Go for it PR Week! After much delving into how technology is changing what we PRs do on a daily basis, this week it's the turn of blog monitoring to get the once over. I'm listed as a dedicated blogging expert (wowee) in tomorrow's edition of the magazine, in a feature on how PRs should monitor blogs. Hi to old pal Dalj who's in there too (no blogs though from the Hotwire lot yet I don't think), as is Nick from Bite, then a bunch of evaluation firms are quoted too.
What PR Week might not realise, but which some PR people working on blogging projects might, is that the major media monitoring firms don't have a clue about how blogs are impacting their industry. One firm I use for press cuttings emailed my colleague Anna not too long ago, when she started spotting more coverage in blogs than they did, and said: "please could you send me a list of the blogs that are on your target media list and we'll read them for possible coverage." The List?!?! What, the like 40 million blogs that might mention my client? That list? You think that's in one list?! Heard of search engines maybe?!
They just don't get it!
And then there's the feeback from yesterday's audience at the PR Week conference on New Media. Now, I wasn't there, so this sin't first hand, but one of the speakers said to me that in his feedback session a media monitoring firm asked him how blogs are impacting to the media-monitoring industry. They didn't know. Great. Nice to know our money is being well spent.
...Cue Romeike, Durrants, Press Index and everyone else telling me I'm wrong... please do! Us PRs need to know who can help us out and who to steer clear of.
Of course the media monitoring firms don't get it, or even some in public relations. Because it's misleading to view blogs as media.
What about viewing bloggers as people? Public relations: now what's that all about...
Posted by: Richard Bailey | June 23, 2006 at 11:55 AM
Why on earth would anyone use Romeike or Durrants to look for coverage in blogs when they can just use Technorati and/or Google Blogsearch?
Posted by: Fiona Blamey | June 23, 2006 at 02:35 PM
I've recently seen emails to an editor that might just as well have been written any time in the last 10 years. Not an ounce of originality in any of them, same old, same old 'Would you like to talk to my client...'
Another telling point. One major software company said to me it has no idea the value of its online advertising with certain media.
At least I know who my audience is. And by the way - Technorati is losing its allure. Hasn't updated a number of sites for weeks. Goodnesss knows why.
Posted by: Dennis Howlett | June 24, 2006 at 10:22 AM
Richard (sorry Drew, I seem to have a lot to say for myself) - how can blogs not be media?
People write stuff, publish it via a medium, other people read it. Isn't that what 'the media' is all about? And arguably, blogs are a better medium, because they're two-way. Other people can contribute to the debate via comments, links and by amplifying the topic on their own blog.
You're arguing that bloggers are an audience, rather than a medium. Well, hey - they're both. And while we're about it, 'proper' journalists are people too. People *can* be producers and consumers at the same time, which is great, because otherwise we'd be living in some sort of Orwellian dystopia where information is just fed to us and [continues in this vein for several hours...].
Posted by: Fiona Blamey | June 24, 2006 at 11:58 AM
Dennis said: >>Technorati is losing its allure. Hasn't updated a number of sites for weeks. Goodnesss knows why.<<
Technorati's always been incredibly flaky, but I'd still rather search for blog content on there than pay Romeike or Durrants to read 46 million blogs for me!
I'm hoping that technorati tagging will make it easier to find coverage over time, but it remains to be seen whether tags will become a useful filtering system or an unholy mess. I'm inclining towards 'unholy mess' at the moment.
Posted by: Fiona Blamey | June 27, 2006 at 12:29 PM