Global PR Blog Week 1.0

I've been in PR now going on 11 years, mostly technology driven clients. I've always felt hamstrung by clients and especially agency co-workers who felt tied to the traditional ways of doing PR. Even with all of these tools available to us we still talk in the same droning corporate voice using five paragraph long pitch letters or three page long releases.

I've been a long-time practitioner (on the side) of open source technologies and have kept a personal blog for a couple of years. I've been amazed at how it opens up the whole world - people from halfway across the globe find each other and share personal interests, insights and even become friends.

My biggest fear, frankly, is that we as PR pactitioners are just expropriating something authentic and organic. That in a year or two all corporate blogs will look like news releases and pitch letters.

This community seems dedicated enough that with you all as evangalists my fears seem unfounded. But I do think we have to be very careful with our colleagues and clients, we have to monitor then and teach them that open source PR is open source.

That all being said, I'm really looking forward to what you all have to say.

Posted by: David Parmet at July 2, 2004 07:33 AM

I'm fascinated by how blogs can be used in tandem with conventional PR and marketing practices - especially from the point of few of solo professionals. I have been teaching blogging to a bunch of entrepeneurs and I feel like I could use better language in explaining why blogging is different/useful and how it fits into an existing marketing strategy. You're in my RSS reader!

Posted by: Andy Wibbels at July 2, 2004 08:04 PM

David - the exciting thing about the prospect of blogging, wikis and other open source communication technologies is that we might just be able to windback the horrible use of PR to spin rather than reveal. Good PR explains complex things simply and by doing so invites others into a genuine dialogue. But spinners feed off the media's gateway role on public discourse to conspire against free flows of information and ideas. If we can split that conspiracy wide open. Well. Migosh - its almost tooo exciting too think about.

Posted by: Trevor Cook at July 2, 2004 08:23 PM

David - Your fears are indeed well-founded, and I am afraid that we will most certainly see blogs as corporate marketingspeak. However, these blogs will be ignored, as they will offer little of value.

Unfortunately, in the minds of their producers, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy in a sense. They are unsure about blogs as a tool of dialogue, so they hamstring them by disallowing true dialogue. Then, the blog will fail, "proving" that they aren't a valuable tool.

That is the type of thinking we are trying to overcome here. Openness requires a complete shift from "command and control" to guidance, transparancy and interaction. This is going to take time. I hope that the community that we have been forming here will help our entire profession and the organizations we serve make that shift.

Andy - Most of us blogging here have been evangelizing blogs to people for awhile. You will find many resources on how to talk to people about blogs by visiting each of ours, or heading over to our wiki, where we have posted resources as well. http://www.thenewpr.com/wiki/pmwiki.php/Resources/HomePage

Posted by: Elizabeth Albrycht at July 7, 2004 02:51 AM

I'm incredibly enthused about this event taking place this coming week. We've been evangelizing the shift to online PR and opt-in distribution for years. In fact, PR WEEK awarded us the 2004 PR Innovation of the Year Award in March for our online media room technology. www.onlinemediaroom.com

Anyway, we are entirely open-source, being a LAMP solution for PR agencies and corporate-side communicators...among our clients is ebay. LAMP for those of you that don't know is Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP...an entirely flexible, open source platform for content management of web sites and media rooms. We put the power of the Internet back in the hands of professional business communicators. I'm psyched to participate and listen this week.
Dee

Posted by: Dee Rambeau at July 11, 2004 03:48 AM

Congrats to PRMachine's Rob Heckt for finally stepping out behind his blog. Unlike all the other bloggers (with their pictures on their blogs) and shouting their names throughout the course of the advertising of your event, Hecht has consistently stayed behind the scenes. He ain't no Max Clifford, but the UK likes this guy. For now, that is.

Posted by: at July 12, 2004 02:08 PM