How I Used to Get My Daily PR Blogging Fix
Aside from subscribing to every public relations blog in the world, there has to be a better way of monitoring what the hot topics are.
When I first started reading blogs, I tried subscribing to Blogdigger, which sent me a list of posts that were tagged “PR” that day. It was helpful, but I got tired of wading through the unfiltered results, especially the page rank posts by search engine optimization bloggers.
Then there was the PubSub PR list, which showed the relative popularity of PR blogs on a given day. To read the actual stories, you had to click through, so it was only really worthwhile as a way to uncover blogs you hadn’t read lately (if ever).
Then there was CrispyNews’ NewPR, which was the closest thing to an actual community of people sharing their favorite posts. It eventually ran out of steam, dragged down by spammers trying to game the system to generate traffic to their sites.
Public relations is one of those esoteric subject areas that is big enough to attract over 700 bloggers, but not big enough to become the subject of a tool like TechMeme.
Subscribing to Google Alerts and Technorati search is a good way to see what’s being written, but it’s hard to gauge the extent to which a post is worth reading, other than to click through.
I guess Spin Thicket is the closest thing to a site that actively tracks posts that are worth my attention. Some really good stuff shows up there, but I would never count on it to catch breaking news. It’s more of a Ripley’s Believe It or Not for politics, PR, media and marketing. Bloggers or their fans submit links and blurbs, enticing you to click through to read more. Lots of topics never show up. Lots of weird and wonderful posts show up across the spectrum.
Right now, it’s hit and miss. Instead of plowing through my Google Reader subscriptions, I’m more likely to watch mini-posts by my Twitter contacts, watching for them to mention what’s on their minds, and link to a post.
If StumbleUpon was a reliable source for finding PR-related posts, I’d love it. But the tagging doesn’t seem inclined to narrow “business” or “marketing” down to PR, so I use it to make more general searches for the topical and sublime.
Looking at what’s available, there’s no question the field is open for a new service that looks at PR the way Techmeme looks at technology. We’ll see.
Today I check out a new site that ranks new public relations blog posts by their impact.
Tags: blogging, blogs, public relations, communications, business, techmeme
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POSTED IN: Blogroll, Learning Resources, PR, Social Media, Sources
5 opinions for How I Used to Get My Daily PR Blogging Fix
Yet another PR Blog Portal - MindValley’s PR Voices
Oct 4, 2007 at 3:02 am
[…] See my post about earlier variations on the blog portal theme. […]
Scott Baradell
Oct 4, 2007 at 7:25 am
You’re a good man, Eric. As you know, it’s all about people being willing to submit the links they find interesting; if I could instantly triple the number of people actively participating, it would build so quickly from there and I think might even be more than an oddball resource. But I guess that’s the “network effects” Catch 22 for all social networks — the smaller the network, the smaller the effects. I’m going to keep plugging away, though, in hopes that we can reach the critical mass we need.
Eric Eggertson
Oct 4, 2007 at 7:42 am
Scott: If posting to Spin Thicket was one click easier, I’d do it more regularly. I use a bookmarklet to Submit, but then I have to login, and it loses the link, so I have to copy and paste that. That’s the one step that makes me hesitate before sending something in.
Maybe there’s an easy fix for me, but I don’t know what it is.
Scott Baradell
Oct 4, 2007 at 10:00 am
Let me look into it….thanks, Eric.
Greg Gershman
Oct 8, 2007 at 7:21 am
Eric,
Thanks for checking out Blogdigger; I realize it was probably a while back that you were using our service, but I wanted to offer a few thoughts on how to use our query syntax to improve your results.
A Blogdigger search for “PR” returns all posts that mention “PR”; to get posts tagged with PR, try the following search:
http://www.blogdigger.com/search/subject:PR
Using the subject: prefix (and enclosing terms in quotes) limits your search to just posts tagged with the tag PR, and might help to filter out some of the noise you get from SEO blogs.
Another trick is to add in other relevant terms along with PR that would typically be found in public relations blogs, but not in SEO blogs. As an example, try a search for (PR AND marketing) or something like that.
I’d also like to point you to Blogdigger’s Headlines from PR Weblogs group, which aggregates posts from many of the PR bloggers, provides a feed for subscription, as well as the ability to search the archive of posts up to one year in the past. The link is: http://groups.blogdigger.com/groups.jsp?id=85
The list is maintained by Constantine Basturea.
Hope this helps, if I can be of further assistance, please let me know. Thanks for using Blogdigger!
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