Part 4 Five Tips on How to Choose the Right Blogs

I am going to be nice this last post. Instead of calling out the myriad of bloggers that I can, I want to be constructive with some rules so you can determine the quality of a blog post.

1] Does the blogger support their thesis with real numbers and data? 

There is a really well know Author and Blogger who is big time all in on social influence who did a slide share showing 6 case studies on using Klout and Peer Index to help launch products. Not one case study gave support that the campaign worked. Do they use fuzzy math? I am still waiting on a study done by Wildfire App. Media Post did kind of a Press Release for them. It had no basis. It claimed things like 82% increase in engagement without saying from what base. Did engagement go from 10% to 18.2% of from 0.0001% to 0.000182%? Why are the details hidden?

2] Is the blogger an expert in their area of commentary? 

Have they done the things they claim they are an expert in? There are many thought leaders in social media who never built a brand community or managed one themselves trying to tell brands how to do this.

I have a Finance/Sales background. That is why many of my posts are slicing the numbers in the hype to reality. When Yelp! claimed a call is made every other second from the mobile app to sound impressive. I calculated 86 calls per day per US state which is almost zero.

3] Is the blogger always selling to you? 

I find there are three types of blogs. The first is helpful. They want to show you how to do things and do so in detail. The second is discussion. They present something they want people to respond and talk about. The last is selling selling selling They are trying to sell you on their service, their platform, their book etc. If the blog is the last type they will have serious bias.

The list to your left are all either informative/helpful or discussion based. Not one of those bloggers is trying to directly sell you anything even though many are authors and would love you as a client.

4] Are they objective? 

Do they always have the solution from what they do? Or are they willing to offer solutions from other sources? Will they admit there are other solutions or better solutions?

5] Do they like using mumbo jumbo? 

I have called Social Commerce...is just Commerce. I have railed that Social Media is not Media at all. Engagement and Impressions are nice fuzzy terms with almost no meanings. I just came down on Social Business because it is just Business. Look for people who like to talk human vs lingo.

There is so much great content out there. I subscribe to Ad Week, Media Post, and Ad Age news emails. They are free! I read a ton of blogs. There are so many great blogs and great thinkers and leaders if you look for them. Don't use the AdAge Power150 as your guide. Only 2 of the top 50 are listed here. And there is only another 5 I would read. The fact so many people read Mashable proves the low IQ for the industry.

And remember....just because someone wrote something doesn't mean it is true.