The Long Tail - Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief, Wired Magazine

113539 Resource 76407 24 21 1137775462315 1200796883357 Controlled Students in Public Relations and Blogging -- Good or Bad Idea?

If blogging helps businesses market and communicate more thoroughly, then the PR function stands to benefit as well.

<a href="http://www.auburnmedia.com/wordpress/2006/01/19/pr-student-blogging-critique/">Robert French</a> (not related) of <a title="Auburn University" href="http://www.auburn.edu/" target="_blank">Auburn University</a> is on a quest to help PR students prepare for careers that will place them at the core of this debate - should PR students embrace and use blogs in their formative college years? In so doing, Robert created <a title="MarCom Blog" href="http://www.marcomblog.com/" target="_blank">Marcom Blog</a> - a collective of PR practitioners (and hangeron'ers like me) to provide insights to PR students.Questions that should be considered in this debate include (but are not limited to):Do you believe college PR students reading and blogging about PR practices is a viable and valuable endeavor?Certainly - blogs lead to greater understanding and tend to provide effective communication conduits.What are the key concepts/lessons that should be included in such an exercise?Of greatest importance is to make sure that PR students understand that the business requirements of blogging are far different from personal blogging. There's a clear distinction between people that blog and businesses that blog. Business people (for the most part) do not want to become "bloggers" - they want to communicate more effectively with customers, vendors, and resellers. As such, the <a title="Business Blogging: Consider Your Business Requirements" href="item/102767" target="_blank">blog functionality</a> that businesses must have is different from what individuals will find useful. PR students must learn that there's no single definition of a blog.How might a future employer react to a student's PR blogging efforts?Both favorable and unfavorable. The reactions will be no different than the biases felt by the first computer science graduates that also built their own Heath-Kit computers.What tactics by the students will best exhibit PR knowledge through their blogging efforts?I'm not really qualified to answer this question, but I believe it would be a good tactic to demonstrate an understanding that business blogging is more about strategic communications and if done well, eliminates much of the tactical (and reactionary) maneuvering that blogs are typically used for. One reason blogs work so well in today's Internet is the influence they have on the <a title="PR and the Unpredictable Long-Tail" href="http://www.marcomblog.com/2005/09/09/pr-and-the-unpredictable-long-tail/" target="_blank">long tail</a>. Demonstrating a superior knowledge of the hidden side of the Internet and how people discover your message, is a key success factor (in my view). 9 application/xml false Auburn University long tail PR public relations student blogging The Long Tail - Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief, Wired Magazine Media InfoTalk(tm) - Editor in Chief, Wired Magazine on the Long Tail and the impact on marketing and PR http://www.podtech.net/home/?p=38 PR Student Blogging :: We need your input, please. This is a follow up to my previous post. I am reaching out to active PR practitioners seeking input on how to improve our classroom blogging experience. http://www.auburnmedia.com/wordpress/2006/01/19/pr-student-blogging-critique/ PR and the Unpredictable Long-Tail While we have started to grasp a basic understanding of the dynamics of long-tail search (and Internet topology in general), we continue to pretend that search behavior is predictable. The long-tail of search represents a unique opportunity to tap into niche markets for PR purposes, but it is far from a predictable science. http://www.marcomblog.com/2005/09/09/pr-and-the-unpredictable-long-tail/ Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727) 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 174050 false false true false false false true 76407 blog blogsite/Blogsite/web