One of the benefits of an explosion of social media tools and blogs is that more comment, debate and opinion are readily available and accessible anytime, anywhere. I thoroughly recommend that if you’re interested in the views of bloggers, you not only read the blogs themselves but try and spare some time to read the comments posted too. These can add some valuable insight to the issues you are interested in and often further the debate to address areas the original post did not consider.

I was catching up on some blog reading over my lunch break today and dedicated some time to reviewing a lengthy string of comments on one of Rob Brown’s posts about PR and SEO (search engine optimisation). One comment I found particularly worthy of note was contributed by Pete Goold:

I strongly believe that SEO is more akin to PR than the web dev sector, as it should be about great content and effective distribution - two facets which belong in every great PR campaign.

The integration of SEO and other online tools into PR campaigns is certainly the hot topic of the moment and there is bound to be much debate about whether PR agencies, online marketers, web developers or another group entirely are best qualified to lead the evolvement. I agree with Pete that the rules of a good SEO campaign are similar to those of a good public relations campaign, but I would be wary of neglecting the technical expertise of web developers.

Perhaps the future will be more intergration of web developers into PR agencies and PROs into technical agencies to achieve that ideal balance of skills.

Rebecca Wheeler