But for parenting bloggers that’s not the point.

Income from a blog may be a useful supplement to other sources of income but its way that down the list of factors that motivate parent bloggers to commit their content to the Internet.

Instead Mummy and Daddy bloggers cite recording their children’s lives, friendship and a creative outlet as their primary reasons for blogging.

These are finding published in a 30-page e-book by TOTS100 and RealWire. It is recommended reading for anyone that wants a better understanding of the business of blogging.

Here’s a Slideshare summary.

The last two years has seen a huge increase in the commercial opportunities for bloggers according to the e-book.

It covers potential low hanging sources of income for bloggers from ad networks (typically £10 per month) to private ads (typically £30 to £50 per month) and from paid links to sponsored posts (average £60 per post).

“You can make a lot of small fees very quickly as a blogger taking lots of cheap, paid-for links from SEO agencies, but for the best return it’s important to value your blog, look to differentiate, and focus on building up good content and an engaged audience,” said Sally Whittle, TOTS100.

The most lucrative opportunity lies in using your blog as a shop window for copywriting (average £135 per day) or consulting and training (average £300 per day).

The e-book has a useful section on the tension between bloggers, PRs and brands with useful insight and recommendations for developing successful working relationships. The route to success for a PR pitching a blogger lies in helping to drive traffic.

“The parent bloggers surveyed identified irrelevance as their primary frustration with PR pitches. PRs need to continue to ensure that their campaigns are highly targeted if they are to develop and expand these relationships further,” said Adam Parker, CEO, RealWire.

Finally a plug.

I’m speaking at the TOTS100 BlogCampUK in Birmingham on 21 April about the relationship between bloggers and brands. If you’re a Mummy or Daddy blogger there may even be a few tips on making money.

It also happens to be Speed’s view.

Command and control was the defining communication strategy of Campbell’s time in Downing Street.

A splash in a couple of national papers and coverage on BBC TV News would enable the Government to lead the news agenda for 24 hours he said.

No longer.

A decade on and the news cycle is defined by stories breaking minute-by-minute on the internet and not by the daily production cycle of news print. Meanwhile there are an increasing number of outlets fighting for the attention of consumers.

“The agenda is being set as much by those who consume the media, and respond instantly, as those who are trying to exert that control,’ said Campbell.

It has made the business of public relations much tougher. We have entered an era of authentic campaigning.

“Organisations must develop a narrative and build their reputation by landing stories in the media over time,” said Campbell.

I’d argue that media relations has only ever been a proxy to reach an organisation’s audiences.

It’s why it is critical for organisations to be authentic, engage directly with their audiences, and build reputation over time.

It’s a long term job.

Tonight Alastair will talk at a Speed sales event about the end of the age of spin and the need for a more authentic style of communication in the future.

The fragmentation of traditional media over the last two decades and the rapid rise of social media has brought brand reputation into sharp focus like never before.

Disaffected shareholders, customers and staff are noisily voicing their opinions to a global audience via the Internet. Meanwhile the established media is shared in new ways.

No one knows whether it’s going to get even worse. Will conventional media find a sustainable business model as attention continues to move online? Will new social forms of media over power brands?

Speed’s view is that you will never have complete control over your brand’s reputation. You never have.

But you might be able to get more control over your reputation than you’ve had in the past if you are willing to engage directly with your markets rather than via the proxy of traditional media.

That starts with a whole new approach to planning – because of the changed media – and a degree of organisational change for communications teams.

We believe that the future of organisational communication, and therefore the future of reputation management, lies in participation of a brand with its audience.

It’s a return to public relations in its purist form and it’s a huge opportunity for corporate communicators.

“There is a concern that the industry could lose its position easily. Some of the people [involved in the research] said that by 2020 [the public relations industry] could be irrelevant. Success would be a larger industry that is well understood, respected and established as a management discipline,” said Dr White.

Dr White undertook interviews with 15 groups each with an average of seven practitioners around the country. He used scenario planning to explore what the industry might look like in 2020.

In every case White said that the outcome of the scenario planning was unacceptable. He said that leadership was essential to develop the practise as a serious management discipline.

Here are the top ten findings cited by the report that the industry needs to address to ensure a healthy future:

1. Leadership: Encouragement to the Institute to provide leadership and meet expectations for its leadership
2. Professional development: Education and training for PR practice need to be taken to higher levels, which will involve greater collaboration with education and PR
3. Confidence: Practitioners need greater confidence in what they do, and should lead practice development by example
4. Measurement: There is a need for clearer thinking and guidance on measurement and evaluation
5. Ethics: Codes of conduct should be strengthened
6. New skills: Practitioners need to move faster to develop their knowledge of digital communication
7. Definition: There is a need for better definitions of PR and what it is to achieve
8. Change: Change should be embraced
9. R&D: Industry bodies should commit to R&D
10. Young talent: There is a need to synchronise experience and fresh talent, and to celebrate young people in practice

Dr White is an international consultant in management and organisation development with links to academic institutions including Henley Business School, Cardiff University and University of Central Lancashire.

• addressing gender profile – getting more men into the professional and retaining senior women
• training for the future – making training affordable and developing new skills
• managing the jobs market – ensuring efficient transfer of talent into growth sectors
• demonstrating value and standards – communication value, practices and ethics

It’s a depressing snapshot. These are issues that have challenged the industry for more than a decade.

The survey results were presented back-to-back with Dr Jon White’s report ‘PR2020: The Future of Public Relations”. His work provided recommendations for the future of the industry.

The event will be held at Shoreditch Town Hall, which provides a beautiful backdrop for an evening of entertainment.  For a ticket of £50, guests will enjoy food, drinks, the opportunity to take classic prom-style photos, live performances, dancing, a silent auction and other surprises.

Music includes a special performance by She Makes War and The Olympians, with songs from the forthcoming album Little Battles alongside creatively twisted classics, as well as a DJ set from Hypernaked’s Matt Brawn

In the run-up to the event, you’ll be able to vote for your Prom King and Queen by tweeting a nomination in this style; ‘I nominate (name) for #prpromking at the @prprom’ or ‘I nominate  (name) for #prpromqueen at the @prprom’.

Plus, we’ll be giving out a third award in the style of ‘Most Likely to…’, for which you can design your own category and rally support from colleagues. Simple tweet, ‘I nominate (name) for Most Likely to xxx #prprom’

Stephen Waddington, MD of Speed, has lent his support to the event, “Bright One makes a huge difference to the reputation of charities through the work of its volunteers. PR Prom is a chance for everyone in the PR industry to contribute to Bright One’s work – and have a great night out. Have you booked your ticket yet?”

Ben Matthews, founder of Bright One, said, “The PR Prom promises to be a fantastic event and will provide some much needed support to the valuable work that Bright One does. We want to see the industry come out to support their own and have fun while doing good.”

Amanda Rose, founder of Twestival and advisor to Bright One, added, “For our inaugural Bright One fundraising event we wanted to put together something special and quirky that everyone in the UK PR industry would look forward to each year. Many of the events out there are limited to those PR companies winning awards or at a price that only a few staff can attend – we hope to see lots of new faces out for PR Prom.”

The campaign to promote the event features well-known faces from the PR and communications industry, who Bright One thanks for their support; Kerry Bridge (Dell), Jon Silk (Waggener Edstrom), Kate Matlock (Ketchum Pleon), Reda Haq (Cohn and Wolfe), Jordan Stone (We Are Social) and Nik Thakkar (Exposure).

More information on the event is at PR Prom and you can buy tickets here.

Speed Budapest began this morning with the boys holding a campaign plotting meeting in the bar of the Mercure Budapest Buda, within earshot of the girls, already busy putting up some half-baked content so they could enjoy the rest of the morning at a spa.

But for the boys, spas don’t just mean relaxation, they mean business. Deep in the recession’s bowels, we’d decided to spend our lean Christmas party budget on taking the whole Speed company to Budapest rather than pay London prices.

Speed Budapest is partly a training session, partly a party, partly a company meeting and very definitely a ‘team motivational experience’.

Speed’s boys did our search campaign planning meeting this morning at the Széchenyi Bath Spa in Budapest. Here’s Steve Earl and me at the spa, ready for the off.

Changes were announced to the membership status yesterday. They could have gone further but crucially for the first time they align membership with professional development and break the relationship between membership status and time-served.

I was one of the voices on the CIPR Council that argued that anyone should be able to eligible for membership status providing that they committed to follow the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) scheme.

Membership of the CIPR should be recognised as a commitment to the profession.

The CIPR CPD system isn’t perfect (see comments particularly from Heather Yaxley) but combined with professional qualifications it’s a good start in shifting the industry from a craft to a profession.

The CIPR currently consists of 9,500 individuals across different membership grades. The changes mean that 80 per cent will now be eligible for membership or fellow status. Anyone signing-up will automatically be entered into the CPD scheme but it isn’t mandatory.

My relationship with the CIPR started three years ago. After writing a series of snarky blog posts then President Elect Jay O’Connor told me to put up or shut up.

I also argued that the route to fellowship should be transparent rather than on the basis of “recognition of distinction in the PR profession as defined by Council from time to time.” That remains a work in progress.

The changes make the CIPR a more democratic organisation and open up elections and decision making to a wider base in the industry. That can only be a good thing.

Associate has replaced affiliate as the most common entry level of membership and the route from associate to member is two-years employment in the industry rather than the six-to-ten years previously required.

It also makes the CIPR more inclusive and more relevant to how the PR industry is changing. Colleagues from advertising, digital and media industries are welcome as members.

Not perfect yet, but a good start.

During the CIPR TV presidential debate yesterday Rob Brown said that he’d tried hard during his career to bait a legal suit from Clifford. He said that he was surprised that Clifford didn’t come after him when he revealed a professional indiscretion in his book that Clifford had shared privately with him over lunch.

I headed to the bookshelf and picked off my copy of Brown’s book Public Relations and the Social Web to dig out the story.

“Many years ago I found myself sitting next to the celebrated British publicist Max Clifford at an industry lunch in Manchester at which he was the guest speaker. He had been responsible for bringing about the public disgrace of the British government minister David Mellor.

“Max Clifford revealed that David Mellor was having an affair with a little known actress called Antonia de Sancha. Clifford had touted the story that Mellor, a renowned Chelsea football fan, had asked the actress to make love to him whilst he was dressed in his Chelsea football shirt.

“The story made the front page of The Sun newspaper. During lunch, I took the opportunity to ask Mr Clifford whether the story had in fact been true. He laughed and admitted it was a total fabrication.”

Brown said that if he became President of the CIPR he’d front a spokesperson for every PR story that led a mainstream news agenda.

What I am going to do is ask you to stop and think before you start creating your page. Ask yourself if your customers are on Google+? If not why would you want to create a profile on yet another network?

There’s a strong case to be made for media businesses seeking to syndicate content and scoop up clicks to be first to Google+. Tech titles eWeek Labs, SlashGear, and TechRadar have already signed-up.

This makes sense. Early users to Google+ are tech savvy. But this isn’t engagement; its syndication.

If your business is anything other than media your customers, for now, almost certainly elsewhere.

There are some reasons for businesses to be on Google+ such as governance, IP protection, future proof your audience, and to explore the integration between Google+ with other services such as Google Places.

This was the rationale raised by people in my Twitter network this morning.

To date Google has failed in its attempts to build a social network and for now Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter dominate. Its challenge is to persuade audiences to move from these existing networks.

My test for a new technology is the speed with which members of my family adopt it. So far I’m the only person on the network.

As Jas Dhaliwal (@jas) said for now at least it’s likely that Google+ will consist of thousands of empty pages.