Steve Rubel has reproduced the full text of a lengthy article that appeared yesterday in The Holmes Report, an influential PR industry newsletter. It was written by Paul Holmes himself and entitled It’s Time to Take Blogs Seriously—and Maybe to Develop One of Your Own. Nice.

To start with there is quite a bit of Blogs 101 with much background info, but as it is a lengthy piece the pace picks up and there are some very useful sound-bites. There is one I like, which is actually quoting Steve:

The people who read blogs are the opinion leaders and the early adopters. They are people who pass on what they learn to other people. And these sites are being read every day by the journalists who cover your industry. It’s amazing how many stories start on the Internet and then make into the mainstream media.

And there is one quote by McAuley that is close to my heart:

While I think marketing executives are aware of blogs, I think very few really grasp what role they should play in the corporate communication effort...

The biggest potential threat is that there’s no mandate for politeness in blogs. If a blogger doesn't like something, there’s no editor encouraging the writer to tone it down or offer a more balanced view. In many ways, bloggers write to be sensational, to get a reaction, and to start a dialogue—which of course presents an opportunity.

Exactly. That is what so many corporate creatures do not get. In order to have a dialogue you have to abandon control to some extent and accept that the fake veneer is stripped and real people emerge. And sometimes, it is not a pretty sight... but still better than what we see today. A quote by Todd Defren, a principal at Shift Communications and a blogger himself, sums it up real nice:

To those people who still think that blogs are 'loose cannons', I’d say that they should embrace the revolution— or become cannon fodder.

Another quote with the same point, by Mike Spataro of Weber Shandwick Web Relations:

Blogs are more of an opportunity than a threat. Blogs are among the best ways today for companies to speak directly to consumers—an increasingly important strategy in this age of participatory citizen journalism. With media fragmentation at an all-time high and its continuing loss of credibility to the average American consumer, blogs can be tremendous buzz generators for a company. And nowadays, brands can't afford to turn down any opportunity to create a greater sense of connection with their target audiences.

And finally, what Kathleen Godwin, an online marketing columnist describes is closer to what we help our clients to do - build and run their own blogs:

In addition to dealing with independent bloggers, some companies have already created their own corporate blogs. A few savvy businesses have caught on to the fact blogs essentially present an opportunity to build communities where like-minded people gather to establish interactive dialogues on issues of their choice. And in the business world, large communities gather. Business-blogs offer organizations a platform where information, data, and opinion can be shared and traded among employees, customers, partners, and prospects in a way previously impossible: a two-way, open exchange.

There is more where these came from.

A point to remember, this article is written by PR people for other PR people, with a PR jobs to do. tBBC does not really play in that yard. Our aim is to train employees and/or management how to blog themselves. How a particular company applies blogging depends on the business model, the target audience, management culture, external pressures, etc.

The blogs we then set up and train for can vary from group blogs to internal blogs (project or knowledge blogs) to crisis management blogs to 'conversation' or brand blogs. As far as we are concerned, a blog is a tool and we enjoy finding out how it could work in many and varied ways for different companies.

And all the developments in the PR and marketing industry are very relevant to us. They pave the way for a different type of interaction between companies and customers. And with blogs we can add something to their toolbox too.

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