Journalists are increasingly relying on blog content as they write stories and corporate blogs are now an important way for businesses to reach members of the media, says David Meerman Scott, author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing & online media to reach your buyers directly.

"Until very recently, the only way to influence journalists was to have a direct personal relationship with them or to send out a generic press release and hope for the best," says Scott. "But today, blogs allow organizations of all kinds to tell authentic stories directly to the market. Journalists increasingly rely on blog content when they are researching stories."

Over the course of more than a year of research for his upcoming book, Scott reviewed hundreds of blogs and interviewed dozens of bloggers who have found success. He also spoke with journalists to understand how the put their stories together. The book includes dozens of case studies of organizations that use blogs, podcasts, online media, and viral marketing.

"Smart marketing and public relations professionals understand that corporate blogs are one of the best ways to deliver their story and influence journalists, but press releases and personal relationships are still part of the overall mix," Scott says. "Business blogs make it easy to deliver a viewpoint into the sprawling marketplace of ideas. When the posts are indexed by search engines and delivered via RSS feeds, journalists all over the world will see the thoughts and ideas and they will command attention. If the posts are compelling, stories will be written."

Scott's book "The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing & online media to reach your buyers directly" is available wherever business books are sold. The book features a foreword by Robert Scoble, Vice President Media Development, PodTech.net, co-author Naked Conversations, and blogger at Scobleizer.com. ISBN: 0-470-11345-6

David Meerman Scott is an online thought leadership and viral marketing strategist. The programs he has developed have won numerous awards and are responsible for selling over one billion dollars in products and services worldwide. He is also an instructor for Pragmatic Marketing and he has lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, Boston, and Hong Kong and has presented at industry conferences and events in over twenty countries on four continents. Check out Scott's ideas on his own popular marketing blog.


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