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A CHALLENGE TO PRSA: THERE'S STILL PLENTY OF TIME TO ADD A BLOGGING TRACK TO 2004 CONFERENCEBy BL Ochman
Look through all 56 pages of the conference program PDF and you won't find a single session devoted to blogging. And yet PRSA calls itself "the architects of change, helping the organizations we work for listen to and respond to the world around us as it evolves and shifts." I challenge PRSA to add a blogging track to its conference. I have a presentation ready to roll and I can pull together several top bloggers in a couple of hours. Although the event was planned many months ago, any forward-thinking organization would leave a couple of slots for important developments in the field. Last week, PRSA's Technology Section held a Webinar on PR in Emerging Communications Channels - RSS and Blogs that PR Week and iMedia Connection say attracted over 300 participants. Presenters were Steve Rubel, of Micro Persuasion and ClickZ editor and blogger Pamela Parker. That's great, and important, but it's no substitute for including blogging in PRSA's annual event which draws members from around the globe. More than 150 professional development opportunities, conducted by agency, corporate, nonprofit and government public relations leaders, grouped in 3 new tracks: Issues facing the profession; managing and measuring; and strategies, tactics, specialties. But unless you've been under a rock, you'd know that blogging has certainly become a viable part of the marketing mix and one PR people can no longer afford to ignore. The industry's trade organization has an obligation to keep up with developments in the field, not just to cover tired PR tactics. PRSA has nearly 20,000 members organized into 116 Chapters that represent business and industry, counseling firms, government, associations, hospitals, schools, professional services firms and nonprofit organizations. "As the world changes," PRSA's website continues, "our profession changes along with it. We demonstrate the ultimate value of our profession to a world that needs our insights, our expertise and our commitment as never before." Now would be a great time to start.
BLOGS ARE A GOOD BUY FOR ADVERTISERS BUT FEAR AND IGNORANCE KEEP MEDIA BUYERS AWAYAdvertisers including Paramount Pictures, The Wall Street Journal, and The Gap are successfully reaching niche audiences for a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising and a handful of bloggers are earning six-figure incomes from their blogs. Why aren't more advertisers and bloggers getting together? Fear, ignorance and the knowledge that a lot of pioneers got shot. With clickthrough rates in traditional online advertising dropping, inexpensive blog clickthroughs are as high as 5 percent. Blogs provide advertisers an excellent opportunity to reach a devoted audience niche for as little as $10 a week. Already, blogs like DailyKos which receives 15 million page views a month, get $9,000 a week for advertising and is sold out for weeks in advance. Advertising on blogs is not like buying a minute on the Super Bowl says Henry Copeland, founder of Blogads, which matches advertisers with blogs. Successful blogs are edgy, have a sense of humor, and are recognized experts in a narrow niche. Blog audiences look at traditional ads, like "Click here, get 20% off," and say "screw this, I've seen it everywhere," Copeland says. Advertisers should look at blogs in terms of brand development, says Rick Bruner, of Business Blog Consulting, It's easy for a billion dollar company that has a customer service or brand blog to see $100K worth of value, Bruner says, "and that's just a bug fart in the marketing budget of a Fortune 500 company." Blogs are efficient buys In a clueless explanation of blogging's appeal, CFO.com says "For just a few hundred dollars, companies can start a buzz about new products, tout awards won, and generally blow their own horns." Wrong! Nobody is going to read a self-trumpeting blog or one that's awash in PRese. In fact, compelling content is the driving force and any company that doesn't realize that will have a blog that's bound for oblivion. Advertising is not the only way for bloggers to make money, say Bruner Bloggers could have a hybrid of free and paid content, Bruner suggests, with micro-payments of as little as 50 cents for reading subscriber-only articles or papers. One blog that does this is adrag which charges 2 Euros a month for subscribers to view its huge video archives of commercials. Bloggers ñand their advertisers - also could sell music re-mixes, reports, all kind of in-depth posts that could sell for a few dollars, Bruner says. With over four million bloggers, almost no one is doing anything like this, he says, although people like Nick Denton are paving the way. Denton's Gawker Media publishes blogs including Gawker, Wonkette, Fleshbot, and his "testosterone trio," Jalopnik, a car site; Kotaku, for video gamers; and Screenhead, which is about "funny shit." His blogs have attracted advertisers such as Nike, New Line and General Electric. Audi is the most significant advertiser so far, providing "evidence that blue-chip marketers are finally looking at weblogs as part of their online media mix," according to Denton. Clearly, no company, organization or association can afford to ignore blogs any longer. Early adopters have taken the lead, and blogs finally entering corporate consciousness. Despite the fact that every publication on the planet seems to have run at least one article about blogs, the first question I am asked in every Bloginar seminar I give is always "What's a blog?" Pretty soon, the companies that don't know the answer will pay the heavy price of obsolescence.
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The Public Relations Society of America, is asleep at the wheel. The largest PR organization in the world has it's PRSA International Conference coming up Oct. 23 ñ 26 in New York City and blogging is not on the program. That's a fossilized approach for the PR industry's premier trade organization.
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