I’ve been thinking about what lies behind a successful blog – it’s all about value for the reader and the blogger.

A round-up of statistics, analysis and research that I spotted this week.

That beloved business tool, Microsoft Powerpoint, was the topic of much discussion in the office yesterday.

Personal branding is more important than ever before when you’re hunting for a job, and social networking sites have an important role to play.

At a workshop session yesterday I was asked what was the difference between marketing and public relations.

Antony Mayfield asks are trackbacks dead yet? Steve Rubel seems to think so, but I’m not so sure.

I’m planning a holiday in May, and am inviting readers of my blog to become guest bloggers while I’m away.

A round-up of statistics, analysis and research that I spotted this week.

Here’s the outline of my presentation on business blogging that I prepared for the MIPAA bloggers’ brunch.

Alister Cameron has a very interesting post on ProBlogger about how Google Blogsearch indexes your blog posts.

While passing a few minutes reading a newspaper yesterday, my three year old son gave me a powerful reminder of the importance of visual identity.

I’m on a panel tomorrow at an event about blogging. I’m on the lookout for some examples of business blogging and its best and at its worst.

I’d been thinking about live blogging of conferences for a while now and questioning whether it actually gives readers anything useful.

PR Week has a piece about the public relations handling of the selling stories saga that has unfolded since the 15 British hostages were released by Iran.

A round-up of statistics, analysis and research that I spotted this week.

I’ve been on Twitter for several weeks now and it’s about time I thought a bit about why.

A Bain survey of top executives reports just over half of executives believe that insufficient consumer insight is hindering their performance, but insight is only part of the picture.

Nick Porter, director at Iris PR, has an interesting article about how agencies need to delivery genuinely integrated campaigns on the BrandRepublic website.

A round-up of statistics, analysis and research that I spotted this week.

The latest white paper from Daryl Willcox makes interesting reading for public relations professionals.

I did a phone interview with French company Skema this afternoon about blogging. One question I was asked was about the differences between a website and a blog for large corporations.

The UK’s Sunday Times has a thought-provoking article about online and offline advertising which picks up some potential future trends for marketers.

Google’s not the only search tool worth using for desktop research. Discover new search engines and techniques to improve your research.

McDonald’s has launched a new advertising campaign, centred on a member of the public’s experiences behind the scenes with the fast food giant. The campaign points to a website which demonstrates real transparency.