How Scrapblog picked David Parmet to do PR

Carlos just announced to my great delight that he had chosen David Parmet to be the Scrapblog PR guy. In fact, this follows the second time that I had suggested David was the right guy to Carlos.  This time, my tactic was simple. I told Carlos to go read  David's  blog. Carlos did, and he came back with a succinct comment:  "I like him," Carlos said.

Hmm.  He read some postings and felt he actually knew the guy.  How very different than if David had sent some sample press releases down in a fancy folder. How very different than if David had been required to come down with a PowerPoint deck to demonstrate "thought leadership" or "best practices" with three case studies selected from his work over the past 20 years. David was never asked to use a few mirrors and some smoke to try to make Carlos believe that both Robert Scoble and Walt Mossberg were sitting around waiting for David's next phone call.

In fact, the blog, and a previous telephone talk was enough to make Carlos feel enthusiastic about the thought of David having conversations on behalf of Scrapblog. That's what PR is now about.  The PR guy needs o be a trusted participant in conversations.  These conversations can help a client only if the person bringing that client into a community is already a trusted resource.

David is not alone.  There are lots of PR people who get this.  They tend to know and respect each other and enjoy each other's company.  They will compete against each other if they have to, but in fact they would much refer to collaborate.

This is the first time I'll actually work with David.  In writing this blog, it has slowly dawned on me that I don't really know him that well. Our relationship started when I was writing about English Cut for Naked Conversations and Hugh MacLeod told me I just had to speak to the PR guy. So I dialed him up and found myself having this wonderfully transparent conversation with someone I had never seen, whose blog I had not read until that same day and when I hung up the phone, I felt like I had gained a few paragraphs for the book and had made a new and lasting friend.

That's what blogging does.  It lets you see a real person before you actually talk to that person. Blogs facilitate relationships and in fact, the new PR guy needs to be a facilitator as much as anything else.

Meanwhile, Carlos has done a Hell of a good job in aggregating conversationalists.  In the last week he signed up David and me, not to mention our soon-to-be unveiled mystery community guy. He's got an ongoing relationship with the Citizen Agency folk.  It's getting kind of clear what sort of people Carlos wants to have on his team and I'm just tickled to be part of it.