Will a Scoble link make you a PR Genius?

There’s a lot of this sort of nonsense floating around these days:

Public relations in the blogosphere seems to operate under a new set of rules than traditional PR. With traditional PR you hire a PR firm that has relationships with various journalists and media. With the new PR, you start your own blog (assuming of course you have something worthwhile to say) and you work to become one of the blogging elite. The goal is to get the more influential bloggers to notice you and blog about you. You wouldn’t just leave this to chance; you’d help the process along. If, for example, you want to catch Scoble’s eye, then you would say something interesting that somehow relates to Scoble and work in a mention of his name. Scoble, like many other bloggers, follows what’s being said about him in the blogosphere by subscribing to a PubSub search results feed for the word “scoble.” If Scoble likes your post, you could end up with a mention on Scoble’s link blog or, better still, on the Scobleizer blog. » PR in the blogosphere @ Stephan Spencers Scatterings

This sort of thing is often written up as ‘revolutionary’ when really it is the worst sort of schmoozing and publicity-seeking dressed up as something else. It has nothing to do with public relations, as most practitioners would understand it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if PR was as simple as setting up a blog and getting someone like Scoble to notice you – good grief.

Comments

[Robert]

Amen! Wish more of the PR bloggers I read felt this way.

[Jeremy]

Wait - are you saying that PR bloggers should be less interested in their own egos, and more interested in doing quality work for clients?

I met Scoble - and blogged about it in a greater context of PR - and he did link back to me. Did I see a traffic push? No clue, as I was on a media tour and the blog was the least of my worries and concerns.

There will be a lashback about blogging, and it will be interesting to see if PR firms can learn to balance new and old media outreach. I see a lot of falls and mistakes coming, with clients jumping ship.

[Robert Scoble]

There is some effect from me linking to folks. Whether it is overhyped or not I'll leave as a discussion amongst you all.

Some effects?

Last night I had dinner with Brad Meador, Vice President of Operations for ClearContext. He said that when I linked to him last week they got more visits than they received in the past month.

Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords, reports that when I linked to ActiveWords they got about 400 downloads. When a famous national newspaper gave them a five-star review they got 32.

Also, if I link to someone generally they'll get a Google PageRank of four or five, which will put them above 95% of the rest of the Web. (Look at what happened to the law firm my brother works at once I linked to them, went from not found on first five pages to #1 result).

[iProceed]

It is only now that the PR types are starting to realize the new ways of marketing. The days when you sent flowers to journalists at Vogue so that they could mention something you wanted next year are gone. Everything is real time now.