Out-of-touch PRIA bypasses Australian social media expertise

Lee Hopkins:

But what really gets up my nose and under my skin is that when the professional body for PR practitioners in Australia, supposedly the icons to which all Aussie PR practitioners look for guidance on this new ’stuff’, they approach (in what smacks of the redolent ‘cultural cringe’ of the 1960s-1990s) someone ‘not from round these parts’. Why?

Lee is right, I can understand that they wouldn't come anywhere near me given that I'm a truculent critic of this underperforming organisation but there are plenty of other Australians capable of doing a seminar for them.

I was surprised to see Shel Holtz's post this morning not because the PRIA had hired him to do the seminar but because he seems to have not even bothered to familiarise himself with what's happening in Australia before he did the seminar. Hence the theme of his post is an email he got from Rod Bruem afterwards that Telstra has a blog. D'oh. Given the size of Telstra, the fact that their blogs are a year old and that they have been the subject of a lot of debate in Australian social media circles this is quite an oversight. Shel strikes me as a very thorough guy so perhaps his seminar specifically wasn't on business blogging in Australia at all but nevertheless an email to some of the Australian bloggers he knows would have got him up to speed on the Australian situation very quickly. Nevertheless, he did the gig he was asked to do. Any fault lies with the PRIA. I hope the seminar included someone else who could set the Australian participants aright on the local situation.

Comments

[Shel Holtz]

There are lots of corporate blogs I haven't seen, Trevor, even here in the US. I wasn't aware of Telstra's, but I read you and Lee and several other Australian bloggers who lament the lack of uptake. And the theme of the webinar was simply "Blogging for Business," not unique to Australia. In fact, I think PRIA wanted a perspective from somewhere where (they perceived) business blogging had greater acceptance. In any case, if an American or Canadian PR type points me to a US or Canadian blog I haven't seen that does a good job, I'll blog about that, too.

[Shel Holtz]

Oh, one more thing. As I pointed out to Lee, I wasn't "hired." It was gratis.