It has taken rather a while to unpack all the boxes, redecorate and invite you round for a house blog-warming party chez PR Conversations*. We trust that our return to posting is good news as we’re ready to converse again with our usual sassy attitude.
During our blogging hiatus, Judy Gombita has kept up the PR Conversations action via our hugely successful Twitter micro-blog. That’s why we’ve included its feed as a major element of the updated design here.
The site now has two principals, myself and Judy, after our previous Techster, Markus Pirchner, decided to refocus his life. We are hugely thankful for all his support since the Redux version of PR Conversations was launched in 2010. I’ve taken over the hosting, so any technical glitches are now all my responsibility.
What can you expect now we are back? Probably much of the same as before (see About), but we will be experimenting with some new ideas and approaches to stimulating conversations. We will also unpack our wonderful back catalogue of posts for topics and insight as we’ve some fantastic heirlooms lurking in our Seasoned Posts and Classic PR Conversations.
We know that commenting on blog posts isn’t as popular as it once was and indeed the nature of blogging itself has changed much over the past ten years. Originally launched in Spring 2007, PR Conversations broke new ground by envisioning and introducing an international, collaborative PR blog concept under the initial guidance of Toni Muzi Falconi who had founded the original root-blog (tonisblog) sometime around 2005..
In 2010, Toni stepped back to allow the new Redux version of the site to develop. After a further five years, and nearly 600 PR Conversation posts, we refreshed the look and feel, but continued to offer a platform for informed discussion, where a wide variety of voices (including Toni’s) have conversed about public relations in a global-local context.
When Markus let us know of his decision to retire from PR Conversations, I agreed to take on the technical side and give the site another facelift. I confess to being tempted to redecorate with a contemporary creative storytelling theme featuring multi-slider, visually gorgeous Parallax visual effects and scrolling devices. But as you can see I have resisted the urge to go all hipster trendy with the design.
Our focus as ever will be on considered and engaging long-form writing that we believe offers something different to other blogs. We like to champion ‘other’ voices and bring an irreverent sense of fun and critical insight to online debate about public relations.
We aren’t about click-bait, sucking up or jumping on band-wagons. We’re not in the blogging business to make money, promote others’ marketing content or attract the unwanted attention of PR spammers.
We are about being innovative, imaginative and influential. Most of all we want PR Conversations to be relevant and thought-provoking. And, as we’ve said before, we are only as good as our loyal readers and contributors – so please feel free to join the conversation.
PR Conversations is focused entirely on original thinking. We welcome ideas that fit our ethos – but we are more likely to approach people we like or who have attracted our attention (in a good way) to write for or with us than to respond to generic pitches. Indeed, we have deliberately not included a contact us form or other easy way to get in touch on the blog.
We make no promises about frequency of posting, or indeed what we may write about. When we’ve something to talk about, we hope you’ll join us in a PR Conversation. If you’ve something to say, we may even ask you to share your opinion with a fresh post. Or you’re free to tell us what you think right now in the comments… But be warned, pointless pitches posted in comments will be deleted!
* Note: Some of our pictures are lost in transit, so older posts may have a white space where a stylish image should be. We’re a bit busy to go through several hundred posts currently – so perhaps you’d like to imagine what is, or could be the illustration instead 😉
This is excellent news and I am thrilled by the idea the blog ‘relives’.
It is certainly true that habits and preferences have changed considerably and that comments are rare and precious.
One more reason to post intellectually rich and challenging contents which have been the trademark of pr conversations now for many years.
Biased as I am, I have always believed and suggested to my better students to select, according to their specific interests of the moment, any theme got to PRC digit the theme in the search sector and enjoy the wealth, diversity and thoroughness of the contents.
The web is not the same as it was and we have the responsibility: you, I, our friends and adversaries, are all responsible for its dynamics.
Obviously some more, some less.
But we made it as it is now and we must make an effort to correct its deviances.
This is, in my view, vital.
Good luck and I hope very much to contribute.