Monthly Archives: July 2011

Write your blog to be taken completely out of context

3589803370 441ebcf92b m2 Write your blog to be taken completely out of contextI am in the middle of guiding some new bloggers over at Marketing Conversation on how to blog most effectively. It is pretty exciting and instructive because there are many things I take for granted. One of the biggest trends I see is internal shorthand. What I mean is that my bloggers tend to write based on a lot of assumed context. When they write my company name, they might choose AH instead of Abraham Harrison; and, since that AH is on a corporate blog, they might forget to link it to the best page in the corporate Web site.

They simply assume that people who are reading content from Marketing Conversation or Because the Medium is the Message–or even an article on the corporate Website–are in on the joke. That they grok the context.

Not only is that not true but it is dangerous, because I am guilty of it myself. I would say north of 80% of the people I engage with on a daily basis online don’t know that I am president of a digital agency with over fifty staff and dozens of clients. See, I make the same assumptions.

I assume that I shouldn’t be so self-referential because “they” surely know who I am by now, I have been branding for years. Pretty darn shamelessly if you ask me — at least I thought so. Not so.

And I have not even gotten to the most important part: even if people know who you are, what you do, the company you own, and its products and services intimately, their brand perception hasn’t evolved at the speed of your business. What I did in 2006 is quite a bit different than what Abraham Harrison does now, as a company.

Even worse, after we spend all of this time, resources, hours, money, and brain trust on creating insightful analysis and share it for free on our blogs and via Twitter and Facebook, we’re living in a Derridian world: “there’s nothing outside the text.” Let me explain . . .

In a world of excerpting, reading, sharing, retweeting, and sharing shares, or decontextualized via RSS or auto spamblogs, simply all of the breadcrumbs required to bring a reader down the road back to you, your brand, and your sales channel needs to be contained not only in that blog post but also in that tweet, if possible.

Each post needs to be as self contained as a biosphere.

You need everything that you could possibly need to have your post make sense on the same page, within the same post–for three reasons:

  1. If you’re quoting another post, excerpt as much of that content to make your point and make it unnecessary to need to link out to read that other article–they won’t make it back
  2. If you don’t have everything sorted out, completely contextually-inclusive both with references as well as with your branding, your products and services, all on your article’s back, then something might get left behind
  3. If everything’s not completely clear and tidy and tied with a bow–fully sorted–then you’ll lose them anyway because you need to grab them in short-order, every time.

Do not use acronyms unless your brand is that acronym. Abraham Harrison, LLC, is not yet AH or even AHLLC–we’re no IBM. Abraham Harrison should always be linked. Every name of every employee should be linked to their bio on the corporate website at best case or to a LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook profile at the very least. Every product or service should be linked to its exact corresponding sub-page on the corporate website if at all possible.

In blogging, we often do a much better job of linking to other people, companies, and blogs in the form of attribution than we do ourselves.

Even more essential to these constantly contextualizing linking strategies is that the keywords should be hyperlinked and not some worthless [link] or a pithy here or there or my work or any of that, if at all possible.

Search abhors a pronoun.

Finally, any and all posts should be wrapped in analysis, if at all possible. Don’t just excerpt a social media news article onto your blog or site, make it your own. While collecting news and propagating it through your blog with attribution links and excerpts and all that can result in your colleagues and neighbors and even prospects to learn of your existence, you’re not really adding value when you just propagate–it is essential to interpret, analyze, and synthesize, allowing all the marrow of your experience to be extracted in answer to, “well, that’s great content, but it is content from your competitor so maybe we should be using them instead of you if they’re so insightful.”

In a perfect world, with a corporate blog, people should be subscribing to and reading posts on Marketing Conversation in order to learn more about the products and services and quality of mind of Abraham Harrison and not just to get an aggregation of the latest social media marketing news.

Sometimes I forget that and it is something I would like to share with you in addition to sharing it with my new bloggers.

Via Biznology via Socialmedia.biz via Marketing Conversation

Miriam’s Kitchen Serves Farm Fresh Food to DC’s Homeless

mkkitchen 300x224 Miriams Kitchen Serves Farm Fresh Food to DCs HomelessThis AM, I pulled myself together and to the kitchen of Miriam’s Kitchen by 5:30 AM to crack eggs and serve coffee and juice and take numbers in the generous and amazing chez Miriam. I will be going back tomorrow PM to prepare and serve dinner as well. I can’t get enough. What makes MK special is that it doesn’t serve their homeless guests gruel and weak coffee — they do it right. Here’s the email I just received from them:

Food is an important part of our work.

It brings our guests in. Our guests first come to us for our great food, but once they’re with us we can begin to help them beyond meeting their basic needs.

It shows our guests that we care deeply about them. The quality of food that our chefs produce shows our guests that we care enough to do more than is expected, which helps us build the trust that is critical to our work.

It brings our community closer. By offering opportunities to volunteer in our kitchen, donate fresh food and learn more about the issues our guests face, our Meals Program is a way to develop understanding between our guests and our community.

It matters to our guests’ survival. Nutrition is important, especially when serious physical and mental health issues are a concern for many of our guests.

ON OUR MENU TONIGHT: Roasted lamb pita, creamy oregano grits, crisp garden salad, fresh fruit salad, and homemade pecan pie.

Where does that food come from?

The lamb was purchased with donated gift cards from our local Costco. That same Costco donates more than 1,000 pounds of quality food to our kitchen each week.

The salad greens and fruit were donated by Sunnyside Farm and Orchard, a purveyor at the FRESHFARM Foggy Bottom Farmers Market. Sunnyside and other FRESHFARM farmers donate more than 100 pounds of local produce to us each week.

The heirloom cucumbers in our salad were donated by the GroW garden, a neighborhood garden planted by The George Washington University students and home to our guests’ very own garden plot. More than 20% of our produce comes from community gardens just like the GroW garden.

And the pecan pie was made from scratch in our kitchen by our volunteer pastry chefs. The pecans were donated by Georgetown Cupcake and are a tasty way for us to get a lot of nutrition onto our guests’ plates.

So that’s where our food comes from–our generous community of friends like you.

Thanks for continuing to fill our guests’ plates with healthy, local meals.

Miriams Kitchen Serves Farm Fresh Food to DCs Homeless

Abraham Harrison's Work Culture Featuring RuthE Potter

telecommute1 Abraham Harrison's Work Culture Featuring RuthE PotterWe call her the brains of the operation. The brains, the beauty, the goodness that is Ms. RuthE Potter, Operations Coordinator.

RuthE manages to single-handedly orchestrate our schedules and to-do lists every week and that’s why I figured she’d be a viable candidate to showcase in this installment of “Exploring the Abraham Work Culture!” (I never thought of a catchier name, but please envision this in a theatrically booming voice).

She’s modest as well, and points out that the collaborative nature of Abraham Harrison is one of her favorite parts of work. Working closely with Sara (Wilson, COO) and others on the management team helps streamline and create aspects of the workplace that we all have a vested interest in. The goal is always “to make things better.”

“When we are able to improve our process, it benefits our clients. The more that happens, the more we can grow our business… Balancing the quirks and schedules of 36 employees is on some days like herding cats, but most days it is a really enjoyable part of my job. I love having the chance to develop relationships with people all over the country and all over the world. I am reminded daily how similar we all are, regardless of where we may be living.”

RuthE began her Abraham Harrison journey in December of 2010, at which point her role wasn’t clearly defined. At Abraham Harrison, we tend not to pigeon hole; Job titles and duties change and expand as time goes on. We see what each team member can bring to the table and allow them to capitalize on their areas of talent.

It’s a learning process and we all tend to take advantage of each other’s expertise. In RuthE’s case, her passion is making order from chaos. She admits this sounds odd. “It’s like putting together a puzzle, one piece at a time. There’s a lot of trial and error.”

The one aspect of the AH work culture that everyone can agree on, is that there is no typical schedule. RuthE sets “office hours” each day. During this time she manages staffing, processes improvements, develops the internship program that continues to grow and turn out accomplished bloggers like Julianne Rowe and Matt Carroll, and work on various aspects of operations planning.

RuthE reiterates how important it is for her to maintain consistency with those hours as a direct line of communication with team members. As with any AH tech junkie,  RuthE is never without email or phone, in case anyone feels the need to brainstorm the next big idea. RuthE is both curious and excited about the future of virtual agencies, particularly Abraham Harrison.

“There is a HUGE opportunity for companies to consider a virtual environment. AH has, in many way, pioneered this concept. I, for one, am grateful beyond measure to be a part of it. In order for companies to be truly successful, they need to look outside the realm of what has been done, and look toward what can be done.“

There’s an untapped work force out there who have the capabilities of balancing family and being involved in a work environment like Abraham Harrison’s. It’s not for everyone. It requires discipline and motivation.

RuthE points out that even after kids start school full-time, there still isn’t a copious amount of time to invest in your typical 9-5 job. It’s a tough balancing act, but if anyone can executive impress circus acts on the thin rope that is life, it’s Ms. Potter.

“Time is most precious commodity that we can spend on our kids, and working virtually allows me to do that. I can get them on and off the bus each day. If they are sick and need to be home, no ‘alternative’ arrangements need to be made. I can them to their practices and lessons, I am here to help with homework. All this, and I have a career that I enjoy and an obligation and an outlet that challenges me each day. It’s a win win.”

Well put. When asked about greatest lesson learned here at AH, RuthE is quick to point out that it is possible to make a living and orchestrate your life as you please.

That was Mark and Chris’ priority in founding Abraham Harrison, to enrich the lives of their employees by making travel possible. They remain committed to their business model, based on the most critical of premisses- that everyone’s time is important.

Oh…and you really can’t beat the commute.

Abraham Harrison's Work Culture Featuring RuthE Potter

Write online to be taken completely out of context

3589803370 441ebcf92b m Write online to be taken completely out of contextI am in the middle of guiding some of my new bloggers over at Marketing Conversation on how to blog most effectively. It is pretty exciting and instructive because there are many things I take for granted. One of the biggest trends I see is internal shorthand. What I mean is that my bloggers tend to write based on a lot of assumed context. When they write my company name, they might choose AH instead of Abraham Harrison; and, since that AH is on a corporate blog, they might forget to link it to the best page in the corporate Web site.

They simply assume that people who are reading content from Marketing Conversation or Because the Medium is the Message–or even an article on the corporate Website–are in on the joke.  That they grok the context.

Not only is that not true but it is dangerous, because I am guilty of it myself. I would say north of 80% of the people I engage with on a daily basis online don’t know that I am president of a digital agency with over fifty staff and dozens of clients.  See, I make the same assumptions.

I assume that I shouldn’t be so self-referential because “they” surely know who I am by now, I have been branding for years. Pretty darn shamelessly if you ask me — at least I thought so.  Not so.

And I have not even gotten to the most important part: even if people know who you are, what you do, the company you own, and its products and services intimately, their brand perception hasn’t evolved at the speed of your business.  What I did in 2006 is quite a bit different than what Abraham Harrison does now, as a company.

Even worse, after we spend all of this time, resources, hours, money, and brain trust on creating insightful analysis and share it for free on our blogs and via Twitter and Facebook, we’re living in a Derridian world: “there’s nothing outside the text.”  Let me explain . . .

In a world of excerpting, reading, sharing, retweeting, and sharing shares, or decontextualized via RSS or auto spamblogs, simply all of the breadcrumbs required to bring a reader down the road back to you, your brand, and your sales channel needs to be contained not only in that blog post but also in that tweet, if possible.

Each post needs to be as self contained as a biosphere.

You need everything that you could possibly need to have your post make sense on the same page, within the same post–for three reasons:

  1. If you’re quoting another post, excerpt as much of that content to make your point and make it unnecessary to need to link out to read that other article–they won’t make it back
  2. If you don’t have everything sorted out, completely contextually-inclusive both with references as well as with your branding, your products and services, all on your article’s back, then something might get left behind
  3. If everything’s not completely clear and tidy and tied with a bow–fully sorted–then you’ll lose them anyway because you need to grab them in short-order, every time.

Do not use acronyms unless your brand is that acronym. Abraham Harrison, LLC, is not yet AH or even AHLLC–we’re no IBM. Abraham Harrison should always be linked. Every name of every employee should be linked to their bio on the corporate website at best case or to a LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook profile at the very least. Every product or service should be linked to its exact corresponding sub-page on the corporate website if at all possible.

In blogging, we often do a much better job of linking to other people, companies, and blogs in the form of attribution than we do ourselves.

Even more essential to these constantly contextualizing linking strategies is that the keywords should be hyperlinked and not some worthless [link] or a pithy here or there or my work or any of that, if at all possible.

Search abhors a pronoun.

Finally, any and all posts should be wrapped in analysis, if at all possible. Don’t just excerpt a social media news article onto your blog or site, make it your own. While collecting news and propagating it through your blog with attribution links and excerpts and all that can result in your colleagues and neighbors and even prospects to learn of your existence, you’re not really adding value when you just propagate–it is essential to interpret, analyze, and synthesize, allowing all the marrow of your experience to be extracted in answer to, “well, that’s great content, but it is content from your competitor so maybe we should be using them instead of you if they’re so insightful.”

In a perfect world, with a corporate blog, people should be subscribing to and reading posts on Marketing Conversation in order to learn more about the products and services and quality of mind of Abraham Harrison and not just to get an aggregation of the latest social media marketing news.

Sometimes I forget that and it is something I would like to share with you in addition to sharing it with my new bloggers.

Via Biznology via Socialmedia.biz