The Importance of Blogs in Network Building

Blogging has quickly emerged as an important and essential tool in the PR and Corporate Communications industry, especially since a primary function of this industry is network building. The world is beginning to see PR practitioners use blogs as a foundational tool for the building and strenghthening of relationships with their audiences. It is used to break through the clutter of communication and push messages directly to the public.

It wasn't difficult to see that most public relations practitioners recognize that the dynamics of blogs are both appealing and popular amongst their target audiences. I believe that it is important in PR to focus on networks and relationship building because by investing in, building or hosting the connections, links or pathways between and among key audiences, they will be well positioned to use these networks over time to persuade people to action, to respond to a crisis, to leverage current market conversations and to improve business overall. Participatory communications tools like blogs are particularly well designed to help do all of these things. Blogs are used as powerful communications tools.

I also found that blogs are important tools in PR for network building because they give professionals a place to generate visible links, both incoming and outgoing. By enabling and encouraging comments, they are creating visible relationships. By commenting and trackbacking themselves to other blogs and websites, they are also creating links. That is why it is so important that, beyond just producing a personal blog, they are contributing to others.

I believe that professional communicators have learned that they need to focus on building these relationships via online networks. This doesn’t mean abandoning the activities they already pursue via in-person and other forms of communications, but they have begun viewing these activities as part of our overall network-building objective. One of the core forms of public relations is that having someone else speak credibly about your organization and its products or services is more valuable in terms of persuading people to take positive action than a corporation speaking for itself. This remains true in the blogosphere. The challenge is to first find the influential people and to enter into an ongoing conversation with them. A lone PR person trying to speak on behalf of his or her corporation isn’t enough. Rather, one should consider viewing his or her entire organization as full of spokespeople: employees, partners, customers – in fact, all relevant audiences. Increasingly, they are doing it online, where they can easily link up, driving increased visibility of corporate issues.

I witnessed a specific example of a company successfully utilizing blogs to speak credibly about a product during my internship this summer. I worked in-house for Alberto-Culver, a company that owns Nexxus, VO5, Tresemme and St. Ives. On the Tresemme account, we worked as a direct sponsor for Bravo's hit tv show, Project Runway. Tresemme's spokestylist, Nathaniel Hawkins was on-set styling the models' hair before hitting the catwalk. This was a huge promotion and PR opportunity for Tresemme, but the greatest success came from Nathaniel's blog that was written after each show aired every week. He would comment on everything from the designers' attitudes to the models' conversations. As viewers logged onto Bravotv.com and Tresemme.com to read the blogs of both Nathaniel and the show's design guru, Tim Gunn, they were directly exposed to Tresemme product placement and promotion. The blogs were a huge PR tool for Tresemme and contributed to the incredible profits the company experienced over the past couple of years.

I believe the example above shows how companies use blogs as a place for a product's spokesperson to write about their insight and opinions. It creates a sort of connection with the audience that was not able to be experienced before the evolution of blogs.

I also found that blogs are used as a great opportunity to show accomplishments, to track trends and to talk to people at the grassroots level. I found that the president and CEO of Edelman Europe, David Brain, has a blog that posts a series of "occasional one minute interviews with figures from business, media, government and NGOs on topics of the moment with a public relations or public affairs flavour." The blog is neatly organized, easy to read and insightful to the expertise and interests of Edelman's leadership. I believe the blog gives credibility to David Brain, as it shows the investment of his interests and time in the PR industry.

I almost feel that I cannot read or learn enough about the influence blogs are having on communication, network building and PR itself. I truly feel that I can’t think of a more interesting time to be a professional communicator!

http://www.bravotv.com/Project_Runway
http://www.tresemme.com/askexperts/nh.cfm
http://www.sixtysecondview.com/