3 Places to Find The Hottest Blog Topics

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?

How Many People Actually Use Twitter?

Eric Berlin poses a good question here. The makers of this video make it pretty apparent that, while twitter has grown “exponentially” according to Darren Rowse, this random sample society still doesn’t tweet and they’re letting you know that.



What can you do about it?
The most successful social networking platforms come by hands-on learning. You can talk about it to a person until you’re blue in the face, but the first step to conversion is embracing (take in with the mind) the technology; second step, spend hours of time navigating the device. I’ve been reading Twitter conversion articles lately and the writers themselves say they had to give Twitter a second look after an earlier in the year sign-up kept them from exploring Twitter any further.

I believe Twitter will have a tipping point eventually… much like Facebook. If you were to replace “Facebook” with “Twitter” in this street questionnaire, I guarantee you that everyone would know Facebook because it’s a global phenomenon that has stuck. I’m forever enslaved.

Contest Time
If you’re one of those people enslaved by Twitter, you are eligible to participate in this contest. Count how many people in this video don’t know what Twitter is, report it back to @axiompr and Axiom will send your favorite candy to you. Please tweet “XX from Brazil don’t know Twitter.” Remember, you have to be the first person to do it!

Thanks to the makers of this video and Wii for giving vibrancy to gaming.

Baby Step with Bill Murray

Please do not come into work after a long holiday break and talk about how many days left until the next break. Please do not count the number of hours until the weekend.

I believe we should all be doing something we love, something we can be passionate about. There are a lot of people who should not keep the jobs they have. I understand that we all have bills to pay and duties to not act irresponsibly, but if you don't like your job or where you are at (and are not moving towards any personal goals), there is something wrong. Take action.

Please watch this clip from Bill Murray's What About Bob?


Here are 3 Baby Steps you can take:

1. Don't let false excuses imprison you. I do not buy into many of the excuses that I often hear - the economy is bad, its too hard, I don't have time to look for something else. Poor excuses. And many of them are only in your head. There are many benefits to starting a business during a down time and some of the best businesses were started during recessions. Don't go into a recession yourself.

2. "Set small, reasonable goals, one day at a time." Rome was not built in a day. Spend 1 hour a day after your normal work day to get things done. Reconnect with one old friend/colleague/family member each week and let them know what you are up to (maybe they have some ideas or job leads). Have one meaningful conversation a week on Twitter that builds a strategic relationship. Comment on one new blog. Set up a structured way to learn a new skill that could be added to your resume. Each day holds the opportunity for you to make a small baby step in the right direction.

3. "Don't think about what you have to do to get out of the building, think about what you have to do to get out of the office." I get overwhelmed sometimes when I try to make everything happen at once. I start playing the "what if" game and overwhelming myself with every task all at once. Instead of focusing on each step, I wonder how things will get completed and give up before it even starts. There is no way to predict where our future will take us. All we can do is take the baby steps towards what we think it may be. As we move along, our next step should become apparent when we need to take it.

Please do not do nothing. Baby steps towards the future.

Social Media Marketing Is Simple

Many are still afraid of social media. There are a lot of terms and ideas floating around that confuse people and can even make them panic. I want to start the new year off right by proposing an idea that sounds pretty simple:

The goal of social media marketing is the same as traditional media marketing - to spread ideas through word of mouth.

When working in the social media world (obviously not all social media should be used for marketing), the aim is to get people to talk about your product or brand. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other social media platforms allow people to share ideas quickly. People talk about their interests and hobbies, which often include brands and products. Using social media for marketing aims to tap into the rich veins of discussion that will produce buzz and excitement around a brand.

The tools may be different, but most of the goals are very much the same:

• Make a great (good is not good) product that can stand on its own without spin that satisfies a consumer need.
  
• Customers will get excited and tell their friends about the product.
• Marketing can help, but real success comes through viral word of mouth a.k.a. the best and most desired form of marketing.

Yes, I am trying to simplify social media a bit for those still gripping to understand. Good ideas spread. Goal of social media marketing = word of mouth. Is this too simplified?

The Fall of Twitter?

MySpace was fun, then the spam came.

Facebook was great, then the spam came.

Twitter is great, and now the spam is here.

In order for a community to flourish it must have members. With members comes momentum and with momentum come the stupid people. This is the tricky part about preventing spam in a user-generated content community; there is no way to keep out the trouble makers without limiting the community's potential for everyone. Charge for the service and some people are left out (I would have to reconsider using Facebook if they charged). Before you knew what Twitter was or how it worked, would you have paid to use it? I did not understand Twitter at first until I used it a while then realized the value. On top of everything else, even if a community charged its users, this still would not guarantee the safety of a spam-free environment.

I do not think there is an easy fix for spam on social networks. We should probably get used to a certain degree of it. While spammers will get smarter and smarter, the only defenses we have are better anti-spam education, better spam filters on the communities, and harsh punishment when possible. I personally think that Twitter has done a good job so far to let people know about DM spam. Hopefully the developers have taken a few lessons from MySpace and the others that have lost control of the problem.