The Affair with Bloggers
While many PR agencies in countries like the US have been including bloggers outreach in their Marketing and Communications plans. (The Nokia Nseries Blogger Relations Programme is a good example). I've noticed that not many agencies in Singapore are doing that. There are some who do and do it really well but there are many others who do not seem to realise the shift in media.
Brian Solis wrote that PR 2.0 is defined by the evolution of industry practices forced by the shift, and the process, of influence ...
One interesting thing I noticed from my recent discussions with several local bloggers about a particular client is that there is a significant difference between talking to a journalist and a blogger. Typically, PR consultants send pitch notes and explore story angles with a particular media, the media either agree to include a write-up (or not) in his/ her column, they seldom invest time to DISCUSS topics and issues with you.
With bloggers, you are often talking to a thought/opinion leader who is often quite open to ideas and willing to provide feedback and discuss industry issues, especially when you are able to single out one who blogs about topics relevant to what your client or company does.
Bloggers, like traditional media are also often looking for interesting content for their blogs. I believe bloggers should start talking to more PR folks, we are the people with alot of content as we usually have many different clients and PR professionals should get out and start listening, talking and engaging this group of influencers.
I am not saying here that PR professionals should forget about traditional media and get all excited about the new. I am saying, the ability to combine our skills and expertise with the help of new tools to reach out to more and targeted audience should be one of the key aim of a good PR professional in this PR/ Web 2.0 age.