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For all its attractions, technology is sometimes just plain overwhelming. This fact of life was especially apparent at the Web 2.0 Expo that I attended last week in San Francisco.  You can really lose your perspective surrounded by thousands of Internet techies in a part of the country populated by hundreds of thousands if not millions of high tech workers.

For much of the week, I was speaking with vendors of social networking and blogging platforms. As I evaluated pricing and feature sets, a persistent question of mine resurfaced: What does a PR professional need to know about technology — especially for those advocating social networks and blogging?

“Absolutely nothing,” quipped Sam Lawrence, Jive Software’s CMO and blogger. Jive makes social networking software used by companies like CNN and Bank of America.

Sam was maneuvering through a crowded Expo floor in a wheelchair with a stuffed octopus suspended overhead. He had recently broken his foot while getting up from his couch to grab his iphone – case in point that technology can in fact inflict mental anguish if not physical pain.

Sam’s point, “It’s not that technology isn’t important, but it shouldn’t be the focus. Marketing is already overburdened in overseeing the message. For marketing professionals, it’s far more critical to understand the nature of the tools and the theory behind them.”

Views from the Front Lines

And what do communications professionals at some of the largest companies and agencies think?

Ken Kaplan a blogger who helps manage broadcast and new media relations over at Intel’s Global Communication Group explained to me that he “is not a technical guy; I’m a story guy. Tools after all are just tools.”  Ken’s approach is to learn by using. New situations may require new tools, and each tool adds to his collective knowledge.

Ogilvy Public Relations Digital Executive Rohit Bhargava is in full agreement. A highly ranked blogger and author, Rohit also told me that he studied coding earlier in his career. Now I appreciate that code is not essential to his workaday world but that knowledge gives him a certain confidence and ability to connect with programmers and product developers that I don’t have (aside from the Basic and Fortran I used on a mainframe in high school.)

David Churbuck, vice-president of global web marketing at Lenovo and a well-known blogger believes you need very little technical knowledge. It’s more important “that you understand the whole ecosystem-gestalt of this stuff — e.g. how does a trackback work? Why is a blog so powerful and different from a forum, or a basic web page? (I would argue it’s about detection of who is linking, who is commenting, who is subscribing.)”

Mike Prosceno who runs “new” media relations at SAP has a similar take.

From his perspective, many of today’s tools are pretty intuitive, and you don’t need much technical know how to create and maintain a blog or use social networks or feed readers. In creating a corporate blogging platform or community site as part of your company’s web presence, he does advise (and your CMO will demand) using an information architect and web designer to ensure that your effort has the look and feel of your brand.

Mike emailed:

“I think those [who know technology] will have an advantage, although I am of the opinion that it’s not mandatory. The real advantage is having a PR professional that understands how to convey your company’s information in a manner in which your constituency wants to consume it. In the high tech or telco industries it’s definitely a plus to have coding and mash up skills, but in some industries it’s just not important.”

And speaking for a non-tech industry, Adam Brown director of digital communications for The Coca-Cola Company here in Atlanta wrote:

The next steps for PR2.0 are probably going to come from someone who ‘gets’ BOTH the technical and communications side of the effort. I believe the future of our PR industry depends on our understanding of and passion for both the words as well as the new places and ways those words can be shared.

So what is my take? Overall strategy is my key consideration. Tactics and tools help get me there. And lest we forget, results for our clients and executives are by far the most critical. The journey is much less relevant. Nevertheless I want every competitive advantage I can find, and understanding the underlying technology gives me one.

How meta data works

Why linking matters and how to do it

How to embed multi media objects

How to use social bookmarking

How to use social distribution methods (Facebook, Twitter)

What key word density is and how to use it

How to setup analytics for websites, blogs, audio, video

How to make information portable and easily shared via email and mobile devices

Tools after all come and go. Instead we looked at how social media has changed the way we do our jobs in the broadest sense. Together this list covers the boardwalk of authoring, publishing, finding and reporting.

It comes down to information flows and the way people receive and digest news. It goes to a new way of doing corporate communications where PR and marketing are more integrated. It goes to the heart of technology where how the news is delivered is as critical as the news itself.

Let me get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0 Expo; PR Tech Essentials; Sam Lawrence; Ken Kaplan; Rohit Bhargave; David Churbuck; Mike Prosceno; Pete Fasano; Max Levchin;

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