Steve Rubel from Edelman sparked a discussion between bloggers and PR professionals today, with the likes of TechCrunch and Mashable putting in their two cents.
The question: Are PR tactics obsolete, especially when bloggers and journalists prefer to discover interesting trends and companies on their own?
The question: Are PR tactics obsolete, especially when bloggers and journalists prefer to discover interesting trends and companies on their own?
PR has truly hit a turning-point with the evolution of blogs and social media, but as a whole remains a widely misunderstood profession that draws a lot of criticism from many outlets.
Many people believe that PR people are purely spammers who crank out a press release once in awhile—and indeed there are a few PR firms who do just that, but what is left out is that PR is more than just media/blogger relations.
PR professionals are in the business of relationships, using them to connect people with the right influencers. PR is also more than reaching out to media—at the root of any media outreach effort is a carefully-crafted message and a plan on who to target to get that message out to the right audiences.
And while bloggers and journalists prefer to discover trends and companies on their own, that leaves a good-sized group of interesting, visionary companies that remain unwritten about and unheard of, mainly because the company might not know how to present themselves, and who to reach out to.
Michael Arrington argues that most PR people don’t read or understand blogs, this is all changing quickly. With more and more blogs being created each day, there are PR people who do read blogs and are making every effort to understand them, because well-written PR efforts directed to the right blogger changes everything.
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