In my mind, from my time as a child (too young to watch it first-run, but my parents did) and through repeats and syndication (it was on every evening in Honolulu growing up) and through its 1972-1977 run of 251 episodes of M*A*S*H, starting from season one, disc one from Netflix.

This show haunts me but is sort of like my glory days in high school, maybe my memories are clouded by my parents’ love for M*A*S*H and its merry pranksters, Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, John Patrick Francis Mulcahy, Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan, Maxwell Q. Klinger, John Francis Xavier “Trapper” McIntyre, Henry Braymore Blake, Franklin Marion “Frank” Burns, Walter Eugene “Radar” O’Reilly, B. J. Hunnicutt, Sherman Tecumseh Potter, and Charles Emerson Winchester III.

Well, I finished the first disc of, I think 7 episodes, including the pilot and I must say that the show started off on blocks, sprinting away from the pilot.  I am so excited about watching the show in broadcast order because, as you know, watching old series like this is a nonlinear and atemporal experience, from Trapper to B.J., from Blake to Potter, from Frank to Charles — completely without self-consciousness.

Anyway, thanks to DVDs individually mailed to me in Portland, over time, by Netflix, I will have seen all the episodes of MASH at some point in the future and I am pretty sure my life will be changed when this is over.  The only thing I can say to you millennial whipper-snappers — and to many folks my age who were out of the loop — is that watching the entire five-years of M.A.S.H. in order should be your queue after you get through Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Freaks & Geeks, and Undeclared.

I have Lost in Translation playing on the TV in the background, recorded off of HBO, I guess, onto DVR.

It really is one of the best movies ever, in my humble estimation.  Sofia Coppola gets a lot of shit, I guess, for being the daughter of Francis Ford, but her talents are profound.  She understands negative space.

She understand the pregnant pause.  She understands ambiance and naturalism.

The most gorgeous moments of Lost are environmental.

That and the willingness and shamelessness of the camera to fetish the impossibly young and ethereal Scarlett Johansson.

Virtually no makeup, a shaggy head of hair, and the pleasantly apropos preppy kit she probably brought with her, un-stylishly, to Japan from Yale, which fit in beautifully, of course, in the school girl-obsessed Tokyo: flat canvas shoes, peacoat, a little girl’s clear plastic brolly.

And, though Sofia is obsessed with Scarlett as a possessed, out-of-context, wild thing in a cultural alien landscape bereft of appropriate levels of appreciation and adoration, she is also obsessed with Bill Murray.

Every crag of his face, every arch of his brow, every flyaway hair on his receding hairline.  She is fascinated with Bill and Scarlett equally — with the sort of emotional detachment proffered by a German nature documentary.

They’re like wild things in a wilderness that is actually a wilderness park.

They’re like two alien life forms contained in what their captors how are good enough manifestations of their natural environment.

But in this Japan, in this particular containment in Tokyo, it is not through luxury or pleasure or even their family that they find the courage to finally venture into alien land and find their comfort and joy and safety in and through each other.

Can you find a home in someone else’s simulacrum?

Can the simulacra become one’s home?

Yes, but only through another.

I love this movie.

Universally, the biggest gasp I get when I meet people new to marketing, PR, or advertising is that most ad copy is restricted to a 6th grade reading level.

I am going to use this blog post to reassure everyone that writing simply should mean writing elegantly and not writing simplistically, resulting in young adult fiction.

While the reading ease is kept simple, we’re generally not writing to appeal to 12-year-olds.

One of the biggest challenges that writers have across all disciplines is with interpretation. While ambiguity and nuance is favored by poets and novelists, creating copy that isn’t concise, clear, and succinct is a disservice to my clients.

What is required, at least online and when engaging bloggers, is messaging that endures the obligatory game of telephone that always happens when sharing between people. If you’ve never heard of telephone, I thought I would share this from Wikipedia:

The first player whispers a phrase or sentence to the next player. Each player successively whispers what that player believes he or she heard to the next. The last player announces the statement to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first.

Social media is essentially a game of telephone, so it is critical to make sure the last player receives as intact a message as possible, no matter who is in the chain.

No matter their background, native tongue, education, gender, cultural heritage, age, or disposition, our most important job is creating messaging that both injects a durable copy into the mind and consciousness of the consumer while also making it past the client’s review.

It isn’t easy, to be sure. If I choose a word that someone isn’t familiar with, they generally won’t take the time to explore the OED—not because of intellect but because people are busy, people have limited time and attention, and we don’t have them on salary.

The time we have with them is generally limited to five minutes from opening an email pitch to when a blogger clicks on [Post] on their blog.

Gustave Flaubert was fastidious in his devotion to finding the right word, le mot juste, and so should we be because when you’re able to spend a little time distilling your message, the client’s message, or your company’s mission, then you’ll probably learn quite a lot about yourself as well as how you’re perceived.

I had been using the word premasticate in my talks about blogger outreach and online messaging because I like to think about how the kiss was developed, in a time before Gerber’s when baby food was made by a mother who would pre-chew food for her child.

I also like to think of sea birds going out to sea, fishing for smelt, and then coming back and feeding their chicks through regurgitation. I loved these visuals and it always amused classes when I did my Blue-footed Booby mating dance (pictured above) and subsequent feeding of chicks as marketing metaphor. However, I now know that the visual is vile and is often considered infantilizing to bloggers.

Like I said, I am always listening and always learning. Progress not perfection.

When you think carefully about your core message, think about not just the ideas but also the consumability of each word (6th or 7th grade reading ease), you also realize that thinking this way can also be very useful for organic SEO and search.

How? Well, when you consider every word, you’ll start to think about how other people read and comprehend your brand. Have you ever listened to an interview of someone who has a highly-technical job?

Their responses tend to include acronyms, nicknames, and references that are only understandable by other scientists, politicians, engineers, doctors, and lawyers. A good interviewer asks what those acronyms means, slows the interviewee down, asks them to explain what they’re saying.

They call this unpacking your thinking, or layman’s terms.

Google runs on layman’s terms—all search does. And because search engines don’t use thesauri and are painfully explicit, it’s important to broaden your choice of words (search keywords).

For example, a television is also popularly called a TV, a flatscreen, a plasma, a big screen, an HDTV—even a boob tube and idiot box. If you don’t include them all in your online copy—if you don’t know the potential lingua fanca of everyone, you really had better cover your bases.

In summary, the resulting “simple” of any copy you write for general consumption should be as accessible as possible—not simplistic. More like Hemingway—to the marrow—rather than of a lower fidelity.

Writing like this requires and demands that we, instead, work harder, become more concise, and distill the larger prose, copy, corpus, text, into something more essential, more easily and universally comprehensible and intact.

It demands the we bear the brunt of the load, do all the hard work, instead of depending on others to parse what we’re on about.

And, on that note, I am well aware that I didn’t follow any of my rules while writing this post. Let me know if I should have.

Via Marketing Conversation via Socialmedia.biz via Biznology

Image by wstera2 via Flickr

Since there’s so much going on online, post Osama bin Laden‘s death in Pakistan, in memoriam of the attacks on September 11th, I wanted to add my personal memories as culled from my blog entries from 9/11 and the week or so afterwards. As close to real-time reporting of the moment as I have:

Driving the Jeep Home
Posted Sep 11, 2002 – 09:29 AM

I must have spent some time with Michelle, as she was under the weather, because on my drive back from Michelle’s pad in Dupont, I had the windows rolled down and Morning Edition on the radio. It was then that I heard about the 0850 and 0904 crashes into the World Trade Center. First into the first Twin Tower (as I knew them) and then the second, respectively.

The weather was pristine, in the low 80′s like it is today, and I had the windows down and the radio was on loud. I looked over to other drivers and we shared looks. The looks were not terror, they were not panic, they were not any of those things. They were not even numb, dumb looks. They were looks of incredulousness. Disbelief. Dumfounded.

There were rumors of all sorts of things at that moment. There had been no sort of anything in DC yet, but there were rumors that there was a bomb in the State Depeartment.

At this time, 9:30, I was driving fast down Massachusetts Avenue, returning from a night’s sleepover with my ex-girlfriend, Michelle.

I was staying there because I has double-booked my apartment and as there was a bed for Isabelle and a bed for Kate, I was either sleeping on the love seat (I am 6’3″) or in the bed of a friend. Michelle was my friend. Michelle is my friend. So are Kate and Isa.

Lincoln Park and the Explosion
Posted Sep 11, 2002 – 09:35 AM

I returned to the Hill, and was rounding Lincoln park, on 11th Street, SE, and I heard an enormous, muffled, but distant blast. There were rumors on the radio that there was a bomb at the State Department. Michelle works at the State Department.

I hit the gas and hustled home to Isabelle, to Kate, to the television and to the phone so that I could call Michelle to see if she was okay.

Before the blast, I was in the Jeep, listening to Morning Edition on the radio. I was returning to my home office. I had the windows down and saw everyone in the other cars with looks of disbelief in their faces. My face must have been similar.

When the day began, I woke up in bed with my Ex, Michelle. She had let me spend the night because I had double-booked my pad and needed someplace to crash. She was sick so she didn’t plan on going to work in the Library of the Department of State.

Upon Arrival at the Grotto
Posted Sep 11, 2002 – 12:03 PM

Upon returning to the Grotto, my pad, I joined Kate and Isa on the blue Ikea loveseat. They were hunched over, squinting at the little Sony 19″ TV with all their might. The room was dark. Kate told me my mom had called to tell me what was going on. When she called, Kate and Isa had turned on the TV. Neither of them watches. Only my obsessive NPR-listening kept me informed as returned from Michelle’s.

It was really only then did I recognize what was going on in NYC. It was only then, as they alternated between live news feeds and the looping looping looping footage of the crash crash crash of the two planes into what knew as the twin towers, but now learned were called Tower One and Tower Two of the World Trade Center.

I had been in New York city just about a month previous. I had been staying in Brooklyn in Anne and Ian’s apartment. While they were gone. When they returned, I commuted into the City with Anne. She works for Moody’s. Ian works for the Port Authority. She worked right next to the WTC towers and he, Ian, worked in them.

We had walked from their gorgeous walkup apartment in Brooklyn to the Subway. It was only a short ride to the Subway right there at the WTC. I walked Anne to her building, gave her a hug and a kiss, and then headed uptown to the trains back to DC.

I wrote this first weblog entry the week before visiting Anne, Ian, Marlise, Minna, and Mark; I wrote this second weblog entry the week after.

Funny that. It bears no importance that I was at the towers a little over one month before the terrorist events of 9-11, but I hadn’t realized it.

Collecting My Family
Posted Sep 11, 2002 – 12:20 PM

When I realized the import of what was going on, I called Michelle Nolan, my recent Ex, and told her that I was jumping into the Jeep and dashing back over to Dupont so that I could collect her from her 10th floor condo, right up the street from the State Department and relatively close to the Executive Branch. And she lives in a Studio apartment, one wall of which is glass. And she lives with our dog Suzi.

So although she didn’t want to come at first, I sped over there anyway. To collect her. To collect them. Big Little Erz and Little Little Erz.

There was a lot of traffic forming. There were the first signs of the military. I hustled up 13th, and then made it up to Florida and cut around above the city center and after some nasty jams, I made it in to Dupont and there was Miss Michelle and Miss Suzi, all packed up and ready to bail.

I got her in the car. As I said before, she was feeling sick anyway. She was looking kind of out of it; I knew I was kind of out of it. It didn’t matter. When I need to perform, I always do, thank God.

As I recall, there were already Hummers at some of the corners downtown, so I avoided downtown again. I tried my best to do the circuit, but as I recall, I believe I tool Mass Ave mostly.

When we got into the Grotto — Suzi, Kate, Michelle, Isa, and I — I felt better. And by that time, Anita was back home and her crew were starting to drink some beers. Isa had made plans to bail town to the ‘burbs to avoid the inevitable, I was blogging and sending emails on the kitchen table, Michelle and Kate were glued to the TV, and Suzi was just chillin’. She’s good like that.

Of course, the towers fell. The fell and many people didn’t get out. And there is something wrong when the rescuers need rescue.

By noon, Kate and I headed over to Al’s to grab some ‘za.

And, then there was the plane, hijacked, and apparently on its way to the White House. And then there was the report of it going down in a field in Central Pennsylvania.

And the day passed.

Washington (and America) Under Siege.
Posted Sep 11, 2001 – 11:10 AM

This morning at 0850 a jetliner crashed into the World Trade Center. Then another. Then a jetliner crashed into the Pentagon. A car bomb at State. A fire at the Old Executive Office building. I heard an explosion on the way home from Dupont. I guess it was the State Department. The towers collapsed. There is a jetliner on route to DC. It is hijacked. A 747 crashed in Western PA. Part of the Pentagon is collapsed. All federal buildings have been evacuated. F-16s are scrambled. The two towers are collapsed at the World Trade Center. What are you doing right now? Are you okay? What were you doing when the initial terrorist action was perpetrated?

Washington Gridlocked and Panicked.
Posted Sep 11, 2001 – 02:01 PM

Union Station is closed down, for obvious reasons. 395 in Virginia is as well. I was just on the road picking my friend up from Dupont so she would not be alone, so I know that 16th street up to Bethesda is locked, so is New York Avenue, Rhode Island, Mass Ave, and obviously downtown. I have decided not to leave the city, as this probably won’t go NBC, so I am staying put.

People are blowing through red lights and stop signs. Emergency Vehicles are stranded in traffic.

I recommend leaving your windows open so that you can hear sirens and horns

The routes out of the city are mad and gridlocked but most folks who are home are eating lunch right now at the stores and restaurants around the hill.

Don’t panic. Stay at home. Slow and stop for pedestrians. Give blood. Respect the authority of the street cops as they direct you, if you will be on the road.

Be safe.

Friends, Please Check In!
Posted Sep 11, 2001 – 2:33 PM

If you are here, you might know me. First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to offer my condolences to those who are suffering, are injured, or have died, and their friends and family.

Secondly, please click on the “comments?” link below and let me know if you are okay? Or if you want or need to talk about this.

My Experience of Wednesday’s Terrorism in DC
Posted Sep 11, 2001 – 03:42 PM

Egad!

I found out on the way back home this morning from a friend’s house. On NPR. At 0930. Washington was hit by an AA jet — the Pentagon.

I left the windows open when I was driving. I drove across town twice today, once from Dupont at 0930 and once at around 1130.

Each cross street was dangerous because there was a cascade of Emergency vehicles. I left the doors open because of Emergency vehicles as well as cop cars. I kept my windows open because people were blowing through stoplights and stop signs.

Union Station is locked down. When I dropped Isa off there, all trains were ceased and Jersey Barriers. The sky was and is clear, bright blue, and earily quiet.

There is not a plane in the sky.

Southwest of here, there is a waft of dark smoke. I assume it is the Pentagon.

All the roads out of town are gridlocked and I am hoping that there is not a second round.

The entire city is evacuated. There have been many revisions of what had happened: car bomb at the State Dept., Old Executive Office Building on fire. Something going on at the White House.

Right now, the skyline of Manhattan is completely different and Washington a panicked and ornery.

The Pentagon is still partially collapsed and the full extent of the attack — the force of its ripple; the reaction to a definite action — is still to be revealed. Is everyone okay? Is Anne and her fiancé Ian okay? Others in Gov’t and Finance?

Well, I know that Mark, Michelle, Diane, Cheryl, Suzi, and Kate are okay. How about the rest of you. Lots of love and Godspeed!

Chris Abraham

Normalish
Posted Sep 13, 2001 – 06:02 PM

I just drove out to Target on rt 1. The car’s batts were acting funny, so I wanted to get a charge on, so I went to Target so that I could buy a can opener and some laundry detergernt and dishwashing machine liquid.

I didn’t see the damage to the Pentagon. What side was it on? Anyway, aside from the a little more intensity with regards the police presence, all the roads are open and I could even travel up Independence back to the pad.

Its very weird to see it heal at least superficially so darn quickly. There are roads closed off, but I don’t see the National Guard or anything.

Chez Michelle
Posted Sep 11, 2002 – 07:30 AM

A year ago this morning at 0719, 11 September 2001, I woke up with Michelle. Michelle had recently moved out of our shared apartment and into her new condo in the Chandra Levy building in deepest, darkest Dupont, Washington, DC, US.

Michelle felt sick. I got up, had some water, used the loo, and then left the little Studio flat with our dog. I walked Suzi up to P Street, grabbed Michelle some food from the convenience store. The kind of care package one collects for a friend who is under the weather. As everyone knows, I always over-buy. She could have camped out in her little apartment, under the covers, for a week on my supplies.

Chris Abraham Online 9-11

Employee number one and the Poet Laureate of Abraham Harrison, Sir Phillip Rhoades of Fulton, wrote the most amazing anti-advice post ever that is so funny — and really what everyone in the space is actually doing too much of — that my eyes are bleeding — 10 Essential Tips For Failing At Social Media Business:

Plenty of people out there are giving you the down low on how to manage your social media presence successfully, but that can lead to some serious repercussions! Improved brand coverage, more business, and worst of all – more work! No one wants more work and that’s all “more business” is after all. So for those of you who want to make sure you reduce your work load this year, I have these 10 essential tips for failing at social media business:

1. Only reach out to A-listers, because you want to make sure you have all of your eggs in one basket and that when they all turn you down that you have no recourse and no resources left to reach out to the B-listers. After all, who cares about the thousands and thousands of people that follow the B-listers. They’re all just B-people anyway.
2. There’s no reason to rush a response. People online have all the time in the world. They are all just a bunch of jobless, socially inept, timewasters anyway. They don’t need you to respond in an hour or anything like that. A month or two should be just fine!
3. Being online is just like being at home on your couch in your underwear. Treat every single interaction as if you’re just yelling at the TV. None of those people online are real and it’s not like they feel emotional pain or anything.
4. If someone gets angry with you just threaten them with lawyers and knee-cappings. It totally can’t go wrong. Better yet, send lawyers to commit knee-cappings! Yes!
5. Keep as much of the conversation in the dark as possible. Always start a phone call or email thread as soon as possible. Especially if you’re actually helping someone. If people see you helping someone then they might get the wrong idea about your company. They might think it’s a friendly and helpful company. That would mean more business and more business means more work! No one wants more work. Screw that.
6. Never ever turn a support request into a conversation. Conversations lead to warm fuzzy feelings of emotional connection with your brand, which of course leads to more business! We already know from rule 5, more business is more work! No good will come of it!
7. Always tell people asking stupid questions to google it. In fact be extra abrasive and send them a link like this: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Abraham+Harrison+LLC which is awesome because it shows them how easy it is to search for something. This way they feel the sting of the insult that much more. Huzzah! Less business and less work! (Also, all questions are stupid questions)
8. Be as mean, curt, and condescending as possible. How dare these people bring their baggage into a conversation with you about your brand! Make sure to unload with some baggage of your own.
9. Make sure to make a lot of promises that you can’t possibly keep. Make these promises publicly and often. Then come up with the flimsiest excuses to defend not following up. Examples include: “Corporate says no”, “We lost the paperwork”, “I never said that”, and “Really this is all your fault because blah blah blah”.
10. You’re off the hook the minute you stop communicating so keep communication at a minimum. Only communicate in the most basic and simple ways. Most importantly, NEVER offer a solution, especially one that actually works. If you solve people’s problems then they won’t learn. . . learn to leave you alone so you can enjoy some peace and quiet that is! Solving problems can only lead to more business and more work! No one wants that.

Well, there’s my extremely bad advice. If you follow these tips your social media presence is sure to be doomed, business will decrease, and you’ll have so little work that you’ll wonder how you ever had so much before.

That’s how many I have! Come join me over at FourSquare: foursquare.com/chrisabraham

What does this mean for Carrie Ann Inaba‘s clout if she’s coming to Fort Wayne, IN?  Either way, she’s doing it for breast cancer.

I think it means she’s a super-hard worker and far from a princess. I think she’s maximizing her current valuation and doing an honest-to-goodness grass roots pitch to where her fans live and breathe. I also think they showed her the money.

Only had a late-night two hours from 9pm-11pm tonight, Tuesday. Listened to some No Agenda and some Coast-to-Coast AM on podcast while trying to walk as fast as I wanted.  Night was cool and I enjoyed the walk. Via Jockular Athletic Blog

Mark promised me that Berlin was high-culture, high-brow, and intellectual. However, check out the signage here for Sex and the City 2, dubbed into German.

What’s more, on the message boards and on Facebook, sophisticated German and expat women are, city-wide, organizing girls nights out to consume the exploits of Carrie and her friends and her over-sexed and hyper-drama lifes and “loves.” Also, note the Marmaduke sign to the left of the SatC poster.

Poor Germany and poor Europe — they’re becoming as banal & mundane as we!

• Zattoo – watch online TV
• ARD.de – Homepage
• zdf.com: home
• Deutschsprachiges Radio und Fernsehen Live auf dem Web
• German Language Television Broadcasts
• Television
• German Links – German Language Learning Resources Online – German Culture Resources – Websites on German Language & Culture
• TV ZAP – TV Guide, Television Schedules, and Program Listings – Germany, Switzerland and Austria
• German Language News and Magazines: Foreign Language News and Newspapers: MIT Libraries
• Yabla German – German Immersion TV
  (tags: german video languages online tv language education elearning)
• German Internet TV – TVover.net
• OnlineTVRecorder.com – Your personal multichannel tv recorder
• Germany TV Online Channels
• My Eyes Online: Where to Watch German TV Online
• Watch Germany TV Channels Online | Germany TV Online | Germany TV Live
• Learn German via Internet: Television and Radio
  (tags: german deutsch languages radio deutsche fun imported)
• Watch TV From Germany Free
  (tags: german television language online tv)
• Free German TV – Watch Online TV Channels
  (tags: tv german deutsch television video)
• German Internet Television – Watch German online television and video and practice your German!
  Awesome list of streaming German TV channels
  (tags: german tv deutsch online television de germany internet)
• Internet-Fernsehen: Filme, Shows und Serien als Online TV bei RTLNOW.de
  (tags: portal free internet german online streaming video tv fernsehen rtl iptv)
• Chris Abraham – Language Learning with Rosetta Stone
  Chris Abraham

Pooky Amsterdam didn’t really tell me what I was in for when I signed up to be on a panel with some other guys on Second Life.  Well, maybe she did tell me but I have been super-busy.  Anyway, I spent an hour last night being a contestant on a Second Life-based game show for smarties called The 1st Question — and you can watch the entire experience thanks to Treet.tv and Pooky Media — thanks so much Pooky and Hydra!

The rumors are true…. Motionbox is soon to be a featured Channel on the Roku digital video player.  You’ll be able to hook the player up to your television and enjoy instant access to all the videos you’ve uploaded to Motionbox. All you need is a TV, a high-speed Internet connection (wired or wireless), and a finger to click the remote!

As a special sneak preview, we’re giving away a few brand new Roku players to people who become Motionbox members this month.

All you have to do is sign up for a FREE Motionbox account before November 30, 2009 then email offers@motionbox.com with subject line “Roku Giveaway” and we’ll enter your name for a chance to win a Roku HD  Player.

Learn more about Roku:
Read a recent article about Roku.
Check out the Roku website.

I am amazed the quality of this little itty-bitty Creative VADO HD and how cool Motionbox, my client, is for hosting HD video — I mean, come on! I never thought that something the size of a pack of 100s would be able to take low-light video like this!

Abraham Harrison‘s favorite Intern, Miss Liza Peiffer, wrote a post over at Marketing Conversation because I asked her to.  Mr. Bob Garfield has asked me to blog over at his new book’s new blog, the Chaos Scenario blog, and I seem to be a blank.

So, I was on a call yesterday with Ken Pearce of HMH and after I shared a little bit about what we do at Abraham Harrison, he said, without knowing that I have been tapped by Bob, “this reminds me of Bob Garfield’s new book, Chaos Scenario.”  What?

Well, I asked Liza to please dig through the entire site to collect all the poop she can on the project to help give me the confidence to man up and contribute!  I mean, how intimidating, right? Bob Garfield of On the Media (awesome), AdAge’s The Boboshere, and Comcast Must Die!  A living legend.

Well, Liza did a phenomenal job, if I do say so myself, We’re living in The Chaos Scenario’s “Brave New World”:

So I wrote a short blog about the decline of newspapers a few days ago, and blogger Liz commented and referenced Bob Garfield’s “The Chaos Scenario” (thanks, Liz).  More specifically, she mentioned the chapter “The Death of Everything,” which surprisingly makes reading about the demise of everything we’ve known for the past 100 years quite pleasurable.

“The digital revolution is already having far-ranging effects on every aspect of our lives, from socialization to communication to information to entertainment to democracy, and these Brave New World effects will only be magnified as the Cowardly Old World collapses before our eyes. Not that this will happen. This is happening. Right now.”

This quote from the Garfield’s introduction is one of the best ‘in a nut shell’ explanations of what we’re dealing with.

It is not a matter of how quickly technology advances, but rather how quickly new generations can overturn the old ones.

Think of this “Brave New World” as the new frontier in the Old West.  Not everyone has arrived, but eventually it will be fully populated.  Everyone will be comfortable in their online communities functioning together like the Internet has existed since the dawn of time. Very soon no one will see the frontier as scary or an uncharted territory.  I’m mainly referring to Baby Boomers and older who are the most likely to resist the digital revolution, although many are active participants.

The new generations are completely digitally trained, almost born with a cell phone in hand.  I know my cousin was texting in the 4^th grade.  I didn’t get a cell phone until 7^th grade, and even at that age it was such a privilege (and really ugly, too).  Garfield says that “just as young people no longer listen to the radio, they simply don’t buy newspapers.”   Not only newspapers, but the young will dictate what happens to other industries like music and television as they grow up and replace those who still cherish records and their un-flat screen TVs.

More important in The Chaos Scenario is the realization that advertising once ruled.  It’s now having trouble keeping itself and its media children alive.  With television fragmentation and the decline of radio popularity, people see advertisements as pests more than ever.  No longer does your music have to be rudely interrupted by Dr. Swartz’s miracle pill, just hit shuffle on your iPod and relax.  You never have to suffer through watching another toothpaste commercial while waiting for your show to return just “use TiVo to skip past the ads.”  Many refrain from advertising in these places if no audience is even being reached.

“The unspoken compact between media and consumers — having to endure commercial messages as the quid pro quo for free or cheap content — has never applied to Generation Y and will be difficult to impose ex post facto. Never mind that the generation’s intellectual-property ethos — ‘All Content Wants to be Free’ — is stupid and criminal on the face of it. They truly believe that malarkey, and aren’t apt to change their minds.”  So I say good luck ads, there’s a rough road ahead and it doesn’t appear those Ys will show you any mercy.

Go read the intro on The Chaos Scenario site, because that’s all you need to want a copy of your own (right hand column, CHAOS ON US).

I didn’t do the book justice nor did I scratch the surface of its enlightening perspective into the crazy media world we’re living in.  Remember, “This is happening. Right now.”

I just got off a demo presentation by a company you might not have heard of yet called Sysomos. Nick Koudas, Sysomos’ founder, personally showed me around two of the company’s products, MAP and Heartbeat, and I have to admit that I think I just witnessed 22nd century — maybe even alien — technology. Sysomos MAP is the sort of research and social media metrics tool that they have on TV and movies, the sort of data forensics tool they tout on CSI or NUMB3RS that looks spiffy on television but doesn’t exist in real life.  Well, it does exist, and in real time and in real life.  You really need to check out Sysomos and you really need to know about these tools.  Seriously.  Alien technology, for real.

I recently spent about $100 on 20 500-word blog posts from a company called 99 Cent Articles — about a fiver-a-post. For $46, I received 10 posts on any subject I can imagine.  I am going to share these in a series of posts and I would like you to tell me what you think about the quality of these posts.  This is not an endorsement of 99 Cent Articles, although their service was fine. I paid for these articles out of my own pocket.

Twitter is changing the way television interacts with viewers

Over the decades, televisions as a form of communication media and its effects have been topics of communication theorists.  This, of course, is comprehensible because television has had always been a source of influence— both good and bad.

But with the world in the 21st century, television has transformed into a social media where a quick and real two-way interaction becomes easy and possible. Twitter, a social networking and micro- blogging website, provides a relatively new but potentially viable media channel where one can update his friends, family, co-workers, and anyone who’s on tweeter about his activities for the day.  Update is limited to 140 characters and can be posted via e-mail, text message, or instant messenger. Just like the word tweeter, twitter is a “loudspeaker” that announces daily updates to its millions of subscribers.

Its widespread popularity has convinced CNN to join twitter as its first broadcast official network. Partnering with Twitter makes it easy for CNN to receive responses, or comments on its various segments. Major tv networks and productions had also joined Twitter and are now gaining millions of views and comments in the real time those tv programs were aired.

Although people used media for different purposes, Twitter seemed to have a momentary monopoly on this trend—hooking a wide range of people from the internet addicts down to people who merely have an e-mail account. Twitter incidentally captures the theory of uses and gratification where research conducted on television had the following result: People used television for building relationship, intimacy, communication, and structuring the day, while the gratifications are named into four categories: Information (People are hungry-knowledge and always yearn for reasoned perspective or at least for logical connection), Personal Identity (we normally look for famous personalities whom we can relate to in-terms of our behaviour or aspirations) , Integration and Social Interaction (our ability to sympathize and empathize with tv characters —their journey and experiences both fictional or real allow us to appreciate tv programs  and develop similar likeness and opinions) and  , and Entertainment (we once in a while want fun and enjoyment).

Whatever the members of Twitter are up to for counting their names in, one thing is certain there is a need that yearns to be filled in. Lull’s theory is patterned on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs where basic needs is found at the foot of the pyramid while at the top is the need for self-actualization. Twitters do twitter possibly because of the urge for knowledge, for belongingness, for esteem and for realizing one’s full potential since one can post blog entries, upload music or composition videos, or market your products.

Twitter appears to be a lot more interactive because it combines the principle of both mass communication and social media. Single person can post update on himself and send it to a large, usually anonymous audience. This social media platform may be relatively new in the cyber world but it has nonetheless posed issues which will make good topics for researches on media communication.

Here’s another one, also on the topic of Twitter.

Twitter is an Effective Way to Promote your Business Online

Like most social networking sites, Twitter encourages its users to interact with each other. The aim here is not just to advertise yourself or your activities but to respond in other’s Tweets. You can ask questions to followers and keep them track of them. The RT symbol enables you to rebroadcast a previous Tweet of someone if it’s worth the spreading. The process of Tweeting is like a ripple effect that requires a motion in order to make waves.

Think of Twitter as tool that notifies clients of your business news, not as a direct promoting site. It would be more fun and effective that way. By following your friends’ posts, you are given the chance to answer questions and eventually get noticed. The more people who notices you, the bigger chances of selling.

This micro-blog is very simple to understand. The approach they use in making your life more fun online is through sharing a line that suggests your current activity. Status updating enables you to let everyone know what you are up to, so if you get popularity here, why not use it to make your business bloom? Through Twitter, business promotion could be as quick as a tweet.

Fast as a wildfire, the Internet Marketing hype is spreading. Big names made use of this method to gain popularity among consumers, raking them great incomes in return. Companies like Apple and Intel has thousands of followers in Twitter and your business too can have as much, maybe even more given the proper marketing strategy. Sign up and start your own wildfire. If you already have a list of business contacts outside the cyberworld, make use of them and import e-mail addresses to Twitter. Send them invitations to make them sign up for their own account and have them add you, follow your Tweets and follow them back. Post links to your official website where they can process orders and browse your products. Doing this gives your business the opportunity to be known worldwide.

The secret in effective promoting through Twitter is to never treat it as a promoting tool for it is originally designed a networking site. Again, have fun, and start slowly. Don’t follow thousands of anonymous accounts, instead, introduce yourself to a few, maybe 50, then make friends and comment on how you liked their posts. Wait for their replies to build a bond and further strengthen it by constantly updating and Tweeting, then have your business promoted. Mention it in a status and be noticed by your followers. When they make a comment, comment back and the process is as unending as the flow of your success. After creating connection with a few clients, it is now time to expand your market. Repeat the method you used in finding followers and by word of mouth, you could get referred if they are satisfied with your service, making your business grow.

Having a positive image gives your business the same impression. Be an active follower and do regular Tweets. People love returning favors so do them a favor by being courteous enough to at least click that little star at the right side of a Tweet and they might return that little favor by doing business with you.

In all cases, my only guidance was the title of the article.   So, I defined the title and within 3-weeks (they promised ten-days), they sent me the articles.

I will post more soon, and you can see all of the 99 Cent Articles articles here.

Please pop me your feedback in comments — I would love to hear what you think.  I have not edited the articles in any way.

As of the 8th April Morgan Spurlock’s documentary is showing in full on YouTube. It’s part of a new initiative to put more TV shows and films on the site. Super Size has had about 360,000 views in 10 days.

You can explore the different films here. Trust me – Super Size is one of the best on there. The range is smaller than a the video collection in a village post office. So far. But, like the village post office, they’ve got some totally unexpected things there, like Aguirre Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo & St Elmo’s Fire. Although that last one’s blocked in the UK.

There are also TV shows, but these all seem to be blocked for the UK. We’re not missing much though – Alf, Married With Children, Barney Miller, Jackie Chan cartoons, Sherlock Hound… Nothing to get excited about.

The potential is there though. The quality looks ok, and YouTube certainly has the reach to make this a popular destination for entertainment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, good luck to you, Kari!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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