Do PR Professionals Need to Blog to Be Successful?

There are a number of things PR professionals are taught to do in order to be successful. A few that come to mind immediately are network with industry professionals, get involved with PR/communications organizations on a local or national level and build strong relationships with media.

Those are all important, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how blogging plays a part in succeeding in the PR industry. I’m talking about blogging in general – whether you have your own PR blog, contribute to your company/agency blog, contribute guest posts on other blogs/websites or blog about topics totally unrelated to PR. There’s value in all of those options.

Aside from giving you more opportunity to grow as a writer, blogging also:

• Helps you build credibility as someone who has an expertise in whatever it is you choose to write about.
• Fosters creative thinking.
• Is a great way to build up positive Web content associated with your name.
• Gives you experience with understanding analytics and SEO.
• Can, and often times does, lead to a new job and/or professional development opportunities.
• Allows you to learn the functions of blogging platforms (which is especially helpful if you are ever tasked with helping your company or clients add blogging to the marketing mix, or if you’re ever part of a website build or redesign where the site is built on a CMS like WordPress).

The list goes on.

Here are my two questions:

How crucial is it for PR pros at all levels to blog in some sort of capacity?
Do PR job candidates with blogging experience have a one-up on candidates who don’t blog?

Just kidding, I have a third question:

I know it’s possible to achieve success without blogging, but does blogging add a whole new layer to the success mix that isn’t achievable through action items like those listed at the beginning of this post?

My opinion? I’ve grown both personally and professionally since I started blogging in August 2007 (wow, that seems like eons ago!), and I highly recommend PR professionals blog in some capacity.

Each person defines success differently, but do I think it’s impossible to be a successful and accomplished PR professional if you don’t blog? No.

I would love to get thoughts from PR pros who do/don’t blog, anyone whose blogging experience helped them get a job and people who are in charge of interviews/hiring for PR positions. The comments are yours!

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