Blogging Q&A with CrunchGear’s Blake Robinson

12Oct07

Hey all,

Recently, I had a discussion with Blake Robinson, Co-Founder and Contributing Editor of the highly popular CrunchGear tech blog. I wanted to get his feedback on what would be considered an influential blog, how to identify them, and how to build a solid readership:

NMW: One challenge in social media PR is reporting influential vs. non-influential blogs to clients. How would you characterize an influential blog?

Blake: With the exception of a select few instances, influential blogs are almost universally characterized by the number of page views that they receive. If an influential blog has low page views, it’s only a matter of time before its traffic and influence expand.

NMW: What’s the methodology to building a successful blog, whether for business or personal?

Blake: It’s generally considered necessary that in its first year of operation, a blog needs to double its traffic every three months to be considered successful.

NMW: What types of tools out there should people be using (i.e. Digg) to promote their blogs and start building a community of readers?

Blake: Every tool that expands your points of impact. Link aggregators like Digg are the clear choices, but don’t neglect community message boards either. It’s also advantageous to setup Google Alerts for your properties and respond to as many of your mentions as physically possible.

NMW: How should PR pros look to identify key influential blogs? Is a blogroll enough?

Blake: Again, use everything available to you. Typically speaking, any place with an active community is a good place with which to identify. Visit prominent blogs in your scene and see who they link to, then visit those sites and so on and on and on.

NMW: How long did it take for CrunchGear to become the highly successful tech blog that it is today? On the average, how many readers a month does CrunchGear receive these days?

Blake: CrunchGear is a little over a year old. It receives somewhere in the vicinity of 1.5 million page views per month.

Thanks!

Filed under: blog pitching, interviews, social media   |  4 Comments