I'm 2 years late to Ryan Holiday's publication"Trust Me, I am working". Never much of a PR person, I learned immediately from his nonfictional accounts of becoming a"media manipulator" that marketing can be everything once you've built a great item. Since I must return the book by 12/20 into the San Diego Public LibraryI figured that this is a great time to write my notes down as a blog post.
Quotes from"Trust Me, I'm Lying"
"Social media isn't a set of tools to allow humans to communicate with people. It is a pair of embedding mechanisms to allow technologies to use people to communicate with each other, in an orgy of self-organizing... The Matrix had it wrong. You're not the batter power in a worldwide, human-enslaving AI, you are somewhat more valuable. You Are a Part of the shifting circuitry"
-Venkatesh Rao (Entrepreneur in residence at Xerox)
"it is a prime example of the feminist blogosphere's tendency to tap in the industry force of what I've begun to think of as"outrage planet" -- the frequently occurring firestorms awakened on mainstream, for-profit, woman-targeted blogs such as Jezebel and also, to a lesser level, Slate's very own XX Factor and Salon's Broadsheet. They're triggered by writers who are compelling readers to feel what the authors assert is righteously indignant anger but that is really just petty jealousy, cleverly marketed as feminism. These firestorms are fantastic for page-view-pimping bloggy enterprise."
"Companies should anticipate a full scale, organized attack from critics. One that will simultaneously overrun blog remarks, Facebook fan pages, and an onslaught of blogs, resulting in mainstream press appeal. Begin by developing a social media crises plan and developing inner fire drills to anticipate what would happen."
"Our illusions are the house where we live; they are our information, our personalities, our experience, our forms of art, our really experience."
Exercise Advice from the Book
Control your Wikipedia page (use any press mention from blogs or conventional media)
Study the top stories and you will notice a pattern: the best stories all polarize poeple. If you make it endanger people's 3 Bs -- behavior, belief, or belongings -- you receive a massive virus-like dispersion
Compose stuff bloggers can post immediately without any work. Feed them their very own lies"assist them trick their readers"
Silence on sites is your worst.
Faking leaks with email editor (from different sources) can operate if you have the Ideal contacts
Prominent headlines that screamed excitement about utlimately unimportant news
Lavish use of pictures (often of little relevance)
Shade comics and a big, thick Sunday nutritional supplement
Ostentatious aid of this underdog causes
Use of anonymous sources
Prominent coverage of high society and events
Concepts from the book
Ongoing Narrative /Iterative Reporting -harm is already done, there's no such thing. Iterative reporting is bullshit, people treat news headlines as"cultural fact", the damage is already done, even it it is a baseless accusation.
Faking escapes with email editor (from various sources)
The Psychology of Error -- Errors and errors get rewarded, causes outrage = pageviews = money
By way of instance, each image is a different load screen = more pageviews (short term vs. long-term metrics). Usability vs. profitability -- publishers are concentrated liberally on pageviews, but in the long term, user trust will be important. Meanwhile, irresponsible bloggers are making millions from sensationalizing stories that are untrue.
Snark -- mortal weapon (humor in its own dark form. Example = "Your Daily Douchebag: John Mayer Edition". Another online illustration: Hot Chicks using Douchebags
All that happens -> All that's understood by media --> All that is newsworthy ->All that is published as news -> All that spreads. This is the systematic limiting of the information seen by the public
My Action List / Courses in the Novel
Blogs hold a Good Deal of power
The right contacts in the right sites in a specific industry hold tons of sway. Example: Apple announcements
Building a brand new website with high viral grip (but with the ideal user metrics in your mind ) can take off fast. Sites like Watch Mojo, Ebaumsworld, Break.com, ride the wave of copying content from others, organized in a digestible manner that consumers can quickly disperse. Millions of dollars are created this jak zagadac way while sources are never credited. There must be a means to do both.
There's a need for a respectable news source, or an industry specific source that doesn't pander to"mass hysteria". Example: refinery29.com