Edelman/Technorati Blogger Survey: Same Old, Same Old About New Media

Edelman PR and Technorati have teamed up to publish Public RelationSHIPS:Communications in the Age of Personal Media, a 24-page study of bloggers. In their introductions, Edelman CEO Richard Edelman provides a lot of PRese and corporate speak about blogging on one side of the page, and Technorati Exec VP Peter Hirshberg talks about blogosphere growth and trends on the other.

Dear Edelman: show me the clients. As far as I can tell, the only blog project the company has ever done was to add something called Stories of Hope to an incredibly commercial, unbloggy Wal-mart website that happens to use Moveable Type as its database.

Says Edelman: "We see a very different future - one in which PR becomes the essential aspect of communications creating a runway of trust before other marketing disciplines are deployed." Sure sounds like dealing with consumers is a war.

And: "Public relations practitioners must become informed advocates, dedicated to speaking the truth and listening." Umm, isn't that what they should have been doing all along?

The survey itself covers how often bloggers post, whether we trust corporate blogs (somewhat), etc. It concludes, unsurprisingly, that companies and PR firms "have a long way to go to achieve better-than-average levels of trust."

And, it says, unsurprisingly, PR people should pitch bloggers. However, it points out, "the "pitch" approach must now change to participation: a mutual communication exchange in near real-time."

Pitches of news that has not already been transmitted to everyone and her dog are always welcome here. Just please don't do them like this.

Comments

Posted by: Dennis Howlett at January 16, 2006 3:01 PM

Post a comment

Email this story to a friend

TrackBacks

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.whatsnextonline.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2867

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Edelman/Technorati Blogger Survey: Same Old, Same Old About New Media:

Truth is not PR from AdShift
Many of us have come shambling out of the twentieth century into a curious new light that makes us a little uncomfortable. However much we are shielded from this light by willful interests bent on keeping things as they were,... [Read More]

Tracked on January 17, 2006 4:21 PM