The State of Blog Relations is Not Strong

Question: Do public relations professionals effectively communicate with bloggers?
Answer: That depends upon who you ask.

The public relations trade association Council of Public Relations Firms and APCO Worldwide have just published the results of a survey they conducted last year with PR pros and bloggers. "The State of Blog Relations" reports that bloggers perceive their medium to have unique properties that most PR professionals just don't get.
The survey indicates that there is a considerable gap between how PR folks perceive their communication with bloggers and how bloggers perceive it. In short, "PR professionals who understand the blogger 'culture' are having more success in communicating in this online channel than those who do not." With that said, some public relations professionals do get bloggers. And I appreciate those that make the effort to communicate more effectively with this unprecedented medium. I also appreciate that, instead of releasing the findings in a standard format, David Wescott of APCO and his colleagues published them on a new interactive wiki, that allows anyone to help choose the questions that will be asked the next time the trade group conducts the survey.