*Disclaimer added Feb. 13: This is all based on the idea that the day-to-day practice of pitching blogs won’t change much in the future. I don’t want to make any judgments on the theory the practice, which I imagine will change quite a bit.
If there is one fear I think a PR person who focuses on blogger relations has, it’s redundancy. With more companies conducting blog outreach programs in-house to save budget, it begs the question if blog outreach teams on the agency side will have a place in the future.
This is something I’ve thought quite a bit about seeing as how I don’t want to be out of a job in a few years time, and honestly, I do think there will always be a need for specialists in the field. Although, as one might expect, I think the dynamic and some could argue, effectiveness will vary greatly.
The Near Future:
In the next five years, blog outreach specialty teams will continue to be instrumental in the success of any digital campaign. They are the ones who hold the relationships, know how to talk to bloggers and get the results the client is looking for with a fast turnaround. I firmly believe that any company who just “goes out” with information to targeted bloggers today, however relevant they might be, will have less luck getting them to write about it than someone on a blog outreach team. At least that’s been my direct experience.
The Future:
However, blog outreach teams can’t stay in denial that they’ll always be the only ones who can deliver. True, they will always hold the Ace when it comes to longevity of the relationships, but I think we’ll start to see a loss of the stronghold over the mid to high-traffic blogs that established outreach teams have had so much luck with in the past.
As the blogosphere becomes more overrun with PR people both clueless and savvy, I predict that more of these sites (Mommy bloggers included) will close their doors to PR with a Boing Boing-esque no e-mail pitching, submission-only policy – even to their friendly PR contacts.
At that point, it’s the content that will reign supreme.
photo via Blaugh
13 February, 2008 at 6:14 am
[...] blogger, and friend of Shiny Red, Melanie Seasons has written an interesting post on the future of blog outreach, in which she argues that the “one fear […] a PR person who focuses on blogger [...]
13 February, 2008 at 6:32 am
Thought provoking – so I’ve posted my thoughts on the issue. Would be interested to know what you think.
15 February, 2008 at 10:23 am
While the broader world of consumer or social marketing may be different, which I doubt, in our B2B technology practice we have never viewed bloggers as requiring any kind of special unit. In fact, one of the very posts I wrote for our blog sought to demolish this fiction. I invite you to check it out and add to the debate at http://inmedialog.com/index.php/archives/fiction-bloggers-are-different-from-other-journalists/
27 December, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Melanie
Now we are hitting 2010 I m interested to know if you have seen your prediction come true?
Murray
28 December, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Hey Murray,
I completely forgot about this post! Rereading, I’d say that it’s pretty spot on.
The only caveat is that when I wrote this, it was specifically intended for a US audience, and my impressions of blog outreach and online PR are now specifically UK-based. But, in the UK – yes, I’d say this is pretty much true. I’m not sure about the US anymore….