I just had the experience of being checked out by a blogger that one of the consultants I work with had contacted via email. And this definitely underlines the importance of being transparent, truthful and straightforward in any blogger relations initiative.

Recently, one of my colleagues at Thornley Fallis, Keelan Green, sent an email to the authors of The Torch, a blog he had been reading for the past month. The Torch had featured a number of posts that discussed Canada’s moves to replace its fleet of tactical transport and Search and Rescue aircraft. Keelan identified our firm as the Canadian public relations firm for Alenia and Lockheed Martin, two of the companies whose C-27J and C-130J aircraft are being considered for this purpose. Keelan offered to provide the authors of the Torch with the same information that we provide to mainstream media. He also provided the URLs for www.c-27j.ca and www.c-130j.ca, the Canadian websites that provide information on both aircraft and their suitability to Canada’s needs.

One of the The Torch bloggers, Paul Synnott, was prompted by Keelan’s email to take a close look at us on his personal Blue Blogging Soapbox blog. He did a pretty thorough job researching our online presence and quoting both from Keelan’s email and relevant passages from some of my earlier blog posts.

Happily, we seem to have passed his test for transparency and genuine commitment to blogging and the conversation it supports. in fact, he concludes that we are “A savvy firm not afraid to embrace a new and changing landscape.”

Public relations practitioners should accept that this level of scrutiny of our actions and how they line up with previous statements will become routine in the blogosphere. What we have said and done is not buried in paper files or hard-to-search microfiche. It is in fact easily and readily available to anyone who knows how to use a search engine.

The bottom line: Avoid shortcuts. If you conclude that the blogosphere is important to you, establish your own voice first. Go ahead, contact the bloggers who you think are the most influential. But let the rest of the world see that you are prepared to say in public what you private encourage an intermediary to talk about.