All Online Digital Roads Lead to Google Plus~By Chris Abraham

Google can’t get any of us to use Google Plus, but they’re still trying. And they’re pushing hard. One of the reasons I love blogging is, for good or evil, I don’t need any evidence for anything I say. With that caveat, Google’s closing in on its goal of being federated across all of its properties, so be acutely aware. They’re triangulating us all and will soon be able to identify not merely what “you” — someone like you, a demographic generality — want, need, and desire, but what you, yourself, (or me, Chris Abraham), want in particular, down to, at most, your person (and the maximum 7.8 square meters around you).

Rejoice! I am not longer 35–44-year-old white, college-educated, man, living in Metro Washington, I am 43-year-old, soon to be 44, Christopher James Abraham, who lives between Columbia Heights and Arlington Views off of Columbia Pike in South Arlington, VA, who owns guns, motorcycles, spends money on eBay and Amazon, and loves eating fish tacos at Taqueria el Poblano during their weekday happy hour from 4-7pm — and many other very specific details of my life (like the fact that I attended the Nation’s Gun Show at the Dulles Expo Center over the weekend).

 

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• 
• Chris Abraham
• Chris Abraham is a leading expert in digital: social media marketing, Internet privacy, online reputation management (ORM), and digital PR with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet crisis response.

  A pioneer in online social networks and publishing, with a natural facility for anticipating the next big thing, Chris is an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and advisor to the industries’ leading firms. He specializes in Web 2.0 technologies, including content syndication, online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media. Chris Abraham was named a Top 50 Social Media Power Influencer by Forbes, #1 PR2.0 Influencer by Traackr, and top-10 social media influencers by Marketwire; and, for what it’s worth, Chris has a Klout of 78 the last time he looked.

  Chris is currently Director of Social Media at Unison agency, where he is expanding their social media offerings by starting a social media practice. Unison is an integrated brand agency combining strategic, creative, and technology services to help their clients build and strengthen their brands.

  Chris recently completed a five-month contract with Reputation.com as Team Lead, Special Projects, in sales for their “Whale Hunting” team. Chris was one of two whale hunters tasked with closing clients for their high-end Picasso Online Reputation Management (ORM) and Executive Privacy products, from $10,000-$100,000/month campaigns for high-net-worth and high-profile individuals and Fortune 500 companies.

  Prior to Reputation.com, Chris ran his own digital PR and marketing company, Abraham Harrison, LLC, from Washington, DC, Portland, Oregon, and Berlin, Germany, with clients including: Kimberly Clark, The Daily, Habitat for Humanity, Greenpeace, The Fresh Air Fund, International Medical Corps, Sharp, Pew, Alzheimer’s Association, and others. Previous to starting AH, Chris worked on the Interactive Team at Edelman Public Affairs in Washington, DC, consulting with clients such as Wal-Mart, Shell, and GE on blogger and social media strategy. Before Edelman, Chris was Technology Strategist for New Media Strategies, a pioneer in online brand promotion and protection with clients including Sci-Fi Channel, Buena Vista, TomTom, Paramount Pictures, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Disney, Reebok, EA, RCA, and NBC.

  In the early nineties, Chris joined The Meta Network, a seminal online virtual community based in Washington, and so began his career as an expert in online community development, social media, social networking, and online collaboration. Chris has had a web presence since 1993 and started blogging in 1999, focusing on community, connection, innovation, and brand extension. As a technologist, Chris has consulted T. Rowe Price, the US Department of Treasury CIO, Friendster, Deutsche Telekom, and others.

  Chris has taught blogging courses for the Writer’s Center of Bethesda, has been a guest lecturer on public affairs blogging at Columbia University’s SIPA school and the American University in Washington, DC, the Emergent Technologies Advisor to the Urban Institute’s Communications Advisory Board, and a Renaissance Weekend participant since 2001. Additionally, he is the go-to expert on social media, citizen journalism, technology, and the Internet for BBC World Service, CNN Radio, and CNet’s BNet.

  Chris received his BA in American Literature from The George Washington University, studied American Literature at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, studied French at the University of Hawaii, and studied German at both the Washington and Berlin Goethe-Instituts. In addition to the Huffington Post, Chris blogs for his own blog, ChrisAbraham.com, for Biznology.com, for Socialmedia.biz, and for MarketingConversation.com. Chris has written for AdAge’s DigitalNext and Global Idea Network blogs.

  Chris is indulging his mid-life crisis by buying a motorcycle and taking up the shooting sports including trap and target shooting with both rifle and pistol. Until he gets the novelty of gun ownership out of his system, you’ll find Chris in South Arlington, Virginia, right across the river from his beloved Washington, DC.

  Chris is president of Gerris digtial and director of social media at Unison.

  (Disclosure: I am a former employee of Reputation.com and they continue to sponsor my work)

 

How to boost your Klout score with Flipboard

Give more than you take — and get rewarded for it

I’ll get to the point: My secret to being amazingly and profoundly engaged with so many of my followers on Twitter, my friends on Facebook, and my circles on Google+ is because I cheat.

Whenever I am between things, in lines, waiting for something, and even on boring conference calls, I pull up Flipboard and read what my followers, friends, and circles are sharing and I generously retweet, +1, like, favorite, share and comment. I believe that Flipboard is my secret weapon when it comes to improving and maintaining my Klout score. Why? Well, the more I give, the more I get. The more items I honestly and earnestly retweet, favorite, +1, like, and share, the more willing and game the people I share are also willing to take the few seconds it takes to retweet me back.

One of the hardest things to do when it comes to participating in social media is trying to give more than you take. In order to really grow your reputation online you really need to be perceived as giving more than you take. Generosity is always rewarded in this marathon of social media engagement. In order to make the most of your work online, you need to work on becoming connected with your online community. Social media demands not only commitment to feeding the beast — the 24/7 maw of content-creation — but it also requires that you take an interest in what your followers and your friends are posting as well.

Begin with the automagically generated personalized newspaper

Flipboard makes it easy to do this. When you install it, immediately go to the red ribbon with the magnifying glass on it. Here you can login, link up all of your social networking credentials and Flipboard will automagically generate a personalized newspaper for you to peruse. Of course, you can also follow various topics and news sources and so forth — and I do that as well — but the real juice happens when you share the content of real people with whom you’re connected via reciprocal connection rather than just sharing content fed to you directly from online media sources.

And since I really only like, share, favorite, +1, and retweet stuff that resonates with me, it helps build my character online, allowing me to build not only my personal and professional brand with my followers but it also allows these real people to get to know me better based on what I like, as well. Additionally, all of this great content aggregates right to me, so I become not just more broadly informed but also way more deeply informed as well. Why? Because birds of a feather flock together.

This is especially important for us social media experts, social media ungurus, and social media marketers. We tend to be a little heavy-handed and tend to do a lot more egocentric and self-serving posts than other folks. It’s our business. Tempering our perceived abuse of these platforms with authentic sharing and an engaged back-and-forth is essential, otherwise people will tune out and we risk being unfollowed for being a little spammy.

Flipboard even knows how to set up an editable RT the right way

Because Flipboard isn’t an open mic, you won’t be tempted to read your own poetry, to just speak about your own brand. Since Flipboard is a reader that allows full social engagement and wraps it up with a very gorgeous bow (the UI is amazing and makes even the simplest blog posts feel like a full-color glossy magazine), it’s no pain to consume all the share of everyone you too often ignore. Instead of being painful torture, it’s actually quite amazing.

Even more, because of how easy it is to navigate through the cross-platform interface — including uniquely designed Apple iOS apps for iPhone and iPad and a very attractive interface for the Android as well — it’s easy to breeze past the articles, tweets and posts that don’t interest you and then move on to content that catches your eye. You can easily favorite, +1, retweet, or retweet with comment. And, for you Twitter grammar geeks, Flipboard knows how to set up an editable RT the right way, conveniently adding an RT before the quoted tweet and none of that stupid quote stuff that some of the other tools offer.

 

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