It’s not been so much difficult writing this but to get people to open up and give their point of view …and since everyone has a right to privacy, that’s a request which has been made to me by most people I spoke to and I will adhere to that. The topic here is about mis-behaviour and mis demeanor with PR professionals by Clients and sometimes journalists too. PR as a profession has long been considered to be a profession that heavily relies on wining and dining and guess it is that perception that drives forward the intent of some people to think that it is okay to act fresh or make advances to people who belong to this profession. Albeit I would like to deny personally that that happens only in PR, since I do know that there are people with lewd mentality every where and you meet them wherever you go. It is how you deal with it, what you come across and the action you take against the person is what matters the most.

I have been speaking to branch heads, team leaders and heads of organisations I know to whom I posed the question in terms of what would they do if someone from their team was treated in any way that was vulgar and sick. Almost all of them said that they would immediately take cognisance of it and bring it to the notice of the senior most people in the organisation both at the Client’s end as well as the agency. And if after warnings, the problem persisted, they would give up the account no matter what. Some of them have given up accounts because the problem persisted.

But again the discussion is not so black and white…mis behaviour, mis demeanor and harassment is not always one sided. It is very much a function of how each one of us conducts ourselves, how we behave, how we talk, our mannerisms, the signals we pick and give out and if there is anything that makes the other person feel that one is ‘available’ issues such as these crop up. However there have also been instances when guys have been harassed by female Clients and that’s when I realised that gender issues are no more about just women…they are beyond all lines and rules…it’s all individualistic and very dependant on situations and people themselves.

Some rules that I try to follow as a girl in this profession….

• Never go alone for Client meetings or media rounds unless you know the people really well

• Always go with someone along and have the team anyways with you….so that you are not just in good company but also do not have to come back and summarise the meeting details to your team

• Try to meet Clients and Media in their offices and if you are meeting them outside for lunch or snack meet at a place which is more fun, casual and crowded instead of restaurants with a certain ambience

• Dress appropriately…. This is a profession of not just overt communication processes but of informal, subliminal and behavioral communication. Dress decently to not attract any unwanted attention

• Be professional in your behaviour and conduct • If in spite of all this, you are faced with an uncomfortable situation, do not shy away from talking about it, but bring it up to the notice of your seniors

• Do not get hysterical while reporting about the incident but state facts and get both parties involved

At the end of the day, stand up for yourself and if you think no one is taking an action against the unfair treatment, take a decision that protects your integrity and self esteem. Since nothing is more important than your self esteem.

Madhavi Mukherjee

Dear PR colleagues, India PR Blog is developing a directory of PR agencies and PR freelancers in India. This directory will consist of all big, medium size, and small agencies across the various States, cities, and small towns in India.

The directory will be available online at this site. The agencies will be categorised according to their locations.

The directory is an endeavor to showcase the diverse talent and local know how of the various PR professionals across the country. As the India PR blog is becoming a comprehensive resource for not only PR professionals and agencies but also for corporations and organisations seeking professional information on their PR and communications requirements, this directory will serve as a ready online guide available to them free and 24/7.

So if you are a PR agency owner or a PR freelancers in India, please send us your details in the format below to editor@indiaprblog.com and we ensure your inclusion into this upcoming directory.

Name of PR Agency/ professional:

Contact Person (In case of PR agency) :

Full Contact Address:

Phone (with STD code):

Email:

Website (if any):

Specialisations: (For example event management, media relations, press releases, organising media interactions, press conferences, etc.)

Experience: (Please provide a brief paragraph of your experience, clients you have worked for, events you have handled)

Additional information: You can include anything you want to include about yourself/ agency here. This can be number of employees you have, profiles of key team members, awards won, etc. etc.

ASSOCHAM yesterday released a report on the Indian PR industry, which came as a bit of a surprise. I though they aptly called it a ‘random’ survey. It came out of nowhere.

On one hand, this report is a positive development with industry associations now starting to conduct studies on the PR industry. PR researchers have been yearning for a PR industry report and this seemed like one that authenticated a lot of trends and issues that we in the industry are witnessing and discussing about.

And then before I completed my smile, a conspicuous figure in the report attracted my attention. ASSOCHAM has boldly put the size of the Indian PR industry at USD 3 bn currently. While I would have loved to believe this figure and bask in the glory of being part of a fast growing industry, I have my doubts. Are we really that big? A USD 3bn means around INR 12,000 crores. And that is a huge amount.

From the not-so-perfect finger-counting that we do usually, the PR consultancy business in India is supposed to be around INR 150-200 crores only. We have around half a dozen ‘big’ PR agencies that rope in the majority, read 70-80%, of the revenues for the industry. Each can have a revenue of around INR 12-15 crores with the highest going to around INR 20 crores from pure PR fee (not calculating the expenses). Even if you calculate the expenses, the total revenue of the biggest PR firm is supposed around INR 40 crores. The rest perhaps bring in a just as much as one or two combined of these ‘big’ agencies.

Let’s do some more guess work. What could be the total PR spend by the organised corporate say in the top 1000 companies in India through one or the other agency or directly? Can we quote a figure of around INR 500 crores. Add around INR 125 crores from the PR spends by the unorganised sector in mini cities. Would even all these combined reach that ASSOCHAM figure of USD 3 bn?

Or is there something else that I am not aware of in the industry, I would definitely love an explanation into that figure.

Other key findings from the report:

1. Growing opportunity cost in PR industry is one reason for constant job shuffles

2. Over 90% PR professionals come in at the entry level with enthusiasm and passion for their work but within a year shift to greener pastures

3. Brand building and image management are emerging as key areas where corporates seek services of PR firms to enhance visibility and promote services/ products/ top management

4. Majority of PR professionals confirmed that during the economic boom, huge competition emerged for brand building as a result of which PR agencies are in demand and quoting high market driven prices for services

5. PR sector registered growth of 22-25% in last few years which further went up to 32% in 2007 and by 2010, size of PR industry is expected to grow to more than $6 billion

6. Indian PR industry comprises 1200-1500 agencies with manpower strength of 30,000 to 40,000

7. In terms of vertical markets, healthcare is the fastest-growing sector; however, public sector, environment and corporate social responsibility are emerging as growth areas for PR

8. Overriding concern of industry is skills shortage; almost all agencies are hiring, a trend that is indicative of growth, and some are looking outside the PR industry to bring in new skills

9. Although there are thousands of small agencies and individual consultants serving very local markets, larger agencies are forging partnerships across the globe to meet demand from clients

10. Retainer fee on an average can be anywhere between Rs2.5 to Rs 5 lakh

11. Reasons for high attrition could be the temptation of moving to the higher pay master; leadership crisis within the industry; inability of PR outfits to meet evolving needs of companies/ clients and to understand the dynamics of the present-day market place

Read media reports on the study here: The Hindu, Mint, IndiaInfoline

Clients paying Peanuts?!

Missed this space in the past couple of weeks…was all over the place with events, plans and new business pitches.

Now that am back was too restless to wait for my turn over the weekend.  So am back with my thoughts.

Sometime ago I had written about how it was important for the media to understand the importance of PR as an industry and respect its professionals. And how without their help it would be difficult to give PR it’s due importance. But there is one more entity who plays an equal role and needs to give PR it’s dues, which I mean literally and that is Clients!

As much as we may all want but pitch fees is still utopia to expect but what is not Utopian and is even justified is for Clients to agree to give PR agencies at least the fee they so deserve and not haggle over monies. Am sure all senior PR professionals would have experienced this at various points in time at new business presentations. The plans and concepts presented are seldom just the ordinary and I know that many of us burn the midnight oil, brainstorm and research a lot to present the best of pitch concepts and plans. The Client is all too eager and excited to lap it up the first instance…but the moment the commercials are put across the table the Client cringes to an extent to make you feel as if you have asked for the moon. As much as the fees may be, trust me, PR is still asking for peanuts as compared to all the money that the Client spends in other forms of communication. When you are invited for a pitch you are told that the brand is incomplete without you, which we agree…then why the discomfort to pay the right dues?

The haggling goes on for days on end…(am sure to get a lot of …Madhavi, it is a part and parcel of this profession..comments) but what am saying is it is not fair! People negotiate and renegotiate…they want all regions, they want dedicated resources, they want all the activities mentioned in the pitch and then they confess about menial budgets for PR. Why should you have menial budgets for PR? Why shouldn’t you understand the long term positive effects and the equity you will enjoy as a brand after a successful PR campaign and allocate budgets for PR likewise?Why would you not understand that it takes a lot of effort, a 360 degree understanding of various media operations, people skills, industry knowledge and a news sense to get your brand the required limelight…so why would you not pay?!

And the even better part is that when Clients do agree to a commercial, they start negotiating on the size and position of coverage, when it will appear, the headlines and content?! Suddenly one wonders if the Client is equating PR to Media buying?!

Even while the PR professionals study and increase their competency to understand the Client’s domain and communicate to the Media, just as we all expect the Media to respect us for what we do and not treat us as mindless mediators…we also need the support of Clients to understand that PR is a knowledge exercise… Public Relations is the Art of communicating with the masses and formulating a Scientific approach to reach out to your target audience to enable the publics have better understanding of an organisations’ objectives and intention thereby building a favourable image.

It’s a humble request to all the Clients all over who engage or want to engage PR teams and professionals…Do not haggle and negotiate to an extent to drain the communications experts of their enthusiasm and eagerness to work for you. When you are agreeing to a retainer or project fee, you are respecting the talent, the ideas and the resources that is being dedicated to build your brand. It is not a high perk, high paying, high on revenues and billing industry. But that does not mean the work and effort, the brains and sweat are any less…so just do the needful…Give PR it’s Dues

Cheers

Madhavi Mukherjee

Much have been discussed about PR agencies’ yearning desire to protect their intellectual properties they share with a potential client during a pitch process. Typically the problem starts when a company starts inviting say 15 PR agencies for a pitch, ask for rounds of presentations to finally select one agency. This sounds ideal from a hiring company’s point of view. they get to select the best agency and gets tons of free ideas and tips for their communications requirements. But for the rest of the 14 agencies that didn’t get selected, imagine the time and resources wasted.PR agencies have not been able to make much headway into addressing this issue. Earlier a post on Open RFPs and a reader commented that charging a pitch fee could be a solution. The comments is as follows:

RFPs which look at the PR consultancy’s understanding of the business environment a client is operating in is a good idea. As far as RFPs with ideation are concerned, Consultancies should ask for a pitch fee which if the account is won by the consultancy can be adjusted against the retainer, and if not, it would be fee earned for work done. Putting this into practice will also enable PR consultancies to gauge the seriousness behind an RFP and clients will also understand that for PR consultants time is money!

It would be great to see clients apply the same methodology towards their advisors such as KPMG/PwC and the like.. surely they would not put forth a strategy without agreeing on fees and signing on the dotted line!

I couldn’t agree more. I think it is high time there is a serious discussion on whether PR agencies should start charging clients pitch fees. One factor that seem to have work against this is the intense competition in the PR market and agencies feel that if they are the only one to ask for a pitch fee, they might lose out on important RFPs. This could be addressed if PR associations like PRCAI and PRSI take this pro-actively and if some of the bigger agencies start charging. That could be a start.

On a realistic note, I know it’s easier said than done. Unlike the ad industry, there are no ‘INS accreditation’ tag that agencies would fear of losing. So nobody would listen one another. But there is no harm dreaming.

I would love to hear what some of the industry leaders say about this.

After doing battle with scaremongering for the last couple of posts, here’s me wimping out and spinning my own doomsday special for you. Unusually I have had more than enough sleep so this is not sleep deprivation either. The media is awash with the Union Budget news and I don’t seem to agree with anything that is being sold by various economists, interest groups, lobbyists and politicians. As is won’t, this promises to be an election budget with populist measures that will whittle away tax payers money (yes this usually represents a third of your income on the pay slip!) in rubbish schemes but nothing can make me unhappy today. I am surprisingly happy considering the fact that there is really no good news!

So to the topic of my post: Is Web 2.0 becoming Bubble 2.0 and Social Networking becoming Social Notworking (sic)? If you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve probably seen the internet bubble of 2000 and its crazy outlandish pony tail visage. Funny part is, nothing was too freak or outlandish to pitch for a business plan if it included a website in it. The market was awash with venture capital dollars and run rate or burn rate were common place terms in those circles. Not much survived that era and the remnants of this internet bubble largesse did not last.

When Google bought a loss making YouTube for USD 1.65 Billion, followed by the crazy valuations at facebook.com and myspace.com, and a seemingly crazier bid of USD 47 Billion by Microsoft for Yahoo, I knew that Free is Back! Recently AOL decided to offer free e-mail, with many free goodies including XM Radio, Anti Virus, 5 Gig online storage, etc, etc. Incidentally the poor cousin Indian version of AOL does not offer these!

There is more bad news on the horizon as Google stock fell 38 per cent on a report by comscore that AD clicks on Google had been flat in the month of January as compared to last year. This was widely reported across the world and created tremors that were felt far away from its epicentre.

Facebook has recently retreated on its aggressive advertising venture known as the Beacon after howls of protest from its subscribers, numbers which incidentally for the first time started to plateau. Google similarly is showing signs of a slow down. All this coupled with the strong privacy issues that have plagued all large players in the social networking are really a cause for worry where the future of the web 2.0 is concerned.

The benefits that it has bought to the enterprise business in terms of collaboration tools like blogs, widgets, twitters and IM as a result of user generated content can not be ignored but at the same time the impact of social networking has been minimal besides online advertising. This is even more pronounced in India due our insulation from the west both in terms of cultural differences and internet infrastructure bottlenecks across 3G spectrum as well as simple broadband. What it can do is hopelessly mix up your personal and professional life and inadvertently give access to people about your personal information, which you’d much rather keep to yourself and your social ilk.

The other is the time spent wasting company resources while on the job doing what is popularly being referred to as social NOTworking! This is a real concern as, while many managements have draconian solutions but it is important for all CIOs and CTOs to consider how much of the technology and infrastructure that they provide is actual used by employees, and how much is in the nature of freeware which certainly brings a lot of productivity to the enterprise including web based e-mail, instant messaging services as well as social networking tools.

Back into the PR paddock in India, I would love to hear from PR Firms who actually have a social media list they actively use, and dedicated resources who are real practitioners, with real customers without getting my bullshit meter in the red.

If you are bleeding from the budget take hope and have a great weekend!

Militant as I sound, it must be the general pall of slow down in Bombay, IPOs tanking, doomsayers with the recession din, the taxi strike, the weather, and the general non happenings of the week.

The only things that I am a little excited about are some tools for research that I have had a chance to play with recently. These have long been used international PR firms and it is quite interesting to to see their slow acceptance and investment in these tools by Indian PR firms too.

We live in a world of Information Overload and Insight Scarcity. Have you ever wondered when a 26-year old from a management consulting company presents at an industry forum, leaving everyone spell bound by trends and the insight he or she spouts? Similarly how investment banking professionals get the detailed information to discover synergies that decide when to merge and acquire companies, or top Sales people to design and sell solutions for their customers? These are the tools that leading professionals use to know about their customers, markets and industry in real time!

I don’t have the time!

In the PR business, whether it is preparing for a meeting with your client; writing a new business pitch or presentation, or writing a pitch note for the journalist, there is always a chronic shortage of time. In a landscape dotted with delivery milestones, reviews, internal processes and various other mundane activities that are urgent but not important these reserach tools come really handy. They help save time in searching for information, time which is then saved for analyzing and surfacing insight to finally arrive at a positioning statement or stance in the media. It further helps do a snapshot of where a client is at, and where he aspires to be in terms of peer group companies and competition. If you have the first two licked, finding a workable communication strategy to reach these objectives finally comes on the horizon.

What is required is actionable intelligence to optimize your communications strategy, this intelligence today is not just about the good old print medium but requires media analysis across traditional and social media. The ability to benchmark competitors, find PR weak spots, defining focus areas-which sectors, which markets? Finally an ability to track the drivers of your clients’ corporate reputation!

I am referring to the information databases, news aggregators and news wires, prominent among which is Factiva, a tool that is an effective news aggregator and search tool. Besides the latest news on a Company or topic that you may be researching across sources of media reporting on a company or topic, the issues at hand, stick price changes, key executives and a lot of other information it would take you weeks to gather from multiple sources.

In addition, Factiva has something known as Search 2.0 that throws up graphs and through other pictorial visualization tools like heat maps really useful to depict trends. Trends that can help you understand the success of your PR campaign; the effectiveness of your spokesperson and measure your success to show bang for the buck!

There are others such as Datamonitor, Hoovers which are again general business research tools. In addition, you will discover deep dive tools for different domains such as a Gartner, Forrester, IDC, for Information Technology, and Ovum for Telecom related information. Similarly for information of a financial nature there are tools like a Dow Jones, Reuters Knowledge, Thomson Financials, and Bloomberg. I can go on and on but will close here to say that there are best-in-breed research tools out there for pretty much most domains and these can change you life if your information needs are critical for your business decision making and survival in reputation management.

In a time often replete with 25 hour work days; these tools help you climb a growth curve which would be pretty much uphill if not impossible as a PR professional, without the help of these tools. In these days of consolidation in the PR space, it may well prove the magic bullet to enable the local tigers and independents to hold their own as they scale up the ladder to compete with their MNC peers who are old users of these tools.

The challenges in adoption are of overcoming inertia and building a research-based PR culture besides of course having some bean counter sign a cheque. Mind you some of these databases do not come cheap but the benefits in time saved and the value of the information that news aggregators provide, more than justifies the investment.

The information age is here and the question is does your organization have an information strategy and tools to take the next big leap?

This post seeks to address the genesis of PR Firms in India, their move towards specialization, and then back towards a generalist positioning. It further seeks to explore the interrelationship between global and organic Indian outfits and motives for their speedy polymerization. Finally it seeks to draw parallels in trends between the state of the Global PR business and a growing similarity in the Indian PR Industry.

Most Indian PR Firms first cracked on the scene somewhere between the late 1980s and early 1990s, which I really see as the time when Public Relations consulting evolved somewhat from cult led spin-doctors to consulting organizations. I employ the caveat, somewhat, because even today many if not most continue to have a similar architecture, with a single personality or two providing the thought leadership, most of the others never really making it beyond middle or senior management, till they either decided to start their own little PR Firm! Those were the days of IPAN, Good Relations, and Genesis (Now Genesis BM) to name a few, as they were very few. Some of these are still around, some with international affiliations and some with name changes after being acquired but do they remain the gorilla on the hill? I think not!

Here again, while we are on the topic of genesis, it is important to separate the also-rans from the connoisseurs. Disregarding honorable exceptions on both ends, on a general cliché, stand-alone PR Firms, grew organically, built scale and proliferated, while the PR’ divisions and the PR’ arms, mostly of advertising networks or agencies took a step forward and two backward, mostly playing a game of snakes and ladders. Evolution does strange things and many organizations that were once infallible are today extinct or alive in a dysfunctional sort of way, impossible if not hard to imagine back then.

Specializations are a factor of consolidation and pretty much follow the need for differentiation and domain expertise. At different points of time in the evolution of the PR story in India, tangents have proliferated in the form of Technology PR, Financial PR, Corporate Affairs, CSR, University PR, ‘this & that’ PR, etc. Have these always been deliberate attempts or single projects turning into templates that gave the financial logic of a practice or a critical mass that justified a specialist structure? There have been so many instances that have polled for or against the trend so the truth is somewhere in the middle.

The question in my mind really is what works best in the long-term, a generalist approach, or the specialist path? While I have had the good fortune to work for both specialists like Text 100 and 2020 Media, I have also witnessed their forays into the non-tech arena, the former through a proxy agency called Vox PR and the latter directly, when generalists started to eat their lunch. The smaller reasons for this were various including client business conflict, retainer pricing, and sometimes plain ego clashes. The positioning conundrum clearly follows the way of the market shift. The shift has not been smooth, some may call them works in progress, others a fear of losing what they already have in existing clients due to an apparent positioning preference as opposed to other client portfolios that they desire.

There are of course international specialist PR brands that have come in and opened their doors for business to get a piece of the action like APCO, Lewis PR, but for every specialist, there are an equal number of generalists rushing in with names like Fleishman Hillard, Brodeur, Manning Selvage & Lee and scores of others.

Interestingly one space that has stayed relatively virgin is the Financial PR marketplace with a few like Adfactors PR which have stayed ahead of the game and hedged their bets in other specializations while clearly holding on to a very lucrative Financial PR (read IPOs) pie. Others in the game include names like Concept PR, Pressman PR and the Financial PR practices in some of the larger generalists but with a low critical mass as a part of their revenue base. This remains one of the most lucrative spaces in Indian PR and already there are overtures from many international PR firms that work the Financial PR or Investor Relations space for a piece of the action. I know that they are biting at the hooves and I’d just love any M&A gossip there!

While specialists and generalists keep moving towards each other in shenanigans that defy logic, in the final analysis with a few exceptions, most home grown specialist outfits may or may not last long. Large global mandates will force an ongoing consolidation as the Indian PR Industry becomes pregnant with the FII money and the burgeoning weight of its booming middle class marketplace.

The Holmes Report makes for great reading for those interested in delving deeper into the holding patterns, revenues, market statistics and other insights into the global PR business. It is interesting to note that globally a majority of PR firms are controlled by 4 holding companies or networks: Omnicom, WPP, Interpublic, and Publicis.

Either which way the Indian PR Industry cookie crumbles, the traditional approach of developing a specialization to carve the melon will increasingly become harder as entry barriers to opening up or sustaining organic PR shops will get way higher than they used to be for the last decade or two. PR Firms that have shown amazing organic growth in the comparative short term like a Vaishnavi will become rarer. Independent firms of course remain more than capable of competing with network players for clients, both network clients or restricted to geographic location.

The Indian PR Industry soon promises to map the global PR Industry, and while a consolidation is imminent, all that is open to debate is the when and at what valuation. While isolated accounts may remain in silos but clearly the end of cult and personality led PR is around the corner. In all this mayhem, the largest benefactor is not a single entity; the entrepreneurs have their happy exits, the employees-growth, while slowly but surely the fight is hotting up for the Indian PR market pie and it’s time for the big guns to battle! These remain exciting times and all this can only mean more professionalism and better prospects for the Indian PR Industry: The King is dead, long live the King!

Last week was very busy for me. I attended the ABCI Awards ceremony, cheered for friends, met people of all sizes and shapes, made new friends and created couple of enemies too in the process! I am getting more and more fascinated by the news in 2008. My love for news has increased it seems. The ‘Nano’ effect grabbed many headlines and gave many opportunities to new age Narads (Narayan! Narayan!) – In fact, it gave me an opportunity to coin a new celebrated word: ‘auto expo’sure. Oh darling! Sunita, it seems that you are not worried about our health. First, you do not want cola companies to kill germs in our bellies and now you are hell-bent on not allowing ‘Nano’ smoke to kill the deadly mosquitoes as well! Shame on you! Sunita. I empathize with your self centric syndrome but, please allow others to use some airtime on TV News channels too. There are many of my clients waiting in a queue. I think somebody is showering all her ‘Mamta’ on you.

Well, promise is a promise! I am not referring to anybody else but reminding myself about my promise to you for annual PR horoscope for 2008, I finally persuaded my dear friend (she refuses to reveal her identity even when I promised to her that she’ll become famous!) to give her readings for all of us.

This week I will write about the industry’s prediction and last six signs. Why Aries should have all the fun every time? Let’s Pisces feel happy this time around. So, we will go in reverse chronology. I am not sure whether these predictions are going to be true or not, but what’s the harm in sharing with you.

Indian PR Business: Indian PR business will grow leaps and bounds in 2008. It will see some drastic changes happening in the month of July, October and November. New international players will enter India independently or through M&As. There will be a birth of few more specialized agencies in technology, financial and pharma/healthcare sector. Many small agencies or independent operations will go out of business or will be forced to join hands with larger players by August. Money will pour in from all directions but agencies will suffer from image crisis and this year we will lose couple of our leaders from PR industry.

Pisces: You will make more friends in media and gain respect from clients. The promotion is due and it will be very rewarding. Your boss will have to keep you in good humor as there are chances that you will get a better offer than your Hari Sadu. Saturn will influence most to Pisceans and though this year is full of good things, watch out for hidden enemies and stay clear of any legal cases involving you, your client or your organization.

Aquarius: The message is be careful. There are many hurdles to face as you move into 2008. Clients’ complaints, Bosses’ cribs, payment collection and all such thing will make you think twice about the career in PR. But, there will be good moments too. Appreciation letters, recognition and rewards are also on cards. Be a firm believer in God and he will take care of you. It is a mixed bag.

Capricorn: Promotions, foreign trips and happy clients. This year is very happy year for you my dear Capri friend! You will be loved by all. You will get money, fame and happiness from all quarters. Do some charities. Donate some money to PR associations or buy some PR books and give it to your subordinates – that will give you some good karma. It’s your year Capricorn – grow fast but keep your feet on ground.

Sagittarius: Promotions and big money is on the cards. The owners of the PR agencies will be laughing all the way to banks. But, be careful – the fall can be as big. Loss of reputation and loss of clients are on cards too. Take care of your employees and do some good for the industry. For professionals, it is a good year but trade cautiously. Don’t get carried away by big promises – apply your own brain.

Scorpio: This year is full of surprises. You will make many friends. A perfect scorpion PR person would be on a roll. Some many even become the top leader during the year. A chance of getting international assignment is clearly visible in the crystal ball for few scorpion PR friends. You will be respected by clients and industry. Some of you may get a much awaited career call you have been waiting for.

Libra: A balanced year this time. At home you will get lots of love and affection and at your office – lots of junk mails and junk calls from clients. Many opportunities those may look lucrative but be careful of deception. Saturn is not favoring you as it should but don’t you worry, your Libran charm will make life little easier for you and as I said a perfect balance will help you to sail out 2008 without much of worries.

We will meet after a very short break! Don’t go away and come back, next Thursday, same blog, same time. Take care, God bless and somebody, hey you! please switch off this unwanted tune on my unreliable phone.

Image credit: Active Rain: Person in picture is not our fortune teller.

Tech Tags: pr public+relations india

As corporate India and the Indian PR industry wake up to blogger relations and many are now experimenting inviting bloggers to their corporate events and including them in their outreach programs, it becomes essential to develop a fine target bloggers list. Take it as another form of the media list that we are so used to.

So today if you are handling a tech client, maybe you should know the names of the top ten tech bloggers in India. Likewise if you are handling an automobiles client, you should know who all are writing on bikes or cars. The list goes on with bloggers writing on healthcare, education, economy, current happenings, etc. etc.

So how do we start compiling a list of bloggers? These are some of the good resources that I use and you might find them useful as well.

1. Technorati - Here you will find Indian blogs listed according to their ‘authority’- the standard Technorati way of ranking blogs primarily based on how many blogs link to a particular blog. This may not be the best way to judge a blog to fit a client’s program. I would rank a blog based on how many people read it and who are these people. Also you might not be able to judge a blog’s subject merely by reading the list. You have to get pretty familiar with the blog yourself. Nonetheless, this might be a good start to look at some of the good blogs.

2. India Blogs - This one groups the various blogs in India based on their content subject. The list looks clean, meaning you might find it hard to believe that a spam blog might get featured here. But that’s all. You have no way of telling which is the best blog in a particular category. The criteria for inclusion is not very clear as well. However you can pick up the blogs from here and run them through Technorati to see how much influence they have got in the blogosphere.

3. BlogStreet - BlogStreet groups Indian blogs according to subjects, language, and cities. At first glance, this looks like the perfect resource. But considering the hundreds of similar blog directories floating around the blogosphere, you cannot escape having that lingering doubt about the authenticity of such a directory.

Maybe if you pick up some blogs, run them through all of these directories, and start monitoring them for some time, maybe you can figure out which are the best for your client. Also a point to remember is that you cannot compare a technology blog, read by one and any, and a marketing blog, read by a niche audience, in the same parameters. For instance, while many consider Technorati as the one site having the final say on tech blogs, it can be the Power 150 (this blog is ranked 406th as of today) for marketing blogs. For PR blogs, there are PR Voices (this blog is ranked 22nd as of today) and The PR Friendly Index (this blog is ranked 42nd as of today). Similarly there will be sector specific ratings for other subjects.

However the rankings on these are also based on Technorati, Bloglines, and other services - which many professionals and blog readers might not have heard of. So if a medical blog is read by well-known doctors but not through Technorati or Bloglines, it does not mean the blog is not influential - a point I gathered from a friend. So proceed with care. The final word could be then to use the directories to pick up the blog names. Then use your wise counsel to figure out the blog yourself.