03/30/08

No, I’m not talking about the relatives of your blogger friends. I’m talking about a term that’s becoming as frequently used in the PR business as “media relations.” How PR professionals interact with bloggers is taking on more and more importance—so much so that it’s now actually being studied. That’s right, all you bloggers out there—now we’re legit: the PR people are officially studying what we do and how they can influence us. In an announcement this week, the two firms behind the study announced a new web site, where you can read about their ongoing findings, as well as best practices in the field: BloggersandPR.com.

It’s a very nice, well organized site, with lots of information, and I would encourage anyone either new to PR, or just interested in getting up to speed with the latest thinking in blogger relations best practices, to bookmark it.  What are the biggest surprises in the findings so far?  Well, to me they are....

• 52% of the PR execs surveyed think they “do a good job identifying the specific interests of individual bloggers and sending them relevant information”
• while 65% of the bloggers surveyed say they don’t

The most insightful comment about the study that I noted, however, came from this article in the current issue of PRWeek:

Many PR pros don’t realize bloggers take part for various reasons, among them business, personal fulfillment, or to serve an audience. “It’s important to not just know where the blogger is coming from intellectually, but also to understand what is motivating them to blog in the first place, and to develop an approach that corresponds,” said Evan Kraus, SVP and director of APCO Online (one of the firms sponsoring the study).

That’s a critical point, I believe—and very good advice for PR practitioners. It’s really part of a major question many people seem to be wrestling with today: are bloggers journalists? Lots of folks, including many in PR, disagree on this point. But it really comes down to a matter of definitions. I tend to agree with those (including Dan Gillmor) who say anyone who chooses to write in a public forum—keep a “journal,” if you will—is in fact a “journalist.” Sure, there’s a wide disparity in writing skills (and critical thinking skills) across the blogosphere. But, face it, the number of good, generally well-regarded, and reasonably well-read bloggers out there—the vast “long tail” of what I maintain is modern journalism—already far exceeds the number of people employed in traditional journalism. Their voices are being heard. The world is changing. And it’s good to see the PR profession recognizing that, and trying to help its people understand best practices—what works and what doesn’t in communicating with bloggers.

The other thing about bloggers vs. traditional journalists that I find very interesting is the matter of transparency. I’ve written about this before. In fact, I was featured way back in November 2006 on what I think is the best blog on the topic of the changes happening in the field of journalism: Mark Glaser’s MediaShift on PBS.org.  In fact, I started a very good discussion there about Bloggers Leading Mainstream Journalists in Transparency. And I was delighted to see that Dan Gillmor agreed with my viewpoint when I saw him here in the Twin Cities a month ago.

Want to read a little case history of a company that doesn’t know how to deal with bloggers?  (One of many, for sure.) Check out this post I did yesterday about Best Buy on my other blog.

One final thing: here’s a link where you can download a PDF of the entire “State of Blog Relations” study.

What do you think about blogger relations becoming a major focus of PR?  Is it, in fact, now a legitimate specialty in the field? Maybe one that only younger PR practitioners understand?  Or maybe only PR people who also blog?