By Lauren Cook: Never has the power of Twitter been more evident than in the last few weeks and months. Once known only by “techies” and early adopters, this micro-blogging site is now slowly infiltrating into the mainstream and more importantly, affecting the way many of us communicate, listen, and learn.

For those not familiar with Twitter, here’s a quick introduction: Twitter is a free social networking service that allows users to send and read each other’s updates (known as “tweets”) that are limited to 140 characters in length (think two sentences at most). At its inception in 2006, Twitter (then known as “Obvious”) was originally created as a tool to be used internally by the podcasting company, Odeo. Two years later, over 3 million individuals worldwide have Twitter accounts and the rate in which news spreads has shortened to, well, 140 characters.

Initially, the goal of Twitter was to allow users to share with their “followers” exactly what they were doing at that moment (ie: “It’s Monday morning and I’m having Cheerios for breakfast”). A common misconception among those who aren’t familiar with Twitter believe this is still the case with the micro-blogging site. In fact, Twitter has grown and expanded and its capabilities have far surpassed solely communicating the mundane details of everyday life.

For instance, take the recent Mumbai attacks in November, 2008. During the three-day battle that left more than 100 dead, social-networking services such as Twitter and Flickr were flooded with news, rumors and pictures of the tragedy by what is now termed as “citizen journalists” — users on Twitter that were tweeting breaking news faster than mainstream media could pick up the same information on the news wires. Many people now describe the situation in Mumbai as “Twitter’s moment.” As a result, major media outlets now uses Twitter to help communicate the real-time public sentiment on various issues, such as Presidential elections, natural disasters, and current events.

Abraham & Harrison has been at the forefront of the Twitter phenomenon since its public offering, sucessfully leveraging the power of micro-blogging for many of its clients. One only has to take a quick look at Abraham & Harrison’s President and COO, Chris Abraham, who is known as one of the top Twitterers of Social Media news, having over 2,700 followers, to understand Abraham & Harrison’s extensive knowledge of cutting edge social media tools.

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.

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.

Are you thinking about joining Twitter? One word of warning: You can’t become a Twitter sensation overnight. As Chris Abraham says, “Growing a social media profile is like growing a coral reef: after seeding the reef, there are so many things that need to happen before a reef blooms ‘in its own.’” With Twitter, time and commitment are key in order to position yourself as a valuable addition to the community. “You need to be generous — give more than you take — and you need to be committed to the long term,” Chris advises. And it’s not all about your follower numbers.

For instance, once could argue that Lance Armstrong isn’t a valuable member of the Twitter community given that he has over 23,000 followers, but is only following approximately 40 other Twitterers (an improvement since the last time I checked, when he was following a mere 2 users: his Livestrong organization, and one other member of the Livestrong Executive Team).

Twitter isn’t about just talking about yourself, accepting every follower, and never engaging in actual dialogue. Like every other social networking tool, it’s about forming relationships, providing valuable content, listening and (like Chris said), giving more than taking.

There’s an unspoken code of ethics followed by well-respected Twitterers, and a strategy that can help you reach your customers and supporters on Twitter while not opening yourself up to criticism and in extreme cases, retaliation (ever heard of the Motrin Mommies ?). The power of Twitter is increasing daily — do you know how to harness it? Let Abraham & Harrison show you how.

Here is a warning to all of us who are doing conversation marketing, buzz marketing, viral marketing, social media marketing, etc. We have all been there and we have seen it many times before. Some of us have done it! Well, this must have stung quite a lot. I can’t wait to find out which agency did this. If anyone knows, please let me know!

I was just farting around Boing Boing Gadgets, enjoying the fine work over there, post amusement over seeing my business partner become immortal in a Boing Boing post and referred to as “a globe-trotting alpha male who spends winters rubbing elbows with bikini models down in Mauretius and summers either indulging in sport in Berlin or piloting yachts around Cape Horn.” Well, I started reading comments and there were some funny ones, and then an obvious comment spam about the Motorola Krave. Then, the wolves circled and the entire comment thread started mocking the shiller. Ultimately, Joel Johnson wrote the following awesome blog post, entitled, Motorola, could you please tell your viral marketer to get out of our comments?

Motorola, could you please tell your viral marketer to get out of our comments?

In John’s post about Steve Jobs’ purported tantrum, a commenter “MGOODE08″ made this remark:

I’m so glad my boss isn’t like that! I’m working with Motorola right now, and became a huge fan of the Krave (motorola.com/krave). I especially like the full touch screen display and html web browser. It’s awesome!

On the 14th, he made this comment:

Oh man this looks awesome! I hope they release a version for the Krave by Motorola. Ever since I started working with Motorola I have became a huge fan of the phone (motorola.com/krave). With a full list of features, like a full touch screen, I can’t stop obsessing over it.

“M Goode” loves this phone so much that he posted this at GigaOm:

This is a very good idea. I think it could be applied to any phones with a similar format. Ever since I started working with Motorola I have become a huge fan of the Krave. It has some of the same features, and I think a built in micropayment system would be great. It’s a fairly new phone, so if you haven’t seen it yet it’s online at motorola.com/krave. I wonder if they will jump on the bandwagon when/if a micropayment system is implemented.

When he’s not on tech sites, though, “M Goode” loves to relax with a good game:

I wish this game would get released for a mobile gaming platform, especially the Krave. I have been a fan of this franchise since it’s first release, and would love to have it on a cell phone, especially the krave. Ever since I started working with Motorola, I have become a huge fan of the krave. Has anyone else seen it?(motorola.com/krave) It’s so loaded with features, most important of which is the full touch screen layout. It’s DEFINITELY worth checking out.

He’s also really into the indie gaming scene:

I can’t wait to see this on a mobile phone platform! it would be so cool to see ti on a Krave! Has anyone else seen it? (motorola.com/krave) It’s a flip phone with a touch screen, 2 MP camera, full html browser and bluetooth functionality. Definitely worth checking out.

But uh oh! He might be considering switching from a Krave to the new Nokia:

My favorite phone right now is the Krave by Motorola. I became a huge fan of the Krave once I started working with Motorola. You can check out the full spec list online at motorola.com/krave. It’s definitely strong competition with it’s full touch screen

(He is also apparently working for Cirque Du Soleil, but we’ll let them pass for the moment because I love acrobats.)

“Follow the money,” they say, but in this case we don’t have to, because all we have to do is follow the link. Motorola, if you could be so kind as to tell your viral marketer to fuck right off we’d sure appreciate it. Perhaps you could spend the money instead on making your phones something that people actually want to buy.

P.S., I love our readers. Check out the replies they immediately started making:

I’m so glad my boss isn’t like that! I’m working for Burger King right now, and became a huge fan of the Mushroom and Swiss Steakhouse Burger. I especially like the cheese and mushrooms. It’s awesome!

I’m so glad my boss isn’t like that! I’m working for a pimp on the corner of wellwood and barrington and became a huge fan of Allie and her turrid backstroke technique. I especially like the pop and rock. It’s awesome!

I’m so glad my boss isn’t like that! I’m working with Cryptozoologia right now, and became a huge fan of the Trepanasaurus (Cryptozoologia.com/ Trepanasaurus). I especially like the way that, after the dinosaur-anteater hybrid rips off the top of a person’s head with its sharp teeth, it can suck out its victim’s brain with its nose. It’s awesome!

I’m gonna run with this concept of community for a while. I’ve touched on something that’s created a bit of a spark. In other words, I value the contributions people have made here and I want to keep the discussion going.

Chris Abraham, in a response to my previous post The Fallacy of Community, gives us a great synopsis of what they’re about. Jeremiah Owyang has another post that’s excellent, What Makes a Successful Marketing Campaign on Social Networks?

What got me thinking about this is an exchange I had with Marco Nunez of Aurelius Maximus and Richard Millington of Fever Bee. The discussion centered on the use and misuse of the word “community”.

I’m starting to think that many mistake great brands with enthusiastic users – users who may even evangelize – are brands with communities. Some manage to attain that status of course, but I’d say that the majority of them don’t. That’s because these brands often don’t have the users, the clients, the customers that CONNECT. What I’m offering is the thought that the relationship between community members, while not as vital a the relationship between member and brand, is still important. Or, if not the direct relationship, the experience one garners with the product brings out a intangible sense of belonging. That status could be based on enjoyment, on status, on a sense of mission.

So the users have to feel some sort of connection with one another. Marco mentioned Apple. Richard noted Harley Davidson. Chris brought up WordPress. I pointed out Red Sox Nation and Blog Her. These are brands with communities, quasi-organized entities whose members have developed a sense of camaraderie. The camaraderie is genuine. It isn’t necessarily corporate created and maintained.

I’ll add that entities such as marketer-created fan pages and groups on the likes of Facebook and MySpace are inherently not communities as well. They may be clever marketing tactics and they may eventually become communities. But a page on a website doesn’t within itself capture the essence of community. The members do.

Real communities are long-term, if not permanent entities that last beyond a three month marketing campaign on Facebook. Especially in this day of quickly created social media networking/marketing groups. That’s because quite often those groups last as long as a campaign lasts and hence, they aren’t communities.

I write all this because the idea of “brand” is one of the most important in marketing. There’s been debates for decades on what makes a great brand. Rob Frankel, one of the best minds in branding says “Branding is not about getting your prospects to choose you over your competition; it’s about getting your prospects to see you as the only solution to their problem.” Building a brand often takes an enormous amount of work, and many attempts fail. (Note to Richard: this supports your point about Guy Kawasaki and his work for Apple).

At this point we’re not even touching on brand evangelism. There are plenty of great brands out there that don’t cause their enthusiasts to evangelize. Someone may be dedicated to using Tide Detergent, but that doesn’t mean they’ll tell friends and coworkers…unless asked. As I mentioned in a previous post, Tropicana No Pulp Orange Juice is my “brand”, but I don’t evangelize about it. I just drink it.

But the concept of community goes beyond a great brand, it goes beyond getting evangelists. It means either organizing those evangelists – or helping them organize themselves. It means enabling the members to connect with both the brand and the community. It then means keeping true to the brand promise so as not to throw off the community members.

That’s what I see is behind an enduring, thriving connected brand community.

For the past two months I’ve been in a mental funk when it comes to blogging. Maybe it’s because I got caught up a bit too much following the political primary season and felt that I’d end up focusing too much on politics.

But now I have Brian Solis, Loic Le Meur, and Robert Scoble to thank for getting me back into the game.

Perhaps the one I should thank the most is Loic because I found much of what he wrote in response to Brian’s TechCrunch article to be misdirected toward his own experiences.

It started with Brian’s May 25 article in TechCrunch “PR Secrets for Startups”. Now that headline itself is a bit silly as it sounds as if it’s a headline used in an overhyped industry rag, but the meat of the artilce is pretty much straightforward. He doesn’t lay out secrets at all, just sound advice. And while I don’t agree with the fine line depicted between PR 1.0 and PR 2.0, but there is no question that all of strategic marketing communications is undergoing a transformation and that the internet – and social media in particular – are playing key roles in that.

In the article, Brian outlines a series of points that serve a great guideline for most younger startups. Loic tells us that Brian has many valid point in his post and that Brian knows what he’s talking about and that he really likes Brian and then he proceeds to write that what Brian is saying is bullshit.

Well, I like Loic and think he has many valid points and he knows what he’s talking about, but what Loic is saying is bullshit. Loic’s advice is correct for a finite amount of CEOs and a finite amount of startups from a finite amount of industries. It’s solid advice in certain circumstances.

I’ll start out with Loic’s major point:

Get a community and focus on your friends is the way to go.

Good grief.

It’s not that this is directly wrong, it’s that it’s ridiculous in that it’s a practically impossible to accomplish task to achieve in the amount of time needed to boost a start up. In fact, formulating one’s own community can be as difficult as successfully launching a start up in the first place. Establishing a community can take years – Loic himself talks of how it took him eight years – and there’s no guarantee that the community will stick.

Most prominent blogger don’t have communities. They may think they do, but they don’t. They have readers instead. Most companies don’t have communities. They have customers. Most products and services don’t have communities. They have users. Cultivating a community is similar to cultivating a loyal customer base…only more difficult. It takes time, it takes energy, it takes a special touch. More often than not, it’s an elusive accomplishment.

It’s not as if one can go down to the local K-Mart and buy a community – as if it comes in a box – one that’s on sale this week only for the low price of $79.95 – twenty dollars of the regular price of $99.95.

No, there’s no Easy Button to press in getting a community. As commenter Jeremy Toeman points out “Loic, I think your assessment is fairly biased to your personal experience. The truth is most companies and individuals aren’t nearly as well connected as you are, and to just dismiss PR by saying “just go build a community” is frankly, naive.” Which is soon followed by Vinh, “Where can i get a community? Is it expensive? What happens if I need audience now?” Bingo.

Loic himself proves the difficulty in establishing a community by writing “I took me 8 years since I started blogging in 2003 to have a community and it is no marketing.” First of all, he’s so exhausted from establishing that community that he’s added wrong. It’s either 5 years since 2003 or 8 years since 2000. Whether it’s 5 or 8 (and I believe it’s 8), that’s way to long of a time period for a CEO to wait to effectively kick in as he or she is launching a startup.

Allen Stern has two great comments regarding Loic’s claim…

First, he points out that it takes more than a desire to have a community to actually accomplish the huge task of establishing a community. “Loic – it’s important to remember that not everyone has the “instant-on” connections you do today. While I agree with what you are suggesting about a community completely – not everyone has “instant-on” that you do.” He follow this with a clear statement of total sense. “This is why I suggest you work on building your network while you build your startup. Don’t expect to finish your product and have a network ready to launch it for you.” Words of wisdom.

The reality is that the essence of community building is something that’s often elusive. One needs talent, time, luck, and a topic or series or topics that engender an interaction amongst readers. That’s rare indeed. Loic has been able to establish this over several years through hard work, a warm and colorul personality, and an effective writing style. He also benefits from the fact that he’s launched a company that, at its core, is at the heart of social media.

Community is one of the most dangerously overused terms in social media. It’s often bandied about by people who treat the subject matter as if communities already exist or are readily available. And this then underplays the importance – and the essence of community.

Next, I’ll look to take on the Brian vs. Loic debate point by point.

This morning, Norman Birnbach wrote an article wherein he suggests that I emphasize giving swag:

One of his tips is to “Give swag” — a point that Chris Abraham emphasized in a recent interview. The reason is that blogging is often a second career and there are few perks so swag can make a difference to get bloggers to respond.

He is not wrong, but I think I need to clarify my definition of “gift-giving.” I don’t emphasize giving away swag, necessarily — what I do emphasize is gifting — and giving ’til it hurts, “What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception.”

The following excerpt is from Be Generous, Not Stingy, When Engaging Bloggers (via Chris Abraham):

“Gifts don’t have to be free stuff — like books or iPods — gifts can be in the form of knowledge, intellectual property, insider access, or blogger exclusives; gifts can be informational, gifts can solve a community problem, or customer service issues.

What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception. You need to be willing to give the gift that the blogger wants and not the gift you are prepared or want to give.

What is not cool is half measures or crappy, throw-away gifts, the Internet version of key rings and a bowl of candy. Offering throttled, limited or restricted demos (without access to the full version when it is released); offering a single book chapter (without the whole book being an option); or granting “exclusive” access to something that is already released is just plain lame and will result in severe negative consequences.

It is pretty bad to not give a gift when you reach out to bloggers just because you feel entitled or represent a fancy client but it is worse to be stingy about the gift you do give. Make sure the gift is generous — give until it hurts.”

Rich Karpinski just wrote an article that’s featured on the front page of BtoB. The information in the article is basic. It’s not groundbreaking. It’s about a trend that, if you’re reading this blog, then you’re already familiar with. It’s about how businesses are now embracing blogging.

Karpinski points out how only aroudn 12% of Fortune 500 companies run corporate blogs. But he gives key examples of how companies such as Dell, Kodak, Intel, SAP, and IBM run coporate blogs.

The reason articles such as this can be important is because it is located in a targeted business publication. It’s readers, many of whom are at he very least involved in corporate markting at some sort of senior level, need to be exposed to more articles such as this. Larger publications such as Business Week feature similar articles that carry influence.

The more exposure senior managers – be they in marketing or technology or finance – get exposed to blogging and, more importantly overall, social media as a business cultural paradigm, then the more likely they are finally going to “get it”.

Articles such as these are a form of professional-word-of-mouth. Many of the decision makers – those that are in the 88% of the Fortune 500 that don’t have corporate blogs aren’t going to be reading social media marketing blogs. Many of them haven’t heard of Todd And’s PowerList or the Age of Conversation or ooVoo. They’re not on Twitter. They don’t care about any of that. And there’s enough of them out there that that’s fine…for now.

So that’s why wee need more basic articles like Rick Karpinski’s.

Andy Sernovitz’s blog’s name says it all, and definitely reflects my response to reading this: Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That!, especially in his post Instant Word of Mouth for Restaurants. From our experience doing blogger outreach and blogger gift-giving, this is on-the-money advice you should all consider (Via Chris Abraham — Because the Medium is the Message):

Give every lunch customer 6 desserts to take back to the office.

Give them one desert and they will eat it.

Give them 6 and they will to announce to everyone that they just ate at your restaurant and you gave them snacks to share.

Lesson: One free sample is interesting. Lots of samples turn customers into evangelists.

Firstly, while we at Abraham Harrison do online publicity and blogger outreach exclusively, this advice rings true. First, let me define what we mean by “free samples” and “gifts” in our context.

Gifts don’t have to be free stuff — like books or iPods — gifts can be in the form of knowledge, intellectual property, insider access, or blogger exclusives; gifts can be informational, gifts can solve a community problem, or customer service issues.

What a gift needs to be is super-valuable to the recipient — the value of a gift is based on perception. You need to be willing to give the gift that the blogger wants and not the gift you are prepared or want to give.

What is not cool is half measures or crappy, throw-away gifts, the Internet version of key rings and a bowl of candy. Offering throttled, limited or restricted demos (without access to the full version when it is released); offering a single book chapter (without the whole book being an option); or granting “exclusive” access to something that is already released is just plain lame and will result in severe negative consequences.

It is pretty bad to not give a gift when you reach out to bloggers just because you feel entitled or represent a fancy client but it is worse to be stingy about the gift you do give. Make sure the gift is generous — give until it hurts.

For example, with Survivor Corps, not only did we make lots of full-chapters available for download and sharing, but we are making paper hardcover copies available to anyone and everyone who wants one — and the offer is transferable.

While the wide selection of chapters may be generous, offering only a partial book would easily be considered to be stingy and cheap if we were not willing and able to drop-ship complete copies of the book at a moment’s notice without ever demanding a quid pro quo.

Most of the bloggers might very readily blog about I Will Not Be Broken were I to only send a smattering of chapters; even so, the risk associated with not making copies freely available would be intense and is not worth it.

The cost of a hundred books sent to important niche online influencers who have promised to blog about Survivor Corps, whether they ever do is negligible compared to being pegged as cheap and ungrateful.

Even a blogger who has an advertising rate sheet and who would never consider doing a review without being sponsored or paid are often willing to blog on behalf of our clients – when we get the right balance between influencer-targeting, message-modeling, gift-giving, blogger activation, and following-up.

It works because this is relationship and conversation marketing. There are real people behind those blogs who are sick and tired of not being treated like people and if you can get the mixture right, magic happens.

When we do blogger public relations (often called blogger relations or BR), blogger messaging, or online outreach, it is essential to do everything possible to make sure that the blogger’s free spirit is appreciated and also realize that the blogger is under zero responsibility to blog about your client at all; and, for the same reason that bloggers are pursued by us PR and marketing professionals — their influence, platform, and voice — bloggers are fully capable of turning against you and your client.

Luckily, bloggers are people, marketers are people, even PR professionals are people; therefore, even if something goes wrong during an aggressive messaging and PR compaign, which they often do if you’re being aggressive and passionate, a human touch and human engagement usually does the trick to smooth feathers, clear the air, and make things nice.

Even when clearing the air isn’t possible, it is important to be brave and a little shameless: when you’re in this sort of business, 1% or more of all recipients will have a cow and there is nothing you can do about it, no matter how much attention, love, adoration, and mea culpas you’re willing or able to invest.

For the Survivor Corps campaign, we have been pretty aggressive. Even before we have delivered our first copy of I Will Not Be Broken to a single blogger, we have received almost 50 blog mentions and posts. Even if we had suffered a couple negative posts as a tithe for the 50 positive mentions, I believe it would still have been worth it.

If you need more proof you can read the mentions that bloggers have written so far about Jerry White’s book, I Will Not Be Broken, collected well before any actual books arrived via Fedex to the bloggers’ door, you will see that Blogger PR is well worth all of the time and trouble required to make it work right.

Let me know if you have any questions about what we do or how we do it. I would be very happy to tell you more if you contact me at Abraham Harrison.

Check out this excellent post by Geoff Livingston regarding GM’s vision and strategy on how they’re using social media.  In The Word of Mouth is Driving Others, it shows that GM “gets it” by engaging automotive enthusiasts while understanding their own presence remains important.   It’s crossposted on Jason Fall’s Social Media Explorer

Don Frischmann of Rubicon Consulting wrote this great article for AdAge.   A great read.

Nothing is Insignificant When It Comes to Brand Fulfillment

The culture of participatory social media is having some surprisingly significant effects on both the way satisfied customers play a role in contributing to the marketing message development of products and services. And it is also playing an increasingly important role in defining the key touchpoints that customers use in the deciding factors one what to purchase. What makes this all the more noteworthy is that much of this is rooted in offline purchases. I’m putting this together from two recent studies…

As we all know, a satisfied customer can often be your most effective marketing vehicle. This has become all the more apparent as Bazaarevoice found in a survey they completed for Keller Fay, the word of mouth marketing agency based out of Atlanta. They found that 79% of reviewers write reviews to reward a company for the quality of the product or service they bought, with 87% of the reviews being positive in tone. Positive experiences mean greater customer involvement.

This means that satisfied customers see the idea of writing online reviews as an important part of their product/service experience. That’s backed up by the fact that in the same survey, 90% of the respondents write the reviews to help others make better buying decisions. Social media allows them to ‘share the love’ so to speak. The survey also points out that 70% see contributing to online reviews as a means to help a company improve what they offer. If this is the case, then we’ve got the initial stages of what many are calling a ‘community’.

The significance of that point shouldn’t be underestimated. Social media marketers are constantly talking about community. Sometimes I think they overdo it. That’s because I think they believe exists in the first place. It doesn’t. But customer reviews are one way in which they begin.

That becomes more important when you realize that comScore and the Kelsey Group found that reviews written by fellow consumers had a greater impact on the buying decisions of potential buyers than that of professional reviewers. And this no small point: 97% of review readers fine the reviews they read to be accurate. So, the quality of the reviews by fellow users is not compromised by a lack of ‘expertise’ in writing reviews. With more than three-quarters of review readers saying that their reading of someone else’s opinion on a product or service effected their decision to make a purchase, online review are now completely mainstream They are part of customer relations, message development, and community formulation. In short, an ecommerce strategy must include happy customers.

And just how can this affect the touchpoints as to the reasoning behind a purchase. comScore helps us out again by pointing out that people were willing to pay 20% ore for an Excellent, or 5-star rating, than they were a Very Good or Good 4-star rating. The survey doesn’t stipulate the percentage of people that feel this way however. But it does show that for (likely) price is not necessarily a huge factor when it comes to top quality. I say that because a 4-star rating is still very positive.

It should also be pointed out that offline purchases are really pushing this. Bazarrevoice found that of their respondents, 65% of them had, after purchasing offline, had gone back online to write a review. So it is not necessarily technology insiders. It’s broader than that.

Kelly Mooney has a great piece in AdAge, For Relevance, Think Three Way, in which she talks about the concept of ‘triangulation’ involving the brand, the customer, and the community and that all three need to embrace one another. She also blogs at MooneyThinks.

She’s quite right in that, for many of us, we’ve moved much of our media gathering experience online. Websites, blogs, social networks, forums are the areas that we discuss brands or experiences with brands or our impressions of brands.

Kelly calls on companies to shift from “B to C” over to “B to We”. An excellent example she gives is the “Pink” campaign from Victoria’s Secret that targeted young women. She writes

The recent star-studded PJ Party, promoted through Facebook, street teams and in-store, included flash-mob experiences via SMS announcements about free merchandise and a mobile photo application that enabled partygoers to see themselves on the stage’s LED screen, and it culminated in a free Fergie concert. The destination site featured a real-time mobile photo blog from the party and a dance-video-upload contest set to Fergie’s latest hit, where Pink fans voted on who should win a shopping spree and have her video featured on VSPink.com. Through triangulated communications, the brand is extended from offline to online, viral and mobile, and to an increasingly “qualified” audience.

I can’t disagree with this concept but, I’m often left wondering…how many brands can actually engage their customers? How many brands are able to cause that much passion? How many brands can develop or, for that matter, find an actual online community?

That’s a question that most of us haven’t asked yet.

Check out the article in last Thursday’s Times, Dealing With the Damage From Online Critics, that addresses how to handle consumers who develop a personal vendetta against your company. Well, you could send lawyers but legal cease-and-desists generally just make the customer madder than hell and it isn’t hard to just start yet another attack site.

I hate to say it, sucking less always helps. Start with treating your customers better. Also, be sure to register lots of domain names and work on your online reputation aggressively before it becomes a problem.

Online, the best defense is a good offense and an ounce of online promotion is worth a pound of cure. Here are some great commented-by-me excerpts from the article, Dealing With the Damage From Online Critics, so you can get a gist:

As the power of the Internet grows, businesses small and large find themselves confounded by disenchanted employees, suppliers and competitors who seek fertile ground to air grievances online.

Armed with little more than a Web connection and a keyboard, these detractors can do everything from irritate, via a scathing review, to causing serious business problems by using message boards to reveal company secrets or spread rumors of unethical behavior. They may also start a gripe site or register a Web address in their target’s name.

There is not a lot you can do here so the best way to make sure you’re safe online is by making sure there is a whole lot of conversation about you, your brand, and your company well before anyone says anything, and they will, eventually.

It’s from Stat 101: the more data points there are the less any particular one point will effect the total. If you’re nowhere online, then one attack can demolish you. If, however, you’re ubiquitous, then any negative ad will probably not even cross your first few pages on Google anyway.

And, if it does, an appeasement policy does work: this person is not Hitler, this person just feels like he’s not being heard. I mean, I have done this sort of thing myself with Media Temple.

Their Director of Customer Support called me but his appeasement sucked because his gift wasn’t what I wanted, it is what he was authorized to give. Not enough. I just wanted to be appeased and so he never got the posts off of my blog and never will. I ended up leaving MT and will never recommend them ever again.

In fact, I am adamant that people stay away from Media Temple because I think Media Temple sucks (see what I just did there?)

Remedies vary by case and by state, but lawyers, Internet specialists and others counsel that the best course with may be to ignore irritating posts because trying to squelch a malcontent can have unintended consequences.

Beware of the unintended consequence, something we call blowback in DC. Reacting, responding, or arguing in a comment thread is basically engaging with a Tar Baby. There is no way you’re ever going to come out alive unless you come in very open, very sorry, and have a legitimate solution. Otherwise, if you’re ornery, you’ll have your ass handed to you.

“Your reaction often, if you’re a small business, is to get angry and to fire off a letter,” said Barry Werbin, an intellectual property lawyer at Herrick, Feinstein in New York. “Some big companies do it. More often than not, the person who posts the gripe site can’t wait to get that letter and post it.”

Sometimes, Mr. Werbin added, “it can worsen the damage because it just fuels the fire.”

This is super important — the best reason to hire a company like Abraham Harrison is because we know when not to react. As I always say, don’t respond, reply, react: message and counter-message!However, it is always smart to ask web hosts, web companies, the blogger, etc, very nicely to remove the content, especially after the issue has been resolved by you. Don’t get angry, don’t get even, get your “the customer is always right” hat on and start solving problems.

That the the owner of the gym in the article wouldn’t refund the $100 to the lady-in-question was just a seriously self-destructive rule. Katie Lambert is a moron. Now, she is known as a moron in the New York Times as well because this article makes her seam petty and cheap, surely prissy and pretty bad at customer service, that’s for sure.

Shit, if you own the company, “the rules” can always be ignored — rules are for dumb employees who have no authority so that spineless customers who don’t know their rights can tell their spouses that they tried and there was “nothing I could do.”

“New consumer opinion gets posted about every five seconds,” said Rob Crumpler, chief executive of Buzz Logic, which helps businesses identify influential bloggers.

Samantha DiGennaro, who runs her own strategic communications consulting firm in New York, says many companies either run scared from electronic media or fail to realize how quickly negative comments can jet around the Internet.

“People think, ‘It’s only on the Web. It’s not that important.’ But it’s almost more important than a newspaper or something in print,” she said. “Things live in perpetuity on the Web.”

Spoken words and even IM is “ephemeral,” meaning it is said and dissipates. When you post a blog entry or write a review, it goes on a permanent record. Since most companies have have websites that are essential “brochure-ware,” if there are enough negative reviews, these reviews can even place higher on Google than the company itself!

And, this “blog effect” even works for people who don’t have the Super Ninja SEO skills that I have just because Google favors deep sites, sites with lots of inbound and outbound links, sites with keyword-rich textual links, sites that are easy to “recognize” because they use predictable architecture, and also sites that are updated frequently. Google favors frequently-updated content above any other because Google is always afraid of missing something. Google wants to be first so Google will always index something fast and often if it is a site that is being constantly-updated — like a blog, a message board, or a review site! Ha!

Some large marketers may blog or respond anonymously. Ms. DiGennaro said appropriate responses were not one size fits all and must be tailored to the particular case. If something merits being addressed, she said, it can better be done in the name of the company rather than hiding behind anonymous postings.

Good lord, do not astroturf — it might seem like a great idea but it will give you nothing but pain!

Finally, Defensive Search Engine Optimization (Defensive SEO) works! It works! And here’s how, in a nutshell:

On the technical front, a search engine optimization expert can tweak a site so that it moves a positive posting higher in an Internet search, tending to bury the negative one. Shailen Lodhia, vice president for sales at Submit Express, an optimization firm in Burbank, Calif., estimated results could take three months to a year, and monthly retainers could exceed $3,000.

The best defense is a good offense. Useful practices include registering personalized e-mail addresses as well as gripe domain names — not with the intention of using them but to prevent others doing so. Registering common misspellings as well as derogatory domain names is a good precaution and so is covering extensions like .biz and .org. Costs are minimal, some lower than $50 a year.

And here is the money-shot of the entire article: you will not only be judge on the dumb or good things you do, but people know that you can really judge a company during a fit of rage, so you will also be judged by how you respond!

“Some people, for whatever reason, aren’t going to like or appreciate what you’re selling,” she said. “Accept this as normal, and you won’t stay awake at night letting a disgruntled client or a negative person who decided not to use your services bring you down with what will be transparently obvious to most people as sour grapes feedback.”

Angie Hicks, founder of Angie’s List, a member-generated ratings service where users report their positive or negative experiences with local contractors, said every company gets complaints at some time, but the way it responds can be more telling than the complaint itself.

“You can really see how that company is going to stand by their work based on how they handle problems that come up,” she said.

Don’t even try to attack, to counter-attack, to start making excuses, or by insulting or defaming your attacker. Remember what I told you about the tar-baby? Well, waging war with online conversation is an insurgency and requires asynchronous warfare techniques… I like to call them asynchronous marketing and asynchronous PR — forget about it, I already locked down the domain names!

All businesses should put some time and energy into reaching out to online influencers. The Wall Street Journal Weekend has a great article, The Price of a Four-Star Rating, on how restaurants, cafes, and bars can do a little face-to-face blogger outreach and engagement to great effect: dominating and pwning their reviews on Yelp!

Last August, Dine spent about $1,500 on an event for members of Yelp, a Web site where consumers post reviews and rate restaurants. The nearly 100 members were treated to an open bar, duck roulade appetizers and red velvet cupcakes for dessert. As a bonus, they all received certificates for discounts on subsequent meals. The result: a torrent of favorable reviews on Yelp. Most reviewers mentioned that they attended a Yelp event, though few highlighted that the food and drink was free.

$1,500 is peanuts, even for a small business, when the outcome can result in a 4-star rating — and it can be much much less — or much more luxurious, too! Additionally, the more folks who review you on sites like Yelp, the less likely that any one particular post will gut your reputation for all to see.

It is Stat 101: more total data assures that outliers are less influential over the total.

If your Yelp page has only one bad review, you can clean it up with 20 lukewarm reviews or even 2 or 3 brilliant reviews.

PR firms like Ogilvy and Edelman have been inviting bloggers and message board owners to round tables, forums, lunches, dinners, and parties on behalf of their clients for years now. Wining and dining bloggers works as long as you just put your best foot forward and don’t demand or require good press in the end. And before the Internet, they were wining and dining newspaper, magazine, and television reviewers as well. Does Car & Driver pay out-of-pocket to fly to Nice just to review the new Aston Martin DB9? No, Aston Martin foots the bill, of course!

Don’t game the system: sponsor and open house and invite local residents to eat your food and drink your beverages and then offer them a simple request: “blog or yelp me when you get home.” Make it simple: put a link off your site or give them a card with a URL that redirects directly to your Yelp page: www.joesdineryelp.com, for example

Better still to make a point of limiting your outreach to just local bloggers, inviting just them, as opposed to a bunch of general folks, to a face-to-face gathering. Bloggers are more likely to grok Yelp, anyway, and they also have their own platform — their own blogs — with which to write their own reviews. Online, more is better and ubiquitous is best!

If you treat people right, if you tell them who you are, if you don’t demand anything, and if you are transparent as to your intent, then it will all turn out well.

Heaven forbid folks don’t reveal they were guests at your schmooze fest! Make sure these bloggers reveal that they attended this special gathering for them!

If you don’t and anyone finds out that your wooed these high-influencers and community influentials then you’re toast. Be open, be honest, and ask for what you want, “please pop over to Yelp and let the gang there know what you think about my store, service, restaurant, bar, cafe, etc.”

It works.

And, if you think that $1,500 is too much, you’re a cheap bastard and will probably go out of business within a couple years or have probably never really made much of a success of yourself or your company and probably have already cut too many corners and earned those poor reviews.

You cheap bastard!

With the issue of reputation management in the news, I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent discovery that many of the Mattel toys made in China were painted with lead-based paints. This had followed several other unrelated incidents that had previously caused embarrassment to either Mattel or to China.

A company such as Mattel needs to have a proactive online strategy that could meet the negativity head on, to help suppress those damaging rumors that could hurt the company both immediately and permanently. A company needs to understand what is being said about them in online forums, on blogs, and, if necessary, it needs to help blunt and diminish the negativity headed their way.

For Mattel, it was the recall of millions of other toys that contained small magnets that could fall out of the toy and could be swallowed by young children. And for China, it was the massive recall of pet food earlier this year.

Oddly enough, a controversy erupted when Mattel apologized to U.S. consumers. The company had done the ‘right thing’ – or what is now considered standard practice – as they trotted out CEO Bob Eckert and put him on video with him stressing that Mattel will immediately look into the matter and make changes. And he wanted us to know that he, as a Dad himself, was concerned. Relational empathy works.

But the problem was that as Mattel was apologizing to US citizens, they were subtlety making it seem the problem was ‘with China’…which, if not exonerating the toy company, muddled up their role in the fiasco. In the meantime, the Chinese government was not thrilled as most of the recalled toys had problems with their very design as created by Mattel as opposed to lax Chinese standards or poor Chinese workmanship. As a result , Mattel made an apology to China, even though lax standards DID cause some of the problems.

So, as it often happens, we don’t know really who is to blame here. Or if any blame is damning enough to have either the company or the country or both scorned. Now that may be good enough and the issue may go away. But today, with the blogosphere in full swing, with online forums abuzz, with citizen journalism being heralded as a wave of the future, my bet is that problems like this will last more than a bit longer.

So, to me, companies such as Mattel (or governments, or associations, or any type of organization) and their PR agencies are going to have to either learn about or invest in the services of a digital consultancy that can help them manage, repair, or defend their reputation.

Disclosure: Abraham Harrison offers those services. But hear me out.

Businesses are going to make mistakes. Some honest ones, some callous ones. There will always be forces out that the will – very legitimately – call them on these mistakes. But mistakes can lead to rumors to that can spread very fast, to activist groups looking for the killer punch, to media outlets looking for that big story…when there may be no story to speak of.

Traditional PR practices still make perfect sense. Put the CEO on video, develop an new (and more effective) set of guidelines, work with the media. But today that may be enough.

A company such as Mattel needs to have a proactive online strategy that could meet the negativity head on, to help suppress those damaging rumors that could hurt the company both immediately and permanently. A company needs to understand what is being said about them in online forums, on blogs, and, if necessary, it needs to help blunt and diminish the negativity headed their way.

It’s a whole new ball game.

‘Around one-quarter of all online adults are thought to be influential brand advocates, but they spend more time online researching and purchasing than spreading the word according to a new report from JupiterResearch “Brand Advocates; Creating Rewarding Relationships.”‘ Via WebProNews

In my humble opinion, one cannot define someone who spends “more time online researching and purchasing than spreading the word” an influential brand advocate, can you? He may indeed be an influencer and a maven but unless he has a platform, a voice and the interest in actually evangelizing, he is not a brand advocate.

The report defines influential brand advocates by their purchase behavior and high rate of online activity. Over two-thirds of brand advocates research and purchase products online compared to slightly over half of all online users.

“Although a high level of online activity may suggest the influential brand advocates would respond to social marketing tactics, they are actually more traditional in their manner of research,” explained Emily Riley, Analyst at JupiterResearch.

“This group is more likely to read a blog for information rather than create their own; advocacy toward a product or service is most likely to be generated by word-of-mouth.”

Value and reliability are the most important considerations for brand advocates in making a purchase. The report suggests that social marketers should focus on this group by aiding in their research through microsites or product reviews instead of blogs and user-generated content.

“Marketers will have an easier time of attracting more brand advocates if they target this group with the right tactics,” said David Schatsky, President of JupiterResearch. ”

“Behavioral and content targeting are likely to attract brand advocates, since more than half of this segment is likely to pay attention to online ads that fit their interests or current activity.”

Via WebProNews

Our very own Dani wrote a brilliant post about the Mackay Effect as revealed in the New York Times. I thought I would weigh in with my opinion…

For those of you who underestimate the power of what Mackey did in those boards, Yahoo! Finance Groups, I just spoke to my college chum and fraternity brother (Phi Kappa Psi), David, and he told me that as a young analyst one of his daily tasks was to read the boards at Yahoo!, he was not alone, there were legions who scrutinized the Yahoo! Finance Groups very carefully, looking for market indicators.

He told me that he kept track and could see these little, small, conversations either precede changes in the stock market or catalyze the selling off or buying of stocks.

There is a high concentration of influencers in these spaces and while “having fun” is fine and good, the ramifications are real, especially if “his identity was not as well hidden as he may have hoped” because that means that he was in fact revealing insider info to those people who are running Wall Street.

Seriously!

If you are anything like me you have been following with interest the story of the CEO/Chairman of Whole foods Mr. John P. Makcey who, using the online name Rahodeb, would bad mouth competition on Yahoo Finance’s bulletin board. It seems that the Federal Trade Commission is using Mackey’s pseudonym against him as they try to block Whole Food’s purchase of Wild Oats Markets as it would “limit competition among natural and organic groceries” (New York Times).

In his own defense Mackey wrote: “I posted on Yahoo! under a pseudonym because I had fun doing it. I never intended any of those postings to be identified with me.” (New York Times). It seems that his identity was not as well hidden as he may have hoped either. He was called out many times by fellow posters on Yahoo Finance’s bulletin often times by name. He finally admitted to his real identity upon losing a bet to fellow posters.

Is it okay for some to use pseudonyms and for others not to? I must say it seems more of an embarrassing faux pas by Mackey than anything else. What could make you feel sillier than having the whole country know that you were flattering your own haircut in a web forum? Perhaps Mackey took his fun a bit too far, but what can one expect of a vegan, to not be extreme???

In the end I do not think that this will lead to any great ramifications for Mackey or the Whole Foods company. Who can judge what negative banter on an online bulletin can really accomplish or if it had anything to do with the ultimate acquisition of Wild Oats?

My questions are many, but mainly this: Should status or rank in a company inhibit an online alter ego? Is the next step banning CEOs from World of War Craft for fear that the Whole Foods Orcs will demoralize the Wild Oats Elves with a crushing battle?

One of the least important reasons for doing online messaging and blogger outreach and brand ambassadorship is to actually solve problems. The real mission of a online messaging and blogger outreach campaign is to share the experience, hope, expertise, and story.Since the blogosphere is not local at all, one shouldn’t care where these folks are — even if they’re outside the distribution channels of the magazine — when you plan out a online messaging and blogger outreach campaign.

Getting links from Europe or Asia is just as valuable, since what we are  doing, partially is “viral and buzz marketing”

In addition to just getting the conversation going, working towards a promotional “tipping point,” there are other things going on here.

LINK POPULARITY AND PAGE RANK:
Part of what is going on here as part of the outreach is to persuade bloggers to cover and recognize you, your upcoming and future announcements and your news .  The more organic blogger-based mentions, especially from within your target topical community, the better for your reputation on Google, as reflected in PageRank.

One thing folks don’t generally know too much about is that Google PageRank ranges from “excommunicated”(removed from the Google indices) and from 1-10. Most sites have appalling PageRank, which you can check on the Google Toolbar. If a bunch of PR 6 & PR 7 sites, such as newspapers and magazine and top blogs, link to you, you’re likely to increase in PageRank. While High PR sites can confer Google Juice to your site, they can also get you out of the Google Quarantine in short order — sort of like getting vouched for.

If you have lots of incoming links from a vertical market (autoblogs, gossip blogs, enviroblogs, celebrity blogs, or marketing blogs) then you are going to get a better PageRank than if you receive all of your inbound link from all over the board — too broad a cross-section of blogs and sites — then you will not receive the same boost. This is done by Google to judge what the site is about (New Marketing) and if the site is participating in link farms (a “black hat” method of search engine optimization), for which you will become quickly excommunicated.

GOOGLE AND SEARCH ENGINE INDEXING:
The messaging is primarily a person-to-person promotional strategy, but humans aren’t the only readers of the Internet: search engine bots and spiders are, too. Getting your properties deeply indexed into Google usually takes a while as Google has had its heart broken again and again. As a result, Google places new and unconnected sites into what is called the Google quarantine. This is the protected staging area where new sites need to live while Google gets to know you. Picture is sort of like being kept outside on the front porch at the end of a date until your date figure out if you’re a gentleman or not.

THE GLOBAL CONVERSATION:
This entire thing is not about a blogger from Denver or a teacher from Baltimore.  It is about the echo chamber, the passion chamber — it is about the “buzz.”  Each mention is less important that the total mention. At the end of the day, the metrics don’t really care about the particular mentions so much as the volume.  In a perfect world, there would be hundreds of mentions from PR5 sites.  To be honest, a lot of this has to do with “standardized testing” — these are finite algorithms and we are trying our best to match them.

ON PERMANENT RECORD:
At the end of the day, this is all about getting into permanent record. Second Life may be cool, and so may be IM, but these are all ephemeral — the web and the blogosphere is indexed and exists much longer and to greater effect the longer and deeper the penetration a site has into Google‘s, Technorati‘s, and Ask.com‘s site indices.