How Do Blogs Help PR?

The creation of blogs has rapidly quickened the pace of the public relations and corporate communications industry. Blogs create a new platform for the consumer where one can be truly honest about their opinion. Blogs have transformed the voice of the consumer from passive to active. In a non-threatening and comfortable environment, bloggers can give their anonymous and honest opinion about a product with a sense of security. John Cass explains in his website-www.pr.typepad.com- that companies such as Microsoft and Macromedia developed blogs for their support staff as a way for clients to suggest ways of improving their products. Simply, blogs give consumers their own voice, a voice companies simply cannot afford to ignore. Blogs have the power to shape public opinion. Infact. General Motors consulted environmental bloggers before they invested in energy efficent technolgy. Flickr (www.flickr.com) is a Web 2.0 service that allows people to upload pictures instantly online. Therefore, journalists can get a true “inside” view of an event they might be covering. RSS, known as real simply syndication- is a tool that provides blogers with instant information. A company can add an RSS feed on their website, which could announce the launch of a product immediately-no more waiting on slow press releases.
Blogs can give public relations professionals valuable insight into their own work. A blog-goodpr.blogspot.com- comments about the successful actions of public relations professionals. Also, a program created by Blogpulse.com tracks online conversation between bloggers. Therefore, companies and PR professionals can always instantly be “in the know”. Podcasts have the power to revolutionize the future of press releases. Instead of an actual paper press release companies can send audio news releases to promote a new product. Marketingsherpa.com is a website dedicated to promoting this upcoming trend.