Now that I posted both Saul’s Thoughts on What AH Does etc and Dani’s Thoughts on What AH Does etc, the rest of the staff has piled on and started sharing their answers.  This continues our new What AH Does series.  This is a series of free-form posts by members of the Abraham Harrison staff.  Instead of a book report, I asked my staff to write a company report.  While the request was generally free-form and I didn’t care what was written — everything is good — I did float some general questions that people could respond to. This week, we’re exploring What AH Does through the eyes of our Director of Client Services, Dan Krueger:

Cocktail Party Synopsis:

I was sitting on the beach with my family over the weekend and was asked by a friend what it is that I do. This is an interesting question. First my background – I was a TV Producer for about 10 years. I’ve always had a passion for photography and have been very computer and web savvy.

About two years ago I got a job with a company specializing in putting other businesses  into virtual worlds. There was a rush of excitement over virtual worlds in the television, film, and general corporate world two years ago and I was able to get in on the ground floor. With my background in TV production and computer knowledge, it was a great fit.

I was a Producer/Project Manager for various campaigns in 3D environments. Eventually the pendulum swung the other way and the excitement over virtual worlds was replaced with a fear and general apprehension about 3D environments. While I very much enjoyed this job, the industry itself could not sustain and so I found myself after working at home for 1.5 years looking for something similar without the commute.

A friend of mine from the former company I worked for referred me to a web 2.0 marketing company telling me that it would be perfect for my background. I spoke to the two owners, Chris Abraham & Mark Harrison, and after a couple of very interesting hour long phone conversations and back and forth emails, I was brought on board as a Project Manager soon to become the “Director of Client Services” for Abraham & Harrison – still working from home.

Abraham & Harrison is a web 2.0 marketing company specializing in conversation engagement. Basically what this means is that if you have a product or company that you want spoken about on the internet or developed buzz around, A&H is the company to make that happen. There are a couple of different ways of promoting online engagement.

One of the main ways that A&H uses to promote a product or campaign is through blogger outreach. Online blogger outreaches are similar to traditional marketing in that a demographic or “universe” is chosen as the potential audience, however, instead of direct mailings, TV, or radio advertisements, the universe is researched and built from the “blogosphere.” There are millions of bloggers who write about everything from being a mommy to their passion for food. This is an enormous audience of potential promoters for a product if the right avenue is taken to engage the blogger.

After the demographic is filled with bloggers of a certain genre (blog name, URL, blog title, topic, name of blogger, email address) a Social Media News Release is built. An SMNR is a basic who – what – when – why of the campaign. Another very important element of the outreach is to “come bearing gifts.” Who doesn’t like to receive a present? The gift does not have to be a tangible item, but information, exclusive access, or even the gift of helping others is widely accepted in an outreach. After the SMNR and targeted audience is built, a message model is created.

The message is the hook. No one wants to read a pageful of information in an email, so a streamlined message must be created to hook the blogger into visiting the SMNR and then to engage them to blog about the campaign. Personalized response in a short amount of time is KEY to a successful outreach.

This means that as soon as a blogger responds with either a positive or negative email, that email must be replied to by a real person in a reasonable amount of time (1 hour to one day). This lets the blogger know that a real person is writing to them  and not some automated spam-bot. This also allows a relationship to be established with the responder and blogger.

Other methods of promoting a campaign Abraham & Harrison uses are through grassroots outreaches and using social networking sites like Facebook & MySpace. A grassroots outreach is basically a “hitting them where they live” promotion. A group or forum is an excellent way to reach a community of individuals interested in the same thing.

By reading about what the group is interested in and then leaving comments to blog postings and engaging in forums, spreading the message of the campaign and conversation engagement can be accomplished. Social networking communities, while are closed off from the openness of the internet, offer a way to engage those already interested in certain topics. Creation of groups, profiles, fan pages, and causes offer another venue to spread conversation.

So in a nutshell – Abraham & Harrison is a web 2.0 marketing company specializing in online promotion by engaging people in conversation.  

What we do that is cool?

I think that telling a story is cool. As a TV Producer I told stories though what the camera recorded and how it was edited. As a photographer I tell stories through still images. On the web stories are told through websites, blogs, social media news releases, micro-blogging (twitter, Facebook status, instant messages) and in general online conversation.

What do you think we do that is most effective?

Obviously our ability to engage bloggers we have never met into writing about a topic they might never have been interested in (or might never have written about) and then maintaining that relationship campaign to campaign is our speciality.

Where would you like the company to grow?

I like the fact that our company specializes in an area where traditional marketing companies are not well versed. I like to be the expert in a field that is not populated and I think we need to take advantage of the fact that we are the social media experts.

I am starting a new series of  blog posts called “What AH Does.” This is a series of free-form posts by members of the Abraham Harrison staff.  Instead of a book report, I asked my staff to write a company report.  While the request was generally free-form and I didn’t care what was written — everything is good — I did float some general questions that people could respond to. This week, we’re exploring What AH Does through the eyes of our Director of Operation, Saul Wainwright — Saul chose to respond directly and openly to my suggested topics and questions, and I quite love the response:

Cocktail Party Synopsis:

Abraham Harrison is a PR agency that focuses on the social media environment – primarily blogs, and social networks like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. We help to amplify, create and promote conversations around client’s products and services.

We focus predominantly on getting bloggers to actively participate in the conversation by reaching out to them – via emails, twitter or comments on their blogs – with the intention of alerting the blogger to a product or service and to get them to blog about these products/services.

This ultimately increases the amount of online-buzz surrounding the client and leads to a filtering of the conversation in all directions. We never sell a product – we only talk about the product.
   
With longer-term clients we focus on building them a strong and active social media presence that we ultimately teach the client to operate in and to manage on their own. Our goal is to make our clients stronger and to educate them about how to actually participate and actively use this incredibly powerful resource.
   
Our methods are open, our conversation is open and we enjoy seeing our clients – who are often nervous of this space – moving actively and strongly into the realm of social media.

AH Business Plan:

I see AH moving into this arena with the goal of creating an agency that operates in as close to a non-hierarchical structure as possible – something fluid with nodal points. AH hopes to become an active agency in the social media realm and is open to partnering with multiple agencies providing the “services’ that are necessary to successfully implement an online social media PR campaign.

What we do that is cool?

AH is able to get people to talk – to talk to us, to talk to others and ultimately to help amplify the voice of different organizations and companies. All of this is done with out having to pay a single blogger for their time, their input! This shows a) how altruistic on one level people are b) the power of a story – everyone wants to hear a story, wants to tell a story and to feel like they have access to stories

What do you think we do that is most effective?

Our online outreaches are very effective – and I see them getting better and better. We are very good at this process and will continue to refine it. I think implementing my idea discussed below (and have mentioned in meetings and emails) will be an incredible tool to help us move more effectively into this space.

What could we do to grow our services?

The continued and growing presence of Chris will help – I would like to see Chris’s blog grow in prominence and I think this will greatly lead to increased business.

I also think a little bit of “specialization” or at least the “impression of specialization” will go a long way especially if this is expressed on the website. So – I think our work around NGOs could really grow – all of our most successful clients are interested in this.

Thank you very much, Saul, for sharing so openly and for pouring your passion, experience, and skills into the company.