Simon Wakeman discovered an interesting post by Steve Rubel about how he finds news and material to blog about - Steve has created what he calls a blog feeder.
Simon notes the potential for this just got greater, as Steve has blogged that Technorati now offers RSS feeds for searches, which means that it’s a whole lot easier to include Technorati searches in a blog feeder (althoug it does not cover all blogs and sometimes takes a long time to index sites). Also spotted this news on i-wisdom and Webfeed Central.
Can I add that it is also possible to use RSS for Google News, Google Scholar and any web site can be monitored using Google Reader (When you find content you want to read on a regular basis, you can subscribe to it, and Google Reader will monitor that website for updates and add them to your reading list). There is an issue with how fast it will update with Google.
As I am now experimenting with Google Reader, it is an interesting option. In addition, of course, I do have my sumarisation software that allows me to load interesting items direct to my blog in summary form which is very quick.
Of course there is a ton of software out there to help you monitor changes on web sites.
If you can't monitor news, blogs and web sites these days you will be at least 20 hours behind the news so I do it and I expect every PR practitioner does it as well.
David, you'll find most PR people don't do it. Pre-web and pre-RSS I was constantly surprised at how few PR people scanned newspapers and magazines as their first task of the day. Today it is easier than ever to scan even more sources, but lots still don't bother. You need to know your industry sector(s) and the poltical/social/economic/technology around it.
ReplyDeleteHi David,
ReplyDeleteThe Google Reader website update feature could be used well in tandem with this news monitoring technique I suggested in a post earlier today - http://www.bivingsreport.com/2006/monitor-your-organizations-news-using-a-tool-thats-searchable-categorized-up-to-the-minute-and-free/
Keep up the great posts!
Alex
Stuart, It was true. In my agency we had early morning meetings that included a daily run down of both news and cuttings - many moons ago.
ReplyDeleteNow, its so east by comparison.
Alex, Thanks for the link. I am a fan of Bloglines which is versatile but there are still sites that do not have RSS and so I have been monitoring them with G plus de.icio.us mashup. But the best is our own (created/adapted open source software). Then I know the whole site has been indexed overnight but it does entail knowing which site to go to and RSS is so much easier.