OK, so this week began with a column from PR Week's editor, published in The Guardian. In the column the editor said there's a real lack of good PR blogs in the UK at the moment.
Cue a considerable number of the UK and US PR community (Antony, Stuart, Simon, Stephen, Constantin, Niall...) who responded by pointing out that there are actually many UK PR blogs. The editor of PR Week then replied and said 'ok, maybe you're right'. In terms of how many UK blogs there are, a definitive(ish) list is here.
I'm not taking sides, but I sometimes wonder if there are enough good PR blogs in the UK. What do you think? Maybe, in a roundabout way, PR Week's editor is right. I'm not saying there aren't many, just there could be more. I'm thinking there could be more good PR agency blogs for a start - there's a lot of agencies that aren't blogging. And maybe there could be more discussion blogs, like Linkbunnies for PR people? I think maybe UK Press should be a blog, so the emails could still come to you through RSSFwd, or you could surf the blog, or use something like bloglines. And I think more of my friends could blog. They'd be great at it. And did you know RocketBoom, the tech videoblog, is making $85,000 in ads a week and has 300,000 daily viewers? I know the PR industry isn't as big at the geek industry but why isn't there a PR industry videoblog? (hmm! :-) I think we've got so much potential, but maybe the problem is that PR agencies are always so busy that there's just no time.
So here's to many more home grown blogs, podcasts and videoblogs for the PR industry.
Let's set up a UK Digg-type service for marcomms/PR. That'd be the lowest maintainance way of sharing the best info, links etc.
Posted by: Antony Mayfield | June 13, 2006 at 09:25 AM
Perhaps it's not surprising that an editor of a trade magazine should assume that to be good a blog must be like a print publication.
To me, blogs are good just because they're authentic and amateur. Clearly, some good blogs do become good publications; but others will continue just because the author finds a motivation to keep them going. We need more PR blogs - not one or two 'better' PR blogs. More voices, not fewer.
Posted by: Richard Bailey | June 13, 2006 at 09:35 AM
I don't know if you'd call it a PR blog or a tech blog or what, but here at Prompt Communications we're slowly getting together our corporate blog. It's written by the various former tech-writers who work on staff here, with occasional input from the PR bunnies.
Posted by: Lance Concannon | June 13, 2006 at 10:24 AM
Thanks for the link, Drew. i think you are right to point out that what Danny said is perhaps technically true.
But I also agree with Richard bailey in that the 'big agency blogs' or corporate blogs are not necessarily the best ones.
Stuart Bruce posted recently about how he reads some minor blogs because they are ones that really have something to say. The risk is, of course, that with big agency blogs all you're going to get is PR Week in blog format... and who would want that!
Posted by: Simon Collister | June 13, 2006 at 04:08 PM
If the dead tree person has a problem lets help him. I propose that PRW puts up stories onto its wiki, allowed us all to listen to the journalist interviews as podcasts gives public access for comment and then published the result in dead tree format.
Anyone else got a scheme?
Lets comment on his blog.
Oh... hasn't got one.....
Perhaps he's not 'got it' yet.
Posted by: David Phillips | June 14, 2006 at 03:35 PM