The State of the Blogosphere

Dan Gillmor has a very interesting post about how the Blogosphere is maturing.

"But blogs are becoming more than just a new publishing medium. They're infiltrating a variety of spheres from personal to corporate.

One of the BloggerCon themes was business: How can people make a living from this medium, or use it to help in their professional life?

Lots of ways. Some smart companies are beginning to incorporate the format internally and externally. Keeping employees informed, and getting their best ideas, makes obvious sense, and a blog is an easy way to do it.

But the relative informality of the format is also valuable in communicating with customers, suppliers, media and anyone else who's outside but wondering how an organization works."

Q&A on Corporate Blogging

Over on the PR meets the WWW blog there's a terrific Q&A with Billy McCormac, a corporate PR blogger. McCormac writes the English section of JKL Blog, a weblog started in January 2004 and authored - in four different languages - by members of JKL Group, a Nordic PR firm.

JKL's vision is that weblogs can be used, both internally and externally, to help a company to communicate with its publics. Highlights from the interview…

Do you think that PR professionals should see bloggers as journalists? If so, how will this impact their relationship with the "traditional" media?

The blogging/journalism issue is a thorny one. Bloggers, though not journalists in the traditional sense, do produce editorial content. More and more gadget businesses, for example, are pitching blogs such as Gizmodo and Engadget as part of their campaigns or product launches. These companies know that gadget blogs have legions of loyal readers, so it's natural to include them. Blogs and traditional media outlets, I believe, dovetail each other nicely.

Do you encourage your clients to include pitching blogs in their media campaigns?

We address this in our workshop, actually. Once we begin to see high-profile Nordic bloggers attracting massive readerships, I think that pitching blogs will become a natural part of campaigns and product launches.

Staying Inspired While Blogging

If there's one piece of advice I can offer those who are thinking about launching a blog as part of a PR campaign, it's this - don't underestimate the commitment. Over at Blog Business World Wayne Hurlbert has a good post about how to stay inspired.

Participatory Journalism is Worth Watching

I have been doing a lot of informal research lately into participatory journalism. The concept is simple - major media outlets are increasingly soliciting their readers, viewers and users to actively participate in the editorial process. I have been asking what impact this might have on how we practice PR? At what point should we begin pitching readers as well as traditional media gatekeepers we have relationships with?

My client recently pointed out to me that participatory journalism actually began in the '60s when Sports Illustrated writer George Plimpton strapped on a football helmet and actually experienced what it was like to play in the NFL for the Detroit Lions. Plimpton chronicled his adventure in the classic book (and later the movie) called Paper Lion. The trend has steadily evolved ever since pioneer Plimpton.

In the early '90s, for example, the major TV news networks began incorporating raw unedited footage from viewers who happened to be on the scene when news broke. Shows like MTV's The Real World blurred the envelope even further when they chronicled the actual lives of seven strangers forced to live under the same roof. The reality TV phenomenon is a close cousin of this phenomenon, but it's really entertainment, not journalism.

For now, participatory journalism means that big media are increasingly soliciting the assistance of micro media outlets to help them build their franchises. Dan Gillmor from the San Jose Mercury News epitomizes what some call "open source media." He has been steadily posting new chapters of his new book on this subject, which he calls Making the News. He is using his blog to solicit reader feedback so that he can make his book the most useful reference available on the topic. Similarly, The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington recently begun to solicit readers to become official bloggers for the paper to expand their local news coverage, according to this post on The Public Journalism Network.

For now, this all bears watching. But evenutally, I envision a future when PR pros will be pitching their neighbors to write about clients for the local newspaper and not just the actual trained scribes we court today. What are your thoughts? Are you pitching readers? Share your comments to this post so we can all learn from your experiences.

Bloggers Will Become the Aristotles and Platos of Tomorrow

Imagine for a second that there actually was a thriving public relations industry like we have today back in the days of Plato, Aristotle or Leonardo da Vinci. Is it possible that PR pros might have shaped the opinions and writings of these influential teachers? Possibly

Now flash forward to one hundred years from now - 2104. Will the influential bloggers of our time like Ito, Scoble, Udell and others be viewed then as the Platos and Aristotles of our day? It’s very possible. Now imagine if PR pros are successful in influencing these influencers to portray our clients, companies or products in a positive light. The potential is huge – we can shape opinions for years to come.

In last Sunday's New York Times, James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly wrote about knowledge management or K.M. Specifically, he details how technology companies like Google and Microsoft are trying to make sense of "the swamp of data on each person's machine or network."

I believe that much of the "knowledge" that most of us in the future will need– if not already – will exist solely online in a giant knowledge base. The Microsoft Support Knowledge Base and Usenet (e.g. Google Groups) are early such examples. These days, if you have a computer problem, you can probably find a clue or even a cure in these powerful shared K.M. centers by typing in a few keywords.

Weblogs will become a fountain of knowledge more powerful than any other. Some of the best and brightest minds in every field imaginable are already sharing their deep wisdom and experiences with the entire connected world. Take David Allen, for example. He wrote the book on time management and now every week he showers bits of wisdom on us every week via his blog. These posts will be part of our collective Knowledge Base for years to come.

Now strap your PR hat on. Imagine if today we can convince the greatest influencers for the next 100 years to portray our clients (external or internal) in a positive light in what will eventually become the ultimate Knowledge Base. This is why building relationships with Weblogs is so important for today’s public relations practitioners and why I am so excited about “micro persuasion.”