RESOURCES · E-NEWSLETTERS · THINK · APRIL 2007

THE POWER AND PERILS OF BLOG PUBLICITY

One of the challenges currently facing public relations professionals is how to harness the power of blogs. These web logs—in which writers post their opinions on a given topic and allow readers to respond—have grown exponentially in the past few years and their readership and influence can surpass that of traditional media outlets. According to a report by the digital measurement firm Comscore, 30 percent of U.S. Internet users (that's 50 million people) read blogs at least occasionally. This year, blogs and other user-generated content led Time magazine to name "you" its Person of the Year.

The lure to public relations professionals is obvious: here's a new medium, capable of influencing millions of readers worldwide, accessible without going through the gatekeepers of the traditional media. As public relations blogger Don Crowther noted, "Blogging has risen to the point where a single post in a well-read blog can get echoed and built upon in literally hundreds of thousand of other blogs, until the noise level reaches a point where even the monolithic news organizations simply have to pay attention."

Some PR practitioners simply lump blogs into the long list of media outlets. Database services that compile media lists have added blogs as a new category and clipping services monitor web postings just as they do newspaper articles and television broadcasts. And while the benefit of courting bloggers is obvious—the possibility of gaining huge exposure for minimal cost—the risks are just as great. Some words of advice:

Don't treat bloggers as traditional journalists. Encouraging bloggers to write about your product or company may backfire. They're just as likely to lambaste it as they are to praise it. Objectivity and accuracy may be highly regarded values in newsrooms, but few rules apply in the blogosphere.
Know the blogger's agenda. Many blogs are founded to tell a story other than that coming from traditional media. Often a blogger's mission is to rage against big business, the government or other forms of "the establishment." Don't assume that sending a press release or product announcement will result in a glowing review.
Who you gonna call? When a newspaper, radio or TV station airs an inaccurate or misleading story, there is recourse. Calling an editor or a station manager can lead to the reprimand of a reporter, or at the very least to a correction in the next edition of a newspaper. Bloggers report to no one.

While all companies should monitor blogs and even post responses on them to correct inaccurate information, relying on bloggers to disseminate information to the masses is a two edged sword. In many ways blog publicity is still unchartered territory and using blogs to advance your business objectives may or may not be a good idea. Sometimes it can result in word-of-mouth advertising that pays off beyond any traditional marketing or PR campaign. Other times it can lead to negative publicity that echoes endlessly throughout the blogosphere.

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