Bloggers and Public Relations

Online public relations experts already know that blogs are valuable publicity tools.

There’s so much critique against paid blogging on the Web that I cannot help but wonder: when a radio DJ stops a song to read a commercial, what makes him better than a blogger who writes a review about a certain product? Well, yes, the review is paid, but let’s get real and understand: everyone knows that blogs are PERSONAL diaries. Business blogs are written by persons too. Are websites that display several ads and banners better than a blog?

I am so tired to read the opinions of some frustrated web authors! Paid blogging is “poisoning the blogosphere”; the Pay Per Post controversy really pisses me off and so on. There’s nothing wrong with receiving money to advertise a product on a blog! But enough about this!

The blogger is free to choose what to post on her/his blog. So if you are a PR officer, I suggest you make yourself a list of bloggers ready to write for your, or to post comments about the brands you promote on their blogs.

If you are one that likes to go always for the big fish, I have to tell you that the big fish was a small fish once! There is great potential in blogs and unknown bloggers. In addition, bloggers have some networks of their own, so they are more than able to spread the word about a product or a company, about an event or a star, about whatever you want. After all, this is what public relations need: public awareness.

And by the way, you don’t always need to pay a blogger to motivate a response. When you approach a blogger just give the information and let him decide whether to publish it or not, what to publish and so on. Treat bloggers like you treat journalists. After all, when you submit a press release to a media outlet you don’t start teaching the journalists how to do their jobs, do you? Bloggers are the same. They are alphas and omegas of their blogs. So… approach with care.