How to use the ‘mixed economy’ model in online PR

What do the blogosphere, Wikipedia, and Apache have in common? Basically, huge influence, a great deal of collaboration, and dependence on free work supplied by amateurs. In Apache’s case this has created a huge degree of reliability, and in Wikipedia the more science-based topics are usually very authoritative, too. Even in the blog vs traditional media debate it’s now widely recognized that the comment and response system and immunity to commercial pressures compensate for a relative lack of infrastructure. The news world has in fact reached a point of interdependency.

Now, a lot of the more authoritative blogs are done on a professional basis, but the ecosystem in which they operate is one in which amateur or semi-professional bloggers predominate. This ‘mixed economy’ model is also the basis of the profit in the Open Source movement — companies can use Open Source profitably by using part Open Source, part proprietary software.

So how does this mixed professional and amateur, commercial and free environment affect the way you conduct online PR and marketing?

1. It’s important not to make too big a distinction between amateurs and professionals. Professional is not better, commercial is not more reliable, so hierarchical thinking of this kind can be counter-productive. Mutual respect is the watchword.

2. It’s not all about money. The fact there is so much good discussion in blogs, that Wikipedia is now so reliable, and that the open source movement has produced so much reliable software proves that a lot can be done without money. But it can’t be done without trustworthiness and reliable information. Web presence comes with being a provider of information - not a tit-for-tat process of buying favours but one of becoming a participator. The investment is time and energy.

So perhaps the model companies should use for such participation is Google’s ‘We offer our engineers ‘20-percent time‘ so that they’re free to work on what they’re really passionate about’, but in this case the free time is for participation.