The “Officer Ludwig” Experience
Unbeknownst to his large family, Retired Metro Transit Police Officer P.F. Ludwig had been waging a battle with his former department over his medical disability pension for almost 4 years. He had his pension reduced to less then a third of his original pension which forced him and his wife to file bankruptcy and forced them to move in with one of his son’s families after having his dream home in the mountains foreclosed on. In May of 2010 he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and the fight of his life began!
Towards the waining days of his battle for life, his middle son and his grandson get the idea to start a Facebook page to help spread the word of his battle against his former employer, his fight against cancer and the love for is family.
Over the course of the next few weeks I will show you how connecting with people from all walks of life from all parts of the world can be done through the use of Facebook, videos and Blogs. Social media is ALL about the connection and relationships you build and if done correctly they can have a major impact on you, no matter if it is for personal or business use.

Emotional Connection and Content
It’s not just good enough to have content, there has to be an emotional connection made with the reader/viewer. Otherwise it will sound like the adult voices on the Charlie Brown cartoons. Waaawaaawwannt Waa waaaa waannn, waaaan waaaa ! And having that will certainly not keep people engaged.
There where several emotional connections that were able to be made with Officer Ludwig. Obviously with his family, he came from a huge family, 2 bothers and 8 sisters (all of which are all very emotional!) 3 sons with wives and 7 grandchildren. Then there are the 58 nephews and nieces and their 75 children. That’s a large fan base just to start with and when they shared the story with Facebook friends it went viral fast.
But there were several other groups that had an emotional connection, Cancer survivors, folks that were fighting their own battle with the disease and families of cancer victims. Then there was the Thin Blue Line. The battle with the Police Dept over the pension struck home with lots and lots of Officers from across the country. And if you mess with one, you mess with us all! I will cover how we connected with them latter.
One very obvious thing you will gather when you go to his Facebook page and read back through the posts. We engaged, we were active and we made him a person. You saw the love, the warmth, the humor, the determination he had to win. You could not help but feel like you were a part of this family. A year and half after his death we are still getting posts from people that say they felt like they knew him, felt like a part of the family and they even call themselves “Honorary Ludwigs”. In just 48 hrs,we went from 50 or so friends to 20,000! And by the time he passed away 3 days latter we had close to 200,000!
Having an emotional connection with your followers, engaging them and making them feel like part of your family, will open the doors for so many possibilities later down the road, you can not afford not too.