The top blogger assignment

BOSS - “CAN WE PLEASE GET HOLD OF A TOP BLOGGERS’ LIST ?”
ME - “Yes of course”

This task has sat unbudgingly in my to do list for over three weeks (OK one of them was half term). I don't usually prevaricate. But this one is elusive, and it's interesting why.

So, why do we want this list? To inject our excellent content into blogs with ready-made followings, so we don’t have to go through the sweat of building up our own readerships. A cheeky but effective barter trade. But I'm discovering, that it's by no means clear what one would be listing in a list of top bloggers.

Lists of top blogs ? There are a few of these around– usually the rankings are idiosyncratic and reflect the outlook of the compilers and the day they did it. But some have consistent methodology eg Technorati top 100 blogs list which measures daily blog “authority rank” based on a technorati basket of indices; and other rankings which mash other data sources eg quantcast, Alexa etc. Example EBiz, blogstorm

Or, we can look at points of influence and power (people, companies) who are also bloggers Eg Fortune 500 companies with a blog output . Presidents, PMs, CEOs etc also do this or have it done for them. Unfortunately, it doesn't make them influential bloggers.

We can look at media brands which also publish blog output eg Financial Times/blogs, Economist/blogs, Bloomberg blogs etc – pick the influential ones - or at least those we think most approachable and best fitting our brand. Arguably, for our business, some very focussed media brands might work better eg Director of Finance Online with committed blog output see http://dofonline.co.uk/blogs/the-edge/business/cadbury-law-5582144/. Anoraky, but the DOFOs clearly love it.

Another option is to look at major blogging platforms blogspot, wordpress etc which rank top-read blogs in their platforms for example at http://botd.wordpress.com/; or we could select their top bloggers by the tags we are interested in eg Economy http://en.wordpress.com/tag/economy/

What’s not about to turn up is an authoritative compilation of independent bloggers who write from personal and authentic perspectives. Those guys are influential not by size but by quality (of content, of audience) – and those factors don’t register on indices of bigness.

So it looks like we will be compiling our own blogger hall of fame – aggregating all the company employees’ blogrolls and blog subscriptions – it might actually be a good place to start. It’s more likely to reflect the interests of the company ? Or maybe we have found a gap in the market and the next project should be the SBI (Specialist Blogger Index) as a way of expressing the character of a company...