Global PR Blog Week 1.0

Great stuff Roland

Posted by: Trevor Cook at July 13, 2004 05:42 AM

Thanks, Trevor!

Posted by: Roland Tanglao at July 13, 2004 05:49 AM

Between your post here, and one of Ross Mayfield's yesterday, an underlying theme is emerging. Or maybe we should call it a question instead.

What is the role of a PR agency in blogging?

Can blogging be outsourced? To what degree?

If you are an agency person (as I am), these are incredibly important questions. I thinking about a response and will post later today.

Posted by: Elizabeth Albrycht at July 13, 2004 08:11 AM

The decision to outsource your blog should depend on whether you have the time, expertise and inclination to do it yourself.

I have been ghost wrting articles and case studies for executives for years. There are two main reasons corporations use my services:

1. An exec just doen't have the time to research and write the piece.
2. The exec I am writing for has great ideas, but struggles to get themdown on paper.

Most execs are more comfortable talking about their ideas. They have all the expertise - they just don't write well.

A good PR could write the corporate blog as long they understand the medium, have sufficient knowledge of the company's internal 'news' and can write with the human voice required.

Posted by: Sally Falkow at July 13, 2004 08:40 AM

elizabeth: looking forward to your response
sally: i agree. as i said outsourcing can work in rare circumstances!

Posted by: Roland Tanglao at July 13, 2004 09:11 AM

Trevor said some wonderful things over at Ross Mayfield's blog on the topic of outsourcing.

Speaking from personal experience, with the clients I have initiated into blogging, I did quite a bit of posting at the beginning, just to get things going, and helped to write/edit the posts. However, over time, I have been doing less and less of that. This is a GOOD thing, as my goal was getting these folks to take ownership of expressing theirs (and the corporation's) personality. Of course, that also means I am training myself out of a job.

But, as Trevor mentioned, the opportunities for helping new people jump into this brave new world are legion, and I am not worried about finding clients in the short term.

I honestly don't know if it is better to keep blogging-related activities in-house or not. It will totally depend on the organization and the team. I suspect that the pragmatic route will be taken: whatever works best will be done, and there will be some hiccups along the way.

Many PR people are well-versed in writing in other people's voices: by-lined articles, letters to the editor, speeches have all been part of the PR person's portfolio. Blogs are just another tool, albeit one that will take special effort on the "voice" front. Furthermore, I don't think there is anything inherently dishonest or unethical about "ghosting".

Posted by: Elizabeth Albrycht at July 13, 2004 09:46 AM

yes blogs are just another tool
the only difference is that they lower the barrier to conversations on the web even more
nothing wrong with ghost writing but in the end if there's nobody in your org who can communicate effectively by blogging (perhaps without the spit and polish of a seasoned wordsmith; but i'd rather have something unfiltered directly from the source without polish) then your org is in trouble

...Roland
p.s. sorry for the lack of polish in these comments but i am holding a crying baby :-) !

Posted by: Roland Tanglao at July 13, 2004 09:57 AM

Seems to me what your rant really says is "Bad PR is Bad." The "good communication" you support is, in fact, good PR.

(Reminds me of Tuffte's rant against PowerPoint, which really said "Bad PowerPoint is Bad.")

Good PR is participatory and always had been. Consider Burson's efforts on behalf of Starkist when activists were proposing a tuna boycott. Through negotiation with activists, Starkist and the activists reached an agreement that kept the company's products off the boycott list, a win-win for everybody. And this was in the days well before the Net. There was no spin, no message, just an honest attempt to understand the other side's issues and address them in what the academics call "two-way symmetrical communication."

So I'd like to counter: Good PR is Good. Long live good PR.

Shel

Posted by: Shel Holtz at July 13, 2004 10:53 AM

I like "Good PR is Good. Long live good PR"

I guess I haven't seen too many examples of good PR lately. Could you please point some out to me?

My bias is that communication unmediated from C level execs and direct from employees is always going to be better than the typical over filtered over mediated communication that is unfortunately the rule (in my experience) rather than the exception.

Posted by: Roland Tanglao at July 13, 2004 10:57 AM

I'd be careful about making too broad a claim here Roland. Some people simply are not good communicators. Maybe they are too technical. Maybe they don't speak or write English well. Maybe they are shy at writing. This doesn't mean that they don't have something good to share.

The PR person can help make the person's meaning come through by helping the writing/speaking along. That has been one of our important roles as professional communicators.

So, sometimes, filter is good.

Posted by: Elizabeth Albrycht at July 13, 2004 11:12 AM

Rolando, you said: "Instead let's get people who are passionate about your corporation to write about your company. People who believe and who can tread the delicate line between public and private, and the myriad of laws and regulations and write in an informal, natural and conversational voice. People who can tell your company's stories."

That is the perfect description of the public relations and marketing communications folks at my university. Our job IS to tell DePaul's stories to a variety of audiences in a compelling manner. We must be doing something right, since enrollment has doubled in the past decade.

That's not saying that there aren't other literate people here. But, as you note, to be good bloggers they need good writing skills, knowledge of--or access to resources about--laws and regulations, and that most elusive resource, time.

I suspect that corporate communicators will lead the charge in convincing management that blogs are an important channel and that we need to identify, encourage, support and compensate good employee bloggers.

I also believe that corporate communicators will continue to ghost blog for people who are excellent at what they do, but whose writing is so convoluted that no one can make sense of it. The goal is to get the good ideas out there, not to restrict the channel to only those who write well.

Bad PR practitioners get fired. Good PR practitioners evolve. Know the difference.

Posted by: Kris Gallagher at July 13, 2004 11:42 AM

There's good and bad practice of course but what's also important is the imperatives and constraints built into the medium. I think Tufte demonstrates that powerpoint is very limited because it encourages bad presentations talking down to people etc (I wrote a piece on Death by Slides last year which is on my blog so I won't go into this here) but its obvious really writing for radio and Tv is different to writing for print and its all different again on blogs and there are some things that work well in newspapers which just don't work on TV and so on. So that all means can you ghost write a blog - I'm sure a good PR person can but I think it will require a stronger relationship with the listed author than might be usually the case for speeches, newsletters etc

Posted by: Trevor Cook at July 13, 2004 11:59 AM

Oh its late here - I also meant to say you can't just say something is just another 'communication tool' there's a lot more to it than that

Posted by: Trevor Cook at July 13, 2004 12:00 PM

Both Trevor and Kris have proven that PR is not - in fact - dead. There is a great deal of value in understanding and mastering many different aspects of (corporate) communications.

As a consumer of PR services, I view communications as a skill set much like web design, event management, program management, product development, marketing and sales. In theory, I can "do" each of these activities, but in practice, there is no economy of scale in my performing any single task. What I look for from PR is a "been there, done that" approach to both strategy and tactics.

The appeal of corporate blogging is as a complement to existing PR activities. Instead of writing a (700-900 word) editorial piece, waiting three weeks for it to get posted and then finding out that the piece was only published online; I can cobble together 250 words to outline the idea. Then I can share the idea and get credit for it at the same time. The piece is hosted in a place where I can track the traffic and where I own the copyright.

Try getting a deal like that from a publisher.

And the way I became educated in the weblog opportunity -- my PR firm.

Long live PR.

Posted by: Daniel Taylor at July 13, 2004 01:42 PM

I believe blogs are no substitute for PR, but they can be another tool in the PR toolbox. I remember reading about an electric company who was in the midst of bad publicity (but not the why and no, it was not Enron). Rather than deny or avoid the issue, the company regularly updated its Web site with the latest news on the situation. What could've been hugely damaging for the company's reputation ended up being a saver because of the communications. A blog would've made this easier -- this happened before blogs were prevalent.

Posted by: Meryl K. Evans at July 13, 2004 06:20 PM

elizabeth: yes, not everybody is a writer and not everybody is therefore a blogger, but i'd argue that if you don't have at least one person on the management team and one person who's not in management who can articulately write and blog in the language of the country where you are doing business then you are in trouble in the long run. i am a first generation immigrant and I heard many accented voices growing up and I learned that just because you speak with an accent doesn't mean you think with an accent and that if you have a 250 word vocabulary in English and passion for what you are speaking or writing about your message deserves to be heard unfiltered and unmediated. Filters are good when they don't mask the real voice accented or not; unfortunately most PR filters do exactly this.

Posted by: Roland Tanglao at July 14, 2004 12:51 AM

This is a great discussion! Thanks to all the participants.

Posted by: Keith Jackson at July 14, 2004 04:17 AM

Roland: I am certainly not stating that all language in a blog should be bland English. But if your readers can't make heads nor tails of what you are saying then you are not communicating.

Playing the role of filter -- sensitively, so as not to block out authentic voice -- is indeed an appropriate PR role.

Posted by: Elizabeth Albrycht at July 14, 2004 08:30 AM

Good stuff, Roland. More often than not, blogging and PR seem more antithetical than not to me, unless we're talking about being honest, clear and direct. Every once in a while PR is that, and that almost always gets noticed and held up, talked about, passed around as "see, isn't that good effectice honest PR?"

The key question for me, then, is why is that not the touchstone of the PR profession ?

Posted by: Jon Husband at July 17, 2004 06:09 PM