Just over a year ago I made a post on the number comparison between UK and US PR related blogs to get a snapshot view to see which country, out of the two, is embracing blogs the quickest. (First let me apologise to none UK and US readers. I had been blogging for two months at the time and did clearly not see the bigger picture.) Needless to say the US was by far the most dominant between the two countries, although the difference between the two with regard to PR educational blogs were nearly on par.
The numbers were originally taken from the Bloglines public PR blogs maintained by the great Constantin Basturea and I thought I’d review them one year on to see what changes there might be. All 2005 numbers were recorded on June 23 of that year and all 2006 numbers were recorded today (July 11).
PR practioner blogs
Last year the UK had 19 PR practitioner blogs and the US had 64. One year on the UK number has risen a mere 32% with 25 practitioner blogs in comparison with a 73% rise for the US to 111 PR practitioner blogs.
Blog consultants
In 2005 the UK had only three blog-consultant blogs with the US having just over eight times that amount at 25. The 2006 numbers show that the UK and US numbers have risen 200% and 60% respectively. Although the percentage increase seems to flatter the number of UK blog consultants which are still at a low nine.
“The percentage increase seems to flatter the number of UK blog consultants which are still at a low nine.”
Corporate PR blogs
Again, the number of UK corporate PR blogs in 2005 was at a low four in comparison with the US which had 33. 2006 brought an extra six UK corporate PR blogs bringing the total number to 10. This number is dwarfed in comparison to the US which has increased by 130% to 76 corporate PR blogs.
PR education blogs
Perhaps a surprising change from last year are the number of US PR educational blogs. Last year both the UK and US almost had the same number with five and six respectively. However, a big change this year with the US increasing its number by 250% to a total of 21 and the UK increasing by 60% to eight PR education blogs.
“Perhaps a surprising change from last year are the number of US PR educational blogs.”
Total number of PR related blogs
Looking at the stats above it’s not surprising that the chart below shows a considerable change in the total number of US PR related blogs with an increase of 94% from 128 to 248. The total number of UK PR related blogs has also increased 68% from 31 to 52.
The total number results show that, once again, the UK PR community is not embracing the medium as much as the US. I wonder why? Any ideas?
Stephen is a communications consultant based out of the UK. You can connect with him on Twitter or check out his LinkedIn profile. | Email Stephen
Stumble it
Digg it
Deli.icio.us
Tweet this
Paull Young
Well you’re still a long way ahead of Australia.
We’ve gone from two PR blogs at the start of your survey, to probably about seven now. And of that seven, there’s only three or four that are updated on a regular basis.
Richard Bailey
Some possible reasons:
- The demographic disparity between the two (you should multiply UK blogs by six to get a like-for-like comparison)
- ‘Not invented here’ (this applies to blogs; it also applies to public relations)
- The diffidence of the British, compared to the much more promotional culture in the US
That said, and in contradiction to this, I’m immensely proud of the British tradition in journalism (eg the BBC, The Economist, The Guardian, FHM even), but this is Philip Young’s area more than mine…
Stephen
Nice points, Richard. I was discussing on the PR Monkey’s blog today that if the blogosphere as a whole is doubling every five months but the PR blogosphere is nowhere near that number, then it shows how stagnant the profession is … maybe … perhaps.
Owen Lystrup
Amazing to see how few there are.
There are a lot of professionals blogging. But the graphs you made also show just how new we are at this thing.
David Phillips
I have a feeling that despite the benefits to some, the UK is not optimising its web presence. Companies are cosy and insular and do not seem to see how much further their web presence should be beyond being a brochure.
Robin
I agree with David, especially in the more traditional engineering PR work I do they would rather pay £3000 for a single shot full page ad in trade book than align their online comms strategy and research where their potential customers look gore information.
I digress, back to the blog in hand… this looks representative to me. I noticed that in my niche there are just two PR blogs in the UK – mostly concerned with the world cup and Google Earth rather than PR!
Karel Mc Intosh
I just discovered that I’m listed on prblogs, so I’m a wee bit excited about that. As soon as I discover another prblog from the Caribbean, I’ll let you know.