One of the things that really surprised me when I started blogging earlier this year was the number of PR people who are involved in it (big list here here). For some reason, I thought there’d be more journos doing it. But then, I suppose a lot of journalists have to blog for the publications they work for. Also, the subjects I cover are frequently about communications of one kind or another.
Euroblog 2006 has done a survey of PRs to discover their use of blogs (found via Neville Hobson).
This is the upshot on their reasons for blogging (click for big):
Compare this to the reasons given by the general (American) public in the Pew Internet /American life report:
Well, there’s almost no similarity between PRs and normal people whatsoever ;).
Update: the PR survey is a year old with a new one just launched. Oops.
The Euroblog survey came out last November I think, Ian. This year’s survey is being kicked off as we speak… I await the result with baited breath!
Attention to detail is a fine asset, Simon.. erkk…
There’s another reason why the two set of responses are so different: the survey instrument and the focus was different.
(I hope Philip Young [1] will correct me if I’m wrong, but) I think the EuroBlog survey was asking what will motivate a *company* to use a blog (or why PR people think that weblogs will be a good communication tool — we’ll have to see the original questionnaire), as opposed to the Pew study, which was asking people what is their personal motivation for blogging. But it will be interesting, indeed, to see what are the motivations of PR bloggers :)
Thank you for pointing to the PR & Communications Blogs List! Please note that the list hosted on that URL is no longer updated, and that the current list is hosted here:
http://blog.basturea.com/pr-blogs-list/
(I promise to update the info on my old blog really soon.)
……
[1] Philip Young’s blog is http://publicsphere.typepad.com/mediations/
Thanks, Constantin. To be honest, the whole post was to allow me to make the gag at the end, which was intended to raise a little smile, rather than hackles. I guess I need to get better at communicating ‘whimsy’ and apologise to anyone offended…
Link corrected.