How digital PR is changing

Mark Hopkins at Mashable has written a post that's a must read for PR people who ever find themselves doing PR in the blogosphere. It's our day to day here at number 33, but there are some useful tips for any PR person in Mark's post. The post originates from an article by Edelman's Steve Rubel on how PR needs to change from pitching to something a little more sophisticated.

All too often I hear that people in PR are told: "never pitch to a blogger". Fact is, we do, and some are doing it a very ok way. So have a read of this post and see what usefull logs you might find laying about:

"Instead of being sent press releases by public relations folks, I'm receiving friendly emails and phone calls letting me know about interesting upcoming tidbits of news, and increasingly I'm starting up conversations of a friendly nature that often have very little to do with what sort of new thing their client may be doing. It's leading to all sorts of beneficial things."

Mark goes on to talk about the kinds of things a good PR person should do. I hope this is useful. Is to me.

Comments

[david cushman]

It all comes down to relevance in a networked world, doesn't it? I don't care (presuming a certain threshold) about the quality of the press release, if it isn't relevant to me it's of no value.
If the person sharing the message with me is someone I trust, and who knows what I think is cool, I am more likely to embrace, adapt to my own community of purpose, and therefore pass on (to people who trust me).
This is the idea encapsulated in the P2PR discussion we've started here:
http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2008/07/p2pr-real-online-public-relations.html

[david cushman]

Sorry, looks like that link failed. the one attached to my name here, should take you there directly

[The Red Rocket]

Another good spot Drew (I enjoyed the blogging tips spot).

It raises an interesting question about PR's acceptance of the importance of bloggers and put time into thinking about engaging with them.

I wonder what % of PRs actually blog themselves..? Or even read them? Until this happens, not much will change across the industry.

[Paul Stallard]

Nice blog again Drew. I agree with the point that David makes above. It is hard to understand the dynamic of blogging if you don't blog yourself. I would like to see more PROs practising what they preach.

[Richard Millington]

This week I secured nice coverage on three very important blogs for a client. I began working on these pitches several months in advance with by commenting on those blogs.

It takes time, if the time isn't worth it, don't do it.

[Nivell Rayda]

Nice thread of comments here.

I began to conduct some sort of survey on corporate blogging. please visit:

http://indipr.com

[Craig McGill]

Some good points there. I think blogging - as long as you build up the relationship - can be very, very useful and bloggers should be considered as important as other media.

However, many companies don't see the long-term benefits of exposure on blog sites - and others place little value on their opinions when it comes to evaluation.