When a company wants to get some new information out to the public, they usually publish a press release. The press release then, hopefully, gets picked up by some media and reaches the public. When you talk about media you usually mean newspapers, magazines, TV and more recently news webpages.
I wrote that the press release “hopefully” will get picked up. Well that might make it sound like its all about luck, that’s not completely true. All companies have a PR staff, and ne of their jobs is to make sure the press releases gets picked up by the viable media. I’m not going to go in to how they do this because it’s too off topic. Anyhow, lets say you get allot of hits on your press release and you want to know from what media most of the hits was referred. This is of course very valuable information for the PR staff, so they can know what media to target harder next time.
Oki, back to the topic. There is a new type of news media now days, namely the blogs and podcasts. But, as Jarboe points out, many companies haven’t realized this fact yet. Jarboe really emphasise the importance of blogs. His company made some research for other companies to see where the traffic to the press release came from, and it turned out that in many cases blogs contributed with more traffic than big news organizations.
I have to say that I’m actually not surprised by this. I think it has to do with what type of reader sees the different media. The newspaper might have a hundred times more readers than the blog, however only a small percent of those readers are actually interested in the topic of the press release. With the blog it’s a different story. Blogs are usually specified into one area, so the readers of the blog are more likely to be interested in your information. Another aspect that is in favour for the blogs is the trust issue. Big news media are very faceless or anonymous. With blogs you know that there is an actual person, maybe allot like yourself, writing the content. Of course actual persons write the news for the newspaper as well, but I hope you can see the distinction. My point is that if you follow a certain blog regularly, you are very likely to value the bloggers opinion and thus very likely to read about the things he/she writes about.
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3 comments:
I think you make a good point as to why blogs might generate more traffic than large news websites.
However, I also think that it comes down to the fact that traffic is a poor measurement of the impact your release is making.
Large news sites, at least according to my experience, seldom post links to other websites, and if they do they often only have the links as a kind of supplement on the side of the article.
Blogs, on the other hand, are often all about linking and frequently incorporate links (-- and links that are actually there to be clicked, not just for reference) in the texts. I think this makes a difference in the statistics and gives blogs a distinct advantage in the number referrals generate, making referrals an unappropriate measurement of how well your message has been spread.
Regarding bloggers being perceived as more reliable, I think it's a double edged sword. Unless you can control what the blogger will actually write, it just increases the risk (and gain). However, that obviously also means that bloggers are powerful tools in marketing that need to be taken advantage of.
One thing we need to consider here: With the web 2.0 technologies, now, individual can do PR for themselves. In the past, normally, only companies could do PR through their PR department and agencies, but, normal people couldn't do. But, with this search engine, and blogging, now individual can be an economic unit, like a company, can do business and do PR. That's a benefit, and that's why there is a new term "MEconomy."
Yes. PR in Blog is useful way for specsific area and has specialty. If PR staff decide to advertise in Blog, the character and recognition of one's blog should consider. Like Hoh said, individual can attract PR and these days individuals can involve with action of the firm.
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