SCHWARTZ CROSSROADS

Judging Social Media: Listen to CAIT

Whenever someone comes to me asking about blogs and other social media sites, I get the same question: what are the top ranked blogs? I try to point out that there are several ways to cut this, but people still want numbers.

The short answer? Size doesn't (always) matter.

I've long been critical of the idea that links determine much of anything, partially because they don't measure number of readers, but also because they assume that readership equals active participation from other blogs.

Shel Israel has made the point that if you have a blog with no links and three readers, it comes up as unimportant in the blogging world, but if those three readers include President Bush and his Chief of Staff, then it's influential.

Still, in the PR field we have a problem. Clients pay us to get them the best possible coverage in a defined period of time. So here at Schwartz, we've focused on what we call CAIT. That is, Community, Author, Intelligence and Topic. For each we ask a series of questions:

• Community--Does this blog have an active comment community? Are they gaining links from other bloggers and reporters? Do reporters/influencers/analysts read them?
• Author--Does this person put up their name? Do they work in the industry? Are they an analyst? A competitor? Interested party?
• Intelligence--As you are reading the posts, do they make sense? Are they in line with what you know about the industry? How do those commenting react?
• Topic--What is this blog truly about? Did the author write a piece about a client's area just once or is it a regular topic?

We look for a balance of all four elements. The reason is pretty simple: social media relations isn't about the big audience, it's about the right audience. So if a blogger, podcaster, vlogger, Twitter user or anyone else influences a community in an intelligent way that speaks to the topic of our clients, then that's someone with which we want to talk.

The fact is, these same concepts can be applied to just about any media and will work properly, but in the traditional media world we tend to know understand this concept inherently. When dealing with social media we need to be taught.

Posted by Chuck Tanowitz on October 19, 2007 at 7:30 AM