The Dawn of the Anti-Blogger

I think a lot of marketing communications people and other creative types got excited when blogging became part of the day job vs. a nice-to-have.  While blogging is one more task on top of many in a day in the life, it offered a respite from the more processed writing style associated with business communications. Generating and delivering content using traditional marketing communications tools -- news releases, white papers, presentations, brochureware, case histories, etc. -- requires more of a left brained approach.  Writing a blog entry, however, allows the writer to exercise the brain's often less used right hemisphere, where creativity, intuition and subjectivity rule.

And while the traditional tools all serve a purpose as part of a marketing communications campaign that may include product publicity, cause marketing, thought leadership, influencer relations, issues management, etc., they only communicate out and provide little or no feedback loop. By design, these tools don't encourage conversation or the exchange of information.

When integrated into a broad communications campaign that does includes two-way communication channels -- like blogging -- they continue to be very effective, however.

Still, traditional business communication forms often don't allow for marketing services pros to be what many of us are or "secretly" want to be:  thoughtful and creative writers.  Writing for business is all about business.  It's what we do to generate awareness for our clients so our clients can sell more products and/or services and make more money and so we can get paid. Ask any professional blogger why they blog.  It's for the same reasons.

For the rest of us, the non-professional blogger, blogging was making it possible for us to scratch our creative and expressive itch. It's a format, so we thought, that gives us just the right amount of editorial and artistic license that news releases and white papers, generally, deny us.  It gave us a new outlet that satisfied the "I want to be a thoughtful writer" craving many of us have suppressed for too many years. So we thought.

For better or worse, though, these are the facts:  SEO, page ranking, backlinking, link baiting, ping services, social bookmarking, etc., are working overtime to put blogging in the same class as the traditional forms of business communications. The irony to me is that blogging gives us suppressed creative writers a creative outlet within our profession, finally, only to be microscoped by Google Juice.

Beth Harte, client services director at Serengeti Communications, initiated a Facebook discussion earlier this week on this subject, and puts it quite simply:  "But at the end of the day writing only for Google Juice doesn't always provide real value to your clients/customers.  Or, if you're a non-professional blogger like me, it's just not fun."

Perhaps we are seeing the dawn of the anti-blogger - folks who blog because they have something to say and care less about page rank and comments.

Tell Your Story

In recent weeks, I generated a couple of posts with the theme of "the more things change, the more they stay the same."  Specifically, I was referring to two constants in the public relations business. The first was that PR pros have been practicing for decades what is today called "content marketing." The second was despite the proliferation of social media and new digital forms of communications, the majority of tech journalists and bloggers prefer e-mail-based communications vs. all other types.

I also called out a few of the revolutionary changes in our business, many influenced by advancements in technology.  For example, how we write with SEO and SEM in mind.  The entrée of real analytics to how we measure results vs. the THUD factor days of old.  And even how the Rolodex is being replaced by services that peg story ideas to specific journalists and bloggers.  For example, HARO, PRManna.com, Reporter's Source and PitchRate, among others.

Remember the Rolodex? Ever have one on your desk? 

They still exists, of course, but they mostly reside in Gmail, Linkedin, Twitter, etc., these days.

For a PR pro, the size of their over-stuffed Rolodex used to be a badge of success.  It communicated to colleagues, competitors, clients and prospects that they were connected.  And their vast connections meant they could open doors and close deals.

Today, a Rolodex -- real or figurative -- doesn't matter nearly as much as it used to.  The advent of HARO-type services reinforce this position.

Instead of asking "who do you know?," clients and prospects should be asking their PR and social media agencies about their process for researching and developing clients' stories; their process for creating memorable, diversified content based on strategy and messages; and their process for engaging their audiences in a conversation.  

Having close connections at the Wall Street Journal, Fortune or InformationWeek are nice-to-haves.  Crafting the right story on behalf of your client and communicating it to their customers, though the right channels, are must-haves.