Moblogging – short for "mobile blogging" – will have a bigger impact on the public relations industry than any other technological change in the past five years. Combine low-cost, easy-to-use social media tools like Blogger, TypePad, Audioblog, Flickr and BitTorrent, with an intelligent arsenal of millions of connected mobile devices, and suddenly the PR professional is faced with an entirely new set of challenges and opportunities. Here’s a quick look at two threats and two opportunities …
Moblogging's Threats to PR
Corporate/Intellectual Property Secrets will Leak onto the Internet
Some companies and organizations are already banning camera phones from the workplace. Others, perhaps naively, are still allowing them. In either case, it will increasingly become difficult for corporate America to stop some employees from using their camera phones to mobile blog photos of source code, secret products in development, planned advertising/marketing campaigns, legal documents, pending patent filings and more. Once this information is out on the Internet, it’s an easy picking for any enterprising professional/amateur journalist. Just think what the Enron and Tyco scandals would have been like if moblogging were more widespread back in 2001.
The "Soft Launch" Will Die
"Soft-launches" and "test marketing" are oft-used phrases in corporate marketing. Companies often roll out new products and services in stages to make sure they’re fully baked and ready for primetime. Typically the PR team will wait to begin its full court press until a soft launch has completed. The reason is simple – you don’t want to "hype" a product before it is widely available and functional. With millions consumers moblogging, the soft launch is dead folks. If your company or client is test marketing a product in a limited market – and you are a well-known entity – expect the news to hit the network.
Moblogging’s PR Opportunities
Moblogs Will Become a Valuable Crisis Communications Tool
What’s more convincing? A corporate-speak PR statement from Firestone that says "we’re working on our tire recall issue" or an up-to-the-minute moblog that shows executives and front-line workers in real-time implementing a massive recall to protect consumers. This gives you a taste of how the savvy PR pros might employ moblogs in the future when a crisis breaks. Take a look at what David Sifry wrote today as an example.
Using Moblogs to Bang the PR Drum
Moblogs can also be used to build early hype for a product/service before it’s even out on the market. Let’s say you’re a movie publicist. Why not moblog or "vlog" (video blog) snippets of the "dailies" live from the shoot’s location? Or perhaps you are organizing all PR for a trade show or conference. You could launch a live moblog from the event. Moblogging offers PR pros the opportunity to leverage new tools to generate buzz. Look into them.
