There's a fascinating article on PR and blogging in today's Globe and Mail (hat tip to IWantMedia). In the piece, Richard Edelman comments extensively on how blogs and other on-line tools that enable companies to speak directly to consumers are pushing the news media out of their central role in public relations. He openly encourages PR practitioners to think more like journalists. Gee, what a radical thought. PR isn't about going to cool parties after all.
…My feeling is that the best way to teach PR pros to think like journalists is to encourage them to become bloggers. I have learned more about journalism through one year of blogging than perhaps anything else over my entire career in this business.
Every PR agency large and small should be giving their employees the "keys to the blog." Let your employees dabble in the blogosphere and learn. Even an internal blog is better than no blogging at all. Will the big PR agencies rise to the occasion in such manner? I highly doubt it. Many of them are risk averse. Is Edelman doing this? One hopes. …
Jupiter Research, comments by Lockergnome:
…While the report does serve some relevant obstacles to wide-spread marketing adoption of RSS, it mostly shows a poor understanding of RSS by marketers.
Before going through the various points made, the key missing factors that marketers seem not to understand or acknowledge yet, are:
a] RSS is not only about delivering content to end-users, but also about improving search engine rankings (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and driving new traffic through the use of various RSS specific search engines and directories.
Even if marketers are still doubtful about using RSS to communicate with end-users, the many examples available clearly prove that they should at least start implementing RSS as part of their online visibility strategy.
b] RSS is the basic NewsMastering ingredient, allowing companies to republish online content to provide their visitors with fresh content from multiple sources, even establishing themselves as key sources for highly targeted niche content.
c] Combined with branded RSS aggregators, the marketing advantages of RSS expand to “owning” part of the end-user’s desktop venue; a direct link between the company and the end-user, allowing for complete brand interaction and experience on a daily level.
However, as we’ve shown many times, the key benefit of marketing RSS usage still remains content delivery to end-users.
Paul Chaney of Radiant Marketing:
One of my latest memes is how blogs can be used as search engine optimization and marketing tools. For example, The Green View, a blog sponsored by fertilizer manufacturer Lebanon Seaboard Corporation, is beginning to serve it's purpose of not only providing good lawn care information, but of driving traffic to the new Greenview Online website as well. (I can hear the purists laughing now...a blog about lawn care! Har-de-har-har!)
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