PR will lose Social Media to Advertising Because of Sex

The past weekend - not the last one, but the weekend before - I went to Vloggercon.

After that week, I had continued talks with Dina and Michael from Blip.tv about what they are doing, been talking to the Podtech.net (there's me and John Furrier at Vloggercon) people for ideas and further discussions on what they are doing, and then went to the Blip.tv/Dabble party and spoke with GeekTV's Eddie Codel - all about video blogs and what is going on with them.

But, one thing that I noted to Rohit Bhargava - who was at Vloggercon for a client - was the missing PR people. Yes, there were PR people at the show ... but mostly for clients. And, full disclosure - I wasn't there for a client, but to learn.

Where we the PR people that were there to learn more? Why weren't there more PR people there learning about video blogs, and what is being said, how the technology is changing, and what we can do with video blogs.

Rohit has a great post on his observations from Vloggercon, and ValleyWag has a great post on the flipside of the insular nature of vlogs. But, for PR people, both of these are important issues.

Video blogs or vlogs or video podcasts - while still a nascent field in consumer generated media - are a growing space, and has potential to really explode. If you look at YouTube - ignore all the copyright material, and look for the original content - you find a massive audience that is watching. When you go to Blip.tv, you see various channels that include cooking, personal, travelogues and other fun videos.

Okay, so PR people should be paying attention to video blogs, because there are opportunities: outreach and conversations. Yes, vlogs are also a place you can reach out to, and get information to and help tell the story. Or, well, you know it could be easy to transfer the whole video library for media - the atypical b-roll - to a media center video blog. Instead of doing the full link-up and crew, you can shoot for a vlog and have those clips available for the media.

That's the difference from the past to now: you can provide the videos to the media and the public, and give them the tools to create their own media. Help them own the brand as well.

But, well, there were not enough PR people there to learn these things.

Photos by Chris Heuer. All rights reserved (but he's a friend, so hope he's cutting me some slack).

Tags: vloggercon, vlogs, vidcasts, public relations, pr, marketing, marcom, marketing communications, bliptv, podtechnet, dabble, geektv, youtube