The Differences in Working with Traditional Media and Bloggers

By Kristin Kiltz

We had the pleasure of having Jon Greer, past journalist, media-training specialist at MediaBridge, and avid blogger at BNET, come to Engage PR for a training session on “How to work with traditional media versus bloggers.” He had us go through an exercise of noting how we work with these two media and what drives them.

Here are some key things to note about traditional media:

• They have limited space to work with
• They have to follow a code of ethics. All data needs to be factually proofed
• It’s important that their stories are objective
• Their audience is well defined

Bloggers operate quite differently:

• They don’t want to be pitched; you must create a dialogue by commenting on their blogs
• There is an opportunity for multiple opinions to be heard
• While people like Tim O’Reilly try to urge bloggers to agree to a Blogging Code of Conduct, it’s not mandated; it’s up to each individual blogger to decide whether to follow the code
• Bloggers want “link love”–other bloggers linking back to their stories

So what do these things tell us? You can’t work with traditional media the same way you work with bloggers. If you do, you will not be successful in getting your message out. As we have always said in PR, know your audience, how they like to work, and what hot buttons to avoid. If you treat everyone the same, you can guarantee you will have no results to deliver to your clients.

Comments

[Jon Greer]

Thanks for the write-up -- I had a great time working with your team!