The PR industry is obsessed with industry rankings, so it was only a matter of time before we started creating our own.
One of the more controversial ranking comes from Edelman’s European office, and is their take on ranking the influencers of the blogosphere. Dubbed the Social Media Index, it looks at 30 blogs, from media sites like TechCrunch and Search Engine Watch to PR/Marketing blogs like Logic+Emotion, to corporate-to-consumer blogs like direct2dell. The Index measures each blog’s “influence” based on their Facebook ranking, Twittering activity, and even the number of contacts on LinkedIn.
In the past week, this index has generated a lot of discussion and responses. My take on the index follows:
- First, I’m still not sure I understand what Edelman is measuring. It’s not clear if they even understand what they’re measuring, which leads to poor data. Just look at the collection of blogs they bunch together – it makes me wonder who TechCrunch and Dell’s consumer blog and a marketing executive are collectively influencing. The answer, of course, is they’re not. Their audience, and ultimately their purpose, varies. So how can a company claim to measure and compare their “influence” in a standardized way?
- The Index is naive in that it assumes quantity and exposure = quality; activity = value; and popularity = influence. For example, it gives credit to the number of contacts on LinkedIn – without confirming whether those are people who have met at a tradeshow, or if a real relationship exists. Look at it this way: can you imagine a company basing a salesperson’s commission on the number of business cards they collect each year vs. the number of deals they close and customers they retain?
- It forgoes any real research that measures influence, listing a site that focuses solely on tech startups as one of the most influential on the Web — yet it cites no evidence that public companies or consumers or any other stakeholders outside that universe have been “influenced” by it. It also neglects to define what influence is.
- I could see value in Edelman trying to standardize how its clients rank the influence of the bloggers relevant to them. But even then, giving weight to effort over results creates flawed rankings.
Another listing that has appeared copies Todd And’s Power 150 approach. The Friendly Ghost’s Power PR Index measures the popularity of the FG’s blogroll. It bases the rankings on a mixture of traffic, linking, etc. Because it only looks at PR blogs, it also applies an apples-to-apples comparison. The one challenge of the list (which I love, btw, and not just because I’m on it) is that it only looks at the PR blogs that the Friendly Ghost reads. But, it’s still a great start.
And finally, we come to possibly the most in-depth ranking list, as well as the most thought out. Check out the Onalytica Blog, which has two great posts about measuring the influence of PR blogs. I’m not sure if this was a response to Edelman’s list or just a very timely post. It takes a look at the science behind measuring influence, recognizing that influence varies by audience, and attempts to measure the influence of PR blogs.
If you haven’t read the posts describing the process and thinking of quantifying influence, you really, really should. Clearly, a lot of thinking went into this list, and it sounds like even more work is planned. Depending on how it develops, it could become a model for actually measuring the influence of other topical blogs. At some point, I’d love to see this list merge with the Power PR Index, to compare popularity and influence side by side.
