“We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.”
Livy, (Roman Historian)
As I posted yesterday, the Internet has had significant change on how every PR practitioner achieves their professional objectives.
Last week I was cleaning up my office when I happened upon my first business card. Examining it, it looked very bare and simple, then I realized why. There was no e-mail address, no mobile phone number, no web address. It was just a name, title, address, phone and fax number.
In the past decade we have adopted to e-mail, web sites, discussion boards, instant messaging, reality TV and a host of other innovations that impact our daily lives.
More importantly from a PR perspective, we now live in an environment where good communication is more important than ever before. It’s a world where organizations communicate directly with their audience every day and it provides PR with great opportunities.
However, as a profession we often seem to yearn for the days when things were more simple. We often seem to fear change.
Tough.
Public Relations is about communicating with audiences. Your job is to understand how to reach those audiences, how to deliver information to those audiences in a format that they find acceptable. We’re not just talking about the media here. PR is about good communication to every audience, that includes customers, partners, staff, suppliers etc.
If you are not trying to reach and communicate with the relevant audiences for your organization or client, then in my humble opinion you’re not doing you job.
This post was prompted by a link provided by Constantin Basturea to a posting by Robert Scoble the Microsoft blogger. Scoble is a speaker at the Demo 2004, which is a (expensive) showcase for demonstrating new technologies.
He mentions that:
“… one of the industry’s top PR pros came up to me after I was on the panel and she said “bloggers scare the heck out of me.” Wrong way to look at it. PR is all about relationships, right? I’m sure she charges a lot of money because he knows the secret to getting five minutes with Walt Mossberg for her client, right? Well, yes, blogs can certainly mess up a good PR plan. Or, are blogs the new PR? I now have a stack of business cards from the world’s most powerful tech journalists and the biggest VC firms. It’ll be interesting to see how blogs change the work that PR professionals do.”
Blogging is not exactly a highly technical, specialized skill. Blogging is simple web page publishing.
Why would a PR person fear blogs? Here’s a theory.
We have been trained in managing communications. Typically, though not always, that communication is aimed at our audience through an intermediary.
That is still a valid model today. After all the media remain a vital constituent of our practice. However, increasingly PR people have to understand how to communicate with an audience directly. A lot of practitioners have a fear of that.
Blogging is an opportunity for Public Relations, not a threat.
Blogging provides a unique means of providing your audience with the human face of your organization. Your customers can read the actual thoughts and opinions of your staff. On the flip side, consumers increasingly want to see the human side of your organization, beyond the corporate speak.
If you don’t believe it, try it. Host a corporate blog. It works and you’ll be amazed at the positive feedback you’ll get.
The other side of the blogging movement is of course the thousands of independent people who provide their views on events and news. As these individuals garner an audience that is relevant to your company, then your job is to communicate with them.
As Livy wisely states, the more ignorant we are of something the more afraid we are of it. Understand the changing balance of PR communication, embrace the change and get rid of the fear.
It’s your job.
PS: Why not share your opinions on the changing face of PR in our survey.
Murphy's Law 