Top 10 PR and social media blog posts of 2010

These are the top 10 public relations (PR) and social media blog posts of 2010 on this blog:

1. Android vs. iPhone vs. BlackBerry – the users infographic – This one shouldn’t really be in the list as it’s not strictly about PR or social media, but I’ve left it on as it’s a good example of how really good infographics, the right title and some basic SEO can ‘go viral’. A lot of people shared this content, but important lots of visitors via search.
2. Future of public relations and social media – the truth according to Mashable – One of my old lecturers taught me that ‘you don’t pick a fight with somebody who buys ink by the barrel’. Today his advice might be somebody who buys bandwidth by the gigabyte. But sometimes it does get you attention, and this post got lots of attention. Luckily, most of them agreeing with me and saying that Mashable had got its analysis of public relations and social media wrong.
3. Forrester Research’s new Social Technographics ladder – This post is evidence that old mainstream media are still very important. Most of the traffic came from a single link on The Guardian website. It also shows why it’s important to blog quickly as The Guardian linked to me because I was the first to pull some UK and European specific data out of the new Forrester Research social technographics research.
4. New Media Age leader still doesn’t really get PR and social media – Yet more evidence that picking a fight – but only if you’re right 🙂 works. The New Media Age leader was a typical digital industry perspective of the PR agency world i.e. Don’t have a clue and think its all about media relations.
5. An inconvenient PR truth: experience and training are what counts – I think this one took off because it’s still such a hot and controversial topic in the PR agency sector.
6. Labour manifesto launch – Once again not strictly PR or social media related, but included because it’s a good example of best practice. To launch its general election manifesto the Labour Party gave an embargoed preview to selected supportive bloggers. That way we were ready to post as soon as the official launch to the mainstream media started next day. Because my post was one of the first up I was quickly linked to by the BBC live election blog, which caused a massive spike in my page views. And yet more evidence of the continued importance of mainstream media.
7. Social media newsroom X Factor at Communicate corporate communications conference – This post gets a lot of traffic from search and is a good example of why business blogging works. At Wolfstar Consultancy we’ve been responsible for a lot of social media newsrooms for clients as varied as First Direct, Philips and Sony Ericsson. This post led to new business opportunities which mean we’ll be doing even more next year. Sometimes we just provide consultancy and in other cases we’re responsible for the entire design and build of the social media newsroom.
8. Social media marketing guidelines from WOMMA – A post that gets traffic because it’s a subject that people need to know more about. As my post last week said, I’m still amazed by the number of so called PR and social media agency experts who don’t have a clue what the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations are.
9. Wolfstar has won the UK’s Best Use of Social Media campaign award – It’s always uncomfortable writing a post that ‘blows your own trumpet’, but hey if people are interested in reading about the UK’s best social media campaign then who am I to complain?
10. Social media measurement in PRWeek – Another post where I seem to pick a fight. But really social media agencies that pretend to clients that they can measure social media ROI p**s me off. They are either lying or too stupid too know that they are wrong. And don’t get me started on the idiotic PR agencies that use AVEs. Advertising Value Equivalents didn’t work 20+ years ago when I came into public relations so why the hell anyone would use them today is beyond me.

The top ten takes into account a number of ‘metrics’ including unique page views, comments and PostRank (for tweets, bookmarking etc).