I know the issue seems to have been debated a thousand times, but what IS the real value of blogs?
There seems to be a noticeable distance between bloggers and non-bloggers. When I told my friends and family about my guest editing stint here, I was greeted with blank faces all round. And if I’m honest, I think although I’ve always considered myself reasonably technology ‘savvy’, I wasn’t really aware of blogs until about six months ago.
People are still raving about the value of blogs in PR, but if blogging has had its heyday and could be on its way out, how much value does it really hold if joe public still doesn’t know about them? Reading the industry mags, specifically PR Business, you’d think blogging was going to take over the world.
I think PROs hooked on the blogosphere can sometimes be in danger of becoming too enveloped in its potential. Controversial comments on a blog about PR, certainly! I am very aware that blogs are a great tool for communicators undoubtedly, but I think its value is sometimes in great danger of being exaggerated.
PR Studies 
When I’m speaking at conferences or workshops about bloggging I always start with this quote from The Guardian:
“The PR who ignores blogs is an even a bigger fool than those who think that blogs change everything,” said Stuart Bruce, the founder of UK PR company Bruce Marshall Associates
The so-called PR blog experts tend to fall into two camps.
On one hand we have those who think blogs will disrupt everything we do – “the press release is dead” brigade – think Steve Rubel and Micropersuasion.
Most of the specialist ‘blog consultancies’ that have appeared also fall into this camp. The problem is many of them have been created by bloggers, IT professionals, journalists etc – in fact anybody but professional PR communicators who can understand the big picture.
On the other we have those who say blogs are yet another aspect of communications that we’ve all got to get to grips with – think myself and Tom ‘PR Opinions’ Murphy at Microsoft Ireland.
The blog hype is actually doing a lot of damage as it makes it more difficult for us to have sensible conversations with clients about what they should really be doing about blogs.
Yes, I think blogs are over-rated.
They may be a useful tool to enable quick and easy communication between companies nd journalists – but for a good proportion of the wider public blogging remains a mystery.
In a recent lecture room containing @ 15 people I was one out of two people who had a blog. Many people hadn’t even heard of them – and these are technically-savvy, young students.
So, based on that, do I think most people would use a blog to give a company feed back on a product or service? – probably not. Neither do I think that they would read a blog to discover company news/developments – they want that presented on a properly designed website.
Blogs are useful, but let’s not get carried away.
Of course blogs are over-rated.
Mine has given me access to Senior civil servants and a Governement Minister this week (not in the UK, I might add). It has gioven me platforms to discuss issues such as the importnace of blogs and if you want to find out about me the Google Juice you get from blogging can be measured (Try “David Phillips” in Google and see where I rank.
If you want to find out about a company or organisation, where do you go….Google of course.
Of course, there are people who do not use or know about blogs. There are people who have never opened up a breadsheet newspaper and loads of people who do not know what CNN is. Does that make these media irelevant?
Are we in PR or not?
If yes… mono-media is not enough.