media guerrilla

The WSJ has an interesting story that’s bouncing around the blogosphere.  It’s yesterday’s Portals column by Lee Gomes (“Tech Blogs Produce New Elite to Help Track The Industry’s Issues”). 

I know I’m chiming in a little late on this one so I won’t re-hash all the points of this piece here other than to say its a good read and that it hits on some bigger trends taking shape right now in the media sausage making business, especially in the tech industry.  One trend in particular that’s worth calling out revolves around the idea of “corporate access” and how it relates to influencers, big media and public relations.

Now, I’m not going to get into the “blogger vs. journalist” debate here, see Angela Gunn’s post today for smarter thoughts on that, but I will say that there’s a bigger trend afoot within a small, but growing group of tech companies right now that realize keeping a tight kung-foo grip on corporate content and more importantly, “who” has access to that content is no longer the only, err best, way to handle communications.

As a result, industry influencers (be they bloggers, podcasters or otherwise) are increasingly being approached and invited inside corporate walls to preview products and receive pre-briefings on announcements, and are quickly finding that the once exclusive privilege of big media — access — is increasingly being offered to them too.  They are also quickly finding themselves going toe-to-toe (for better or worse) with their big media counterparts, and THAT creates all sorts of interesting dynamics for the influencers and the media and the tech PR pro who needs to maintain relationships with both.

Ultimately, I think the savvy companies, the ones embracing PR 2.0, are the ones that are willing to experiment with access and broaden their scope and definition of who the stake holders really are within an industry and how best to go about engaging in a conversation with them.

Technorati Tags: Influencers, Journalism, PR, PR 2.0, Silicon Valley, Technology