Prompt's TechBlog

UPDATE 2: Thanks to Stuart Bruce for pointing out in the comments that the reason PRs were absent from this event may be that they were all over in Regent's Park for the Delivering the New PR 2.0 event (can't find a URL, but it's blogged very nicely by Rob Skinner). And of course there's also PR Week's PR and New Media conf coming up later this month and again in Oct, so perhaps in the near future we'll start to see less of this sort of thing. Thanks Stuart!


[Original Post]:

Of all the interesting things about Tuesday's Blogs and Social Media Forum, perhaps the most striking was that the PR community was practically absent from the event.

Only three of the 110 attendees were in PR roles, and one of those - Mark Monseau, director of media relations at Johnson & Johnson - was a speaker. That left an account manager from JBA Public Relations and the PR manager of an academic book publisher to make up the numbers for the profession.

With many blogs having achieved quasi-mainstream media status, and online chatter increasingly influencing public perception of organisations, I found this absence genuinely perplexing.

Personally, among the many fascinating topics covered at the event, I welcomed the opportunity to learn how major media outlets are addressing social media. I was heartened to find that even the best minds at these organisations are still uncertain about how to go about it. The BBC's Jem Stone said that the broadcaster no longer expects people to come to bbc.co.uk to talk about BBC content, but admits that 'we don't monitor conversations very well' on the wider internet, and that the Beeb is 'bad at engaging in those [non-BBC] spaces'.

This will be partly addressed by a new bbc.co.uk feature that will pull in BBC-related content from the blogosphere to show what people are blogging about, he said.

At the Economist, online publisher Ben Edwards is planning to make his first moves into social media by launching a 'publisher's blog' to inform readers of new developments and solicit their feedback. He is also creating a section on economist.com where all readers' letters will be published, and readers will be able to comment on them, form communities of interest and network with each other.

Edwards did not say whether Economist journalists would join in the debate.

So if PRs were conspicuously absent, who *was* there? The delegate list has job roles ranging from knowledge managers to digital strategists, marketing executives and IT folk, from blue-chips, publishers, government, law firms and charities.

While UK organisations seem keen to get to grips with social media, it looks like PR might be getting left on the sidelines.


UPDATE: This may go some way towards explaining why PRs are having difficulty engaging with journalist-bloggers in the era of social media, to Charles Arthur's frustration (via TWL).