The Pros and Cons of Getting In Bed with Big Media

WebProNews, an article portal for Internet and technology professionals that also has an email newsletter with over 800,000 subscribers, has - with my blessing - started re-publishing my posts on their site. I am not being compensated in any way for my content. Tapping blogger-generated content is a brilliant strategy, but it carries many pros/cons for both WebProNews and myself.

On the plus side, WebProNews immediately augments their high-value, professionally written articles with more folksy contributors who live on the edge of the content tail - all at no cost. In return, I benefit from more visibility, in-bound links and traffic. This is a harbinger of the partnerships we'll see many big media construct in the near future. Jeff Jarvis at Advance Internet is already blazing the trail by hosting local blogs on the the company's newspaper sites, such as this one. The media will increasingly partner or acquire bloggers, while adopting more social sharing features like comments and trackbacks in order to compete with the the eager-to-break-news blogosphere. Dave Winer even goes as far to say that he thinks eventually The New York Times will become a blog

There's risk here too on both sides of the fence. Let's start with the downsides for WebProNews. For one, I am a relatively unknown quantity. I have been blogging all of seven months - not a very long time. Also, I may not always have such great things to say some days. Last but not least, at times I am controversial.

On a personal level, the biggest risk of this entire relationship is that Google News and Yahoo! News index all WebProNews articles - including my blog posts! Anytime I write about a person, topic or company and WebProNews picks it up, it gets indexed in these search engines. For example, yesterday I wrote about Rex. Well today he's showing up in the search results on both Google News and Yahoo! News.

This gives me - a PR professional - incredible power and influence that I truly don't deserve. It also ensures that I need to always play my A-game. I must be extremely sensitive and meticulous about who and what I write about. In short, it will probably immediately impact what I blog about. If I should slip, I will be perceived as simply using my position to sway opinions through search results. This is why effective today I will no longer mention any of my employer's clients by name. It's simply not playing fair.

What else needs to change? What are your views? Let's start a conversation. Do you view this as a good thing or a bad thing? Do you think I am a sell-out? Should I continue with them? Are there other changes do I need to make? I am all ears.

Comments

[-b-]

A relevant post to an app we're trying at the Blog Business Summit. We're picking relevant feeds from our OPML and publishing them to a blog. It's here

http://blogbusinesssummit.com/refeed/out/

[Rex Hammock]

Gee, Steve. I was just about to post my observation (via Google News e-mail alerts and PubSub vanity subscriptions) that what you've just blogged was happening. I think it's cool...and will, at some time in the not so distant future, be following up with with some related news. Happy Thanksgiving, Steve.

[Josh Hallett]

Steve you are now main stream media :-)

I think the perception of good thing/bad thing depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to further establish/advance your reputation as a leader within the PR industry as the go-to guy for blogs then it's a good thing. As you become more specialized your stock goes up. In any specialty there are a few nationally known individuals who are great at what they do and command a high price. (I can think of a few crisis communication pros)

You are bound to get more invitations to speak at conferences, which always leads to new business (speaking of which I have a group that may be interested in having you speak).

Perhaps the 'cashing-out' thing to do is write a book on blogging and public relations, or maybe you've already started :-)

The only downside would be if blogging becomes your full-time gig and you lose your grounding in PR.

[Mike Manuel]

I agree with Josh, it’s dictated by your goals.

Do you want to become the poster child for PR blogging? I’d argue that you already are in most circles – with or without this new gig.

Do you want to expand your personal brand for new business purposes? This might help, but then again, a lot of folks think Richard Edelman and Larry Weber are smart guys too, but no one does business with their firms based on their personal reputations alone.

Do you want to contribute your little part to the “greater conversation.” Again, you already are and doing so without compromise or limitation. With this new gig you lose IMO a big part of what makes blogging so great – absolute freedom to write about what YOU want.

Do you want to transition to full-time blogging? Obviously only a question you can answer, but you’re probably one of a very few people who could potentially pull this off under the right circumstances. This would be a good transition opportunity.

For what it’s worth, with or without the WPN gig, I think people will continue following your stuff. Good luck with things…

[Richard Bailey]

Isn't this simply what we used to call public relations?

[david]

For what it's worth, I'll echo the comments above.
There's no negative to this, congrats!