Corporate PR and Blogging
Increasingly, companies large and small are getting to understand that blogging can be an effective tool of corporate communications and public relations.
And unless the CEO or some other senior executive with the CEO’s confidence is an experienced blogger, the next question for some will be, “Who are we going to call?”
“Our PR company” would be a likely answer in a lot of instances. And what would you expect the PR company to say when they are asked, Can you help us with integrating some of this social media, blogging, podcasting, etc into our communications and public relations strategy. Why of course, they’ll say. Won’t they?
Eric Eggertson has some interesting and cautionary observations on the subject in his post Blogging Consultants - Separating the Pros from the Fakes.
Everyone is an expert on social media. Go ahead, ask an ad agency or PR firm if they can help your company get into blogging, podcasting or video podcasting. Most will say they can. But that doesn’t mean they have any expertise in that area.
He quotes approvingly Josh Hallett’s excellent five point checklist, the first of which made me chuckle:
What’s the address of their blog? If they don’t have one, run.
This is definitely not a game you can learn from a book.
But while I certainly endorse what Josh and Eric - and others - are saying about being wary of the just-hatched or not-hatched “experts”, I suggest that PR companies wanting to get into the game would be smart to partner with some pro bloggers for some upskilling and mentoring. And enlisting a “tested in the trenches” blogger as part of their pitch and service delivery could similarly be a smart move.
And if a company wanted to do that, where would they look for appropriate people?
Well, without wanting this to sound like a plug, but in the interest of providing a “next step” clue, I suggest they could do worse than to start with a group like our b5media network, where there has already been some peer assessment done, or at another group of which I am also honoured to be a member, the Business Blog Consulting team.
For a start, we can all pass the first step in Josh’s test and show our blogs :)
Tags: b5media, business+blog+consulting, pr, Public RelationsRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Corporate, General, Marketing, Public Relations, Risk Management, Small Business
4 opinions for Corporate PR and Blogging
Sean Kelly
Dec 4, 2006 at 7:50 am
Good post, Des. Thanks for the link to Eric’s post, too.
Blogging is deceptively easy. Excellent software - hosted and not - is available for free. Excellent guidance from bloggers on how to blog is widely available for free. However, effective blogging that lasts, and achieves a desired outcome, is a lot more difficult. The more I learn, the more I appreciate the expertise of the pros.
Matt
Dec 8, 2006 at 11:15 am
I am working with a corporate customer who is scared to death to start her own company blog. I imagine that bad publicity about blogs that have gone awry is one of the reasons, but I mentioned to her that an informal blog is just as effective a tool as a formal one.
Des Walsh
Dec 8, 2006 at 4:02 pm
Sean
You’re quite right. And one of the things I’m learning is that in the long haul, like a lot of other things, it needs discipline, in setting times to blog, in organising your thoughts, editing your own efforts as objectively as you can - a lot of discipline. Which is perhaps why some people for whom it was a great lark when they started get bored with it and stop posting.
Des Walsh
Dec 8, 2006 at 4:06 pm
Sean
May I recommend Debbie Weil’s The Corporate Blogging Book - http://www.thecorporatebloggingbook.com - for your client. Lots of good advice for the undecided corporate person. Also, one of the things I find with business people is that they are very apprehensive about comments - when I tell them they can control the comments and moderate them and do not have to have inappropriate comments on their site they are generally surprised and relieved,
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