression when your primary objective is to avoid offending as many people as possible. You wind up pleasing no one, or next to no one, or so it seems. You are relegated to second-class status. Or worse, you are forgotten.

[...]

That told me that the Cobalt SS was the car that Chevrolet regarded as the real Cobalt, the one the company regarded as the most representative of that compact economy car line. That being the case, I wondered why the company wasted so much time, money and marketing muscle pushing lesser Cobalts — disparagingly regarded as “rental cars” by the automotive media.

[...]

No one regards the comparable Honda Civic, Hyundai Elantra, or Toyota Corolla as a “rental car,” although all of those models can be found on somebody’s rental car lot. A Civic is a Civic. An Elantra is an Elantra. A Corolla is a Corolla. All are compact economy cars with good road manners and excellent quality. Their reputations are so strong, their names speak for themselves.

[...]

I suspect it’s because of GM’s dedication to the lowest common denominator — the company’s tendency to take a good idea, such as the Cobalt, and dilute it as much as possible in pursuit of maximum affordability.

The end result is a line of cheap, forgettable cars. That’s too bad because as demonstrated by the tested SS, the Cobalt is so much better than that.

And I can’t help but think that the Cobalt would be even better had GM not squandered money and reputation spreading the car’s value over a broad field of less-than-impressive materials and mediocre performance in pursuit of more sales.

GM needs to abandon that practice, even if it means losing aggregate sales. It should consider trading volume for memorability, which could lead to an increase in higher quality sales — cars and trucks sought by consumers more for likeability than price.

[...]

But they all said they would strongly consider buying the Cobalt SS, although it comes with two fewer doors and a substantially higher price than the workaday Cobalt sedans flooding the rental fleets.

“I don’t get it,” said a Virginia friend after taking a spin in the Cobalt SS. His first experience with the Cobalt was via a car rental agency in South Carolina.

That rented Cobalt was so ordinary, “it was depressing,” he said. But the Cobalt SS was “a boss little car, something I could see myself owning,” he said.

“I don’t get it,” my friend said. “Why doesn’t GM put this one [the Cobalt SS] in the rental fleets. It’s like GM wants us to have a bad impression of its products. That doesn’t make sense.”

Enough said.

It all comes down to producing cars that work too hard to appeal to everyone that they appeal to noone. In my opinion, American car models are too broad and there is too much desire to water brands down to a lowest-common-denominator.

In Germany, Mercedes-Benz is more of a “tool-car” that offers cars at most levels of affordability while still not offering garbage “rental cars.” There is a difference between offering fleet-level vehicles and what people perceive as “rental car quality.” Fleet-worthy vehicles are considered durable. Most European taxis are diesel Mercedes sedans. While not the luxury S-class sedan, the reputation Mercedes-Benz has in Europe comes from the ubiquity of these MB workhorses.

When people think of rental cars, they think of plasticky sub-compact tin boxes, not durable everruns. Do you see what I mean?  American cars (not trucks — American trucks are built, and priced, to be workhorses)  have become associated with being the vehicle you buy until you can afford a Toyota or a Mercedes.  Even Saturn is being shuttered — and rightfully so, since it has long ago lost its novelty and associted nationwide appeal.

And, while this article is about General Motors, the same can be said about Ford and Chrysler, too.  Yes, you will tell me about the Corvette and the Ford GT and the Jeep and even the Hummer and all of these little eddy brands.  Well, when we take the trucks and the sports cars away and you’re left with 2-door coupes, 4-door sedans, 5-door hatchback, and wagons, what’re you left with? Especially when it comes to “tool-cars” and quality sub-compact and SMART-like high efficiency vehicles?  How about resale and reliability statistics?

Around here in Arlington, cabbies are replacing the unquitous Crown Vic with Toyota Priuses and Camry hybrids.  On that note, the Crown Victoria was the last real success story when it came to fleet vehicles: cop cars, cruisers, taxis. Too bad the Impala — an amazing car when it was the real Chevy Impala SS — doesn’t seem to get the pick up the Vic did.

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:

1. Shorter emails will be the best way of getting people’s attention
2. 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:

1. They are short – only 2-3 paragraphs
2. 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)
3. 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)
4. 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
5. 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:

1. 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’.
2. 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.
3. 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
4. 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!

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Currently listening to ‘Next’ by The Necks from the album ‘Next’. Superb jazz funk from one of Australia’s great cult bands.

I think you should check out Michael Gray new article, Using Directories for Search Engine Reputation Management, because it is a very interesting article — essential reading — I have only excerpted a wee bit of it here because I think you need to go over there and spend some time with the article, which is really valuable and essential as a way of inoculating your brand in advance of anything going wrong.

Search engine reputation management (SERM) is a growing discipline under the larger umbrella of search engine optimization (SEO). If you deal with client services, and you don’t already have at least one reputation management client, chances are you will in the very near future. The more tools or options you have at your disposal for this type of project, the easier the task will be. In this article I’m going to look at one of those tools; directories. (via Marketing Pilgrim)

I think it is really important for me to start writing more on this topic.  I have written a few things on this topic: I, Online Reputation Manager, The Powerful SEO Benefits of Blogger PR Outreach, An El Al Jumbo Jets Chaffing and Flaring the Skies Analogy, Online Reputation Defense: Resistance is Futile, Online Reputation Management, and Online Reputation Management Needs to Be Proactive.

At Abraham Harrison, we have three practices: 1) online PR, web video marketing, Twitter and social media marketing 2) social media and SEO consulting 3) online reputation management. Read the below excerpt from Danny Flamberg, What Tactics Work Best in a Recession? — whoops! 

Ironically many of the highly hyped tactics – online PR, web video marketing, Twitter and social media marketing –  are sorted OUT because of their limited track record in delivering quantifiable results. Though today they are cheap enough and accessible enough for marketers with a few extra bucks and some extra imagination to use creatively and break through to hard-to-reach customer or prospect segments.

Search (both SEO and PPC) and e-mail are the work horses in a recession. The costs are containable, the targeting can be quickly and effectively tweaked plus the ROI has been proven again and again.They are sufficiently interactive to meet “social” marketing needs and can be deployed almost on-demand to suit anxious CFOs.

Oh well, this is a very insightful and well-thought-out article with a lot of truth and some very important insights. Since I have over a decase of information architecture and SEO experience, I know that #2 is going to get a lot more of my attention in 2009 — thanks very much for the benefit of your experience, Mr. Flamberg, and remember that there is much more to the article, so please explore the rest, What Tactics Work Best in a Recession?

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.

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

If you Google the name of our President and COO, “Chris Abraham“, you will see what it means to dominate the search engine results and own a position as an expert in a field.  We can do the same for your key staff.

Methods: Blogs — Yours & Others: Dominating the Online Space as an Expert & Generous Contributor. We will get your blog infrastructure and your content production policy established. This involves installation, set-up, and design of the blog software. To drive SEO it is important to get the relevant social bookmarking, ping server, etc. accounts and plug-ins set up and installed.

To further drive SEO, a powerful additional methodology is to mirror your blog content across multiple other blogs on highly-ranked blog hosting sites like blogspot, wordpress.com, etc., or under additional aggregation blogs you may set up under your own domain names.  This process will be automated at the outset and run without human effort thereafter.

Blog Content Creation Policy
We will help your team get the blogging policy right, following best practices in line with the informational guidelines of your company.   There is a clear culture of blogging and respecting and adhering to its norms and expectations will make the difference between you being welcomed as a respected contributor and being mocked as a soulless corporate shill (or an embarrassment and danger to your company).

It is essential to have a clear policy for your company’s bloggers, particularly in terms of outlining and reserving their freedoms as writers.  With a clear understanding by the blogger and by the company of what freedoms are allowed, you avoid cramping, overly-careful, stuffy-sounding, self-censoring while also avoiding cringe-inducing embarrassments of inappropriate disclosure and language.

Blog Content Creation System
The best system of content creation is to have the key staff members whose reputations are to be built writing the blog content themselves — that leads to the most honest, transparent, and bi-directionally informative information exchange. However, sometimes those key staff members simply don’t have the time, inclination, or writing talent to create that content.  In that case a content creation system and methodology must be put in place:

• Hiring or assigning professional bloggers or staffers with good writing abilities to produce the content under their names or
• Establishing a ghost-writing system where topics are suggested (by the writer or the key staffer), concept outline given by key staffer, posting written by the professional writer, posting edited and approved by key staffer, posting proofed by editor (optional), and article posted.

If this route is taken, there are workflow blog softwares that can be put in place and set up to manage this process.

Appearing on Others’ Blogs
By generously contributing to the community via bloggers in your spaces, you can get broad coverage and enjoy the implicit (or explicit) endorsement of these influencers.  We would help you get these content contribution requests by executing a Blogger Outreach. This is done by:

• Giving of yourself in the form of interviews, etc.
• Interviews are excellent relationship-builders that give you direct, personal access to the bloggers and builds up a connection for the future.  Interviews can be given via:
  • Email
  • Chat
  • Phone
  • Podcast (voice)
  • Vlog (video — either onsite or via video VOIP)

This list is by order of “live-ness” of the interview with email being very asynchronous, allowing time to reflect and gather info and Vlog interviews being very live.

Guest blogging by the key staff
Guest blogging is very warmly welcomed since it gives bloggers good content that they don’t have to write themselves, and it makes them look good because they are being honored as a valued platform.

Being a guest blogger gives you coverage on another site, increasing the number of locations you are appearing while giving you total control over your message and while driving your SEO by adding link-backs. Additionally, you get the implicit (or explicit) endorsement of the blogger in front of his readership.

It is important to be writing interesting, engaging content as a guest blogger and avoid presenting something that sounds like a callow pitch.

If the key staff member is not interested or capable of doing the guest blogging, then the ghostwriting approach outlined above can be followed

Podcasting and Vlogging (video blogging)
Podcasting is very much like blogging, but in audio format.  While it is not as SEO-friendly as text-based blogging, it has a stronger “star-quality” effect, as the listeners develop a stronger human connection to the podcaster.    The lower SEO-friendliness can be counteracted by posting transcripts of the podcast along with the podcast itself.

It can be done very simply, but generally it is good to have quality raw audio, a polished intro and outro, and good tone balancing so that the podcast sounds somewhat professional and is auditorily a pleasure to listen to.

We can guide your staff in setting up the recording mechanisms, get your intro/outro composed, and have the raw audio balanced and cut into a finished podcast.

It is also good to have clear, interesting concepts to speak about and an effective style of delivery.  It’s easy to be boring or irritating.

While the ghostwriting approach outlined above can be followed, much more responsibility lies on the key staff member who is recording, since it is a very “live” experience — you cannot read a pre-written article and come across as a compelling Podcaster.

The staff of Abraham Harrison, LLC, can get the transcripts written and assist in the posting of the podcasts and the maintenance of the podcast blog website.

Vlogging follows the same rules as podcasting in regards to production and quality, but the pressure on the “star” is that much more intense.

Abraham Harrison’s staff can guide your staff in getting the recording and production infrastructure set up.

An advantage of vlogging is that it has the even higher “star” effect upon the key staff member doing the vlogging, and the videos can be posted on all the video-sharing sites (dozens) to get more coverage and dominate search results.

We at Abraham Harrison can handle the video asset distribution for you, or train your team in the method.

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

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

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

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.”

In an effort to really get to know the folks who are “in my space” and in the space of my firm, Abraham Harrison, I downloaded the AdAge Power 150 OPML and hacked it into a spreadsheet.  Then, I had my team look up the names and emails behind the 781 blogs of the Power 150. Then, I reached out to all of them, looking to see if we could maybe do something together, may be get to know each other a little bit better. I offered the list I collected for free and offered to help put together some sort of community.  Well, who knows if these things ever work or not; however, we at Abraham Harrison LLC have had a lot of practice at reaching out to bloggers via email on behalf of our clients and earning hundreds of supportive and awesome “earned media” blog posts.  Jon Burg’s Future Vision agrees in his article The difficult art of cold pitching – Chris Abraham’s pitch to the AdAge Power 150.  Thanks, man — I really appreciate the kudos!

the difficult art of cold pitching – Chris Abraham’s pitch to the AdAge Power 150

Call it ePR, blogger outreach/relationship management, networking, social media activation or social marketing…  at it’s heart, this is the practice of speaking with the community;  enlisting bloggers and the community at large, to speak about your efforts and on behalf of your brand.

• If you have a relationship with a blogger, you can leverage this relationship to drive your brand/client.
• If you do not yet have a relationship, you have to start building one.
• If you need something done today, and don’t have a relationship, you need to resort to the daunting cold pitch: pitching your product or service without any prior interaction.
  

Chris Abraham, a noted blogger and popular twitterer, recently sent out a private email message to many of the bloggers on the Ad Age Power 150 list, asking them to register their contact information.

His note was personal, personable and extremely well written.  It felt like he was really speaking to me.  No, he didn’t mention any of my previous posts.  And yes, there is a strong likelihood that this letter was a form letter.  Nevertheless, this letter feels somewhat warm, an incredible accomplishment for a cold pitch.

The Pitch

Hi there Jon

I wanted to reach out to you since you’re a current fellow member of the AdAge Power 150 with Future Visions. Please excuse the form email but there are over 780 current Power 150 members. I am popping you this note for two reasons: first, I would like your help to do something with this list; second, I just want to update you as to what I am up to.

To create this list, I collected the OPML file free off of the Power 150 page on Adage and expanded it into a list with names and emails. I would love to share the list with you so please pop me an email if you would like a copy. I was hoping we might figure out a way to keep in better touch as a group of marketing, PR, and advertising bloggers. Please shoot me any ideas you have. I was thinking we could create a community group to share news, ideas, and opportunities to work together. On that note, I am the president and COO of Abraham Harrison LLC, a firm specializing in social media PR, blogger outreach, online engagement, and online reputation management. I would love to schedule a call so that we can explore possibilities to collaborate.

On a personal note, I have started blogging for AdAge and have had so much fun with that that I am looking to find as many opportunities to blog as I can. Please let me know if you know of anything or if you would like me to guest blog. Also, if you’re in the DC area I would love to get together. To be honest, I would love to meet you the next time I am in your neck of the woods.

Thanks so much and I appreciate your time and attention.  I wish you a very fine 2009 with much luck and success.

Cheers,

Chris
<note: Lots of contact information was provided, but I have deleted it out of concern for Chris’ privacy>

So what do we think?  Is this a cold pitch done right? 

Note: After reading this letter, I’m still unsure of what will be done with my contact information.  Is this being gathered as a closed list/community for AdAge?  Is this a contact list for his firm?  Will my contact information be shared with anyone outside of this community?

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.

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

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

Using ‘social media’

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

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

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

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

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

We have been using Central Desktop now for a while and really love it. It allows Abraham Harrison’s entire distributed team to collaborate and work together. We love it. Well, Abraham Harrison is being featured as one of Central Desktop’s case studies, Successful Global Task Management Across 3 Continents 

Abraham & Harrison’s Biggest wins using Central Desktop:

• Ability to manage a global team across 10 time zones and 4 continents
• Found it to be an unbeatable value and unbeatable workspace system after an extensive 4 month comparison of over 60 tools
• Easy customization for business critical campaign management needs
• 50% faster at finding documents

“We spent 4 months looking and tested 60 different tools before choosing Central Desktop.”- Sara Wilson

What Abraham & Harrison does:

• Online Public Relations
• Online Reputation Management
• Social Media Consulting
• It is an internet based virtual company – everyone works remotely from home

The Problem:

• Could not assign tasks to different groups of users with Basecamp
• Finding documents proved to be nearly impossible before Central Desktop

How Central Desktop Helped:

• Project Workspaces are created for each project
• Wiki Workspaces are created to share information with other team members internally

Central Desktop – Benefits:

• The ability to assign tasks streamlined daily business processes
• Crucial campaign organization can now be done inside the Central Desktop workspace
• Customization options allowed Abraham & Harrison to associate tasks w/milestones
• Task-management tools increased productivity
• Easier search functions and simple email integration saved precious time

Chris Abraham, President and COO of Abraham Harrison, is a leading expert in online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet reputation management. A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and advisor to the industries’ leading firms. He specializes in web2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.

Prior to starting Abraham Harrison, Chris was a member of the Interactive Team at Edelman Public Affairs in Washington, DC, consulting clients such as Wal-Mart, Shell, and GE on blogger and social media strategy. Before Edelman, Chris was Technology Strategist for New Media Strategies, a pioneer in online brand promotion and protection with clients including Sci-Fi Channel, Buena Vista, TomTom, Paramount Pictures, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Disney, Reebok, EA, RCA, and NBC.

In the early nineties, Chris joined The Meta Network, a seminal online virtual community based in Washington, and so began his career as an expert in online community development, social media, social networking, and online collaboration. Chris has had a web presence since 1993 and started blogging in 1999, focusing on community, connection, innovation, and brand extension. As a technologist, Chris has consulted T. Rowe Price, the US Department of Treasury CIO, Friendster, Deutsche Telekom, and others.

Chris has taught blogging courses for the Writer’s Center of Bethesda, has been a guest lecturer on public affairs blogging at Columbia University’s SIPA school and the American University in Washington, DC, and is the Emergent Technologies Advisor to the Urban Institute’s Communications Advisory Board. Additionally, he is the go-to expert on social media, citizen journalism, technology, and the Internet for BBC World Service, CNN Radio, and CNet’s BNet.

Chris received his BA in American Literature from The George Washington University, studied American Literature at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and studied French at the University of Hawaii. He splits his time between Berlin, Germany, and Washington, DC.

Project ID: OZH1P1

Giving starving children food is not enough – the food needs to contain the vitamins, micronutrients, and calories a developing child needs to survive. New ready-to-use food (RUF) provides this. It is individually packaged, is stable in hot climates, does not need to be mixed with water (no risk of contamination), and even tastes good. Children recover in about one month and RUF is cost-effective. With this treatment there is simply no reason for children to die of starvation any more.

A reputable health organization estimates there are 178 million children that are malnourished across the globe, and at any given moment, 20 million who are suffering from the most severe form of malnutrition. Each year, this contributes to between 3.5 and 5 million deaths of children under 5. It is estimated that only 3% of children suffering from malnutrition receive the lifesaving treatment they need.

We’ve all seen so many photographs of malnourished children that it has become a problem that we assume can never be solved. But with RUF, there is no reason for children to die. One organization treated more than 122,000 children in 2007 in 22 countries with nutrient-rich therapeutic and supplementary food. The cure rate for children receiving RUF is more than 90%. Tens of thousands of children could receive life saving RUF in places such as DRC, Ethiopia, Sudan, Niger, and around the world.

A friend in Haiti recently reminded me that children there and many other countries are either dying of malnutrition or given away by their parents because food and medical care is so scare. As a parent in the US, this is heartbreaking. However, the achievable solution to this children’s crisis inspired me to submit this project.

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I would have never guessed that Camille Paglia would be in awe of Sara Palin or perceive her as follows, “Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.” Whoa. (Via Salon.com)

Fresh blood for the vampire

Rip tide! Is the Obama campaign shooting out to sea like a paper boat?

It’s heavy weather for Obama fans, as momentum has suddenly shifted to John McCain — that hoary, barnacle-encrusted tub that many Democrats like me had thought was full of holes and swirling to its doom in the inky depths of Republican incoherence and fratricide. Gee whilikers, the McCain vampire just won’t die! Hit him with a hammer, and he explodes like a jellyfish into a hundred hungry pieces.

Oh, the sadomasochistic tedium of McCain’s imprisonment in Hanoi being told over and over and over again at the Republican convention. Do McCain’s credentials for the White House really consist only of that horrific ordeal? Americans owe every heroic, wounded veteran an incalculable debt of gratitude, but how do McCain’s sufferings in a tiny, squalid cell 40 years ago logically translate into presidential aptitude in the 21st century? Cast him a statue or slap his name on a ship, and let’s turn the damned page.We need a new generation of leadership with fresh ideas and an expansive, cosmopolitan vision — which is why I support Barack Obama and have contributed to his campaign. My baby-boom generation — typified by the narcissistic Clintons — peaked in the 1960s and is seriously past it. But McCain, born before Pearl Harbor, is even older than we are! Why would anyone believe that he holds the key to the future? And why would anyone swallow that preening passel of high-flown rhetoric about “country above all” coming from a seething, short-fused character whose rampant egotism, zigzagging principles, and currying of the gullible press were the distinguishing marks of his senatorial career?

Having said that, I must admit that McCain is currently eating Obama’s lunch. McCain’s weirdly disconnected persona (beady glowers flashing to frozen grins and back again) has started to look more testosterone-rich than Obama’s easy, lanky, reflective candor. What in the world possessed the Obama campaign to let their guy wander like a dazed lamb into a snake pit of religious inquisition like Rick Warren’s public forum last month at his Saddleback Church in California? That shambles of a performance — where a surprisingly unprepared Obama met the inevitable question about abortion with shockingly curt glibness — began his alarming slide.

As I said in my last column, I have become increasingly uneasy about Obama’s efforts to sound folksy and approachable by reflexively using inner-city African-American tones and locutions, which as a native of Hawaii he acquired relatively late in his development and which are painfully wrong for the target audience of rural working-class whites that he has been trying to reach. Obama on the road and even in major interviews has been droppin’ his g’s like there’s no tomorrow. It’s analogous to the way stodgy, portly Al Gore (evidently misadvised by the women in his family and their feminist pals) tried to zap himself up on the campaign trail into the happening buff dude that he was not. Both Gore and Obama would have been better advised to pursue a calm, steady, authoritative persona. Forget the jokes — be boring! That, alas, is what reads as masculine in the U.S.

The over-the-top publicity stunt of a mega-stadium for Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic convention two weeks ago was a huge risk that worried me sick — there were too many things that could go wrong, from bad weather to crowd control to technical glitches on the overblown set. But everything went swimmingly. Obama delivered the speech nearly flawlessly — though I was shocked and disappointed by how little there was about foreign policy, a major area where wavering voters have grave doubts about him. Nevertheless, it was an extraordinary event with an overlong but strangely contemplative and spiritually uplifting finale. The music, amid the needlessly extravagant fireworks, morphed into “Star Wars” — a New Age hymn to cosmic reconciliation and peace.

After that extravaganza, marking the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s epochal civil rights speech on the Washington Mall, I felt calmly confident that the Obama campaign was going to roll like a gorgeous juggernaut right over the puny, fossilized McCain. The next morning, it was as if the election were already over. No need to fret about American politics anymore this year. I had already turned with relief to other matters.

Pow! Wham! The Republicans unleashed a doozy — one of the most stunning surprises that I have ever witnessed in my adult life. By lunchtime, Obama’s triumph of the night before had been wiped right off the national radar screen. In a bold move I would never have thought him capable of, McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his pick for vice president. I had heard vaguely about Palin but had never heard her speak. I nearly fell out of my chair. It was like watching a boxing match or a quarter of hard-hitting football — or one of the great light-saber duels in “Star Wars.” (Here are the two Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, going at it with Darth Maul in “The Phantom Menace.”) This woman turned out to be a tough, scrappy fighter with a mischievous sense of humor.

Conservative though she may be, I felt that Palin represented an explosion of a brand new style of muscular American feminism. At her startling debut on that day, she was combining male and female qualities in ways that I have never seen before. And she was somehow able to seem simultaneously reassuringly traditional and gung-ho futurist. In terms of redefining the persona for female authority and leadership, Palin has made the biggest step forward in feminism since Madonna channeled the dominatrix persona of high-glam Marlene Dietrich and rammed pro-sex, pro-beauty feminism down the throats of the prissy, victim-mongering, philistine feminist establishment.

In the U.S., the ultimate glass ceiling has been fiendishly complicated for women by the unique peculiarity that our president must also serve as commander in chief of the armed forces. Women have risen to the top in other countries by securing the leadership of their parties and then being routinely promoted to prime minister when that party won at the polls. But a woman candidate for president of the U.S. must show a potential capacity for military affairs and decision-making. Our president also symbolically represents the entire history of the nation — a half-mystical role often filled elsewhere by a revered if politically powerless monarch.

As a dissident feminist, I have been arguing since my arrival on the scene nearly 20 years ago that young American women aspiring to political power should be studying military history rather than taking women’s studies courses, with their rote agenda of never-ending grievances. I have repeatedly said that the politician who came closest in my view to the persona of the first woman president was Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose steady nerves in crisis were demonstrated when she came to national attention after the mayor and a gay supervisor were murdered in their City Hall offices in San Francisco. Hillary Clinton, with her schizophrenic alteration of personae, has never seemed presidential to me — and certainly not in her bland and overpraised farewell speech at the Democratic convention (which skittered from slow, pompous condescension to trademark stridency to unseemly haste).

Feinstein, with her deep knowledge of military matters, has true gravitas and knows how to shrewdly thrust and parry with pesky TV interviewers. But her style is reserved, discreet, mandarin. The gun-toting Sarah Palin is like Annie Oakley, a brash ambassador from America’s pioneer past. She immediately reminded me of the frontier women of the Western states, which first granted women the right to vote after the Civil War — long before the federal amendment guaranteeing universal woman suffrage was passed in 1919. Frontier women faced the same harsh challenges and had to tackle the same chores as men did — which is why men could regard them as equals, unlike the genteel, corseted ladies of the Eastern seaboard, which fought granting women the vote right to the bitter end.

Over the Labor Day weekend, with most of the big enchiladas of the major media on vacation, the vacuum was filled with a hallucinatory hurricane in the leftist blogosphere, which unleashed a grotesquely lurid series of allegations, fantasies, half-truths and outright lies about Palin. What a tacky low in American politics — which has already caused a backlash that could damage Obama’s campaign. When liberals come off as childish, raving loonies, the right wing gains. I am still waiting for substantive evidence that Sarah Palin is a dangerous extremist. I am perfectly willing to be convinced, but right now, she seems to be merely an optimistic pragmatist like Ronald Reagan, someone who pays lip service to religious piety without being in the least wedded to it. I don’t see her arrival as portending the end of civil liberties or life as we know it.

One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil). Like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Manhattan and Washington occupy their own mental zones — nice to visit but not a place to stay if you value independent thought these days. Ambitious professionals in those cities, if they want to preserve their social networks, are very vulnerable to received opinion. At receptions and parties (which I hate), they’re sitting ducks. They have to go along to get along — poor dears!

It is certainly premature to predict how the Palin saga will go. I may not agree a jot with her about basic principles, but I have immensely enjoyed Palin’s boffo performances at her debut and at the Republican convention, where she astonishingly dealt with multiple technical malfunctions without missing a beat. A feminism that cannot admire the bravura under high pressure of the first woman governor of a frontier state isn’t worth a warm bucket of spit.

Perhaps Palin seemed perfectly normal to me because she resembles so many women I grew up around in the snow belt of upstate New York. For example, there were the robust and hearty farm women of Oxford, a charming village where my father taught high school when I was a child. We first lived in an apartment on the top floor of a farmhouse on a working dairy farm. Our landlady, who was as physically imposing as her husband, was an all-American version of the Italian immigrant women of my grandmother’s generation — agrarian powerhouses who could do anything and whose trumpetlike voices could pierce stone walls.

Here’s one episode. My father and his visiting brother, a dapper barber by trade, were standing outside having a smoke when a great noise came from the nearby barn. A calf had escaped. Our landlady yelled, “Stop her!” as the calf came careening at full speed toward my father and uncle, who both instinctively stepped back as the calf galloped through the mud between them. Irate, our landlady trudged past them to the upper pasture, cornered the calf, and carried that massive animal back to the barn in her arms. As she walked by my father and uncle, she exclaimed in amused disgust, “Men!”

Now that’s the Sarah Palin brand of can-do, no-excuses, moose-hunting feminism — a world away from the whining, sniping, wearily ironic mode of the establishment feminism represented by Gloria Steinem, a Hillary Clinton supporter whose shameless Democratic partisanship over the past four decades has severely limited American feminism and not allowed it to become the big tent it can and should be. Sarah Palin, if her reputation survives the punishing next two months, may be breaking down those barriers. Feminism, which should be about equal rights and equal opportunity, should not be a closed club requiring an ideological litmus test for membership.

Here’s another example of the physical fortitude and indomitable spirit that Palin as an Alaskan sportswoman seems to represent right now. Last year, Toronto’s Globe and Mail reprinted this remarkable obituary from 1905:

Abigail Becker Farmer and homemaker born in Frontenac County, Upper Canada, on March 14, 1830

A tall, handsome woman “who feared God greatly and the living or dead not at all,” she married a widower with six children and settled in a trapper’s cabin on Long Point, Lake Erie. On Nov. 23, 1854, with her husband away, she single-handedly rescued the crew of the schooner Conductor of Buffalo, which had run aground in a storm. The crew had clung to the frozen rigging all night, not daring to enter the raging surf. In the early morning, she waded chin-high into the water (she could not swim) and helped seven men reach shore. She was awarded medals for heroism and received $350 collected by the people of Buffalo, plus a handwritten letter from Queen Victoria that was accompanied by £50, all of which went toward buying a farm. She lost her husband to a storm, raised 17 children alone and died at Walsingham Centre, Ont.

Frontier women were far bolder and hardier than today’s pampered, petulant bourgeois feminists, always looking to blame their complaints about life on someone else.

But what of Palin’s pro-life stand? Creationism taught in schools? Book banning? Gay conversions? The Iraq war as God’s plan? Zionism as a prelude to the apocalypse? We’ll see how these big issues shake out. Right now, I don’t believe much of what I read or hear about Palin in the media. To automatically assume that she is a religious fanatic who has embraced the most extreme ideas of her local church is exactly the kind of careless reasoning that has been unjustly applied to Barack Obama, whom the right wing is still trying to tar with the fulminating anti-American sermons of his longtime preacher, Jeremiah Wright.

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.

Let’s take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter. As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice. Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body. (Hence I favor the legalization of drugs, though I do not take them.) Nevertheless, I have criticized the way that abortion became the obsessive idée fixe of the post-1960s women’s movement — leading to feminists’ McCarthyite tactics in pitting Anita Hill with her flimsy charges against conservative Clarence Thomas (admittedly not the most qualified candidate possible) during his nomination hearings for the Supreme Court. Similarly, Bill Clinton’s support for abortion rights gave him a free pass among leading feminists for his serial exploitation of women — an abusive pattern that would scream misogyny to any neutral observer.

But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, “Sexual Personae,”) has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature’s fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman’s body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman’s entrance into society and citizenship.

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

What I am getting at here is that not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.

The gigantic, instantaneous coast-to-coast rage directed at Sarah Palin when she was identified as pro-life was, I submit, a psychological response by loyal liberals who on some level do not want to open themselves to deep questioning about abortion and its human consequences. I have written about the eerie silence that fell over campus audiences in the early 1990s when I raised this issue on my book tours. At such moments, everyone in the hall seemed to feel the uneasy conscience of feminism. Naomi Wolf later bravely tried to address this same subject but seems to have given up in the face of the resistance she encountered.

If Sarah Palin tries to intrude her conservative Christian values into secular government, then she must be opposed and stopped. But she has every right to express her views and to argue for society’s acceptance of the high principle of the sanctity of human life. If McCain wins the White House and then drops dead, a President Palin would have the power to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, but she could not control their rulings.

It is nonsensical and counterproductive for Democrats to imagine that pro-life values can be defeated by maliciously destroying their proponents. And it is equally foolish to expect that feminism must for all time be inextricably wed to the pro-choice agenda. There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism — one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired.

But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.

Camille Paglia’s column appears on the second Wednesday of each month. Every third column is devoted to reader letters. Please send questions for her next letters column to this mailbox. Your name and town will be published unless you request anonymity.

My business partner and CEO, Mark Harrison, boiled our, Abraham Harrison’s, elevator speech down into bullet points.  Let me know what you think!

• Abraham Harrison, LLC is a Public Relations company dealing solely in online media
  • AHLLC has two practices: Promotional online PR, and Defensive online PR
    1. Promotional online PR is about getting the client’s message out
       1. Three methodologies:
          1. Top-down Online Influencer Outreach
             • Blogger and community gatekeeper outreach in order to get those influencers to be the mouthpieces for our clients.
               • We do the elite A-lister high-touch, personal relationship management
               • And B-Z lister “long-tail” outreach
          2. Social Networking Site (SNS) presence creation and management
             • Creation, development, and upkeep of profiles, groups, and friend relationships
          3. Bottom-up Online Conversation Engagement
             • Going to where the conversations are happening online (in forums, newsgroups, blog comments, etc.) and directly engaging the conversation that is happening online.
    2. Defensive online PR is essentially crisis management
       1. Two methodologies:
          1. Making bad stuff disappear: Online Reputation Clean-up/Search Results Cleansing
             • Establishing client’s hegemony over their search engine results and making the negative content a “needle in a haystack”
          2. Countering bad stuff too big to make disappear: Direct Misinformation Correction via Online Conversation Engagement
             • Finding negative conversation online and engaging it in order to bring the client’s message into the dialogue
             • Quiet and/or neutralize vitriol by bringing the detractors into positive relationship

If you are interested in an online reputation management, defensive SEO, reputation defense campaign, please call us at +1 202-657-4769 or email us at info@chrisabraham.com, and we’ll be more than happy to help you!

Abraham Harrison Online Reputation Management and Defense Services

When it comes down to it, reputation defense and crisis management demands engagement: resistance is futile. Here’s some excellent advice from Local Advertising Journal about the risks and rewards of Online Reputation Management: Eliminate the Negative:

A negative review of your business or product is detrimental to your online reputation, but if it is managed correctly you can negate some of its worst impacts. When you find a negative review about your business, under no circumstances should you knee-jerk a reply defending your business. This can quickly devolve into a nasty thread of replies that will in perpetuity online, for anyone to read. You would not want have a heated argument in front of your customers in public, and make no mistake, an online post war is public indeed.

This is an excellent addition to what I have written in the past about online reputation defense and management:

Some things to consider when you’re cleaning negative returns on Google and the other search engines: cleaning is easier after the body has been removed. If you are in the middle of a maelstrom of bad press and online vitriolic hatred, then you probably need to weather the storm for a while before the counter messaging and the defensive SEO strategy starts working.

That said, messaging, controlling your brand, your reputation, and your results on Google — promotional SEO — should be started well before you ever get smeared online. Getting your message, your intent, your true self, your words, you interests, your true bio, your positive images, your press packets, and everything you have ever published online well before sladerous things happen is essential.

Otherwise, you will be too vulnerable. The best defense is a fantastic offense, to be sure.

One thing that one really needs to consider before entering into a reputation war is whether or not to engage at all.  One thing that I learned during my short stay at Edelman was that the very best PR consultants know when not to engage.  That’s the magic.

Also, if you have a choice, to not engage the attack unless it is in your own terms. If you enter into an engagement in the other party’s terms, you are doomed to failure. Most often, no matter how tempting it may be, do not try to do crisis management in a blogger’s comments unless you have an attitude of mea maxima culpa and a strong solution — a solution that will seriously win hearts and minds — and that does not include being defensive or fighting back.

What I recommend in cases like this is counter-messaging, using either a platform you control or a neutral platform, such as YouTube, Twitter, Digg or whatnot.  In this way, you will be able to convey your truths and the truths of your company and brand without getting to wrapped up in the tarbaby of the commenters and supporters who will, undoubtedly, flock around you like Piranha.

Otherwise, as I said before, no time like the present to start working up your online brand reputation with some of your own energy, positivity, passion, case studies, bios, experience, sharing, teaching, participating, engaging, and learning well before anything happens in your space, online or otherwise.

When it comes down to it, it all comes down to whether you’re known or unknown. If you are attempting to defend your reputation as an Internet unknown against an Internet Celeb, you’re toast and you probably need to quickly contact me and my firm right away — things are going to get ugly fast.  Even if you’re known but not necessarily adored, you will still be part of the accountability loop. People tend not to attack someone they know. If you can make sure your “captors” know your face and know who you are, you’re more likely to survive any sort of slander and online attack much more than a nameless, faceless, and detached corporate globalist.

I don’t know if you’ve been online much, but the worst thing ever to be online is a detached corporate globalist. Even if you and your brand has a history of tending towards detached corporate globalism, you can at least become an engaged corporate localist with the name Jack or Phil or Mike or Sheila, and that’s better that just being a Trademark, a Copyright, and a pack of hungry lawyers!

Abraham Harrison LLC’s Online Reputation Management Defense Services

You are not helpless in the face of negative search results. A directed, well-executed, diligent campaign will place your desired results high in the list, pushing undesirable results down to irrelevant pages where the majority of Internet users do not bother to look. 90% of searchers never look past the first page — i.e. the first 10 results. 99% of searchers never look beyond the second page. We will work to get the undesirable results as far from those first two pages as possible.

At Abraham Harrison, LLC, our proven and well-refined methods as well as our long-established credibility gives us particular efficacy in influencing top search results. We don’t engage the negative results, as this actually makes them more attractive to the search engines. We employ an assortment of tactics to chaff and flare, to draw the search engines’ attention to positive and neutral results, and away from the problematic negative results .

It is not possible to make information on the Internet disappear unless the people who put the information online in the first place take it back down again — even then, the data is often mirrored elsewhere or cached and re-served by the likes of Google and The Wayback Machine. The method is to make the undesirable results needles in haystacks — it can be there, but only people really intent on finding it will come across it.

An online search results sanitization campaign is a long-term commitment, much like treating a cancer. It begins with a period of intense assault on the problem to beat the negatives down followed by a on-going low-level maintenance regime to keep them down. A campaign is heavily front-loaded with the ongoing maintenance being very low cost — we can also turn those maintenance operations over to you, together with any infrastructure, content, and domain names we may have set up during the campaign.

Unlike many other companies in this field, we have no interest in holding you hostage over the years by keeping control of the mechanisms of the treatment. We are happy to turn that over to you once we get you in the clear, or if you prefer, provide you the service of keeping up the defense, however you prefer.

An online search results sanitization campaign requires subtlety convincing the search engines that what they previously believed — i.e. that the currently highly-ranked negative results are indeed some of the most valuable and relevant results — is no longer true, and that the neutral and positive content that we identify or create is far more valuable and relevant and therefore should rank highly, pushing the negative results down into the obscurity of lower rankings.

This requires a bit of time, 6-8 weeks of concerted effort generally, to get results moving away from where the search engines have long believed them legitimately to stand, toward the new state that we desire, with those negative results far below the neutral and positive ones.

Once we get the results moving and out of stasis, we keep them moving until we are happy with the results, then maintain them in place, so that the negative results (which naturally have their own legitimacy in the eyes of the search engines) do not move back up again. It is a bit like braces on a child’s teeth which are then followed by a retainer that keeps them straight and prevents them from slipping back to their original crooked state.

Even the largest, well-known companies have used defensive SEO tactics in the face of crisis and unfavorable publicity. It works for them, and it will work for you. Negative search results are a controllable problem that can be solved with diligence and know-how. Unlike other common types of crises, negative search results will not disappear without action. However, unfavorable publicity that you may have received years ago that is still affecting perceptions about your brand can be dealt with and have its negative impact neutralized.

We have resolved difficult SEO solutions — probably far worse than yours – in the past and come out on top. With our vast network and effective systems, we are able to provide an viable, permanent solution to most online reputation problems, and we will help with yours as well.

Generally, campaigns run a year, with the bulk of the effort in the first 4 months. After the first five to six months have passed and we have achieved a stable new order with the negative results well-buried, we will be happy to turn the maintenance over to you, if you wish, or we can continue to maintain the defensive systems for you until the end of the year.  After the first year, we’re happy to continue monitoring your online reputation and maintaining your defensive systems for as long as you choose to retain our services.

That said, all of the work, all the domain names, and all the IP we generate for you is yours and we’re happy to turn it over to you if you like, after the year-long contract is completed.

Abraham Harrison, LLC, bills on a retainer basis, i.e. at the beginning of the month before beginning operations. As mentioned, the effort, and the billing is front-loaded to allow an aggressive attack to beat down the negative results soundly, then backing off over time focusing over more on the lower-resource work of stabilizing the results in order to allow you to save money.