by Janis Brett Elspas
MommyBlogExpert
Just a few months ago, I was invited to join the Advisory Board of SheBlogs.org, an online community that connects women bloggers with and without children -- including mom bloggers, product reviewers and others -- with PR and brand pros who issue the news and promote the products that women care about most. Julie Wohlberg, founder of SheBlogs, has certainly played a pivotal role in connecting brands with bloggers with this initial venture, so I was thrilled to hear that Wohlberg has partnered with Michael Connor to launch another new business, this one known as The BlogWire.
According to TheBlogWire's new site which launched March 31, the online company's goal is to provide a new way for brands and bloggers to connect. In the organization's own words, "BlogWire is a PR distribution service that picks up where traditional newswires and media database services fall short -- by connecting marketing professionals with niche, targeted blogging communities that want to receive their news, host contests and giveaways, or review new products."
This got me thinking about how truly amazing it has been to be an observer of how the ways the PR profession works with the media have evolved over time. Though I'm a full-time mommy blogger now, relying on everything that the Internet has to offer to stay close to my family while also working professionally, I learned to write not on a computer but on a manual typewriter. Having worked previously for more than two decades in PR, media relations, and journalism, yes I even pre-date IBM Selectrics (the electric typewriters in vogue in the late 70s and early 80s).
During all stages of my career I have never ceased to marvel at the power of technology and have enjoyed the thrill of riding out the multitude of waves of tech booms and busts that fellow old-timers will also recall. PR news distributing vendors have definitely come a long way. Where there were once only companies such as PRWire, Businesswire and others like them acting as messengers for PR workers helping them to distribute news releases to traditional media, there is now TheBlogWire. A company that I think, specifically because of its unique paradigm, will make it easier than ever for bloggers and brands to find each other and interact in a world where these two forces might otherwise be whizzing past each other in cyberspace missing countless opportunities to connect.
And to think my own first job out of college was at an agency in the good old days, before the FAX machine was invented, before PCs were on all workers' desks, and before the Internet was in common use. Back then, my associates and I relied instead on sending messages via Telex and we were forever manually updating media mailing lists (sans the computer) via hard copies of spiral-bound Bacon's Publicity Checkers. We even received monthly mailings of updated contact information stickers that the publisher would snail mail us that we'd then have to paste up in our Bacon's books.
Bloggers, brands, and their public relations representatives have so many ways to benefit from connecting with both TheBlogWire.com and SheBlogs.Org. Now that it's 2010 and bloggers and brands want so desperately to find each other, I can't imagine not being networked into both of these vital resources and tapping into all they have to offer.
FTC Disclosure: Janis Brett Elspas, the MommyBlogExpert, is an Advisory Board Member of SheBlogs. However, MommyBlogExpert did not receive any payment or other compensation associated with this post. See complete FTC Disclosure information that appears at the bottom of MommyBlogExpert's main page and at the bottom of every individual post on this blog, including this one.
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