“Do it Wrong Quickly: What Corporations Need from PR in Today’s Transforming Marketplace”Mike Moran begins the afternoon keynote with what is perhaps the most salient point of the whole conference. We don’t need to be the expert in new media or blogs. We need to be the expert in how to solve our client’s problems. Otherwise, we might as well give up. We’ll never be the blog expert because the blog experts exist, and they’re not getting any dumber.

Moran’s tone is optimistic, and not at all condescending, which is a refreshing change from many speakers on this topic, who seem to want to tsk-tsk us for not having discovered social networking years ago. Oh, and they are eager to inform you that whichever social media platform you have succeeded in engaging was obsolete in 1999. Moran eschews alarmism to good effect.

PR types tend to view new media as a sort of death knell for Public Relations. Moran sees them as an opportunity. The new model allows Public Relations to deliver hard results where we know we are making an impact on behalf of our clients. We can target more closely, measure results more accurately, and respond more quickly to customer feedback.

Mainstream media is losing it’s luster and PR firms are scrambling, fumbling in some cases, to reach out to the influential blogerati in the hopes to capture shifts in audience information consumption. OMB recently published a blogger relations guide as well as a long list of what not to do when pitching blogs. Here’s an exceprt:

• Don’t pitch irrelevant stories
• Don’t send emails to anonymous recipients. Use a name.
• Don’t send blanket solicitations to bloggers in the same general industry.
• Don’t embargo an announcement for more than a few days.
• Don’t demand to be covered as if you’re gods gift to the blogosphere.
• Don’t insult the blogger, even as a joke, especially if you don’t know them.
• Don’t lie or make promises you can’t keep.
• Don’t send story ideas that are about as exciting as mall music.
• Don’t send a regular pitch with a press release to a blogger.
• Don’t use traditional media relations tactics with bloggers, but rather, make an effort to connect with them individually.
• Don’t play bloggers like a numbers game.
• Don’t be rude and not thank the blogger for covering your news.