There's a big discussion going on at the mo' about the role and function of PR in the blogosphere. It was all started by Tom Coates who feels he's been treated like "a piece of meat" by PR companies who target his blog as "influential".
The source of Tom's ire seems to be Stephen Davies -someone I count as a friend. Stephen adds his thoughts to the debate and asks what others think of the situation.
So... [two penneth alert] for me the issue is two-fold: it's retrospectively about how the PR industry is missing the point about the social web and going forward how PR can engage with the online environment properly.
Firstly, the PR industry misses the point with the social web/live web/blogosphere/whatever because it is far too process driven. PR people are ever used to writing a release, creating a media list and blanket mailing it out. This is partly the problem at the heart of Tom's predicament.
Now, this process can be improved by some extra effort and understanding and Stuart Bruce offers a good overview of how PR people can improve this process.
However, working in an online social environment the PR industry needs to abandon process and adapt to working in a networked world of individuals. This invokes real effort, spontaneity, trust, genuine dialogue with real people. It's the stuff PR should have been about from day One but which got lost in the world of mass communications.
It would mean that PR people would know who Tom is and know not to appraoch him. Tom is vociferous about not receiving press releases from people/companies/etc but other bloggers aren't.
But it also means more than just pitching bloggers which is really a glorified version of media relations, but media relations done properly.
PR done in the real way of the social web will - and I say 'will' because we haven't got there yet - mean companies (both PR and clients) being social. That way there will be no crow-barring of bloggers and social networks into horrible mass marketing campaigns. The social worth of an organisation will be there for people to choose to engage with from the outset.
The problem is, of course, that this requires giving over control of the campaign to the 'crowd' and that is a huge wrench for most marketing and PR types. This means that their beloved 'process' is taken over by other people - YIKES!
And I think this comes down to something that my colleague Rick Murray talks about when he says we need to change our understanding of PR from being 'public relations' to 'public relationships'.
That's what I'm striving for. It's about moving beyond doing PR where colleagues say: "Can you find some bloggers that want to write about 'product X'" and explaining that most people - bloggers or not - don't want 'product X' or 'company Y' pushed into their life.
Only problem is... I'm not entirely sure how to get there yet.
Other people blogging about the great debate:
Technorati tags: Tom Coates, Stephen Davies, PR, public relations, public relationships, blogging,
[Disclosure: Stephen's work was done with Edelman whom I now work for]
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