b) Negatively targeting Irish SME’s in the present economic climate is not only counter productive the economy as a whole but also to business building any future relationship of trust with ‘the bloggers’ for play group. Either we can expect a professional attitude or we will opt to take the ‘business’ aspect of blogging in another direction.

* 2 other SME’s with similiar experiences in this blog

Insightful post. I didn’t make it unfortunately but hopefully I’ll get to a future one. Not sure what hat I’d be wearing – blogger or Client-behind-PR-firm hat. Looks like some interesting points came out of the session. From my perspective, I think you are correct that clients / advertisers are weary of bloggers. There is a somewhat distorted view that they are an angry anti-establishment crew. Pity, as it feels like blogging community and clients could both benefit if clients had a better understanding of blogging.

I know you said bloggers are not financially motivated and as a blogger, I agree with that. But as a client, I believe advertisers would like to find a way to get their products or messages to bloggers, and pay for it. They often just don’t know how to approach this. And they’d need some education on this – you know, honest dialogue, relevant messages and respect for the blogger and his or her view. And no reason why bloggers can’t earn a few quid doing the stuff they are already doing, as long as they don’t feel compromised.

P