Five favourite PR blogs
By Craig on Nov 5, 2009 in Blog guests & critiques, interviews, Digital communication, Marketing, Public relations, Social media, Strategic communication | View Comments
I want to learn something of interest and/or value from any blog, but particularly from those of a public relations or marketing bent, which are the fields I work in. But there are a plethora of these sorts of blogs out in the wilds of the web, so I thought I’d pick out five of my current favourites and explain why I find value in them.
To interest me, a blog is going to have to tell me something I didn’t know, provide a fresh perspective on a topic or notion and/or explain an idea I am familiar with in a lively, engaging manner.
When it comes to value, I want to be able to apply what I am learning in a professional context. I don’t need to be able to run out and do it right now. And it doesn’t mean it needs to be a tangible tactical approach. It could be a particular perspective that, over the longer term, will influence the way I practice public relations and marketing and/or the counsel I provide to clients, colleagues and employers.
Other aspects I look for in blogs that help determine whether or not I will value them include:
- how well they are written, including whether they are written in an online-friendly manner
- how frequently they are updated – the rule of thumb I apply to my own blog is that it needs to feature an update of utility at least once a week (more is better but, hey, most of us have other jobs here!!)
- whether they are challenging the status quo. Maintaining the party line is pointless for me. I want to be surprised and be prompted to rethink my own opinions and approaches.
Bearing all that in mind, I recommend you make a habit of checking out the following.
Sean Williams, a professional communicator and budding academic, runs this show. We’ve had a number of conversations about two-way symmetrical communication and its place in the ‘real world’ and I always find them of value.
Sean is a generous and highly intelligent writer. He likes his theory – the breakfast of champions – but he is always cognisant of its place in business. An example of this is his use of case studies and discussions on social media, obviously the hot spot of contemporary public relations practice.
Karalee Evans is a hip and humourous (have I said that I like bloggers who don’t take themselves uber-seriously?) PR blogger who provides plenty of amusing anecdotes and goes to a LOT of trouble with her posts. She might be the most sophisticated PR blogger from a multi-media perspective that I have come across.
I have great fears for her social media addiction – do you live on Twitter, Karalee?? – but this is doubtless one reason why she is one of the more insightful commentators on the social media-public relations nexus. She is no strategic ingénue, either.
Marketing Is Us is a consultancy so I’m not sure who does all the posts, but they are generally interesting and useful. Perhaps some incredibly sophisticated marketers might turn their nose up at the blog, but for me it works.
And yes, I know this is a marketing and not a public relations-specific blog. But my attitude is that marketing and public relations, firstly, utilise the same tools at times and, secondly, are inter-related and can learn a great deal from each other.
Marketing, social media, all things digital and advertising – from a strategic, tactical and social (as in, society) perspective – are discussed. The layout of the blog is nice and clean and their use of various forms of media to enliven their posts is good.
Matt Granfield – social media marketer extraordinaire – is the main man here. The quality of his writing and insights is impossible to ignore.
He has contributed some excellent posts to Marketing magazine (such as this one on finding social media influencers) which he has somewhere on his own site. I counsel paying attention to what he has to say. His spiels are just as relevant to experienced or ‘baby-steps’ marketers and social media ‘activists’ (by which I mean those who use the mechanism(s) professionally).
Too marketing oriented for you? Do both PR and marketing folk utilise social media? Care to learn something from an expert? Let me introduce you to…Matt Granfield.
Karen Russell, who runs this blog, is an associate professor (PR and media history) at the University of Georgia. There are three main reasons why I recommend this blog:
- It highlights Karen’s favourite PR-relevant blogs on an ongoing basis (often of interest, so it acts as a sort of short cut to quality)
- It takes a good hard look at social media and its relevance to the practice of public relations
- There are intelligently written, wide ranging conversations on a number of relevant PR issues, undertaken in both an academic, theoretical sense and a practical, ‘real world’ sense.
The bonus site! – Thoughtleadership strategy
Okay, so it’s six favourite PR blogs. This is Craig Badings’ blog. Craig is an ex-colleague from Ogilvy who is a senior corporate and financial comms strategist with Cannings. His blog is pretty new but its up among my top picks already because of the incisiveness and utility of its content.
Craig is big on thought leadership and has just published a book on the topic. He has a passion for thought leadership and its relevance to brand communication and businesses’ bottom lines. He tells me the blog is an ongoing commitment and I think we should all hope that proves to be the case. A must read for all ‘levels’ (including students) of those in the public relations and marketing industries.
Others
To finish, whilst I think the following blogs are great, they don’t always meet the criteria for favourite PR blogs I have noted above, but are still very much worth checking out:
I’d be interested to hear how you rate these blogs and/or what you would like to read/see on public relations-relevant blogs. Also, are there other PR blogs that you rate highly?
