This post also appears as the July Digital Dialogue column in “Public Relations Tactics,” a publication of the Public Relations Society of America.

Can you, your clients or your spokespeople be considered thought leaders in the digital era without a blog?

Joe Pulizzi, author of “Get Content Get Customers,” founder of Junta42, a content marketing advisory, and creator of the Content Marketing Institute, posed this question in a recent blog post.

“You can’t be taken seriously by business audiences unless you have a blog in the mix,” Pulizzi explained during a phone discussion, also noting that blogs are simply delivery mechanisms. Sharing your insights consistently is the true yardstick, according to Pulizzi, regardless of format. And while it is certainly possible to do business without a blog, having one is a key ingredient for establishing and sustaining online presence.

On a World Wide Web full of Twitter following, Facebook friending and YouTube viewing, it is easy to lose sight of blogging’s benefits. Blogs remain the most flexible online format for professional communicators.

Technorati’s most recent State of the Blogosphere report, released in April, found that 70 percent of nearly 3,000 bloggers surveyed say they are better known in their industries because of their blogs.

Amanda Miller Littlejohn, a PR and social media consultant based in Washington, D.C., is a believer. She started her Mopwater PR + Media Notes blog in November 2008, and has since seen her client roster grow and has had more speaking and training opportunities.

“People remember the Mopwater name, which has become an excellent icebreaker during networking events,” she says. “Blogging helps me stand out in the competitive D.C. region. People may forget about a specific PR project I managed, but my blog is always there archiving my expertise and advice. When people read its quality, they are instant believers.”

Her sentiments echo a common theme: Traditional journalists often prioritize interviews with bloggers because they see proof of expertise through a blog. Well-written, tagged and search-optimized blogs are their directories.

Pulizzi concentrates on frequent blog posts rather than press releases to promote Junta42, and says he receives three or four solid interview requests per week.

He finds that the most charismatic bloggers do not merely regurgitate the latest stats or trends about their industries, they offer opinions and analysis. They also expand their content’s reach, sharing it across Twitter, Facebook and other networks.

Blogging, then, is not only their central self-publishing outlet and home base; it is their resume for attracting new opportunities.

In addition, lacking a blog can potentially be perceived as lacking relevance within an industry. Blogs are the fabric of online communication, serving as outright thought leadership vehicles and behind-the-scenes content management systems. They require a time commitment, plus mind-set and priority shifts for those who haven’t yet tried one. Blogs are inexpensive (often free) and fully at our disposal. As professional communicators, we ought to maximize their use.

Ryan Zuk, APR, is a media and analyst relations professional and Phoenix PRSA Chapter member. Zuk can be reached at ryanzuk at gmail dot com and @ryanzuk on Twitter. He also blogs at criticalmasspr.com

That headline may have tripped off some grammarians’ alarms but if you’re here reading, mission accomplished!

Some thoughtful readings about business relationships and applying social media to care for them gravitated my way this week, inspiring a few thoughts that expand on each.

Identifying And Attracting Your Audience

Perusing a print copy of BtoB’s 2010 Lead Generation Guide surfaced “Social media tips for demand generation” by Marketo’s Maria Pergolino. Maria includes seed nurturing among her methods for developing business leads, noting this is a vital early-stage part of the sales process. Content marketing (or Inbound Marketing as well branded by the HubSpot folks) is then emphasized to which I say “Bravo,” and I’d add a reminder that content offered in various social sharing forms (eBooks, podcasts, communities, etc) succeeds most when it refrains from chest-thumping. Share information prospects need to answer urgent questions even if only mildly associated with your product or service. When you do, as Pergolino notes: expect prospects to return for more content and be more willing to share their own information.

I then started thinking about personalized ways to develop and maintain relationships that now days often begin online before any face-to-face interaction occurs. Valerie Simon from BurrellesLuce shared a nice post recently with suggestions for bridging virtual relationships into real acquaintances. She outlined these with her attendance at today’s PRSA T3 conference for technology communicators in mind. You can draw upon these in nearly any situation. Important here is that you will get the most value using the social media tools that best suit your audience. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore other channels yet emphasizes you don’t have to be all things, and everywhere, for all people. Valerie suggests many good options to consider. Knowing where your audience “participates” and spending a large degree of your time sharing there is the ticket!

Engaging That Audience

Denis Pombriant’s “Membership is not participation” post next caught my attention. Denis aptly reminds us that membership in and of itself does not translate to participation. Commenting and contributing content are typical activities that qualify online community members as participants. Call this giving something of value to the community at large. Denis references crowdsourcing and diversity, to which I’ll add that people most naturally contribute to communities based on their areas of expertise. This alone goes a long way towards generating value out of diversity. From there it’s a shared responsibility between a community’s purveyor (a vendor, organization, business person, fan, thought provoker) and its members to keep conversations worthwhile. Recognize and encourage insightful participants to further enlighten the group and keep at offering your own thoughts too. In an attention-deprived culture large membership numbers are impressive but not the only criteria for defining a community’s or company’s success.

Author David Meerman Scott and HubSpot co-founder Brian Halligan hosted a fun Webinar yesterday for marketing and communication professionals entitled “Marketing Lessons From The Grateful Dead” (Replay Here).

I’m an easy sell when a classic rock or jam band theme is afoot and, besides, the hosts were putting their respective “World Wide Rave” and “Inbound Marketing” mantras into practice by providing valuable content at no cost to their audience.

Both gents did a nice job relating characteristics of the Grateful Dead with communication and content marketing concepts; even noting that, just as The Dead improvised during their long concert jams, they too were creating much of Thursday’s Webinar as the went along.

The most interesting thing about the Grateful Dead is their unique sound – tapping jazz, blues and psychedelic era influences – and the way they distribute and share it. While the band occasionally released studio albums until the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995, their live shows are what made them remarkable according to Halligan. I agree, and although I’m not a Dead Head to the core I’ve certainly learned to appreciate the band’s music through its live recordings.

(Musical interlude #1 – I don’t think the band’s 1980’s studio album output – my era of introduction – was that bad either. Removing official live album releases you have “Go To Heaven” (’80) “In The Dark” (’87) and “Built To Last (’89). “In The Dark” alone gave us great songs including “Touch of Grey,” “Hell In a Bucket” and “Throwing Stones.” You may recall the “Touch of Grey” video that gave the band a brief MTV run.)

Letting fans record concerts for free is the cornerstone of the band’s strategy even today (post-Garcia iterations include The Other Ones, Phil Lesh & Friends, The Dead, and Furthur). The band has always allowed this, even staging designated recording equipment areas at their shows. This was the “original freemium model” as Halligan puts it, and it created viral, word-of-mouth marketing among fans who still spent plenty of money on concert tickets, T-shirts and posters; making album sales concerns an afterthought.

The Dead are willing to lose control of their marketing by letting fans define them and giving much of their music away for free. This has made all the difference in terms of the band’s long running success. Halligan and Meerman Scott implore marketers to engage in similar activities, creating great content that is meaningful for an audience instead of being all about products and services. Business opportunities and sales results follow as a content strategy develops awareness, reach and trust.

Meerman Scott reminds us that most organizations operate in a command and control environment with mission statements, boilerplate descriptions and processes and PR messages. “This stuff doesn’t spread much,” he said when suggesting businesses let people talk about them as they will, without dictating how they should say it. (I commented on dictation and collaboration previously in a Social CRM guest post for CRM Magazine). It’s a leap for anyone set in their ways, yet if you can accept letting prospects and customers use your information in a context that is valuable for them and their social networks, the likelihood of gaining favorability among them is infinitely better.

In The DARC

Halligan mentioned one of my favorites from his book “Inbound Marketing” with Dharmesh Shah as the hour concluded. Certain traits are desired when assembling top quality marketing and communication teams in the digital era. He and Shah offer the DARC acronym as a guideline, suggesting you seek people who are digital natives, analytical, have social reach and are content creators. (I explored this further in conversation with Halligan earlier this year.)

Several other points I liked from the Grateful Dead Marketing set:

• Halligan noted it is ok to “be worse than your competition in some ways.” The Dead were much worse at studio albums by most fan standards while better than most anybody else at live concerts. Focusing on your core competency helps you stand out.
• Modern marketing professionals are half marketer and half content creator. Your library of content stacks up over time and starts to pull people towards your business.
• Enable your fans to help spread your message. It’s simple and I like it. If you develop ebooks or whitepapers only to cage them behind lead generation forms, you’ve left most of your potential audience in the dark. Set these things free (and tag them with your contact info and social sites) – the goodness will come back to you!
• The Dead were experimenters, improvising within songs every night. No show was the same. “Sometimes they laid an egg,” says Halligan, but they failed fast and moved on to the next show. Quick cycles of experimentation work well in the new world of marketing.
• Your best fans / customers ought to get special offers and news about your new products first. Meerman Scott says most of the time marketers do just the opposite, offering special pricing to first-time buyers and subscribers while giving the rest of their customer base the shaft.

If you attended the Webinar, watched the replay, or just dig Inbound Marketing, I would enjoy hearing your perspective.

(Musical interlude #2 – Speaking of free music, I’m a big fan of Wolfgang’s Vault which features dozens of Grateful Dead shows among its thousands of free concert streams spanning the 60’s to present day. Many of the shows, including some Dead shows, were originally staged by famed concert promoter Bill Graham and have great history behind them you can read about in the Vault. My favorite Dead show in the Vault thus far is the New Year Eve ‘88 show from Oakland Coliseum Arena. A good three-hour vibe. And www.deadlistening.com is another place to discover shows.)

Ok, add me to the list of marketers, PR practitioners and bloggers who feel compelled to comment about Apple without any prompting from the company whatsoever. Or have I been prompted in some cosmic way?

Last week’s “at last” arrival of the iPad, its launch event in San Francisco and the PR halo surrounding it signaled yet another moment of truth for the company’s recipe of experience-driven innovation, secrecy and consumer buzz.

Apple’s iPad even made an appearance on the Grammy Awards television broadcast. I found this to be cheesy product placement (I’m not aware if it was an Apple tactic or otherwise), but the Grammys is certainly where eyeballs were last weekend and only an iPad in the President’s pocket during his State of the Union address would have trumped it.

As the Grammy telecast kicked off comedian Stephen Colbert just happened to have an iPad inside his tuxedo pocket when announcing the Song of the Year award winner. I will say that Colbert made the prop “fit” his routine with a funny “what, you didn’t get one of these in your gift bag?” quirk to Jay-Z and the celebrity audience. He further passed it off as trying to be cool for his daughter who was in attendance.

Making the iPad “fit” is really a fitting point here. The cool factor that is Apple products makes many industry observers, techies and consumers want to find viable uses for them. This power of attraction is such an asset for brands. And this doesn’t always require revolutionary but rather evolutionary product strategies, as CRM industry analyst Denis Pombriant commented on in his recent Apple post.

My perspective is less technical and more focused on the communications aspects Apple have at play. I mentioned the company in my “Inside Inbound Marketing” post last week and, the more I ponder, it certainly employs a form of Inbound Marketing, not so much by creating tons of its own compelling and sharable Web content per the intended Inbound definition, but certainly via content. Apple’s content is great products. It’s also the music, videos and iPhone apps it sells (which it does not create but profitably distributes). And most notably it’s the word-of-mouth the company’s presence generates.

The elements of Apple communication mainly boil down to: innovation, mystery and community.

Innovation’s inherent leadership quality

There’s a pecking order to power and influence in just about any market. Apple certainly makes the short list of enterprise-level organizations that move technology markets. Testimony to this was offered this week from a former Microsoft employee. In a New York Times piece Dick Brass contemplates what might be the diminishing impact of Microsoft when compared with Apple on the scale of innovation. In short, fusing its focuses on customer experience and technology has netted the easy-to-use products that have placed Apple in an enviable leadership position.

The moat of mystery (and its occasional, strategic leaks)

Apple seems to make a living out of being quiet and letting the rest of us tell its story. There are pros and cons to this approach, of course, and it is best reserved for a few solidified brands that can weather the cheers and jeers of its publics. Apple has launch events down to an art form and between these occurrences a sort of super sleuth mentality produces much of the Apple chatter. Take these iPad prototype photos for example, or this lavish timeline about the iPad’s history – the iPad that didn’t officially claim until last week. Such examples of speculation and debate usually require a kernel or two of fact, so Apple soft peddles information in some fashion to influencers. It’s all permissible when you have a charismatic leader like Steve Jobs who surfaces occasionally at events to confirm and add context. (I profiled Jobs’ persona in my keynote presentation to PRSSA chapter presidents at their Leadership Rally last May.)

The pure power of communities

For Apple it’s communities of developers and techies. It’s the blogerati. It’s admired tech columnists and reviewers like Walt Mossberg, David Pogue and Lance Ulanoff. It’s consumers. I’m sure there are many other community types but you get the point. Word gets around.

The innovation, mystery and eventual facts feed the communities that create a surge of Apple interest. How long can it last, and what other lifestyle and communication standards will Apple innovation create? I’m certainly not claiming to know Apple’s inner workings from a communications standpoint, or any other, yet even removed from specifics I find that watching its marketing machine work offers an educational and entertaining view. How about you?

I love when a good book finds me. This was the case with “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, And Blogs” by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot. It was next up on my Amazon Wish List but then – Boom! – it came my way via a promotional copy handoff from Social CRM consultant Brent Leary.

This friendly exchange ended up being a nice example of what the book is all about; creating content (online content for the most part) and relationships that help people find you and your business. These guys are good… I called up Brian right away and he was open to sharing some additional thoughts regarding Inbound Marketing implications and opportunities. His comments became the basis of my January PR Tactics article “Welcome to the DARC side: Creating compelling content for your Web site.”

The article focuses on the authors’ DARC acronym detailing essential qualities for every communicator in the digital age (Digital Citizens, Analytical Chops, Web Reach, and Content Creators). I couldn’t fit everything from my discussion with Brian into this piece, so here are some additional insights he shared. His comment regarding Apple is timely this week given introduction of the iPad, and extension of their simplicity and ubiquitous themes. (Apple PR, by the way, is an interesting study unto itself. This New York Times article by David Carr gives further details.)

Ryan Zuk: You cite Apple and the iPod among the inspirations for HubSpot. Are there elements here communicators can apply to help do their jobs better?

Brian Halligan: When I think of the iPod, instead of a complicated MP3 player, I think of a great experience focused less on features and more on user interface. Apple designed an alternative focused not on features but on an enjoyable experience. This is the takeaway everyone in business should consider. At HubSpot, for example, we take complicated Web concepts and simplify them for marketers. Most marketing firms wanting to do modern marketing right need to assemble SEO, blogging, lead management and Web analytics consultants. This can get rather complicated. Our Internet marketing software harnesses these elements to help businesses generate more inbound leads and convert a higher percentage of them into paying customers.

RZ: How does Inbound Marketing change business operation and communication?

BH: I was reading a comment by David Meerman Scott basically suggesting that the old-school rules of marketing focused on buying attention (advertising), begging for it (PR) or bugging people one at a time (sales). Inbound Marketing is about creating really compelling content for your Web site (videos, blogs, EBooks etc) that pulls people in to learn more about you. The people attracted include other Web site owners who link to your content, and people tweeting about your content and sharing it on other social networks. Lots of links naturally bring more people to you, and meanwhile you start ranking nicely on Google.

When you have good content it tends to snowball. More and more people start to find you. The nice thing about creating remarkable content is that it is very cumulative. You earn a few more links after each post. It’s kind of like compounding interest in your bank account.

RZ: What can we do as marketers, PR practitioners and communicators to get on board?

BH: Marketing teams and PR agencies need to help clients change their culture of content creation. Bigger, older businesses need to understand that every piece of content shouldn’t be scrutinized through legal reviews. You really need to crank out lots of good stuff, so focus on turning your clients into publishing machines. Businesses who win on the Internet are prolific publishers. Zappos and Whole Foods are a couple that come to mind.

Help your clients craft content that is right for them. Maybe it’s videos for one and blogs for another. Getting remarkable content to the masses creates an inbound flow of traffic that becomes your prospect pipeline, and eventually your paying customers.

My thanks to Brian for his time. You can find HubSpot’s free Grader resources at Grader.com if you haven’t experienced them already. The tools help evaluate and improve your Web presence as well as how you use Facebook and Twitter.

Also check out www.hubspot.tv which airs Fridays at 4:00 p.m. Eastern