Pr has been getting a bit of a bad rap around the blogosphere lately. From PR’s being blacklisted by bloggers to nasty and aggressive emails sent to companies blasting their internal PR staff.
I agree that some PR’s probably have zero respect for blogger relations and probably deserve to have a fire lit under them to make them understand that spamming is not cool and that bloggers are people and not purely a marketing channel for them to exploit.
However, I also believe that these (over) reactions to PR by some bloggers has succeeded in creating an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty about PR/blogger relations which makes dipping one’s toe into the already treacherous water of the blogosphere even more frightening and risky.
Spend a few weeks at any PR agency and you’ll probably find that you have a new respect (or at least a healthy tolerance) for the day-to-day workings and effort required for a PR agency to obtain coverage for a client on a daily basis.
They need to be quick thinking, to jump on any opportunity and often to create an opportunity where non existed before. They’re resourceful and don’t often take no for an answer. That’s what makes them good at their job.
As the digital account director here at Zing, I get to observe them in their element but still sit outside the pure PR sphere and can truly say that I have a deep respect for the arduous, relentless and often thankless job they perform.
No other communication discipline is as fast changing as that of PR. That’s why it’s my job is to make them comfortable with new and developing methods to outreach to consumers and online media and to help engage new products for clients to drive internet traffic, increase search results and monitor the bloggosphere.
“Treat them like rock stars” is a sound bite that gets bandied around our office to describe how we should treat bloggers. The only problem being, many of the PR pros are too concerned about negative reactions from bloggers no matter how sensitive they try to engage with them to even consider contacting them.
PR’s and bloggers need to work together and most of them do but when PR’s get too scared to even make contact with bloggers at all then there’s something out of balance, which needs to be addressed.
Sean O'Byrne is the Digital Account director at Zing. Email: sean@zing.net.au
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