Skip to content

Skip to search - Accesskey = s

22 Responses

Subscribe to comments with RSS.

1. paulstallard said, on March 21, 2009 at 5:43 pm

   Brendan – thanks for listing my blog and it is a pleasure to be one of the newbies. How do you find the time to do this?…….but please do it.

   Reply
2. Robin Grant (Managing Director, We Are Social) said, on March 22, 2009 at 9:30 am

   Hey Brendan – thanks for taking the time to do this. I wonder where We Are Social would appear in the list?

   I quick check reveals that we should be pretty high up the list, with scores of:
   128
   225
   3
   163

   Feel like editing the list to include us?

   Reply
3. Brendan said, on March 22, 2009 at 2:10 pm

   Hi Robin,

   True enough, but this is the problem of categorisation – as in, you’re decidely social media, not strictly PR. I totally get your point that you’d probably fit in the rankings, but I’ve got to keep this ‘PR’. As I said in my explanation, maybe I don’t even fit into this anymore! Not sure what to do. Maybe split this between social media and PR? Have two indexes? Bring the two together? Any ideas appreciated.

   Reply
4. Robin Grant (Managing Director, We Are Social) said, on March 22, 2009 at 2:22 pm

   I’d just include We Are Social in the list – that would fix it.

   

   Especially as you have http://www.toprankblog.com/ in 1st and http://www.feverbee.com/ in 27th both of which could hardly be considered PR blogs either (I haven’t bothered checking any further, but you get the point)

   Reply
5. Brendan said, on March 22, 2009 at 2:31 pm

   Depends on your definition of ‘fix’!

   Toprank blog talks about digital PR. OK, this could be social media, but it’s a mention of PR.

   Richard Millington used to run the PR Place, which was decidedly PR. I see what you mean though, he’s now more into building communities. Not quite the same I guess.

   Which illustrates another point: tracking all of this. Again, as I said in the explanatory notes, people change their subject matter. While I do read these blogs, I don’t read all of them, every day. When people change it’s difficult to keep up with everything.

   I once discussed this all with Todd Andrlik, the guy who pretty much invented the template for a lot of ranking lists, who also testified to the problem of adminstrating indexes. I figure that eventually he too realised it was too much to take on, hence the total automation of his list, plus the handing over to Ad Age for the back office work.

   So, any more suggestions? There’s an opportunity here for you guys to do something for a social media index maybe…?

   Reply
6. Robin Grant (Managing Director, We Are Social) said, on March 22, 2009 at 2:37 pm

   Well – by that definition, we’re in! Just check out the HTML title tags on the home page. And perhaps a few of the tags used on our posts, e.g.:
   http://wearesocial.net/blog/tag/reputation-management/
   http://wearesocial.net/blog/tag/corporate-communications/

   In all seriousness, have you thought about approaching Peter Hay at PR Week UK? Perhaps they could take over your list in the way the AdAge took over Todd’s?

   Reply
7. Brendan said, on March 22, 2009 at 7:36 pm

   Hmm, looking at html title tags isn’t a bad idea. But how do you arbitrate for this kind of situation: http://brendancooper.com/2008/10/13/top-tip-put-your-keywords-in-your-title/ – that is, where people work in PR, but don’t actually state this? Where they say it’s ‘communications’, for example, which is possibly more accurate even if more generic (if that even makes sense)? In which case, do we put together a ‘comms’ index? Would that include advertising? In fact, don’t we just end up with… the Ad Age Power150? Which isn’t even 150 any more?

   Interesting suggestion for PR Week but that would involve setting PR Week against Ad Age, which is a bit like King Kong vs Godzilla with myself as the lissome Fay Wray in between…

   Reply
8. Sally Whittle said, on March 22, 2009 at 8:42 pm

   Oooh, nice to know my blog hasn’t fallen off the rankings.

   Re Twitter – it’s an interesting idea, particularly as I’d say Twitter is the biggest single source of traffic to my blog these days bar none – which makes me think it’s increasingly influential. I considered including this in the index we put together (with the help of your good self, of course) of parenting blogs – those who were active on Twitter generally performed above their weight in the rankings – ie newer blogs with a single author performed higher than you might expect, because they’d built a community on Twitter.

   Be interesting to see how you’d measure it, though – followers? Twitter Grader?

   Reply
9. Brendan said, on March 22, 2009 at 9:05 pm

   I’m going to stick my neck out here and say I’d probably use Twitter Grader, because it seems to me to do something similar to Technorati Authority.

   Before everyone laughs, I’d say that Twitter Grader looks at factors such as number of followers, number of friends, frequency, tenancy and recency – the last three of which fall under ‘classic’ metrics for any blog, and which are encapsulated in the authority figure being updated, as it is, according to six-monthly rolling stats and therefore taking into account time.

   I think. I pinged Twitter Grader a while back asking for exactly what they’re measuring and I think that’s what they said. Unfortunately I cannot find the email, and their forum logon is so torturous that I’ve just given up trying to find out what they say there.

   Whatever measure you take, this ties in with the issue I outlined in the explanatory notes regarding whether we’re measuring the blog, or the blogger. It probably should be the blogger – as in, how influential is this *person* – in which case, yes, we probably should include Twitter. We could also then look at HowSociable and socialmention which give aggregated figures across lots of platforms. But they’re unfortunately not terribly well specced for grabbing data.

   Plus, looking for bloggers is more difficult than looking for a blog because blog URLs are unique, whereas blogger names are not. Imagine a blog by someone called John Smith – it would not be easy to get an idea of how that person fared on cross-platform branding ‘scoring’ sites, whereas johnsmith.wordpress.com would be.

   This is where you probably need to get the big guns in, who employ their server farms and algorithms to track this stuff in a more methodical, scientific way. Again, as I say in the notes, this is intended as a very first step in that direction: identify who’s talking about your subject matter, then rank them in some way. Then, you need to start really looking at them and listening and learning, etc etc etc

   Oh, and Twitter’s already been done – see http://www.rainierpr.co.uk/blog/2008/11/top-50-uk-pr-people-by-twitter.html, and the entire PR Week Twitter ‘thing’.

   Reply
10. finalspin said, on March 23, 2009 at 2:06 pm

    Hey, thanks for listing my blog. It’s always nice as a newbie to have those little bits of recognition. Thanks for going through the trouble of including the new kids.
    I really like the Index, not as a precise measurement tool (we each have those), but to see what’s out there, what’s popular and what sticks. I am due to revise the Links section on Final Spin, the Index will be a big help.
    I need to go trough the list again and see how the other blogs whose author(s) is writing anonymously are faring. You don’t get the benefit of people dropping by just because they know you. Strumpette being the great counter-example, but not something I plan to imitate. It was fun once, for a while. No point in re-creating it.

    Reply
11. Kari said, on March 23, 2009 at 3:12 pm

    Brendan – thanks for updating your list (and including FirstPersonPR.com). I recently went through the painful process of moving my blog to its own hosting server, which wiped out all my links & authority — but your index continues to send traffic my way!

    Reply
12. Rebecca McMichael said, on March 23, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    Oooh in at 90 *blushes* thanks for including me in the list. I do love a good list.

    Reply
13. Brendan said, on March 23, 2009 at 5:10 pm

    Hi all,

    I need to bring your attention to the fact that I got the URL wrong for Tech PR Gems. They now have their own URL at http://techprgems.com, so I’ve updated the table to reflect this.

    Of course, in doing this, the spreadsheet went doo-lally. For some bizarre reason, Google Docs saw fit to lose most of the equations that govern position changes. I think I managed to sort it out but I had to lose the colour-coding for positions, so they’re all black rather than green for up and red for down.

    So Tech PR Gems haven’t plummeted quite as far as we first thought – just 23 positions rather than 60 as was the case with the old URL! Of course, this index means absolutely nothing – unless you’re not in it, or your address is incorrect…

    Reply
14. are you PR-friendly? « balancing act said, on March 23, 2009 at 9:20 pm

    [...] fact, according to Brendan Cooper, I am the 90th tallest midget in the UK PR circus (blatantly ripping off David Brain’s [...]

    Reply
15. Sally said, on March 24, 2009 at 12:42 am

    But doesn’t Twitter Grader give everyone somewhere between 99.7 and 100?

    Reply
16. Goodness Gracious, Great Blogs of Fire! » The Buzz Bin said, on March 24, 2009 at 2:30 pm

    [...] created by Brendan Cooper, is now available. The Index uses a compilation of social media resources to determine the top 100 PR blogs. Brendan says, “…what I’m trying to achieve here is an ongoing, developing investigation into [...]

    Reply
17. Jeremy Porter said, on March 26, 2009 at 6:58 pm

    Thanks for taking the time to put this list together. I was not aware of a couple on the list. This list is simply fantastic!

    Now I have to get our act together, so we can make the list next time!

    JP

    Reply
18. Back with the first post of the year « said, on March 29, 2009 at 2:56 pm

    [...] from Brendan’s PR index, this blog just keeps on falling. haa. I really applaud Brendan for  pulling together the index, [...]

    Reply
19. Richard Millington said, on April 21, 2009 at 5:59 pm

    “he’s now more into building communities. Not quite the same I guess”

    Here, here!

    Get that pretentious FeverBee imposter offa this list right now. He’s not one of us genuine PR folk. It’s high time we draw the line about what is and isn’t PR.

    I recommend we keep it as suggested. Keep PR, social media, marketing, tech and media blogs in. Online community and dancing blogs out.

    Reply
20. Brendan said, on April 22, 2009 at 11:34 am

    Hmmm, but if I keep PR, social media, marketing, tech and media blogs in, we’re pretty much at the Power 150, aren’t we? Which I was trying to avoid.

    Ho hum. P’raps the PR Friendly Index has run its course now. It was an interesting exercise but I think we’ve all moved on quite a bit since it started.

    Reply
21. Richard Millington said, on April 22, 2009 at 11:37 am

    I think that would be a shame.

    I suggest you remove my blog, along with any other which isn’t strictly public relations – as per your opinion.

    Reply
22. Brendan said, on April 22, 2009 at 11:40 am

    OK, looks like I need to spend time going through the list to make it strictly PR. Maybe I should rename it ‘Strictly PR’!

    Reply