I'm two years to Ryan Holiday's publication"Trust Me, I am working". Never much of a PR person, I learned immediately out of his nonfictional accounts of becoming a"media manipulator" that marketing can be everything once you've built a great product. Since I have to return the publication by 12/20 into the San Diego Public LibraryI figured that this is a good time to write down my notes as a blog post.
Quotes from"Trust Me, I'm Lying"
"We play by their rules long enough and it becomes our game" --
Orson Scott Card
"Social networking isn't a set of tools to permit humans to communicate with people. It's a pair of embedding mechanisms to allow technologies to use humans to communicate with each other, in an orgy of self-organizing... The Matrix had it wrong. You are not the batter power in a global, human-enslaving AI, you're somewhat more precious. You Are a Part of the shifting circuitry"
-Venkatesh Rao (Entrepreneur in residence at Xerox)
"It's a prime example of the feminist blogosphere's tendency to tap in the industry force of what I've come to think of as"outrage world" -- the regularly occurring firestorms awakened on mainstream, for-profit, woman-targeted websites such as Jezebel as well, to a lesser level, Slate's very own XX Factor and Salon's Broadsheet. They're triggered by writers that are pushing readers to feel what the authors assert is righteously indignant anger but that is actually just petty jealousy, cleverly promoted as feminism. All these firestorms are great for page-view-pimping bloggy enterprise."
-Emily Gould from Slate.com
"Companies should expect a full scale, organized attack from critics. One that will simultaneously overrun blog comments, Facebook fan pages, and an onslaught of sites, leading to mainstream media appeal. Start by creating a social media crises plan and growing inner fire drills to anticipate what could happen."
"Our selves are the home where we live; they are our news, our heroes, our experience, our forms of art, our very experience."
Exercise Advice from the Book
Control your Wikipedia page (use any press mention from blogs or conventional media)
Examine the top stories and you will notice a pattern: the top stories all polarize poeple. If you make it threaten people's 3 Bs -- behaviour, belief, or possessions -- you receive a huge virus-like dispersion
Compose stuff bloggers can post right away without any work. Feed them their very own lies"help them trick their readers"
Loaded headlines are very popular
Silence on sites is your worst.
Faking jak zagadać do dziewczyny na imprezie escapes with email editor (from various sources) can work if You've Got the right contacts
Prominent headlines that screamed excitement about utlimately unimportant news
Luxury use of pictures (often of little relevance)
Shade comics and a big, thick Sunday supplement
Ostentatious aid of this underdog causes
Use of anonymous sources
Prominent policy of high society and events
Concepts in the book
Ongoing Narrative /Iterative Reporting -harm is already done, there's no anything. Iterative reporting is bullshit, folks treat information headlines as"cultural fact", the damage is already done, even it's a baseless accusation.
Faking leaks with email editor (from different sources)
By way of example, each picture is a different load screen = more pageviews (short term vs. long term metrics). Usability vs. profitability -- publishers are concentrated liberally on pageviews, but in the longterm, consumer trust will be important. Meanwhile, reckless bloggers are making countless sensationalizing stories that are untrue.
Snark -- deadly weapon (humor in its dark form. Example = "Your Daily Douchebag: John Mayer Edition". Another online example: Hot Chicks using Douchebags
All that occurs -> All that's known by media --> All that's newsworthy ->All that is published as news -> All that spreads. This is the systematic limiting of this data seen by the General Public
My Action List / Lessons from the Book
Headlines matter
Blogs hold a Good Deal of power
The right contacts in the right sites in a certain sector hold tons of influence. Example: Apple announcements
Building a new site with high viral grip (but with the right user metrics in mind) may take off fast. Sites like Watch Mojo, Ebaumsworld, Break.com, ride the tide of copying content from other people, organized in a digestible manner that users can quickly disperse. Millions of dollars are created this way while resources are not credited. There has to be a way to do both.
There's a need for a respectable news source, or an industry specific source that doesn't pander to"mass hysteria". Example: refinery29.com