Engage in the News

This week I was was looking for something to write about for our "PR in the news" blog. I started researching and came across an article about one of the books we are reading in class, Brian Solis's Engage. The article focused on what the book was about and also asked readers to "engage" and comment with suggestions that Solis is going to use in another edition of his book.


The version we are reading in class was released one year ago, and is referred to by many PR professionals as a "guide for brands and businesses to build success and measure it on the 'new Web." During an interview that is mentioned in the article, Solis pointed out some changes he made after receiving feedback about his book. He used social media, such as Twitter and blog posts, to listen to what his audience had to say. Scott used this research and made changes. He cut 35,ooo words from the original book, wish turned out to be roughly 40 sections in the text. Pretty significant. He also used what his viewers had to say to create new sections and tweak certain chapters.


Solis stated, “It was less about worrying about people’s attention span and more about trying to revise the flow of how I wanted people to experience the book. It wound up being shorter, but I introduced new topics to improve that experience and add more value."


In my opinion, this was a great example of a PR professional at work. He listened to his audience and made adjustments in order to make his product fit to their demands and needs. So far, from what I have read of Engage, I enjoy it and find the information educational, interesting, and helpful. While reading this article, I also checked out Solis's blog. Let me say, as a recent blogger, I found his blog to be somewhat extravagant and fancy. However it was, like his book, interesting. If you have not checked out his blog yet, you definitely should.