Who is Dave Fleet?

Well, Sir Dave is the Senior Vice President of Digital at Edelman’s Toronto office. No big deal, right? Anyways, he has a blog that’s pretty informative and well-versed on all things related to communications and PR. It’s called davefleet.com. Not very original, I know, but Mr. Fleet is quite relevant in the world of PR. He writes about advancements in fields relating to marketing, social media, communications, and of course, public relations. Considering that Fleet works for one of the most prominent PR agencies in the world, it is safe to say that he has much authority in the world of PR.

Prior to working at Edelman, Fleet launched and built a digital communications practice at a mid-size agency. Additionally, in 2008, he was presented with the Amethyst Award, the highest award available to Ontario public service staff.

As a side note, it is important to note that although Fleet works for Edelman, he does not write on behalf of the company. The thoughts and opinions found on davefleet.com are all his own.

Fleet began his blog in 2005, but did not consistently post until 2007. Today, he is rather inconsistent in his posts. Sometimes he’ll post a couple times a week, and other times he will make a post every other month. Considering that the quality of his posts, it seems that this format works well for Fleet. I believe that Fleet only makes a post when he thinks it is actually informative.

This leads me to talk about the tone of davefleet.com. Fleet chooses an informative and serious tone when writing his posts. The blog is well written, and his posts are both concise and pretty easy to comprehend. He uses several photos, which give the posts a nice visual component. However, he only uses photos when it actually makes sense for the post. For example, the post “How Lean In Got Me Thinking,” doesn’t contain any photos, but it is short and easy for the reader to follow along. In the end, I actually learned something from reading this post. Fleet places more emphasis on the content of his blog rather than its aesthetic factors.  Still, the layout of the blog is sleek and professional, which goes along perfectly with the tone of his posts.

On the other hand, in the post “Marketing, Community, Support, or All of the Above?” Fleet uses two pictures, but both of those pictures have a purpose. For example, one of the subheadings in his post is “When I Was Your Age…”, and Fleet put a picture of an older man sticking his cane out towards the reader. This picture makes sense with the post. Also, Fleet included an infographic that supported the point he was trying to make in the post

Reader engagement is quite low on davefleet.com. The highest amount of comments that I could see on a post was 20, which may mean that Fleet’s readers either do not feel comfortable commenting on posts or they may just view the blog as a purely informational source. Also, I couldn’t find an instance where Fleet actually responded to any of his readers’ comments. This may or may not be hurting the number of readers. According to the Alexa ranking system, davefleet.com is ranked number 462, 165 globally and 311,037 in the United States. In order to gain a higher readership, it may be a good idea for Fleet to post on the blog more consistently. Additionally, it would be beneficial if he were to interact on a more regular basis with his followers.