Now that we’ve been called morons, struck back and been called even worse (no links, you know where the fun’s been so there’s no reason to replay it all), I’ve been thinking about ways in which we can all – both PR folks and bloggers – move beyond the rancor to talk about what works, and not about what doesn’t.
In other words, I’m interested more in the how-to than in the how-not-to.
Now in the middle of writing this, the always perceptive and wise Tim Bray dropped this gem onto my lap:
We, the bloggers, are going to go on telling the world what we’re doing for a living and why it matters, and we’re going to do it in our own voices, and we’re going to be simultaneously biased and eccentric and authoritative, because that’s how life is. If our company has a sane strategy and we believe in it, then the world is going to come to understand it.
You, the information professionals, you can aggregate us or repurpose us or debate with us or debunk us. But this big fat pipe with everyone’s voice roaring through it? It’s not closing.
Tim is talking mainly about bloggers, like himself and Robert Scoble who are closely identified with the companies they work for, and their relationship with their corporate PR teams. But he may as well be talking about the bloggers we in the PRosphere try to pitch, push and cajole.
The hardest thing for most PR people to accept is that other participants in the conversation – the media, the customers, the analysts – have their own voice and point of view and it might differ dramatically from their client’s point of view. Back in the good old days, these opposing points of view could be safely dealt with because they were in advertising-supported trade media, analyst firms that could be paid off or customers who could be ignored. Now that everyone has their own printing press and PubSub or Technorati can find “Microsoft sucks” faster than you can say “Scoble,” it matters.
So to get back to my original point (!), what works is understanding that the voices aren’t going to go away, that they matter and are amplified by the power of the Web and these days, entering the conversation is a lot safer than ignoring it.
Technorati Tags: blogging, culture, marketing, public relations
