Jane Genova: Speechwriter - Ghostwriter

A Lawsuit, Google Juice, Lawsuit Dropped

The next round of books on social media will carry the case study of the lawsuit, lots Google Juice, and dropping of the lawsuit by the plaintiff.  So, remember today's and yesterday's dates [November 3rd and 4th, 2009].  The case study will be used to illustrate the influence and power of the blogosphere.

On November 3rd Karen Sloan published an article in THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL which reported that a lawsuit had been filed on October 27th of this year [statute of limitations under the wire?].  The plaintiff was Donald Jones, an African-American professor at the University of Miami School of Law.  It alleged that Breaking Media, the parent of the legal tabloid Abovethelaw.com [ATL], et al. portrayed the professor in a false light, invaded his privacy and infringed on the copyright of photos of him from his university's website. 

The plaintiff wanted $22 million and removal of the three items by ATL on him back in October 2007. That coverage was of the professor's arrest for soliciting an undercover officer for sex for $20.  The tone was, as is the tone for much of ATL, satiric.  The charges were then dropped and the record expunged.

Yesterday when we legal bloggers [my site is http://lawandmore.typepad.com] read the article in THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL and then the brief statement on ATL, we posted on the matter.  We did that, as we usually do, unilaterally.  But search engines have a way of organizing points of view, perhaps better than Saul Alinsky or Barack Obama ever did.  That point of view tended to negative about the plaintiff's complaint.  Our objections were based on:

• First Amendment rights
• The parameters of humorous content [which included a disclaimer by the ATL writer]
• The stupidity of a plaintiff who seems to hope to reset search engines with positive coverage of him when he files a lawsuit which is bound to result in much more negative coverage on search engines.

The legal blogosphere contained little else.  In addition, each poster tended to include a digital trail, that is links, of other coverage.  Saying this opining went viral would be an understatement.

Somewhat after 2:00 P.M. today I read on ATL that Professor Jones dropped his lawsuit.  ATL extended an olive branch to The Professor.  It offered him space on the wildly popular ATL to share his point of view.  He could also decide if he wanted that post open or closed to comments.

The last time I checked ATL, the former plaintiff has not responded.

Hunch:  This victory, which I contend resulted primarily from Google Juice, will deter a lot of bullying or playing around with the First Amendment in the future.

Update:

On Friday, November 6, 2009, the Establishment media - THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL - covered the story of the withdrawal of the complaint by the plaintiff in "Jones v Minkin."   The blogosphere called it a wrap on reporting the dismissal early on the night of Wednesday, November 4, 2009.  The issue is clearly: Can Establishment media remain a source of news, influence, and power in this era of citizen journalism?

Twitter: Is it a liberal rent-a-mob?

The power of Twitter has become so amazing that in THE GUARDIAN, Jon Henley poses the question: Is Twitter a liberal rent-a-mob bent on hanging out to dry those who express an opinion that differs from their own?"

That question answers itself, of course, with another question:  How did liberals gain control of the medium? 

Then there are flip answers we can give.  For example, in its heyday wasn't THE WALL STREET JOURNAL the voice of the conservative mob?  At least Twitter isn't contending to be more noble than it is.  And, let's praise those who know how to acquire such influence, particularly in this era of fragmented media.

Twitter is what users make it.  In fact, every product or service is only what users shape it to be.  Users are the messenger and the message.

Blogs: Cheap, Efficient SEO Tool

Twitter has not killed traditional blogging or long-form social media. 

That 140-character medium often called "tweeting" actually adds another reason to blog.  That's because Twitter.com provides the platform on which we can link our blog posts.  

Blogs still remain front-line soldiers in any social media outreach.  That's because, as every expert on SEO [search engine optimization] will tell you, blogs attract those search engine crawlers and spiders.   Those experts range from Paul Chaney ["The Digital Handshake"] to Rebecca Lieb ["The Truth About Search Engine Optimization."]

Search engines "read" words and words are what blogs provide.  The graphics might be cute but they are ignored by the crawlers and spiders.  That pull force can be enhanced by researching and using the right keywords and making that sprinkling-in graceful.  Be ham-handed [called "stuffing"] and the search engines will ignore the site.

On page 108 of her 2009 book on SEO, Lieb says:

"[Given blogs's ability to attract search engines] it is no surprise that in recent years, many successful and profitable publishers have built editorial products entirely on commercial blog platforms."

Like every aspect of social media, blogging has changed.  Mentored by Chaney, I began publishing articles about blogging in 2004.  That was soon after I had read about then-Wonkette Ana Marie Cox in THE NEW YORK TIMES SUNDAY MAGAZINE.  I got it she and early adopters  of blogging such as Dave Winer were media revolutionaries.  By early 2005, I had set up my first blog. 

The "rules" [every movement has its rules] back then were:

• No commercial purpose
• Short, as in 350-words or less
• Tight niche focus
• Communication is a conversation [see "The Cluetrain Manifesto"]
• Pass on the ethos of sharing [Marketing expert Toby Bloomberg still is practicing that.  Back in 2005, she helped launch 1000s of us newbies.  Right now Bloomberg - toby@bloombergmarketing.com - is publishing a book on social media totally through Tweets]
• Oprah-like transparency.

Currently, blogs are a mainstream business tool, at least for small business.  According to a McKinsey survey, reports Chaney, only about a third of large-company executives invest their time into blogging. 

The genre is loose as to length and format. 

While the niche should be tight, often we push the boundaries when our site has a lot of Google juice.  For example, we might tend to introduce a new service or product or point of view on an existing site when we could have started a new one.  We could, though, have gotten that new one getting its own Google juice through links to and from it to the existing sites. 

And the excessive self-disclosure ["Feel fat today"] became tedious and essentially disappeared.

What stays the same has been the tone and content of a conversation.  That means horizontal, open, expressive, opinionated, presenting just enough evidence to convince, and ability to be influenced by reader input. 

Also there is the spirit of giving.   Even though capitalism has embraced blogging, it remains sort of a family affair.  We look out for our own.  We give.  We take.  No surprise the language about blogging is about "communities."  Not target markets.

How to achieve your goal in blogging?  That might be advocate a position, fundraise, build a brand, manage a crisis, research, collaborate, or even sell? Or a combo platter of several.  Here are some recommendations:

• Start low-profile.  You don't know what you're doing.  Online communications involve trial and error.  Offline we were used to set formulas.  A useful read on this is "Multichannel Marketing" by Akin Arikan.  It tells you something that its foreword is by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers.

• When you got the tone and content parts down [you know this by the traffic, comments, and if you're starting to achieve your goal], let us know you're here. 

• Post often throughout the day, using links to high-traffic sites, topical references, and brandnames.

• Leverage the blog as the platform for your more general social media outreach.  A blog is just a part.  You are denying yourself reach if you stick to only blogging.  There are podcasting, web sites, mobile, YouTube, tweeting, email blasts, social networking such as on Facebook and LinkedIn, and e-media releases [Pitch Engine, PRWeb], e-books, and print books promoted by social media [A print book is still the price of entry.]

• Analyze what the leaders in social media, including blogging, are doing and not doing.

As for making a living as a blogger?  With the glut of writers in major metro areas, freelance bloggers are only receiving about $20 a post.  Those who put help-wanted on Craigslist would like to offer lots less.  Even companies which hire "bloggers" really want communicators who have social media down cold.  That's where the money is: Social media.  Also the demand, even in ghostwriting.

HARVARD BUSINESS Praises Twitter Model

Has anyone paid much attention to HARVARD BUSINESS recently?  Its influence isn't like the old days.  Maybe that's why it's come out so bullish on the Twitter business model.

In MEDIABISTRO.COM, Jason Turbow reports that HARVARD BUSINESS praises Twitter's lack of dependence on advertising since that has shown to be a shaky profit position to be in.  Instead the microblog has been involved in deals to generate revenue by driving traffic to other sites.

Likely this commentary by HARVARD BUSINESS will be picked up all over the web.  It could be a renaissance moment for it.

Dirty Tweeting - CT GOP Gets Caught

It's a given that it was social media that won the 2008 Presidential election.  Think how Facebook c0f0under Chris Hughes designed digital sites for Obama which had down-loadable tools for users to organize, stage special events and fundraise.  Don Tapscott deconstructs that in Chapter 9 of his book "Grown Up Digital."

With a loss and egg on its face, it's no surprise that the GOP want to get into the digital game.  Only they did it, at least in Connecticut, reports Gregory B. Hladky in THE NEW HAVEN ADVOCATE, with dirty tricks.  Well they got caught setting up 33 Twitter accounts.  They used the names of Dem state senators. "The Republican scheme," says Hladky, was to send out posts under the Democrats' names mocking the liberal tax-and-spend bastards."

Low-paid Nobodies - We can tweet all we want

Those Somebodies who get paid well in Hollywood now are agreeing to contracts which bar tweeting as well as other forms of social media.  What a relief to be us: Low-paid Nobodies who can tweet our hearts out.  See my tweets at http://twitter.com/gggggg1.

Gawker: The Rough Language

Those taboos on language used in media don't seem to intimidate the writers at Gawker.com.  Here we read in the headline  about NEW YORK Magazine kissing the a__s of Page Six.  Last week the language was somewhat rougher: The "F" word was used.

There's a risk here.  Gawker is in an identity crisis which its owner Nick Denton hasn't yet navigated the site out of.  Coarse language could alienate the over-30 set, that is we digital immigrants.  That might be a target market Denton could use. 

There is also the risk of losing the under-30, that is digital natives.  From riding public transportation with them and hanging around Yale I notice a surge in the use of all the words which were taboo for my Baby Boomer gen.  The Millennials are huge in number.  If Denton is going after that market, then he's being shrewd in taking this direction.

The Publicist: Is that yet another job killed off by digital technology? - Think Liz Taylor's tweet

The world of media is being rocked by a tweet.  It's by Liz Taylor describing her coming heart operation for a leaky valve.   The odds are that Taylor is not tweeting from her bed.  But the middleman who is is invisible.  If it's a publicist, that role is being denied.  Ditto for ghostwriter.

The new form of connecting with fans, enemies, friends, funding sources is direct.  No middleman.  So, that classic role of publicist is dead, at least on the surface.  And maybe in the pocketbook.  Those savvy about digital communications can handle their own promotions for peanuts.  Using tweets, blog posts, podcasts, Facebook pages, YouTube downloads, e-books distributed on the web, web-formatted media releases, and email blasts they get high-reach at low-cost and the whole process tends to be self-replicating. 

Of course, not everyone has the talent or time to be a self-promoter.  They will hire help. But that help will likely have the title of Social Media Expert, not Publicist.  For those giant campaigns by organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce?  That might be more effectively, in results and cost, executed by a pro in social media.  Social media folks are both strategists and content-providers.  

I have no idea what genius publicity agency was responsible for the U.S. Chamber's anti-green stance and its plan to stage a Scopes Monkey-like trial to demonstrate the folly of green thinking.  But since all that brilliance is driving U.S. Chamber members like Apple and Nike to quit, I recommend one of us new-media kind.

Jane Genova, New-Media Strategy/Content.  Emergencies embraced with passion.  Fees custom-made.  Mgenova981@aol.com, 203-468-8579.

Drudgereport.com - Losing Influence?

Live by the blog's rapid metabolism and overwrought passion, die by 'em too. 

Pioneer of the online sensationalistic, conservative news aggregator site, Matt Drudge owned that category since he broke Monicagate.  But now, as Gillian Reagan opines in THE NEW YORK OBSERVER, his dominance may be fading. 

No newsflash, the space he used to control has sophisticated migrants, ranging from HuffingtonPost.com to Politico.com.  However, competition itself doesn't necessary call an end to an era.  More to the point is if the site can keep its edge.  DrudgeReport.com isn't quoted or linked as often as it had been.  Why?  What happened?  Has Drudge taken the money and stayed - beyond his passion about breaking mainstream and oddball news?

It's a lesson to all us bloggers.  Our heart and soul have to be there in cyberspace.   Weblogs are a genre hardwired for Being There.

Gawker, WSJ Law Blog, Now Abovethelaw? - When Cool Cools

Five years ago, the freewheeling snarky tone for blogs was the new cool.  

Wonkette blogger Ana Marie Cox became iconic.  She was in the stable of Gawker digital ranters.  She went on to write for more mainstream media.  Currently Gawker itself is struggling to find a voice which aligns with more serious times.  Also, the medium of blogging has matured and mutated.

We allowed co-author of "Naked Conversations" Shel Israel to pontificate about everything, including that Amazon.com should have a "conversation" with him, on his blog.  Somehow I get the notion he's not as influential in the "conversation" as he once was.  Ditto for his co-author Robert Scoble, who is no longer penning advice at FAST COMPANY [one of the few new-media rags that's thriving aka selling lots of advertising.]

The lawyer-journalists at THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Law Blog enjoyed sounding unlawyerly, perhaps too much.  A plaintiff attorney one of those cool cats flew out to interview groused that the "kid" just kept checking his Blackberry and wasting his time with non-substantive questions.  Since then, Law Blog has changed its editors twice.  By a look at the content, I would predict more changes are in the cards. 

No slouches at spotting the marketable, numerous others aped that tone.  One has been the wildly successful legal tabloid Abovethelaw.com.  The timing couldn't have been better.  There's been a crash in the business of law.  Those with $160,000 starting salaries are losing them or not getting them to begin with.  Discontents obsessively send their leaks to David Lat at Abovethelaw.com.  Since there is great unemployment and underemployment among lawyers, they have the time to comment prolifically on the site.  The blogging community looked at Abovethelaw.com and saw that it was good aka getting advertising.

Here is today's post on Abovethelaw.com.  It's about job cuts, which is no longer a new topic.  And it's worn out its ability to garner gallows humor.  Yet, the tone is still circa 2003.  Why?  Like shrewd businessman, why doesn't the leadership anticipate and prepare for shifts in what readers want and need?

This layoff topic is a good example.  Abovethelaw.com made of it a cottage industry.  Smart.  For a long time.  But, the shock is over.  Yeah, the legal industry has downsized, won't ever be the same, and that's the way it is and will be.  The emerging zeitgeist seems to be: Okay, what now for us highly educated, ambitious, debt-ridden best and brightest who have been ousted from Paradise?  In short, time for more gravitas.

Will Abovethelaw.com join Gawker and the rest in being a fading phenomenon?  It requires humility and plenty of sweat equity to keep a blog a source of value for readers.  I know.  I had to retrofit my legal blog http://lawandmore.typepad.com post the resolution of the much of the lead paint, public nuisance and personal injury, litigation.  It wasn't and still isn't easy.  We bloggers go from almost-famous to just another voice out there competing for attention.