Blogging about clients

Today on PR 2.0, Brian Solis blogged about...well, blogging. More specifically, he raises the question of whether or not PR agencies should blog about their clients. In his post, he references a company that asked its PR firm to blog about the work they're doing together, and the PR firm declined.

Since talking about the specific work you're doing with a client has the potential to get kind of sticky, Solis suggests that the agency ask itself the following questions before beginning to blog:

• Will blogging about this or other relationships benefit existing or potential clients?
• Will we establish thought leadership or give away our ideas?
• Are we capable of writing authentically and not like most PR people?
• Will this blog hurt or help relationships with media, analysts and bloggers?

Here on Sterling's blog, we talk frequently about news and trends in our clients' industries but not yet about the tactics we use on each account.

Comments

[Denise Shiffman]

Think about what's valuable to your blog readers. It's great if you post about best-in-class programs, and why and how they worked. And if the client is willing, you can talk about mistakes and how to avoid them next time around. Certainly clients need to agree in advance. And if you're just posting to promote your client or yourself, readers won't be that interested. It's the learning and the exchange of ideas that's useful and interesting.