How do you stay on top of the most-read and hottest internet buzz? Whether you are trying to find a hot blog topic to write about or confirm the status of
Steve Jobs' health, we all have different news sources we consult. News aggegators and trend tracking sites are becoming more important for bloggers to tap into channeling search engine traffic to their blogs. In this post I would like to highlight a few of the tools that I often use to find a breaking story that I can write about. If you use these tools you can improve your blog content, capitalize on hot topics, and bring more traffic to your blog.
Here are a few suggestions for you to scope out the latest and most popular articles and discussions:
1. Google Trends - Updated every hour, Google Trends lists the Top 100 most searched terms. A quick scan of Trends will often bring late-breaking news stories to you before most news sources cover them. If I am writing about a hot topic that is listed in Trends, I will make sure to pull related search terms from the list to use as tags for my post. For example, if you wanted to write about the "
naked skier," you could also include the blog tags "skier suffers exposure," "vail skier," and "skier upside down" to increase your Google search traffic to your blog.
2. Alltop - Includes top news stories online, most Tweet links, the hottest news stories from major newspapers and publications, and top selling iTunes items. Knowing which blogs, traditional news sources, and bookmarking tools your blog readers use will help a lot. If you knew that your readers liked to bookmark with Digg, you could check which stories Digg users were most saving. Maybe your readers are big YouTube users; by looking at the hottest YouTube videos you might be able to get some ideas of the content your readers are looking for.
Popurls is also a good choice. This site tracks a lot of the same things as Alltop, but includes more web sites and blogs. I like the format of Popurls because you can expand lists to see more of the top results.
3. Fark - This site collects ridiculous, strange, and unbelievable news headlines from around the world, marking each with tags such as "amusing," "strange," "stupid," and "obvious." Fark's FAQ says it best: "
Fark is what fills space when mass media runs out of news. Fark is supposed to look like news... but it's not news. It's Fark." I can often find tech news (under the "Geek" tab) that can easily be turned into an eye catching blog headline or topic. Number counts next to each headline indicated which are most popular.
Which aggregating news services and tools do you use?
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1. Google Trends - Updated every hour, Google Trends lists the Top 100 most searched terms. A quick scan of Trends will often bring late-breaking news stories to you before most news sources cover them. If I am writing about a hot topic that is listed in Trends, I will make sure to pull related search terms from the list to use as tags for my post. For example, if you wanted to write about the "naked skier," you could also include the blog tags "skier suffers exposure," "vail skier," and "skier upside down" to increase your Google search traffic to your blog.
2. Alltop - Includes top news stories online, most Tweet links, the hottest news stories from major newspapers and publications, and top selling iTunes items. Knowing which blogs, traditional news sources, and bookmarking tools your blog readers use will help a lot. If you knew that your readers liked to bookmark with Digg, you could check which stories Digg users were most saving. Maybe your readers are big YouTube users; by looking at the hottest YouTube videos you might be able to get some ideas of the content your readers are looking for. Popurls is also a good choice. This site tracks a lot of the same things as Alltop, but includes more web sites and blogs. I like the format of Popurls because you can expand lists to see more of the top results.
3. Fark - This site collects ridiculous, strange, and unbelievable news headlines from around the world, marking each with tags such as "amusing," "strange," "stupid," and "obvious." Fark's FAQ says it best: "Fark is what fills space when mass media runs out of news. Fark is supposed to look like news... but it's not news. It's Fark." I can often find tech news (under the "Geek" tab) that can easily be turned into an eye catching blog headline or topic. Number counts next to each headline indicated which are most popular.