My webzine,loadedpun, is dedicated to finding out the latest information in online video in all of it's forms. It's an arduous task. Like most bloggers, I follow hundreds of blogs and sites in my RSS feeder, skimming for content that catches my eye and sparks an post idea.
One of the problems with this approach is that I tend to rely too much on just a few sources. How do I find the information that few are writing about? I'll tell you how I get around this.
I use tag searches. In del.icio.us, I use my inbox to search for tags on relevant topics. The inbox queries are then made into a feed which I follow in my RSS reader. These are good for skimming to see what others are tagging in the area I'm interested in. If a particular user name keeps coming up in the results, I know that they are interested in the same things I am and I add them to my inbox search.
Many social bookmarking sites have feeds that are tag specific and you can often find things that don't come up in del.icio.us although they may not be as prolific. For these, I utilize FeedBlendr.
With FeedBlendr, I can combine several tag feeds into one which I can then label with the tag I am searching. I have a feed for "videoblog", for example, made up of tag feeds from magnolia, furl, blink, etc. I can also mix in variables, combining searches for "videoblog" and "vlog".
The best place I've found for doing this type of feed search has been Technorati. Most bloggers tag their posts with Technorati tags so the feed I get comes directly from the people producing the content rather than readers who choose to bookmark and tag it. Think of it as going to the source.
If your site is specific to a particular topic, try out these tips and let me know how they work for you.
-Anne
excellent post
I was about to mail Nick and ask him why this wasnt on the main page until I checked :) Thanks a lot for this post, very informative. I've just started using tag-based feeds, and this should help a lot, especially since I have multiple blogs in different niches to take care of.
Perhaps a tutorial on video blogging would also be useful?
yeh, it is a great post, and
yeh, it is a great post, and a great way to find stuff.
I've long had the delicious inbox thing going, it helps me stay one step ahead of "me too" competitors (well ok, it used to when i had time for anythibg other than performancing heh..)
great post
It's always nice to learn of other bloggers techniques for finding writing inspiration. I've used Technorati a fair bit, but I'm often finding that in some of my niches, many bloggers still don't use tagging of any sort. I've started using del.icio.us more often. And I stick the results RSS feed from both del.icio.us and Technorati into Bloglines, which I just started using 2 days ago.
Nice ...
Nice tips! Del.icio.us inbox is a great tool!
Thanks for the comments, folks
Hmmmm. A tutorial on videoblogging. Interesting proposition!
I'm finding that since I started searching by tags and using RSS, I have a glut of info from which to choose. Nice to see others are onto the tag/RSS thing.
good post
I wrote a similar post a few days back on my < href="http://reblogger.wordpress.com/2006/03/28/tags-keywords-making-a-tag-search-site/">semantic web blog. Basically I was playing with the idea of how to combine tags from different systems to generate truly good search results.
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