2009 PR People Awards: PR Blogger of the Year

Brian Solis, Principal, Futureworks

His tireless quest to improve and enrich his field makes Brian Solis a model of excellence as a public relations communicator. Author of the PR 2.0 blog at www.briansolis.com, this sought-after author and speaker has been covering developments in communications during our age of increasing technological dependence, while creating them himself since the mid-90s. As an entrepreneur he founded the PR firm Futureworks, which continues to provide guidance to technology companies at all stages of their growth.

Regular Diet

Updated on a daily or near-daily basis, PR 2.0 covers some of the most urgent themes professionals face across all practice settings. In a recent week, Solis touched on Twitter’s trending topics; the evolution of search influence in social media; the death of the blog (an exaggeration); the future of the embargo; and a detailed analysis of where social media has traveled over the past half-dozen years and where it may go in the next. Solis has been recognized for his consistently forward-thinking posts, and his blog is ranked in the Ad Age Power 150 list of leading marketing bloggers.

Related Pursuits

The passion that Solis exhibits on his blog transcends his other pursuits as well. A regular speaker who travels the globe to share his unique insight, Solis is co-founder of the Social Media Club and an original member of the Media 2.0 Workgroup.

He is the co-author of Putting the Public Back in Public Relations: How Social Media Is Reinventing the Aging Business of PR, a book published earlier this year that has received accolades from executives and public relations professionals alike for its practical information and counsel on how to differentiate in today’s marketplace. Where differentiation is the subject of thought, Solis and his redoubtable blog are not far from mind. ■

Honorable Mentions

The creation of USANA’s Health Sciences’ blog was just a precursor. Since then, Tim Haran has used the blog to develop video series, a weight-loss challenge with photos, interviews and exercise tips and interviews with sponsored athletes like Jennifer Azzi and Abdul Fox.

David Wescott’s development of a social media strategy for environmental technology company 3Tier included contracts with leading science writers and bloggers, resulting in a 16-fold increase in traffic to the client’s Web site. For APCO, Wescott helped establish its first media presence in the form of the Virtual Vantage Points blog. His own blog, It’s Not a Lecture, takes a behind-the-scenes approach to information important to his clients.

December 7, 2009