By Danny Sullivan
A lot of PR people seem to be a little nervous when it comes to dealing with the blogosphere. There exists a sentiment that there is some kind of black magic at play – and if you don’t know the magic words you might end up spending the rest of your days as a toad flack.
Fear not. Bloggers are not really any different from the media – they have the same interests, in the same topics and, for the most part, respond to PR in a similar way to the media. If approached, they are not (usually) inclined to destroy your fledgling career with a casual flick of their wand.
There are certainly some ways to make your life easier when dealing with blogs, but none of these are unique to the space. Like the media, bloggers prefer to know about stories in advance, so embargoes are appreciated and usually honoured without question. And in the same way as the broader media despise receiving news that is irrelevant to them, so too bloggers rail against such indiscretions. Basically, if something usually pisses the media off, then you can be pretty sure it’ll piss off a blogger too.
In fact, continuing to refer to bloggers and the media as two separate entities is probably well past its sell-by date. The large numbers of media sites that have now recast themselves in a blog-style format is surely proof enough of this. They must be considered one and the same by PR people and should not be avoided out of fear of the unknown.
By Danny Sullivan
I’ve written a couple of posts recently about social networking and its link to PR, but its growth in this area was firmly driven home to than by a recent conversation with a reporter at a leading US trade magazine.
We were discussing a client and the relative merits of the company’s position as an expert source for future articles, and she indicated that we should join her LinkedIn group. She went on to explain that her first stop when looking for information for a story these days is now to poll her LinkedIn buddies. And what’s more, it really seems to work for her – usually getting a range of responses, allowing her to pick and choose the best ones to follow up on.
If ever we wanted proof that social networking is here to stay, then surely this is it. Only by providing true value to professionals in their day-to-day work can the phenomenon be expected to succeed, and this is a perfect example of such value being achieved.
By Danny Sullivan
You may have heard the news this week that the European Commission has cleared the way for in-flight use of mobile phones. I’m sure that within a year or two, this will be standard on airlines the world over.
As a busy professional, my reaction was initially positive. When you work in PR, being able to stay in touch while travelling is important, and the idea of being able to circumvent those long flight blackouts is certainly appealing.
But then I paused to consider the cons. Sitting on a plane for three hours next to the guy who is trying to organize his brother’s stag party in Vegas. Or worse, sitting next to some stressed-out PR coordinating an interview for a client… (hang on…)
Yes, given the choice, even I would not want to sit next to myself in such a situation. While spoken communication is absolutely key in this business, there are still places where I think it should be verboten.
Limiting air passengers to text messages and emails would still be of huge benefit to business travellers, but airlines should think carefully before allowing normal phone calls to become part of our everyday flying experience. Air rage anyone?
By Danny Sullivan
I’ve recently been working with a client on the development of article discussing the economic downturn and how companies can profit by investing in customer-facing activities during this period, rather than the usual approach of cutting back in these areas.
The article isn’t going to appear for a while, but I wanted to raise the topic now, as it’s one that affects PR and marketing people directly.
Many of us who worked in this business during the years when the tech bubble burst will have stories to tell about the hacking and slashing of marketing budgets that were, in many cases, first in the line of fire. Unfortunately, marketing is often viewed as an area of business that doesn’t have enough impact on the bottom line to prevent the hatchet falling heavily on it.
But in the article I’ve been working on, my client references data showing that companies that chose to increase their investment in marketing during previous downturns actually vastly outperformed those companies that cut or maintained marketing budgets, once the economy started to recover.
It’s an interesting topic, and I’m sure it’ll be of even more interest as marketing and PR departments start making the case for their budgets in the face of the downturn.
Of course, I’ll refer back to the article when it’s published so you can all check it out for yourselves (some time in May).
By Danny Sullivan
Since writing my last post about social networking and PR, I have learned about recent social networking tie-ins involving two of the world’s leading business publications, Fast Company and Business Week.
Fast Company kicked things off earlier this month, with company president, Edward Sussman, stating that it was “the first major media website to tackle the following problem: Can a business publication blend journalism and online community to create something better than either by itself?”
And then there was this week’s news that Business Week is partnering up with LinkedIn, the popular networking site for business professionals.
Both deals show a keen interest on the part of major media to broaden their horizons to include social networking. Great to see this kind of positive response from the top tier of the media sector.
