I am excited to see that my colleagues at Edelman have been busy taking advantage of our partnership with Technorati.
Steve and Stephen both reveal significant research looking at the top blogs in France, Germany, Italy and the UK. I am proud to work at a company that recognizes the global nature of social media and is working to better understand the impact of consumer participation in the communications environment.
However, as is the case with the majority of research in this field, for every question they attempt to answer, they raise several more.
So........with that in mind, here are my thoughts on the Edelman/Technorati data:
- I take issue with the use of the term "Most Influential Blogs" to describe these sites. I think it is specious to equate popularity (in this case, links) with influence. What are these blogs influencing? Who are they influencing?
My worry is that if we begin to associate links and traffic with influence, we as an industry are going to begin to treat the blogosphere like we do MSM - with an emphasis on hits and ad equivalence. The goal will become getting mentions on A-list blogs for clients, not cultivating valuable conversations.
I know that this is not how Steve and the rest of the me2 team at Edelman think. As Steve noted today in responding to criticism, "We believe that every niche has its own Long Tail and our teams work
with them accordingly, not just the folks with the most links."
However, I urge them to understand their role as thought leaders in the field and pay close attention to the way they position this data. Clients, and those unfamiliar with social media and the power of the long tail, may misinterpret the purpose of this information
- Technorati, though potentially the best game in town, is not yet reliable
As even David Sifry notes, splogs (blog spam) continue to cause problems for blog search and ranking offerings like Technorati. Use Google Blog Search or Icerocket and you are likely to get different results. Which blog is truly influential? I don't think we know enough to say yet. All that being said, I feel that Technorati has made great strides to improve their accuracy over the past couple years (and yes, this is completely biased). In addition they seem to be leading the way in terms of foreign language search capabilities (at least in terms of global offerings).
- The data ignores passive users, thus misses an examination of audience
As we intuitively know, most people participate in social media simply by reading blogs, not by posting, commenting or linking. As Jakob Nielsen points out this provides a "biased understanding of the community." By giving value to link numbers, we are tacitly giving value to individuals who post frequently or build a fervent group of participators.
Conclusion
All of this speaks to the larger issue of the credibility and influence of blogs. Last week, PR Week hosted a teleconference featuring Mr. Rubel and Andy Lark.
At one point they were asked, how do you determine the credibility of a blog?
Steve responded (I'm paraphrasing here)- Do your research, check Technorati, read the blog, look at who links to them.
This is a perfectly reasonable approach, and likely the best tactic currently available.
Andy responded - There is no good way to do this right now.
His point is that the influence of blogs will differ drastically depending on the situation. Measuring this influence requires communicators to research and map out communities and how they consume information. Andy mentioned the increasing role of user reviews on CNET and Amazon as influencers in purchasing decisions.
If PR is going to go after the big budgets thrown at advertising and marketing agencies, and make the claim that we can influence the bottom-line, than we are going to have undertake research that shows we can influence consumers and drive action. That begins not just with understanding the shifting communications landscape, but what how consumers interact with this new paradigm
On a related note, David Brain, President and CEO of Edelman Europe, presents data on a study that does link blog participation to individual action.
I'd like to end with this thought - these are tough issues, issues that a lot of smart people are struggling with, and very few definitive answers are emerging. I am glad my colleagues are grappling with these questions. I am glad they are making this information public with the knowledge that the data is not perfect and there is more work to be done. This is how we move forward as an industry. This is how we become smarter as a community.
Update: Richard Edelman writes a great post that addresses several of my concerns about equating popularity with influence (though he still uses the word influence to describe the top blogs).
"There are significant limitations to the studies. Most important of
all, let's recognize that in selecting the top 100 blogs in each
market, we might be giving the false impression that the blogosphere is
to be categorized in the same way as the world of mainstream media,
where ratings are the Holy Grail. For the record, Edelman does not
recommend that companies simply identify and establish relationships
with the "A-List" bloggers. We are not transposing to the blogosphere
the traditional model of PR which calls for influencing the media
elite, whose interpretation will then cascade to the mass media. We are
not reliant on the economics of mass communications that relies on Cost
Per Thousand (CPM) as a means of guaranteeing a cost effective outreach
to a mass audience. Instead we posit that there is a new force at work,
quantum influence, where information moving laterally gains momentum
from thousands of individuals, each adding small bits of knowledge,
whose aggregate power exceeds that of any institution and whose
knowledge is greater than any expert."
Technorati Tags: Rubel, blogs, data, technorati
