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There are few situations in which a PR practitioner enhances
audience relationships and personal rewards by being a demagogue. So
the first facet of blogging – the freedom to say anything – is
compromised when the tool is used for PR. This alone makes blogging
for PR purposes different than personal blogging anyone else might do.
Credibility is key to the PR practitioner, both internally and
externally.For PR practitioners who blog, accuracy is a burden.
Journalists have editors to help them. Bloggers don’t. One should take
care to check references and make sure of facts before using them in an
online journal. That is why PR blogging should use hyperlinking as
much as possible to refer to sources of information.
Originally, bloggers listed hyperlinks to help users who didn’t have
time to scour the web daily. The blog hyperlink was a shortcut to help
one remain up-to-date on what was happening. Today, bloggers appear
to cite sources by hyperlink as much to let one look for oneself at the
original statement, news story or other topic that generated the blog
entry. The PR practitioner should be as careful. If the PR blogger cannot
use a hyperlink, then the he or she should quote someone who is the
source of information. E.g., “Just got a call from X who said that we
won the Widget contract. Stay tuned.”
A second difference between a PR blog and a personal blog is
purposefulness. There is no point in maintaining an online journal as a
PR tool unless one has something to say. Why blog if you have a
functioning communications system that is reasonably fast in letting
employees and others know about organization news? Blogging just
adds to noise. The answer to this objection is that blogging might be an
excellent way to maintain a stream of news and organizational viewpoint
to the organization at large that would take too much time to process
through the communications system. For example, mentions of contract
wins, CEO and senior executive visitations, policy changes those
employees should be aware of but might miss and so on. The stream of
tidbits could become a journal of the organization’s life and a source of
information to employees who might otherwise miss formal
communications. For example:
CEO Smith visits Warrentown today to deliver a speech on
company goals. Check the following link for the text of the speech.
Three contract wins are about to be announced out of the Z
division.