Brendan Cooper – your friendly social media-savvy freelance copywriter and social media consultant. Or: words make ideas make money.

The PR Friendly Index for February 2008

Posted in PR by Brendan on February 24, 2008

All change!

Key below, index below that, explanation below that.

You might also find the FAQ useful.

 

KEY
 
  Technorati Authority – blogs (not links) linking to a site in the last six months
 
  Technorati Inlinks – links coming into a site according to Technorati
 
  Yahoo Inlinks – links coming into a site according to Yahoo Site Explorer
 
  Google Hits – hits for a site’s URL
 
  Google Blog Hits – hits for a site’s URL according to Google Blog Search
 
  Google Blog Hits over the past Month – hits for a site’s URL over the past month according to Google Blog Search. This is given more weighting than other metrics to promote blogs with recent online activity.
 
  IceRocket – recent posts that link to a site according to IceRocket

 
1   +1  Micro Persuasion 2,762  
4,306  
557,000  
50,500  
5,335  
4,933  
1,984  
2   -1  Online Marketing Blog 3,069  
6,335  
166,000  
37,000  
1,211  
1,113  
1,188  
3   0  PR Watch 644  
2,076  
381,000  
42,100  
410  
128  
409  
4   0  PR 2.0 Silicon Valley 648  
1,395  
61,600  
6,330  
446  
127  
703  
5   +1  NevilleHobson.com 451  
847  
91,700  
7,800  
1,541  
49  
426  
6   -1  a shel of my former self 525  
1,010  
98,700  
6,900  
1,042  
26  
510  
7   +2  PR Squared 460  
938  
53,100  
3,350  
330  
39  
429  
8   +1  Web Ink Now 478  
1,484  
42,700  
2,990  
353  
82  
392  
9   -1  The Buzz Bin 412  
1,080  
36,700  
2,210  
251  
98  
603  
10   +4  Media Orchard 178  
494  
44,300  
3,910  
328  
26  
181  
11   -4  Communication Overtones 331  
809  
48,200  
1,560  
46  
32  
407  
12   +3  Strumpette 170  
325  
29,700  
5,290  
311  
20  
163  
13   -2  Pop! PR Jots 250  
401  
59,300  
1,420  
39  
17  
199  
14   +6  Paul Gillin – Social Media 237  
326  
27,000  
1,510  
163  
30  
126  
15   +2  Pro PR 188  
393  
31,700  
1,060  
285  
20  
192  
16   +6  Spinwatch 121  
293  
57,200  
11,700  
26  
17  
108  
17   +4  Young PR 147  
279  
26,400  
837  
312  
15  
186  
18   +5  PR Works 133  
320  
21,400  
912  
215  
12  
134  
19   +4  A PR Guy’s Musings 113  
178  
28,400  
2,070  
255  
9  
67  
20   +8  Tech PR Gems 95  
269  
11,200  
1,520  
14  
38  
164  
21   +4  PR Blogger 173  
287  
35,700  
1,700  
5  
13  
98  
22   -9  The Bad Pitch Blog 216  
324  
42,900  
1,070  
12  
6  
138  
23   -5  Strategic Public Relations 171  
256  
39,000  
863  
11  
6  
139  
24   -5  PR Meets the WWW 190  
253  
41,400  
938  
3  
7  
125  
25   +1  The Flack 3  
176  
62,700  
1,260  
104  
20  
81  
26   +5  ToughSledding 90  
168  
20,200  
375  
61  
21  
79  
27   -15  Todd Andrlik 391  
600  
10,800  
2,050  
390  
0  
224  
28   +12  On Message Wagner Comms 170  
206  
25,200  
853  
1,178  
3  
34  
29   +10  PR Conversations 93  
220  
12,100  
1,140  
19  
8  
63  
30   +16  Piaras Kelly PR 48  
75  
33,000  
1,230  
104  
14  
31  
31   -15  Canuckflack 167  
241  
11,900  
3,240  
4  
3  
131  
32   +15  Murphy’s Law 76  
103  
22,700  
519  
90  
9  
46  
33   0  PR Communications 106  
151  
18,800  
869  
13  
6  
54  
34   +7  Heather Yaxley 137  
226  
16,600  
773  
6  
3  
139  
35   -6  Common Sense PR 221  
437  
4,440  
3,830  
0  
2  
221  
36   +14  Teaching PR 79  
155  
5,570  
102  
44  
21  
72  
37   -7  Occam’s RazR 4  
195  
9,350  
920  
53  
12  
137  
38   +5  Engage in PR 62  
240  
5,550  
547  
25  
7  
61  
39   -7  Blogging Me, Blogging You 88  
138  
25,500  
572  
9  
4  
57  
40   -4  KDPaine’s PR Measurement 82  
131  
10,200  
344  
14  
9  
78  
41   -7  Corporate PR 118  
179  
35,800  
541  
6  
3  
42  
42   +3  PR Disasters 64  
103  
10,800  
1,790  
28  
3  
42  
43   -1  IndiaPRBlog! 48  
119  
14,700  
2,410  
18  
2  
72  
44   -7  Media Guerrilla 66  
105  
11,900  
1,200  
62  
2  
53  
45   -10  Drew B’s take on tech PR 94  
138  
25,100  
309  
63  
2  
44  
46   +22  Flack Life 5  
76  
14,300  
1,230  
85  
13  
32  
47   +6  Naked PR 82  
151  
6,160  
779  
20  
3  
40  
48   0  Brendan Cooper 48  
118  
2,500  
851  
9  
12  
57  
49   -11  Cooler Insights 56  
137  
20,400  
748  
4  
4  
43  
50   +9  Valley PR Blog 47  
97  
3,670  
956  
11  
8  
48  
51   -2  ….the world’s leading…. 62  
130  
8,150  
155  
30  
3  
61  
52   -8  PR Studies 80  
118  
20,900  
283  
5  
4  
29  
53   +8  Getting Ink 60  
145  
1,780  
420  
28  
3  
44  
54   -3  Wadds’ tech pr blog 54  
99  
8,010  
339  
13  
5  
44  
55   +25  PR Newser 33  
98  
54,200  
465  
13  
2  
26  
56   -4  The New PR 43  
59  
9,720  
210  
156  
2  
34  
57   -1  The PR 2.0 Universe 31  
80  
17,500  
408  
27  
2  
21  
58   -3  Beyond PR 32  
82  
19,900  
423  
3  
3  
17  
59   -2  bitemarks 48  
74  
20,800  
604  
1  
2  
22  
60   +2  The New Marketing 33  
55  
3,410  
208  
17  
4  
31  
61   +11  Wired PR Works 29  
114  
2,160  
349  
8  
3  
35  
62   +1  Onalytica 29  
69  
3,980  
255  
18  
4  
16  
63   +12  The PR Place 20  
36  
9,570  
165  
31  
3  
19  
64   +4  The Rosemont Loving 40  
61  
15,800  
194  
3  
3  
11  
65   0  PR Meets Marketing 5  
78  
267  
432  
0  
12  
55  
66   +23  wordymouth 10  
21  
1,380  
1,310  
15  
5  
13  
67   -13  Tech PR War Stories 33  
105  
4,590  
177  
25  
1  
40  
68   -41  Peter Shankman 8  
0  
347  
1,690  
12  
6  
18  
69   -6  Priscilla’s World 26  
49  
1,880  
309  
0  
4  
20  
70   -3  Alan Weinkrantz PR 20  
29  
4,250  
340  
2  
3  
20  
71   +11  GREENblog 11  
30  
4,900  
129  
22  
2  
17  
72   -2  Media Artifacts 22  
55  
1,360  
179  
1  
2  
24  
73   0  note to editors… 18  
40  
1,260  
38  
1  
5  
17  
74   -3  PR 2.0 26  
50  
6,290  
109  
0  
2  
13  
75   +2  Active Voice 28  
54  
8,380  
127  
0  
2  
6  
76   -10  media mindshare 18  
0  
6,110  
153  
1  
3  
10  
77   -3  First Person PR 24  
35  
951  
50  
0  
3  
21  
78   +6  The Thicket 14  
21  
949  
505  
14  
2  
10  
79   +2  Public Relations Rogue 15  
30  
848  
66  
1  
3  
22  
80   -22  Glass House 28  
32  
11,000  
2  
0  
2  
13  
81   -3  PR Voice 34  
68  
1,360  
126  
0  
2  
6  
82   0  my(PR)palette 16  
29  
1,030  
85  
0  
3  
15  
83   +16  Point oh 34  
38  
7  
507  
3  
0  
17  
84   +4  DummySpit 14  
38  
2,720  
63  
0  
2  
12  
84   -5  Fusion PR Forum 17  
39  
461  
9  
2  
2  
18  
86   -1  PR Girlz 15  
26  
6,070  
10  
23  
0  
11  
87   -1  Corporati 9  
26  
10,600  
8  
1  
2  
7  
88   -2  copypunk 18  
44  
1,530  
10  
0  
2  
7  
89   +2  Tech for PR 10  
26  
1,570  
91  
0  
2  
12  
90   +3  point being: 8  
28  
2,900  
169  
0  
2  
6  
91   -31  In Front of Your Nose 8  
12  
67  
7  
6  
6  
2  
92   -2  Indian and Global PR 6  
22  
4,730  
88  
1  
2  
6  
93   +1  All Things PR 7  
27  
3,610  
81  
0  
2  
9  
94   +3  nerd-in-residence 9  
21  
473  
251  
0  
2  
6  
95   -3  PR (in a jar) 11  
23  
1,280  
2  
0  
2  
11  
96   0  The Spud Gun 10  
27  
970  
10  
0  
2  
6  
97   -2  The last man in Europe… 9  
27  
1,540  
8  
9  
0  
7  
98   +2  Small Business PR/Marketing 4  
11  
372  
71  
0  
2  
8  
99   -1  PR India Post 1  
0  
399  
6  
0  
2  
8  
100   -24  Don’t eat the shrimp 1  
2  
33  
441  
0  
0  
0  

This month, the PR Friendly Index has had a substantial facelift, as you can see.

This is following comments that the 1-10 scale didn’t show the true nature of the difference between blogs. So, I’ve decided to abandon the scale, and simply show the results for what they are.

It bears out interesting results. Not only does it show that the top three or four blogs really are way ahead of the rest – a fact which was masked by the 1-10 scale – but it also shows how some blogs do well in some areas but not in others.

Canuckflack is noticeable here, in that it has a strong Technorati Authority figure but performs weakly in others. In aggregation, this means Canuckflack is placed below other blogs that have substantially smaller Authorities but better all-round performance.

I’ve also abandoned Blogpulse in favour of IceRocket. This is a purely pragmatic measure: I can use ImportHTML calls in Google Spreadsheets to compile IceRocket figures, which I cannot do with Blogpulse. It’s much quicker and easier. I would love to use Blogpulse but ideally they will produce an API like Technorati to allow the little people like me to do stuff like this.

I’ve also removed Technorati Rank because it just looks weird on a chart. You get the impression that a large bar on a chart implies a large rank, when in fact it’s the other way around: the lower the rank, the better. It just proved so counter-intuitive that I decided to scrap it.

The metrics are scaled to fit the page, so you should compare the metrics like for like, not with each other. So, compare the chart of Technorati Authority for Micropersuasion with that for, say, PR Watch. Don’t compare Micropersuasion’s Techorati Authority chart with its Technorati Inlinks chart, because they’re on a different scale.

There are also removals, additions and changes:

  • Removed – Client Service Insights because you have to sign in now, which imho stops it from being a blog, and PRactical PR seems to have disappeared.
  • Added – Point Oh and PR Newser, simply because they asked me nicely, and it works well to have two out, two in.
  • Changed – Don’t Eat The Shrimp now has its own domain, New View From Object Towers is now In Front Of Your Nose at a new domain, and PR Differently now blogs as Peter Shankman. They have all fallen down the index as a result of their domain moves, but should start creeping up again as they pick up momentum.

Taken together, these changes produce some results which I can only describe as odd. Wordymouth, Piaras Kelly and Teaching PR have taken big leaps up. Wagner Comms continues to rise, but hasn’t posted much recently. There are some big losers too, such as Tech PR War Stories and Todd Andrlik (sorry Todd!)

I’ve been through the figures to make sure these are valid results – many times, hence the delay in publication. They are correct. So I’ve decided not to fret it too much. It’s probably something to do with the other new/changed blogs coming in and pushing existing blogs around, as well as changes to the metrics. Let’s see what happens next month when we’re comparing more like with like, given the metric changes this month.

And, of course, this is another weakness of these metrics: they continue to go up whether or not a blog is active. I never said this index was perfect.


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31 comments

31 Responses

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  1. I’m faaaaaaallling … a recurring PR blog ranking dream « media mindshare: news media, technology & media relations said, on February 24, 2008 at 6:03 pm

    [...] It happened when I was finally updating my blog roll link to the site of the PR ranking artist formerly known as “The Friendly Ghost” to the eponymous site of Brendan Cooper. I was shaken by the most ominous reverberations of pipe-organ music emanating from seemingly everywhere, gushing dread from the bowels of the earth, fear of retribution rom the heavens on high, sonorous thunder heard only in my youth on only the highest of holy days, of the kind that rattles your dental fillings and sends chills from the crown of your head down your adolescent spine, as I noticed that young Brendan had posted … “The PR Friendly Index for February 2008.” [...]

    Reply
  2. Michael Tangeman said, on February 24, 2008 at 9:12 pm

    But, seriously, Brendan … as i noted in my comment to yours on mine, i do appreciate your herculean effort at the index and (as I obviously do keep an eye on it) will watch out for next month’s edition.

    Also noticed unexplained jump of John Wagner’s blog and as I noted at mine, Brian Solis’ continued fall, also an oddity. One thing I find curious is the high number across the board of links coming into a site according to Yahoo. Don’t quite get this metric & I can’t believe there are 6,110 links coming into media mindshare, for example!

    p.s. for March, you may want to take note of Joel Postman’s move from Media Artifacts at Eastwick over to his new blog at SocializedPR.com.

    Reply
  3. Scott Baradell said, on February 24, 2008 at 9:44 pm

    Cool format, Brendan. Posted to Spin Thicket.

    Reply
  4. Brendan said, on February 24, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    This is where I get the Yahoo figures from: http://tinyurl.com/ysrcbo

    Top left, you can see the inlinks figure. It really is that large (and, of course, different now from when I compiled the index).

    I really do think a lot of the placement jumps are due to the changes. When Ad Age introduced the Alexa metric, I plummeted! But really, what I’m trying to do with this is just figure out ways of showing the metrics at work. It’s entirely possible that at some point I’ll decide they just don’t benefit anyone, and drop the whole thing. Meanwhile, it provides a central resource and food for thought.

    Reply
  5. Sally Whittle said, on February 24, 2008 at 10:15 pm

    Ooh, we’re on the up. Marvellous.

    But have I really only had three hits on my blog* in the last month? I feel a bit depressed by that. Cos once you count me and my boyfriend, that leaves … er… you.

    * I may not have fully understood the metric.

    Reply
  6. Badger Gravling said, on February 24, 2008 at 11:57 pm

    Guess I’m outside the top 100 still – I thought from my own calculations I would have qualified this month, so I’d be interested to know what scores I ended up with?

    Still, gives me something to aim at! And I can always claim to be more about marketing than PR…

    Reply
  7. Joe said, on February 25, 2008 at 2:49 am

    Hi Brian,

    Thanks for compiling, and glad to see PRNewser made the list this time. Fastest growing PR blog :) We’re honored to be in such good company.

    Joe

    Reply
  8. So, did you get the latest PR Friendly Index then? « Brendan Cooper - Your friendly PR social media planner said, on February 25, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    [...] tayters Joe on The PR Friendly Index for Febr…Badger Gravling on The PR Friendly Index for Febr…Peter Brill on FlockoverySally Whittle on The PR [...]

    Reply
  9. Brendan said, on February 25, 2008 at 12:58 pm

    Hi Badger,

    I agree, it looks like you should be in according to your stats, but I’m coming up against the old definition nutshell here ie, is your blog a PR blog? You bill yourself as Digital media and publishing, Community marketing, Social networks, Usability and SEO. I’m trying to keep the PR blog restricted to PR – and, before you spot my hypocrisy here, while I am a social media planner, I am working in PR.

    Definitions, definitions. They’re hard. I mean, what even qualifies as a blog? Is it an individual? A group? The face of a company? Does it have to include RSS? Etc etc. Then again, is PR exclusive of social media? Or part of it? Or is it part of PR? Or what? Aargh!

    Anyone else have an opinion on this?

    Oh, and Joe, you’re welcome, but my name is Brendan… ;)

    Reply
  10. Badger Gravling said, on February 25, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    Hi Brendan (or is it Brian!)
    Thanks for getting back to me, and I totally understand that my blog might not fall into the definition of a strict PR blog. I do think that perhaps my billing might cast my net a little too wide in retrospect, but I’m still trying to define myself, let alone my blog!

    I do think the lines between PR and Marketing are increasingly getting blurred, as shown by the fact the top ranked PR Friendly Index blog is billed as a Marketing blog! I certainly don’t see much difference in my ongoing marketing activity utilising social media, and the PR emails sent out to relevant journalists, for example. The main difference is that I’m targetting bloggers and social network users with a less corporate message!

    Reply
  11. Brendan said, on February 25, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    Hi Badger (or is it Daniel!)

    This is the difficulty, I agree. I simply included micropersuasion because I often read what Steve Rubel had to say, and related it to PR. But increasingly, as you say, everything is becoming blurred. I read today in Metro about a preview of an advert. Now, is that PR – because it appears in an unrelated publication – or advertising, because it’s branded content? It’s all very confusing.

    You also touch on the blurring between bloggers and more corporate audiences. How about the difference, then, between bloggers and journalists? Are journalists different because they’re paid? Because they’re legally accountable? Or is this the Billy Bunter defence (“I didn’t steal the cake, and anyway it tasted horrid.”)?

    Reply
  12. Brendan said, on February 25, 2008 at 5:55 pm

    Btw, I just want to point out that I’ve updated the PR Newser and Point Oh change indicators to say ‘new’. This is as a result of PR Newser claiming to be the fastest growing blog on the index! I appreciate the sentiment guys, but you’re the ‘latest’ addition, not the highest moving! Let’s wait until next month before we start to assess movement.

    Reply
  13. Barbara Rozgonyi said, on February 25, 2008 at 7:56 pm

    Thanks for the update – and for your attention to continuously advancing quality of scores, Brendan! Every month, your rankings give us new performance measures.

    Reply
  14. PR Friendly Index for February 2008 | WPRW at 61 | Wired PR Works said, on February 25, 2008 at 8:15 pm

    [...] Kudos to Brendan Cooper for his evolution of the PR Friendly Index. This month, Wired PR Works comes in at 61/100. To see how the top 100 PR sites stack up in terms of Brendan’s new scoring system, check out the PR Friendly Index for February 2008. [...]

    Reply
  15. Joe said, on February 25, 2008 at 8:21 pm

    Hi Brendan,

    I just updated the PRNewser post to include your coment. Forgive me for the error, but I took a look at the rankings last night, saw our +25 point gain was the largest, and surmised we had grown the most. Like you said, we’ll wait ’till next month to assess movement.

    As for the name thing, I guess that’s what happens during Sunday night multi-tasking :)

    Reply
  16. Brendan said, on February 25, 2008 at 9:37 pm

    Hi Barbara, thanks for the comment. Ideally I *wouldn’t* be changing this each month but, quite frankly, one of the reasons I changed was that the Ad Age Power150 had adopted some of the metrics I’d been using, so I needed a further reason to differentiate. If they start using a graphical layout then I’ll be annoyed!

    Joe – no worries on the change there. In truth I should have noticed this myself. It’s always a danger when I introduce a new blog. I just have to keep my eyes peeled – or rely on keen readers to notice these things.

    Reply
  17. Badger Gravling said, on February 26, 2008 at 12:37 am

    Hello again Brian….Brendan….Brenda?

    (Badger/Dan is interchangeable by the way)

    (We’re probably distracting from the Index itself…feel free to email/twitter etc me if it’s easier)

    I do think there is very little difference between bloggers and journalists, and the line will increasingly blur. It’s particularly relevant for freelance journalists, who will have less reason to be tied down to a particular publisher or magazine due to geography, and can instead publish across titles, publishers, or on their own site, and make similar financial rewards… Currently the only differences I see between journos and bloggers are that journalists, on the whole, have to research their stories in greater depth to avoid legal repercussions, are usually trained to be better writers and contact managers (a huge generalisation), and many are scared of the internet!

    If you want real blurring, I spent 7 years as a journalist, using community sites as more of a hobby, and then began editing a free online magazine in my spare time ( as well as blogging).

    Somewhere in there, I ended up becoming a community marketing manager! So I’ve gone from full time journo and hobby marketer, to full time marketer and hobby journo!

    Reply
  18. Brendan said, on February 26, 2008 at 9:25 am

    Hi Badger Dan,

    I think this is the perfect place for this kind of discussion! This is one of the reasons for the index existing in the first place, so that these issues come out.

    Things We Need Definitions For, But Cannot Readily Define:
    * Influence. It’s not about how many, but who. I recently looked into influential blogs for environmental issues. Jonathon Porritt’s blog was not one of the most popular but he is undeniably a highly influential person in this sphere.
    * Blogs. One person? A group? A company? A ‘pro blog’ where people make money from it? An ‘am’ blog where people just dabble in their spare time? What about top pros who blog in their spare time? This links to the influence question.
    * Bloggers. ‘Am’ journos? What about when they’re paid? Who says they’re exempt from legal issues? Plus everything else you just said.
    * PR. When does it achieve a high enough profile, with paid-for results, to class as advertising? At what point do we stop drilling down, to avoid it being marketing?

    The way I’ve approached this in the index is:
    * Influence. If I had the resources, I would create my own tool that would trace the people who read a source rather than just count them. Various companies already have this. I’ve taken the approach that there are metrics freely available which enable me to establish popularity, and you *could* to an extent argue that popularity equates to influence. Roughly.
    * Blogs. Actually, I just count a blog as a site with an RSS feed. This could be a bit utilitarian, but I see the RSS feed as the means by which I access user-generated content – which is, after all, what a blog is, regardless of who the users are.
    * Bloggers. Whoever runs the blog! Tom Murphy is a high-profile PR figure but he gave me some of his time to feature in my recent Friendly Chat. Generally if someone seems to me to speak sense, I read them.
    * PR. If it feels like PR, it is PR. That is, it looks to creating relationships and conversation. This is why I include people like Steve Rubel. He tended to touch on issues that I felt were relevant to PR.

    Perhaps I should add all this to the PR Friendly FAQ. It needs updating anyway.

    Reply
  19. Top 50, 200 Subscribers | Valley PR Blog said, on February 26, 2008 at 4:04 pm

    [...] Cooper has posted his monthly list of the top PR blogs and Valley PR Blog has cracked the Top 50.  (#50, up 9 spots this [...]

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  20. Todd And said, on February 26, 2008 at 5:01 pm

    Love the format! Nice job. Moving forward, anything you can do to prevent using my name and the word “losers” in the same sentence would be greatly appreciated! :-) Keep up the great work!

    Reply
  21. Brendan said, on February 26, 2008 at 5:48 pm

    Oops. Sorry Todd. Bad PR there. I’ll bear this in mind in future, of course! Seriously though, I think it’s important to wait and see how this all pans out next month. Then I can hopefully put your name in the same sentence as ‘winners’!

    Reply
  22. Gerry McCusker said, on February 27, 2008 at 3:35 am

    tar Brendan; prdisasters.com is still in that ‘Man City/Blackburn’ table posi – be happier being Everton, tho; great work, thx.

    Reply
  23. PR Disasters » PR Disasters blog rises on old Power PR league table said, on February 27, 2008 at 3:55 am

    [...] Le grand competition de l’urination expertly assembled by Brendan Cooper shows “more and more popularity for the blockbursting PR blog, PR Disasters’, run by PR Disaster analyst and author Gerry McCusker. [...]

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  24. Badger Gravling said, on February 27, 2008 at 11:15 am

    Influence: Interestingly, I’m very deep in researching the usage of Net Promoter scores, Buzz Monitoring etc, to look at how to track influence and engagement as far as is currently possible (Nothing will ever be close to 100%!). I do know from discussions with some firms that they’ll be providing some limited free tools in the future, which may help track influence above and beyond popularity and linking. I’m influenced by a lot of things that I don’t end up linking from my blog due to time, effort etc.

    Blogs: For me, it’s any site which is updated chronologically in one ‘flow’. Any news site is chronological, but articles etc will be spread across sections. A blog can cover numerous areas of interest, but everything is covered in one main stream of information which can then be split out. Rather than a homepage aggregating from the various sections. If that makes sense!

    Bloggers: Anyone publishing a blog, whether paid/unpaid, corporate or not. And certainly a journalist can also be a blogger and vice versa. For me, the definition seems to come from what, where and how their content is displayed. Again, going back to my definition of a blog (which is very much a work in progress). I’d hesitate to define it by technical functionality, such as RSS, and certainly look to define it more by form (Any definition of over 100 million examples is going to be fuzzy in some way…)

    PR: Definitely the trickiest one. Should it be classed with Marketing/Customer Retention? Is there even a place for it now? I’d argue that to define a discipline by the fact it doesn’t analyse as deeply as another is probably doing it a disservice, but it’s difficult not to. Certainly journalism, PR, marketing, advertising etc are all increasingly about relationships and conversations rather than purely broadcasting. I’m still stunned by at least one PR company I deal with banning employees from using Facebook for example, rather than encouraging the use of every tool to target press releases as accurately and individually as possible. But where the line comes between targetting press releases to journalists and bloggers, and marketing something to bloggers and consumers, for example, is very, very fuzzy. Maybe the terms for PR and Marketing should be merged and then discarded. Engagement and communication? Enunication? Communigagement?

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  25. Ben Matthews said, on February 27, 2008 at 3:28 pm

    Defining a lot of these terms is near impossible, and has caused more arguments then ever – but in the spirit of conversation…

    Wikipedia (“Wikipedia – probably the most trusted source in the world”) defines PR as “the management of internal and external communication of an organization to create and maintain a positive image. Public relations involves popularizing successes, downplaying failures, announcing changes, and many other activities.”

    I really dislike the second sentence but I guess it’s a start, and wikipedia does offer a number of different definitions on it’s site.

    Personally, I like Robert L. Heath’s definition from the Encyclopedia of Public Relations:

    “Public Relations is a set of management, supervisory, and technical functions that foster an organization’s ability to strategically listen to, appreciate, and respond to those persons whose mutually beneficial relationships with the organization are necessary if it is to achieve its missions and values.”

    I think this encapsulates PR pretty well – including blogs, bloggers, the blogosphere and the issues of influence that are involved in that area. And the “listen to, appreciate, and respond to” distinguishes it from marketing.

    @Badger Gravling – Just to point out that “any site which is updated chronologically in one flow” could still apply to news aggregators and RSS feed readers – and even spam blogs.

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  26. Badger Gravling said, on February 29, 2008 at 2:01 pm

    There is always the argument that PR is actually a part of Marketing as a whole…(ref: Wikipedia!)

    I think perhaps I need to work on the definition of ‘flow’. Aggregators and feed readers are chronological and in one place, but reference many other websites etc.

    Whereas even a link blog tends to include some reasoning behind the inclusion of links.

    Maybe one flow based around the identity of the individual (s) responsible for the website content?

    Reply
  27. Leona said, on March 1, 2008 at 1:18 am

    Interesting post. I’d love to recommend a PR blog maintained by a friend of mine– http://prosintraining.blogspot.com/ . Based on the metrics of some of the sites featured, I think she’d fit right in!

    Reply
  28. Valeria Maltoni said, on March 6, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    Brendan,

    Nice to find you. Another list, amazing! I should disclose I’m a client of your Boston office. Thank you for streaming some of my content, that’s how I got here. Keep up the good work.

    Reply
  29. Spring cleaning brings spring reading « First Person PR said, on March 31, 2008 at 8:26 pm

    [...] Brendan Cooper: PR Friendly Index — a fabulous list of 100 PR focused blogs. Pick a new one each week to [...]

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  30. TheWayoftheWeb » Conversation about definition: Marketing, Blog, Bloggers, Public Relations (PR) said, on May 6, 2008 at 6:38 pm

    [...] Aside from an exponential increase in my involvement on Twitter, and setting up FriendFeed on an experimental basis, probably my most interesting discussion at the moment is with Brendan Cooper, the creator of the PR Friendly Index. [...]

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  31. Valley PR Blog » Blog Archive » Top 50, 200 Subscribers said, on July 7, 2008 at 9:07 pm

    [...] Cooper has posted his monthly list of the top PR blogs and Valley PR Blog has cracked the Top 50.  (#50, up 9 spots this [...]

    Reply

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