View My Blog In Your Language

Books Recommended

Alterman, E. (2003). Determining the Value of Blogs. Neiman Reports, 57(3), 85. http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/03-3NRfall/V57N3.pdf.

Brian Cooper's Blog: http://www.searchengineguide.com/briancooper/2007/02/online_
pr_and_marketing_strate.html

Davis, A. (2002), (2nd Edition). Mastering Public Relations. Palgrave Macmillan, U.S.A.

Elena's Blog:
http://elenablogpr.spaces.live.com/

Gill, K. E. (2004). How can we measure the influence of the blogosphere? Paper presented at the WWW 2004 Workshop on the Weblogging Ecosystem: Aggregation, Analysis and Dynamics.http://www.www2004.org or just "Google" (gill www2004).

Haig, M. (2000). E-PR: The Essential Guide to Public Relations on the Internet. Kogan Page; London, U.K.

Harries, D. (2002). The New Media Book. BFI publishing, U.S.A.

Holtz, S. (2002), (2nd Edition). Public Relations On the Net. Amacom Publishers, U.S.A.

Jefkins, F. (2000), (2nd Edition). Public Relations for Your Business. Management Books 2000, U.K.

Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press, U.S.A.

Joseph D. Straubhaar, Robert LaRose (2005), (4th Edition) Media Now: Understanding Media, Culture, And Technology. Thomson Wadsworth Publishers, U.S.A.

Murphy, T. (2000). Web rules: How the Internet is changing the way consumers make choices. Chicago, U.S.A.

Phillips, D. (2001). Online Public Relations. The Institute of Public Relations. Kogan Page; London, U.K.

Weil, D. (2006). The Corporate Blogging. Penguin, U.S.A.

Walker, J. (2005). Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, Routledge.

Should Public Relations Industry Rush into New Media?

When I began this blog my debate was inclined more towards yes Public Relations should rush into New Media. But as I began researching more and more into the topic I came across some interesting information that was published by PRWeek, it was a report on the survey that was conducted by KMPG. KMPG is a global network of professional firms providing Audit, Tax, and Advisory services.

What I found most interesting or rather useful to read is the report that was issued by KPMG, "The Impact of Digitalization – a generation apart". It was a survey of 3000 people, aged from 18 to 65 plus, from the U.K., the U.S., Germany, Spain and the Netherlands explores how different generations across the world are using new media.

I don't necessarily agree with the whole report and some of its findings for example, I am not hundred percent convinced of its claim that despite the growth of new media, television and newspapers remain the primary source of news across all age groups. I might agree if they said more of the older generation still tend to follow the traditional media

The report also includes that over 44 percent of respondents, cited television as their primary news source, followed by newspapers with 28 percent; 14 percent of respondents indicated the radio as their preferred news source and only 13 percent of all respondents preferred the Internet. Which is a bit surprising for the younger generation who are constantly now a days on the net. The survey also highlighted big variations across age groups. For example, Generation Y the under 25’s have the lowest news consumption via TV, with 37 percent choosing this as their primary news source.

The core audience for newspapers is now the over 35’s; on average 32 percent of respondents who are 35 and over use newspapers as their primary news source, with only 7 percent preferring the Internet. In contrast, Generation Y show the highest preference for news on the Internet, with over 30 percent sourcing news this way. This trend continues in to the 25-34 age bracket, with one in four favoring the Internet over newspapers. Only 11 percent of those aged from 35-54 use the Internet for news and this drops to 2 percent for those over the age of 55.

Looking at this report, its quite interesting to see what the future holds for the new media, also to see how it will develop and to see in the coming years whether the new media will take over the traditional media completely. And will it revolutionize the PR field? Even though we can see the new media has many benefits for PR Industries but as we can see that most of us still trust the traditional media that's why we can see still see today the traditional media is alive and kicking.



After reading this report it made me come up with the conclusion that one can not make at this stage any predictions whether the Internet will really revolutionize the PR field or not. And we all know that direct communication is, of course, excellent, but after the initial hype has faded, will audiences still be that interested in trusting of blogs? Since there have been already problems with online PR for example, the issue of flogging practice. We could look at the example of Edelman's who have now legendary attempts to punk the blogosphere on behalf of Wal-Mart and their recent attempt was (Wal-Marting Across America campaign). For further details on this case you can refer to the PRWeek site on the issue of "Industry must self-police flogging". After all, the whole point of journalists is being gatekeepers of information and separating reliable, unbiased information from the rest.

So in my opinion PR practitioners should still be cautious not to overestimate the impact of the new media but let's face it, most of us still tend consume and trust traditional media more than we do blogs. In fact, so far at least, old media are still alive and kicking! And didn't have problems with flogging like the new media has.

Online Communications Allows PR Pros to Bypass Media

Online PR and the Future of On-line PR

Online public relations is known to be a rather new sector in the field of PR, even though PR has existed for as long as there was humans on this earth. Of course at that time PR was only used to sell peoples skills and their services. Brian Cooper the director of online PR at Medium Blue said, that we can look at the examples of cavemen who painted their haunting skills to sell their services to people in that era or time, even though it wasn't called PR at that time but they were still using it to sell their skilled services such as haunting, spear throwing, etc.

Looking at what the Internet has done for us today we should begin by looking at the different fields of study such as science, the media, engineering, etc. What the Internet has really done is enable many fields to progress, but especially looking at the field of PR we can see that it has benefited and progressed a lot from this new technological advancement. The Internet has helped traditional media and the new media emerge together slowly, to create new forms of communication which is called today the New Media. Examples of this new media are Blogs, online newsletters, podcasts, online press releases, etc.


According to Brian Cooper, he states in his Blog on "Online PR and Marketing: Strategies for Internet Visibility", that press releases haven't changed much over the years even though now you can find them online compared to the past, but the differences is in the way in which its being distributed and how the media and the public can find those press releases.

The benefits that Online PR has compared to traditional PR (traditional print media), is that it's able to reach out to a wider audience in a short period of time if not even instantly, to the public and also to local and international media outlets.

Now looking at online newsletters. Online newsletters usually contain both some advertising and information content. The things that we can usually see included in these newsletters are; articles, information about sales and promotions, news alerts, and surveys. This PR strategy has an advantage thats why its also quite a popular new strategy, the advantage it has is that it can be created very quickly and it can also be distributed very quickly and directly to the people who are asking for it, like clients, potential clients, etc, basically it will only be spread to people who are interested in it.

While looking at Blogs. Blogs are like an online dairy or journal that if written for a company it’s actually written by the company’s executive, but in most cases Blogs are written by people who want instant feedback on what they have to say like some kind of an issue, topic, etc. Blogs communicate the writer's opinion about the industry or the company or even any issue that the writer wants to talk about. The benefits of having a Blog is that it helps create informal communication between the company, organisation and it's clients or potential clients, it basically gives the company or organisation a face not just a name or brand and the same goes for the writer of the Blog and it’s viewers.

What I believe as technology evolves, the future of online PR will become more and more sophisticated, it will involve Podcasts and maybe some other new features which we might have not heard of yet. I actually recently heard that there were some companies who already use Podcast as there online PR strategies. Podcast is one of the newest online PR strategies. Podcasts are used today mainly by independent radio programs, but also large media corporations are trying to use it to distribute advertisement.

What are the Advantages of having a Blog in a PR Agency/Industry?

While I was doing my research on this topic I came across some articles on the Internet that stated some of the advantages of having a blog in a PR Agency/ Industry.

According to (Weil, 2006), the advantage of having a Blog is that instantly after the posts get published the Blog becomes noticed by search engines. People who have blogs especially looking at my colleagues we noticed that blog entries do get included quite fast into in the search engine and they are given higher rankings on the search engines. Another advantage is that they are easy to use and easy to develop. Blogs are also great tool for internal and external communications, etc.

Also another thing those companies who use Blogs as part of their PR strategy they have discovered that blogs bring more web traffic especially to their website and in many cases if the visitor likes the website they will also go and visit that organisation's or company's blog, and if visitors feel influenced by the things on the Blog they will actually try to come back and visit it again or either purchase something from their website, etc.

Looking into Elena's blog on "Weblogs : A current trend in Public Relations" She says that according to David Sifry there were 18 million blogs in 2006. But I did some research of my own and I found a clip on Youtube.com, the title of this video clip was "Why Corporate Blogs are the Future of PR" and it said that, According to David Sifry, founder and CEO of blog-focused search engine Technorati, he said that there are almost 27 million blogs in 2006 and it has grown to 50 million and by end of this year it should have increase by 60 percent more than the year before.

Looking at these statistics shows us that blogs are a great way to maintain a good relationship between the public because of its instant feedback in the commentaries, the organisation or company can also in a short span of time reply back to their questions or their comments and also they can reach and influence clients, potential clients or their target audience.

David Sifry

David Sifry during the Global PR Week 2.0 which was held online September 19th 2005 says, that blogs are a good way for any company or organisation to know what are peoples perceptions on them because they can instantly get feedback from people who are interested in what they do or even at times the opposite from people who are not interested in what they do and that helps the organisation or company to know what they need to do to tackle the problem so that they can have everyone interested in them and maybe become later potential clients.

Blog are now very necessary for any PR Agency/ Industry. PR agencies will gain a lot from using this new media because this new media helps organisations or companies to interact with their audience, find out more who they are targeting, how to tackle problems or crisis, and helps them with many other issues concerning them and their target audience.

What Does A Blog Do for Public Relations Agency/ Industry?

Before the field of Public Relations used to depended on controlling the message, which was put forward from the organization, this was to manipulate public opinion.

However, as I was researching I came across some PR books that talked about what the New Media does for PR industries, and one of the things that was talked about is Blogs, these books considered blogging as a public opinion which no longer has control on what is being said and makes it a more honest conversation with the reader. It also shows us that a blog can cultivate public opinion. It also helps the PR industry break away from some of the myths attached to the industry about it being manipulative. A blog is ideal for delivering messages to the Public and that makes it a good tool for a Public Relations company (Phillips, 2001).

Blogs are now a new interactive way to communicate with current and potential customers. Instead of just being a company or an organisation with a name, blogs help them come alive and not just look to the public as a company name.

This free interaction and narrowing of gap between producers and consumers will help attach a human face to the organisation (Holtz, 2002).

Blogs also provide immediate feedback to discuss about any issues that are concerning the public or even if there is a crisis.

In my opinion, blogs are very effective and they are also very easy to use and create. Anyone can create a blog if they follow properly the footsteps that are given to them when they sign up with one of these blog sites. It is also a new form of communication.

Therefore, one can say that a Blogs are the new tools which helps develop a point to point communication with the consumers, and that also gives the consumers a chance for them to voice their opinions and their concerns.

I believe that Blogs serve two main purposes for Public Relations Agency/ Industry or even any other industry or company. These two main purposes are; firstly it serves as a medium to transmit information to the masses and secondly it also helps receive information from the public in the sense of customer feedback.

What are Blogs?

What is a Blog and Why is it Considered Benificial for PR Agency/Industry?

As I was looking through some books about the New Media, I came across this definition for what is a blog and a blogger. The act of updating online journals or even diaries is a blog, adding an entrie into the blog is called blogging, and those people who write blogs are called bloggers (Gill, 2004). Bloggers write heterogenous collection of related topics and content about themselves or about their products/ services or even about their organisation/company and their audience may be large or small as a Blog may have as many as tens of thousands of daily readers. Because now a days we can see so much blog content out there so people have a choice where or with who they should sign up with and even who at the end of the day they should read. .

A blog is basically, a quick and easy way to publish your content to the web. Not only is it economical (costs nothing) but also that it provides the viewer or reader a chance to interact with the author of the blog.

I consider it an ethical and open way of communicating, it helps both people and the industry/ company interact with each other and learn more about each other. One learns more about the organisation and other gets customer feedback on the organisation's products or services. That's why blogging has been proven to be extremely beneficial for any PR agencies/ industries.

Blogs are unquestionable a current trend and issue in Public Relations that is talked about, more and more PR agencies are now turning to blogs to place their products and services to a wider audience around the globe, firstly by advertising their products and actually the second point is the most important point which is customer feedback. The Public Relations industry has much to benefit from this new tool, which is based on customer and organisation or company interacting with each other (one to one communication). The only difference with this style of interactivity is that it's the customers or potential customers and the blog authors for the organisation or company communicating with each other online rather than the usual conventional way.(Weil, 2006).

Perhaps, what this really made me realise is that blogs are kind of personal which means the companies audience or even the authors of these blogs, their audience get to know them on a more personal level maybe they won't know everything about who they are but they will have a rough idea of what is going on in the organisation or company and the same thing with the author he/she will have a rough idea who they should be targeting at especially if they are blogging for an organisation, company, etc.

The New Media that PR Industries had to Adapt

The Internet is one of the newest technologies that the PR industry has had to adapt itself too.

After looking at some books and articles on the internet, I noticed that the latest issue in technological advancement that is part of the Internet, that is also taking the world by storm is Web-Blogs.

Weblogs, or Blogs are frequently arranged in a sequential order so that the reader sees the most recent post first (Walker, 2003). Usually when you look at Blogs it's writing is usually personal and informal, and it has sections for commentaries, links and any other extra features you want to add to the blog. Its one of the communication tools on the internet that's available for anybody to create and publish their own thoughts and ideas about a specific topic. Some blogs are writen and created by a one person and others might have a few people or authors who have created it and published their posts (Gill, 2004).

Of course none of us knows what future technologies that will be used as the main tools for communicating to the public in any PR industry and their practitioners. Even though some say it might be Podcasting. At this stage we can only make predictions.

Public Relations and the New Technology

Public Relations is an industry that has had to always change itself to keep up with the new changing times, especially now we can see it more since the world is going through a digital age. This digital age has helped change the way people communicate to each other whether its in an organisation, etc. We are basically now living in a Global village where nothing is restricted and it does not bound use just to the place where we live in or to our nationalities or even our cultures, now its so easy for one to find out about each others cultures, traditions, country, etc in just a touch of a few buttons. To be successful in this fast changing world you would have to have good information and good tools for communication. As we know that Public Relations is primarily concerned with establishing effective communication between organizations and individuals or companies and their audience (Straubhaar and LaRose, 2005).

According to Anthony Davis (2002), he refers Public Relations to the management of any communication between an organization and its public. As the world enters the digital age where anything to do with computers or the internet plays an important role in the lives of the people, Public Relations industries are all changing and trying to adapt itself to new means of communication that are not only fast but also efficient. PR industries need to reinvent themselves in away that any changes happen in this fast changing world it can easily adapt itself to these changes,

One of the latest New Media that many PR Industries and PR practitioner use is "Blogs", blogs are part of the internet invention and they are very similar to websites but they are easier to develop and they take much less time to setup. Blogs: double every six month. New blogs are created every second of the day. Blogs are one of the fastest growing New Media, according to David Sifry (2006). .

PR Trying Now to Embrace the New Media

PR has been changing itself to try to embrace this new media. Now communication professionals recognise that the way people get their information is also changing because of this new media. Others try to resist this fact, dismissing change as a fad. But those that get it can’t seem to create enough opportunities (Murphy, 2005). Organisations who are willing to take the risk and embrace this new media, benefit from it a lot, especially it helps them boost their sales, create awareness of their company or organisation or even brand and it also helps them spread their products and services to a wider audience all across the world not just locally now but globally too.

According to Dan Harries (2002), he said that it always takes some doing to get clients to understand and accept new thinking like this, but the rewards are worth it. In his opinion, being strategic does not always require being traditional in the way you involve your audience in what the agency or company is trying to do, actually using the new media such as the internet for blogging, allows the agency or company to acquire more information based on costumer or consumer feedback then when you use the traditional ways and they have more chance of having an open and honest conversation with their clients or with any interested party. That also helps the organisation or company learn more how they can improve their products and services for their audience.

This new media enables organisations or companies to have access to the new audience. It also enables new ways of publishing and inspires new ways to transmit information in a convenient way.

Looking at the Internet's use and media trends they will illustrate to you why PR has had to being embracing the New Media.

Public Relations and the New Media

In my opinion, the use of communication technology is pervasive in contemporary public relations practice, and often there’s no choice but to adopt the newest communication technology.

For example, even the smallest and most traditional businesses require the Web sites that their customers expect, and the submission of a simple news release to a mass medium’s electronic newsroom must satisfy the technological requirements of that medium. Organisations recognise that harmful rumors can spread worldwide in minutes, while blogs can help monitor that problem (Alterman, 2003). The contemporary practice of public relations requires practitioners to immediately respond to emerging issues and crisis situations via Web sites, blogs and other new media. Today, the choice of communication channels is dictated by technology: a practitioner must seriously consider which message forms and channels would be best for specific publics. Often, new technological forms and channels, such as electronic pitching, podcasting and blogging, prevail over traditional news releases and media kits.

Thus, I believe that all students must know how to use today’s communication technology and must monitor and most likely adopt rapidly and unpredictably to changing technology. Equally important, public relations students must be taught to appreciate and to continually explore the societal ramifications of continually emerging communication technology. As technology remains simply a tool that PR practitioners must manage and adopt to its changes.

Public relations practitioners are among the heaviest users of today’s communication technology. However, technology remains simply a tool–albeit an important tool–those practitioners must manage. This means public relations professionals must not be unduly constrained by technology in developing their communication strategies, nor must practitioners’ strategies and tactics be restricted by the technicians who develop and maintain organisations’ communication technology infrastructures (Straubhaar and LaRose, 2005). Rather, public relations practitioners must be the managers of how their organisations strategically use communication technology to affect public relationships. Within their organisations, public relations practitioners best understand that communication technology that conquers time and space by permitting instantaneous communication worldwide not only can create understanding and cultivate harmony and empathy between an organisation and its publics, but has great potential to generate misunderstanding and to exacerbate disharmony and conflict (Straubhaar and LaRose, 2005).

The New Media

As we can all see the bubble may have already burst on the Dot-Com boom of the late 1990s, but technology still remains a foundation of our economic landscape. New technological innovations continue to emerge, while the traditional players in telecommunications and the Web continue to refine their offerings and break new ground (Jenkins, 2006).

This New Technological innovation in the Communications field is the New Media. In my opinion the New Media has helped shift the way that the world digests information because with the Internet we can get all sorts of information in a quicker time then we did with traditional media, today we could all say we are living in a Global village.

It is also vital that PR professionals embrace the messaging potential of this new media and manage risk effectively to keep track of customer feed back, also have conversations with clients or potential clients, for example, answer their complaints or queries (Haig, 2000).

With so many communication technologies being offered to us in these days, its hard to choose which tool will be the ideal one to use for communication. From attracting the attention of blogs and e-zines to even podcasts, all these new technologies team up to create and develop a strategic PR, but the only difference its all online compared with the traditional media, and another very important difference that we must all have noticed is that with the invention of the Internet, information could now be distributed in a much faster way and this information can be transmited to a much wider audience, not only locally now but globally too.