Some very interested notes from Philip Young at the Delivering the New PR conference today. You may recall the Euroblog survey last year, which polled PR professionals across Europe to find out their attitudes to the form. In March, the 2007 results were released. But I didn’t come across them till today, so apologies if this is old news.
Last year, the results were a little depressing. The most common reason cited for getting involved with blogging is that it allowed the agencies to ‘be seen to be using the latest technology’. “Looking cool” isn’t a great business argument for blogging and, having met a fair number of serious bloggers now in the flesh, it’s not really all that true.
This year’s results thankfully reveal considerably more experience, understanding and maturity with regard to the possibilities of blogs as part of the PR mix for clients.
Nowadays, 79% of PRs read blogs; 51% comment on them and 38% run them — last year, these figures were 37%, 10% and 21% respectively. The fivefold increase in commenting seems especially striking — comments are a way of getting involved in the conversation and also getting your feet wet without too much investment.
In the 2006 survey, PRs checked up on blogs to see what was happening to their clients on a monthly basis in most cases (36%) — now nearly all check at least weekly, with many checking what was happening in the blogosphere several times a week.
Many more PRs saw the opportunities offered by blogs this year:
- 33% use them for environmental scanning — to gauge opinion about their clients — as opposed to just 10% in 2006.
- The fast reaction times posting and commenting on blog posts was viewed as an opportunity by 28% (versus 11% previously).
- A third viewed blogs as offering an opportunity for authentic communications and to receive feedback — more than double the numbers in last year’s survey.
However, the study has also unveiled a new realism. The main obstacle to creating more blogs is that the agencies simply don’t have the resources — the people and the time — to do so. A shocking 69% cited lack of resources as a reason they’re don’t blog, with potential legal issues, loss of control and difficulties measuring the ROI also offered as substantial obstacles.
Once again, it’s time that’s the key issue, with this compounded by a lack of good, qualified people to help out. It seems to me that there are still battles to be worked out with the grumpy FD over measuring the ROI of this blogging time and personnel, despite an abundance of great arguments for their existence.
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