Top 10 Social Media Blogs: The 2011 Winners!

Social media is a big subject. If you’re looking for some reliable places to go for the best tips and social media tactics, look no further!

Our second-annual contest generated more than 300 nominations. Our panel of social media experts carefully reviewed the nominees and finalists, analyzing the quality of their content, the frequency of posts and reader involvement (among other things).

The following are the winners of Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blogs for 2011.

If you’re looking to master all that social media has to offer, these rich blogs need to be at the top of your reading list.

1. Brian Solis: The grand master of social media, Brian is one of the web’s leading social media evangelists and his blog is required reading for businesses.

TopRank: This popular blog, the brainchild of Lee Odden, provides exceptional social media advice and should be one of your daily destinations.

Convince & Convert: Jay Baer’s Convince & Convert provides outstanding content for businesses seeking to embrace social media. This is the second year Jay has made our list.

Six Pixels of Separation: Mitch Joel offers consistent and thought-provoking content delivered with personality.

Social Media Explorer: This blog, from Jason Falls, provides excellent perspective on the current state of social media and should be a regular stop for serious social media marketers. This is the second year Jason has made our list.

Brand Builder: For businesses looking to dive deep into social media discussion, check out Olivier Blanchard’s rich insights. This is the second year Olivier has made our list.

Spin Sucks: Gini Dietrich’s blog takes a look at social media from a PR perspective. Check her site out!

Danny Brown: Danny Brown’s blog examines the human side of social media with rich content and insights.

The Anti-Social Media: For something completely unique, check out Jay Dolan’s satirical blog on the state of social media.

BrandSavant: This unique blog from Tom Webster combines a great intellect with with common sense, giving it an edge.

Congratulations to the winners. Be sure to check out these amazing blogs!

• Reference/Source: socialmediaexaminer.com By Michael Stelzner

Be Ready for: Top 10 Social Media Blogs 2011

We received over 330 nominations for our second-annual Top 10 Social Media Blogs contest (the blogosphere’s biggest contest for social media blogs).

The list of 23 finalists is pretty impressive! Take a look for yourself below.

The Judges: Our judges include David Armano (Edelman), Debbie Weil (author, The Corporate Blogging Book) and Rick Calvert (CEO, BlogWorld). They are currently finishing up their reviews of these sites.

Here are the finalists (in alphabetical order):

• Anti Social Media
• Brand Builder
• BrandSavant
• Brian Solis
• Convince & Convert
• DannyBrown
• Grow: Marketing. Social Media. Humanity
• Kikolani
• Kommein
• Mack Collier
• Mark Oborn’s eMarketing
• Michael Brandvold
• Pushing Social
• Reel SEO
• Ricardo Bueno
• Six Pixels of Separation
• Social Media Explorer
• Social Fresh
• SocialMouths
• Social Penguin
• Spin Sucks
• StormDriver
• TopRank

How We’ll Pick the Winners

1. Initial qualification: A blog must have a strong social media focus, must have been nominated multiple times by multiple individuals and must be regularly updated. If someone nominated more than one blog, only the first nomination was counted.

2. Final winner selection:

* Quality of posts: Our judges will examine and score the quality of posts on each blog. Educational and discussion-spurring posts are more valuable than self-promoting posts (55% of decision).
* Frequency of posts: Blogs that feature multiple posts per week will score higher. This is a sign of the blogger’s commitment to blogging (15%).
* Reader involvement: Blogs that have regular comments from readers are another sign of a healthy blog. In addition, the numbers of nominations for a specific blog play a part in this (15%).
* Blog ranking: The number of other blogs that link to the nominated blog shows the value of the content (15%). We’ll use accepted third-party blog ranking systems for this portion of the score.

Congratulations to the finalists! We’ll announce the winners here soon!

• Reference/Source: socialmediaexaminer.com by By Michael Stelzner