I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has read my posts, commented, linked to me or subscribed to my RSS feed in the past couple of years. I really appreciate it and hope that you have found my ramblings and tweets of interest.

And now for a shameless plea… If I am lucky enough to have a place on your blog roll I’d be extremely grateful if you could take two minutes to update it with my new web address.

For the past few months we have used Twitterfeed to herald new blog posts by Speed staff using the @speedcomms Twitter feed, but recently we have experienced problems with Twitterfeed’s service going down quite regularly. So we are now experimenting with Google’s service.

The ‘socialize’ feature uses Google’s new URL shortening service named goo.gl to push blog posts out on Twitter almost instantly. If also offers a couple of interesting options that are above and beyond what Twitterfeed currently offers. It allows users to turn the keywords that they have tagged their blog post with into hashtags, which can help more people to discover your tweets and blog posts by using Twitter Search. The service can also reduce the size of your tweet, making it small enough for other users to retweet and share with their followers.

But there do seem to be a few teething problems at the moment. As not all blog posts are tagged with keywords, some blogging platforms such as WordPress tag them with ‘uncategorized’. Currently Google classes this as a proper keyword and has been tagging tweets with the #uncategorized hashtag.

Will scores of users now migrate from Twitterfeed to Google? Only time will tell, but I suspect that many users will give the new service a try the next time that Twitterfeed goes down.

(Cross posted on the Speed Tech Blog)

The Blog Council was setup in 2007 to give senior executives in charge of social media at the largest corporations in the world, a platform to share ideas and to learn best practices. The Council now has more than 40 members, including the Coca-Cola Company, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft.

I caught up with Bob to find out why he thinks blogs can benefit businesses.

How long have you been blogging?
I have been communicating online for many years, but I really started blogging during the last 3 years. I blogged a lot internally for Dell’s One Dell Way and Marketing Blog to reach Dell’s 80,000 employees and I did a series called ‘TechKnowledge’ on Direct2Dell where I interviewed leading experts about the future of technology. You can expect me to blog on a regular basis related to social media trends on the Blog Council’s blog.

Why did you start blogging?
It’ important to listen and learn with your customers, which is a two-way street. Blogging allows any of us to share a point of view and then listen to the comments. I have to admit I read every comment every time for my posts. You learn a lot from what people enjoy and, quite frankly, just as much when your post is greeted with silence.

How can businesses benefit from writing a blog?
This is a long list, but here’s a few key points.

• Customers are co-creating messages of brands everyday. If you aren’t communicating online, you aren’t really shaping your brand effectively.
• There are hundreds or thousands of conversations occurring everyday about a brand. At Dell, we could see 5-10,000 conversations per day. If you know what customers are interested in, your blogging can become a relevant part of the conversation.
• Blogging is really symbolic, in my view, of telling your story, which is also done well with video, photos, twitter, facebook and many other ways to round out how you share content.
• Overall, it’s really a company’s approach to joining in the conversation that matters the most. Customers can see who really cares and, most importantly, who is trying.

What concerns do businesses have about blogs – and why?
I would flip that around. What concerns should businesses have about how their brands are being shaped without their knowing it? What issues do they not know about due to a lack of strong blog monitoring? How well is a company preparing for a future where 500,000 new people go online everyday for the first time in their lives? Social media is a new discipline that is transforming how we speak with customers, how we conduct e-commerce and how we unlock the knowledge of our employees. The leaders are realising their social media strategy may start with a blog, but this is only a first step.

Should every business blog?
Yes. Every business has conversations with its customers via the phone and in person. Why not via a blog? In a few years, this question will sound like “should every business have a website?” Of course so. Same with a blog.

Which blogs do you particularly admire?
I enjoy reading Jeremiah Owyang’s Web-strategist. If I want to listen to a podcast, I think Neville Hobson and Shel Israel do great work. If I want to see what the world is saying, I look at my customised Netvibes screen or my new Tweetdeck summary.

How do you think Twitter has affected the blogosphere?
Twitter is making people think, which I love. Twitter is showing us that people are willing to follow accounts where they can get information they want at their convenience. Unlike email, which shows up in your inbox whether you like it or not, you have a choice on Twitter to visit or not visit a site. Someday, people will receive the content they want wherever they want it, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn, MySpace and they will receive it all at the same time. It will redefine how we distribute content. For example, if I want an update from Starbucks, I might want to only receive it in Twitter and if that can be done, I’m in. If I’m looking for a new bike, maybe I only want updates that contain reviews and new videos delivered to my Facebook account for a certain period of time. So, give Twitter a lot of credit for opening up new ways to reach people effectively. Its power goes well beyond the fact that it is a microblogging tool.

Follow Bob on Twitter: @bobpearson1845

(Please note that this interview was previously posted on the Speed Communications blog)

Here are my top 10 blog posts of 2008 ranked by number of hits. Although it’s really only since June as that’s when I started using Google Analytics. I’m impressed that my post about PR Bloggers on Twitter is so high up considering I only wrote it two weeks ago.

1. World’s top PR blogs 28 comments 1,400 hits
2. Top 75 PR blogs: September 2008 10 comments 527 hits
3. Top 50 PR blogs: August 2008 10 comments 458 hits
4. How long should a blog post be? 1 comment 410 hits
5. Top 75 PR blogs: October 2008 16 comments 399 hits
6. Technorati releases blog report 1 comment 294 hits
7. PR bloggers on Twitter 6 comments 229 hits
8. Does size matter for PR graduates? 1 comment 153 hits
9. Has Liverpool One put the city on the map? 5 comments 131 hits
10. Where are all the women? 10 comments 103 hits

Blogs
Reading other blogs can be a great source of inspiration and has inspired a great many of my posts. Plus occasionally I get tagged in MeMe’s! Example.

Twitter
Links that have been shared by people I follow on Twitter have inspired a few of my blog posts and have even helped me at work. Example.

Newspapers / Magazines
Articles that attract my attention sometimes inspire my blog posts. They don’t even happen to be about social media or PR, often it’s just a case of commenting on an article from a PR point of view. Example.

Out of nowhere
I find that many of my best ideas come to me when I least expect them. A lot of my ideas have come to me when I’ve been lying in bed, trying to get to sleep and have had to get up to scrawl them down on a piece of paper. Example.

PR people
At least one of my posts has been inspired through creative blogger outreach. Example.

I tag Chris Norton, Richard Millington and Stephen Davies.

Stay tuned to see who he will interview next!

I’m not sure I agree. Certainly paid for blogs produced by professional bloggers or PROs has had an impact on the blogosphere, but I don’t believe that it’s killed off the blogosphere as professional and amateur bloggers blog for different reasons.

Professional bloggers blog to share news or their opinions about issues affecting the industry they work in, as well as to network, whereas amateur bloggers blog to share their thoughts and ideas, and to keep in contact with friends and family. As long as the barriers to entry stay low, amateur and professional bloggers can co-exist.

Further proof that the blogosphere is far from dead comes in the form of Technorati’s recent ‘Blogosphere 2008′ report, which reveals that 79 per cent of bloggers write personal blogs. This hardly makes amateur bloggers sound like a dying breed.

Instead of pointing the finger at PROs or professional bloggers I would suggest that social networking sites, such as Facebook, have had the biggest impact on the blogosphere. Since many amateur bloggers blog to share news and photographs with friends and family it is no surprise that some have swapped blogs for social networking sites.

I’ve picked out a few interesting facts.

• 133 million blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002
• 76,000 blogs have a Technorati rating of 50 or higher
• 41 per cent of bloggers use Twitter
• Technology is the 2nd most popular topic for bloggers
• Corporate blogs make up 12 per cent of all blogs
• Professional blogs make up 46 per cent of all blogs
• 50 per cent of bloggers are aged between 18 and 34
• 44 per cent of bloggers are parents
• 42 per cent of bloggers spend 3-10 hours blogging per week
• Only 15 per cent of bloggers spend less than an hour blogging per week
• ‘Blog’ is the 5th most popular tag
• ‘Technology’ is the 11th most popular tag
• 83 per cent of blogs are listed on Technorati
• Just 4 per cent of bloggers pay to advertise their blog
• 46 per cent of blogs don’t feature any advertising
• Bloggers spend twice as much time online as U.S. adults 18-49,
• 82 per cent of bloggers post brand and product reviews
• 89 per cent of bloggers post about brands that they love or hate
• 37% of bloggers have been quoted in traditional media based on a blog post
• Half of bloggers believe that blogs will be a primary source for news and entertainment in the next five years
• 1 in 5 five bloggers don’t think that newspapers will survive the next ten years

From editing client websites to writing blog posts and formatting html newsletters, web design is now a part of PR. Rather than having a digital team to deal with the online stuff, all PRO’s should have a good understanding of web design. PRO’s clearly don’t need to be equipped with the same level of skills as web designers but I think a basic knowledge of web design languages like CSS and HTML would certainly be a good idea.

Another thing I noticed when I updated this site was how quickly it had got out of date. Richard Millington reckons bloggers should update blogrolls weekly and site designs monthly. I agree, udating your blogroll and having a tinker with your site’s design is a great way to keep your blog looking fresh. It’s only been two or three months since I last updated my blog, but in that time Jed Hallam started working at Wolfstar PR, Stephen Davies started 3WPR, and I contributed to an eBook about Digital PR. All of which made parts of my blog and website out of date.

Last year Stuart Brown performed research into the ideal blog post length. He measured the 10 most recent blog posts for each of the Technorati Top 100. Stuart revealed that half of the blogs had an average post length of 100 to 249 words, and the majority of blog posts were between 100 and 500 words long.

This got me thinking – What is the perfect length for a PR blog post?

Unlike Stuart, I don’t have the patience to sit down and measure the word lengths of nearly 1000 blog posts. So instead, I took my most recent list of PR blogs and looked at the five most recent posts published by the top 10 blogs.

These are the average word lengths for the top 10 blogs:

1. PR2.0: 1791 words
2. PR Squared: 405 words
3. A Shel Of My Former Self: 372 words
4. POP! PR Jots: 1042 words
5. Pro PR: 172 words
6. PR Blogger: 229 words
7. Strategic Public Relations: 153 words
8. Young PR: 417 words
9. PRNewser: 186 words
10. A PR Guy’s Musings: 210 words

The posts ranged from a short and snappy 27 words to a whopping 4500 words. Overall the average length was 498 words, which doesn’t include content inside videos, slideshows and podcasts used in the posts.

I consider 498 words a good guideline for a blog post length, but ultimately I don’t think the post length really matters. Writing nothing but 498 word long posts won’t get you noticed or attract new readers. It’s the quality of writing, interestingness of content and frequency of updates that make a good blog great.

And yes, I realise that this post isn’t quite 498 words long.