I am two years to Ryan Holiday's book"Trust Me, I'm Lying". Never much of a PR person, I learned quickly from his nonfictional accounts of becoming a"media manipulator" that marketing can be everything once you have built a fantastic product. Since I have to return the book by 12/20 to the San Diego Public LibraryI figured that this is a good time to write my notes down as a blog article.
Quotes in"Trust Me, I'm Lying"
Orson Scott Card
"Social networking is not a set of resources to permit humans to communicate with humans. It is a set of embedding mechanisms to permit technologies to use people to communicate with one another, in an orgy of self-organizing... The Matrix had it wrong. You're not the batter power in a global, human-enslaving AI, you are somewhat more valuable. You are part of the shifting circuitry"
"it is a prime example of the feminist blogosphere's tendency to tap in the industry force of what I've begun to consider as"outrage world" -- the regularly occurring firestorms awakened on mainstream, for-profit, woman-targeted websites like Jezebel and also, to a lesser level, Slate's own XX Factor and Salon's Broadsheet. They are triggered by writers who are pushing readers to sense what the writers claim is righteously indignant anger but that is actually only petty jealousy, cleverly marketed as feminism. All these firestorms are fantastic for page-view-pimping bloggy business."
-Emily Gould out of Slate.com
"Businesses should expect a full-scale, organized attack from critics. One that will concurrently overrun blog remarks, Facebook fan pages, along with an onslaught of blogs, resulting in mainstream press allure. Start by developing a social media crises plan and growing internal fire drills to expect what would happen."
"Our illusions are the house in which we live; they are our information, our heroes, our experience, our forms of art, our very experience."
Exercise Advice from the Book
Control your Wikipedia page (use any media mention from sites or conventional media)
Examine the best stories and you'll notice a pattern: the top stories all polarize poeple. If you create it threaten people's 3 Bs -- behaviour, belief, or belongings -- you get a huge virus-like dispersion
Compose stuff bloggers can post right away with no work. Feed them their very own lies"help them trick their subscribers"
Loaded headlines are very popular
Silence on sites is your worst.
Faking escapes with email editor (from different sources) can operate if You've Got the right contacts
Media historian W.J. Cfambell once recognized the identifying mark of yellow journalism as follows:
Prominent headlines that cried excitement about utlimately unimportant news
Luxury use of images (often of little relevance)
Imposters, frauds, and faked interviews
Color comics plus a big, thick Sunday nutritional supplement
Ostentatious aid of this underdog causes
Utilization of anonymous sources
Prominent coverage of high society and occasions
Concepts in the book
Ongoing Narrative /Iterative Reporting -harm is already done, there is no such thing. Iterative reporting is bullshit, folks treat information headlines as"cultural fact", the damage is already done, even it's a baseless accusation.
Faking escapes with email editor (from different sources)
The Psychology of Error -- Errors and errors get rewarded, causes outrage = pageviews = money
For example, each image is a different load screen = more pageviews (short term vs. long-term metrics). Usability vs. profitability -- publishers are concentrated blindly on pageviews, but in the longterm, user trust will be significant. Meanwhile, reckless bloggers are making countless sensationalizing forum zdrada żony untrue stories.
Snark -- deadly weapon (humor in its dark form. Another online illustration: Hot Chicks with Douchebags
All that happens -> All that's understood by media --> All that's newsworthy ->All that is published as information -> All that spreads. This is the systematic limiting of the data seen by the public
My Action List / Lessons from the Novel
Headlines matter
Websites hold a lot of power
The right contacts at the ideal sites in a certain sector hold tons of sway. Example: Apple statements
Building a new website with high viral grip (however with the right user metrics in mind) can take off quickly. Sites like Watch Mojo, Ebaumsworld, Break.com, ride the wave of copying content from others, organized in a digestible manner that consumers can quickly spread. Millions of dollars are made this way while resources are never credited. There must be a way to do both.
There's a demand for a respectable news source, or a business specific source that does not pander to"mass hysteria". Case in point: refinery29.com