This is the new weekly feature which replaces the Follow Friday Five for the following reasons:
- There were twelve FFF’s. That’s sixty blogs and I was starting to find it difficult to find relevant blogs that I liked and had not already referenced.
- If I’d continued the series the next one would have been number thirteen. ‘Nuff said.
- The format of the blog requires that images have depth (to make the page stand out) and reference the content. Imagine how difficult it was to find interesting new pictures that illustrated the number five. (This feature won’t have images).
- This format allows me to reference good posts, that means I can come back to blogs I like.
- There’s no number in ‘This Week’s Best of the Blogs’ so it is more flexible, I can choose to reference any number of posts I choose. I think I’ll start with five.
- Convince and Convert – The 6 Dangerous Fallacies of Social Media Jason Baer neatly summarises from a PR perspective some of the major popular misconceptions about working with the social web.
- Revolution – Twitter founder reveals business plans Finally the scoop on twitter’s plans for market domination…..sort of. Read the latest at Revolution.
- Stephen Newton’s diary of sorts… - Five years of Carol Kirkwood naked An eclectic take on blogs and SEO. I wonder if this post will take PR&TSW to number two?
- Guardian.co.uk – Find us on Twitter Does exactly what it says on the tin. A guide to the Guardian’s multiple twitter feeds.
- The Huffington Post – 13 Tips For Actually Getting Some Writing Done Top tips from Gretchen Rubin. No.13, have something to say. OK I’m off.
As usual, politics, PR, marketing, journalism, other stuff all neatly packaged in five great blogs from mighty media megaliths to more modest marketing types. A great selection of material to take a look out whist your are filling in your expense claims.
When websites first became available companies had to do with the issue of cyber squatting, where individuals with no connection to an organisation nevertheless registered obvious names for corporate websites and then sold them back often at exorbitant prices. This practice was eventually stamped out through legal channels and in some countries with the introduction of new laws.
In the rush to populate web copy with keywords the most important thing is sometimes forgotten. The copy needs to well written, lively, interesting and relevant. It is astonishing how often this is forgotten in the charge to upload text that will rank highly in Google. 
As PR communicators we need to be very careful about content. PR people have a tendency to feel that if something is published then our goals have been achieved. The ease with which things can now be published undermines that presumption. The sheer volume of web content means that a lot of the stuff that appears on the net is of little interest to anyone other than the publisher. That which has no interest will have no impact.
We are moving away from a world where content and products were pushed to a world in which content and products are pulled. There are many reasons for this and they are all interlinked. The decline of deference means that the consumer is less willing to accept what is being pushed. In the digital landscape it is easy and quick to tailor content to consumer demand. Even in manufacturing and production we are seeing an increasing number of bespoke processes and offers.
We tend to believe that we have a natural instinct for the truth but the web has many inaccuracies that are commonly held to be factual. We can follow the old journalistic principle of getting at least two reliable sources for important pieces of information, but much of the internet is a mash up of other bits of the internet. The resulting multiplicity of sources might suggest a breadth of knowledge but in reality if a factoid is convincing enough it can spread.
