In a newly posted paper, Donald K. Wright (Boston University) and Michelle Hinson (Institute for Public Relations), continue their research into how technology and blogs have challenged public relations practice, stating that the potential influence of blogs on public relations is "phenomenal."

According to the paper, in spite of the huge potential for blogs in both business and public relations, an amazingly small number of corporations are blogging - only about 11% of the Fortune 500 as of February of this year.

Some of the reasons that companies may wish to blog include personalizing relationships with customers and stakeholders, testing ideas (the blog as a huge focus group), and to become recognized as thought leaders or influencers.

Results from the study indicate that there is considerable agreement suggesting blogs and social media have enhanced public relations practice. Two-thirds of the study's respondents (66%) believe social media have enhanced public relations and 60 percent feel the same way about blogs. Most (89%) of those surveyed think blogs and social media influence news coverage in the traditional media (newspapers, magazines, radio and television) while 72 percent say the reverse also is true. There is very solid agreement (84%) that blogs and social media have made communications more instantaneous because they force organizations to respond more quickly to criticism.

Respondents think blogs and social media have a long distance to go before they will be equal to traditional media in terms of accuracy, credibility, truth, ethics and so forth. Respondents do not give blogs and social media very high scores in terms of truth telling or advocating transparent and ethical cultures. However, respondents give social media high marks for offering organizations low-cost ways to develop relationships with members of various strategic publics (80% agreement), serving as a watchdog for traditional mainstream media (61% agreement) and impacting corporate and organizational transparency (76% agreement).

Several of the respondents suggested blogs and social media provide excellent opportunities for public relations practitioners to build relationships with strategic publics. As one wrote, social media "have provided an opportunity to truly put the public back into public relations by providing a mechanism for organizations to engage in real-time, one-to-one conversations with stakeholders. Additionally, they serve as a focus group of thousands, allowing offline communications to be more relevant."