Chris Abraham

By Chris Abraham, co-founder and principal of Abraham Harrison LLC. He is the Publisher of Socialmedia.biz and Marketing Conversation.

In a world in which everyone seems to be a chicken little speaking of the end of traditional journalism, PR and advertising, there are very few people who are working toward guiding the industry toward success in new new media. Some interesting books about “what’s next” that I am reading are The Chaos Scenario by Bob Garfield and Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson. Add to this list David Henderson’s new book, Making News in the Digital Era (Amazon.com, $10.04), a book that is part analysis, part briefing, and part pathfinder, explicitly guiding readers through the very confusing social media landscape.

In the 170 pages of Making News in the Digital Era, David E. Henderson personally walks his readers safely through the mine field that is new communications, digital PR, and social media marketing. Essential reading.

Making News in the Digital Era explicitly answers some very important questions: how to make your organization heard above competitors’ noise, how to capture new media’s attention when then time is right, how to increase the “Googleability” of your organization, and how to have a more meaningful conversation with key stakeholders and audiences. These questions are essential in the context of the near-future:

To give you a real taste of the answers these questions, here’s some of Henderson’s sage advice: Advocate change in your agency — champion change, embrace storytelling — honestly and without hyperbole, use plain language — accessible to everyone, reach out to a few to achieve more — influence the influencers, start marketing and promoting — start listening, and become the credible voice and face of your organization and industry — become the online influencer.

Part of Henderson’s research into Making News in the Digital Era included reaching out to sundry experts in the field, asking them questions such as what works and what is no longer effective; how to communicate with reporters, bloggers, and key audience; what is the definition of journalist in a world of online citizen reporters; how beneficial is online strategy for strategic communications; and how will new media effect the effectiveness of traditional media kits, new conferences, and news releases.

The unique thing about Making News in the Digital Era is that is it not written to much to the neophyte or two the small business expert but rather to the dyed-in-the-wool communications professional — be it journalist, PR or advertising exec, communication director, or business consultant who wants help transitioning from “traditional” marketing and mass media strategies to what’s next. This book speaks “our” language as communications professionals and is illustrative using case studies and best practices examples from the world of brand promotion and reputation management and not just the general pie-in-the-sky spitballing that tends to come from visionaries and futurists.

Chris Abraham publishes Socialmedia.biz

OK, I don’t want to transcribe the entire book — that would not serve David Henderson very well — but I will boil it down as best I can to one pithy sound bite that explains how companies, brands, services, and organizations need to evolve into the next generation: brands need to become as charming, engaging, and responsive as humanly possible — to offer a story that is captivating and appealing enough that your consumers feel compelled to come to you. Or, do quote the king of communication, Mike Deaver (who I got to meet during me short stint at Edelman Public Affairs), “know who you are, be open and transparent, and be ready for change.”

One of the most valuable parts of the book that I found, and something you will surely consider invaluable if you’re shopping for a PR shop, is a list of new PR-savvy questions one must ask potential firms to make sure they’re set up to handle a new media and a social media world of communications. I can’t tell you how many clients and prospects I have spoken to who are just winging it when they becoming big enough to start thinking about retaining a communications consultant — this questionnaire should be de rigueur when shopping.

From chapter six through 10, Henderson explores the tools of the social media marketing and digital PR trade, pointing out one needs to offer much more than lip service to transparency and authenticity. ”To have a meaningful conversations online, a company needs to do the following: articulate clear points of view on the things that it cares about the most, identify its own experts and champions to tell compelling stories to advance its case and strengthen its market position, create ever-evolving public platforms and forums where it con consistently and frequently shawcase its views, along with other respected industry experts and thought leaders, and create a forum for sharing comments, generating a conversation and listening.”

I am not even on page 57 yet and I could keep on quoting and sharing, so I will suffice it say that there’s amazingly practical advice on every page, most of which are unspoken rules and intuitions that most people in the space have learned through intuition and experience — things that need to be said explicitly and clearly, something that David Henderson does with aplomb. Not only does the book offer advice on how to bullshit-check your PR firm but also do the same sort of check on your social media guru and your blogger and your Twitter expert as well. The book spends a lot of its column inches on not getting saddled with some lame “experts,” something that is essential when everyone, including yours truly, professes himself to be a social media expert (SME).

Some other important issues Henderson addresses is whether you actually need, or are ready for, a CEO or corporate blog. What do do with Twitter once you have become obsessed with becoming a resident of twitterville, how best to wade into web 2.0 and how to develop an online digital communications strategy — essentially “everything you ever wanted to know about new media communications but were afraid to ask.”

Chapter 13 is titled “Crisis Never Takes a Day Off” and addresses the 800-pound gorilla in the room: online reputation management and online crisis response in the “new era of openned, timeliness, responsiveness, and truthfulness” that “had truly become 24/7.” This, in a world where it is still possible to assassinate someone’s brand as long as you attack it on a Friday afternoon because said brand most likely won’t even notice it until 10 on Monday morning.

When it all is said and done, David Henderson tells the truth, even though it’s a bitter pill to accept, “no one cares about you.” In Making News in the Digital Era, David Henderson works real hard to try to knock it all into our stubborn heads. If you want to remain in denial about the current state of the Internet, new media, digital PR, and the post-PR and post-advertising world, then don’t buy Henderson’s book; however, if you want to sort our your own personal brand story and develop some narrative game, then you really had better grab a copy and read it through and then share it around the office.

Chris Abraham is co-founder and principal of Abraham Harrison LLC, an international consulting group with specialties in online word-of-mouth/conversation marketing and online business & technology strategy advising.

Greg Dobbs on HDNet

My old and good friend and colleague, Greg Dobbs, sent around this message this morning about Monday night’s launch of space shuttle discovery that he will be covering live on HDNet. With his permission, I wanted to share the message here and also talk up his new book:

Late Monday night (actually Tuesday morning in Florida), I’ll be on the air again from the Kennedy Space Center with the launch of space shuttle Discovery. Liftoff is set for 1:36:02 AM EDT Tuesday morning (yes, you read that right, it is timed to the tenth of a second), so we’ll broadcast from 1 AM to 2 AM EDT Tuesday, which is midnight to 1 AM Central Time, 11 PM to midnight Monday night in the Mountain Time Zone and 10-11 PM in the Pacific.

If you’re thinking about the six-count-em-six delays last time for Endeavour … so am I! It took me only three trips to Florida to see that baby go up. But two pieces of good news for NASA: the countdown started last night and so far, so good. And, NASA’s weather experts put the odds of a launch at 70%. I’ve seen them go up when the odds weren’t half that good.

Although it’s not the primary piece of cargo, one of the devices Discovery is carrying to space is the COLBERT treadmill, which is named after Stephen Colbert. You might remember reading that he staged a write-in from his viewers during NASA’s contest to name the newest U.S. module on the International Space Station. He won, but NASA wasn’t willing to go that far; the second-place entry, “Tranquility,” got the nod. However, with about as much humor as you can expect from a government agency, they decided to put his name on the treadmill. But only by doing what anyone might expect them to do: they turned it into an acronym. So, COLBERT stands for “Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill.”

~ Greg

HDNet covers all shuttle launches live. It’s on DirecTV, Dish Network, Comcast (in most of the country) and most other cable systems in the US and Canada.

Greg’s new book, “Life in the Wrong Lane,” has just been published by iUniverse and will soon be available at book sellers everywhere. It’s the inside scoop on life and adventures as a television correspondent.

Two more Baby Boomer icons are gone: Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Both passed away on June 25th and whether you were a fan or not, the world seems a bit more empty to this Boomer. If you are one of those who limits Boomer icons to Beatles, Stones, and peace symbols, that only means you are at the upper end of our mega Boomer generation. Both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson were Baby Boomers themselves. And both were Boomer icons as well.

My wife, who is at the VERY youngest end of Boomerdom, had a Michael Jackson poster on her wall as a teen. Being a bit older, I had the famous 1970s poster of Farrah in the red one-piece bathing suit on my wall. Over twelve million of those Farrah posters were sold (mostly to males, I presume), so I was not alone. As Jill Munroe in the television series “Charlie’s Angels,” Farrah was THE beautiful, sexy, blond-haired girl to which all other girls of the era were compared. Girls, of course, knew this and emulated Farrah. Seems every girl I knew back then had a Farrah hairdo.

Michael Jackson, long before his fall from grace with legal and financial problems, and before he started getting downright weird, was truly the King of Pop. His Thriller album sold more than any other record in history, including anything by the Stones or Beatles.

When the icons of a generation pass away, whether it be George Harrison, John Lennon, Bob Marley, Jim Morrison, or whomever, bits and pieces of the generation they represent go with them. So it is with real sadness that I feel the vestiges of our generation slipping by. Farewell to Farrah, she is truly an angel now; not just playing one on TV. Farewell to Michael Jackson. Maybe he is now moonwalking in heaven. And, onward fellow Baby Boomers … taking one day at a time, wondering which of our beloved icons, reminders of our lost youth, might be next to remind us of our own mortality. But fret not. In the end, ya gotta admit … being a Boomer has been a really fun ride, hasn’t it? And there’s more road ahead of us.

Or so the story goes. But is it really true?

Listening to some of the voices online at the minute, it’d certainly seem that way. Yet history doesn’t bear these opinions out.

• TV would kill radio.
• DVD’s would kill movie ticket sales.
• CD’s would kill vinyl.
• The Internet would kill traditional media.
• Music downloads would kill traditional retailers.

Maybe I’m looking at the wrong picture, but I still see all of the things that are meant to be dead by now. If anything, many of the doomed mediums are thriving and actually performing better than their replacements.

So what does this mean for traditional media and its “death by social media” tag?

Convergence and Collaboration.

Instead of traditional media dying and making way for the new kid on the block, how about simply making room?

There’s a lot of negativity from both sides toward each other. Many journalists, reporters, news anchors, etc, don’t see the value or benefit of social media. Additionally, may social media practitioners ignore the more traditional outlets, citing them as irrelevant and out-of-date.

Neither of these views help when it comes to maintaining what’s really important – access to the most relevant information from the most reliable sources.

Instead of decrying each other’s medium, collaborate. Open up to the experience of each other.

Traditional advertisers should look at the results a social media advertising strategy can offer.
Newspapers can integrate better online newsrooms and citizen journalism to complement what their experienced journalists are doing.

Social media-based companies/agencies should look at how they can integrate traditional media into their strategies. Online communities are great; how much more reach would you have with local newspapers and TV stations?

These are just some ideas – they’re not perfect, nor are they meant to be. I don’t have journalistic experience, nor am I an advertising expert. All I’m offering are suggestions.

But wouldn’t it make more sense to help and work with each other as opposed to canceling each other out?

Danny Brown owns a boutique agency combining traditional PR and marketing with social media. He provides consultancy services to clients in both the consumer and commercial markets,
from small start-ups to Fortune 500 businesses. 



He is also founder of the 12for12k Challenge, a unique charity project using social media to change the lives of millions in 2009.

We hear it over and over again, every day.

“Times are tough.”

“This economic crisis is the worst we’ve seen since The Great Depression.”

People are losing their jobs, their lifestyles, and their homes. It is a pretty desperate situation.

Charitable organizations have it particularly tough right now. People just don’t have the cash to contribute anymore, and any time they might normally give to volunteer is taken up by just trying to get ahead.

CNN recently reported that 58% of United Ways are expecting a decline in donations this year. Not only that, but the average individual donation has declined from $225 in 2007 to $190 last year. [http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/13/news/economy/charity_donations/?postversion=2009021311]

The irony is, the further we go into this slump, the more people there are that need help. However, many people are no longer in a position to be donating larger sums of money. Traditional fundraising, be it pledge events, which are expensive to run, or fundraiser galas, which are expensive for participants, simply are not as effective in this climate. It’s clear that some new approaches are needed.

The good news is, people still want to make a difference. And they are turning to the Web and social media in a big way. The reason is simple – volume.

I have just shy of 2,300 people following me on Twitter. I have 400 friends on Facebook. Give or take the duplicates, that’s nearly 3,000 people that I have the ability to communicate with on a daily basis. I’m probably about average. So let’s say then, that 10 of my friends on Twitter also have 3,000 people in their network. Suddenly, without a tremendous amount of effort, there’s the potential for a message sent to just 10 people to reach 30,000 people. You get the idea.

This is the concept behind 12for12k [www.12for12k.org]. The fundraiser is the brainchild of Danny Brown [www.dannybrown.me], who saw the power and potential of his online network to do great things. The good thing about volume is that word spreads fast. And this means you can raise a tremendous amount of money in a very short amount of time – and nobody has to break the bank to do it.

The concept behind 12for12k is simple. Each month in 2009, a different charity will be chosen. For January it was War Child (www.warchild.com) and for February it’s Stop the Silence (http://www.stopcsa.org). The goal is to get 1200 people to donate just $10 each per month, which is an amount that many people can still afford. That’s $12,000 a month for each charity, or $144,000 over the year. And it’s all being done through online networks.

So far, we’ve had some really great successes. The network has exceeded our expectations with how they are getting behind 12for12k and every week we are seeing more awareness and higher donations. We’ve also produced a video [http://www.overlay.tv/overlay/39349] that has been getting some good exposure. We’re getting tremendous support from people like John Haydon and his blogger outreach program [http://my.socialactions.com/forum/topics/12for12korg-looking-for], have interest from corporate sponsors, and have even been invited to talk about the project at a Social Media in Government conference this Spring. We’re learning a ton and we’re infinitely grateful for everyone who has helped, not only by making a donation, but also by getting the word out to their networks.

For more information on 12for12k, or to find out how you can get involved, visit the web site at www.12for12k.org. We will be announcing the March charity shortly, so check the web site for updates. Thanks in advance for your generosity.

With special thanks and appreciation to Susan Murphy [www.suzemuse.ca]. She is a video and web producer living in Ottawa, Canada. She is part of the creative team of 12for12k.

We have entered a wild west world of social media communication, where everything we share in these networks – including missteps – can go viral quickly, causing irreparable career damage.

And – perhaps surprising to you – this gives me enormous hope for improvement in communication and social discourse. Certainly, the only way to “control” these networks is to consistently engage in them with openness, transparency, clarity and responsiveness.

If we follow this approach, we are protected by our authenticity. But, communication occurs at an intersection between writer and reader (or speaker and listener). To navigate social media we need to approach this intersection with our consistently truthful persona and values, but we also must honor the audience who faces us at this intersection.

Social cues and contexts also matter:

• A psychologist might term this “appropriate filters”
• A theologian might term this “discernment” or “wisdom”
• As a trainer who advises business people how to communicate in the workforce, I’d be more pragmatic and advise that we must be transparent in our way of being, but we don’t need to bleed on our audience to be authentic.

Let’s look at four communication incidents in social media just this past week, and how this intersecting place offers both pragmatic and higher opportunities.

1. James Andrews, of Ketchum Public Relations, failed to realize his tossed-off, snarky, one-liner on Twitter, the micro-blogging platform used by business people world-wide, would likely be seen by clients. He forgot about his audience, including those who might hear the message in social media echoes. Andrews pushed the gaffe to a trending topic du jour on Twitter when he failed to engage in the subsequent conversations in social media, and retreated to old-media proclamations on his blog and news. Lack of audience awareness combined with lack of authenticity caused a silly throw away comment to snowball into a full-blown communications crises. You will find a very thoughtful analysis of the actions, reactions and responses of the players involved on David Henderson’s blog post, “Social Media Crises Continues, Unabated.”
2. Chris Brogan has an utterly truthful and authentic persona, and is a brilliant community social media strategist. Chris swore a few times during a recent presentation, and received feedback that some in the audience were put off, prompting him to ask the question: “Why do we edit who we are when we’re in business? If, as writers, we’re told to find our voice, why don’t we bring this to all aspects of our life? What’s your take?” (Note his honesty and desire for both feedback and interaction here.) View Brogan’s video, and ask yourself if authenticity in social discourse requires us to be utterly ourselves, warts and all, even if it if chafes our audience? I do not advocate self-censorship of personality, beliefs and way of being, but I do believe we must frame our message so our readers can hear it. After all, if the swear rings in the air too loudly in the meeting or on a blog or in a Tweet, readers will disengage, and they’ll miss the great core message you’re trying to convey. The communication opportunity is broken. Keep focus on that admittedly precarious fulcrum holding our authentic persona on one side, balanced with our reader’s needs on the other. Ideas move when both authenticity and awareness balance.
3. Recently, I sat in on a client webinar where a younger, very talented programmer referred to a senior manager as “dude” both in chat and on audio. The tension in the room was palpable because it’s not part of their culture to speak so informally. The programmer’s manager left the room muttering, “I can fix this, I can fix this,” like a mantra. The webinar was recorded and posted to the company knowledge base, so this gaffe lives on.
4. I stumbled a couple of days ago, also. My company, Instructional Solutions, launched a company Facebook page, and I am featured in a welcome video that explains a little about our company and the support viewers will find on this page. The problem: I am wearing a short-sleeved dress. 

In the United Stated, my dress is suitable for business and is authentically my style, but I forgot my global audience has varying standards. Our client in Qatar told me kindly and with trepidation, “Your message is wonderful and the information very valuable, but some members of my staff would notice that your dress does not have full sleeves more than your message.”

Now, I could argue fairly that I am going to be who I am, but I want to do more than be authentic. I want to connect. I want my ideas to flow past our intersection point, and I am so grateful her suggestions flowed to mine. (Plus, I now have a reason to buy a new dress, which is always good.)

I’m not advocating self-censorship. I’m advocating bringing our own authentic selves to a mutual meeting place with our audience so we hear each other, so sales are made, skills gained, businesses grow and perspectives widened. My less pragmatic, higher hope is that these flowing interconnections, already occurring in social media, will enhance President Obama’s tenet that “as the world grows smaller our common humanity will reveal itself.”

For social discourse to fully become the medium where our common humanity connects, awareness is equally as important as authenticity. And here’s the best part: if we are both authentic and aware of our audience, we’ll manage social media better. In addition to our authenticity navigating us safely, we’ll have our audience redirecting our missteps.

~ Mary Cullen
Instructional Solutions
Princeton, NJ
Email: cullenm@instructionalsolutions.com
Tel: 609-683-8100
Blog: http://blog.instructionalsolutions.com/
Twitter: @M_Cullen