Public Relations… five years on

Tom Murphy

Five years ago this week, a group of PR professionals with nothing more in common than an interest in blogging and social media, came together from various corners of the world to share their views on Public Relations.

It was an incredibly interesting remote collaboration project that was inspired and driven by a large number of people who put in an incredible amount of work (I recall Trevor, Constantin, John, Jeremy, Elizabeth, Philip, Alice though I’m sure there were more).

small_logo_blue_right[1]This anniversary came to my notice over the past few days as I spotted a number of blog posts celebrating the fifth anniversary of first Global PR Blog Week. (There was a Global PR Blog Week 2.0 the following year but I don’t think it ever quite captured the excitement of the first.)

My first reaction was shock that five years have slipped past so quickly.  Where did that go? My second reaction was remembering the great sense of excitement and community that surrounded pulling together so much content from so many contributors.  I spent some time browsing the archive (there are more than 60 articles) and I was very impressed with the quality and depth of many of the contributions.

I started blogging in 2002 because there was so little PR content online and I wanted some way of capturing interesting things that I found.  This event in 2004 was really the landmark that the PR profession found its voice online, and since that time we’ve seen an explosion of PR bloggers. Of course you don’t have to agree with them – that’s half the fun, but many of the contributors are still sharing their views online today and deserve your attention. You never stop learning in this business.

That first PR Blog Week was organized into five key subject areas. If you have some time I’d recommend a browse, five years may have passed but many of the discussions and issues have remained unchanged.

  1. PR in the Age of Participatory Journalism
  2. Corporate Blogging
  3. Making PR Work: Creativity & Strategy
  4. Crisis Management
  5. The State of the PR Profession

Trevor summed it up well in his introduction:

For PR professionals, it (social media/blogs) is creating many challenges and opportunities – we probably don’t know most of them yet. Through corporate blogging, still very much in its infancy, our clients will have many more opportunities to engage with their stakeholders and they will feel much less beholden to the interpretative whims of media gatekeepers. The flow of information will increase to an extent we could barely imagine possible just a few years ago.

These, and many other issues, will be discussed during Global PR Blog Week 1.0.

I haven’t been blogging as regularly as I was five years ago, but I still read these contributors and many of the bloggers who have emerged since.  There’s a lot of great PR content and opinions out there if you choose to experience them.

Other posts on the subject: