Follow The Leader
Why blog ? Does blogging actually help with PR? Follow this blog and we will find the answer together. In here, you will find my ID and how I can relate to blogging.
I've been studying MA in Public Relations and public communications for four months now at the University of Westminster in London, I went back home (Jordan) for the Christmas vacation. Today I was asked about my studies what does PR mean? And what is its future?
I used the following line, to describe it; PR is the art of good communication with any audience that is relevant to the goals of the organization.
And their second question was" so what is new"?
My mind got back to our last session which was about trends of PR,And there, I thought of the blog I should tell them something about that after reading some webs and researching I thought of some interesting points about blogs, what is blog?
How can it help a PR practitioner?
And where it is heading?
So, here it goes:
It was mentioned by tom Murphy on the year 2004 that, the major trends that may have an impact on Public Relations in the next three years are:
The rise of individual publishing, better known as blogging (68%) topped the poll.
58% was the impact of increasing “noise” in the market.
The growth in the number of media outlets (53%),
A general increase in direct communication (52%)
PR becoming increasingly important (50.5%)
A rise in the volume of tightly targeted PR campaigns (42%),
Increasing difficulty in achieving PR objectives (40%).
The importance of professional management is increasing. Good Public relation became as a milestone to any successful organization, and one of the main points on the management agenda; building the organization reputation happens to be a detrimental for an organization e organizations success.
This reputation used to take a lot of the public relations practitioners time and efforts to be built, with blogging, the goal just got a little easier
Blogs (short for "web logs") are online journals, published on the Web by either an individual or by, an organization .
Blogging is an effective tool for an effective PR, and is an easy road to reach the targeted goals.
Blogging is a PR tool is new trend, at the beginning it was only something cool to do, but now it is powerful, informative, supplying the readers with unique perspective and resources, a strong tool to achieve the goals of any professional organization, practitioners could have their own spin and comments in addition for opening the space for the readers to comment.
More over, it adds value for the readers by reading the public relations practitioners' analysis.
Professional and informative blogs succeeded by being personal and honest so it kept readers coming back , making it an important tool Using blogs built a continuous relation with public .
Since Public Relations is about mutual understanding and relations this tool (blogs) the new professional way in building those required relations; it also helped practitioners to be tough leaders and experienced in their field, in addition to engaging customers on one to one level, also blogging helped in building credibility for public relations practitioner themselves .
Every organization must communicate and the two major tools it uses to communicate are marketing and public relations, both systems are using the blogs as a modern technique yet how can people know about a blog??
A news release might help, media relations efforts, radio, television, can be used in having a group audience building word of mouth after that the blog job will concentrate on engaging the customers in a dialogue and to bring a transparent dimension to the company , the audience turned to be the on line society.
Bloggers must be sensitive for what they are writing about, it is a giant opportunity for cooperation with other people and organization on a level of a brand, or just exchanging information and opinions.
There is now over 4.1 million blogs around the world, with a new blog created every 7.4 seconds.
Several year ago Public Relation struggled to prove it self on the managerial level today management finally realized the importance of PR considering blogging trend as a necessary part of Public Relations activities, realizing that having an effective blog will help them listen to their clients, gain new business, use their staff time more effectively, less expenses, gives the impression of being a forward thinking company, up-to-date, and mainly to achieve the organization goals.
One marketer mentioned. "I know from our perspective, the amount of people we've ended up talking to and doing business with just simply thanks to our blog is amazing. Producers in Hollywood. People from publishing companies in the States. People who in another time without this network we would never have made contact with."
You can never know who will be interested to read your blog or what you are writing about , people who might not even crossed your mind might be a target audience or a future customer and the interesting thing in that is that they can share with you thier opinions, and remarks.
During my visit back to my country I noticed that some thing had changed the security level in all aspects is raised after the bombing that happened on November eleventh ,lots of check points ,cars are not allowed to park near the hotels , too many police men in the streets …etc.
Talking about this with my friends a blog sucssess story came up which caught my attention .Sabri Hakim is a friend who started blogging a few months back. His blog is mainly focused on photography and creative writing he wrote in it several things about Jordan as a country , using his creative writing skills and he happens to be amateur photographer he gathered several pictures from the Jordanian society ,streets buildings what ever he find interesting in his road , he posted those pictures to his blog
at the night of the terrorist bombings Sabri was, as any Jordanian, rushing out to help the people, and of course his beloved camera was with him
He took several shots during the mess, after that he went back to his computer and uploaded the pictures to his blog
The next day , people called him up to tell him he was on cnn tv being broadcasted all over the word
Sabri was very surprised, it was taken by the CNN and published in his name all over the world the very Next day!
His blog was featured on CNN TV!
CNN left all the media outlets in Jordan, all the press agencies and journalist and decided to get some more in depth news from an average blogger, the word from the street if I might say. This is the power of blogs; the power of the individual.
They did not refer neither to the Jordanian television nor to al- Jazeera not even for their own reporters, they opend the Jordanian people's blogs.
I looked at that as a big success story, why the CNN picked him why not an official organization? Why they referred to the blog?
The blog post was more powerful, more honest, more real, to Sabri's credit, he was quick and professional he deserved his 15 minutes of fame.
Dear readers I really want you to have a look at sabri's blog it is on
http://www.sabrihakim.blogspot.com/. It is A famous blog now, at first I looked at it to look at the bombing post later other pictures caught my attention it is creative, interesting it made me think...
Blogging is an effective tool for an effective PR, and is an easy road to reach the targeted goals.
Blogging is a PR tool is new trend, at the beginning it was only something cool to do, but now it is powerful, informative, supplying the readers with unique perspective and resources, a strong tool to achieve the goals of any professional organization, practitioners could have their own spin and comments in addition for opening the space for the readers to comment.
More over, it adds value for the readers by reading the public relations practitioners' analysis.
Professional and informative blogs succeeded by being personal and honest so it kept readers coming back , making it an important tool Using blogs built a continuous relation with public .
Since Public Relations is about mutual understanding and relations this tool (blogs) the new professional way in building those required relations; it also helped practitioners to be tough leaders and experienced in their field, in addition to engaging customers on one to one level, also blogging helped in building credibility for public relations practitioner themselves .
Every organization must communicate and the two major tools it uses to communicate are marketing and public relations, both systems are using the blogs as a modern technique yet how can people know about a blog??
A news release might help, media relations efforts, radio, television, can be used in having a group audience building word of mouth after that the blog job will concentrate on engaging the customers in a dialogue and to bring a transparent dimension to the company , the audience turned to be the on line society.
Bloggers must be sensitive for what they are writing about, it is a giant opportunity for cooperation with other people and organization on a level of a brand, or just exchanging information and opinions.
There is now over 4.1 million blogs around the world, with a new blog created every 7.4 seconds.
Several year ago Public Relation struggled to prove it self on the managerial level today management finally realized the importance of PR considering blogging trend as a necessary part of Public Relations activities, realizing that having an effective blog will help them listen to their clients, gain new business, use their staff time more effectively, less expenses, gives the impression of being a forward thinking company, up-to-date, and mainly to achieve the organization goals.
One marketer mentioned. "I know from our perspective, the amount of people we've ended up talking to and doing business with just simply thanks to our blog is amazing. Producers in Hollywood. People from publishing companies in the States. People who in another time without this network we would never have made contact with."
You can never know who will be interested to read your blog or what you are writing about , people who might not even crossed your mind might be a target audience or a future customer and the interesting thing in that is that they can share with you thier opinions, and remarks.
During my visit back to my country I noticed that some thing had changed the security level in all aspects is raised after the bombing that happened on November eleventh ,lots of check points ,cars are not allowed to park near the hotels , too many police men in the streets …etc.
Talking about this with my friends a blog sucssess story came up which caught my attention .Sabri Hakim is a friend who started blogging a few months back. His blog is mainly focused on photography and creative writing he wrote in it several things about Jordan as a country , using his creative writing skills and he happens to be amateur photographer he gathered several pictures from the Jordanian society ,streets buildings what ever he find interesting in his road , he posted those pictures to his blog
at the night of the terrorist bombings Sabri was, as any Jordanian, rushing out to help the people, and of course his beloved camera was with him
He took several shots during the mess, after that he went back to his computer and uploaded the pictures to his blog
The next day , people called him up to tell him he was on cnn tv being broadcasted all over the word
Sabri was very surprised, it was taken by the CNN and published in his name all over the world the very Next day!
His blog was featured on CNN TV!
CNN left all the media outlets in Jordan, all the press agencies and journalist and decided to get some more in depth news from an average blogger, the word from the street if I might say. This is the power of blogs; the power of the individual.
They did not refer neither to the Jordanian television nor to al- Jazeera not even for their own reporters, they opend the Jordanian people's blogs.
I looked at that as a big success story, why the CNN picked him why not an official organization? Why they referred to the blog?
The blog post was more powerful, more honest, more real, to Sabri's credit, he was quick and professional he deserved his 15 minutes of fame.
Dear readers I really want you to have a look at sabri's blog it is on
http://www.sabrihakim.blogspot.com/. It is A famous blog now, at first I looked at it to look at the bombing post later other pictures caught my attention it is creative, interesting it made me think...
"Of course as any other trend,blogging has some challenges to face, Some marketing people don't think having PR provide editorial advice is a good thing. Their concerns are the fear of having problems, regardless of the good intentions of the PR department, knowing that the PR department is reading all the blog entries is going to have a chilling effect on the marketing bloggers, If developers new that PR would be reading their entices, their guess is that 90% of them wouldn't have even started a blog"
That was taken from a marketer personal opinion those points were written in his blog.
What caught my attention here that the cold war still exists between the marketing and the public relation!
With all the achievements and the cooperation between the two systems yet there is some kind of competition in all joint techniques and activities, we can say that the blogging is another point listed in the marketing mix.
· Also blogging is a challenge to the PR industry because PR is "totally about control," the PR field will struggle to cope with the increase of sources of information and opinions available on the Internet.
· Sensitivity about becoming mouth pieces for other organizations and companies.
I learned at the University of Westminster through my MA course how to prepare a pitch document, and for that,I need to know:
- Where we are now?
- Where we want to be?
- And how we can best do it!
Trying to use the same methodology to talk about the importance of public relations for management trend we can see that the public relations is growing quickly and successfully during the last and current period,
My personal point of view I think public relations should be on the table of decision making and on the board table as well.
To reach that, public relations should work harder on its own image; once the media and the words of mouth mention the successes different organizations achieved, because of their management belief in the importance of PR and by giving the space for the public relation practitioners to work …
It was stated in 1997 that "public relations managers and the PR industry as a whole needed to find ways in which to gain access to the dominant management coalitions in major companies".
Today the reputation and importance is noticed but as mentioned we are looking for the seat at the top table.
There is evidence that finding "a seat at the top table" is not only difficult for public relations people, it is difficult for people from every managerial discipline. Certainly, the accomplishment of chartered status by the IPR is a strong move in the right direction.
More over, the role of the communicators is becoming more and more important; today they are the key factor for building a relation and a reputation for the organization with its public not forgetting to mention building trust with the stake holders.
Also we can find that CIPR now has more than 8,000 members, an increase of 60% since 2000, and many new programs and initiatives reflect the development and power of PR in today's business and academic communities. New graduates, postgraduates, and practitioners form a very lively part of PR debate and development of new trends such as blogging.
We find the consumer and the customer iseager for real information about the company or the organization they are interested in. They also like the fact of having a relation with it, know more about it not just to see a nice paid advertisement that might or might not be true.
and the have almost no chance to share their opinion .
In a recent telephone survey to PR practitioners - consultancy and in-house - it was discovered that 70 per cent of their time was taken up with work they described as 'marketing communications'.
Noticing that relation between the public relation and marketing is getting clearer.
Finally I want to say that knowledge is power facts are needed blogs are successful not just cool. It is a very useful tool.
P.S: In my coming publish I will share with you the success story of soft sell regarding the importance of PR and the new trends within blogging itself
- Where we are now?
- Where we want to be?
- And how we can best do it!
Trying to use the same methodology to talk about the importance of public relations for management trend we can see that the public relations is growing quickly and successfully during the last and current period,
My personal point of view I think public relations should be on the table of decision making and on the board table as well.
To reach that, public relations should work harder on its own image; once the media and the words of mouth mention the successes different organizations achieved, because of their management belief in the importance of PR and by giving the space for the public relation practitioners to work …
It was stated in 1997 that "public relations managers and the PR industry as a whole needed to find ways in which to gain access to the dominant management coalitions in major companies".
Today the reputation and importance is noticed but as mentioned we are looking for the seat at the top table.
There is evidence that finding "a seat at the top table" is not only difficult for public relations people, it is difficult for people from every managerial discipline. Certainly, the accomplishment of chartered status by the IPR is a strong move in the right direction.
More over, the role of the communicators is becoming more and more important; today they are the key factor for building a relation and a reputation for the organization with its public not forgetting to mention building trust with the stake holders.
Also we can find that CIPR now has more than 8,000 members, an increase of 60% since 2000, and many new programs and initiatives reflect the development and power of PR in today's business and academic communities. New graduates, postgraduates, and practitioners form a very lively part of PR debate and development of new trends such as blogging.
We find the consumer and the customer iseager for real information about the company or the organization they are interested in. They also like the fact of having a relation with it, know more about it not just to see a nice paid advertisement that might or might not be true.
and the have almost no chance to share their opinion .
In a recent telephone survey to PR practitioners - consultancy and in-house - it was discovered that 70 per cent of their time was taken up with work they described as 'marketing communications'.
Noticing that relation between the public relation and marketing is getting clearer.
Finally I want to say that knowledge is power facts are needed blogs are successful not just cool. It is a very useful tool.
P.S: In my coming publish I will share with you the success story of soft sell regarding the importance of PR and the new trends within blogging itself
· www.edlmen.com
· www.pandia.com/sharedword/200-39-oclc-size.hlml
· www.CNN.com
· www.sabrihakim.blogspot.com
· Interview with Mr. Omar KoudsiWeb Architect & Co-founder
· Interview Mr. Sabri Hakim"Changing the Arab World, One Homepage at a Time…"http://www.jeeran.com
· Strategic Public Relations
· PR and marketing blogs
· Blogging for PR
· Global pr blog
· www.pandia.com/sharedword/200-39-oclc-size.hlml
· www.CNN.com
· www.sabrihakim.blogspot.com
· Interview with Mr. Omar KoudsiWeb Architect & Co-founder
· Interview Mr. Sabri Hakim"Changing the Arab World, One Homepage at a Time…"http://www.jeeran.com
· Strategic Public Relations
· PR and marketing blogs
· Blogging for PR
· Global pr blog
About me
- I'm lina
- From Amman, Jordan
- About me myself and I About me I am Lina Hourani, 33 years old, MA student at the University of Westminster in London. I have 11 years of experience in the job market Happen to be the higher education coordinator for a USAID project in Jordan Was responsible for the youth courses and activities at 21 universities all over Jordan Also I enjoyed being a team leader for several conferences and youth activities on the national and the international level Today I am enjoying my studies and trying to make used of all the information that I’m getting from my tutors and class mates at the university, which is without doubts a very interesting and informative experience. I’m aiming to have my MA degree in Public Relations and Public Communication on September 2006.
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