One of the really fun things about blogging is when your blog or a post gets picked up by an influential blogger or webpage. A few weeks ago, Dave Winer mentioned one of my posts on Scripting.com (#17 on Technorati Top 100). This week it happened again, Doc Searls, another Internet legend, linked to Media Culpa here. The Doc Searls Weblog is #22 on Technorati Top 100. It may seem insignificant, but it’s part of what makes blogging worth doing. Consider there are more than 3 million blogs out there, and you realize that your chances for attention are extremely small.
Category: Blogging
Global PR Blog Week 1.0
I will represent Sweden in the Global PR Blog Week which is coming closer and closer. Yesterday an official press release was distributed to promote the event.
Weeklong Online Conference Featuring Some of the World’s Most Influential Public Relations, Marketing and Business Bloggers set for July 12-16, 2004
Live & Interactive Global PR Blog Week Event Opens at
http://www.thenewpr.com
NEW YORK, June 21 /PRNewswire/ —
WHO: Twenty-eight influential public relations, marketing and business bloggers from around the globe will participate in Global PR Blog Week 1.0.
WHAT: Spearheading Global PR Blog Week 1.0 is Australian Trevor Cook and Romanian Constantin Basturea, who, along with 26 other PR bloggers and marketing practitioners, will assemble remotely across the globe (including Australia, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, UK and the U.S.) to discuss many facets of blogging and communications.
The event is split into five topic sections including: PR in the Age of Participatory Journalism, Corporate Blogging, Making PR Work: Creativity & Strategy, Crisis Management and The State of the PR Profession.
Global PR Blog Week will be open to everybody — for asking questions, making comments and participating in the discussion through the event’s weblog.
WHEN: The event takes place during the entire week of July 12th – July 16th 2004.
WHERE: On the Internet. Information and a schedule are available on http://www.thenewpr.com. The actual event will take place on the Global PR Blog Week weblog that will be available at http://www.globalprblogweek.com starting June 28.
WHY: To teach businesses about the interactive communications value of blogging and to discuss a wide variety of topics related to the confluence of public relations and technology. The event will look also into the impact of participatory journalism and personal publishing on the PR practice.
“We want to showcase blogging to help our colleagues and clients understand the value of blogging as a fast, low cost and highly-effective publishing, marketing and content management tool,” said Cook, director of the Sydney-based public relations firm Jackson Wells Morris. “With top blogs reaching millions of people daily, and directly influencing journalists and decision-makers, thousands of whom also blog, it is time for blogging to be taken seriously in the marketing mix.”
BLOG DEFINITION AND IMPACT: A blog is an Internet publishing tool that allows users with no technical or programming skills to write about a topic and publish to the World Wide Web inexpensively, instantly, and easily. Most current estimates find 3 million blogs amongst an online community of 729.2 million global Internet users, according to Global Reach. Top blogs have readership in the millions, and many have begun to attract mainstream advertisers.
ITINERARY: The schedule for Global PR Blog Week 1.0 is as follows:
MONDAY 12 JULY — PR in the Age of Participatory Journalism
* Trevor Cook (Corporate Engagement http://trevorcook.typepad.com/weblog/)
* Dan Forbush (ProfNet, Media Insider http://www.mediainsider.com) –
Blogs, Wikis and Expert Networks
* Ryan May (Minnesota Public Relations Blog http://www.mnpr.blogspot.com)
* Steve Rubel (Micro Persuasion http://steverubel.typepad.com)
interviewing Jay Rosen, Chair, New York University Department of
Journalism, author of the Pressthink weblog
TUESDAY 13 JULY — Corporate Blogging
* John Cass (PR Communications http://pr.typepad.com/pr_communications/)
* Trevor Cook (Corporate Engagement http://trevorcook.typepad.com/weblog/)
will interview Robert Scoble on corporate blogging
* Wayne Hurlbert (Blog Business World
http://www.blogbusinessworld.blogspot.com)
* Hans Kullin (Media Culpa http://www.kullin.net)
* John Mudd (Inside Real Estate Journal
http://insiderealestatejournal.blogspot.com) – How blogs can increase
your sales, help you influence the news and make you an overnight expert
in your field
* Todd Sattersten (A Penny For http://www.apennyfor.com)
* Trudy Schuett (WOLves http://wolves.typepad.com/wolves/) – How Business,
Governments and Non-profits can use blogs to communicate with the public
* Roland Tanglao (Streamline http://www.streamlinewebco.com/blog/)
* Jeremy Wright (Ensight http://www.ensight.org)
* Philip Young (Mediations http://publicsphere.typepad.com/mediations/) –
Ethics in PR
WEDNESDAY 14 JULY — Making PR Work: Creativity and Strategy
* Elizabeth Albrycht (CorporatePR
http://ringblog.typepad.com/corporatepr/) – Corporate PR – Pragmatic PR
strategies for community building
* Angelo Fernando (Hoi Polloi http://hoipolloi.typepad.com) – Impact of
blogs on PR and Marcomms
* Bernard Goldbach (Irish Eyes http://irish.typepad.com) – Promoting
client messages through blogs
* Alice Marshall (Technoflak http://technoflak.blogspot.com) – Media
relations issues – including pitching small businesses to editors
* Mike Manuel (Media Guerrilla
http://mmanuel.typepad.com/media_guerrilla/) – Micro media measurement
* B.L. Ochman (What’s Next Blog http://www.whatsnextblog.com) – Examples
of smart blog use in PR and marketing campaigns and sites that cry out
for blogs
* Anthony V Parcero, (eKetchum Digital Media Group
http://www.eketchum.com) – Developing interactive PR strategies
THURSDAY 15 JULY — Crisis Management
* John Cass (PR Communications http://pr.typepad.com/pr_communications/)
* Kevin Dugan (Strategic PR http://prblog.typepad.com) – On the Martha
Stewart case
* Jim Horton (Online PR http://online-pr.blogspot.com)
* Colin McKay (Canuckflack http://www.canuckflack.com)
* Steve Rubel (Micro Persuasion http://steverubel.typepad.com)
interviewing Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News and author of the
forthcoming book We the Media
FRIDAY 16 JULY — The State of the PR Profession
* Richard Bailey (PR Studies http://prstudies.typepad.com/weblog)
* Constantin Basturea (PR meets the WWW http://weblog.basturea.com)
* Robb Hecht (PR Machine http://prmachine.blogspot.com)
* Montag (World of Spin http://worldofspin.blogspot.com) – PR needs a
crisis communication plan
* B.L. Ochman (What’s Next Blog http://www.whatsnextblog.com) – The PR
Lessons of Bit*hing About Blogging
* Tom Murphy (PR Opinions http://www.natterjackpr.com)
Global PR Blog Week was announced and formulated on The New PR Wiki, a collaboration space for professionals interested in the practice of public relations, hosted at http://www.thenewpr.com. (Wiki is server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser.)
PR Managers rely on old fashioned methods for media relations
There is a huge gap between how PR Managers and journalists view the importance of online technologies for communication, according to a survey (pdf) by Glide Technologies. Journalists say that the Internet is the most important source of information about a company, still PR Managers put it at the bottom of their list, after face to face, phone conversation, press conference, press event and PR agency. It indicates that PR Managers value relationships higly, while journalists are more interested in getting the information, with or without relations.
The survey has several interesting findings, for example, 56% of the responding journalists claim that they have seen an increase in the number of press releases the last two years. Almost half of those, say that the volume has more than doubled or tripled. Only 14% of journalists find at least half of all press releases to be of genunie interest, while 88% of PR Managers claim that their press releases are accurately targeted.
When PR Managers want to track which journalists actually reads their press releases, they pick up the phone. The vast majority, 82%, call or contact the journalist (calling to ask “have you read the release I sent you” surely has to be the number one pet peeve of all journalists), while about one in five use some kind of IT tracking.
I can’t help but think that these findings confirm that PR practitioners who adopt blogs and RSS will have an advantage over laggards who stick to “wine and dine PR”.
Lawyer blogs on antitrust lawsuit
Since I work for a law firm I try to stay informed about blawgs, and here is another interesting example. Dan Gillmor writes about the lawsuit “United States of America v. Oracle” which is the antitrust case regarding Oracle’s hostile takeover of PeopleSoft.
Gary Reback, a lawyer for PeopleSoft, is posting daily summaries of the trial on a blog-like format on the PeopleSoft webpage. It is interesting that PeopleSoft use a blog to communicate their side of the story and it shows the importance (at least in the US) of fighting a trial also outside of the court room.
Dream job – Chief Blogger?
In a few years, when we ask our kids what they want to be when they grow up, will they answer “Chief Blogger”? Anyway, I picked this new title up from a post on Online Public Relations Thoughts. Chris Halvorson is Chief Blogger and Web Editor/Writer for Stonyfield Farms’ five corporate blogs.
PR Week on PR blogging
PR Week reports on the Global PR Blog Week 1.0 and on PR blogging in general. Several of the most influential PR bloggers, like Steve Rubel and Trevor Cook are interviewed.