Some good and timely questions from Canuckflack.
As more and more PR firms develop blogging "practices" and push blogging programs, I have to wonder: when we're peddling the flavour of the month, are we taking into consideration the other entrees in the meal?
Are we pushing adoption of a tool that, while cool to communicators, does not fit well with our client's existing communications strategy?
Are we taking the initiative to pitch them on an integrated communications strategy, including blogs, or just the new tool?
Even more importantly, are we pitching blogs as a cure-all, even though the technology may not be an appropriate channel to reach their customers, suppliers or stakeholders?
I'm concerned about the proliferation of companies and individuals promoting blogs as some sort of panacea, as if everything will change because you now have 'conversations' online.
For a start, the online audience is a minority for all but a few industries (eg IT) and online audiences tend to be skewed in important ways (eg younger, more middle-class, and of course tech-savvy)
Second, blogging (certainly at this early stage of its development, probably forever) is a complement (in my view) to other comms mechanisms. I would always urge clients to do trad. media relations AND blogging, newsletters AND blogs. I see blogging as allowing us to do more rather than displace existing activities.
Despite the hopes of some of the more dewy-eyed bloggers, it seems to me to be obvious that trad. media will retain its dominant position even if it has to adapt in many and important ways to blogging.
At the moment, the average person still finds the media far more credible and authoritative than any number of blogs. Its partly about brand and longevity, of course. But most people still do 'trust' the media in some fundamental ways. They still think that if its in a respected newspaper or electronic media program than its more likely to be true or important.
Perhaps this is a lag effect, but for all the hullabaloo about dying and discredited media our clients' audiences (and our clients) retain a very touching (not to say sometimes bemusing) faith in the media and its capacity for accuracy and fairness.
(an aside: we get too close to this debate about the media at our peril, most people just don't spend a lot of time analysing the media's flaws and failings, and they tend to agree with whoever shares their viewpoint whether or not they are accurate or fair on all occasions or any. eg the influence of FOX).
Except in special circumstance (not sure what they would be), only an irresponsible PR adviser would suggest replacing media relations with blogging. In fact, the idea is so preposterous as to cause me to think that I'm attacking a 'straw man' here.
On the other hand, I think it would be also irresponsible not to advise a client to blog if they are doing media relations.
I think we're at the stage now, or near enough not to matter in a strategic sense, where clients (probably without exception) should be using blogs to supplement and complement media relations. Blogs should include additional information, commentary, fact-correction and so on. Most importantly, blogs do allow a direct relationship with the people interested in what you're doing that simply isn't possible through the third party filters of the media.
Blogs give our clients the opportunity and capacity to break-free of the monopolistic clutches of big media. Not as opponents to the media (I still want that big positive story running off the front page if I can get it, believe me!). If you use a client blog to piss journalists off (deliberately or collaterally) you are not advancing the interests of those clients.
I could go on across a range of fields in this vein but you get the idea.
Yes, blogging should be part of an integrated comms strategy. But also, I think a comms strategy that doesn't include some blog activity is a little lame these days (or very soon will be). And as clever PR people we should be encouraging clients to capture the early-adoptor street cred and learnings rather than wait to everyone else is doing it.
Blogs Will Change Your Business