Survey: PR professionals recognise importance of blogs but do not know how to integrate them in their planning.
Yesterday afternoon the Euroblog 2007 conference ended in Gent and I must say, those were 3 very interesting days. Below are some of the results coming out of the 2nd European survey of PR Professionals I would like to highlight.
The survey was conducted on-line at the end of 2006 and is based on 409 responses from PR Professionals in 24 countries. It has been organised by Philip Young (University of Sunderland, UK), Swaran Sandhu (University of Lucerne, Switzerland) and Ansgar Zerfass (University of Leipzig, Germany) whom I also interviewed- a video will be posted later.
- 89% of PR professionals surveyed think that blogs and social software will be widespread and integrated into communications as websites are today.
- but 69% say they do not have the skilled personnel to handle them and 42% are unable to demonstrate the ROI of blogging.
Lack of skilled PR professionals is now the biggest factor influencing the use of social software. A new niche specialisation for PROs is emerging.
The 3 biggest challenges for PR Professionals to use blogs int heir organisation are:
- having time to blog regularly (83%)
- reacting to comments/feedback from the audience (83%)
- creating content and ideas for posts (80% !)
The 3 biggest opportunities for PR Professionals are:
- environmental scanning, keeping a finger on the pulse (81%)
- fast reaction time to issues (74%)
- opportunity for authentic (!), personal communications (77%)
PR professionals have also discovered RSS and on-line monitoring; 49% use RSS to monitor blogs and websites, 20% use professional on-line monitoring services. Still 13% do not monitor on-line.
When they monitor they check the following types of blogs/websites: thematic blogs relevant to their business (60%), competitors (47%) and citizen journalism projects (46%).
In my next post I'll put up the video interview I did at the conference with Philip Young, Swaran Sandhu and Ansgar Zerfass. You can download the major results of the survey here. (opens a PDF)
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Philippe Borremans
in Blogosphere, Events/Conferences, Study/Surveys, Corporate New Media
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Reader Comments (3)
PR professionals never really understood the internet except maybe for email use... If you look at NGOs, in some cases direct Corporate PR adversaries, well they have learned how to use the web, with very limited resources, about 10 years ago.. We in PR have a lot of catching up to do. This was again made clear through the Euroblog survey results.
As to marketing agencies... Well, let's be honest, not all of them do get it but they are used to the medium because they sell and are more commercially inclined than PR. The messages are not the same but the medium can be.