The Technical Communicator community has many influential bloggers. Yet for an industry known for its communication skills, we were surprised by the lack of social media experience even among the elite. Astonishing, given the nature of the industry. I suspect that will change as Technical Communicators become more comfortable with today’s communication tools.
In compiling our ranking of the most influential Technical Communicator bloggers, we chose a variety of metrics to measure influence. Our Most Influential Blogger (MIB) formula consists of a weighted average across a range of metrics including Alexa, Klout Influence, Google Page Rank, Technorati Authority, and Twitter Followers.
In determining which bloggers are most influential the following criteria needed to be met:
- The individual needed to have a blog with regular updated posts.
- The blogger needed to have external activity on 3rd party sites like Twitter for additional influence points.
- The blogger’s focus needed to be Technical Communication subject matter
The MIB formula illustrates how much influence the individual has in relation to the other bloggers. These thought leaders were first scored for influence then compared to one another to create the top 25 ranking. For example, Scott Abel would have been the most influential had he been more active on Twitter.
Although Abel has 4437 followers, he is not active enough and does not engage others to promote his influence. According to Klout, “@scottabel needs to engage more with others or be more active to gain influence.”
The Top 25 Most Influential Bloggers in Technical Communications
The Top 25 in detail
Keep in mind the rankings are relative to the others on the list. That means everyone on the list has a much higher influence than the average active Technical Communicator Blogger. Note, most of the five dimensions that make up the MPV were taken in the last 3 days.
| Rank | Name | Alexa | Google Page Rank | Technorati Authority | Klout Score | Twitter Followers |
| 1 | RJ Jacquez | 150,000* | 6 | 637 | 48 | 3582 |
| 2 | Tom Johnson | 91,108 | 5 | 432 | 30 | 1274 |
| 3 | Scott Abel | 551,163 | 7 | 1 | 13 | 4437 |
| 4 | Sarah O’Keefe | 1,175,000 | 5 | 0 | 25 | 599 |
| 5 | Ellis Pratt | 1,433,000 | 5 | 0 | 27 | 642 |
| 6 | Anne Gentle | 1,234,176 | 5 | 100 | 14 | 981 |
| 7 | Aaron Davis and Scott Nesbitt** | 1,484,662 | 4 | 115 | 29 | 425 |
| 8 | Sarah Maddox | 1,487,000 | 5 | 100 | 24 | 328 |
| 9 | Rhonda Bracey | 447,462 | 4 | 434 | 18 | 156 |
| 10 | Gordon McLean | 1,968,396 | 5 | 112 | 20 | 215 |
| 11 | Simon Bate | 1,175,000 | 5 | 0 | 15 | 123 |
| 12 | Bill Swallow | 11,200,000 | 4 | 0 | 27 | 985 |
| 13 | Alan Pringle | 1,175,000 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 87 |
| 14 | Ben Minson | 2,380,000 | 4 | 420 | 16 | 143 |
| 15 | Colum McAndrew | 2,399,000 | 4 | 1 | 13 | 344 |
| 16 | Julie Norris | 4,101,000 | 3 | 0 | 31 | 426 |
| 17 | Paul Pehrson | 1,885,933 | 4 | 1 | 9 | 192 |
| 18 | Rahul Prabhakar | 3,534,000 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 655 |
| 19 | Ivan Walsh | 1,492,000 | 2 | 0 | 14 | 1745 |
| 20 | Tristan Bishop | 5,601,284 | 0 | 0 | 44 | 846 |
| 21 | Matt Sullivan | 8,694,000 | 6 | 0 | 11 | 295 |
| 22 | Bill Albing | 533,190 | 3 | 0 | 8 | 195 |
| 23 | Craig Haiss | 1,476,000 | 4 | 100 | 0 | 44 |
| 24 | David Farbey | 3,846,000 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 479 |
| 25 | Alistair Christie | 1,026,000 | 3 | 108 | 0 | 101 |
* Since the blog was located on a URL with other blogs, we triangulated traffic data on RJ’s blog to determine an approximate Alexa rank
** Since we could not distinguish Aaron from Scott on their blog or Twitter, we included them both
Follow the top 25 on Twitter with one click RJ Jacquez from Adobe narrowly emerged as the most influential over Johnson and Abel primarily due to his Klout score and Twitter use. He is well connected within the community and always has an engaged audience on his Technical Communication and eLearning blog.
Honorable Mentions
Larry Kunz, Julio Vazquez, Janet M. Swisher, Edward Martino, Keith Soltys, Miriam Lottner, Susan Wu, Rachel Houghton, Peggy Harvey, Rachel Peters, Edward VanArsdall, Kai Weber, Gautam Soman, Chris Borokowski, Andrew Brooke and Bill Kerschbaum just missed making the list only to be outdone by their more social media savvy peers. Did we miss anyone? What did we get wrong? Please give us your thoughts by commenting below.
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