We at Gerris do outreaches to companies to establish B2B relationships.  We have a refined and effective methodology that allows us to reach out to hundreds or thousands of potential partners in a personalized, professional and friendly manner that is always met with enthusiastic and motivated response.

At the moment we are running partnership outreaches to PR and crisis management firms,  NGOs and foundations, top marketing bloggers, and lobbyists and political communications shops.

The operational methodology is very much like Blogger Outreach, outlined above, but with the "Gifts" and "Calls to Action" focused on the company itself, rather than the blogger's readership.

In our outreach campaigns to bloggers and press, we regularly get 50 to 200 articles published for a client per 4-8 week outreach cycle -- this is generally an order of magnitude more articles than most PR shops get their clients.

• Through our many campaigns for clients over the years, we maintain a correspondence with upwards of 30,000 bloggers and journalists and can establish friendly personal contact with brand new demographics of bloggers and journalists within a few weeks through our polished, professional, and personable outreach methods.
• The coverage we get is earned, not paid media -- honest, enthusiastic, real coverage from influencers into their communities, not only reaching and influencing their immediate readership, but dominating the search results with the large numbers of articles, and driving your sites' SEO through all the organic, honest link-backs.
  • Unlike paid ads, these articles stay up online forever, appearing in searches, improving your sites' SEO, and driving traffic ad infinitum.
• The details of Blogger Outreach: Influencing the Influencers -- In this top-down approach we identify the online influencers whose platform and writings speak to the demographics you want to reach.  We reach out to these influencers and get them to carry your message out to their readerships -- and in the process, giving you an implicit or explicit endorsement.  Depending on how compelling the issue is to the blogosphere, we get from dozens to as many as 200 postings in a 4-8 week outreach cycle, reaching millions of readers from an outreach. 
  • The potential universes of bloggers/influencers to reach out to is almost unlimited -- we will just have to work with you to determine what the compelling message is that we want to reach out to them with; what the "Gift" and what the "Calls to Action" are (more detail on this below).
  • Blogger outreach not only allows you to reach the readerships of the postingblogs; broad postings in the Google-beloved blogsphere help you dominate the search engine results with natural, organic, and most attractively, permanent presence right there where people are looking for information and solutions.
    • The tactics of this process involve identifying the relevant influencers in the targeted communities, reaching out to them and building a relationship with the goal of having them provide coverage for you, raising your visibility, and endorsing you. With all outreaches it is important to come bearing a "gift", and some call to action. The "gift" - generally informational, rather than physical - gives them a chance to boost their own standing as a blogger and as a community member by bringing something of value to their readership. 
  • The specific steps in the Influencer Outreach element are the following (you may comfortably skip over this section if you already understand outreaches -- it's just for reference):
• Details of a Blogger Outreach Operation
  • "Universe" creation:  "Universes" are what we call the lists of contact and general descriptive information on the online influencers.
    • We will work with you to determine what the most appropriate definers/groupings will be and how granular and specific they should be.  Your list of audiences is a great place to start, and we think we can develop additional universes that will be receptive to your goals.
  • Within the context of this effort there may be some very personal outreach to A-list bloggers who have huge readerships and require a higher-touch approach to move past their "celebrity" defenses.
    • We will ID those in the universe we build who are "A-listers".  They will be:
      • Handled individually by our in-house A-list bloggers who have relationships with this community
      • And not included in the universe to receive the initial "Hi, let me introduce myself" messaging
• "Gift" definition for the outreach -- what are you giving in order to launch the relationship?
  • Some service offer that solves a problem for the blogger's readership
  • Offer of access to your CEO or another top brass for interviews (email, phone, videocall, etc.)
  • Access to some exclusive offer or information
  • etc. - we can craft these together
• Definition of the "Call to Action"
  • This will depend on what access you want to offer, but probably includes:
    • Announce this service that will help the blogger's readership
    • Get interviews (voice, video, email) and/or do podcasts with top execs of your firm
    • Distribute an exclusive offer or information
    • Support a cause
    • Take political action
    • etc.
• This Call to Action should be compelling to both the Influencer and their readership while clearly and directly supporting your interests
• Outgoing outreach message creation
  • Appropriate and auto-personalized messages will be created for each universe, dependent on the interests and focus of the each blogger sub-group and the type of "gift" that is being presented.
  • This messaging must not only be topically appropriate for the universe but stylistically, and culturally -- we'll work with you, and if necessary, people with sub-culture expertise, to get this messaging appropriate and properly respectful of sensitivities
• Initiation of outreaches
  • This consists of:
    • Finalization of messaging
    • Merging with universe data
    • Sending
    • Individual follow-up to responses and cultivation of relationship aiming at Influencers' embracing the offer the "Gift" and the "Call to Action".
      • This is personal, one-to-one communication with those who respond to the outreach and is real, personal relationship building with the requisite unfeigned human interaction.
      • This will be a connection and a relationship that will be ongoing into the future and hopefully will be able to be leveraged repeatedly as new news-worthy events arise and are utilized for new outreaches

There is a misconception among many old-media PR shops that online PR is pretty much like the old-school stuff, just in a different place.  This this leads to a lot of the clumsy,  ineffectual, and often offending attempts at online PR that we see around the internet – unfortunately, almost every day .  New media online PR is a very different world, a very different culture from old-media, and an entirely different approach.  It's not easy, and it is continually evolving terrain, but it is very effective when done correctly and with enough commitment.

Results by True Online Experts

We're completely confident in our ability to produce results with clients who commit the necessary resources and focus to online efforts – we know our way around this space like few others.  We also know that there is far more to being a surgeon than reading how an operation is done.  That is why we are willing to give away the shop in this outline of our services, and willing to provide even more detail to anyone who asks for it – indeed, we publish all this openly on our website.

Securing you Trust, Endorsements, Top Search Results Ranking, and Ubiquitous Presence of Message 

We can get your brand out in front of the world, right in front of the eyes of exactly the people you want to reach.  We can drive your search engine and general online visibility so that your brand is ubiquitous in the places where your potential clients live online and at the tops of search results – not only having your brand promoted on your own sites, but getting them endorsed and promoted on the sites and under the names of the influencers in the online worlds where your customers are waiting for you to meet them.

Finding the People you Need and Mobilizing them to Support your Aims

Be it connecting to decision-makers or activating mass support, we can help you identify, connect with, and mobilize the people you need to be supporting you on the issues that affect you.  We can reach out directly to the people you need to be in contact with or connect with entire demographics in the places they live online.

Helping you Manage your Reputation Online, and Protecting you Online in Times of Crisis

With the internet, with its forced transparency and free, instant flow of  information, communication and reputation crises can crop up overnight – and with the search engines, even a very old blemish can taint your or your organization's image years later and on into the future.  We can help you manage crises, steering communications effectively in the free, open, uncontrollable online medium and we can help you regain and maintain control of your reputation and image in the search engine results.

We're happy to help you manage crises, activate your target markets and constituencies, and connect to the online influencers who are speaking to the communities you'd like to reach.  

We're looking forward to working with you!

Tracking and monitoring the online reputation of your brand, company, product, and services on your behalf, as a way of keeping track of conversation real-time.  Unless reporting is explicitly agreed to, this "open source intelligence" will be monitored for content, friendliness, and threat. Any and all threats are triaged and reported to the the appropriate client point of contact.

Gerris retains a suite of tools, algorithms, and strategies that allow us to provide you and your client with bona fide measurements, including reach, tone, and sentiment.  This suite of tools allow us to create illustrative proof, over time, of the efficacy of the campaign from the launch and over time.  This level of metrics allows us to compete with PPC and SEM and other metric-based advertising strategies.

Intelligence plus metric plus time equals reports. Client and campaign reporting is something that needs to be defined and agreed to in advance of the camapaign because reports are not built into the capaign but are a la carte and you get to define the specificity and granularity of the reporting.  Generally, reports are done bi-weekly or monthly, usually intersperced with weekly updates and "as needed" alerts.

Twitter is not a broadcast medium, it is a community-prospecting platform.  In order for the entire community to take shape and take bloom, one needs to not simply register an account, one needs to design, populate, and then prospect followers before there can be any real growth. 

Twitter community-building

This community-building leverages both our collected contacts and current community relationships as well as several tools that we use to help promote and grow online reputation and growth of your Twitter online reputation.  In other words, like everything online, if you build it they won't come.  Building it is a start, if course, but unless you're Oprah or Ashton Kutcher, there is a lot of work and a lot of building, promotion, and prospecting required, and that is what Gerris can do for you.

Twitter posts

Twitter has become an essential part of online branding. Companies, celebrities, brands, and even fictional entities have been leveraging the ease-of-use and the simplicity of Twitter to both communication with current and potential customers as well as being able to engage and respond to user question, user requests, and user responses.  However, it isn't as simple as posting status updates to Twitter regularly.  In our process, we work with the client to come up with 25-100 pre-approved "tweets" that the client can approve, veto, or edit.  Over time, Gerris is able to message on behalf of you, the client, with messages that are consistent with client vision. After that, the messages are delivered to the Twitter stream with an approved-to frequency, from once-per-day to a couple posts to multiple-posts-per-day, with the frequency according to the scope of the contract.  During this process, it is also important -- essential -- to trust the Twitter team to be able to triage all replies and direct messages on behalf of the client -- or, there needs to be a rapid process to triage replies and direct messages through the client.  As the campaign moves forward, the evolution of the campaign can change to offer more and more independence to the Twitterer.

Twitter Retweets

The secret sauce of Twitter is retweeting (retweet (RT) a) to copy a tweet and then send it again on twitter. b) passing along of messages in Twitter) Retweeting is the epitome of what makes Twitter such a powerful tool. 

Retweeting allows Twitterers to repeat content from one Twitter stream they're following onto all of their own followers.  Writing compelling tweets is what organically can result in retweets down the Twitter stream; however, it is also important to use Retweets as a form of reciprocal currency. Retweeting someone else's tweet can engender attention or connection and build social equity within the "Twitterverse." 

In addition to intentionally retweeting on a client's behalf, one of the benefits of running your Twitter campaign through Gerris is that you are able to instantaneously have all of your client tweets retweeted through not only our staff's Twitter accounts but through all the status-update social network sites our staff is a member of. 

This allows our clients an automatically enter the conversation well-in-advance of their earned reputation online.

Twitter message modeling

In our process, we work with the client to come up with 25-100 pre-approved "tweets" that the client can approve, veto, or edit.  Over time, Gerris is able to message on behalf of you, the client, with messages that are consistent with client vision. After that, the messages are delivered to the Twitter stream with an approved-to frequency, from once-per-day to a couple posts to multiple-posts-per-day, with the frequency according to the scope of the contract.

While it is simple to join YouTube, there are quite a few important steps one must take before launching. First of all, there is a lot of customization that one can do to make sure a client's YouTube channel blends well with the client brand identity, mirroring the parent brand. 

In addition, structuring the channel, making sure the channel name is appropriate, and also make sure that if there needs to be content that plays for more than 5-minutes there are ways of extending that to hours. There are ways to make revenue as well, through Google AdSense. 

Since Gerris staff has been using YouTube since it was launched in 2005, we understand that unlike television channels, YouTube is not simply a broadcast medium but it a community platform.  Like Twitter and other online communities like MySpace and Facebook, YouTube allows a very deep level of participation, which is what many companies, looking for the next viral hit or just a YouTube land-grab tend to forget.

It is important to not simply create the YouTube channel and make it pretty, it is important to also upload all of the videos required as well, knowing what the most appropriate file type, file size, and file quality it appropriate for each particular application or requirement.  It is also important to consider how the client is willing to share the content and with whom.

Sometimes the community maintenance required for YouTube channel creation is too much for a particular client requirement or campaign and what is needed, instead, is a complete and comprehensive video upload to all of the current video sharing sites. 

This video distribution service offers a quick and comprehensive upload to over 30 video upload and social network sites, including the usual suspects but also including many other less-popular and less well-known social networks; however, in order to best cover all possible opportunities for brand video sharing, it is always a good idea to make sure the client brand experience and client video assets always exist exactly where and when people are looking for them. 

In addition, the primary way people look for video content in today's market is primarily through word-of-mouth and sharing; however, a more predictable and common way of discovering content online -- and the only way of discovering the content if the word of mouth does not include sharing links -- which is search.

Doing a comprehensive video upload and distribution is a way of stacking the deck towards the discovery of the content organically by flooding the search engine indices with client content -- which can result in the ownership of the content. 

Video distribution is an important strategy towards controlling and promoting brand perception online.  The secret sauce of the social web.

In the past, there were many methods for promoting on Facebook; however, Facebook is clamping down on Terms of Service (TOS) violations.  As a result of -- and in response to -- people creating profiles that do not reflect authentic peoeple but brands, products, services, or fictional entities, Facebook has replaced business profiles and business groups with Facebook Pages.  Pages are entitities not unlike profiles, and are becoming more and more like profiles. Like profiles, Pages have walls, updates, videos, events, and all the rest. Additionally, they interact with peoples' statuses in much the same way that Facebook Profiles do. 

When creating a Facebook Page or Group or Cause, it is important to remember that these Facebook Apps are community-oriented and need to be fed and watered.  The tools support community, conversation, and collaboration and many people develop these Facebook Pages as if they were a published brochure instead of a dynamic, developing, conversational community. 

These communities are needy, more like a blog or like Twitter than anything like a page. A MySpace profile can be deceloped more like a proper web page, but Pages offer the opportunity to share Events, Conversation, Links, Discussion, Photos, Videos, etc. While they don't have to be completely open and interactive, they do need to be responsive and there needs to be a certain level of maintenance and content creation committed to the Facebook Page.

There is a lot to know about the Pages, however, and there are many 3rd party tools and services that can be used to expand brand, including doing Facebook Ads and the like, to help promote the brand. 

In order to best promote "fan" membership of a Facebook Page, one needs to be creative as to the reason why being a fan is worthwhile.  Some easy "gifts" can include exclusive content, Facebook-only offers, "live" interviews, access to celebrities or notables, etc.  When an online brand reputation

One of the things that makes Facebook Pages better than either Facebook Profiles or Facebook Groups is that the content is not hidden behind the Facebook Authentication Membership Wall. More like MySpace profiles and groups, which are completely visible and partially accessible when not yet a registered member of the site, Facebook Pages are one of the few "rooms" in the mostly "gated community" of Facebook proper. 

Facebook Pages can be indexed by search engines like a normal web page and found using simple keywords through Google, Live.com, Ask.com, and Yahoo!

One of the beautiful things about Facebook Pages is that Google loves Facebook more than just about any other web site (Google loves Twitter more) so brands that have a Facebook Page are often surprised by how quickly the Page turns up on the first page of search.

There are other ways of promoting brand on Facebook, which can include cross promotions with other Social Networks (have all of the networks aimed at the Page), organic SEO strategies, Facebook Ads, as well as incorporating a strong blogger outreach campaign aimed at brand promotion.

However, that said, it is hard to start a Facebook Page and we generally recommend starting with a Facebook Group.  It is much easier to prospect new memberships, invite new members, and get everything started from zero, so we often start with a Group, build that up to over 1,000 members, and then have the Group converted into becoming a Facebook Page, which is what we have the connections to do.  We call it the one-two sling-shot punch!

The advantage of a Facebook Page is that you can use it as a proxy web page for marketing and a proxy online community in support of your brand instead of developing or hosting your own; however, aside from being a "fan" of your company, brand, product, or service, there is little incentive, or "gift," associated with ever returning to your Facebook Page unless you spend some time and resources developing unique content for the Page -- Facebook Pages support photos, events, videos, message boards, a wall, etc --  as well as for responding to questions, queries, comments, and the like. 

One of the strong advantages of smartly-but-aggressively developing messages, updates, photos, videos, and exclusive content is that the New Facebook Pages have evolved into me a lot more like the Original Facebook Profile, which includes status updates that scroll down each fan's status update stream in exactly the same way their friends and family's statuses update. 

This is a very powerful method for brand messaging and distrobution.  One of the past lacks of Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages is that it was too easy to join and forget, becoming a Group member or a Page fan and then never seeing hide nor hair of it until there was an explicit admin message to all members -- a member update. 

Even so, with Facebook Groups in the past, one was penalized by success because when a Facebook Group grow above 1,000-1,200 members, the ability to send a message to all members was revoked.

With the new Facebook Pages, it is easy to keep "fans" engaged and updates, through the regular status update stream that all users; unfortunately, as I mentioned above in the section about Facebook Groups, it is easier to proespect and collect new members on a Facebook Group and a Facebook Cause because it is very possible to easily invite personal Facebook "friends" to Groups and Causes.  When creating a brand profile on Facebook, it behooves one to develop all three: Facebook Page, Facebook Group, and Facebook Cause.

Gerris offers its clients comprehensive Online Conversation Marketing campaigns. What exactly does this mean? We integrate Digital PR, Online Grassroots & New Media Marketing, Business Intelligence, Search Engine Services and Online Reputation Clean-up and Defense to ensure that our client’s message -- the right message -- is being portrayed in every corner of the digital space.

Leveraging our strong relationships with top bloggers, our Digital PR efforts persuade the most influential members of the online community that your brand/company/service is worthy of recommending.

We identify your target audience (wherever they may be on the web) using our Online Grassroots and New Media Marketing, and develop tailored outreach activities that honor each community's "local customs."

Therein lies the Gerris difference: We adapt to differing community's values and communication patterns because we respect the medium, which in turn will translate into respect for your company and brand.

Our Business Intelligence and Online Reputation Systems constantly track the web's movements so you don't have to in the areas of profiling, intelligence, forensics and crisis management.

Gerris understands that the Internet is not just a different advertising medium, it is a different culture with unique customs and protocol. Knowing this culture allows us to translate your unique company message to relevant online communities.

This approach drives business your way—our primary and sincere goal.

There is a misconception among many old-media PR shops that online PR is pretty much like the old-school stuff, just in a different place.  This could not be further from the truth.  New media online PR is a completely different world, a totally different culture, and an entirely different approach.  It’s not easy, or anything for amateurs, but it is very effective when done correctly and with enough commitment.

Results by True Online Experts

We at Gerris are completely confident in our ability to produce results with clients who are willing to commit the resources and focus to online efforts — we know our way around this space like few others.  We also know that there is far more to being a surgeon than reading how an operation is done, far more to being an engineer than having the blueprints in your hands, far more to being a chef than being able to read a cookbook.

Securing you Trust, Endorsements, Top Search Results Ranking, and Ubiquitous Presence of Message

The staff of Gerris can get your brands out in front of the world, right in front of the eyes of exactly the people you want to reach.  We can make stars of your key staff members and position them as trusted experts before the world.

We can drive your search engine and general online visibility so that your brands are ubiquitous in the places where your potential clients live online and at the tops of search results — not only having your brands promoted on your own sites, but getting them endorsed and promoted on the sites and under the names of the influencers where your customers are waiting for you to meet them.

We’re happy to take you there.  Your future customers are waiting out there online for you.  We will help you find them, make sure they trust you, and establish you as the people they want to come to.  We’re looking forward to working with you!

In Gerris' outreach campaigns to bloggers and press, we regularly get 50 to 200 articles published for a client per 6-8 week outreach cycle – this is generally an order of magnitude more articles than most PR shops get their clients.

Through our many campaigns for clients over the years, we maintain a correspondence with upwards of 30,000 bloggers and journalists and can establish friendly personal contact with brand new demographics of bloggers and journalists within a few weeks through our polished, professional, and personable outreach methods.

The coverage we get is earned, not paid media — honest, enthusiastic, real coverage from influencers into their communities, not only reaching and influencing their immediate readership, but dominating the search results with the large numbers of articles, and driving your sites’ SEO through all the organic, honest link-backs.

Unlike paid ads, these articles stay up online forever, appearing in searches, improving your sites’ SEO, and driving traffic ad infinitum.

Podcasting is very much like blogging, but in audio format.  While it is not as SEO-friendly as text-based blogging, it has a stronger “star-quality” effect, as the listeners develop a stronger human connection to the podcaster. The lower SEO-friendliness can be counteracted by posting transcripts of the podcast along with the podcast itself.

It can be done very simply, but generally it is good to have quality raw audio, a polished intro and outro, and good tone balancing so that the podcast sounds somewhat professional and is auditorily a pleasure to listen to.

Gerris can guide your staff in setting up the recording mechanisms, get your intro/outro composed, and have the raw audio balanced and cut into a finished podcast.

It is also good to have clear, interesting concepts to speak about and an effective style of delivery.  It’s easy to be boring or irritating.

While the ghostwriting approach outlined above can be followed, much more responsibility lies on the key staff member who is recording, since it is a very “live” experience — you cannot read a pre-written article and come across as a compelling Podcaster.

The staff of Gerris can get the transcripts written and assist in the posting of the podcasts and the maintenance of the podcast blog website.

Vlogging follows the same rules as podcasting in regards to production and quality, but the pressure on the “star” is that much more intense.

Gerris’ staff can guide your staff in getting the recording and production infrastructure set up.

An advantage of vlogging is that it has the even higher “star” effect upon the key staff member doing the vlogging, and the videos can be posted on all the video-sharing sites (dozens) to get more coverage and dominate search results.

We at Gerris can handle the video asset distribution for you, or train your team in the method.

Guest blogging is very warmly welcomed since it gives bloggers good content that they don’t have to write themselves, and it makes them look good because they are being honored as a valued platform.

Being a guest blogger gives you coverage on another site, increasing the number of locations you are appearing while giving you total control over your message and while driving your SEO by adding link-backs. Additionally, you get the implicit (or explicit) endorsement of the blogger in front of his readership.

It is important to writing interesting, engaging content as a guest blogger and avoid presenting something that sounds like a callow pitch.

Gerris has deep relationships with a broad spectrum of highly-influencial and popular blogs, online communities, podcasts, and video blogs, so we can connect you with the best blog or series of blogs required for your key staff to start communicating and sharing online.

By generously contributing to the community via bloggers in your spaces, you can get broad coverage and enjoy the implicit (or explicit) endorsement of these influencers.  We would help you get these content contribution requests by executing a Blogger Outreach. This is done by:

• Giving of yourself in the form of interviews, etc.
• Interviews are excellent relationship-builders that give you direct, personal access to the bloggers and builds up a connection for the future.  Interviews can be given via:
  • Email
  • Chat
  • Phone
  • Podcast (voice)
  • Vlog (video -- either onsite or via video VOIP)

This list is by order of "live-ness" of the interview with email being very asynchronous, allowing time to reflect and gather info and Vlog interviews being very live.

Internally, we call our blogger outreach "long-tail" because these brand promotion campaigns aim at all the passion players of the blogosphere, not just the top few some consider the most important.

Think about it this way (an acting analogy): Every actor from the A-list through the D-list are working actors. They certainly don't act for free. To these actors, acting is a job, a business.  However, there are also thousands of actors who populate community theaters worldwide.  They act because they love it, they're passionate about the craft, and they don't care if they're paid or not, they have other things going on -- work, family, kids, hobbies, friends, etc.

The same thing is true with most bloggers on the Internet.  Everyone is so focused on getting the attention of maybe 1,000 celebrity bloggers, they're missing everyone else.

In many ways, our online long-tail blogger outreach is almost identical to traditional PR, just using different channels, different protocols, and different rules of engagement tailored best to bloggers and other online influencers.  Before we reach out to bloggers, we spend a lot of time and attention developing a compelling narrative and a perfectly-targeted and appropriate "gift," be it a literal gift such as a two-dollar off coupon the blogger can offer her readers, a review copy of a book, karmic dispensation (an opportunity to help others), a funny video or widget (a dancing bear, anyone?), or just the opportunity to be recognized as an influencer and being engaged with on a high level of attention and appreciation. 

Part of this requires that we make things very simple.  If we can't convince a blogger to "take our call" and then post, all within 5 or 10 minutes, it's probably not going to happen.  The way we do this is keep the pitch email very brief, one or two paragraphs at the very most.  We have tried many different styles and this is where we are: short, terse, minimal, highly textual, with a clear message and a clear request, no verbiage that sounds like it is selling or marketing. All assets, graphics, movies, or videos are collected into a "microsite" or "social media news release (SMNR)." Finally, we never include conversion GIFs, hyperlinks, hot emails, images, or attachments in our message.

Then, we offload all of the "press release" and "news release" information into the aforementioned Social Media News Release (SMNR), something we also call a client microsite. Rather than send the blogger the press release as an attachment or inline in the email or directly to a website where there could easily be information overload, the SMNR breaks down the goal and message the client wants repeated and simply gives the blogger the ability to copy and paste any or all of the info directly to her blog -- all of the content, including embeddable video, banners, and widgets (with their embed code), photos, graphics, links, copy, and whatnot.  Our SMNRs are boiled-down into one easy-to-navigate page with various sections of info -- a Who, What, When, Where, Why of text, images, logos, videos, widgets, banners, etc.

Depending on how compelling the issue is to the blogosphere, we get from dozens to as many as 200 postings in a 4-8 week outreach cycle, reaching millions of readers from an outreach.

Mind you, bloggers are busy, bloggers have other stuff going on, bloggers are very independent-minded people by their very nature.  It is impossible to tell them what to do from on high, so it is important to not only make each outreach as pleasant and as easy to understand and navigate as possible, is also essential to be human, be responsive, and make sure the blogger knows, without a doubt, that there is a person behind the pitch.

After the email pitch goes out to all the bloggers, all replies, questions, query, and frustrations must be dealt with immediately and personally by a human being -- just say no to autoresponders and noreply email addresses.  Offering bloggers a rapid and personal response is the most important and most time consuming portion of the blogger outreach -- a real person responding to every email response whether it is positive or negative can be the difference between a success or failure.  Our mantra is "respond quickly and with love." 

If positive, great! We respond thankfully and ask them to please send a link to their post or tweet when it goes live;  if negative, we respond accordingly and are often able to sway a negative response into a positive post by simply engaging him or her thoughtfully, quickly, and with compassion.

Follow ups are key as well. By not following up on bloggers who say they will get back to you, will post later, or will look into it, you are letting posts slip through the cracks. By gently following up with these folks, we are able to remind them of our last conversation, continue to be on their mind, and hopefully are able to get them to post for us.

In our outreach campaigns to bloggers and press, we regularly get 50 to 250 posts for a client per 4-8 week outreach cycle – this is generally an order of magnitude more articles than most PR shops get their clients, and we achieve it because we don't assume some bloggers are more worthy of our attention than others and because we strive to approach all bloggers with respect and gratitude.

Gerris: True experts in online PR, not just old-media PR doing an add-on

There is a misconception among many old-media PR shops that online PR is pretty much like the old-school stuff, just in a different place. This could not be further from the truth. New media online PR is a very different world, a totally different culture, and an entirely different approach. It's not easy, and there are lots of potential pitfalls, but it is extremely effective when done correctly and with enough commitment.

Results by True Online Experts

We're completely confident in our ability to produce results with clients who are willing to commit the resources and focus to online efforts – we know our way around this space like few others. We also know that there is far more to being a surgeon than reading how an operation is done, far more to being an engineer than having the blueprints in your hands, far more to being a chef than being able to read a cookbook. That is why we are willing to give away the shop in this proposal, and willing to provide even more detail to anyone who asks for it – indeed, we publish all this openly on our website.

Securing you Trust, Endorsements, Top Search Results Ranking, and Ubiquitous Presence of Message

We can get your brand out in front of the world, right in front of the eyes of exactly the people you want to reach. We can drive your search engine and general online visibility so that your brand is ubiquitous in the places where your potential clients live online and at the tops of search results – not only having your brand promoted on your own sites, but getting them endorsed and promoted on the sites and under the names of the influencers in the online worlds where your customers are waiting for you to meet them.

We're happy to help you connect to the online influencers who are speaking to the communities you'd like to reach, and whose posts will further bolster SEO and the presence of your brand in the search results.

With all the busyness and business here at Gerris, I have not stopped, breathed, and shared something that I find to be really cool: we’re doing digital PR and blogger outreach in several languages on behalf of our clients. 

Currently, we’re doing a blogger outreach and social media campaign in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In July, we’ll be adding Russian into the mix; in August, we’ll be adding Polish.  Last year, we did a crisis management and online reputation defense campaign for a financial services client in German and French as well, in addition to English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

We really enjoy doing these these multinational, multilingual, and multicultural campaigns because we have staff all over the world, in seven countries on four continents.  

While there most surely are quite a few cultural differences (call or email us for many funny examples), the Internet community has an over-arching global protocol, which I argue is simply “being human”: one needs to listen, be responsive,  engage on a human level, and always assume good intent — especially when it comes to earned media blogger campaigns.  This works worldwide.

Logistically, the most important hire for our foreign language campaigns is the native-speaker project lead in each language, especially in the languages that you and your polyglot CEO can’t read.  Just because you can read, write, and/or speak fluent [insert language here] it doesn't mean you think like [insert nationality here].  The cultural knowledge, and the “nativeness” of the (written) voice are very import to getting the communications across most effectively.

It is essential to work directly with a native-speaker who is well in touch with his/her native culture. When doing communications work internationally, how you say something is as important as what you say.

Also, technologically, it is essential to make certain you have your email solution set up to support 8-bit character sets and that you have tested and re-tested because having Cyrillic or Kanji arrive corrupted or poorly-rendered is unacceptable.

Test, retest, consult an expert.  When it comes to reducing accented and special-character Roman characters to ASCII, Internet denizens are sort of used to it, be it turning the German “ß” (ess-zett) to “ss” or realizing that much of the world doesn’t use our quotes but often uses <<>> or ‘  ’.

Additionally, numbers are rendered differently in different languages, such as “€10,00? instead of “€10.00? and the like.  These are the gaffs that make you seem like you don’t know what you’re doing – and as if you are not taking the time to respect the reader.

At the end of the day, don’t let these details prevent you from giving it a go. The big secret is that there is a vibrant blogosphere, Twittersphere, and forumsphere everywhere now, no matter what anyone says or thinks they know.

Since I spent a year in Berlin, I know that I have heard this a hundred times, “what you’re doing in the US with bloggers is very cool, but in Germany there are very few bloggers and they’re all friends and they’re very cliquey and it would never work here,” which is, strangely enough, what everyone I have spoken to says about their country’s bloggers, including the United Kingdom, which is patently untrue.  Every new country we begin interacting with we discover has a whole world of bloggers, etc. outside these supposed monolithic A-list cliques.  It’s just that no one seems to be making the effort to check if the consensus reality is the truth, or is actually the Emperor’s new clothes.

We’re having a lot of fun on these campaigns and expect to begin new campaigns in German and French as well in the short-term as well.

Since our inception, we have been focused on blogger relations and blogger outreach. Social media is our bread and butter, not just something we tacked on.  Over the last several years, we have prospected over 100,000 bloggers across a wide-variety of topics (see below) and over a growing number of languages, including Spanish-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, and Russian-speaking blogs wordwide. 

Please scroll down and explore some of the blogger-types we have collected and engage on a daily-basis.  Of course, when a client needs something new -- such as our upcoming engagement with Russian and Polish bloggers -- we're very efficient and experienced in researching, locating, and harvesting the most appropriate bloggers.

• A-list Bloggers
• Academic Bloggers
• Activist Bloggers
• Africa Bloggers
• African-American Bloggers
• Alumni Bloggers
• Animal Bloggers
• Anti-Facebook Bloggers
• Asia English Speaking Bloggers
• Baseball Bloggers
• Big Brothers/Sisters Bloggers
• Cancer Survivor's Bloggers
• College Students Bloggers
• Colorado Bloggers
• Combined Top & Marketing Bloggers
• Contest Aggregation Bloggers
• Corporate Social Responsibility Bloggers
• Craigslist/Online Auction Bloggers
• Daddy Bloggers
• Deaf Community Bloggers
• Democrats Bloggers
• eBay User Bloggers
• Education Bloggers
• Environmental Bloggers
• Ex-Patriate Bloggers
• ExPatriate Health Insurance Bloggers
• Food Bloggers
• Foster Family / Adoption Bloggers
• General Political Bloggers
• Grandparents Bloggers
• Green Bloggers
• Health Bloggers
• Hearing Impaired
• Illinois Bloggers
• India (english speaking) Bloggers
• Investment Bloggers
• Job Seeker Bloggers
• Lawyer Blogs / Blawgs and Blawgers
• Liberal Bloggers 
• Marketing Bloggers
• Military Bloggers
• Moderate Bloggers
• Mommy Bloggers
• New Education Bloggers
• New Mexico Bloggers
• Newest Marketing Bloggers
• NY Area Bloggers
• Ohio Bloggers
• Online Dating Bloggers
• Pennsylvania Bloggers
• Photography Bloggers
• Portuguese Speaking College Bloggers
• Portuguese Speaking Daddy Bloggers
• Portuguese Speaking Job Seekers Bloggers
• Portuguese Speaking Mommy Bloggers
• Portuguese Speaking Real Estate Bloggers
• Portuguese Speaking Saving Money Bloggers
• Portuguese Speaking Tech Bloggers
• Real Estate Bloggers
• Real Estate Brokers /NYC Bloggers - TriState Area
• Rebate and Coupon Sites Bloggers
• Recent College Grads Bloggers
• Reconnectors Bloggers
• Running/Jogging/Marathon Bloggers
• Russian Mommy Bloggers
• Russian Tech Bloggers
• Saving Money Bloggers
• Social Networks Bloggers
• Spanish Language Job Seeker Bloggers
• Spanish Language Saving Money Bloggers
• Spanish Language Speaking College Bloggers
• Spanish Language Speaking Mommy Bloggers
• Spanish Language Speaking Real Estate Bloggers
• Spanish Language Speaking Tech Bloggers
• Spirituality Bloggers
• Sustainers Bloggers
• Tech Bloggers
• Teen Lifestyle Influencers/Teen Bloggers
• Top Blog Bloggers
• Top Environmental Bloggers
• Top Liberal Bloggers
• USA: North-East State Bloggers
• Video Sharing Sites Bloggers
• Washington DC Bloggers
• Women's Lifestyle Bloggers
• Women's Self Help Bloggers
• World Food Day Bloggers
• Yoga/Soccer/Martial Arts & Sports Nutrition Bloggers
• Young Volunteer Bloggers

Gerris offers its clients comprehensive Online Conversation Marketing campaigns. What exactly does this mean? We integrate Digital PR, Online Grassroots & New Media Marketing, Business Intelligence, Search Engine Services and Online Reputation Clean-up and Defense to ensure that our client’s message -- the right message -- is being portrayed in every corner of the digital space. Leveraging our strong relationships with top bloggers, our Digital PR efforts persuade the most influential members of the online community that your brand/company/service is worthy of recommending.
We identify your target audience (wherever they may be on the web) using our Online Grassroots and New Media Marketing, and develop tailored outreach activities that honor each community's "local customs." Therein lies the Gerris difference: We adapt to differing community's values and communication patterns because we respect the medium, which in turn will translate into respect for your company and brand. Our Business Intelligence and Online Reputation Systems constantly track the web's movements so you don't have to in the areas of profiling, intelligence, forensics and crisis management.
Gerris understands that the Internet is not just a different advertising medium, it is a different culture with unique customs and protocol. Knowing this culture allows us to translate your unique company message to relevant online communities. This approach drives business your way—our primary and sincere goal.

At Gerris, online social media PR is what we do all day, every day, and have been doing for years. We're not an old-media PR shop trying to quickly jump on the new-school bandwagon, hoping we can figure it out (and making all the mistakes on your dime). We are a well-practiced team of 55 professionals who work exclusively in the social media world. We're very pleased to put our skills and experience at your service to deliver the extraordinary impact social media operations can have when practiced by true experts.

Results by True Online Experts

We're completely confident in our ability to produce results with clients who wish to leverage online social media – we know our way around this space like few others. We also know that there is far more to being a surgeon than reading how an operation is done, far more to being an engineer than having the blueprints in your hands, far more to being a chef than being able to read a cookbook. That is why we are willing to give away the shop in this proposal, and willing to provide even more detail to anyone who asks for it – indeed, we publish all this openly on our website: www.gerr.is

Securing you Trust, Endorsements, Top Search Results Ranking, and Ubiquitous Presence of Message

We can get your brand out in front of the world, right in front of the eyes of exactly the people you want to reach. We drive your search engine and general online visibility so that your brand is ubiquitous in the places where your potential clients live online and at the tops of search results – not only having your brand promoted on your own sites, but getting them endorsed and promoted on the sites and under the names of the influencers in the online worlds where your customers are waiting for you to meet them.

We're happy to help you connect powerfully with your natural clientèle online and to the online influencers who are speaking to the communities you'd like to reach, and whose voices will influence those you want to reach and further bolster SEO and the presence of your brand in the search results.