Growing a PR blog in a different language
Posted by Administrator on September 19th, 2005
By Italo Vignoli, Quorum PR | weblog: Errepi
Business blogs around the world
Blogging is mainly done in English, and PR are not an exception. In addition to this situation, most of the discussion about the relationship between blogs and PR happens in English-speaking countries (with France being probably the sole exception).
When I have started my blog in early 2005, after almost one year of thinking, it was a natural choice to write in Italian. The problem was to find readers: Italy is a country where the discussion about PR has always been restricted to a minuscule group of professionals, while the rest of the industry does not seem to care at all.
The same situation seems to apply to marketing, with a handful of exceptions.
Therefore, the target of my blog could only be the entire community of Italian web surfers, which includes only a small number of people interested in the subject of the blog: the relationship between PR and high technology.
On the other side, I wanted to cover the subject of PR, because I feel that in a few years - maybe more in Italy - blogs will be one of the best weapons of PR people, especially in high technology, and therefore being positioned as a pioneer will help my work as a consultant in this field.
In the past, being a pioneer in the use of e-mail for the distribution of press releases has been instrumental for getting a number of new clients. We were the first PR agency to use a personal list server in 1999, and it is simply amazing that after six years we still are the only one to use it and to send personalized press releases every time to a different mailing list (in Italy, newswire services simply do not work).
I have started blogging on February 1st, 2005, and I have added two different monitoring systems on April 1st (a pure coincidence): Sitemeter, which is international, and ShinyStats, which is Italian. Funny enough, the two systems split in a different way visits and page views.
For the first two months, I have decided to post without getting any feeling on how I was doing in terms of visits and page views because I wanted to get acquainted with the process of blogging: reading, selecting, writing, posting. Once I have found the right balance between the time devoted to blogging and the time devoted to other activities, I have started to monitor results.
After a few months, I have reached a daily average of 125 visits and 175 page views, which I find extremely satisfactory given the specific subject of the blog (the most popular blogs in Italy, which have been online for years and cover subjects of general interest, do not exceed 2500 visits per day).
Of course, I have been posting daily, and I have always preferred “strong” opinions to mild ones. But I had to find by myself the other rules for a successful PR blog in Italian (which should work also for several other languages, especially if the country’s PR industry is not at the forefront of the professional debate).
This is my recipe:
- 25% of posts discuss public relations theory and practice, and comment on best and worst cases (I try to be as neutral as possible). These are the posts which do not attract the general public, but are read by the small minority of PR and marketing professionals who visits regularly.
- 25% of posts discuss daily news, especially if they are about the environment and the relationship between men and nature (as you can imagine, George W. Bush is a regular guest). These are the posts which attract the minority of opinionated readers.
- 25% of posts discuss TV advertising, and especially bad TV advertising (at the moment, I am focusing on directory services ads, which are insulting the average individual for their paramount stupidity). These are the posts which attract the highest number of readers, through search engines (mostly Google).
- 25% of posts are covering various subjects, from web sites which do not work with Firefox to strange pictures which I find during my surf sessions. I try to convince people to throw away Outlook (which I hate, because is one of the worst pieces of software ever written by a human being). These are the posts which attract the tech geek, another minority of regular readers.
All my posts have a “communications” or public relations angle.
By combining the four publics, I try to educate a few Italians about the concept of public relations, which is totally unknown by the majority of internet surfers. So far, it has been a tremendous experience… I have got a lot more than I have given.
About the author
Italo Vignoli is a humanist lent to high-tech PR, who has close to 25 years of experience in the business on the company and on the agency side, where he has led the PR practice of large international shops and founded two small and specialized boutiques in Italy. He is blogging about PR at www.italovignoli.com.
{tags: prblogweek, pr, public+relations, blogging, how-to
September 25th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
I think your idea of giving PR blogs in a different language is a very interesting idea. Part of the reason I this article stood out to me is because I enjoy traveling so much, and Italy is my favorite place that I’ve traveled so far. Another reason is because I’m graduating in May from Auburn University with a degree in Public Relations. So when I see an article on Italy and Public Relations, I know I have to read it!
I think the concept of educating Italians about public relations through blogs is very cool, and something i’d like to learn more about. In my Style and Design class at Auburn we have our own PR blog, which we write in twice a week. In this class we have been learning about the importance of blogs and how they are becoming so large.
It’s important for people all over the country to hear about PR and blogs, not just in the United States. It’s encouraging to see that there are people out there, such as yourself, dedicating their time to promoting the Internet and PR.