Fridays are typically a day where I share the five best articles that I read in a given week. While I would love to continue that tradition this week, I have spent more time changing diapers than sharing and digesting links and articles so I decided to share with you five blogs that you should be reading.

Before you roll your eyes and say sheesh another list post or grumble at adding more real estate and clutter to your RSS reader, take a step back and answer these questions.

1. How many blogs are in your reader?
2. How many of them make you think daily? Note I am not talking the thinking involved with reading.

I am going to guess that the answer to question one is a lot and number two is not too many. This is mainly because a lot of ideas get rehashed and let’s face it with the information overload with number one, you just miss things.

So with that said, take a look at the five blogs below (in no particular order), subscribe to them via email (so they don’t get lost in the shuffle) and see if you find something that stimulates your medulla oblongata.

Personal Cartography - For some reason, I just stumbled on Tamsen McMahon‘s blog after chatting with her for years on Twitter and reading her on Brass Tack Thinking. Her posts are unrelated to most things I read daily, but they are a good swift kick in the pants to get me going.

In Over your Head – You may know Julien Smith as the co-author of Trust Agents, but what you might not know is that he is the author of a kick ass blog. I don’t think I’ve read a post where I can either say that he mailed it in or that I was left without an opinion. The Canadian blogger comes out with piece after piece of mind crack that have you coming back for more.

Geoff Livingston’s Personal Blog – Did you ever have that friend who was never afraid to speak his mind? Well in my online circle, Geoff Livingston is that guy. Now there is a different in speaking opinions and being rude, so I would also suggest checking out how Geoff handles himself with both his opinions, disagreeing commenters and pundits.

{GROW} Blog – This blog from Mark Schaefer is a perfect mix of general social media chatter, business development and personal insight. He is also one of the genuinely nice and helpful folks that I have had the pleasure of meeting on the interwebs.

Danny Brown - Danny Brown is the second Canadian on the list. He blogs on things that touch him on an emotional level and also things that touch on the social industry at large. Danny is also a great conversationalist that extends the shelf life of every post within the comments.

Bonus Blog – Digital Dads – I started checking out this blog/online show when Mrs. Espo found out that we were going to have a baby. I was instantly hooked, but after superstitions, shied away until the baby was born. Well I am happy to say that I am back on the horse and strongly recommend it to any dad or dad in training.

Are you a subscriber to any of these blogs?

Also what are your top blogs that I should be checking out? Please leave them in the comments below.

I also implore you to check out these blogs and let me know what you think at the end of a week.

Image – Student Branding

I was watching this video over on BusinessWeek today. Stephen Baker tapped his connections via social media to come up with a list of four innovators in social media including Beth Kanter, Noah Brier, Scott Monty, and Eric Brown. The group discusses how they use social media and the innovations that they see coming.

Monty hits the nail on the head with the implication that a personal touch is key, if only companies could all get this into their heads.  While his checks come from one of the Big Three, no not the Celtics, but acts in a way previously unseen in the auto industry where everything is cold and fully automated. Brown’s characterization of a Wild Wild West mentality is scary, but is also true. Social media in itself is only as good as it’s contributors.

Working for a large company, we are always hearing: how does this contribute to the business? As a flack its always tough to defend what PR does, especially when not many people realize what a PR team actually does.

Our search team has valued our releases, search enhanced via Marketwire between $2,000 – $5,000, but it is just on an educated guess or hypothesis. Trying to apply publications’ ad rates is equally skewered when looking for results.

So how can one expect to answer the age old question mentioned above?

Typically I would say that you can’t gague the impact of PR or a press release outside of social media. That will be until around 5:30 pm today.

We are sending out a press release around the open of the market announcing our small business marketing blog as a Social Media 2.0 release over Marketwire.

In the past we have seen typical releases average  331 pickups on Google, however our most recent social release we saw over 1,500 placements on Google alone.

The blog is hosted on WordPress and has gained traffic of around 50 visitors/day through our viral efforts on Twitter and a few small plugs in a targeted, but small email campaign.

I am hoping that via the strength of the press release, we can finally put a number or get a better understanding of what that “value” may be.

I’ll update later in the day with a number. My pie in the sky guess is that the release will generate 1,000 visitors to the site tomorrow.