Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Blogs on the Mind

Everywhere I turn this week someone is talking about blogs. Since I started writing on the blog for PRowl, I've learned more about the world of blogs (with a lot of help from Jess) and how important and sophisticated they are becoming.

Also, this week at my internship my boss talked a lot about how we as a PR department need to be more involved with blogs so that we can offer our clients the best services we can. I researched blog directories, as well as sites like BuzzLogic, Technoroti and Spiral 16. I couldn't believe the number of blogs that are out there, and the number of new blogs popping up every hour!

Before learning about blogs through PRowl and researching blogs at my internship, I thought many blogs were like online journals (some are and some aren't.) I now know how important blogs are in PR, marketing and advertising departments. Blogs aren't just online journals, they are places that many people go to for information and places that many people trust.

I have a couple questions that I'm hoping our readers will be able to answer:
  • Do you have your own blog, or contribute on another blog of some kind?
  • Do you use blogs in the workplace, and if not, are you considering it?
  • What do you think about the future of blogs as a tool PR practitioners utilize?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you have your own blog, or contribute on another blog of some kind?

I contribute to my company's blog uwishunu . It's an insider's guide to Philly, check it out! We're also in the TOP 5 blogs in Philly :D

Do you use blogs in the workplace, and if not, are you considering it?

Of course. We're always monitoring blogs and giving travel blogs info :). A lot of bloggers/journalists even use Twitter as a means to find info.

What do you think about the future of blogs as a tool PR practitioners utilize?

It'll be essential in PR campaigns. 'nuff said

Melissa Marsili said...

Thanks for the great answer, Eric!

Cari said...

I totally agree with Eric. There is so much content constantly being created on blogs that it would be ridiculous for PR and any other marketing professional to not be involved.

That's why we started a buzz marketing company that is very similar to Buzzlogic. We help small and medium businesses get involved in relevant online conversations. For the most part, we help businesses that don't have the time or knowledge to do it themselves. We monitor, measure, and get involved in the conversation in a meaningful way.

Cari
Buzz.io

Anonymous said...

We have 5 blogs for our PR firm, each one covers the industries we represent. Our firm has been blogging since 2001--it had started off as just one blog, but then evolved into the 5 as we saw there was a strong pull towards niche blogs.

Blogs will surely become more commonplace for various companies. We think of it this way, a blog is your marketing, customer service dept. and PR all in one location.

However the shift is towards social media in general--Twitter as Eric mentioned, social bookmarking sites, social networking, video, widgets, podcasting...it's really getting diverse.