How blogging can close the age gap for PR
Digging a little deeper into the idea of updating corporate images, I’ve begun to see the real impact blogging can have.
Like I said, I was a skeptic from the start. For me, the word “blogger” conjured up visions of milky-skinned teenage boys and 30-something-year-old men hunched over their keyboards, discussing the latest techniques for Halo.
However, I now see I couldn’t have been more wrong. Blogging has the ability to seamlessly blend the knowledge and expertise of a corporation’s older employees with the influx of Internet-savvy college grads coming into the PR work force.
Nearly three years ago, Blake Barbera, a San Francisco PR practitioner and blog-enthusiast, wrote a speech that captures exactly what it is that makes blogging so poignant in today’s corporate communications: “Blogs are a medium that give individuals and organizations a voice they never thought they could have.”
People want to be heard, and blogging gives them the microphone. When corporations partake in the blogosphere, they are showing their publics that they are willing to listen to their opinions.
This translates into an answer for PR practitioners looking to target younger generations- a generation plagued by apathy. Getting people my age to care about anything of substance has proved to be an uphill battle for many corporations. However, like Mr. Barbera said, blogging gives everyone a voice, even apathetic college students who once thought their opinions wouldn’t make a difference.
And although I continue to focus on blogging, PR and its relation to my age demographic (don’t forget I’m still a self-absorbed undergrad), I can’t ignore blogging’s impact on virtually everything. Take Heal Blog for example, where cancer survivors now have a forum to express “their ideas, thoughts, feelings, theories, and hopes.” No other medium can hit such a humanistic note so quickly and effortlessly.
Numbers don’t lie. Gartner, an information and technology research firm, suggests that the number of blogs reached an estimated 100 million in 2007. The best PR practitioners know a good thing when they see it and are flocking to the blogosphere, ready to capitalize on this economic and intimate form of communication.
2 comments:
I really like what you say about blogging as a microphone. It is interesting how people are using the internet as an unedited tool to sound off on anything and everything, so if PR professionals don't learn how to use the blogosphere to their advantage, they won't be able to reach out to such a large number of listeners.
Keep up the great work!
You make some good points. Nice job.
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