Moving PR Forward With Blogger Relations
As described by Constantin Basturea, Steve Rubel's efforts to further the practice of public relations with blogger relations, by hosting his project on the NewPR Wiki are to be commended.
Initially Steve Rubel proposed this project with a select few PR agencies behind closed doors and was not even considering the NewPR Wiki as a place to host the project, but after receiving a suggestion he use the Wiki, he brought the project to the NewPR Wiki, that's a win for the Wiki, but I think its also a win for Steve's project that he is hosting the project there, the effort will gain more from being hosted on the NewPR Wiki.
However, I had my doubts about his initial efforts on the NewPR Wiki, when he restricted the discussion to only larger PR companies Wiki, Steve’s original intention with the project. My concern comes from the idea that a wiki is a community project run by volunteers. And as a past contributor to the project, I don't like to think of the project being exclusive to a small group of people.
That's why I commend Steve Rubel for changing his mind and opening up the project, it’s the right thing to do as it’s in the spirit of the NewPR Wiki.
Steve wants to discuss the following issues on the NewPR Wiki.
1) Hands-on Workshops: PRSA, Ragan, the IABC, PR Week and other organizations need to start running hands-on industry workshops - not just panels with bloggers. Memo to my friends at these organizations. This is money you're leaving on the table. Start renting rooms that have computers and wifi, not pens and pads.
2) Integration: Let's not do what we did back in the 1990s where we had lots of agencies with interactive divisions that had no connection to the mother ship. We need integration. We need to have every PR practitioner thinking about how they might use these tools in their current campaigns. Give blogs, RSS, podcasts just as much thought as press releases and pitch letters. I put this responsibility squarely on the PR professionals who are running PR campaigns. Innovate!
3) Encouragement: There's no easier way to get people learning about blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, tagging, etc. than to get them to try it. Hill and Knowlton's effort is exemplary. But it's a first step. We need to get more agency heads blogging. By having his own blog, Richard Edelman is on the right track here, but collectively we need to get more of our corporate siblings into the pool. At a we need to teach them how to make RSS reading part of their workaday. At CooperKatz we're there, but we have further to go too.
I'd suggest that the project should be expanded to include every aspect of Blogger Relations, and really Blogger Relations is not the complete domain of public relations professionals. Though Steve and many of initial collaborators on the project are members of the PR profession, blogging is so much more than PR. In fact I'd suggest that's what part of the discussion needs to be about. Blogger Relations involves skills from many different existing professions, PR, search engine optimization, web design and journalism. I'd even suggest that there is a new profession, Blogger Relations, that combines expertise from all of those professions.
Maybe its because I consider myself an online marketing professional and my industry is still very new, but the concept of Blogger Relations appears to me to be a combination of different skills sets, some of which include PR. To be successful a PR professional will have to educate themselves on all of the skills needed to help their client's efforts. I do believe that the PR industry is one of the professions poised to growth significantly from the growth of consumer generated media and blogging. As I've previously discussed in a post in 2003 on PR and blogging, PR professionals have many of the skills and strategies needed to be successful in today's Consumer Generated Media world, but PR professionals have much to learn from other existing professions if they are truly going to be successful in blogging.
In light of the above, I’d recommend that for workshops, different organizations that round out PR expertise in blogging come together to host workshops on Blogger Relations, not just the PRSA, but maybe SEMPO.org for search engine optimization, and the American Marketing Association for online marketing.
Blogging is not just about PR, it also involves customer service and product development, in fact I might argue some of the best returns for companies come from product development. I think Macromedia is a great example of a company that uses blogs for gaining feedback from their customers, and in the process gains PR and immediate promotional benefits from following a product development dialogue with their customers. Therefore its important to educate PR professionals how these other disciplines affect Blogger Relations. Integration is not only about integrating agency divisions but also making sure every professional has access to the expertise on how to run a good Blog for their clients, that expertise include SEO skills, online marketing and the journalistic approach.
