PR and Blogging

Whew. I’m back. Finally. I’ve been working on some projects (work related) that needed special “detailed” attention. They took up a lot of my bandwidth these last few weeks. I woke up this morning thinking about my blog and how important blogs play a role in the new “PR”. I have friends at other companies think that blogs are a waste of time and offer no value. Of course, they are mostly in HR and engineers. They think that blogs are just rants and random entries people do in their downtime. What they completely underestimate is the fact in this new world PR order, a blog can become a destination, and aggregate of knowledge and expertise that helps customers (or investors) make decisions while also building relationships with them. Relationships are THE name of the game. Also, a lot of companies are paranoid (legal dept.) that if their employees start blogging, then it can also hurt relationships and even start creating misinformation that could lead to lawsuits i.e., public company stock takes a nose dive via a employees blogging that has “gone off the reservation” and starts ranting and railing against the said company. That is why every company (public) and most private need to have a safeguard in place if it’s to allow employees blog about the company and products on company time. There needs to be a final sign off on all blog posts (preferably a PR or legal) before it goes live. This safeguard is a necessity. Now, if the employee has their own personal blog and they do not write on company time, then so be it. They can write anything they want if it’s their own personal blog. Nothing wrong with that.

Everyone within a company is responsible for Public Relations. Media or investor relations are specific responsibilities of communications professionals. Those conversations are going to happen out there with or without them, and if companies aren’t on the radar screen, then they are missing valuable opportunities. Blogging also helps bring these customers and relationships back to your company site. This additional traffic will help brand awareness, sales (duh), and Google rankings. Need blog traffic? Just write good compelling content. It’s that easy. Other techniques to get your blog up and pumping traffic include: Links to other blogs, Link Building, buy Blog Ads (many sites out there offer this service), submitting to blog directories, or write guest articles for popular websites allows you to tap their brand equity, user trust, and traffic stream for free. So many ways. This is the new PR world order. Go get your company some exposure. Create relationships that go viral. The traffic and exposure will follow. Blog……….because your competitor is already doing it!