Our CEO Comments on Shelly Palmer’s Blog

On Saturday, Shelly Palmer weighed in on the FTC’s Blogger Endorsement Rules and Regs: Not Really Needed.  Great post. My CEO, Mark Harrison, himself, weighed in in a comment that I would like to share here:

Great post, Shelly! I wanted to respond directly to one of the many excellent questions you raised; specifically, the very last one in your article: “Can big anything work its way into your trust circle?”

That one question I can answer with an authoritative “Yes we can.” (to use an illustrative example).

It’s what my team at Abraham Harrison, LLC does day in and day out, and has been doing for over three years now (quick clarity: the amazing Obama campaign I just alluded to was the brilliant Thomas Gensemer’s… not ours.

A deep bow to that master of communication and to Blue State Digital!) You can connect to these many, many dispersed influencers at the centers of these smallish trust circles and have them carry your message in their voices, and in their names to their listeners who have chosen them as their opinion-leaders.

It works for business just as well as it works for politics – perhaps better as it is rarely such an overt either-or message.

It is CERTAINLY not a question of paying the infuencers or engaging in “blogola” of any sort. It is simply a matter of communicating the proper information in the proper manner to the proper key people:

• Selection of the right influencers who will have a natural interest in your message (generally in the hundreds or thousands, as circles of real trust are generally relatively small and tight)
• Clear, precise, and above all, personable communication with these influencers – in the language and according to the constantly evolving social mores of the demographic
• Immediate, generous, personal follow-up and
• Well-structured, easy-to-”steal” content for the influencers to leverage in their communication out to their listeners

We actually find these new FTC rules a pleasant contribution to the world – a bit like a UN resolution or a “clean up your dog’s poo” law: definitely unlikely to be enforced universally, but very good at finally defining openly and for the whole community what is “good” behavior, and what is “offensive” behavior – and laying down a basis for future action, if there are particularly egregious offenders going forward.

Again, thanks for another excellent and thought-provoking post! Feel free to ping me any time if you want to chat about this stuff further. It would be a pleasure to connect!