Online & Brand Community Ringleaders - learn from the 31, er 32 Community-Savvy Bloggers

 

Falling behind on my 366 Days of Word of Mouth Blogs, but thought I would kickstart May, 2008 off with a group of specialists who write about community building, brand communities, citizen tribes and the intersection of social networks and marketing.

After sifting through 90-100 blogs that I thought had strong content potential, these are my personal fave 32 posters that are making sense of the space (too bad Technorati doesn't sift for quality of ideas, would have made my job easier)- these are the "Community Ringleaders".

Would love to hear about others as I'm sure there are diamonds in the rough or people overlooked?  I find that good quality specialist blogs in any area, particular this one are tough to discover because:

1. people lose interest in their blogs (blogged about this previously in The Quality of the Blogosphere Careens Downhill)
2. people have to be practitioners in order to say something new, fresh or important and
3. people need discipline to stick to the reason they started their blogs in the first place (many have veered from their initial community slant).

So as you're visiting your RSS reader in May - designate a visit across the blogosphere to the list below. I may not agree with all of them, but they are nonetheless important "community" ports of call.

1st - Community Spark (Matt Reed) – tips and advice for running online communities (http://www.communityspark.com/)

2nd - Horse Pig Cow (Tara Hunt) – Enchanting and Delighting Members of Communities (http://www.horsepigcow.com/)

3rd - Communities Dominate Brands (Alan Morroe/Tomi Ahonen) – Europe’s leading luminaries (http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/)

4th - The Community Guy (Jake Mckee) – An Ant Eye’s view on Community from Lego’s former architect (http://www.communityguy.com/)

5th - Confessions of an Aca Fan (Henry Jenkins) – Academic Insight of Convergence between Fans, Bloggers and Gamers (http://www.henryjenkins.org/index.html)

6th - Online Fandom (Nancy Baym) – Relationships analyzed between fans, artists and industries (http://www.onlinefandom.com/)

7th - Brandthroposophy (Rob Kozinets) – from Burning Man to Star Trek, An Antrhropologist’s View on Why People Go Tribal (http://kozinets.net/)

8th - Bloghound (Lois Kelly) - Going Beyond Buzz and exploring the world of Conversation Marketing (http://blog.foghound.com/)

9th - Web Strategy by Jeremiah (Jeremiah Owyang) – Forrrester’s ominpresent online guru chats up digital community (http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/)

10th - Online Community Strategy (Bill Johnston) – Forum One’s resident community master take on online community (http://redplasticmonkey.wordpress.com/)

11th - The Viral Garden (Mack Colllier) – Social netwoprker extraordinaire erases the line between company and customer ( http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/)

12th - Around The Web (Richard Binnhammer) – Musings from Dell’s social insider (http://richardatdell.blogspot.com/)

13th - Diva Marketing Blog (Toby Bloomberg) – Fun and Sassy bridge between brands and good marketing (http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/bloomberg_marketing/)

14th - The Buzz Bin (Geoff Linvingston) – A neat looking blog from D.C.’s new media titans (http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/)

15th - Tell Ten Friends (Jordan Behan) – Strutta’s community guy back in the conversational saddle again (http://www.telltenfriends.com/blog/)

16th - Brains on Fire (Spike Jones) – A bit over-sell-y but interesting community WOM insights nonetheless (http://brainsonfire.com/blog/)

17th - Church of The Customer (McConnell/Huba) – Sure they are a catch-all for many WOM categories but a lot on this topic too (http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/)

18th - Chris Brogan (Chris Brogan) – Sometimes Podcamper, sometimes social media guy, always interesting (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/)

19th - Servant of Chaos (Gavin Heaton) – A bit of storytelling and community from social media’s fave Aussie (http://servantofchaos.typepad.com/soc/)

20th - Jaffe Juice (Joe Jaffe) – Joining the conversation from a number of crayon-laced angles (http://www.jaffejuice.com/)

21st - Marketing Nirvana (Mario Sundar) – What LinkedIn’s evangelist does in his off hours (http://mariosundar.wordpress.com/)

22nd - Influential Marketing Blog (Rohit Bhargarva) – Tough to pidgeonhole Rohit's blog, but ample amounts of community and personality (http://rohitbhargava.typepad.com/weblog/)

23rd - MP Daily Fix (Ann Handley) – A cast of usual suspects chatting about what’s hot off the press, sometimes in community (http://www.mpdailyfix.com/)

24th - Flirting with the Crowd (Sami Viitimaki) – Scandinavia’s resident crowdsourcing guru (http://www.samiviitamaki.com/)

25th - Crowdsourcing (Jeff Howe) -Wired into tracking the rise of the amateur (http://crowdsourcing.typepad.com./)

26th - Emergence Marketing (Francois Gossiaux) – Corante’s marketing ringleader prseides over  thoughts on new marketing and media (http://www.emergencemarketing.com/)

27th - Impact Interactions (Mike Rowland) – Communities, Social networks and Metrics from the community meter reader ( http://impactinteractions.blogspot.com/)

28th - Social Media Conversations (Sean Driscoll) – Microsoft’s change agent and community MVP (http://communitygrouptherapy.com/)

29th - Best Engaging Communities (Mukund Mohan) – A Broad pot pourri of stuff but some good historical insight on communities (http://bestengagingcommunities.com/)

30th - David Crow (David Crow) – Toronto’s own entrepreneurial community pro (http://davidcrow.ca/)

31st - Wikinomics blog (Tapscott and team) – Collaboration pros changing the face of the world, including yes...marketing (http://www.wikinomics.com/blog/)

June 1st - Buzz Canuck (Sean Moffitt) – similar to the Church, I talk about a lot of WOM but increasingly fixated on new forms of brand communities (http://buzzcanuck.typepad.com/)

Next up - June's roll call of great Customer Experience bloggers - send us your best.

Oh, and if you want a download of our new presentation on "It Takes a Community to Raise a Brand", just  add you name here. Happy to send in our next Buzz Report.