My “Who’s Who” list of Influential PR Bloggers

The social web platform makes it easy to connect with PR experts and keep relevant in my chosen field. There are many bloggers in the social web who blog about PR and social web topics. Narrowing the list down to 10 was easy, from a technical point of view, using an RSS reader to easily subscribe to the blogs I am interested in following. But how do you decide who to follow from the myriad of bloggers out there? I’m discovering that there are a number of elements that worked together to get me to notice the blogs I list below in the first place, and determine that the blog was relevant enough to make my list. Generally I believe the list I constructed would be beneficial to a noobie, providing information and perspective to topics related to the industry, with particular focus on blogs that provide a forum for news and discussion about the social web platform.

My list begins with subscribing to someone I know outside of the social web who I already know will be influential to me – our teacher, Boyd Neil: http://www.boydneil.com/.

Choosing my next subscription was less obvious given I had no lead, but I landed on a blog written by someone I have never heard of before, named Brian Solis, http://www.briansolis.com/2011/08/the-end-of-social-media-1-0/#disqus_thread. I found Solis through a simple Google search that turned up a blogger recommendation under the search result Top 10 PR Blogs. Being recommended by another blogger offered third-party endorsement that made me willing to click through and see Solis’ blog for myself. It didn’t disappoint. In my view, Solis sets up his blog as an authority in the PR community, through the provision of timely, relevant articles that I found inspiring and informative. And I wasen’t alone in deciding that Solis’ blog was worth following  – the blog already has many followers. With an RSS icon made available on his site (plus every other social medium tied to his blog) following him was made simple. I joined the bandwagon.

I added http://edlee.ca as my third subscription basically because he was also recommended similar to Solis, but I really liked the local element to this blog given the author is living and working in Toronto in the field of PR. He seems to be “someone like me.”

The rest of the list was selected for similar reasons explained above. Here’s my official top 10 list to date:

1.       http://www.boydneil.com/

2.       http://www.briansolis.com/2011/08/the-end-of-social-media-1-0/#disqus_thread

3.       http://edlee.ca

4.       http://www.copyblogger.com/write-article-fast/ (offers handy articles with useful tips and tricks on writing effectively for the social web and creating effective blogs)

5.       http://davejones.ca/ (I’ve heard him speak and his name was mentioned in a magazine article as an authority in social web use)

6.       http://indefenseofpr.com/ (perspective on PR offered seemed funny and interesting to read)

7.       http://www.proactivereport.com/ (the author calls herself a social media strategist – found her title intriguing)

8.       http://www.spinsucks.com/ (liked the colloquial title and the perspective on PR it promises)

9.       http://comprehension.prsa.org/ (if they are not experts on PR than who is?)

10.    http://badpitch.blogspot.com/ (a blog focused on bad pitches takes a fear of PR practitioners and offers it to the world to laugh and learn from. Sign me up!)