Poll: practitioners shun 'blog' policy

PR Week UK, Wednesday, 06 December 2006, 7:00pm,

More than eight out of ten UK and US PR professionals admit that neither they nor their clients have an official blogging policy, according to a major survey.

The research was commissioned by agency Peppercom. It showed that most of the 1,162 PROs polled (89 per cent in the US and 83 per cent in the UK) thought blogs were an important digital comms tool. But 62 per cent (US and UK) have ‘not adapted their comms strategy to include proactive outreach to blogs, message boards and other forms of digital medium'.

‘What we found was a level playing field, where in both countries only a select few are diving into social media. Most are hesitant to start the process,' said Steve Cody, MD and founder of Peppercom.

ALSO... Harvard PR released a survey with similar findings this week, which polled 70 in-house PROs.

It found that ‘the majority' had ‘yet to embrace social media techniques' such as blogs, RSS and online communities, with 27 per cent ‘just experimenting' and 26 per cent ‘having not yet investigated them'.