This is why you’re fat

Is required reading from me these days. I have a morbid fascination, even as I feel my lunch rise at the very sight.

Wouldn’t it have been great if one of the health food companies had set this up? Or a diet company. I’m sure you’ll say they don’t want to hector people about their indulgences, but there would be few examples of such complelling and viral content to ram their point home.

I often look hard at it before deciding if I really do want random unhealthy food for dinner…

For a PR to blog, or not to blog?

It’s a tricky one. I’m sure, as readers of this blg, you’re all superstars of the industry. As such you’re working with awesome brands and organisations, and have no doubt you could be called upon by any other awesome brand, at any point in the short-to-medium future.

Great. Let’s look at the other side of the equation. As a PR you know that for a blog to work you need compelling, personal and regular content. You also knwo that 15% of all conversations are about brands (made up stat based on somethig I recently read). So, 15% of all your posts will be about brands, good or bad.

So does this possibility of imminent work with any given brand mean you shouldn’t blog about brands full stop? Yes, I know the theory “they’d respect your well-thought out criticism and appreciate they were buying indpendent advice”. But in practice the world doesn’t work that way.

So, do we need to change the way we think about how, as PRs, we express our thoughts on brands? Does it need to become a matter of conscience that you can freely express opinion, in the same way as political views are held separate to your ability or suitability as a professional? After all, holding strong (personal) Tory or Labour views wouldn’t affect your ability, and it wouldn’t be deemed appropriate to object to them.

Or should we just accept it’s tough to blog when you work in PR, and handle the need to watch your step?

Fame and Fortune…

beckons for Alex, well blog fame at least.

Alex is interviewed here for Sarah Stimson’s recruitment blog.

A cautionary PR tale from the digital frontier…

Just remember, when you do anything online, it is never anonymous. even when you’re pretending to be someone else.

The Fake Steve Jobs blog [FSJ], a hilarious satirical blog on Apple’s leader, recently ripped apart the ‘One laptop per child’ [OLPC] leaders and projects. OLPC  News followed up with an article  agreeing ith the thrust of FSJ’s comments [largely that the OLPC project was deeply unrealistic].

Cue some surprise when the comments are joined by FSJ, attacking the author of OLPC News. Following some IP searches, the attack turned out to have been written by someone from OLPC’s PR agency.

Tut tut. Bad enough not being transparent in blog comments, let alone pretending to be someone else entirely. There’s only so many times you can say it, but transparency really is key. Unless you want to be the AE/AM putting your hand up and ‘fessing up to a very public embarrassment for your agency.

[I've been a bit Apple-orienttated with this week's posts...can you tell I've just got a new macbook?!]

Why you don’t, won’t, and quite probably shouldn’t blog.

I’ve always avoided blogging about blogging here. Not least because it isn’t usually very interesting, but also because we didn’t exactly start this blog ‘to blog, so much as to expand upon the conversations and issues which were arising within the Facebook group which spawned this.

However, PR can’t ignore social media [much as some would like to try], and so perhaps the time has come for this blog to bite the hand which feeds it. So to speak.

I’m not going to excitedly proclaim ‘blogs have peaked-hurrah-I knew it was all a passing phase’ as someone excitedly assailed me with recently. I’m not going to claim you should all write blogs, rather than just lurking around reading us, with your only shadowy trace being an IP address. Most of you shouldn’t, wouldn’t, and in some cases quite possibly couldn’t.

No-one is defined by the act of blogging, however much they try. Indeed only some people are suited to doing so. usually the very confident, or the deeply insecure who couldn’t usually articulate their thoughts in real life. It’s a theme Hugh Macleod [of Gaping Void fame] has been addressing recently, as he appears to be re-appraising his activities and pl,atforms. I’m a big fan of Hugh’s, and he doesn’t buy into his own celebrity and celebrate his own status in quite the way some of his contemporary ‘a-listers’ do. He is honest enough to note, and enthuse about the current momentum away from blogging, towards Facebook.

His observation that blogging is essentially another form of the traditional capacity to broadcast, is astute when we apply it to our own experience with the PR and Comms Network. Sure we get lots of readers here [relatively speaking-we have niche potential audience], but people are far more inclined to actively participate on the Facebook group. There are many who would run a mile before posting a comment here [even though they could so anonymously], but will send us messages on Facebook about activities we have going on, or posts which have appeared. Individuals will post up on the group wall, but not do the same here. And as Hugh notes, many people just feel more at home inside the sandbox of Facebook, because it is where their existing ‘real-world’ network is. Simply in electronic form.

And that’s great as far as we’re concerned. We need to blog, in the sense it is the appropriate way to explore issues like these. It is where other bods hitting out on extended themes like this pursue their conversations. See Simon, Ed or Stephen for probably our three favourites, although David gets the interest up too. But if it comes to sharing your quicker, more direct and personal moments, I’m going to point you in the direction of Twitter and Facebook, not encourage you to blog.

Blogging doesn’t make you a great person, or supremely interesting. But it does help develop conversations [wherever they are pursued; in flesh, FB, or blog comments].