According to a survey co-published by the BullDog Reporter and Peppercom Strategic Communications, in which over 1100 PR executives were polled, it seems while the majority acknowledge the power of blogging in communications, there continues to be a shocking disconnect with their actions.
Yes, you can file this under “talking a good game”, because the results show that while most PR executives believe in the blogging as an effective tool to share information quickly and broadly (UK 70%, US 80%), and have a role in influencing public opinion and decision making (UK 60, US 70%), the majority do not have a blogging policy (UK 82%, US 88%), and only around a third blog for their own company or clients (UK36%, US 37%).
Being immersed in the technosphere, you’re almost of the opinion that public relations companies are dying to get in front of the next big media trend for fear of looking like they’re too late to the party.
I think, what with all the hype news about Second Life we hear about (cough, cough *Crayon!), or the hubaloo around social news media releases, for tech watchers it represents a very small slice of the PR industry pie … at least that which is actually being practiced.
What does this represent? Well beyond the fear that getting into a new technologies, it may represent a fundamental disconnect between what blogging means to public relations and traditional marketing types. Its old hat to anyone that follows “new media” news, but all of that stuff which is repeated so often it borders on “buzz” and on the edge of hackneyed such as “the customer is in control” — well, in the case of blogging, its actually true.
For marketing types who actually “get it”, it looks like a period of opportunity — the only trick, of course, is “getting it right”.
December 12th, 2006 at 11:21 am | Permalink
i think that what it comes down to is that the large PR companies (Weber Shandwick, Hill and Knowlton, Edelman, Golin Harris and my in-direct employer Fleishman-Hillard) are being run by people who are typically 30 or even 40 year veterans of the business.
When they started, and when they got into positions of management, the phone and a typewriter were the main weopans of choice. For the first iteration of the web (1.0 if you will) they were totally flummoxed by its potential.
Now we’re in web 2.0 (yuck) the PR industry is desperately trying to work out how they can monetize social media and the web in general. this has manifested itself in a “wait and see” state of mind. the only company who has visibly gotten out there to lead the charge into the new Internet is edelman and look where that got them - into all sorts of hot water for acting without transparency.
each large firm probably has a large degree of competency around online communication but it’s a question of bringing everyone together, sharing the knowledge and making strides together, rather than individual consultants running off in all directions.
that being said, the strategic importance and dollar values assigned to online communications in 2007 is huge for FH and its subsidiaries.
I’m not sure if there was a question or if i’ve answered it, but the point i want to make is that we’re doing (slightly) more than just talking about it!
Ed
December 12th, 2006 at 11:24 am | Permalink
Is that the royal “we”, or the istudio.ca “we”? :D
But I’m glad you weigheed in on the issue, Ed — I guess the question is how long can these huge powerhouses “wait”?
December 12th, 2006 at 2:06 pm | Permalink
i use we in the loosest possible sense. i’m just talking about, people far more talented than me are actually doing ;-)
Seriously though, istudio is doing a lot - we have an award winning internal podcast that we produce for ALTANA, we have a great blog (http://blog.istudio.ca), we help out on Mark Evans’ Talking Tech podcast, have launched a few blogs including a bilingual blog (http://blog.caa.ca/en) and are now helping to push the social media news release forward as well.
we (and i mean all agencies) do as much as our clients feel safe with.
Ed
January 20th, 2007 at 11:35 pm | Permalink
[...] In a study that I blogged about a month ago, it looks like while many PR firms RECOGNIZE how important blogging is (such as, how it can influence opinion and how people are reading them), very few are blogging for their clients, and fewer still have a blogging policy. [...]
January 30th, 2007 at 11:32 am | Permalink
[...] Tom Chandler, in his Engagement Principles blog, tackled the subject of the hesitancy of PR agencies to utilise blogging. He referenced research, highlighted on the Deep Jive Interests blog, which showed that: [...]
March 20th, 2007 at 4:02 am | Permalink
Your article makes sense extremely, I supports