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.