There are some real gems among these 21 finalists. Our judges Scott Monty (Ford), Ann Handley (MarketingProfs) and David Meerman Scott (author New Rules of Marketing and PR) are finishing up their reviews of these sites.

The judges

Here are the finalists:

• Altitude
• Blog of Shani Sammons
• BrandBuilder
• Buzz Marketing Daily
• Chris Brogan
• CopyBlogger
• Diva Marketing Blog
• Gray Matter Minute
• Convince & Convert
• Future Buzz
• Jason Keath
• Jeff Bullas Blog
• Kikolani
• Mack Collier
• Mashable
• Mery.net
• Methodical Madness
• Outspoken Media
• Shannon Paul’s Very Official Blog
• Social Media Explorer
• SocialMouths

How We’ll Pick the Winners

1.  Initial qualification:  A blog must have been nominated multiple times by multiple individuals (and be a social media blog).  If someone nominated more than one blog, only the first nomination was counted.

2.  Final winner selection:

• Quality of posts: A qualitative analysis of the content of posts will be examined by our judges.  Educational and discussion-spurring posts are more valuable than self-promoting posts (55% of decision).
• Frequency of posts:  Blogs that write multiple posts per week will score higher.  This is a sign of the blog’s commitment to blogging (15%).
• Reader involvement:  Blogs that have regular comments from readers are another sign of a healthy blog.  In addition, the numbers of nominations for a specific blog play a part in this (15%).
• Blog Ranking: The number of other blogs that link to the blog shows the value of the content (15%).  We’ll use accepted third-party blog ranking systems for this portion of the score.

Congratulations to the finalists!  We will announce the winners here soon!

What do you think about these blogs? Leave your comment below…