Saturday, July 14, 2007

Content Is not King - discuss

Alice Marshall, Founder, Presto Vivace, wrote in Daily Dog

"Very few gold prospectors made money in the gold rush of 1849; the people who got rich were those who sold Levi's, buckets, shovels and related equipment.

During the dot-com boom, we repeatedly heard the call, "content is king." It was said that those who created compelling content would be the winners in the Internet economy, even while online publications were bleeding money. Even as news organizations were laying off reporters and offering others buy-outs, we were told that content was king.

Yet the people who made money from the dot-com boom were the manufacturers of router and network equipment, web servers and infrastructure related products and services. Those who built the Internet itself did well. The content creators took a bath....."


I agree that content is not the king it may once have been. I disagree with all the rest.

Press Agentry is not public relations.

The value of PR is not derived from content or from relationships derived through third parties (journalists, blogger.com or even Twitter).

The real value of PR is in the ability to understand the nature and value of relationships (of all kinds) to and within an organization and the ability to plan, manage and optimise the organization's ability to benefit from relationships.

Creating and selling-in content has its excitements but public relations, the planned management of organisational relationship optimisation, is a service upon which all organizations depend for survival.

No relationship—no organization.

Public relations provides the service that, among other things, offers a living to content creators.

The role of risk, opportunity and uncertainty management in relationship development has to be a highly developed management science.

Journalism and blogging, even communications, are not Public Relations they are just tools to be deployed.

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