OPEN

…Long post warning!

I attended the Edelman / Technorati conference yesterday morning in London, which was very well organised and attended by some really interesting people both on the panel and in the audience.

Jackie Danicki gives a good account of the session on her her blog and there’s some discussion of it on her blog, and Hugh Macleod has some notes on Gapingvoid (pic of Jackie and Hugh shamelessly ripped from her blog, but I took it for her, so hopefully she’ll forgive me). One of the organisers, Stephen Davies, newly of the Edelman parish gives good blog over at PR Blogger too.

I’ve noted some observations and highlights below.

First though, mid-way through a ranging discussion of blogs and PR and influence Kevin Anderson, blogs editor at the Guardian, made two killer points:

1. Blogs are only part of the way that media is changing – the wider developments in social / networked media need to be borne in mind.
2. People try to understand these new forms of media from an old media standpoint – and it doesn’t quite work.

The second point is one that I constantly challenge myself (and colleagues and clients, for that matter) on. Are you thinking about things in terms of channel-based mass media, with all the implications of content scarcity, one-way communication, mass audiences, blockbusters and “average people”?

Well you need to throw all of that away and build your understanding and world view up again piece by piece. We are moving to an age of networked communication and media and things work very differently now.

Think about things from this point of view and the concept of lists of top  bloggers become less useful. Focusing on individuals becomes less useful, you need to understand networks, how they work, what yours and your audiences look like and how you should behave in those networks to win attention.

Notes:

Richard Edelman was clear – and you believe him – that blogging is a “core element” of what Edelman is doing and has rapidly moved from being an interest for him to a “strategic” part of where the company is going.

(Hugh Macleod said that in effect this was massive gamble on blogs being the future of comms, which would pay off (maybe) in five years time.) 

Edelman released stats on blog use in Europe – I’m not able to bring you the slides at the moment but I expect Edelman will release all the data soon.

Results of an omnibus survey were shown saying a quarter of people in the UK, US and France read blogs once a week.

Lists of the top 100 “most influential” bloggers were listed for the US,  France, Germany and Italy.A “unique Technorati authority algorithm” was used to do this – something I’d be keen to find out more about.

The UK has a list which was more subjectively based on Technorati rankings, which while a good guide may indicate popularity rather than influence an important distinction, as Fleming Madsen of Onalytica would no doubt point out.

Some observations were made about apparent cultural differences between the countries studied based on their top 100 blogs, which were very interesting:

• US blogs dominate the global top blogs list.
• The highest positions in the global chart for a blog from each country were 28th (Italy), 139th (UK), 164th (Germany), 518th (French).
• Suw Charman made some very good points about the UK top 10 blogs: in the US most top 10 bloggers will actually know one another, they are a preexisting network, a clique, whereas in the UK the top blogs are effectively in different networks.
• In France technology and personal blogs dominate the top 100.
• In Germany top blogs are about (in order of prominence) technology, personal and the media.
• Italian top blogs are much more likely to be about politics.
• US top blogs look more like traditional media brands in their own right, many are household names: this could be a signal of a mature or more mature blogging culture.
• Reinforcing Suw’s point the top 10  US blogs link to one another a lot, whereas French and German blogs are more likely to link to mainstream media.

Peter Hershberg of Technorati described a movement in the general blogosphere about 8 months ago as he saw the relative number of links to top bloggers decline and move away to other blogs and media. At first he said this was slightly disconcerting, but then they realised it was a sign of maturity:

• Less self-referential linking in a small group.
• Linking spreads out which has the effect of making mainstream media look more prominent.

(This analysis certainly chimes with my understanding of how growing networks behave, as described in ‘s Albert-Laszlo Barabasi‘s excellent book Linked, which I’m reading at the moment.)

Edelman’s European President and CEO, David Brain took us through some research which showed a massive rise in the number of mentions of blogs in mainstream media. Here’s his slides:

There was a good discussion kicked off with a panel including:

• Kevin Anderson, Head of Blogging, Guardian Unlimited
• Iain Dale, political commentator and blogger
• Nick Reynolds, Senior Advisor Editorial Policy, BBC

Nick Reynolds described blogging as another way for people to win entry into the “club” of opinion formers, citing a story of his boss meeting Guido Fawkes at a conference. “Guido is now in the club [of opinion formers]. Doesn’t mean that political blogging has had an impact outside of that circle…”

NR: “this is not like dealing with the press… it is a personal medium…. [It] is a real challenge for the BBC  and other organisations….”

Kevin Anderson stressed the new-ness and potential of blogs and social media:  “It’s not just a way to get a message out to your customers.” He gave an example of listening as being when the Guardian got some flack from listeners to its Media podcast: “Someone slagged it off. But it was a very useful slagging off…. We made improvements and got 80 mails thanking us for taking the comments on board.”

Kevin also questioned the usefulness of top 100 lists (see my next post for more on this), stressing that the strength of the medium is in its ability to represent and serve niches: “I read new media blogs. They are incredibly important to me but you’ve probably never heard of them. We make the mistake of bringing a mass media mentality to understanding blogs.”

Iain Dale described the delicious irony of being a high profile political blogger: “The change is that every conversation I have with a journalist now is prefaced with: ‘ Is this off the record?’”

Good work Edelman and Technorati for stirring up debate, adding new data and insights to the discussion and bringing together so many interesting people to discuss the subject.

: : Lastly, it was a particular pleasure to finally properly meet Neville Hobson, PR blogger and podcaster extraordinaire. Listening the For Immediate Release podcast which he co-hosts with Shel Holtz at the beginning of last year was a major source of information and inspiration for me.