Priscilla Tan makes a rather pointed blog entry about pitching, as a PR professional, to bloggers. Especially useful to PR students who don’t quite understand the importance of using blogs in public relations.

http://priscillatan.com/2007/09/23/blogger-pitches-how-and-who/

No, “widget fever” is not some odd affliction you get from visiting a jungle, nor is it a new Will Smith song.

Through the past few weeks, I’ve been redesigning the Web site for the online (and soon to be hard-copy) magazine I publish. It has been a trying experience which took three different tries with three different software packages to find one that my feeble brain could figure out and SUCCESSFULLY Web publish. When I finally figured out how render HTML packages from outside companies (read: the Amazon book links you can embed in Web sites), it was like I had reached Web nirvana. Through that process, I then tripped over widgets, and now I’m spending my free time looking across the ‘Net for relevant widgets for my site.

I must be calm. I must remain design-minded and not go crazy, posting widgets every which way from Tuesday.

So why am I rattling on about this? Think about it. Widgets are a great PR tool. Take a look at the Kansas Health Foundation’s “Change Something” campaign. To empower participants in their health-focused effort, the KHF provided a widget with a dual purpose: participants could upload their suggestions about changing a health habit, and then download a widget to be placed on their desktops, etc., to be fed (no pun intended) by the KHF with new suggestions daily. It’s interactive. It’s colorful. It’s individualized. It gives the KHF a way to build one-to-one relationships with participants and potential participants without getting in their faces. GENIUS!

In the Google universe, these widgets are actually called “gadgets,” (gadgets, widgets, thigamabobs, whatever) and as a Web publisher (even to your blogs) you can choose from a plethora of gadgets to use: CNN, Mayo Clinic, New York Times…heck, you can even post a language translator to your site. Widgetbox has a lot of fun, though not necessarily relevant to PR, widgets, including the effervescent PacMan game, a cat which responds to your mouse pointer, and a way to integrate YouTube videos (by keyword) to your Web site without complicated coding.

Now I feel compelled to go out and create my own widget (or gadget or whatever I shall call it)…but about what? Who do I want to reach? Why is this relevant, and what’s the demo of my audience?

While my life is as crazy as the next academic’s, I do try to take time and check out Steve Rubel’s MicroPersuasion blog. In a recent post, he points to a colleague’s post (power of recommendation!) about becoming a better blogger. In Media Landscaping, there is a robust debate about taking advertising within a blog. The best advice I found in the Landscaping post is remembering to find a niche and stick to it. This will define you and your message.

I’ve spent nearly three years teaching in the School of Journalism here at K-State. Every time I bring up the topics related to e-communication, whether it be blogging (weblogs), e-newsletters, Web design, you name it, I’m a rather bit amazed at the blank stares I receive. When I first taught a media relations class about blogging, the reaction to the subject matter was negative. The students, all upper-level public relations or mass communications students, all felt that blogging was merely trendy, a fad, something that would pass. The gist I felt from the students was that there was no place for e-communication in traditional mass communications and that as long as we focused on the big three — newspapers, radio and television — that it would pass.

Two years later, I’m actively teaching students about blogging, about e-newsletters, about Web design. I’ve also heard from alumni that have told both myself and colleagues that if we don’t get riding (and steering) on the e-communication bandwagon that we’re going to start losing students. Employers are expecting, more and more, at least a basic understanding of e-communication tactics…though I can guarantee you there are an incredible few classes and textbooks out there to use as resources to teach mass comm students (especially those in PR) how to USE the tactics of e-communication.

Even though I really hate the term “buzz” to describe some of the stuff we do in public relations, I have to admit I recently tripped over a few decent resources about blogging as a trend (which unfortunately refer to PR as “buzz”). While I’ll be introducing some of my students (the ones farther ahead in their sequence) to more depth about blogging, I’m also generally introducing my introductory (“Fundamentals”) students to the concepts of it.

That said, The Washington Post featured a great article in March of this year about how the food company, ConAgra, circumvented the potential of waning sales after the low-carb craze started to sputter out by monitoring what they called “blog buzz,” or the chatter being generated on blogs all over the world.

At the same time, this article also turned me on to something called Nielsen Buzzmetrics. You remember Nielsen…the company that puts those little devices in only-so-many homes to measure who is watching what and when, etc.? They now have an entire division devoted to quantifying (essentially, through content analysis…I’m assuming) the chatter being generated about various companies and topics on blogs and other individual communications mediums. Mouthpiece is the blog written by Nielsen Buzzmetrics CEO, as he constantly discusses how consumer-driven media is evolving.

As I’ve worked on starting my students down a path of blogging nirvana (and no, I don’t mean Kurt Cobain), I too have been learning quite a bit about blogging and its impact on public relations (in general, and specifically). I latched onto Steve Rubel’s blog, Micropersuasion. I really like how diversified his posts are every day. He hits on so many topics. Rubel is connected with Edelman PR, but his blog is more than just a big drum he beats for his firm.

Anyway, there is a blog he’s referencing about “thinking small.” When I was recently thinking about a discussion/lecture I was going to lead with my students in my large lecture Fundamentals of PR class, I remember thinking I needed to very blatantly say “the days of press-release publicity are over.” I received my PR degree during a time when media relations was still fairly golden. Newspapers weren’t nearly as hard to get coverage in, and the general public wasn’t inundated with such information overload that you had to stand on a streetcorner, doing a headstand and singing the “Star Spangled Banner” in Swahilli to get your message heard. But this is why I’ve introduced the concept of social media (generally) and blogging (specifically) to my students. I want them to think smaller. I’ve talked quite a bit in my classes about how we have truly become atomized in our perspectives. Here’s proof. Eric Sink goes into great detail about thinking small and blogs. Check it out if you have the chance.

Feel free to comment. I’d love to hear your perspectives.

As a professor of public relations, I have assigned an on-going blog to my techniques students for the duration of this semester. I find it only fitting that if I require them to do it, I should do it. So to my students and the world, here you go. Here are my ramblings about public relations.