Today we will look at how you can identify industry experts and their blogs to stay up-to-date on news and developments in your industry.
No matter what business you are in, you need to stay up-to-date on developments in your industry. Social media can help tremendously, especially if you are in a field like foreign affairs or technology where things are constantly in flux. In a case like that, monitoring Twitter for breaking news might be best. For those of you who are looking to stay on top of new developments in their industry or who want advance notice on what the future might look like, blogs can be invaluable.
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If you don’t already do so, today we will talk about how to identify industry experts and follow their blogs. (If you do already follow a number of bloggers, please skip down to the Advanced notes below!)
I want to keep this easy and do-able so we will start with two places to check:
http://www.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en and http://technorati.com
Note, this is not your usual Google search as this will pull up blog results related to your keywords. You can get similar results by searching on google and filtering down to the ‘blog’ results
I know we have at least one photographer in our group and a few image/ fashion consultants. I will use them as examples here.
A photographer could search ‘photography’ but also ‘digital photography’. ‘Portrait photography’ brought up the http://blog.photoshelter.com blog with all sort of helpful links and videos.
An image consultant could search ‘image consulting’ as well as ‘fashion consulting’ or maybe ‘skinny jeans’.
The resulting links could be helpful for both professional development and ideas for posts of your own as well as providing you with content for social sharing. Connecting with these bloggers may also be helpful when YOU are establishing yourself as an industry leader and looking for guest blogging opportunities!
Now check keywords (the same or different, your choice!) on Technorati – see if you find any new or different results! Remember, if you find one you like, bookmark the page, subscribe to their RSS feed if that is an option or sign up for their e-news. You may also want to follow them on Facebook and any other platforms you are active on.
ADVANCED OPTIONS:
Once you have identified some bloggers worth following, be sure to connect socially and to subscribe, if at all possible, to their RSS feed. If you already subscribe to a number of RSS feeds, you may be using Google Reader to manage them. If you have not already heard, Google Reader is no longer going to be supported after July of 2013. NOW is the time to set up a new reader. I am using http://feedly.com – it is free and VERY easy to migrate from Google Reader; they actually do it for you! Here is an article on other alternatives to Google Reader: http://lifehacker.com/5990881/five-best-google-reader-alternatives
For those of you who are not yet familiar with Feed Reader apps, these are programs that pull in new posts from whichever blogs you indicate and compile them in an easy to read format. The best ones make it easy to socially share the posts you like and some will even make suggestions for other people/ posts you might like, given your interests as indicated by the blogs you follow.
OK, so now it’s your turn! Please perform this task when you have a few free minutes and do let us know when you find anything good!
And if you are looking for daily tips and thought leadership around social media, please be sure to follow my Facebook business page at www.facebook.com/lisamariediasdesigns as well as my blog here at www.lisamariediasdesigns.com/blog. Thank you!
