I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard “PR is incompetent”. The reality is that you do your best, working on behalf of a number of people’s interests, and always having to put on a happy face.

You can’t exactly say

“sorry, my client thinks you’re Tier Three press and hates your reviews”

likewise to the client

“The journalist didn’t even want to include your cr*ppy product in their feature.”

Despite the amount of un-niceness there is working in public relations, the role implys you can actually relate to the public. Which is why this story about a PR rep telling a blogger that images of them wearning  the designer’s clothes were bad publicity had me astounded.

Is it so hard to be nice? It doesn’t matter if you’re a blogger, write for Vogue or just someone posting pics to your Facebook profile. Surely this is not an example of bad practice in blogger relations it’s an example of just bad relating.

Unfortunately when it comes to bloggers there is still an ingrained attitude of agression from PRs. Could we all be a little nicer to eachother?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYLsyNBnE5M]

Nothing sums up blogging like Gaping Void

Ok, so I don’t have any quantitative research or expert opinion to validate this statement but I’m declaring… The Personal Blog is Back.

Here’s why I’m thinking this:

Reason One: It seemed like some of the original bloggers were quiet for a bit while we media types were navel gazing about the zeitgeist and saying ” But whhhhyyyyyy do they blog? What’s their motivation? Defiiiine them. Raaaank them”. But it’s safe to come out now. Promise.

Reason Two: Twitter is not the new toy anymore

Reason Three: Less techy types warmed to the idea that writers of “weblog diary thingies” are not a bunch of socially inept saddos. Ask your mum if she knows what a blog is. (Or if she’s writing one)

Reason Four: I personally got a little bored opening my reader and seeing the same old search hungry “Top 10 tips …” being generated by some commercial blogs. I started looking for blogs I could enjoy and learnt more about what makes entertaining media by being entertained

So that’s it really. Of course personal blogs never went away. There’s probably no data to show a dip in posts etc. My gut just says it feels like we’ve been through a period of learning and now it’s like the school holidays and we can read & write for pleasure again.

Here’s some that I’m loving.

Gemma Cartwright: The first blogger I ever read. Now I’m privileged to be friends with her I love her own blog. Not least because leaving bitchy comments when she posts about her home decorating has provided a useful outlet  for frustration at my own living circumstances. Sorry Gem. I will try harder.

Good Hooking: Apparently I’m not alone in a misspent youth embroidering samplers and hand hooking rugs. Crafting is, like, so hot right now.

sizemore: Another favourite web person. When not being the perfect host and feeding me up with dinner after dinner of veggie goodness he’s blogging about meeting Harrison Ford and teaching me how to be cool.

Stuart Waterman:  A quick read helps provide me with witty and amusing popular culture anecdotes for sophisticated dinner parties (see above). Thanks Stuart.

Going Underground: Annie Mole, I really and truly do read your blog even though whenever you say to me “didn’t you see it on my blog?” I always seem a little vacant.

Rubinman: In a faraway Social Media training session… “OMG. I heard that some bloggers actually write blogs for their pets?” Yes. Funny, isn’t it. Oh and infinitely better than your latest press release.

Please tell me some of your favourites.

Dennis are really pushing forward on the digital publishing side. This blog is impressive in that it’s the editorial team from the print side also doing a cracking job online, showing a good understanding of the different mediums. However, I don’t get the email magazine format of the iGizmo and Monkey offerings. When you’re used to consuming a lot of digital content they feel clunky to navigate and too much hassle for a smaller volume of content than I’d get from my RSS reader for example; the PC Pro blog was loads easier just to add to the other stuff I read online.

[During my time with ShinyRed we briefly consulted on Monkey at launch]

My positive response to the environment demonstrated that people feel different degrees of being intro- or extroverted and it’s something that crops up in questions when I run social media training sessions: who are ‘these people’ ie bloggers, tweeters, social networkers et al and why do *they* feel so comfortable broadcasting their lives?

I’m not sure I know the answer. At a basic level, once you and your friends start using something like Facebook it becomes more standardised and natural, you find yourself adding more personal updates, posting photos etc.

But honestly I still feel a bit like a social media “observer” using tools like this blog and Twitter to engage with my community from professional more than personal desires. As a pretty private person being publicly online makes me feel exposed and I contemplate deleting my accounts to run away to my Benedict’s cave. (Although I wonder if after 30 mins there I’d discover a compulsion to tweet “sitting in cave waiting for @Romanus to stop by with the food basket”).

I suspect that your level of comfort with publicly sharing is based on your confidence to allow people to make judgements about you. After all people can be nasty (See: Max’s Guardian blog or when Katie took on Fark)

There must be social anthropologists studying and categorising social media engagement types. But it’s intrinsic for humans to share at some level whether it’s online via blogging etc or offline via updating the people in your office with details of your love life. Only the mediums have diverged.

1000s of years ago when humans were creating cave drawings I wonder if they ever imagined their works would be seen outside of their small tribes.

How do you feel? Are you too shy to share?

They also publish some useful content on there. I spotted this post “Thirteen ways to make your blog go viral”. Mostly just best practice for running a blog but a useful summary for someone new to blogging looking for ways to drive traffic.

I think one of the best bits of advice is around creating resources like “how to” articles or Top 100 lists, much like they’ve done here!

I’m a bit late to the party with this but a friend told me about “Max-gate” and The Guardian travel blog and asked me what I thought so i did some reading up.

If you missed it:

• 19 year old writer Max (I’ll leave the surname so as not to contribute to his Google searches damage) starts a travel blog for The Guardian to share his experiences of a gap adventure
• Comments start flying thick and fast attacking the poor lad
• Online paranoia goes into overdrive as it’s “discovered” that Max’s dad has also written for the Guardian Travel Section
• Further conspiracy theories question, via Max’s work on the TV show ‘Skins’ and a bad URL, whether the whole thing is a PR stunt

I think, from my tone, you get where I sit on this. Sometimes the viciousness of online allowing everyone to have their say, particularly when it’s anonymous, really annoys me; this goes double when it’s a target like this. The guy wrote *one* post and people were all over him

1. I think levelling a charge that he’s “young, white and middle-class” and The Guardian should’ve known that would wind up their readers is laughable. We all know that newspapers have detailed demographics of their readership, both on- and off-line, and we all know where The Guardian audience sits…
2. Accusing his father of nepotism I also don’t find valid. It’s not like he was the section editor (he was at that stage an occasional freelancer for them) and again, let’s get real, do journalists not help out other journalists? Isn’t that just like any other industry? The fact that Max is a proven writer, having secured work on Skins etc, validates his work. I don’t feel disclosure is a huge issue here
3. With the dust settling we seem to be left with “it just wasn’t good writing”. Well, that’s the debatable and I would hope The Guardian is allowed some authority on determining this for themselves

Blog writers and readers have always tended towards the cynical, so negative comments is not unexpected. I *do* think it’s a shame that The Guardian didn’t give the blog a chance. In fact, as a PR, I think it looked like some sort of admission of error. They could’ve stood behind their decision to launch it and supported Max. (Heck, now I’m keen to have followed it for a bit and I bet I’m not the only one!)

Is it standard practise for publications to cancel columns after one response like this? I can’t be sure on everyone’s editorial policy but surely they could’ve seen how things progressed. Isn’t social media all about allowing discussion?

I went travelling when I was 19 and I kept a travel diary just like generations and generations before me. When I read it now I absolutely cringe, but it’s fun, it’s of its time. That age and those experiences are relevant to 1000s and 1000s of young UK people every year. The blogosphere is all about niches.

So if not all content appeals to all audiences was it right for The Guardian to try this? Well, why not? They’ve demonstrated leadership in trying new online content and I would think more than any other newspaper (except for maybe The Sun) a strong youth audience to grow.

Has anyone started selling “Team Max” t-shirts yet?

Read the official Guardian response here

As I’ve said before blogging is not the start and finish of a good new media campaign. Forums offer some fantastic opportunities to get direct-from-consumer feedback, if you’re confident enough that a product can stand up to debate.

All forum activity needs to be carefully undertaken though and comes with a Health Warning: You can’t just parachute in to a community and start bugging them. In addition, they don’t take kindly to fake posts so be transparent!

Setting up a blog for your CEO is not the only step towards social media activity. A good campaign can engage via a range of online media, from forums to Facebook. Just setting up senior execs with profiles on LinkedIn could be a great step in using new media for business benefits.

More importantly you can’t blog in isolation. What I mean by that is a blog is not a soapbox for your CEO to regurgitate corporate messaging. Social media is, well, social. Web 2.0 allows people to interact and engage in two-way, three-way, 100-way + conversations about topics they’re mutually interested in.

There’s many good reasons to start a company blog, almost as many as why you shouldn’t start one. Sometimes something as simple as a webcam can have a far greater reach than trying to talk about the company’s annual results – see Ceddarvision.tv

Before writing you need to listen first.