Blogs are kind of like American Idol contestants. For every finalist who ascends to stardom and a nationwide following, there are tens of thousands who, despite their best efforts, wallow in obscurity. But not all bloggers are motivated solely by the desire to reach a critical mass of eyeballs. For some the reasons are deeper and more complex.
Fear. Freedom. Growth. These are in my opinion the three driving forces behind the dramatic increase in the number of PR bloggers. Each says a great deal about what makes us tick, and each says a great deal about where our industry is headed.
Fear
Observe the faces of many PR veterans when a conversation turns to social media, blogging or pretty much anything having to do with HTML code and you will see what the fear of death looks like. The type of fear that can cause someone to question his or her logic in selecting this god forsaken profession and ability to adjust to the changing paradigm.
The unease among practitioners in our industry is justified. For decades the PR template for conducting media outreach changed little. Develop pitch, identify list of targets, call each target, and potentially follow up by sending target a fax.
E-mail ushered in a technology shift, but very different than what is going on today with social media. E-mail changed the rules but not the players, and one could argue the proliferation of e-mail had a far greater impact on journalists than PR professionals. I mean how productive could reporters be collectively huddled around the office fax machine, waiting patiently as it took four hours to print out a two-page press release?
Even for the tech neophytes in our industry, e-mail was something that could be handled. There was no fear factor. But PR 2.0 – the use of Web social and emerging media tools – is an immense beast that many in the industry have struggled to get their hands around. It’s like flying over the Atlantic Ocean and trying to pick the most strategic place to jump in. You have no idea where the best spot is to make a “splash” or even how to jump. Should clients allow Web site visitors to Digg their press releases? Is a corporate blog a good idea? What about a widget or podcast?
What we see when PR practitioners blog is an initial but consequential step into the great PR 2.0 abyss. An attempt to demystify and overcome their fears about what emerging online PR means for their industry, and insecurity that any perceived lack in these skills will hold them back professionally.
Freedom
If you look at it one way, PR overflows with creative outlets. Practitioners have the opportunity to dream up and execute innovative and cutting-edge programs, events and brands. Viewed another way however, it is easy for individual creativity to become bottled up. We spend so much time espousing PR-friendly messages, one-liners and other forms of marketing-speak that true, unfiltered thoughts are suppressed deep beneath the surface. We speak for our clients and our employer, but rarely have the opportunity – or are even asked – to speak for ourselves.
Blogging is a logical antidote. Finally, an opportunity to speak our mind and break free of the PR-speak shackles that bind us every day. While to the external world it might seem that we can be interchangeably rotated among various client teams as if all cut from the same cloth, blogging is an opportunity to demonstrate our unique voice. In a profession based on hard rules there is nothing more satisfying than finding a creative venue without rules, and this freedom no doubt fuels many of us to create, write, and blog.
Growth
It is often said that the only way to truly learn how to speak a foreign language is by physically immersing yourself in the culture of those who speak it. In other words, it isn’t enough to observe from afar. You have to live it.
Perhaps that provides a simple and clean answer to why PR practitioners across all fields and disciplines are starting blogs with increasing frequency. As bloggers have emerged as a vital communication target that cannot be ignored, we logically understand that in order to maximize these influencers, we must learn to think and act like them.
This motivation for blogging is the one that holds the most promise for ensuring a smooth transition to PR 2.0. From blogging we will educate ourselves in other aspects of online PR, and the more we know, the better we can serve clients. And the better we serve our clients, the better we serve the future viability of our industry.
This is why blogging matters.
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