Tech bloggers – key influencers or just more of the same?

By Jacqui Depares

It should come as no surprise that PR is a highly dynamic industry, always looking for new communication tools to get clients’ messages across to their respective audiences as competition, particularly in the tech sector, continues to grow.

I saw a good example of the huge impact that new media has made in this respect when my brother sent me a link to a new series of online programmes he’d helped create for a musician wanting to generate interest in his new album.  With over 70,000 hits in the first 48 hours of its posting, it’s fairly clear that this was a major PR triumph.

The communication mediums we can use in today’s technology savvy society are clearly evolving, with showbiz/gossip blogs often playing a significant role in making or breaking a celebrity.  But how does this translate in the wider business/tech world? Can a blogger really define the fate of a vendor?

In the US, particularly the B2C space, this is definitely the case.  Technology bloggers there have massive influence in the media and PROs go to great lengths to encourage these individuals to write positively about their clients.  A negative story can cause major ripples in an organisation and result in some serious crisis control taking place.

However, the picture is different in the UK market.  Technology blogs exist – but they’re either online publications that just happen to be using blogging software or are directly linked to a publication, and therefore have as much (or as little) reach as the publication itself.  So is there any point in specifically targeting them?

My gut response would be no.  Yes, pitches, briefings etc should all be tailored around the needs of that particular journalist/blogger (with many writers now wearing both hats) – but I certainly don’t think that the UK PR industry needs to launch a full on assault on the blogging community. 

And I’m not alone in my thinking – journalist Stephen Pritchard in last week’s PR Week argued that “targeting bloggers risks stretching PR companies’ limited resources even further”.  With already a huge media base to target, I think that PROs would be best advised to focus their efforts on traditional PR outreach – investing time in building and maintaining relationships with key journalists. 

Now of course, given I’m writing this on a blog, you may be thinking this all seems a little hypocritical.  So just to make it clear: blogs are an important tool for PROs (and PR companies!). I’m just not that convinced they currently have enough influence in the UK media to warrant us – certainly in the B2B arena – dedicating huge amounts of time targeting them.