Markets are conversations. Conversations are two-way. Since you are what you do and say online and since you will be judge on your reputation and follow-through, it is important.

Being open and authentic is step one of who you are, step two is being available to respond to questions, comments, and criticism.

No matter how sweet, open, earnest, and bespoke your message, if you fire-and-forget while messaging online and don’t follow-up and actually engage in the conversation and follow-up, then you might have an online reputation, but it won’t be good.

Becoming an opinion leader online requires becoming part of a community – being invested and engaged.

whenever you engage the Internet on behalf if a company or organization, you are acting as a brand ambassador. If someone is curious as to who you are and why you’re so passionate about an event, product, or service, the understanding is that they will pretty easily be able to find out that you’re a marketing professional.

For some, that is enough. Legally-speaking, it is enough. In terms of building a long-term relationship with your current, future, or present customers, hiding your identity as a professional marketer in the folds of your online profile may be considered deceitful.

You may be attracted to covert online marketing: special ops, black ops, spycraft – “fifth column marketing,” if you will. Don’t be.

The blowback that can result from using a false name, a false email (a Yahoo, Google, or Hotmail address created for the campaign and the false name), and a false bio, isn’t worth it.

There is a term for shooting for the short term by being opaque in your intent, no matter how effective it may be: astroturfing, which “describes formal public relations campaigns which seek to create the impression of being a spontaneous, grassroots behavior.”

Accusations of astroturfing can compromise the integrity of the organization you are representing, and further put your ability to communicate future messages in danger.

Over the short term, pretending to be just another denizen of an online community or a blog works if you can pull it off. It isn’t tough to sneak in and talk, talk, talk.

Even though your reputation online is more defined by your contributions to the conversations rather than who you are, the culture of the Internet doesn’t suffer being fooled, duped, or suckered.

If you are ever found out, you are screwed.

To paraphrase The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "You may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to the Internet."

Learning and researching fast, with connections and conversations with the people on the inside, that is the way to understand the part of the internet that is relevant to your work today. We get that knowledge to you - from the brilliant people who are growing the internet, to your brilliant people who will make it work for you.

Some people call it business intelligence. We call it the give and take of real relationships.

There is no way there can be a one-to-one conversation with everyone on the Internet. The ultimate goal of online marketing and online brand promotion is to accurately target your marketing message directly to the people who want and need what you have to sell, and the most efficient way to reach these consumers is to identify and influence the influencers – the men and women of every online community who are popularly understood to be the most credible and reliable members.

Obviously, there is no way there can be a one-to-one conversation with everyone on the Internet. The ultimate goal of online marketing and online brand promotion is to accurately target your marketing message directly to the people who want and need what you have to sell.

The most efficient way to reach these consumers is to identify and influence the influencers – the men and women of every online community who are popularly understood to be the most credible and reliable members.

To reach the influencers one must break the Internet down into communities and conversations, then breaking it down further into influencers and opinion leaders, and then delivering a marketing message that is appealing enough to pursuade these influencers to tell their friends, co-workers, and families.

Marketing to the entire Internet is impossible. This is why it is important to define your target audience and determine ways to find that audience while being open to the many and evolving ways of accessing online communities.

For example, do not limit your concept of the Internet to the “blogosphere” and to allow the community to include message boards, wikis, social networks, social bookmarking sites, email lists, podcasts, vlogs, forums, IRC, SMS, IM, MMORPGs, webcasts, skypecasts, groups, online video games, 3-D virtual worlds (such as Second Life).

Blogging about your company is an important way to engage in the conversation surrounding your brand. You should seriously consider produce a separate corporate blog that would focus on exposing the cast and crew behind who, what, when, and where to go regarding your company.

Corporate blogging is essential to the growth of online properties for a number of reasons, including gaining access to the blogosphere and its interested and passionate community of bloggers and blog readers.

Blogs offer useful built-in, tools such as RSS syndication, comments, outgoing links, blogrolls, trackbacks, richness of text and textual content, and the ability to build celebrity and personality online through a first-person relationship with the blogosphere.

The corporate blog offers the unique opportunity to share yourself as owners, staff, and crew. You can easily address the curious and the unconvinced.

Not only will the corporate blog allow you to publish shameless testimonials from real fans, it allows you to publish all positive or neutral mentions about the blog or your company website.

Corporate blogs are still a rarity and just producing one will garner favor with the blogging and marketing world. A corporate blog will aid in your brand reputation. Because Google gives priority to web sites and pages that are constantly updated, a corporate blog ensures that Google pays attention to your site.

Why should the online conversation change because of you? Why should online communities care about what you have to offer? Much the same way that before you attend a party, you should purchase a bottle of wine to present as a gift to the host, especially if you heard about the party from your friend and the host doesn’t know you. In that case, maybe a nice bottle of scotch might be more appropriate. All online communities are real families, real parties, and real communities. People know each other. If you’re going to be showing up uninvited, you had better be charming, friendly, cool – and bearing gifts.

An essential part of marketing conversation is being who you are. Moreover, best practices indicate that you should be open and honest about your identity. Resist the temptation to base your online identity what you want to be or some ideal form. Being accessible, approachable, and human is the best bet.

Honestly, folks are paying pretty close attention to your voice, tone, and message and so it is just safer to use your own voice and tone, uniquely tailored to your target community.

Whether you decide to wear your affiliations and intent on your sleeve or not, one thing is essential: authenticity. Outreach is more effective when you are being conversational, casual, and allowing your passion and excitement to flow.

The best system of content creation is to have the key staff members whose reputations are to be built writing the blog content themselves — that leads to the most honest, transparent, and bi-directionally informative information exchange. However, sometimes those key staff members simply don’t have the time, inclination, or writing talent to create that content.  In that case a content creation system and methodology must be put in place:

• Hiring or assigning professional bloggers or staffers with good writing abilities to produce the content under their names or
• Establishing a ghost-writing system where topics are suggested (by the writer or the key staffer), concept outline given by key staffer, posting written by the professional writer, posting edited and approved by key staffer, posting proofed by editor (optional), and article posted.

If this route is taken, there are workflow blog softwares that can be put in place and set up to manage this process.

We at Gerris can win you tremendous respect, gratitude, and powerful word-of-mouth promotion from the very word-of-mouth driven online communities. The staff of Gerris can be answering the questions people are asking and providing needed information to make you a valued, respected, and trusted members of the communities.

Our goal is to ensure that your brands are perceived as trusted member of society, contributing more than they are taking. Such good citizenship is rewarded in the online community by word-of-mouth endorsements, both at the influencer and at the grassroots level, both of which we will seed, encourage, and amplify.

The staff of Gerris can be present for you in the forums, social networking sites, (SNS’s), and comment-based conversations and use these contributions as “gifts” for both the influencers and for us to leverage in spreading the “good news” about your brand.

In addition, the staff of Gerris will set your key staff members up as influencers themselves with their own platforms via a blog, and potentially via podcasts and video blogging. The information they present can be made to be valuable, desired, and will make them trusted and honored go-to people.

Contact Chris Abraham for more information

We at Gerris can win you tremendous respect, gratitude, and powerful word-of-mouth promotion from the very word-of-mouth driven online communities. The staff of Gerris can be answering the questions people are asking and providing needed information to make you a valued, respected, and trusted members of the communities.

Our goal is to ensure that your brands are perceived as trusted member of society, contributing more than they are taking. Such good citizenship is rewarded in the online community by word-of-mouth endorsements, both at the influencer and at the grassroots level, both of which we will seed, encourage, and amplify.

The staff of Gerris can be present for you in the forums, social networking sites, (SNS’s), and comment-based conversations and use these contributions as “gifts” for both the influencers and for us to leverage in spreading the “good news” about your brand.

In addition, the staff of Gerris will set your key staff members up as influencers themselves with their own platforms via a blog, and potentially via podcasts and video blogging. The information they present can be made to be valuable, desired, and will make them trusted and honored go-to people.

Contact Chris Abraham for more information

If you Google the name of our very own Chris Abraham, you will see what it means to dominate the search engine results and own a position as an expert in a field.  We can do the same for your key staff.

Methods: blogs — yours & others: dominating the online space as an expert & generous contributor.

We will get your blog infrastructure and your content production policy established. This involves installation, set-up, and design of the blog software. To drive SEO it is important to get the relevant social bookmarking, ping server, etc. accounts and plug-ins set up and installed.

To further drive SEO, a powerful additional methodology is to mirror your blog content across multiple other blogs on highly-ranked blog hosting sites like blogspot, wordpress.com, etc., or under additional aggregation blogs you may set up under your own domain names.  This process will be automated at the outset and run without human effort thereafter.

Blog Content Creation Policy: We will help your team get the blogging policy right, following best practices in line with the informational guidelines of your company.   There is a clear culture of blogging and respecting and adhering to its norms and expectations will make the difference between you being welcomed as a respected contributor and being mocked as a soulless corporate shill (or an embarrassment and danger to your company).

It is essential to have a clear policy for your company’s bloggers, particularly in terms of outlining and reserving their freedoms as writers.  With a clear understanding by the blogger and by the company of what freedoms are allowed, you avoid cramping, overly-careful, stuffy-sounding, self-censoring while also avoiding cringe-inducing embarrassments of inappropriate disclosure and language.

Blog Content Creation System: The best system of content creation is to have the key staff members whose reputations are to be built writing the blog content themselves — that leads to the most honest, transparent, and bi-directionally informative information exchange. However, sometimes those key staff members simply don’t have the time, inclination, or writing talent to create that content.  In that case a content creation system and methodology must be put in place:

Hiring or assigning professional bloggers or staffers with good writing abilities to produce the content under their names or establishing a ghost-writing system where topics are suggested (by the writer or the key staffer), concept outline given by key staffer, posting written by the professional writer, posting edited and approved by key staffer, posting proofed by editor (optional), and article posted.

If this route is taken, there are workflow blog softwares that can be put in place and set up to manage this process.

Appearing on Others’ Blogs: By generously contributing to the community via bloggers in the travel, expatriate, health, sports, etc. 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.

Guest Blogging by the Key Staff: 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.

If the key staff member is not interested or capable of doing the guest blogging, then the ghostwriting approach outlined above can be followed

Podcasting and Vlogging (Video Blogging): 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.

We 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.

Contact Chris Abraham for more information

When I sell Gerris' blogger outreach and blogger PR services I tend to focus on the initial promotional and profile benefits associated with having hundreds of highly targeted organic earned media blog posts show up almost overnight on behalf of our clients.  If you would like to know what this sort of campaign looks like, check out our case studies.

That's not it, there's more. As I have mentioned before, unlike SEM, these blog posts, reviews, and mentions are permenant and not ephemeral.

Finally, there is the issue of the powerful and amazing SEO benefits associated with having over 100 bloggers choose to write about your brand, product, campaign, or service.

Unlike pay-for-play services like Review Me, PayPerPost, or IZEA, the blog posts written by the bloggers we reach out to are not pay per post, they are earned media.  When my team and I reach out to our A-Z list bloggers along dozens of verticals targets, it is up to each blogger to choose to accept our message and decide that what we're offering is worthwhile to post or Twitter.

There is real power associated with this sort of thing. Like any journalistic or consumer-generated promotional pitching, results are not guaranteed; however, we have done this for over two yearsd and our penetration, success, and results have improved over time.

I am always to allow these things to be as transparent as possible.  What's more, linking back to all of the fine blog posts that bloggers have shoehorned into their busy days is sort of a link love thank you.

And, to be honest, Google thinks were the bees knees because the content that our messaging drives real content. In all cases, we're at the mercy of the blogger -- if we're not smart, generous, engaging, charming, positive, responsive, and even supportive, we'll get tarred and feathered, and so will out client.

We're better than that.

With each blogger outreach that results in a hundred or more organic earned media, highly-textual, brand-centric, keyword-dense and diverse, and often times almost completely based on the Social Media News Releases (SMNRs) we create for the client, the level of powerful Google and Bing love is not only formidable, but, over time, and much sooner than you think, both our social media new releases as well as our blogged content can challenge our clients for top-spot, which is OK because we're not their competitor.

I have almost 15-years of SEO experience and have always done things the right way, and Social Media and Blogger PR is the right way. None of us coerce any of our bloggers into blogging, we're just able to figure out how to appeal, how to give, how to engage, how to message, and how to ask for what we want from our long tail list of upwards of 500 A-list blogger and 30,000 B-Z list bloggers.

Anyway, if you're interested in learning more or getting on a call with Chris Abraham, pop him an email and we'll sort it out.

Gerris is proud of the work we have done for our clients since our incorporation in March, 2007.  Please check out the testimonials we have collected so far from our happy clients.  If you would like to speak to any of these folks, please pop us an email and we would love to organize a call with us as well as a references call with our clients.

Stever Robbins, author Get-it-Done Guy's 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More

Abraham+Harrison exceeded my wildest expectations. As a first-time author, I was concerned about my ability to build a strong campaign. We ended up getting over a hundred blog book reviews and more than 200 tweets—and we still have dozens of responses to follow up on, even after the campaign ended. They've also left me with collateral I can use into the future to promote me and my book. I would use Abraham+Harrison again in a heartbeat. They know their stuff, they are extremely low maintenance to work with, and they did a fantastic job.

Josh Grotstein, CEO, Motionbox, Inc

Chris Abraham’s unique approach to PR is refreshing. It was exactly what we needed to take our market exposure to the next level. Working within a prescribed budget, they were able to deliver results that both exceeded our expectations and inspired new opportunities for PR. I have no doubt that we will come to Chris Abraham again for our PR needs.

Colleen Fitzgerald, Director of Advocacy Implementation, Habitat for Humanity International

On behalf of Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI), thank you for your company’s pro bono work on World Habitat Day blogger outreach during the fall of 2009. We were astounded by the results achieved by Abraham and Harrison (A&H), and we appreciated your donation of staff time and resources.

Olivier Grinda, Co-Founder and CMO, BrandsClub

Chris Abraham has been doing a terrific job for brandsclub. Not only have they created and managed our twitter account, that has the most followers in the world for our business model, their outreaches have gotten us tons of responses. Last but not least they are always coming up with great suggestions and worldwide contacts for any crazy idea you might come up with. I would recommend them to anyone!

Francois Baird, Co-Chairman, Baird's CMC

The dedicated team at Chris Abraham assisted Baird's CMC with new media outreach to create an international discussion about the Baird's CMC report on the view of U.S. multi-nationals about investment in Africa. The results of their work were outstanding; leading to substantial coverage and vigorous debate. Chris Abraham proved to be smart, responsive and highly effective.

Fabrice Grinda, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, OLX

It's been a true pleasure working with the team at Chris Abraham. They increased the online awareness of OLX far more than I thought would be possible with English, Spanish and Portuguese bloggers. 

Jenny Morgenthau, Executive Director, The Fresh Air Fund

Chris Abraham tackled an extremely time-sensitive project for us and got up to speed quickly. We were impressed with their expertise in the industry, ability to execute a plan successfully and willingness to listen to our needs and goals. Their work has made an impact on our programs already and has given a tremendous boost to our awareness efforts.

Jerry White, Co-Founder and Director, Survivor Corps

Chris Abraham has been a critical catalyst for the online debut of SURVIVOR CORPS. They helped us create a blogging buzz around the launch of Survivor Corps, offering savvy counsel on strategically targeted audiences who would resonate with our mission. A&H cleverly leveraged the release of my book -- I Will Not Be Broken: Five Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis -- to generate word of mouth promotion online and cultivate new supporters for our work to help survivors of war in the United States and abroad. Chris Abraham will jump into a campaign with passion and panache. They've been responsive to our needs and a pleasure to work with from day one.

Rebecca Milner, Vice President, Institutional Advancement, International Medical Corps

Chris Abraham has been a tremendous asset to International Medical Corps during our American Express Members Project campaign. Their online strategy and outreach helped introduce International Medical Corps to many new audiences and raised our visibility during this time-sensitive campaign. International Medical Corps was written about in more than 170 blog posts.

Chris brings a unique approach to online public relations. The worldwide web is a vast space, yet Chris Abraham has found a formula to reach out to target audiences, effectively raise awareness and get online readers and activists to take action.

The entire team has been fantastic. Each team member brings creativity and passion to the cause. Without a doubt, International Medical Corps would engage Chris for another campaign.

Shari F. Leventhal, Partner, FireMedia Partners (Former CMO, the dear departed Firebrand)

With Chris Abraham's audacious voice and mastery of a variety of blogs, feeds and social media networks, Chris Abraham was instrumental in significantly raising the volume for Firebrand during its short but illustrious history.

Gerris has been at the forefront of the Twitter phenomenon since its public offering, successfully leveraging the power of micro-blogging for many of its clients. Services include:

• Twitter Consultation: Gerris often works with clients to help them understand what micro-blogging means, the impact it can have within their industry, and the ways in which it can be utilized to implement customer service, improve customer loyalty, promote the brand, and protect a company's reputation.
• Twitter Profile Creation: Gerris has successfully created and populated Twitter profiles for a number of clients. Profile creation includes:
  • Twitter Brainstorming: An initial consultation with the client that outlines the goals, challenges and Twitter strategy prior to profile creation
  • Profile Creation: Gerris will create a Twitter profile that mirrors the branding, marketing, and messaging currently utilized by the client. All messaging "tweeted" through Twitter will mimic that of the company's branding.
  • Constant Population: Once the profile is created, Gerris will either train or populate the Twitter profile with valuable information that connects with fellow users on Twitter. Population will include daily "tweets" throughout the work week to boost followers and community engagement.
  • Valuable Team "Retweeting": Not only will a skilled team member help with the population of the Twitter profile, but the entire Gerris team will be behind the client, "retweeting" their content which in turn means an exponentially larger audience seeing the company's message. For instance, Chris Abraham, Gerris’s President and COO, who is known as one of the top Twitterers of Social Media news(having over 2,700 followers) will "retreet" every client messaging. What does this mean? A Twitter veteran will be promoting your company, brand, and message...and people will listen. At least three Gerris team members with high profile Twitter profiles will be able to retweet each client "tweet" at a time.
  • Continual Re-Evaluation: Gerris will continually connect with each client to ensure the messages disseminated on Twitter stay fresh, valuable, and relevant.
•  Gerris Twitter Case Study: A fantastic example of Gerris’s knowledge of Twitter is illustrated by our work with the client, The Fresh Air Fund, a non-profit agency providing free summer vacations in the country to more than 1.7 million New York City children from disadvantaged communities.
  •  Twitterers Who Will Change The World: With Gerris’s help, The Fresh Air Fund created a Twitter profile to communicate with other NPOs, current volunteers, potential families interested in The Fresh Air Fund, and donors. In just three months of tweeting, The Fresh Air Fund Twitter profile has over 600 followers and has reached thousands of individuals who they otherwise would never have been in contact with. Not only does Gerris help guide The Fresh Air Fund on how to best utilize Twitter in a respectful and value-driven way, Chris Abraham is also eager to help “retweet” The Fresh Air Fund’s Twitter content, meaning that over 3,000 users are seeing this non-profit’s messaging, creating a critical relationship with The Fresh Air Fund that results in support of the NPO. Even more impressive, The Fresh Air Fund was recently nominated to be a part of the “Top Ten List of Twitterers Who Will Change The World” — a fantastic feat for an NPO who has only been a part of the Twittosphere for three months.

Never has the power of Twitter been more evident than in the last few weeks and months. Once known only by “techies” and early adopters, this micro-blogging site is now slowly infiltrating into the mainstream and more importantly, affecting the way many of us communicate, listen, and learn.

For those not familiar with Twitter, here’s a quick introduction: Twitter is a free social networking service that allows users to send and read each other’s updates (known as “tweets”) that are limited to 140 characters in length (think two sentences at most). At its inception in 2006, Twitter (then known as “Obvious”) was originally created as a tool to be used internally by the podcasting company, Odeo. Two years later, over 3 million individuals worldwide have Twitter accounts and the rate in which news spreads has shortened to, well, 140 characters.

Initially, the goal of Twitter was to allow users to share with their “followers” exactly what they were doing at that moment (ie: “It’s Monday morning and I’m having Cheerios for breakfast”). A common misconception among those who aren’t familiar with Twitter believe this is still the case with the micro-blogging site. In fact, Twitter has grown and expanded and its capabilities have far surpassed solely communicating the mundane details of everyday life.

For instance, take the recent Mumbai attacks in November, 2008. During the three-day battle that left more than 100 dead, social-networking services such as Twitter and Flickr were flooded with news, rumors and pictures of the tragedy by what is now termed as “citizen journalists” — users on Twitter that were tweeting breaking news faster than mainstream media could pick up the same information on the news wires. Many people now describe the situation in Mumbai as “Twitter’s moment.” As a result, major media outlets now uses Twitter to help communicate the real-time public sentiment on various issues, such as Presidential elections, natural disasters, and current events.

Gerris has been at the forefront of the Twitter phenomenon since its public offering, sucessfully leveraging the power of micro-blogging for many of its clients. One only has to take a quick look at Gerris' President and COO, Chris Abraham, who is known as one of the top Twitterers of Social Media news, having over 49.4k followers, to understand Gerris' extensive knowledge of cutting edge social media tools.

A fantastic example of Gerris' knowledge of Twitter is illustrated by our work with The Fresh Air Fund a non-profit agency providing free summer vacations in the country to more than 1.7 million New York City children from disadvantaged communities.

With Gerris' help, The Fresh Air Fund created a Twitter profile to communicate with other NPOs, current volunteers, potential families interested in The Fresh Air Fund, and donors. In just three months of tweeting, The Fresh Air Fund Twitter profile has over 600 followers and has reached thousands of individuals who they otherwise would never have been in contact with. Not only did Gerris help guide The Fresh Air Fund on how to best utilize Twitter in a respectful and value-driven way, Chris Abraham is also eager to help “retweet” The Fresh Air Fund’s Twitter content, meaning that over 3,000 users are seeing this non-profit’s messaging, creating a critical relationship with The Fresh Air Fund that results in support of the NPO. Even more impressive, The Fresh Air Fund was recently nominated to be a part of the “Top Ten List of Twitterers Who Will Change The World” — a fantastic feat for an NPO who has only been a part of the Twittosphere for three months.

Are you thinking about joining Twitter? One word of warning: You can’t become a Twitter sensation overnight. As Chris Abraham says, “Growing a social media profile is like growing a coral reef: after seeding the reef, there are so many things that need to happen before a reef blooms ‘in its own.’” With Twitter, time and commitment are key in order to position yourself as a valuable addition to the community. “You need to be generous — give more than you take — and you need to be committed to the long term,” Chris advises. And it’s not all about your follower numbers.

Twitter isn’t about just talking about yourself, accepting every follower, and never engaging in actual dialogue. Like every other social networking tool, it’s about forming relationships, providing valuable content, listening and (like Chris said), giving more than taking.

There’s an unspoken code of ethics followed by well-respected twitterers, and a strategy that can help you reach your customers and supporters on Twitter while not opening yourself up to criticism and in extreme cases, retaliation (ever heard of the Motrin Mommies?). The power of Twitter is increasing daily — do you know how to harness it? Let Gerris show you how.