PR Week ha pubblicato un’interessante panoramica su quelli che ritiene i trend più significativi del mondo dei media.
Accanto ad alcuni temi tipicamente statunitensi, (come l’esplosione dei media ispanici o i “celebrity weeklies”) sono commentati alcuni aspetti di interesse generale, come (guarda un po’) i blog e il loro rapporto con le relazioni pubbliche. Se non volete leggervi tutto l’articolo, vi propongo qui di seguito il paragrafo dedicato alla blogosfera.
Da sottolineare la frase conclusiva di Ray Kerins, che mette a fuoco un aspetto su cui mi sono più volte soffermato: “Every client is not appropriate to have blogs.”
Blogs
In the past couple of years, blogs have grown from an outlet for tech-savvy geeks to something that has reached an almost mainstream level. Indeed, corporations and even media outlets are making blogs part of their marketing strategies. They reached news-breaking entity status when a group of bloggers debunked Dan Rather’s report on President Bush’s National Guard service.
Although they’re considered valuable outlets for marketers – especially PR practitioners – to monitor, Lloyd Trufelman, president of Trylon Communications, says blogs will eventually just be integrated into the media mix, rather than remain a standalone entity.
“Now blogging is becoming very simple and very pedestrian,” he says. “I don’t know how many of these blogs will exist as viable economic [entities]. If a blog is going to exist as a commercial enterprise, it’s going to have to track to the same economic rules that govern all other forms of media.”
Mark Weiner, CEO of Delahaye, agrees that the excitement over blogs will settle down, although incidents where blogs break mainstream news will cause periodic spikes in interest. But for the most part, blogs’ influence over a large segment of the population appears to be limited.
“We see that, except for a small handful of influential, opinion-leading blogs, for the most part bloggers are people who have an interest in something and are speaking to [those] people who share that interest,” Weiner says.
Going forward, PR practitioners need to be mindful of the blog’s place in a client’s communication strategy, says Ray Kerins, EVP and managing director of corporate communications and media relations at GCI Group. “Every client is not appropriate to have blogs,” he says.
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