Blogging: bad for business?

Eight days ago, Dee Rambeau, a (now-former)* contributor to the MarCom Blog, announced that he was giving up blogging. “I am convinced after 3 years of blogging,” he writes in a post aimed mainly at PR students at Auburn, “that blogging is not a positive thing for business, rather it is a negative.”

He then presents his case: that “blogs are useless and irresponsible” for public corporations, that content management systems have improved to a point where they can provide most of the value-added aspects of customer relations blogs used to offer (“Set your website up to have the ability for you to make content additions/changes right away”), that blogging is more about ego than PR, and so on. He ends with good advice to PR students (and anyone else willing to heed it).

While blogging may be bad for business, from Rambeau’s perspective, does that make it bad for colleges and universities?

* Apparently, according to Robert French, the blogger behind Marcomblog, Rambeau will continue to post there on occasion. But he’s given up his businessy blog, Adventures in Business Communications.

Happy, happy higher ed flacks

According to this (via FlackLife), all higher ed PR people should be relatively happy.

…Generalists, people with moderately strong attachments to many ideas, should be hard to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have weaker, shorter negative negative reactions since they have alternative paths to realize their plans. Specialists, people with stronger attachments to fewer ideas, should be easier to interrupt, and once interrupted, should have stronger,more sustained negative reactions because they have fewer alternative pathways to realize their plans. Generalists should be the upbeat, positive people in the profession while specialists should be their grouchy, negative counterparts. — Karl Weick

In general, I agree. (What did you expect from a happy-go-lucky generalist?) The college and university public relations folks I know tend to be more upbeat and optimistic than, say, graphic designers. But we’re not nearly as chipper as the marketing, alumni relations or development folks.

Then again, a lot of PR people with a writing background (the best kind, in my opinion) are more introverted than the schmoozing marketing, development and alumni relations types, and they may come off as moody or negative. Much of it is a matter of perception, I think.

I’ve been accused of being a pessimist before by my fellow PR people. I prefer to think of it as realism based on experience.