The Long Tail Inside

Jake points us to The Long Tail: Long Tail PR: how to do publicity without a press release (or the press).

At the same time, Frank wonders if internal training is overrated, and whether all internal focused communication ought to be aimed at prospects and consumers instead.

Both are riffing on the idea that one of the most important assets of a big company is that... it's big. It has its own long tail inside.

Instead of having one book publicist at a company, someone who does history one day, cooking the next and business the third, Chris Anderson wonders whether allowing people to go deep (and to live in the niches) is more important than having  a 'publicist'. In other words, the editor who edits books on a topic all day is far more aligned than a general publicist ever could be.

If organizations permit and encourage all their employees to spread out, to speak out, to blog and to join communities about what they care about, surely there will be better alignment than there is when yet another clueless publicity person sends me yet another piece of spam about her company's (irrelevant) products.

What's missing from most corporate and non-profit analysis is this: If everyone has a blog, then everyone is a blogger.

Sure that sounds trivial. But then why are organizations acting like there is still us and them?