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I Stood and Cheered

Hello NE Ohio. Welcome to the blogosphere.

By Luke Armour

As a graduate student in The School of Communication at The University of Akron I have had the pleasure of learning a great deal about PR theory, application, and practice. One thing I have taken upon myself to learn about most, though, is the new media and social software permeating the public relations industry. It's a time of great change and a time of uncertainty. No doubt you have seen news articles in traditional media commenting ominously about blogs. No doubt you've been hearing from clients asking, "what is a podcast and should we be doing it?" Surely you've thought to yourself, "did I leave the iron on?" But not all of those questions can be answered simply.

I have been studying these things since October of last year and am actually writing my graduate project on using the Internet to build and sustain relationships in PR. It's fascinating, scary, and wondrous all at the same time. Up until now I have been rather disappointed in, not only with the lack of participation, but apparent lack of interest, in NE Ohio PR professionals' involvement with the new technologies. I'm incredibly excited about PRSA Akron's new venture, special thanks to Akhia for sponsoring the movement.

One thing I have learned about all of this, these new technologies aren't replacing our current channels, just adding to them. For yourselves, for your clients, for the target publics, these new media are just additional methods for implementing our strategies and achieving our goals. As my virtual mentor Shel Holtz says, "new media don't kill old media," and he's right. PR just adds them to the toolbox.

I'd like to mention a couple of resources to help anyone who has an interest in learning more about these channels.

The New PR Wiki ( http://www.thenewpr.com/) is an excellent resource with loads of information about blogging for business, which CEOs are blogging, RSS resources, how to blog, how to pitch bloggers, relevant content about more traditional PR, and so very much more. Moderated by Constantin Basturea, it is a real gem.

Secondly, I just finished reading a book entitled Blogging for Business: Everything you need to know and why you should care by Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulous (2006, Chicago: Kaplan Publishing). It's an excellent resource with really great background info and practical applications.

Lastly, my co-graduate student (and fellow blogger) Elizabeth Farrell and I gave a presentation on social media to our PRSSA Chapter in early February. We have posted our PowerPoint and a PDF ( http://homepage.mac.com/lukearmour/PRSSA/FileSharing8.html ) of some additional social media information from the meeting. Feel free to download those to have a look. A lot has changed since early February (in the online PR world and in what we've learned), but it's not a bad intro. The San Antonio PRSA blog linked to it as well as the PRSA February 15th Issues and Trends E-newsletter.

Again, welcome. I honestly stood and cheered when I heard Akron PRSA was blogging, for so many reasons. Thank you. I'm so eager to read the thoughts of local PR pros and join in discussion with them about all things PR (or not!).

April 13, 2006 |

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