This post is an excerpt from the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook
I’m often asked by friends, family and readers how I spend my time on an average day of blogging.
Those asking are often surprised to hear that while ‘writing‘ is one definitely one activity that I do a fair bit of that there are quite a number of other activities that take up quite a bit of my focus.
One such important activity that I spend considerable time on as a blogger is ‘watching’, ‘monitoring’, ‘listening to’ and ‘reading’ what others are writing on their blogs or social media accounts.
Reasons to Be Aware of What Others are Talking About in Your Niche
There are quite a few reasons that bloggers monitor what’s being said on other blogs and in the news on certain topics. These include:
1. Ideas for Posts – one of the main challenges that bloggers face at different times is running out of things to blog about. Keeping abreast of what others are writing about gives you an almost unlimited supply of ideas and helps you to keep your posts on topic with what is buzzing in your niche at any given point of time.
2. Awareness of Breaking News – this is more relevant for some niches than others but sometimes knowing when a story is breaking in your industry can be very important. Being unaware of such stories can make your blog look out of touch to readers wanting to know the latest.
3. Profile Building and Perceived Expertise – bloggers who are obviously aware of what else is happening in their niche are often seen as experts and authorities in their industry. I know of a number of bloggers and twitter users who’ve built profiles for themselves simply by having their finger on the pulse of their niche and linking to interesting and useful content on other sites.
4. Networking – using some of the ‘alert’ tools below enables you to know who is talking about issues relevant to your niche within a short time of them doing so. This enables you to make connections and build relationships with these people.
5. Reputation Management – knowing quickly when others are talking about you, your company, your brands and your blog is valuable information as it enables you to not only build relationships with those who are saying positive things about you but also manage negative talk.
There are other reasons to be aware of what people are saying in your niche – but lets move on to some of the ‘how to do it’.
Today your task is to set up a variety of ‘alerts’ or ‘watch lists’ for your blog’s niche.
There are many services around to help you keep track of what people are writing. I’d love you to suggest those that you use in comments below – but here are a handful that I regularly use:
- Google News and Blog Alerts – Google’s alerts will show you any mention of keywords in only ‘news’ sources (for example newspapers), on blogs, in videos, on the ‘web’ or even in their ‘groups’. You can choose to be alerted about different categories or for them all. It gives you the opportunity to get alerts via an email or RSS feed at different intervals.
- Technorati Watchlists – Very similar to Google Alerts as it’ll feed you mentions of certain words on blogs.
- Twitter Alerts – there are a lot of tools to help you monitor what is being said on Twitter. Some are built into twitter clients (for example TweetDeck has a great one) but others include Monitter (allows live monitoring but also gives you an RSS feed for words), Twendz, Twitter’s Search (you can set up an RSS feed for any keyword) and Twitter Hawk (a paid service that allows you not only to monitor but respond to tweets on keywords). Again, there are many others that you can use – feel free to suggest others below.
As mentioned above – there are many tools around to do this type of monitoring. The key is to find one or two that fit with your style and rhythm of blogging and to regularly check them.
Types of ‘alerts’ to set up:
Lastly – let me outline a few types of alerts to set up. These are the two that I most commonly set up:
1. Industry Words – these are words relevant to your blog’s niche. For example if you blog about the wedding industry you might like to monitor words like ‘wedding dress’. If you blog about Britney Spears – you’ll want to be watching for any use of her name. The key is to find keywords that highlight when stories are breaking about your industry but ones that don’t overwhelm you with results.
2. Vanity Alerts – these are keywords that are specifically relevant to you. They include your personal name, your blog’s name, company name, brand names and even URLs.
Warning – Monitor in Moderation
Let me finish with a word of warning. Don’t become obsessed with monitoring what OTHERS are saying.
While I do believe it can significantly enhance a blog to be aware of what others are doing online in that space – it can also become a distraction (if not an obsession). The key with all tasks of blogging is to do them in a balanced way. Set up some ‘alerts’ today – keep an eye upon them – but don’t forget to actually do some writing yourself instead of just watching what others write!
Update: See what others are saying at the Day 10 – Set up Alerts to Monitor Your Blogs Niche forum thread!
Want More?This task is a sample of one of the tasks in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Workbook – a downloadable resource designed to reinvigorate and revitalize blogs. Join over 14,000 other bloggers and Get your Copy Today. |
How cool! I just singed up and began using HitTail to monitor the keyword activity to my blog this past weekend. It has already helped me by giving me suggestions for topics to write about. Now I think I need to go today and set up some of these alerts so I can keep better tabs on the EduBlog community.
I’ve honestly never heard this idea recommended. Thanks!
Thanks Darren — I had the google alerts (to many of them so i hooked them into my RSS feed) but the twitter alerts and new Technorati Watchlists is new to me.
Time to go learn more new stuff. But moderation really is the watchword.
I have been using Google Alerts for some time. One idea I got from this post is to add some of my tags and categories, along with important keywords, from my posts and track those. This can help build depth in certain areas that I cover, as well as provide possible link out destinations.
One thing that I recommend is to create a separate folder for alerts and filter them into it so they don’t appear in your inbox. In Gmail, you simply create a label and then a filter that has Google Alerts assigned to that label automatically and also has them skip the inbox. If you don’t do this, you can overwhelm your inbox pretty quickly.
This is an absolutely fantastic idea. I need to do a much better job at breaking financial news on my blog, especially those which relate to getting out of debt.
I do a decent job of following the other blogs and networking, but could benefit greatly, especially on twitter, from being quicker to talk about news items!
What an amazing coincidence. I was just thinking about how I need to spend more time looking at OTHER bloggers’ writing so I can stay up-to-date on what’s going on in my niche. I thought of you, Darren, and how you do this so well. So I popped over to PB and BAM! Great post! Eric
I agree with you. Setting up alerts is profitable for any blogger since it helps get in touch with the latest news, and this is where viral -memes- originate from.
I’ve already started doing this for my wedding blog, but to be hoest I need to modify the, and the content coming back is not always worthwhile.
Thanks for the kick in the ass to get this done
I’m using Google Alert and technorati regularly however I didn’t know about the ones on twitter (as I’m fairly new to it), so I really appreciate the links!
Darren,
I use google alerts to see what “world” is talking about me
even alerts help me to write some good articles on the latest news.
Yes it works well for me
thanks
Hey, great idea. I’ve had a Google Alert for my name for a while, but I hadn’t though much about using it to find content.
I guess if you tried to monitor the wrong keywords though you might find it easy to get buried under a landslide of messages, so moderation would be key.
Thank you so much for running this challenge. It’s really helping me get my blog heading in the right direction.
I was trying to figure out what I am going to write next in my blog. This is a good hack. great!!!
Excellent tip Darren,
I have been using Google alert some time now, but never thought of using it this way,
I like your suggestion Bradford Shimp tracking tags and categories will surely help link to useful and relevant post.
Thanks Darren, this is all very new to me. I’m off to get myself all set up and organised – whoever thought blogging was just about writing about your cat is totally off the money!
I’m actually really enjoying the time I’m spending doing all of these activities and getting to know other food bloggers (and other bloggers generally).
So thanks again – even if my blog traffic comes to a giant screaming halt tomorrow I’ve discovered some fabulous websites and even better people.
I haven’t been really active using google alerts. Really should try out some of the tips you listed.
I have used Google Alerts in my reader for a good while. I have also had to revamp what I watch for until I found the best terms. I was going way to broad and had way to many returns.
I also use a search in Tweetdeck to watch twitter.
I am one that will spend hours reading and forget to write. I have so many notes that I should probably take some of them and make them into post.
This is a great idea, and I glanced at Google alerts once, but for some reason, didn’t set any up.
I have a regular morning routine of checking RSS feeds, so I’ve set up some alerts as feeds and just put them in my feed reader, and I’ll check it every morning.
Like the last ‘warning’ very much. It is so easy to get trapped!
Brilliant.
Watching and monitoring what is happening and what people have to say in your field of interest is fun. It is the best way I get to engage with other people in my field of interest.
As for alerts, very cool idea – I have one on my blog site name – ver interesting. But I did not know it’s use could be extended like you have detailed.
tks
Phill
Wow talk about dedication to their work — few people can match Darren’s simple to follow strategies. This is but a tiny example of this man’s ability. One can only wonder if he is forced to work more efficiently on orders from his wife! :)
I say that jokingly, but anyone who spends a lot of time online (including myself) is taking heat from the little woman. Whatever you do, never ever miss her birthday or any other occasions these strange creatures adore!
John Barremore
Houston, TX USA
Didn’t know about Google Alerts at all, will have to check it out.
Till now I traced about queries for my blgo through Google alerts,I have not yet knwon how to get info of other blogs going ,I will appley for google alerts for what other blgos are doing
Great piece of advice. I have used “Google Alerts” for years on my own name (luckily it is unique… although I do get things for pop star “Sandy Thom, singer” quite often). Also for the titles of my books, and then on key phases and causes that I care about.
I am surprised how few people still know about “Google Alerts”. If you are reading this post, do not just “think about it”…. DO IT.
thom
http://www.thomsinger.blogspot.com
I’ve had a few Google Alerts for quite some time. I originally had one with my name so that I could monitor when something with my byline appeared on the Web (and as part of an effort to guard against unauthorized use of my work). Over time, I’ve added a few other terms to monitor my topic, clients I’ve worked with and major subjects I cover.
I’ve used google alerts for quite some time now, but thanks for sharing monitter and twendz. I think twendz will fit me better, but I can definitely see how it can be obsessive. Since I work with restaurants often, I can see how it would open me up to some new marketing ideas.
Great idea, this is something I actually haven’t been doing yet. Google reader is always a bit slow in letting me know when some story hits the blogosphere. This is the way to do things.
Learning, learning. Always learning something new here. I’ve now set up Google Alerts (industry and vanity). It’s all helping to make me a better blogger, and to make http://mysquiggles.com a better blog for mums!
This is beginning to become almost depressing in that there is so much I am being taught because I know so very little about the services available out there :-(
The sunny, flip side of the coin is that being here is teaching me so much that it is more than worth participating in this tutorial :-)
http://kevincumbria.wordpress.com
Great idea! Thanks.
I know, why not just regurgitate the same old posts, over and over and over and over again? Come on Darren, come up with something original, please! You’re turning into John Chow!
This is exactly the reason why I started using twitter, Digg, Delicious, facebook and technorati..
To get on top of things and act fast on any new developments.
The advice in this post will certainly further that development and help me get on top even more.
That’s MY mountain… !
I’ve never used Google Alerts. It looks like it’s about time to start.
I’ve primarily focused on other blogs and twitter – good sources, but I’m missing a HUGE part of the picture.
Google to the rescue once again…
My is a tech and wordpress theme blog, so its very important for me to keep track of all the latest updates and post about it on my blog.
My strategy is different, I have almost all the big fish feeds in my feeddemon (RSS reader), and I keep track of that.
Other effective strategy is using Twitter, I added all the possible big names in my twitter list and I try my best to keep track of all the updates…
Thanks for the great information. I use Tweet Deck but haven’t really explored the keyword search monitoring function. I’m definitely going to check out the Google alerts.
I’ve been using Google Alerts for awhile but not very effectively (i was using vague words).
Thanks for the ideas, I’ll be adding Technorati’s Watchlists today.
This is PERFECT! Thank you for this Darren. My personal blogging task for today was consolidating all of the blogs I visit into Google Reader. As it is, it’s very time consuming traveling from one blog to the next trying to see if anything new has been posted. I decided yesterday that getting feeds in my email was a little too overwhelming to track with all of my other emails. So this task is right in line, but more well defined, with what I wanted to do.
Currently I have Tweetdeck, but have not been using it that much. I really didn’t understand the full functionality of it. Thanks for the wonderful tips.
I have a Vanity Folder setup in my Google Reader for both my name and my blog’s name. It’s interesting to see what people say about you. (here a link to an explanation of how i did it in case u are interested)
I will try GA and Twitter for keywords in my niche and see how it goes.
On the other hand, a good source of info is to be subscribed to as many blog sin your niche as you can. that will give you an insight of what the others are talking about.
Thanks, Darren, I look forward to each new lesson that will be in my “inbox” each day.
I’ve been using google alerts, to help manage the large number of them that are coming in, I’ve set up folders and mail/message filters to sort them as they come into the inbox.
Now to get to some blogging.
Have a great day,
Claudia L. Meydrech, CN
What a great tip! I had an alert for links back to me, but I never though about using it for content.
Excellent tip Darren,
In fact I have been using Google Alerts for over 2 years or so. And I would like to highlight one other benefit of using Google Alert:
When you create an alert with your blog’s name e.g. Knowliz in my case. Whenever there is any mention of Knowliz anywhere on the web, I get an alert.
What it does basically, tells me who is blogging about my blog, who is using my content and at the same time who is just stealing your content.
I have got so many people scrapping content from my articles and thankfully with Technorati and Google Alert I got to know about them. Sometimes I was even successful to get the scrapped articles removed from other people blogs.
This is definitely a MUST to use Google Alert and Technorati. I haven’t used Twitter Alerts yet. Thanks to you for showing me that option as well.
Thanks
Anurag Bansal
@knowliz
I also use http://www.TweetBeep.com & http://www.TweetLater.com for twitter alerts.
For full scale corporate social media tracking, check out http://www.Techrigy.com
Thanks Darren – I get google alert sent to my RSS so I can track things easily.
I’ve also faced my fear of Twitter and have started using it a little. Downloading Tweetdeck was one of the best things I did.
I’m now going to browse some of the other tools you suggested and see if there is anything else that could help me.
I love your final point – maintaining balance is so important; otherwise we can be online 24/7 and never switch off.
Thanks for another fantastic day on the challenge!
i use Tweetdecks to monitor things and just now just trying out Google Alerts. Thanks Darren for this tip.wow,ive been learning a lot of things from Darren and it feels good!!
I can’t believe I didn’t know about this. Thanks for the tip!
Google Alerts is a great way to keep an eye on what is being mentioned and getting it sent straight to your email address.
Another thing I’ve done in the past is to setup Google News, Google Blogs, Technorati etc. searches. Any search you do comes with an RSS feed which you can easily add to your reader or incorporate into a page on your blog to monitor mentions.
I did use Google Alert before but didn’t know the power of this tool, so I stopped using it. Seems that I’ve to use it again. Thanks for telling us about this Darren! :)
Regards,
Lee
I started using these tools you suggest in Google Alerts and Twitter (through Tweetdeck) about 6 months ago and all the benefits you point out are genuine. It certainly has helped me stay on the cutting edge of my niche (church marketing).
What about using Alltop? Other mashables? Customizing Alltop? or similar?
While the alerts do help, do you ever change your post after you’ve published it to catch a trend you are seeing, or fix something like your second paragraph, or do you leave your posts alone?
Perfect, another useful tool.. keeping updated with what is going on around your niche is really very important at the same time it’s a great way of getting at least idea on what to post next.
I’ve been using Google Alerts for awhile and it is a great way to manage a lot of information. I am going to do some fine tuning based on your suggestions too. I haven’t used Technorati or Twitter much so today I’ll add Technorati.
I am a few weeks away from really marketing my blog – I have some content I want up first – and then I’ll dive into Twitter and all the stuff that goes along with it!
Thanks Darren – great stuff, again!