When I say press coverage, I don’t mean the opposite of giving a wide receiver a 12-yard cushion (sorry, my Eagles just played in the NFC Championship game and I’ve got football on the brain). I’m talking about media exposure for you, your product or your service on the internet.

I’ll be talking about this quite a bit and to start, let’s talk about the importance of connecting with the bloggers. So, why are the bloggers important?

Well, it’s pretty simple: the media landscape is changing and more and more people are getting their information from blogs, just like you are doing right now. I’m not knocking traditional media outlets like newspapers, magazines, radio and television, but let’s be honest, the media is shifting away from that.

The days of the two-newspaper cities are quickly coming to a close. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is in trouble, as is the Philadelphia Daily News. I’ve even read that the Old Gray Lady’s print edition is in serious peril.

I don’t think print is ever going to go away completely, but circulations are down and online readership is up.

Perfect example is the websites of newspapers. Newspapers aren’t stupid, they know the deal. Go to your city newspaper’s website and I guarantee you will see blogs. The Wall St. Journal, USA Today, NY Times, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer…they all have blogs. They know that blogs are just too fast with the information and that people won’t wait until tomorrow morning’s newspaper.

Like I said before, I’m a Philadelphia Eagles fan. By reading blogs online, I know that Brian Westbrook missed practice at 3:30 PM on Thursday. Why would I wait to read the same thing in Friday morning’s Inquirer? I wouldn’t, nobody would. Blogs have the news faster than anyone, and that’s a big reason why people read them.

Sure, bloggers will never completely take over. Traditional journalists are held to credibility and accountability standards that most bloggers aren’t. But, there are more than enough bloggers who have that “street cred” and the number of them who have it is only going to grow. It’s very important to recognize the PR importance of blogs for you and your business. You need to reach out to them in order to maximize your company’s exposure.

Next time we’ll talk about the best way to reach out to those bloggers and get them to write about you.

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