PR Bloggers we have aplenty, but Brendan Cooper has gone where few PR professionals dare to venture – the world of tables and numbers.

Brendan – formerly known in the Blogosphere as the Friendly Ghost – is the man behind the PowerPR Index in which he ranks the top 100 PR blogs using Technorati, Google and Yahoo! measures.

ThePR2.0Universe.com happens to rank at 58 this month, slipping from the 51 spot in August. And I suppose I deserve it for being lazy with only two posts since August.

But my ranking’s not the point here. I write this post for two reasons:

First, I – along with 98 others – have to thank Brendan for the effort that he has taken to put the Index together, and fuelling that competitive streak in us all.

Secondly – to thank him again; but for perhaps a far more important reason. In crunching up this table for PR bloggers, he has subtly reminded us of the relationship that we (must) have with numerical data and analytics in the PR practice today. And here I can almost hear the cry, “but if I like to work with numbers, I would have been a private banker!”

In all seriousness, the deeper we dive into understanding the new media landscape, the more we will need to hone our sense for data and analytics. And the moment we begin to grapple with the explosion in the number of influencers out there, it will become absolutely vital for the 21st Century PR practitioner to be a numbers-person.

Instead of writing a thesis here, I will simply point you to a book worth reading if you haven’t already read it – Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart, Ian Ayres

I’m not too sure if this should go into The PR 2.0 University, because if I do, then many other books and articles need to be included too. But who knows, I may revise that list one day.

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed