On the importance of blogging for young PR grads

I've noticed that around me, more and more PR grads venture into the blogging world. I'm not talking about those in Europe or USA but of my friends here in Cameroon. 

Most of us discovered Internet in the late 90s. We used to exchange emails with friends and family abroad. Some created their first blog in the early 2000s thanks to platforms like Skyrock. But today we're starting to use Internet for another purpose: self-promotion and raise public awareness on what our job is all about.

In my country, PR is still its early stages. Most of our companies' CEOs do not know about PR or how to use our skills. They keep asking "Are you journalists?" and trust me we have a hard time explaining who we are and what we do. They sometimes confused with advertising and we have comments like "so, you're responsible of this crap we have on TV?" and here we go again explaining how we're different from advertising. 

It's a real struggle here to find a job that fits your profile. There's a lot of advertising agencies but no PR agency. What we learnt in college and what we found in reality are different worlds. It's rare to find a CEO ready to invest money in his company's communication or to welcome innovative ideas. They would rather stick to what they know best and keep their communication manager to meetings' organization. The fact that PR results can not really be measured makes things more complicated for us. That's why those here doing a bit of PR are...Advertising agencies! How sad right?

Plus, the fact that journalists here are very strange species: they want money for everything. You have to pay them to attend a press conference or pen an article about your products. Pitch all you want but pay. Don't ask me the reasons or the origins of this weird custom, I don't know. How can we sell PR as "non-paid publicity" if we have to reward journalists for their job? Not to mention the slew of amateurs...

There is a lot to complain about in the way communication is practiced in Cameroon but we chose to make a change via blogging.

Blogs are used by my fellows to comment strategies, communication campaigns and propose alternatives. We're trying to explain how companies can use PR and benefit from it. In fields like fashion, entertainment and events, PR is making a breakthrough and we hope this will set an example for others sectors. SMEs, small businnesses and young entrepreneurs start to understand that they need to use PR to build their image and promote their products. They know that business is about relationships and they begin to understand that PR is about building lasting relationships with the right people.

For my self-employed friends, community managers, communication consultants and freelance PR pros, blogs are very useful for self-promotion. They can show their works and discuss on topics that make the news, share their opinions and give another creative perspectives. They can demonstrate their personnalities and share their interests with people in the country and abroad.

When the case "Vanessa Tchatchou" - the now infamous story of that young woman whose baby disappeared from the hospital under mysterious circumstances -  took the news by storm, they were there to discuss every mistake of the government spokesperson who kept fooling people up to say a DNA test is not possible on a corpse. Doesn't he know we're in the 21st century and we watch CSI Miami?

Blogs are very useful too to network and build relationships with entrepreneurs, journalists and others bloggers, what may set the basis of new relations with medias. More importantly, blogs allow us to support each other. We went separate ways after school and blogging is an ultimate way to stay in touch and show some support.

Here are my selection of three blogs to encourage:

• Fashion Lab One O One  (English)
• Creative and Moving (French)
• Kongossa Alive (French)