Shel Holtz is doing something very interesting, something that every PR practitioner should pay attention to. It’s also something that any business person should be aware of, especially those who believe PR people and blogs don’t fit well together.

Shel’s beginning a blogger relations campaign for his client ClickTV. Blogger relations is a new element of public relations practice that’s emerging as blogs increasingly become a credible business communication channel. It’s such a new area that a generally-agreed definition of the term isn’t even clear yet (try John Cass’ definition for size).

In recent months, we’ve seen two high-profile exercises in blogger relations.

The first was the Nokia N90 campaign developed by Andy Abramson as part of a larger PR campaign. Andy talks about it in an FIR interview last December.

Then we had the Edeleman campaign for Wal-Mart which illustrated some of the basic things you ought to do in blogger outreach and which were lacking in the Edelman example.

Which brings us to Shel’s project.

Shel outlined in yesterday’s edition of our podcast how he’s going about this campaign, especially about the fundamental research he conducted before reaching out to any blogger. Both in his post and in yesterday’s show, he talks about levels of transparency and clear disclosure – twin elements of credibility that are essential parts of the foundation you must have for a blogger relations campaign.

Shel will be writing about the campaign and his experiences in his blog as it develops. Worth paying attention to.