Commentary
Just An Online Minute... Blogging for PR 101
- by June 17, 2004
This week, the public relations firm CooperKatz & Co., New York, organized a discussion among bloggers. The organizer, Steve Rubel, is a vice president at CooperKatz and an enthusiastic bloghound (http://steverubel.typepad.com). The discussion included Robert Scoble, Microsoft Corp. technical evangelist and blogging czar (http://www.scobleleizer.com), and Buzz Bruggeman, EVP, Activewords (http://buzzmodo.typepad.com).
The session was on how blogs, RSS feeds and the like, are impacting the practice of PR and journalism. A couple of key points were made, starting with the fact that blogs and Web media in general, make it possible to have a continuous feedback loop between readers, content creators who are often, one and the same. The power of the Web medium to provide instantaneous feedback shapes and influences ideas and stories.
Surely, we see that here at MediaPost, where we have a thriving online community in the Spin Board and often see letters to the editor almost immediately after our newsletters hit inboxes. Critical reactions may not spur us to change our thinking, but they offer yet another view. If email newsletters and online news in general are powerful, blogs offer an even higher degree of continuous and dynamic engagement. They are visceral and interactive. Blog writers critique news events or offer their own spin on the news. Or, some just discuss what they had for breakfast, or the severe thunderstorms from the night before last. In either instance, bloggers are empowered the means of self-expression and invite reaction and engagement. They seek dialogue.
From the PR perspective, Rubel advanced a few ideas on how to seed stories, ideas and relationships with bloggers and journalists on behalf of clients. They include learning how news spreads online; using tools for monitoring blogs; identifying the most influential and vocal bloggers on behalf of a client's target audience and figuring out how to influence them; becoming part of the conversation; create company blogs championed by real people; and posting thoughtful comments on blogs. As a journalist, most of these points make me queasy. I'll explain why in a future Minute.
Activewords' Bruggeman uses Feedster, a blog and RSS search engine, to monitor where his name, company and other relevant phrases pop up. He says he checks the Feed frequently: "I know 10 minutes after you've written something about that topic. And I'm on it quickly and thoughtfully."
Blogs, according to Microsoft's Scoble, are popular because they're easy to publish, they're social, discoverable, every post has its own link (via perma-linking) and they're syndicated through RSS. Recalling his days running a camera store in the 1980s, Scoble said that 80 percent of his sales came by word of mouth. "The problem is I wasn't able to participate in any of the water cooler conversations where people were talking about us," Scoble said. "Today though, for one, I can be there while those word-of-mouth conversations are going on. And two, the word-of-mouth conversations are vastly more efficient. ..."
Scoble suggested that chief executives can leverage blogs very effectively. Microsoft's Chief Software Architect and Chairman Bill Gates has one. "[CEOs] need to link out to other bloggers. That's Bill Gates' challenge, how you write in a human way given his schedule that doesn't look like a press release."
Naturally, given that the session was devoted to how blogging is changing PR and how PR professionals can leverage blogs, there were a few tips in that department. Bruggeman and Scoble suggested that PR pros ought to engage bloggers who will promote and evangelize their clients' products and/or services. This reminds me of the Apple Masters program, created by Steve Jobs to put Apple products in the hands of big deal influencers in Hollywood, the creative and business communities. Call it product placement for the digerati, glitterati and literati. Apple doesn't hype it, but it doesn't need to.
