Something About Credibility.
Posted by Anthony LaFauce on April 25th, 2008 11:00 AMI come from the world of PR. My goal in PR is to create third party creditability and help shape public opinion by building relationships with opinion makers. For years these relationships were with journalist and industry analyst.
With the rise of bloggers and social media the PR practitioner’s goal has changed. Now the PR world is focused on reaching bloggers and consumers through social media. This makes the PR pro’s job much harder, but ultimately more successful and more fulfilling for the public.
There has always been and interesting relationship with PR people and journalist. Typically journalists have to write stories to fill up column space that resides between advertisements. These ads are what pay the bills and keep traditional media running. PR pros pitch stories because we know journalist have a ton of space to fill and we think they story would be a good fit for them.
Journalists are like your mercenary writers. They write to pay the bills and may or may not have a passion for what they write about. I am not saying all journalists simply work for the highest bidder, but I know plenty of journalists who work at a publication because it’s their job not their passion.
Bloggers are more like volunteer soldiers. They do the work and write because it is there passion. If I reach out to a blogger who writes about cars I can be pretty sure that he or she has a passion for automotive excellence. This passion is what makes working with bloggers a sheer joy and gives credibility to what they have to say.
This is also why PR pros find bloggers so attractive. The public doesn’t trust journalists as much as they used to. The world is filled with stories of professional writers taking bribes and making up stories to fill papers. This might happen in the blogger world but it isn’t as prevalent yet.
When a blogger post something the public generally trust it because they understand that the blogger wants to write about when he or she is covering. This also brings up an interesting question. Should bloggers get paid for their posts?
Right now the public trust blogs because the blogs are untouched by the almighty dollar. If you look at the blogosphere right now you can see a change on the horizon. More and more bloggers are monetizing their sites to form supplementary income. Will this money ultimately ruin the blogging world?
You can look around and see the bloggers who write for a living. Do you trust these bloggers less because they are getting paid for their posts? Do you see the blogger as journalist 2.0 or do you think that they are something different? Can we trust blogs in the future? Let me know.
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