Over at the P2PR community Jordan Stone presents a fantastic summary of Text 100’s Global Blogger Survey.
The survey points to a number of things; corporations are increasingly aware of the importance and influence of bloggers but also that the corporate new releases are out. As Jordan puts it bloggers are fed up of PR people blindly sending corporate press releases to bloggers. Needless to say, we agree, we feel very much that news can still be presented in an official tone of voice but that bloggers should be empowered to monitor and notice that news – not have that news rammed into their inbox.
There’s less welcome news though. It seems that too many people in the PR world are still not making the time to read blogs let alone come to understand communities and the communication methods bloggers prefer to use.
Jeremy Woolf, who led the research, adds some more insight. Bloggers liked social media news releases. People will point out that some press releases have a Twitter or Technorati badge slapped on it and called a social media release. However, the fact that over 400 bloggers said they’d seen a rise of social media news releases and preferred them suggests that many PR agencies and in-house teams are getting them right.
Woolf also talks about the importance of RSS. We agree. RSS is the safe and scientific opt-in for bloggers. As a delivery mechanism it puts the blogger in control and can be trusted. So much of the back bone in a good relationship comes down to trust.
The full research has been wrapped up and presented via Scribd. It’s well worth a read.
July 3, 2009
PR