This is a guest post written by good friend and colleague Zubair, you can follow him on Twitter @souljaof4tune and read his blog here. After a rather interesting discussion with Chris about some really good PR and social media blogs out there and the realisation that no one has a made a list of the very best (we all love a good list – don’t we?) in a long time. I decided to create this, the top 25 UK PR and social media blogs. Using the Ad Age Power 150, a list of the top English language marketing blogs. I pulled together all the UK PR and social media blogs I could find and decided to see what they ...

I have noticed quite a number of corporate blogs recently that have been updated regularly but they don’t seem to be acting socially. It’s called social media for a reason because it is two way – so pushing corporate content in one direction is just one element of the process. I have been working in online PR for a number of years now and I have definitely noticed that a lot more marketers accept that blogging does have major SEO benefits. Halleluiah - our work is now done then and we can all relax. Hang on a minute… In this post I am not going to bang on about writing online content just for Google ...

Another rant I am afraid. I am sick of coming across extremely poor blogs that are being used as dumping grounds by SEO people to leave links and point them towards their client’s main websites. I really don’t see the longevity in this process – it’s wrong and Google and Bing will get wise to it and stop you in the end anyway. Yes blogging can be used to help SEO but please god don’t write terrible, dull content just because it includes your client’s brand name all of the time. Surely, you want these new links to mean something and good quality content is going to have much more longevity than a dull written post. For instance, if you ...

As always in the Dinosaur caves we have been doing some blogger research recently. We have been looking at some of the best written blogs in the world of gardening, so I thought I would share the UK’s top 20 gardening blogs. I hope you find them useful – one thing is for sure I could do with the gardening tips as I am pretty useless in that department. If I have missed a great blog off this list, please feel free to add in the comments as always. Thanks 1. Shirl’s Garden Watch – Packed full of pictures, videos and information, Shril’s Garden Watch is a great website that is constantly updated. With the photos she’s taken you can follow ...

As you know in our day job at Dinosaur PR we are constantly running campaigns for clients that are targeting different audiences, sometimes these can be pretty dry and other times they can be very interesting. We are currently running a blogger outreach campaign for our client Storage Options as they have just launched a new product for cyclists and mountain bikers. It’s called BikeCam and it films from the helmet or handlebars – it’s a great little product and so we wanted ...

With all the hype during the last six or seven years around the explosion of social networking you could be led to believe that social media influencers drive everything and are going to take over the world now. You may also have been convinced that the day of the traditional media sources and good quality investigative journalism are over. Not so – it’s true social media is important and that we all tend to use different channels to share different things. For instance, hands up who hasn’t logged into Quora or Google+ in the last few days? Yes I can hear a few of you sheepishly hiding your  heads in shame – is that because 90% of the ...

Warning this is a self-promotional post from someone who is pretty happy! I have just got back to work today after seven beautifully sunny days in Kos with my family and after going through the obligatory work related emails I stumbled across a number of tweets congratulating me on my position in the Brand Republic Top Marketing Blogs.  In case you didn’t know the BR 200 is a list of (it’s description): “The best advertising, marketing, media, PR and digital blogs from around the world, ranked in terms of traffic and ...

I love it when somebody uses social media a little differently, rather than following the sheep and simply setting up the usual channels. I like it even more when someone goes out there and tries to do something a bit creative and different. Step forward musician Imogen Heap, who is well known for a being a big social media advocate. Imogen has created a dedicated microsite for her latest project, which cleverly has a #hashtag as its working title. Here is how she explains it: #heapsong1 is the working title of ...

This weekend was interesting as a Liverpool FC fan, we lost a manager who was a nice chap but didn’t look big enough for the job. So Kenny Daglish stepped up after being asked and he selected the team for the match against Manchester United. The team lost but I have to admit the performance was one of the best from them I have seen this season but that isn’t saying much. The fact that they played with 10 men for the majority of the game did bode well though. However, something that ruined the game was a penalty awarded to Man Utd for questionable contact on Dimitar Berbatov in the second minute. ...

In this country cameras and any other form of recording equipment are banned from our courtrooms to stop the media interfering with live trials, but this week the British Chief Justice actually ruled that there is to be no ban on using the social network Twitter in the courtroom. Twitter finally became a courtroom tool last week when a court judge allowed mediamen to tweet from a bail hearing for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. However, two days after this ground breaking moment another judge barred it, so it’s clearly still a contentious issue. I have to admit I am slightly worried what a micro-blogging service like Twitter could do to a live trial and I think they need to treat ...