The First Day of the Rest of My Blog

 

How is that for a self-indulgent title? Okay now that I’ve gotten all that explaining out of the way, what now?  Let me take a quick moment to introduce / re-introduce this blog. While this continues to be my personal blog and as such the opinions expressed here are STILL not a reflection of my (past, current or future) employer, my (past, current of future) friends or my family, but what is NEW is that – for the first time in a year – this blog is attached to me.



So, if you have issue with anything I write please feel free to comment or email me directly at paulroberts.par (at) gmail.com.  As a stated previously, this blog was originally launched as a bit of an experiment and an educational process, but now after a lengthy test drive, it is being relaunched and its author is reenergized. I’ve reposted (most) of my older Tony Mackey posts, but full disclosure time, I’ve not transfered all of them. Some just didn’t stand the test of time, so I’m taking advantage of this rebirth to get a (mostly) fresh start.



Moving forward: While this blog will continue to contain my thoughts comments and opinions (and typos) on everything from public relations, to news of the day and even a smattering of commentary on sports and anything else that interests me. The truth is that I’m a man of limited interests, so a great majority of this blog will remain about public relations.



Before I started blogging and engaging in conversations on Twitter, I thought public relations and marketing were fairly simple concepts, but what I learned of the past several months is that too many ‘experts’ have a view of the industry that I don’t necessarily agree with. So, if you’ll excuse another few graphs of self-indulgence, here is what I believe and are themes you’ll see me blogging about.



Twitter is a tool: Twitter and other social media tools are great, BUT, they are not going to replace traditional public relations any time soon. It’s a tool. A powerful tool, but a tool none the less. Much of what you’ll see me blogging about is defending traditional public relations and traditional PR tools. Odds are you are NOT really a Guru: Too many self-proclaimed ‘online marketers’ and ‘social media gurus’ are actively preaching the demise of public relations. TIP: When you hear these folks preaching how a SM program can eliminate the need for PR — replace the term “I’m a social media expert” with “I’m familiar with a small majority of the tools used in public relations.”  Not all industries are created equal: Having specialized in high tech public relations for most of my career, I often wonder what other PR people are talking about when they discuss the death of the press release and the end of traditional PR.



I enjoy reading books about PR and marketing, but all too often these books and experts only discuss ways to promote consumer brands all but ignoring the way real companies need to utilize PR. Fortune 500 brands are not the only companies that need PR.



Disclose client tweets: And finally, over the past year, I’ve become very interested in the industry-wide topics of disclosure and PR ethics. One current rant is — PR folks tweeting a news story that includes a client should ALWAYS include the simple disclaimer (client). It is eight character (including the parenthesis). What you do with the other 134 is up to you, but these eight are minimum table stakes. And, yes I’ve taken into consideration that your bio may make it clear that you are a PR hack. It doesn’t matter it is eight characters.



Did I miss anything?: I’d be very interested in hearing from other PR folks that want to discuss additional PR related topics not listed above.