Imagine me in a slightly more Machiavellian frame of mind and you might just find me wondering what role PR has to play in all this blogging palava. I remember a PR friend of mine appearing on Radio 5 claiming that personality types could be defined by the font you used and casually managing to slip a certain printer manufacturer’s name into the conversation quite liberally. Seeming the BBC don’t do advertising it was probably a spot of genius. It was also entirely fabricated.

And that’s what PR people are – far better fabricators than us sheet metal folk could ever wish to be.

By the time some high powered knob has thought about starting a blog, the blogosphere is already falling over itself to give its two cents worth. It’s buzz marketing gold and the PR gooks with a bit of nous understand this completely. And so does the blogosphere. On the one hand, the business blogging fraternity needs the big names on board to validate the medium and on the other, it has to ensure these people are doing it correctly in order not to bastardise the blog.

What a quandry.

I’m far happier with what GM are doing with their blogs after their initial foray a few months ago. They’ve at least brought trackbacks and comments on board and put a few names to posts after Michael Wiley was taken to task in the comments on The Tinbasher:

While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, and you are correct to assume that the Small-block engine blog was created by the GM PR staff, I don’t think it is fair to discount its relevance just because it was created by a corporation.

Neville Hobson has a post about the behind the blog scenes of the Fastlane blog, but I’m out of cigarettes and currently looking at it all a bit differently,

The blog was result of an ongoing conversation between [PR agency] Hass [MS&L] and GM about blogs. It is run on Movable Type, and Bob Lutz sometimes moblogs using his Blackberry. The company has been pretty happy with all the attention the launch has gotten so far. [...] The blog was a follow to the GM Smallblock Blog, which Hass and GM created as a kind of trial foray into the blogosphere.

So it’s pretty clear there’s been a PR discussion and that Bob blogs with his Blackberry. At the risk of being sued – whatever. I’d love to know which posts Bob has moblogged.

Laurie [Mayers, of the PR firm] says the response via comments so far has been great. She moderates the comments in order to prevent spam, and has had a little fun from bloggers who accidentally got an out-of-office reply because of a comment moderation email.

I think it depends on how charitable you might be feeling as to how far you believe they might moderate, but I’ll take them at their word.

But, if you look at the Fastlane blog, it’s had four posts between Jan 13th and Jan 28th – two by Bob Lutz, one anonymous and the latest one from Tom Stephens. Maybe it’s becoming a legitimate group blog and maybe Bob is bored.

GM is getting it and I want them to get it, but it’s certainly slowly. I still see no embracing of the blogosphere at all. Yes, there are links, but no actual referencing of how they see what else is going on in their corner of the blogosphere within any of the posts.

This blogging lark would be so much easier if we could all blog the Bob Lutz way.