I found a very interesting posting on PR Studies on the subject why PR student should blog. Richard Bailey of the Lees Business School. What he actually state is that PR students should practice their skills and thinks blogs are perfect to experiment with ideas and formats. Also because it is a new medium a lot of new technology can be learned in blogging such as comments, link, googleranking a.s.o. Student also need to read a lot to now more about blogging and a particular subject. For their own personal PR and branding blogging is a perfect tool to build up a context in google. For the student it is also a great opportunity to connect and share with the real world and learn how to create some buzz, such as in a normal PR campaign.
But he mentions also some warnings.Students will leave a lot of context on the internet and if it is bad……well you can delete it. The conflicts of interest is also a thing to work with. On one hand you must be open, informal and connecting and at the other hand you have to be professional and discreet. The last thing he mentions that bloggin is a solitary thing. When blogging, in the same time you could be on the street networking.
Great advices and warnings. For the last point he mentioned about networking I think blogging is networking and a real strong tool for that. You can start conversations and get a lot of connections if you do it right. I think I have 2 or 3 new contacts a day via my blog. Then you build up a kind of virtual relation and after a while it comes to a real live meeting if you want. In most cases I meet the people whom I am ‘talking’ to via my blog face to face after a while. These meetings are more efficient and pleasant because you know each other and there is a reason to meet (could even be to see someone’s face and just have a live chat). My experience is that conversations started via a blog are more intens, bottom-up (not just communicating because you want to sell), open, frankly and person-to-person instead of role-to-role (e.g. account manager to client). The fact that you are both in control as blogger and the reader gives both the feeling that it makes sense, otherwise there would be no conversation and connection.

Tags: conversations, PR

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