Blogging as public relations

Your standard public relations practices are not finding their target audiences. The media doesn't pick up your news stories and run with them. Your public relations time, effort, and dollars seem to be going to waste. Your customers don't see you as a person, but merely as another company among many.



Is there any other way to get the company message out the media, to your business associates, and to the general public?



Try blogging!



Starting a daily blog, and updating it with regular posts, can have a positive effect on your company's public image. By writing personalized entries into the blog, your various reading audiences will get a sense that there are real people in the company. That beats being thought of as The Faceless Company.



As you, and perhaps others in the business, write about various topics within the organization, you will develop a relationship with your audience. Many will become regular readers, and will very often recommend your blog to their friends and business associates. As a bonus, many of those who bookmark your site, will be loyal customers as well.



For the media, your blog is a constant source of potential news stories. Various journalists will occasionally find solid news "angles" from your posts. Where you never thought an interesting story existed, the reporter can spot a gem. As a result of your blogging efforts, your business can become the topic of some great press coverage.



Having journalists pick up story ideas from your blog creates free publicity. What that means to your company is coverage that carries the "endorsement" of being newsworthy. People tend, not surprisingly, to place more credibility on media coverage than on paid advertising. Being highlighted in the local newspaper, or on the evening news, is free publicity that money can't buy!



Of course, to get your blog posts turned into news articles, you need to work with your blog, and be patient and persistent. It will take time to build up your visitor traffic.



You have to keep your blog updated regularly. I recommend daily entries to build up your audience. There are some exceptions to that rule, however.



My friend Jeremy Wright at Ensight.org disagrees with me on posting frequency. He believes, and quite understandably, that one person blogging can become boring and tedious. As a result, the quality of the postings may suffer, and readership will drop. In order to prevent "blogging fatigue" (I may have just coined that phrase!), perhaps a blogging team can be created to share the posting fun. That way, blogging fatigue can be avoided, and strong posts maintained.



In any case, your company blog can help get news stories to the media. Your blogging efforts can also help your regular customers feel closer to you as a person, and to your business as a whole.



Those positives not only help your company bottom line, but they make you feel great as a person too.



What can be better than that?