Public relations in the blogosphere seems to operate under a new set of rules than traditional PR. With traditional PR you hire a PR firm that has relationships with various journalists and media. With the new PR, you start your own blog (assuming of course you have something worthwhile to say) and you work to become one of the blogging elite. The goal is to get the more influential bloggers to notice you and blog about you. You wouldn’t just leave this to chance; you’d help the process along. If, for example, you want to catch Scoble’s eye, then you would say something interesting that somehow relates to Scoble and work in a mention of his name. Scoble, like many other bloggers, follows what’s being said about him in the blogosphere by subscribing to a PubSub search results feed for the word “scoble.” If Scoble likes your post, you could end up with a mention on Scoble’s link blog or, better still, on the Scobleizer blog.
Imagine telling a PR person 10 years ago that, in the future, the way to catch the eye of various journalists is to become a journalist yourself and then write about THEM, that PR person would think you were off your rocker. My, how times have changed!
As an up-and-coming blogger, you might be tempted to brown-nose the A-List bloggers. Don’t kiss up to them, but don’t denigrate them either. This isn’t necessarily a hard-and-fast rule, just a suggested guideline. Some bloggers are quite open to being taken to task. They even encourage it.
There is a line of course that shouldn’t be crossed. Always act in good taste. Scoble himself described, during our MarketingProfs Thought Leaders Summit last month on business blogging, how it really isn’t a “line,” it is more like a “membrane.” There is give-and-take, and flexibility with what’s ok to say in your blog and what’s not, particularly as you build rapport with different bloggers in the blogosphere and you build up your reputation. But don’t push too hard or too often, or that “membrane” may rupture!
Now I wonder if Scoble will blog about this post…
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I have to admit that your explaination of online PR through blogging was the best I have read so far. Most people feel the need to ramble on and on as apposed to just getting to the point.
Scoble rarely does his link blog anymore. And saying his name won’t get him to link to you nearly as fast as speaking with passion or authority on matters that he has demonstrated passion–tech products and blogging, for example. But trust me, just mentioning himn, or Doc Searls or other A-listers is already being sniffed out as hokey. Either have something to say, or my advice would be to remain silent.
The best way to get me to pay attention is to get five people who I read to link to you.
I’m finding I am getting more discerning now that tons of people are trying to get me to link to their stuff.
Shel mentioned it in the comment above, but I wanted to reiterate how important good content is. I can go around dropping Doc Searls’ or Dave Winer’s names all day on my blog, but if there’s not interesting commentary, but I’m not likely to be linked by them without having added something interesting to the conversation.