Good post today from Mike Manuel at Media Guerrilla: DIY PR in a ‘Cheap’ Economy. It reminds me of the meme Jeremy Pepper was tacking during Global PR Blog Week – Jeremy Pepper: PR Blogging, and the New PR Meme. Note: The full post is here at Global PR Blog Week is down now (database snafu) so this is Jeremy’s post that refers to it. Global PR Blog Week blog is back up now.

Certainly, these two bloggers are two of the best you can read. And, their posts/articles take a pretty rational view of NewPR and how CMS is making inroads. They understand blogs. They get it.

Still, I think most all of these posts and articles fail to state the one point that would really make it true, or valid for the broader business community. All should say / add “smaller regional or national/international” companies instead of the broad and generic ‘small business’.

Why? Well, I fail to see the successful broad application for truly small business (a.k.a., mom & pop). Sure, there is a handful of examples. Maybe three or four handfuls. But, the PR blogging meme for small business ‘other than’ the one person shop of consultants, etc. just hasn’t proven true – yet. Can it? Will it? I don’t know. It may. But, right now – the proof isn’t available in sufficient numbers.

The problem? It is due to where most PR bloggers are coming from. Almost all are working in national / international companies – or, they serve clients with national/international customer bases. So, they don’t think like small / regional businesses.

I think that is, in a way, a natural omission due to their focus on PR activities.

So, I believe that if we can make the distinction – clarify, clarify, clarify – when speaking of where blogging / CMS has worked in PR and avoid the broad generalizations – we have started to make inroads. It is, perhaps, the broad promises of how it will work (without the examples to back it up) that may be a barrier to entry for many small business owners.

The last step is to truly identify and analyze a sufficient number of small business blogs. Anita Campbell does a fine job of it. And, she gave me “a talkin’ to” when I posted about Blogs as Panacea or Placebo some time ago.

Still, I don’t think we’ve acquired a sufficient database of small business blogs (other than individuals in business) to judge the effectiveness.

Kudos to Anita, by the way. She now has added a radio program to her armada of small business tools for all of us to enjoy:

Small Business Trends Radio
Tuesdays, 1:00 PM Eastern U.S. time
on Voice America network
Click to listen