An extended and better structured list of PR blogs

Note: Periodical updates on the numbers of weblogs are listed at the end of this entry.

Summary: A new list of PR blogs has more than 160 entries and includes personal, consultants and corporate blogs, with authors from 17 countries.

More:

I know, I know… you must be rolling your eyes by now, asking yourself, why-oh-why do we need yet another list of PR bloggers?

Why isn’t Headlines from PR Blogs enough? After all, it has more than 100 PR blogs already. Yes, it’s great, but it includes only weblogs written in English, and that is because people have subscribed to the list’s RSS feed, and I wasn’t sure that adding German or Swedish blogs is something that makes sense for the list’s audience. A more inclusive list was needed.

Another problem is that the group has an automatically generated blogroll, but it’s not possible to make any changes in RSS feeds’ names. An alphabetical list is great as long as it has less than 30 entries, and if you know already the blogs’ authors. But when you have more than 150 weblogs, and when just a handful of them have authors’ names included in their titles, things are becoming complicated.

Here’s the new list:

http://www.bloglines.com/public/prblogs (OPML)

And here’s a list of answers to some questions that you might have:

  • Q: What’s a PR blog?
  • A: PR blogs is a nickname for weblogs about Public Relations and communication in an organizational context. (Not included: blogs about advertising, branding, marketing.) Some PR blogs are personal; others are published by consultants focusing on how weblogs can be integrated in the business practice. Weblogs authored by principals or employees of PR firms and acknowledged by their employers will fall under the category of corporate PR blogs. If a weblog is (or is not) a PR blog is determined by the blog’s author and by its readers; there is no universally recognized set of criteria for it.
  • Q: How was the list made?
  • A: I combined the list of PR blogs from Blogdigger Groups with the NewPR Wiki’s list of business blog consultants, I eliminated duplicate entries, and added a couple of PR blogs (written in other languages than English). I compared the list with Jim Horton’s list of PR blogs and with Tom Murphy’s blogroll. Then I sorted the weblogs by using the country where the blogger lives as a criterion. In time, this will give us an idea about the adoption of PR blogs in different countries. Moreover, the blogs were sorted by type in: personal, consultant, corporate, and education blogs. There are separate categories for wikis, podcasts, book-related blogs, event blogs, and international group blogs.
  • Q: My blog is not in the list. Why?
  • A: Probably because your blog was not in the lists I mentioned earlier, or because I just missed it somehow. Please drop me a line and I’ll be happy to add your blog.
  • Q: I don’t want my weblog in that category. Can you move it?
  • A: Sure, just pick another category, and please remember that a weblog can’t be included in more than one category (because Bloglines doesn’t accept the same RSS feed twice).
  • Q: The list doesn’t include some PR blogs I read/know. Why?
  • A: If they are written in any other language than Romanian, English, French, Italian and Spanish, then probably I wasn’t able to figure out that the blog is about PR. If you know any PR blog that should be added to the list, please let me know. Another reason might be that my definition of a PR blog is different than yours. But we can discuss about it and find a way.
  • Q: What’s happening with the Blogdigger Groups-based listing?
  • A: It will continue to grow and to aggregate the PR blogs written in English; the same goes for the group aggregating weblogs of BizBlogConsultants. As soon as Blogdigger Groups will offer more control over the blogroll, I’ll consider moving the current Bloglines-based listing there.
  • Q: I can’t add a blog to the list. Why?
  • A: Because you need the password for the Bloglines account. Headlines from PR Blogs is an open group that can be edited by anyone; I make weekly backups of its OPML file, so the group can be reversed to a prior state if -knock wood- vandalism occurs. But I can’t do the same thing for the Bloglines-based list; if the password is public, a vandal could change it and take control of the list. This doesn’t mean that I should be the only one to have the password. If you want to be a constant contributor to the list, please let me know.
  • Q: Is there an RSS feed for the headlines of all blogs, like the feed for Headlines from PR Blogs?
  • A: No.
  • Q: Can I use the list for reading blogs’ postings?
  • A: Yes, but please consider subscribing to the RSS feeds of the blogs you want to read. That’s another way of saying that the purpose of this list is to be a directory that can be easily imported through its OPML file, and not to be an RSS feed aggregator. However, you can use the list for reading the blogs — here’s how:
    • To read the last postings from one blog, click on the blog’s name in the left side panel (click on the + sign to open the folder, first).
    • To read the last postings from blogs included in one category, click on the category’s name in the left side panel.
    • To read the last postings from all the blogs included in the list, click on the name of the top folder.
  • Q: Can I subscribe to the blogs included in the list?
  • A: Sure.
    • If you want to subscribe to only one or two of them, it’s better to go to their homepages and find their RSS feeds.
    • If you want to subscribe only to the consultants’ blogs, you can use this list and import its OPML file.
    • If you want to subscribe to the entire list of PR blogs, you can use the list’s OPML file (save it as somename.opml, than import the file in your newsreader; also, your newsreader might give you the option of selecting which feeds do you want to import).

Updates:

  • June 6, 2005: The directory is currently listing 219 personal, consultants and corporate PR blogs, 3 wikis, 6 podcasts, and 3 linkblogs, with authors from 20 countries.
  • November 6, 2005: Please note that the directory is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
  • December 31, 2005: The directory is listing 330 feeds.
  • January 31, 2006: The directory is listing 374 feeds.
  • February 28, 2006: The directory is listing 407 feeds.
  • April 8, 2006: The directory is listing 446 feeds. The OPML file for the list is hosted now by opml.org, instead of Bloglines.

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12 Comments

  1. Dear Constantine,

    I’m a colleague of Italo Vignoli, a PR consultant you already know, being (at the moment) the only italian in the PR blogs list.

    I would like to submit to your attention my PR blog too, http://pr-blues.blogspot.com/ . a blog I recently start to feed with my original content.
    Many thanks for your attention.
    Enrico

  2. Constantin, as always, what a brilliant service! Thanks indeed for this great resource.

    I know of a couple more PR-related blogs here in The Netherlands, so expect to hear from their authors if they want to be included in the list.

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  4. Excellent resource list. Discovered quite a few blogs I want to explore futher. Thanks for posting and thanks for subscribing to diva marketing blog…am honored to be included.

  5. Constantin,

    First of all please receive my congratulations for the wonderful interview given for For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report.

    Starting from the interview I paid more attention on the useful Headlines from PR Blogs and PR Blogs List.

    My kind sugestion is to create a TagCloud for PR Blogs List OPML: the top topics in PR Blogs are here.

    I have a similar approach related to Romanian Blogosphere; starting from the OPML provided by Bloglines, I update the Romanian weblogs/RSS Collection.

    Your valuable weblog is on the top list – info for PR meets the WWW.

    Sincerely,
    Carmen

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