Blogs are/will beat old media – build your own PR!

Brain Solis is speaking about it…Robert Scoble is doing it…bloggig, and beating traditional media.

Off course this is not new, if you have read Socialnomics by Eric Qualman you know bloggers have got a lot of first mover advantages over traditional media.

So why don’t 50% of the Belgian companies use a blog to beat traditional media and build a positive corporate image?  A blog is an easy and accessible tool which can be used businesslike!

Bloggers, mostly, approach a specific niche and have a timing leverage over traditional media. 
As a business, you are the niche, so you can connect with your loyal customers.

A dedicated blogger is accurate and obsessed with the content….and therefore as correct as traditional media.  While traditional media need to pass everything through the editor’s desk, a blogger is his own editor….and can post movies, pictures, text, … anytime!
Businesslike you can use a blog to present your ideas, fast, to the point and first!  A company blog is a valuable asset to connect to your stakeholders add information, showcases, product demonstrations, …. Adding the conversation aspect to your blog, you can create a powerful tool to interact and build a conversation with your stakeholders

This is off course an opposite strategy then using traditional PR, where you invest in building your brand through media attention. What lacks PR is conversation….we don’t trust the media anymore, we trust our peers….So start the conversation through your company blog and connect to your loyal customer. He/She will connect your brand with his peers (who trust him/her).
Most of the time you hear manager of small and medium enterprises talking about the ROI of social media, although the spent a lot of time (and money) on building the PR. As a new manager in the social web, you use your time and money to create a valuable tool to connect and interact (build a conversation) with your loyal audience. This is PR 2.0 or social PR….the PR build by yourself (not through classic media, or PR events…although the off-line PR events are of great value when carefully chosen, attended and support the online strategy.)

Still not convinced, or in doubt on how to build your blog….check the slide show from Ogilvy!

Public Relations & Social Media

Today an article in De Tijd (a Belgian Financial newspaper) caught my attention. It describes the way companies deal and worked with media and especially Social Media (a “new” medium since a decade).  The article describes a few business cases of the past and present on how companies deal with a crisis and how they communicatie around it

Crisis communication and public relations are very important to maintain the company identity and image. Since social media are playing a bigger role in this 2.0 world, company’s need to adapt theircommunication strategy.  They need to work with the social media as a part of their (crisis) communication, in order to maintain their company image.

You can read the full story in the Flat World – Media section.