Wall Street protests continue to spread across major cities in the U.S. as Americans voice their concerns for the future outlook and well-being of the nation. Presently, these protestors are still being criticized for having no concrete agenda or “goal” in the leaderless movement. How are these visceral grievances of economic inequity not clear to the eyes of these critics? The call for economic equality, social justice, and the ban of corporate greed has been heard. This is their message.

Initially called for action by anti-consumerist group Adbusters, the Occupy Wall Street movement began on Sept. 17, in Zuccotti Park, formerly known as “Liberty Plaza Park” of New York City. Now in its fourth week, Occupy Wall Street has gained an abundance of media attention, proving its growing momentum of the once unheard voice of “ordinary” people. Occupy activists use major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, to post updates of the ongoing series of demonstrations for the general public.

Hundreds of Facebook and Twitter accounts have been used to promote Occupy’s efforts and to amplify its resonance. WeArethe99Percent blog on Tumblr continues to post images of average Americans, both young and old, voicing the hardships and injustice of living in the financial crisis of our current economy. The unemployment rate is at a high of 9.1 percent. This does not take into account those who work endless hours just to make ends meet on bare minimum pay and those who work relentlessly to pay off debt and loans.

WeArethe99Percent takes a stand against economic inequity. It brings attention to the fact that the top one percent of Americans controls approximately 42 percent of the country’s financial wealth. There is a clear disparity of wealth in our nation. Occupy Wall Street aims to do just that — to bring economic justice and equality for all.

Click here to see 11 charts on the discrepancy between the top one percent and the top 99 percent of America.

Related articles

• #OccupyWallStreet takes on Times Square (valeriewire.wordpress.com)
• “Occupy Wall Street” Goes global (alan.com)
• Point-Missing Dudes Declare Occupy Wall Street’s Women ‘Hot’ [Occupy Wall Street] (jezebel.com)
• Occupy Wall Street Zuccotti Park Video (markinthecity.com)
• Occupy Wall Street gets support from the rich 1 percent via Tumblr (cbsnews.com)

I’ve run a social media marketing agency since Autumn 2006 so Abraham Harrison is almost five years old. In that time, we’ve learned quite a lot. One of my biggest learnings is that you can’t always get a direct bead on your demographic target–and that’s OK. We’ve worked for a broad spectrum in these five years, from health care and pharma to huge radio astronomy projects; from global non-profits to very specific public affairs campaigns. Social media marketing and blogger outreach and activation can be effective for everything, though it isn’t always clear how. B2B seems to be the least confident that social can help them but I believe we have really sorted it out: What I’ve learned is that if you cannot target your dream customer directly, you can target everyone around him.

I call this “fire for effect,” which is a term taken from artillery for when you don’t quite know where your target is or your target is well-guarded or sheltered. So, what you do instead is you fire downrange, doing your best to either step your shells closer and closer to the true target or to just use the shock and awe of incoming high explosive shrapnel shells going off everywhere else, distracting and engaging powerfully but indirectly.  (In artillery, you generally try to have someone down range, a forward observer, who can help you drop your mortars closer and closer, called adjusting your indirect fire, which I will discuss further along.)

Let me bring this analogy back to social media marketing. In two instances, I have seen indirect social media marketing work wonders. 80% of what we at Abraham Harrison do is long-tail blogger outreach. Instead of “sniping” at just the top-25 most influential bloggers in any one vertical, we dig deep and often come up with between 2,000-10,000 relevant blogs.  Most client projects make it easy for their general appeal; however, in a couple notable cases, firing for effect was the only thing we could really do: targeting health care providers for a client that sells health care devices and targeting astronomers for a global radio telescope project.

What we quickly realized is that not only were the doctors and scientists that my clients most desired generally not blogging, they were also very busy and quite invulnerable to the sort of blogger PR pitches we were wont to do, but they were also unpredictable and often volatile.

Doctors were almost impossible to access directly and scientists tended to be impolite whenever they received a plea via email from someone they didn’t know — typical A-lister behavior.

What we needed to do was to brainstorm and expand our campaigns to include everyone around the doctors.  Since the campaign was a public affairs campaign on hospital acquired infection-prevention, we brainstormed on who else is in the space–targeting the “ground” immediately around the docs, expanding as far out as we had budget and time.

Who did we come up with? Well, nurses, orderlies, caregivers, parents of elderly parents, partners of the elderly, people with immunosuppressive diseases, parents of sickly children, pregnant women, nursing students, medical students, public policy bloggers–the list was thousands of blogs and bloggers long. All the earth around the OR, an impenetrable fortress, was razed and we super-saturated the blogosphere, the twittersphere, and the Facebookosphere with discussion, mentions, messaging, excerpting, and commentary about the very real issue of healthcare associated infections in today’s hospitals and clinics: ventilator-associated pneumonia, surgical site infections, cross contamination, etc.

The same thing with the scientists who are associated with the radio telescope campaign. The scientists were there, they were just snippy, so instead of risking too much negative feedback, we instead isolated them and instead reached out to everyone around them: science nerds, space geeks, techies, amateur astronomers, sky watchers, backyard astronomers, and stargazers.

When it comes to blogger outreach and engagement, the goal is never to convert the blogger into a customer, I must remind you, but is always to message through the blogger onto his or her blog as a post, tweet, retweet, or wall post.  If the blogger is a gatekeeper, a blockade, to the blog and the blog’s readers (and to the spiders and bots, busily indexing links and content for Google, Bing, and Yahoo!), then you must abandon them and move on to the more accessible publications–generally the hobbyists, the amateurs, and the aspirants of the social media and blogosphere.

Amateur hobbyist bloggers are generally hungrier, more available, more grateful, and don’t have the hundreds of “date offers” that journalists, professionals, or A-listers generally have–they’re interested in making a name and are generally pretty amazed when a brand or an agency is sensitive and generous around to notice a blog that’s not solidly in the A-list and are generally really appreciative and open to building an authentic relationship.

Why do all of this? Why expend all this energy and munitions on indirect fire? The obvious answer is to smoke them out.  Since we’re often able to start a wildfire of blog posts, tweets, likes, retweets, and Facebook shares, there’s really nowhere for these well-fortified A-listers, scientists, professionals, and surgeons to hide.

And since all of the messaging, all the wildfire, is no longer coming from up range, from our battery, then it is no longer associated with us or our clients. Now, the wildfire is owned by the blogosphere instead of the client or my agency.

This means that the public affairs messaging, the content from our social media news releases, and the emailing back and forth between my crack team of online analysts and the hundreds of bloggers who take up the flag of our outreach, become detached from the final end-product: the rash of intense conversation, posting, tweeting, and retweeting that has all of a sudden lit up the social mediasphere like day actually comes from an impressive number of bloggers and readers from the space and not, at the end of the day, directly from us–so, it is much more likely that these unassailable influencers will end up, at the end of the day, be influenced anyway, without ever being pitched directly by us.

We have seen this happen time and time again, so much so that we have cliches for these things: priming the pump, setting the stage, tenderizing the steak, fertilizing the field–and, of course, carpet bombing (I like that last one the best, but my management team wants me to stop using military analogies, so please forgive me for all the above).

Because nobody believes me that this all works, I like to collect “thank you blogger” posts (from the clients who allow) wherein we “thank” the people who blog and tweet for us, through earned media (we don’t pay anyone–all of this isn’t payola-based) and the numbers speak for themselves: Thank You Habitat for Humanity World Habitat Day Bloggers, Thank You All Who Supported International Medical Corps!, Thank You Fresh Air Fund Bloggers, Thank You Snuggle Crème Bloggers, Thank You To All Of The Olympic Bloggers, Thank you Alzheimer’s Bloggers, Thank You Habitat For Humanity World Habitat Day 2010 Bloggers, Thank You HAI Watch Bloggers, Thank You MLK Memorial Bloggers, Thank You Motionbox Bloggers, Thank You To All US Winter Olympic Bloggers–so, the proof is in the pudding.

At the end of the day, the results outlive the campaign on organic search. When hundreds of blogs and tweets are published online–public, archived, and indexed–most of which link to your client’s social media news release, Web site, issue page, or landing page–hundreds of posts from a diversity of blogs and sources, almost always focused on a very impassioned three-week span. While I don’t condone link-farming or any black hat or even grey hat tactics, earned media mentions–where “earned media” means that you make the offer–the pitch–to the blogger and the blogger decides if and when he or she will post and how he or she will post.

Some bloggers post the our pitch email directly to their blog and that’s cool. A majority mention that they received a pitch from us and our client as well as excerpting and blockquoting a sizable amount of our very own copy from our social media news release. A minority actually spend the time to go in and write up a brand new piece, researched and contextualized, and we love those, too. We’re realistic: we’re reaching out to someone, asking for their help, not paying them anything at all except attention, and then expect them to do us a solid and actually post about our clients for free? Well, we’re always darned grateful for just about any mention–even, believe it or not, the spiny ones. It’s all good.

And, at the end of the day, as they say, any publicity is good publicity as long as they link our client’s name, product, services, and keywords as close to right as possible.

Via Mike Moran’s Biznology Blog

At Abraham Harrison, online social media PR is what we do all day, every day, and have been doing for years. We’re not an old-media PR shop trying to quickly jump on the new-school bandwagon, hoping we can figure it out (and making all the mistakes on your dime). We are a well-practiced team of 40+ professionals who work exclusively in the social media world. We’re very pleased to put our skills and experience at your service to deliver the extraordinary impact new media operations can have when  practiced by true online experts.

We’re completely confident in our ability to produce results with clients who wish to leverage online social media – we know our way around this space like few others. We secure you trust, endorsements, top search results ranking, and ubiquitous presence of message — we can get your brand out in front of the world, right in front of the eyes of exactly the people you want to reach, driving your search engine and general online visibility so that your brand is ubiquitous in the  places where your potential clients live online and at the tops of search results – not only having your brand  promoted on your own sites, but getting them endorsed and promoted on the sites and under the names of  the influencers in the online worlds where your customers are waiting for you to meet them.

We do all of this by finding the people you need and mobilizing them to support your aims, be it connecting to decision-makers or activating mass support, we can help you identify, connect with, and mobilize the people you need to be supporting you on the issues that affect you. We can reach out directly  to the people you need to be in contact with or connect with entire demographics in the places they live online.

Abraham Harrison helps you manage your reputation online and protect you online in times of crisis. With the Internet, with its forced transparency and free, instant flow of information, communication and reputation crises can crop up overnight – and with the search engines, even a very old blemish can taint  your or your organization’s image years later and on into the future. We can help you manage crises,  steering communications effectively in the free, open, uncontrollable online medium and we can help you  regain and maintain control of your reputation and image in the search engine results.

Via Abraham Harrison LLC

Social and digital media have created a new and constantly evolving world of communication challenges and opportunities for every organization.

Advocacy has been transformed by social media and online advocacy services are essential in today’s climate where news, rumors, gossip, misinformation, and disinformation spread online as fast as electricity through the wire.

Our social media services offer online monitoring so that we can keep on top of what is being said about you, warn you when issues arise, and recommend a course of action appropriate to the level of danger to your interests and suitable to the culture of social media.

Additionally, our online advocacy team, currently operating in twelve languages and eleven countries can take what we discover online and reach out to the influencers and engage in social media communities that are already talking about you or are prime recipients of your message.

In addition to monitoring and engaging with online influencers, Abraham Harrison can help you develop and grow your branded social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, blogs — wherever you need to engage your natural allies, respond to information others are putting out there, and promote your brand, your issue, and your point of view.

Our services include creating, building, promoting, responding, and guarding your social media properties with around-the-clock support.

(Via Abraham Harrison)

Joan Stewart posted a question on LinkedIn that I found really compelling, Do online petitions carry any weight in PR campaigns? I will post her full question after I post my answer:

My company does blogger activation, which does not equal a one-to-one activation. When it comes to activating bloggers or anyone online, you always need to offer the recipient something actionable to do. People are busy. Not everyone has the time or the interest in calling or writing or the capacity to fax. So, when you activate, offer the simple, the easy, and also the more complex actions like phone numbers.

However, we make staffers and politicians super anxious and responsive when we forego the calls or petitions for real online protestation. Twitter, blogging, retweeting, status updates, and general noisiness online – YouTube pleas, even – can be passed around, shared, and so forth.

If you search google for ‘tea party talking points‘ you will see that you’re almost better off preparing a one-pager list of talking points to make it easier and simpler for people to become briefed and also offer online activists a simple source of info to repeat message along to friends, family, and community.

Long story short is the goal is to light up the Hill’s staffers’ Google Alerts as much as anything else. Rapid crisis response in the Government can be gamed. You can create a perception of revolution that is often equal to or greater than a real revolution if you leverage the media.

Here’s Joan’s question, Do online petitions carry any weight in PR campaigns?

Circulating petitions online has never been a very effective way of promoting a cause or issue. If you’re angry about something, you’d be far better off calling to voice your disapproval.

But now that social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube can spread the word about a cause or issue within minutes, and mobilize huge numbers of people, has that changed? If you manage PR campaigns, what do you tell your clients? If you’re a social media expert, what’s your take on this?

Witness what happened to Amazon.com over the weekend when feminist, LGBT and sexual-empowerment themes were removed from the sales rankings, numbers that show how well a product is performing on the website. Authors went nuts and, among other things, circulated online petitions. You can read more about this at http://budurl.com/cheu

Are online petitions effective?

What do you guys think?

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.”

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.

I just asked a question via Twitter. And I’ll repeat it here.

Question for social media types…many complain about interference from legal dept. when it comes to social media, especially with UGC…so, are there any conferences, events, seminars, etc. that bring the two groups together to understand one another more?

Not to toot my own horn, but that’s a good question. And it’s one that needs to be answered.

Marketers are essentially in charge of defining, promoting, enhancing, and protecting the brand. Lawyers are essentially in charge of protecting the entity, the business, and, yes, the brand.

I got to thinking about this because social media strategists often, as part of their strategy, enlist, encourage, or allow a brands users to play a role in the branding. I got to thinking of a recent story involving a group of car enthusiasts putting together a picture calendar showing off their cars. They calendars were to be sold on CafePress. But there was some sort of communication screw up and it was halted I believe. Some social media strategists mistakenly blamed the car company.

But then I thought…wait…if the legal department did have reservations in this situation, is that necessarily a bad thing? Think about it….

What if one of the participants of an unsolicited consumer generated media effort has let’s say a problem. Like a police record. I mean, let’s say he’s the type of guy who could get nailed by Chris Hansen of Nightline. You know, a pedophile.

Ridiculous? If you think so, you’re missing the point. The point is that legal department and marketing departments are going to have to understand one another and work together to both reasonably promote and protect the brand through social media. Cutting edge vs. overly cautious won’t do. Lawyer potentially nixing or at least getting in the way of potentially effective programs or frustrated marketing types angrily rolling their eyes at the stupidity and interference of the legal department will only serve to stifle the brand, or, potentially worse, leave it unprotected.

Let me first reveal that Abraham Harrison LLC, my employer and my company, is an online reputation management company — online reputation protection, promotion, defensive SEO, domain name strategy, and crisis management. That said, I could not be happier because online reputation management is apparently the new black, at least according to Techdirt, Forget Publicists, All The Cool Kids Have Online Reputation Managers:

It’s been well-documented that Google has become something of the mythical permanent record teachers warned you about as kids. There are plenty of stories about people losing jobs or discovering dubious information about dates using Google. A few years back, services popped up claiming that they could scrub your online record clean — though, how successful such services could be was certainly called into question. However, it appears that those services have morphed into a new, somewhat scary, category called online reputation management. While it’s to be expected that corporations might have people monitoring online reputations, it’s quite another thing to have individuals hire firms to do the same thing.

(Tip of the hat for the article to Scott Burns)

I have tried to explain defensive SEO to clients on pitches and here are a couple examples and analogies I have used in the past. I promise to come up with better analogies, but this is what I have at the moment!

Rockets on Israeli Settlements

Most of the time, defensive SEO is sort of like cleaning up a crime scene. There is a lot of manual labor involved in that cleaning. It requires pressurized water hoses, clorox, mops, panes of glass, lots of spackle, and some paint. The goal after a crime has been committed, is to return the scene to normalcy — as if nothing happened here.

Unfortunately, during a crisis situation, the crime is ongoing. I compare it to the daily rocket fire from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip falling randomly on Jewish settlements. Bombing of this sort is random and destructive and done not as a targeted attack but is known as “firing for effect,” which is to say as terrorism and a way of unsettling the settlers.

When it is the security and confidence of a community that is at stake and when there is no way to be sure that the attacks are ever over, returning these settlements in a state of destruction is unacceptable. There are Israeli task forces that have the single-minded job of responding to any and all rocket attacks immediately after the emergency responders leave. The trucks are mobile housing contractors. They have the ability to actively and quickly clean up any and all signs of a destructive attack within hours of the event.

All shrapnel pock marks are spackled, all burn marks are painted over, and all broken glass is replaced. While this may just be a futile act, it is essential for this kind of defensive strategy to continue and continue. Why? Well, this is a game of hearts and minds. This is a game of keeping up appearances to make sure that all the settlers feel safe in their every day life, day after day. This perceived safety is better than none at all. The reality of the day-to-day is enough; however, living in a home with broken windows and the pock marks of shrapnel is too close, especially for neighbors and new settlers.

Cleaning up these attacks daily and footing the bill and resources is the cost of doing business. It is a budgeted line-item, equally important to actually finding ways, both diplomatic and military, to stop the attacks some day.

If one were to wait for the attacks to be over, strategically, ignoring the tactical, then those same hearts and minds might very well decide that living in the settlements, living in Israel, or even moving to Israel is an unacceptable decision.

One must never underestimate perception of safety and its power over both settlers, government, citizens, visitors, tourists, and immigrants; same may be said with a company’s or person’s reputation: investors, employees, relationships, opportunities, and families may become insecure enough to abandon ship.

El Al Jumbo Jets Chaffing and Flaring the Skies

Unfortunately, one cannot hide El Al’s new Boeing 777, the world’s largest twinjet, when it takes off and lands. Not yet anyway. The 777 is a sitting target. One cannot do much about it. What can one do? Well, there are several things: you can have sensors that check to see if there are any service-to-air missiles either locked on or inbound — that’s a start. You can also make sure that your pilots have been trained in evasive maneuvers, which, unfortunately, are limited in jumbo jets. At the end of the day, however, you need to just make sure that the jet isn’t accessible to any SAMs.

El Al commercial aircraft are outfitted not with cloaks of invisibility but with “softkill” countermeasures. A countermeasure is a system (usually for a military application) designed to prevent sensor-based weapons from acquiring and/or destroying a target. Softkill measures generally interfere with the signature of the target to be protected. One or more of the following actions may be taken to provide softkill: reduction of the 777′s signature, augmentation of the 777′s signature, and the cloning or imitation of the 777′s signature. These techniques are used to generally prevent lock-on of a threat sensor to the commercial aircraft.

It is based on altering the signature of the target by either concealing the platform signature or enhancing the signature of the background, thus minimizing the contrast between the two. Some of these techniques include IR-decoy flares, serving to counter infrared-guided missiles (SAM), and radar decoys, in the form of chaff.

The Internet is very similar. Search engines are doubly so. It is impossible to stop flying. It is impossible to disappear the aircraft. And, it is impossible to delete, kill, or remove all threats in advance. Even if it is possible in the Internet to have an attack site brought down, it is simple enough to duplicate content, is simple for the attackers to create rally points, regroup, and then attack again. In fact, bringing a site down oftentimes results in redoubled enemy efforts.

Some of the only effective tools one can use to use “softkill countermeasures” — make sure there is enough chaff and there are enough enough flares in the search results so that when someone tries to attack your brand, their attack ends up getting lost on page 5+ of the returns while still allowing friendlies, “passengers,” and clients to easily and safely find their way to you.

How about them apples?

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.

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!

Over the next 13 months, we’re going to have to endure yet another campaign season here in the States. Two primaries and then a long, drawn out general election. One way to deflect these attacks is through defensive SEO. It helps suppress concerted attacks by depressing negative search results while increasing positive ones. And I think it will be vital. Hopefully, others will listen.

We’ve got a bitterly divided electorate here in the states. There doesn’t seem to be much give from the hard right or hard left. I fully believe that both sides will be going full force to destroy one another. That’ s not just the eventual nominees, but candidates from all levels, the interest groups that back them, and other assorted key players.

We’re going to see a lot of dirty tricks online. We’re going to see rumor mongering. We’re going to see sleaze come out of the woodworks.

That’s why I think that stakeholders must look to invest NOW in defensive SEO. They need to learn what is out there and what is likely out there. They need to have a rapid response mechanism that limits or eliminates damage.

In the online arena, information can spread fast. Damaging information can spread faster. We’re likely to see successful attacks out of nowhere. Sort of like we did back in 2000 when citizens of South Carolina were told, via telephone calls just before the primary, that US Senator John McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child.

But this goes beyond those candidates. We’ll see attacks on advocacy organizations and on key influentials. Often people in politics like to destroy their opposition.

One way to deflect these attacks is through defensive SEO. It helps suppress concerted attacks by depressing negative search results while increasing positive ones. And I think it will be vital. Hopefully, others will listen.

ZenithOptimedia is predicting that the percentage share of online advertising to advertising on a whole will increase from 7.5% in 2007 to 9.5% in 2009. I’m betting it’s going to be higher. And in part for the similar reasons they do.

Online video is improving and it’s becoming more and more common as a marketing communications vehicle. Broadband expansion is slowing down, but expansion, while important, isn’t the only factor. It’s also how we use and will use video that will cause a continued increase. Broadcast and cable will increase their understanding as to how to make online video more profitable with hopefully, little sacrifice in popularity.

Zenith also says that local search will fuel this increase. Once again, I agree. But I’d expand this. As more and more mid-size and larger companies realize the important of search – and search optimization – they’ll invest more in better sites, further increasing the importance of search. And, yes, those local companies will realize that their customer base is going online for local info. They can’t rely on tradtional methods they once did.

But I’d also add that the growth of social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube will fuel even greater online ad share growth. Right now, they’re in the process of figuring it all out. Once they do, more dollars will be transfered online.

To me, the increase will come from the greater use of improving online applications. My guess is that it will push it up closer to 12%.

	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009
Newspapers	29.7	29.0	27.8	26.9	26.2
Magazines	13.2	12.8	12.5	12.2	12.1
Television	37.8	37.9	37.9	38.2	38.1
Radio	8.6	8.3	8.1	7.9	7.8
Cinema	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.4	0.5
Outdoor	5.5	5.6	5.7	5.8	5.9
Internet	4.8	6.1	7.5	8.7	9.5

Source: ZenithOptimedia

It is not good enough to just pitch bloggers. It is also important to target your audience (and also target your message), be willing to offer a gift (it doesn’t have to be swag, it can be anything: arcane knowledge, help, support, or access), and to actually be an active social media participant (people will check up on your story, that’s for certain).

“The team’s thinking was that any blogger they pitched would go searching for more information on the contest. ” Via Search Engine Guide

I do a pretty good job at all of these things and even I find myself up the flag pole periodically, too.

I asked Kevin to write a blog post (which rocked) based on my assumption that the US is headed towards a recession based on the devaluation of the dollar, the housing market slump, and the war in Iraq. I believe that marketing and advertising online is recession-proof, especially as attention profiling and behavioral targeting strategies improve and ads become customized to each the unique hopes, dreams, needs, wants, and context of users online.

My premise, in short, is that folks will hunker down during this recession with only the “Internet” to keep them company, in the form of VOIP, IPTV, social media, MMORPGs, and networked video games.

Essentially, folks will spend all of their attention online so there will be more ad and marketing dollars spent online in order to reach them. During the upcoming recession, search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), new marketing, online outreach, online engagement, online advocacy, viral and word-of-mouth marketing, targeted direct marketing, and laser-targets online ad buys will thrive because they’re relatively cheap, focused, and where the people are, while print ads, commercials, and radio spots will plummet: too much buck for the bang.

We’re going to have a recession. let’s just make that assumption.

Usually, during a recession, ad revenues drop. My argument is that during a recession, people stay home more. Web surfing is cheap, amusing, plentiful, and also most amusing with broadband. While people may cut down cable, they will keep their Internet connection — and will hunker-down on the Internet while they’re low on personal spending money, on discretionary income.

My dad was an photographer and ad man in Hawaii during a recession in Japan that totally gutted the the Hawaiian economy. Traditionally, the first thing companies do when the shit hits the fan is pull ad dollars.

In that scenario, my dad’s company almost shuttered. What this shakedown did, however, was created stock photography and video, killing the bespoke day-rate on-site corporate photographer. Something always comes out in the end.

Downturns result in a need to make systems more efficient and more effective. It just wasn’t affordable for agencies to hire shooters to do shoots, bespoke. There were too many variables and all the risk was on the shoulders of the client. Stock photography changed all of that: cheaper and oftentimes better, since the shooter incurs the risk and the stock is “all the best of all time” and not the best that a particular day, week, or season had to offer.

How effective is plastering walls with bills or standing on a soap box when people are at home and online? How effective are commercials on cable channels people drop as a “luxury?” How worthwhile are those magazine ads when people drop their subscriptions to GQ and O?

The Internet is a commodity. Broadband is no longer a luxury — people are not willing to either go back to “rabbit ears” or to dial up. Folks will keep their basic cable, I am sure — it is a commodity — and they will keep their Internet, another commodity.

Is it very interesting time. I guess this is sort of a prediction. We’ll see if it all comes true. Check out that Canadian Loonie, eh?

Well, at the end of the day, I will always quote Kevin Donlan quoting someone else:

“When times are good, you should advertise. When times are bad, you must advertise.”

Abraham Harrison executive, Saul Wainwright, brought an amazing radio news article to my attention, The Truth of False, which addresses what I have known forever: the truth is always what people remember and people generally associate the words used when messaging — color and tone — with the final perception, be it positive or negative. (Thanks Saul)

If someone says, “Chris Abraham doesn’t suck,” you’ll come away with, “Chris Abraham sucks.” Better to say, in response to “Chris Abraham sucks,” “Chris Abraham is a generous and loving child of God.” Better, right? Rule 1: Never Adopt Your Enemy’s Language!

People assume that their memories serve them with truth. When doing online messaging or counter-messaging, I go back to quote the maestro, Frank Luntz, “It’s not what you say it’s what people hear,” where I add, “It’s not what you say it’s what people remember,” finally adding, “It’s not true unless people remember it as true and it isn’t false unless people remember it as false.”

Here’s a book recommendation: Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear by Frank Luntz

Transcript of The Truth of False

BOB GARFIELD: Americans may or may not be as sleep-deprived as drug makers claim, but if it were a myth you could try to quash it with the truth. That’s what the Centers for Disease Control Prevention recently did. They sent out a flyer listing various facts and myths about the flu vaccine and labeled them “true or false.” But a study at the University of Michigan found that the CDC flyer actually did nothing to change people’s minds and may have even spread vaccine myths to more people.

Shankar Vedantam, a reporter for The Washington Post, explains that right after reading the flyer, people mostly remembered the false statements as false.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: But about 30 minutes later, older people started to remember some of the false statements as true, and three days later, very large numbers of older people and significant numbers of younger people also started remembering increasing numbers of myths as true.

The true statements did not suffer the same kind of deterioration with time. In other words, over time we tend to remember false things as true but not true things as false.

BOB GARFIELD: Hmm — well, I guess there’s some hope in that. By what mechanism is this taking place?

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: The mind relies on a number of rules of thumb, and one of the rules of thumb that it uses is that things that are more easily recalled are true even if the context in which they originally heard the statement was that the statement is false.

BOB GARFIELD: Now, if I understand your piece, when people hear a statement involving a negative – let’s say Saddam was not connected to 9/11 – and they hear it often enough, somehow the “not” disappears.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: That’s right. What happens, unfortunately, is our denial of the myth ends up repeating the myth and makes the myth itself more accessible to people’s memory. And furthermore, as the separate study that you note points out, what happens very often is that the “not” in the sentence essentially falls off with time in many people’s memories.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: I want to ask you, then, about truth-squadding, since we’re in the midst of political races. Here’s the scenario: politician A makes horrendous charges against politician B, essentially lying about the opposition. A vigilant reporter notices this and does a truth-squadding article in the newspaper that says, no, this campaign ad is simply not true for the following reason. And politician B, of course, immediately starts attacking politician A for misrepresenting his or her record. Who wins?

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: I think invariably it’s going to be politician A. When you have people who are systematically trying to manipulate you, spread propaganda, for instance, and they repeat the same information over and over again, the fact that we are not very good at remembering where we heard a particular piece of information, we tend to believe that we have heard the information from multiple independent sources and therefore it must be true, rather than from the same untrustworthy source over and over again.

BOB GARFIELD: Now, the studies you’re talking about suggest that these effects take place irrespective of the bias of the listener. But there’s another study that suggests that if you are, in fact, predisposed to have a certain world view that misinformation sticks still more. Can you describe it?

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: There’s a new study that’s just been completed by Jason Reifler at Georgia State University where he actually looks at questions such as why it is that large numbers of people continue to believe that weapons of mass destruction were present in Iraq before the invasion or even found in Iraq after the invasion.

And what Jason and his colleagues did was try and give people the correct information. And what he found, ironically, is that partisans who wanted to believe that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, when told about the correct information, ended up believing ever more fervently that they were right and that the correct information was wrong.

BOB GARFIELD: And this would explain, for example, why, throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds, more than half of the population seems to believe that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were the work of the U.S. government or Israel.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: I think that’s right. What’s especially disturbing is that the number of people who believe that is actually growing over time. In the study I mentioned, 59 percent of Turks and Egyptians, 65 percent of Indonesians, 53 percent of Jordanians, even 56 percent of British Muslims do not believe that Arabs were behind the 9/11 attacks.

And so presenting them with the correct information, which, by the way, is our government’s strategy of combating myths and disinformation, does not seem to be a very effective approach.

BOB GARFIELD: So the truth will out, except when it doesn’t.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: [LAUGHS] I guess you can say that. One thing that I should mention, Bob, is that when you’re trying to deny a falsehood, perhaps the most effective way of doing that is by not mentioning the original falsehood at all.

In other words, if someone said that Bob Garfield is for child prostitution, the right response is not Bob Garfield is not for child prostitution, but, rather, to say Bob Garfield is an upstanding journalist who believes in the finest tenets of journalism and runs a very popular show that’s heard widely by many millions of people around the world.

BOB GARFIELD: Ah — so, in other words, to replace one lie with another.

[LAUGHTER]

Shankar, thank you so much.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: Thanks so much, Bob.

BOB GARFIELD: Shankar Vedantam is a reporter and columnist at The Washington Post.

More Info on Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear by Frank Luntz

From Publishers Weekly
After repeating his mantra—”it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear”—so often in this book, you’d think that Republican pollster Luntz would have taken his own advice to heart. Yet in spite of an opening anecdote that superficially attempts a balanced tone, the book as a whole truly reads more like a manual for right-wing positioning. Even in the sections where he is less partisan, Luntz’s advice is not particularly insightful. For instance, his first chapter, on “Ten Rules of Effective Language,” starts by instructing readers to use small words and short sentences in their communications. The least effective section in the book is the chapter on “Personal Language for Personal Scenarios,” where Luntz advocates manipulative strategies for getting out of traffic tickets, boarding airplanes at the last minute and apologizing to one’s wife with the “miracle elixir” of flowers. The most readable and redeeming feature is the two case studies, where Luntz demonstrates his skill as a communicator by identifying real-world communications successes and failures. Unfortunately, by the time nonpartisan readers reach these chapters, they will have already lost patience. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Luntz, an advisor to many political and corporate leaders, reads an impressive introductory chapter before narrator L.J. Ganser spells out the author’s 10 characteristics of effective communication: simplicity, brevity, credibility, consistency, novelty, sound and texture, inspirational language, vivid pictures, questions, and context and relevance. In the introductory chapter and in a concluding interview, Luntz is a powerful speaker. He knows how to anchor his ideas in the larger cultural context. Expressing his ideas with remarkable skill, he’s a pugnacious thinker who is not afraid to be blunt but is always respectful of how his voice and ideas are heard. In perfect sync with these qualities, L.J. Ganser’s determined enunciation moves the rest of the pithy material along with clarity. T.W. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine– Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine –This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Wall Street Journal
“Words That Work deserves an attentive read. Mr. Luntz offers a fair amount of good advice to anyone who must communicate publicly–most important, “be the message.” By this he means that if you want to talk the talk and be believed, you must walk the walk–which is to say, you must mean what you say and act on it. Integrity sells.”As the book develops, Mr. Luntz’s “words that work” turn out to be portals for his clients to think hard about what they and their opponents stand for and how to align their positions more closely with what their audiences actually care about. This isn’t hocus-pocus. It’s just the result of hard work, careful thought and empathy–the staples of all intelligent public discourse.”

Senator John Kerry
“Frank Luntz understands the power of words to move public opinion and communicate big ideas.”

Steve Wynn
“If you can’t afford to hire Frank Luntz, you have to read Words that Work.”

Tony Robbins
“a MUST read!”

The (London) Sunday Telegraph
“The pollster has a long track record of identifying the phrases that make or break political and corporate campaigns . . .”

Chris Matthews
“Dr. Luntz, you are a freaking genius. The book is called Words That Work and you’re always right.”

Washington Post.com
“One of the nation’s leading pollsters and political language specialists.”

Washington Post.com
“One of the nation’s leading pollsters and political language specialists.”

Financial Times
“Few political consultants can boast as many strings to their bow at such a young age as Frank Luntz. When he was barely in his thirties, the Republican wordsmith played a critical role in devising the Contract With America, which helped Newt Gingrich’s Republican party win control of both houses of Congress for the first time in more than a generation….”It is a fair bet that Luntz will play an influential role in the 2008 election, possibly in service of his old friend the former mayor of New York.

“Words That Work is Luntz’s attempt to distil what he insists is his intrinsically honourable profession between two covers. To a large extent it works. Even where Luntz is protesting a bit too loudly – that negative attacks on political opponents rarely work, for example, and that, by implication, Luntz has never been involved in such skulduggery – he is always readable.

“Part lexicographic memoir, part self-help book, Words That Work shines when the accent is on the former. It is hard to think of any other political consultant in America who has coined as many effective slogans as Luntz. Some, such as his branding of the estate, or inheritance, tax as the “death tax”, have remoulded conventional wisdom with devastating effect on their principally Democratic defenders.

“Others have crept into common usage less dramatically but just as effectively. Take “exploring for energy” instead of “drilling for oil”, “tax relief” in place of “tax cuts”, or “not giving” emergency hospital care to “illegal aliens” instead of “denying” it to “undocumented workers”. Words, or rather the slicing and dicing of them to fashion our subliminal responses, do work, particularly when tried and tested in Luntz’s two-hour “dial sessions”, where volunteers convey their responses by turning a dial up or down in reaction to what they are seeing and hearing.

“Luntz has produced a fine book that teaches us a great deal about politics in today’s America and about the minutely analysed mindset of the electorate. That Luntz’s words are effective there can be little doubt.”

Financial Times
“Few political consultants can boast as many strings to their bow at such a young age as Frank Luntz. When he was barely in his thirties, the Republican wordsmith played a critical role in devising the Contract With America, which helped Newt Gingrich’s Republican party win control of both houses of Congress for the first time in more than a generation….

“It is a fair bet that Luntz will play an influential role in the 2008 election, possibly in service of his old friend the former mayor of New York.

“Words That Work is Luntz’s attempt to distil what he insists is his intrinsically honourable profession between two covers. To a large extent it works. Even where Luntz is protesting a bit too loudly – that negative attacks on political opponents rarely work, for example, and that, by implication, Luntz has never been involved in such skulduggery – he is always readable.

“Part lexicographic memoir, part self-help book, Words That Work shines when the accent is on the former. It is hard to think of any other political consultant in America who has coined as many effective slogans as Luntz. Some, such as his branding of the estate, or inheritance, tax as the “death tax”, have remoulded conventional wisdom with devastating effect on their principally Democratic defenders.

“Others have crept into common usage less dramatically but just as effectively. Take “exploring for energy” instead of “drilling for oil”, “tax relief” in place of “tax cuts”, or “not giving” emergency hospital care to “illegal aliens” instead of “denying” it to “undocumented workers”. Words, or rather the slicing and dicing of them to fashion our subliminal responses, do work, particularly when tried and tested in Luntz’s two-hour “dial sessions”, where volunteers convey their responses by turning a dial up or down in reaction to what they are seeing and hearing.

“Luntz has produced a fine book that teaches us a great deal about politics in today’s America and about the minutely analysed mindset of the electorate. That Luntz’s words are effective there can be little doubt.”

Book Description
The nation’s premier communications expert shares his wisdom on how the words we choose can change the course of business, of politics, and of life in this country

In Words That Work, Luntz offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the tactical use of words and phrases affects what we buy, who we vote for, and even what we believe in. With chapters like “The Ten Rules of Successful Communication” and “The 21 Words and Phrases for the 21st Century,” he examines how choosing the right words is essential.

Nobody is in a better position to explain than Frank Luntz: He has used his knowledge of words to help more than two dozen Fortune 500 companies grow. He’ll tell us why Rupert Murdoch’s six-billion-dollar decision to buy DirectTV was smart because satellite was more cutting edge than “digital cable,” and why pharmaceutical companies transitioned their message from “treatment” to “prevention” and “wellness.”

If you ever wanted to learn how to talk your way out of a traffic ticket or talk your way into a raise, this book’s for you.

About the Author
Dr. Frank Luntz is one of the most respected communication professionals in America. With his firm, Luntz Maslansky Strategic Research, he has conducted more than 1,500 surveys and focus groups for corporate, public affairs, and political clients in twenty countries. Luntz lives in McLean, Virginia.

‘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

Yesterday, while on the Boston Globe website, I clicked on a large box ad for Barack Obama. It led me to this page.

There are several problems with this effort. First of all, the ad campaign is designed strictly for people who live in New Hampshire. That’s understandable, but if that’s the case, why was it availalble to me down here in Virginia? The Obama campaign probably paid for my click thru unless they’re doing a CPC or CPA campaign.

The box had, in small letters, the URL NH.BarackObama.com, so I knew that I knew that it was designed for New Hampshire residents. But I’d bet a lot of people wouldn’t notice that URL. And if the ad was available for me, 550 miles away, then I’m sure it was available to people who live in the heavily populated Massachusetts, a blue state if there ever was one. They could be getting a ton of clicks from people who can’t vote in the primary.

When I clicked through, I got a fill out form – no warm greeting – that I’d pump my personal info into along with a pledge to vote for Barack Obama in the New Hampshire primary. They were concerned about my contact information, but not my interests. They’re concerned about building up a database, but not taking the effort to educate me about the man so I would support him. There was no offering that would lead me to issues that I could be concerned about. An offering that would help me make a more informed choice. They assumed that either I was already an Obama supporter…or they didn’t take the time to care.

It does have a nice 8 minute and 20 second video presentation. Somewhat inspirational. He is a great speaker and has a compelling life story. And it includes some good interviews with people from his past. But a problem there is that many who click through may do so in an environment in which they can’t or shouldn’t use audio.

It still is the same old here’s what he’s about with inspiration, now give the campaign something. A wasted opportunity.

This was one heck of an amusing 18-months in online advertising, online public relations, and online marketing. All of the biggest, baddest, richest firms proved they don’t know what the hell they’re doing online.

“2006 was not Madison Ave’s year of embracing the internet, but that didn’t stop it from being interesting … Exposed last week was one by Zipatoni that praised the Sony PSP using a made-up amateur hip hop artist. Earlier, McDonalds was caught with one, and Edelman launched Wal-Marting Across America earning it a rebuke from WOMMA .” Via MarketingVOX

One of the best things I have ever done was spend an intense 90-days working for Edelman as an SAS on the elite Online Advocacy team, primarily on the Wal-Mart campaign. I was on the team that managed Walmarting Across America and Working Families for Wal-Mart, later exposed and buzz buzz buzz. And no, it wasn’t me.

Well, Edelman is not alone… lots of Very Large Firms made some Very Stupid Choices, all because they couldn’t find the time to read the Cluetrain Manifesto.

Mark and I were on a client call yesterday morning with a VP of Marketing who called what we do “field marketing,” popularly defined as “connecting with existing and prospective customers through non-mainstream media methods, grassroots marketing is also known as field marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, etc.” I think this is approximate. Truth is, while field marketing is an extremely expensive, resource-intensive on-site method of direct marketing, the Internet allows online advocacy to be more efficient, more targeted, less expensive, and much more environmentally sound. At the end of the call, the Veep paused and said, “you guys are evangelists,” and I thought of Guy Kawasaki (another local boy from Hawaii) and his exemplary evangelism for Apple, “back in the day,” and smiled. It feels like we’re doing something right. We’ll see, bumbai, meaning “later on” in Pidgin English

As word of mouth marketing has proven to travel further, faster and more effectively than traditional marketing, the development of a comprehensive online advocacy program is vital to promoting any idea, product or person.

It is popularly understood that highly-influencing opinion leaders are capable of influencing between 100 and 1000 consumers; obviously, influencing the influencers is a more effective strategy in terms of time, money, and staffing.

One must break the Internet down into communities and conversations, breaking them down further into influencers and opinion leaders, and then delivering a marketing message in such a way that is relevant and appealing enough to not only be received by these taste-makers but to be impressive enough for them to tell all their friends about what you have to offer as well.

Online advocacy requires a series of key steps, which are derived from two basic strategies: top-down and bottom-up.

Despite the simplicity of the terminology, the strategy itself isn’t this simple, it largely reflects two very separate approaches to targeting and reaching a given audience. In essence, these terms relate naturally to the picture that they paint – top-down buzz marketing being the strategy in which taste-makers or community leaders are defined, targeted and appropriately messaged to (online outreach); bottom-up buzz marketing, on the other hand, targets the everyday consumer via online engagement.

While Online Outreach (OO) is a structured approach to marketing to a given demographic, Online Engagement (OE) is much more organic and relies upon the natural echo chamber of the Internet – or the ability for messages to virally spread from community to community naturally. Additionally, online outreach requires the development of a topical and category-based Affinity Site Index (ASI) which be defined as a collection of Birds of a Feather (BoF) blogs, forums, and websites.

Affinity Site Index Development

Marketing to the entire Internet is impossible as it is a constantly growing and changing entity – one cannot broadcast to the Internet given its scope of millions of sites creating billions of pages.

For this reason, it is important not only to define an audience that can reasonably be reached, but also to be mindful of the constant evolution of the Internet.

Do not limit your concept of the Internet to the “blogosphere;” Instead, adopt a more Web 2.0 approach to marketing by allowing the community to include message boards, Wikis, social networks, social bookmarking sites, email lists, podcasts, vlogs, forums, IRC, SMS, IM, MMORPGs, Webcasts, Skypecasts, groups, online video games, 3-D virtual worlds (such as Second Life).

To kick off any Online Advocacy Program, our team spends considerable amounts of time researching and developing your BoF Affinity Site Index. This research is devoted not only to finding out where your current audience lives online, but also to finding like-minded communities that may be interested in your message. This includes thorough investigation within blogosphere; collecting hundreds to thousands of message boards, usenets and forums; scouring social bookmarking, social media and photo and video sharing communities.

Online Outreach

Following campaign and client research and Affinity Group Index development, online outreach officially begins by collecting contact information for community taste-makers.

Deciphering individuals from taste-makers is a key task within this processes. The Affinity Group Index is also vetted for appropriateness and for communities that tend to be receptive to the marketing message as well.

It is also important to note that while online engagement is very heavily focused towards reaching out to consumers within message boards, forums, usenets and other communities where the nature of online dialogue is participatory, online outreach is geared toward reaching out blogs, sites and online media outlets in which the tone is online dialogue takes a more editorial tone.

The primarily goal of any Online Advocacy Program – to build relationships between the you and the community leaders and taste-makers that will help shape perceptions of your brand.

The secondary goal is to have the blogger blog about you, your mission, your vision, and you, organically on their own; saying whatever it is they want to say. Ideally, if everything is done above board and transparently, and the prospects are tried and true, then any and all coverage will be either very positive or at the very worst, neutral in tone.

The tertiary goal is to seed Google and other search engines – the real Internet – with a permanent message – your message. Talks, podcasts, time on Second Life, interviews, and meetings are ephemeral and don’t endure online longer than a moment; as a result, it is essential to be aware of the enduring nature of text online.

Getting blogged about online is one of the best ways to enter into immortality; that said, whenever anyone else, who isn’t you, adds to the online conversation about you, you lose control of the message — of your message. You will have to be okay with releasing your message, your product, your services, and your insight into the wilderness. Think about it — if you, your product, or your services suck, then the blogosphere will quickly reflect that.

Online Engagement

Contrary to online outreach in which specific individuals are targeted and messaged to, online engagement involves finding and joining relevant participatory conversations that are already occurring within online message boards, forums, usenets and blogs.

In some cases, in which relevant conversation is not already occurring, online dialogue is initiated within communities that would be most receptive to your specific message.

Please note that relevant conversation implies online dialogue either speaking specifically to your brand or online dialogue centered on similar themes, implying the like-minded nature of conversation participants, thereby allowing messages specific to your brand to be seeded in a natural, seemingly organic fashion.

A powerful technique for building community on blogs is to find a compelling item about your industry, products, and services, then search for blogs that are already talking about it on Technorati and similar search engines.

It is much easier to message on blogs that are already having friendly conversation, evident in the tone of the comments section under each blog post.

Online engagement needs to flow and appear as responsive and organic as natural conversation. When preparing to infiltrate any piece of online dialogue, talking points are more preferable than preparing a script as the flexibility of these talking points allow for seemless entry into these discussions.

Engaging in online conversation as a member of an online community requires your language, delivery, humor, and tone to mirror that of the community. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

Although it is likely that a number of these communities may already be included in the ASI (or within the demographics outlined in the ASI), the reality is that an even greater number may not pertain to these demographics. In targeting online conversation that is already happening, you are able not only to effectively reach your primary demographic, but also secondary and tertiary demographics which may also be interested in your brand and your message. Additionally, in seeking out online conversation that is already happening, we are able to better find and counter any negative dialogue that maybe occurring.

After posting a marketing message in any community, be it a blog, message board, usenet, listserv, etc. that conversation is constantly monitored for new activity. Online engagement at this point requires responding to any questions, concerns or criticism of your brand resulting from messaging. It is important to note that a vast majority of online consumers actively participating in these communities are often times as curious as they are skeptical – at times it is required to further inform these users about your brand before they are essentially “sold” on the idea.

In continuing to following up with messaging threads, we are able not only to maintain online engagement, but also provide you with real-time information about your brand and how it is perceived online.

Extensive use of ASI to discover new communities and new consumers that will likely be receptive to your message.

To spread the word online organically, tell them about your company, your culture, your history, your story, your products, and the services you offer – and do it openly and honestly and place your own name, your own email, and either the URL of your web site or the URL of the blog itself.

In a world where online consumers are very savvy to and and very sensitive of spam, it is as important to maintain the appropriate tone as it is to be fully transparent.

Once a list of friendly and like-minded bloggers has been assembled, organize them in an Outlook Contacts folder.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to individual bloggers and friendlies informally in order to build a connection and a conversation. It is important to make sure any formal outreach is carefully considered before moving forward.

When it is time to reach out and message to the list, there are several things to consider before emailing. The most important thing is to make sure you have something important to share or a gift to give. This can be in the form of something simple, but there always has to be a reason for reaching out.

One way to make the connection feel more intimate is to use Outlook’s fine email merge to send out an email. Listservs and mailing lists can be seen as too impersonal, as are formatted newsletters-looking missives. After sending out one of these group activation emails, be sure to respond quickly and personally to each and every personal query and response you may receive.

The primary goal is to build a relationship between other bloggers and your company’s community. The secondary goal is to have the community blog about your company organically on their own; saying whatever it is they want to say.

Ideally, if everything is done above board and transparently, and the prospects are tried and true, then any and all coverage will be either very positive or at the very worst, neutral in tone.

While exploring the blog search engines for relevant company-related content, take note of particularly friendly blogs and bloggers. Also take note of any blog and bloggers who are actively embedding your company code into their blogs.

If a blogger consistently uses your company, comments on blog posts, or has ever given a positive or neutral review of your company, consider asking the blogger to be part of a select list of folks who will receive news, updates, upgrades announcements, and other company news with the understanding that when the news is received by the blogger, the blogger can do whatever they want with it.

This is why it is important to make sure the blogger (or message board owner) is committed to liking your company. If you have an agency to conduct blogger prospecting and the online advocacy, be sure they know the form and content of the messages you would like to be conveyed. The prospect may or may not blog about the news. The hope is that the prospect will decide to blog about the news, either positively or neutrally.

Once the email goes out, however, you have no control of what is done. If you have any second thoughts about the prospect being a friendly, don’t do it.

While exploring the blog search engines for relevant company-related content, take note of particularly friendly blogs and bloggers. Also take note of any blog and bloggers who are actively embedding Your Company code into their blogs.

If a blogger consistently uses Your Company, comments on blog posts, or has ever given a positive or neutral review of Your Company, consider asking the blogger to be part of a select list of folks who will receive news, updates, upgrades announcements, and other company news with the understanding that when the news is received by the blogger, the blogger can do whatever they want with it.

This is why it is important to make sure the blogger (or message board owner) is committed to liking Your Company. If you have an agency to conduct blogger prospecting and the online advocacy, be sure they know the form and content of the messages you would like to be conveyed. The prospect may or may not blog about the news.

The hope is that the prospect will decide to blog about the news, either positively or neutrally. Once the email goes out, however, you have no control of what is done. If you have any second thoughts about the prospect being a friendly, don’t do it.

Doing online advocacy requires commitment, inclusion, attachment, and perseverance. If you participate online, you had better not be a one-night-stand. Be sure to engage in the long term conversation and always be available to answer questions.

Every day, go through your universe to each blog, message board, social network, and social bookmarking site and use either the built-in search form to search for discussions about Your Company, your competitors, or choice keyword phrases, looking for relevant content.

Consider joining the conversation only if there is something worthwhile to contribute. Only enter the conversation if you can answer a question, clear up a misconception, announce news that would be considered interesting to the members, offer a promotion or discount, or contribute to the conversation with expertise or insight that would add true (and not just promotional) value to the conversation.

It behooves the careful online brand promotion operative to spend some time reading previous posts, how people talk, who the main cows are, and how people relate to each other.

Pay special attention to how the Gurus and the Gods interact with each other and with Newbies and Spammers. Are the Old-Timers really nice or do they give new members grief?

Do they expect deference or are they very responsive to adoration and friendliness? Figure out what works and emulate it. Mirror the most successful, including capitalization, tone, humor, and vocabulary.

One a list of friendly and like-minded bloggers have been assembled, organize them in an Outlook Contacts folder. Don’t hesitate to reach out to individual bloggers and friendlies informally in order to build a connection and a conversation.

It is important to make sure any formal outreach is carefully considered before moving forward.

When it is time to reach out and message to the list, there are several things to consider before emailing. The most important thing is to make sure you have something important to share or a gift to give. This can be in the form of something simple, but there always has to be a reason for reaching out.

Ideally, if everything is done above board and transparently, and the prospects are tried and true, then any and all coverage will be either very positive or at the very worst, neutral in tone.

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.