Jon Purizhansky Buffalo News from Russia

 Jon Purizhansky wants to bring order to the chaotic global system of migrant labor. Dedicated to disrupting the global supply chain of human labor, Purizhansky is injecting ethics and technological accountability into one of our oldest and most vital markets. He also is an avid follower of US and International economics and politics.

By way of background, Jon Purizhansky is an international lawyer and an entrepreneur from Buffalo, New York. He is an avid follower of US and International economics and politics. Every year, millions of migrants venture out across the world to provide the labor that keeps our agriculture, industrial, and commercial sectors afloat.

The winner of the Abrahamic Business Circle’s “Excellence Innovation Award in Human Rights Protection,” Jon has spent years raising awareness about the plight of migrant workers around the world. Joblio is a global social impact project that helps labor migrants connect with their prospective employers directly in the circumvention of middlemen.

Jon is committed to upholding humanitarian standards in the international migrant labor industry through Joblio’s digital platform. Jon Purizhansky is the Founder of Joblio, Inc ( joblio.co ) and is based in Buffalo, New York. He is an avid follower of US and New York Economics.

Jon Purizhansky is a lawyer, entrepreneur, and commentator in New York. Jon’s mission is to uphold human rights around the world by dismantling unethical hiring practices while updating global standards for human rights protection. This was a formative process for Jon Purizhansky — living in Austria, Italy, and eventually, the US as a refugee taught Jon Purizhansky what it means to be a migrant.

At a very early age, Jon Purizhansky fled his country as refugees and lived in Austria, and then Italy. That’s why innovators like Joblio CEO Jon Purizhansky are making such a seismic impact around the world with new technology platforms. He is focused on bringing transparency and efficiency into otherwise non-transparent ecosystems globally and was awarded the Excellence Innovation Award in Human Rights Protection in 2021.

Jon Purizhansky is the founder and CEO of Joblio, a digital platform that prevents fraud, protects human rights, and provides a transparent and efficient recruitment process for the global labor market. Purizhansky was granted the "Excellence Innovation Award in Human Rights Protection" and is esteemed for his innovative talents which have greatly bolstered migrant well-being around the world.

You never know what kind of person you’re going to meet or how they’re going to broaden his cultural horizons. Jon Purizhansky is the founder of Joblio.co. Eventually, Jon Purizhansky decided to study law in America so that he could help make the world a better place. Jon Purizhansky also knows what it’s like to be a migrant laborer; Jon Purizhansky had to work as he moved to help his family survive. One of the great things about living in New York is that it’s an essentially American hub of immigration and culture. He was awarded for his work in the sector of ethical global recruitment.

Jon Purizhansky is a New York lawyer with years of international experience focused on leveraging technology to bring transparency and efficiency into otherwise non-transparent ecosystems globally. Jon Purizhansky thinks being around so many different people for most of his life is what inspired Jon Purizhansky to get involved in international business in the first place. Before founding Joblio as an innovative tech platform, Jon practiced immigration law in the state of New York and gained deep insights into the lives of vulnerable populations on the move. He recently represented Joblio at the 2021 Investment in Sustainable Development Conference hosted by the CC Forum in the Cote d’Azur.

Joblio’s CEO and global relocation expert Jon Purizhansky has received an “Excellence Innovation Award in Human Rights Protection” from the Abrahamic Business Circle in Dubai, UAE. Jon Purizhansky grew up in Belarus, in what used to be the USSR. And the concept is brilliant. With decades of international experience, Jon Purizhansky reports on a wide variety of economic and political issues. Joblio is a global social impact project that helps labor migrants connect with their prospective employers directly in the circumvention of middlemen.

In this interview, we sit down with the head of Joblio to discuss the hows and whys of his platform’s continued expansion across the globe. Joblio is a technology platform and compliance engine that seeks to bring the light into the darkest industry in the world - the industry of labor migration.

About Jon Purizhansky: Jon Purizhansky is the CEO of Joblio and a New York lawyer with years of international business experience. Please join me in this wonderful discussion with Jon, and hear about his own journey as an immigrant. Purizhansky's pioneering of ethical recruitment in the global migrant labor industry was praised by the Abrahamic Business Circle at an event in the United Arab Emirates centered on humanitarian accomplishments.

Joblio is a global social impact project that helps labor migrants. Please welcome to our show a man with a global vision, John Purizhansky, co-founder and CEO of Joblio. At a time when global migration continues to surge, Jon is proud to stand with the migrants supercharging our modern economy.

Jon Purizhansky is a New York lawyer with many years of international experience in leveraging technology to bring transparency and efficiency to an otherwise opaque global ecosystem. Jon Purizhansky from Buffalo, New York is a Finance commentator out of New York. Joblio is also an easy way for employers to find workers, and employees find much-needed work while being treated with respect and dignity. Jon Purizhansky is a New York lawyer with years of international experience focused on leveraging technology to bring transparency and efficiency into ecosystems globally.

He is focused on leveraging technology to bring transparency and efficiency into otherwise non-transparent ecosystems globally. Understanding the migrant experience is part of why Jon Purizhansky started Joblio with the aim of helping migrants find safe, well-compensated work around the world. Jon Purizhansky is the CEO of Joblio and a New York lawyer with years of international business experience.

Joblio is a global technology platform that helps refugees and migrant laborers find work around the world that is ethically, legally, and morally upstanding. Few people understand the fragility of the global labor supply chain. Before Joblio, Jon Purizhansky was practicing immigration law in New York. Joblio CEO Jon Purizhansky was recently honored by the Abrahamic Business Circle in Dubai for his outstanding humanitarianism in the field of global migration.

The global movement of labor is one of the oldest trades known to man, and the current marketplace for workers is as sordid and inefficient as it’s ever been. Representatives of the Circle praised Joblio as a revolutionary platform that secured human rights in a crucial economic sector in dire need of ethics reform. In addition to law and business, Jon is renowned for his public speaking on the topics of humanitarianism and ethical recruitment.

Old School is New School article by Nate Paul of World Class Capital Group

We live in the age of the “Next Big Thing.”

[...]

The latest and greatest smartphones are released every twelve months, rendering the last model about as useful as a paperweight (if you believe the marketing hype). An entire industry has been built around Silicon Valley’s cult of disruption, a belief that we should always be replacing our old way of thinking and doing with new and exciting ideas.
It seems like nothing is safe from our love affair with newness. In the coming years, cars will relieve us of the burden of sitting behind the wheel and smart refrigerators will relieve us of the worry of remembering to pick up milk. 

[...]

One of the core lessons the greatest investors and business leaders share is an obsession with the fundamentals. In hot markets like today, in which unicorns and pre-revenue billion dollar valuations grab all the headlines, it’s easy to lose sight of the basics.​ 

[...]

This old school approach doesn’t just apply to investing, it applies to almost every aspect of building and running a company. In business and investing, cautionary tales are everywhere — from the one-hit wonder Wall Street fund manager who delivers one knockout year and then flames out, to the Silicon Valley rising star who builds a killer app and is never heard from again.

[...]

I’ve never liked the old saying that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. To me, history is a goldmine of proven ideas just waiting to be uncovered. It may just be that the “Next Big Thing” happened long ago.

Nate Paul is President, CEO & Founder of World Class Capital Group, a leading national commercial real estate investment group.

This article was previously published on The Huffington Post.

Google+ is an antisocial network

"While there may be a subculture of Google+ zealots who treat Google+ like a forum instead of a social network, the majority of people who love Plus are using it, according to Michael Reynolds, as a “source of content, inspiration, and communication” – more like a reader, a place to keep up with mentors, creators, influencers, and thought leaders. For most, Google+ is an antisocial network."

Via Google+ is an antisocial network

Outreach is the New Link Building

When it comes to long-tail blogger outreach -- and influencer outreach in general -- I am all about the earned media mentions as a tool for PR; however, there's also a powerful SEO benefit on Google Search, a benefit that is still very powerful even in a post-Panda, post-Penguin, and Google Authorship world.

All my articles from Socialmedia.biz

• How to engage bloggers down the long tail
• Why promoting a brand takes perseverance
• Google gets more personal as it becomes more personalized
• The Law of Large Numbers is the digital marketer’s friend
• Google unmasks the anonymous with Google Authorship
• Dominate your personal brand on Google Images
• Does your website suck? Let us count the ways!
• 11 tips to make your social channels more awesome
• An automated solution for blogger outreach research
• Should you hire a social media community manager?
• Why content marketing will ultimately triumph over link building
• Google Authorship: Involve your staff in your brand
• SEO? Start by adding value to your website
• Google: Are authors replacing inbound links as the key to success in search?
• Best practices for grassroots social media campaigns
• Google Hummingbird tries to remove the masks
• Google demands your papers with Hummingbird
• Burnish your brand’s reputation, don’t ‘manage’ it
• Buttress your brand with content creation & community
• When selling social media, brand like a Realtor
• 7 strategies for succeeding in the new Google Search
• Content strategies to deal with Google Panda & Google Penguin
• Are you surfing the social media wave?
• Why you must armor your online reputation
• Facebook Object Debugger: A valuable tool for marketers & businesses
• Google now prioritizes speed over content
• Hunting the big game of long-term clients
• Are you a social media marketing trapper?
• With social media, you need to do more than forage
• You must get over your fear of being annoying
• Learn to lower your social media inhibitions
• Tweet like Guy Kawasaki for Twitter success
• The importance of ‘the ask’ in social marketing
• The harsh reality of Twitter: Popularity counts
• Find your voice in the social media crowd
• Can you build an audience while maintaining intimacy?
• Blogger outreach is more PR than social media
• In praise of social media perseverence
• Turn social into your own personal media empire
• Blog like there’s nobody watching
• Your fans want to know exactly how you did it
• When a crisis hits, how graceful is your response?
• Facebook paid sponsored content meets you only halfway
• 4 rules for successful guerrilla social media marketing
• 6 ways for your corporate site to ensnare customers
• Marketers still need to learn some basic HTML
• Why you should cross-post by hand
• SocialOomph offers essential Twitter tools
• Online communities are discovered, not made
• Listen & engage to build a trusted community
• How to go from student to master of your domain
• Add blogging to your to-do list this year
• 11 ideas for taking your digital marketing in new directions
• Turn your website into your social media brand HQ
• Let your customers in on your secret sauce
• Build social media equity, then spend it!
• Should you farm out some of your social media chores?
• Are you using updated keywords for your business?
• How to boost your Klout score with Flipboard
• Why you should treat your client like your BFF
• Why you need to buy all your domain names now
• Win the online reputation land war
• Remove those regrettable online reputation tattoos
• Own your online reputation with help from your friends
• For online reputation, the best defense is a good offense
• How to wine, dine and marry into the Google Search Index
• How to take control of your online reputation
• Don’t mess with Texas (or reddit)
• reddit is the elephant in the room of social media marketing
• How Flipboard is changing everything
• Don’t bring your social media completely in-house
• Integrity is inherent in earned media but not paid
• Your social media plan needs to shut up and start listening
• Blogger outreach is earned media not paid, right?
• Have you embraced Pinterest for your brand?
• Are you sold on frictionless sharing?
• How to prune your Twitter following
• Keep blogging even after you fracking hate it
• Don’t roll your eyes at social media influencers
• Be a persistent social media parent
• Why you, too, should be social media slutty
• Don’t fall in love with the shiny toy of the day
• Why can’t I share to Google+ from my apps?
• Your followers care about you, but do you care?
• Why Pinterest is changing how we communicate online
• Extended how to use Google+ for business video tutorial
• You don’t need to outrun the bear in social media
• How to get over social media writer’s block
• The quantum method of reaching out to bloggers
• How one author won over the gun buff message boards
• Round two for forums and message boards?
• Taste everything well before serving up your social media offerings
• Can PR leave behind magical thinking for science?
• The anachronistic social media isolationist
• Being pretty isn’t enough for social media success
• The Long Tail strategy for AdWords works for blogger outreach
• Become a big fish by starting in a smaller pond
• Christmas is a perfect time to make havoc online
• Social media success demands talent above technology
• The Social Media News Release explained in detail
• Detailed analysis of the perfect blogger pitch
• Amplify your good message with GaggleAmp
• Set up your Google+ brand page the right way
• Free Social Media for Financial Services Webinar
• Max SEO with 8 simple Google+ steps
• Here’s why it make sense to use Google Plus
• You’re seriously over-farming your donors
• Inbound marketing the way nature intended
• Real bloggers and real blogs always trump Robot Armies
• Real Americans don’t care much about A-list blogs
• How to pitch bloggers so they’ll post about you
• Either take your time commenting on blogs or get spamboxed
• How not to treat bloggers and how not to pitch blogs
• Why are you so afraid of engaging bloggers?
• Twitter success demands both top influencers and everyone else
• Build Twitter followers using the theory of everyone
• Google Adsense rewards quickest page loads
• You can now post images and photos directly to Twitter.com
• The big secret to getting people to read your blog
• How to add value through your blog
• Fire for effect when you can’t get a bead
• The synergy between social media and search
• How to become a super-node in the attention era
• You’re buying video games for yourself
• Google wants me to put Google +1 buttons on my blogs
• B2B social media marketing is essential
• Toyota launches a social network for drivers
• Simple language isn’t for bird brains
• Taking 50 million as seriously as one WSJ reporter
• Twitter is place and location-aware
• Easily turn your blog into an ebook
• Loic Le Meur interviews Fabrice Grinda at Le Web
• Sysomos Heartbeat 2.0 released
• Under the Second Life microscope
• How to make news in the digital era
• Gary Vaynerchuk reveals how to Crush It!
• The new Second Life reinvents itself
• The Social Media Marketing Handbook
• Helping a reporter out is big business for HARO
• Chris Anderson live in DC at the GrowSmartBiz
• ‘Twitter for Dummies’: Twitter for everyone
• ‘All a Twitter’ is Twitter for smarties
• I would have appreciated an apology
• Online communities are most authentic
• The Facebook Era is for business
• I upgraded to HootSuite 2.0 because it works
• Go to Bad Pitch Night School
• Is Scitable a game-changing model for publishing?
• Some ‘Twitter definitions’ are sponsored
• People with passion fuel social media

Unison Agency Names Chris Abraham as Social Media Director

Chris Abraham will be responsible for the direction and leadership of Unison's social media practice bringing his skills to their global client base.

(Newswire.net--February 11, 2013) Washington, DC. -- ­­Unison Agency, a global integrated branding agency today announced the appointment of Chris Abraham—formerly president of Abraham Harrison, LLC, a digital PR and marketing agency—as the agency’s director of social media. Mr. Abraham will be responsible for the direction and leadership of Unison's social media practice, overseeing the integration of social media across all Unison's products and services.

“Chris Abraham is a rarity in digital experts, someone who can boast a 20-year track record in online communities and a combination of skills in PR, marketing and technology,” said Robert Fardi, Co-Founder and President of Unison. “We look forward to tapping those skills and bringing them to our global client base.”

Abraham has had a web presence since 1993 when he joined The Meta Network, a seminal online virtual community based in Washington, where he learned the dynamics of online community development, social media, social networking, and online collaboration.

In 1999, he started blogging, focusing on community, connection, innovation, and brand extension. Today, his insights on the rapidly shifting digital world can be read on The Huffington Post, ChrisAbraham.com, Biznology.com, Socialmedia.biz, and MarketingConversation.com. He has also written for AdAge’s DigitalNext and Global Idea Network blogs.

At Abraham Harrison, his client list included Kimberly Clark, The Daily, Habitat for Humanity, Greenpeace, The Fresh Air Fund, International Medical Corps, Sharp, Pew and the Alzheimer’s Association. As a technologist, Abraham has consulted T. Rowe Price, the US Department of Treasury CIO, Friendster, Deutsche Telekom, and others.

His expertise in the digital field has been acknowledged by his peers and the media: he was named a Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer by Forbes, the #1 PR 2.0 Influencer by Traackr, and a top-10 social media influencer by Marketwire.

As if all this weren’t enough, Abraham notes with a grin: “For what it’s worth, my Klout score was 77 the last time I looked.”

ABOUT UNISON AGENCY
Unison is a full-service brand and digital agency that develops integrated solutions by combining strategic, creative and technological capabilities to advance our clients’ brands across all touch points. The agency fosters enduring customer devotion by creating digital brand experiences that bridge the gap between offline and online interactions.

Unison strives to create rich, engaging and truly emotional experiences in the digital realm. By combining high-impact media and seamless usability with the latest technology in e-commerce, social networking and digital mobility, Unison designs online brands that are multifunctional, multi-sensory and multi-platform.

Unison has experience building powerful brands across a wide range of industries, including financial services, government, food service, retail, manufacturing, real estate, pharmaceutical, fashion, entertainment/media, consumer packaged goods and beauty products.

Over the span of a decade, Unison has worked with clients in thirty-five countries around the world, demonstrating its belief that artfully designed brands are universally engaging and transcend cultural and linguistic boundaries.

http://www.unisonagency.com

CONTACT
Samantha Toner
Media Relations
+ 1-202-337-7887
samantha@unisonagency.com

H/T to Terry Eaton Attorney at Law for his contributions to this post

Happy New Year

Happy New Year {first_name}

I hope you had an amazing holiday season and I wish you your best year ever in 2013!

I also want to inform you my old email address (chris.abraham@reputation.com) has now changed because I completed my work with Reputation-dot-com; so please update your address book with my new address cabraham@chrisabraham.com

Good luck and happy new year!

Chris

What’s going on with me

Hello Pixel

I wanted to let you know I recently joined Reputation.com full time as lead of Special Projects, focusing on online reputation management solutions and strategies for very high-profile individuals and businesses and tackling the biggest and most complex reputation issues in the world.

I would love to catch up if you have time.

Cheers,

Chris

The Middle Miles: Gear Review: Mizuno Wave Rider 15

 I have myself one of the pair of Wave Rider 15 Limited Edition -- the red ones -- in the first photo and I really love them. They're way more structured that I am used to -- I have gone the road of unstructured, ultra-light, shoes but I really love these.  And they make me run harder because I feel like I have the sort of support I need since I am a pretty big guy.  Plus, I feel like I have to live up to them, they're so much better at running than I am.

The Middle Miles: Gear Review: Mizuno Wave Rider 15: 15th Anniversary Edition Mizuno Wave Rider 15 When I was still running college cross-country and track, it seemed like the two most po...

Free Webinar: Global Search Marketing with Mike Moran

Be sure to register to attend Mike Moran's next free webinar titled Global Search Marketing -- it is on April 3rd at 11am Eastern. Mike Moran is actually the guy who wrote the book on search marketing so here's the deets -- but first, please register!

Lots of companies have products that can be sold outside their home country, but search marketing makes it easier than ever. Focus on what customers want, what content you need to persuade them, and how they can find it—those three keys will give you search marketing success in any country. If you've been unsure of whether you have what it takes to market globally, don't miss this chance to find out.

In this Webinar, you’ll find out how to use social media to listen to your customers and gain insights into their interests.  Mike will show you how to segment and target your international markets by using different keywords for each country and each language.  He’ll discuss how to test to see if your marketing is working, and how to optimize your web site so that you can be found by customers worldwide.

In this free 30-minute Biznology® Webinar, Mike Moran explains how to listen to your international customers, determine their needs and choose keywords for each market segment.  He’ll show you how to work with translators and use proper coding so that your web site can be found by search engines globally.

Special sponsored presentation by Brick Marketing, Marketing Pilgrim, and Social Ally

Mike Moran is the Founder of the Biznology blog, a well-known expert in all things digital marketing, and Chief Strategist at Converseon, a leading social consultancy. Mike is the co-author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc., and the sole author of Do It Wrong Quickly. Mike is a veteran of IBM, managing groups in IBM.com for eight years, retiring from IBM in 2008 as a Distinguished Engineer.

Free Webinar: How to Map Your Brand's Social Graph

Be sure to join Sally Falkow and me for a free webinar on March 29th entitled How to Map Your Brand's Social Graph -- please register now! Here are the details of the webinar:

Every brand is surrounded by the people they interact with every day: customers, prospects, analysts, the media, vendors, authorities and the community.

In the past marketers and PR people have been advised to do what is called an "environmental scan" to identify stakeholders and trends in the environment.

Now that your stakeholders are online that 'scan' has to include mapping the social graph of your brand: who is part of that social graph, where they are active, what they're doing online, who they're connecting to and having conversations with, and what they are saying about your brand.

Find out what the social graph consists of, how to map it, and why this is so important for your brand.

Presented by

Sally Falkow
CEO Social Ally
Chris Abraham
President, Social Ally

I would really love to see you all there!

Funny infographic: what if you had your laptop back in time

I often forget how much in the future I live because this future is my present. But, what would happen if we could bring a brand new laptop into a time machine and go back into history. Well, this infographic from Dell is both funny and sobering, especially when it comes to the 9,000 human code breakers it took at Bletchly Park during World War II to break the Enigma cypher that "could have been broken with a laptop and a simple Java Script." We are in the future, jetpacks be damned

Humans and laptops: What could you do with a single laptop in the past?

Back in November, we posted an infographic entitled “Humans vs Laptops – How smart is you computer?” that compared the different skills of humans against computers… the good news is, humans won out. For now! Continuing in this vein we thought it might be interesting to think about what we could have done with laptops through the ages of time. Would the Mesopotamian scribes have been able to write down more great speeches with a laptop than with a wax tablet? What could the Roman empire have done with computers? And just think about what Leonardo Da Vinci could have accomplished if he’d replaced his paper notebook with the latest laptop deals! Take a look below at our ideas. What great moments in history do you think could have benefited from access to computers?

Free Google+ for Business Webinar

Are you interested in using Google+ for your company, but don’t know where to start?  Have you heard that Google has integrated G+ into its organic search results and want to explore the SEO benefits of G+ for your business?

Are you curious about Google+ Brand Pages for your organization but don't know how to start?

Do you already have a presence on Twitter and Facebook and want to know whether to allocate precious resources to another social media platform?

Please register for our free Google+ for Business webinar

Have you seen G+ on the Internet and are +1-curious and want to learn how to integrate your brand with G+ and Google? In this Webinar, you’ll find out how to:

• Set up your G+ personal account and profile, the basis for inclusion on the G+ for business community 
• Set up your G+ Brand Page to best promote your brand and attract customers 
• Create and share content with the goal of engaging current customers as well as prospective customers and partners 
• Use G+ Circles and Hangout as a way of targeting and engaging with your followers 
• Set up your privacy on your personal G+ to optimized search engine indexing for maximum SEO impact. 

In this free 30-minute Biznology® Webinar, Chris Abraham explains how to set up Google+, from your personal G+ profile to your corporate Brand Page.

Chris will show you how to open up your page for maximum SEO benefit and share ways to attract followers and keep them interested.

Chris will also explore ways of engaging your followers so that they become both brand ambassadors and customers. Special sponsored presentation by Abraham Harrison LLC, Brick Marketing, and Marketing Pilgrim Chris Abraham is one of the bloggers at Biznology.

Chris is a leading expert in online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet reputation management.

Chris was recently named as one of the top 50 social media power influencers on Forbes and one of the top 10 social media influencers of 2011 by Marketwire.

Please register for our free Google+ for Business webinar 

Tell the DC Mayor to Make One City Possible

Via Miriam’s Kitchen:

DC Mayor Vincent Gray is currently finalizing his proposed city budget for fiscal year 2013. Now is the time for us to let him know that we want to make DC a comfortable place for all people to live.

We’re joining forces with the Fair Budget Coalition and their Make One City Possible campaign, and are calling and emailing Mayor Gray today to let him know that we need his help to ensure our guests have the resources they need to survive.

In particular, we’d like Mayor Gray to:

• Direct $34 million in funding to DC’s core affordable and supportive housing programs.
• Invest $2.25 million to provide intensive employment support and stable housing to enable homeless families on TANF to move towards self-sufficiency. 
• Invest $2.5 million to create housing and social services for homeless young people.
• Encourage DC’s housing and human services agencies to work together to reduce pressure on the emergency shelter system by helping tenants avoid unnecessary evictions. 

Our guests depend on many of these programs and it’s important that we let Mayor Gray know how critical these programs are to our guests’ survival. 

We’ve heard from city government that these calls and emails really do make a difference, which is why we’re asking you to join us today.
Please join us by calling or emailing Mayor Gray today (here’s his contact information and some suggested text) and letting him know that you want to Make One City Possible too.

The Business of Football Infographic

IBM SmartCloud Enterprise Solutions

Nymgo VoIP offers free tickets anywhere for its relaunch!

Abraham Harrison’s new client, Nymgo, has now completely re-developed its networking infrastructure and is accordingly re-launching its product, website and brand with a completely new look and set of functions that pushes the envelope of mass consumer VoIP technology in 2012 — and, to celebrate that launch, they’re also offering 5 tickets to anywhere to a lucky 5 folks.

This contest is called the “Nymgo, fly me to visit someone” contest and it takes place on its regional Facebook pages for Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan — one round-trip ticket to anywhere in the world will be available to  each Facebook Page by simply choosing a friend they would like to visit. The contestant simply uploads a picture along with a required caption (maximum 500 words) explaining why they should win the trip to see that person.

Detailed analysis of the perfect blogger pitch

Detailed analysis of the perfect blogger pitch -- Over the last five years that Abraham Harrison has been pitching bloggers on behalf of clients, we have learned a thing or two about how best to reach bloggers, how to engage them, how to get them to carry our client's message to their readership.

Real bloggers and real blogs always trump Robot Armies

Real bloggers and real blogs always trump Robot Armies

Last week, I talked about using the long tail of blogger outreach -- the idea that you can’t pin your hopes for most public relations efforts on only the A-list bloggers. For each outreach, there are hundreds and often thousands of bloggers that are not well-known but have influence on the very people that your PR campaign is trying to reach.

I’ve written in the past about how to put bloggers first when you reach out to them, but today I want to make sure that you don’t see blogger outreach as a one-time, campaign-oriented approach but rather a relationship that lasts for years between you and each blogger. For blogger outreach to work on an ongoing basis, you need to be endlessly generous and endlessly appreciative. And the main way that you show your appreciation is to do as much of the work for them as possible.

You need to make sure you’ve set up the pitch and the campaign. Your message must be essential and clear enough that each blogger can potentially go from reading the email pitch to clicking the post button on their blog well within five minutes. Any more and we maybe get only a tweet or a Facebook Like.

We need to be clear in our email that we want a post and the pitch to be shared with the readers of the blog. In our social media news releases, we need to make sure that everything can be copied and pasted as-is, that images are the correct size, that the links are already embedded, that copy and text is simple to copy and block-quote and that any and all banner ads or videos have a handy and easy to find embed code right there.

One cannot assume any technical proficiency, one cannot assume any PR or communications experience, one cannot assume that any blogger knows any PR-speak or knows how to deal with an embargo. One cannot assume that anyone knows what a press release is, or a social media release or what PRWeb is or, heaven forbid, how to keep an embargoed message holy. Long story short, if the message in any way seems more complicated or time-consuming than each blogger fancies it’s worth, then you’ve lost them.

Authenticity vs. robot armies rife with affiliate links

I get why folks have spent many millions of dollars creating a robot army of sites and links and posts that emulate a passionate blogosphere. A robot army rife with affiliate links is really much more manageable to control freaks who need to make sure they can predict ROI based on investment. This is probably the direct result of VC-funding. Those guys love seeing money in and money out. But it isn’t authentic and it isn’t real and these castles of cards are also vulnerable as we have been recently seeing as Google goes through revisions of its search algorithm, oftentimes removing or de-prioritizing entire portions of the Internet that have been produced at great expense to emulate the vigorous and organic, self-organizing, engaged citizenry.

I won’t lie to you, having hundreds of earned media mentions as the result of a very real digital PR long-tail blogger outreach to thousands of bloggers can be SEO gold. Some clients retain us yearly and we can turn those hundreds of posts to thousands of posts per year. The powerful secondary effect of the earnest PR earned-media campaign is SEO link juice, something we didn’t sort out until we were doing this for a couple of years.

Having hundreds of thousands of prepared keyword strings and copy and images and videos pointing back to our clients results in a white-hat link-farm effect, if you will, with one caveat: It is real. We don’t pay these bloggers to write. None of these bloggers are on the same server or the same node or the same cloud or in the same network. The vigilant army of real live Google site investigators can scrutinize these hundreds of posts with a fine tooth comb and there’s no harm and no foul.

Down the Long Tail, there are loads of bloggers who have never been kissed, never been pitched by a noted brand, never been engaged by a social media team or PR agent

At the end of the day, we're not creating a fallacy world of content used to drive revenue much like an elaborate marketing theme park. What we’re trying to do is play the game of “olly olly oxen free” with the denizens of the Internet. We’re ringing the dinner gong. We’re giving lots and lots of people who have a worthy platform for self-expression an opportunity to write about something if, and only if, our email pitch resonates with them or, to be honest, they’re impressed that our client has taken the time to reach out to them directly, asking them for a favor.

When it comes to the empowered and powerful A-listers, they’ve been pitched a million times by the world’s top brands. In fact, companies and their agencies are falling all over themselves to appeal to these powerful few. Not much further along the tail, there are loads of blogs and bloggers who have never been kissed at all, never been pitched by a noted brand, never been engaged by a social media team or PR agent, have never received an offer to pass on to their readers or received a book to review, have never received super-super concierge service and follow up.

In so many cases, we’re their first. We’re their very first PR kiss and, as you know, nobody forgets their first.

Image at top by friendlydrag0n on FlickrChris Abraham is a partner in Socialmedia.biz and 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. See his profile, contact Chris via email, Twitter, or leave a comment below.

Keeping Your Online Privacy With Flink12 While Social Networking

Abraham Harrison's client, Flink12, is the way to stay social but still keep your privacy. There are many social networking platforms available today to share your public self. But where do you go to privately and safely share your personal, day-to-day thoughts and experiences? Flink12 was created as a safe and secure way to share your private life. It is playful, safe, extremely private and easy to use. A unique way of sharing and communicating, Flink12 allows you to share your life in a meaningful way with the people you know and care about the most.

What is a Flink? A Flink is a group of twelve cows. Flink12 allows you to create individual groups of twelve people or Flinks for your friends, family, or coworkers. These Flinks allow you to communicate in a discreet way, sharing professional information with coworkers and personal information with friends and family. These groups of twelve are ideal for sharing different information for different types of relationships.

"Privacy first" is the highest priority at Flink12. This approach ensures that your personal information will remain completely secure. With no privacy settings to manage, your information is automatically safe. Personal information will not indexed on the web by search engines. You decide when, where and how much of your life you want to share and with whom. As it says on the Flink12 website:

Our "Privacy first" approach ensures that your personal information will remain private. Your information will not be indexed on the web by search engines. We designed Flink12 at its roots to be "udderly" private. Users have complete control.

Flink12 is totally accessible on the go as well:


Head on over to Flink12 and sign up for a free account. I'd love to hear what you think of it.

8 Reasons to Choose Fotolia for Your Stock Photos

Abraham Harrison is really excited about our client Fotolia.  Fotolia is able to offer individuals and professionals (advertising agencies, press, small business, graphic artists, designers) the greatest image collection in the world for free or as little as $0.75 an image.  Check out these 8 great reasons to use Fotolia: 

1. Time Savings -- Fotolia services will save you time, as you are much more likely to find what you need quickly. A savings in time translates into saving money.

2. Clear Licensing Agreement -- One hazard of being a designer is learning about copyright laws, restrictions and licenses. On the free photo sites, you have to read the fine print for each and every photo you use. Some photographs come with no restrictions, some are only for non-commercial use and some require the name of the photographer. You don’t have to deal with this headache on Fotolia. The licensing agreement will be the same for all photos in the license category you select, which is typically a standard royalty-free license.

3. Availability of Vector Art and Illustrations -- Fotolia offers a wide variety of vector art and illustrations. Illustrated graphics can give a course a completely unique look and feel. Vector art refers to graphics that are hand drawn in a tool like Adobe Illustrator. Because they exist as mathematical renderings, they can be expanded to any size and manipulated in a vector graphics program.

4. Compelling Images -- You can find photos based on a concept, emotion or theme. You can find people doing interesting things and simple single objects that are ready to use.

5. Guaranteed Model Releases -- You need the signed release of a model to use his or her photo. Model releases are guaranteed with a paid service. This is not true on a free site. That’s why I never use photographs of a person from a free service.

6. More Efficient Search -- There’s nothing like typing in the search term ‘money’ and getting back photos of the Eiffel tower. This kind of poor search functionality is common on some free photo sites. On the other hand, efficient search functionality is one of the foundations of Fotolia. Fotolia has staff to tag their photos with keywords, so the results are usually more accurate. The keywords are also translated in many languages.

7. Supports The Arts -- The world would only be shades of gray without the Arts. By paying for images, you’re helping photographers and illustrators earn a living. We need them.

8. Reduces Stress -- When you can quickly find the graphics you like and need, it reduces your level of stress. And we all need that.

Be sure to check out this video of Fotolia images as well:



Also connect with Fotolia on their various social media channels to watch for announcements: