Novell PR Team Opens Blog

This is interesting, the Novell PR team is using a blog to augment their media program.  This approach, by virtue of the fact that it's authored by a PR team comes with a unique set of challenges -- not least among them is the team's willingness to truely cultivate an "open dialogue" that addresses both the good issues and the bad. 

Regardless, my hat's off to the Novell folks for taking a chance and doing something I think (and have said) will eventually become a best practice for corporate communications.  An excerpt from their opening post:

What we hope to achieve with this site is a more open, more regular dialogue with the media on issues of relevance to Novell, the industry, and the open source community. Press releases will remain an important vehicle for communicating Novell news. Here, we hope to have more regular conversations about developments and issues that may not get into press releases, but are still of interest to those who follow Novell. We encourage active participation and feedback on the site.

The primary posters to the blog from Novell will be the Novell PR team. However, we also plan to include guest bloggers from the ranks of executives, product management, engineering, and more. We hope to make this a site where you can find good, interesting information, opinions and insights into what's happening with Novell and the industry. We commit to being open, although we ask folks to stay on topic. We are a public company, so don't expect us to pronounce on things financial.

[via Andy Lark]

 

Comments

[Jeremy Pepper]

Nice write-up. I had stumbled upon the blog, and was trying to talk to either Novell or its PR firm to get more background.

It is interesting, but I wonder about the issues that there will be with the PR team writing the blog, and not some engineers.

[Media Guerrilla]

As long as they keep the content focused on their primary audience (industry media) I don't foresee PR's authorship being too problematic. It's what they do already via emails, and phone calls and networking -- now they're just making the conversation available to the public.

Also, I think it puts the onus on the reader to understand that the source here *is* Novell PR -- so subscribe or don't, it's up to you the reader.

I can't imagine a beat reporter *not* subscribing to this, in the interest of staying competitive...