How to create a backlog of knowledge

I am a firm believer in having a knowledge channel that you can go to for ideas and inspiration – for me, that channel is my Outlook RSS feed. I have over 40 blogs that I subscribe to and read on a daily basis. They range from business marketing and social media writers to sites good for a morning laugh. A few of my favorites are on my recommended reading list. There are many more that I read, but I only add them to the sidebar once I have been reading them for more than a month and feel that they are worth something to my readers. Obviously that list is always growing…

Anyway, while browsing the current posts from the blogs I subscribe to, I noticed one from Ari Herzog. He shared how he adds one new blog to his collection every day. I do the same thing, just never thought about telling people how I did it. But, I liked reading about how he did, so I figured I would share how I add to my knowledge base.

1. Use StumbleUpon. The tool bar for firefox is fabulous (don’t know about the one for IE), all I have to do is click the ‘stumble’ button, and a new website pops up in whichever category I have selected at the moment. More often than not it is a blog, since most of my categories are writing, blogging, photography or creativity related. You can then vote whether you like the page or not and it learns what you like and therefore the results get better the more you use it.

2. Twitter. I have twitter searches running for many different terms, plus all of my great followers…which leads me to finding a lot of great articles. Once I have clicked on an article, if I like it, I will browse the rest of the blog. If I find at least 4 or 5 interesting articles right away, I will subscribe to it. There is no harm in testing a blog for a few weeks, if it stops being interesting, I can just remove it.

3. Searching Technorati. Simply enter a key term or phrase that you want, and presto…a bunch of great new blogs to check out!

4. Blogroll’s of blogs I already read. I have found some of the most interesting blogs through the blogrolls on sites that I already love. Although I do get all my articles via a feedreader, I try to visit each actual site once a week…see if there are updates/changes to the site, etc. Most of the people I read have a list of other writers they like. I usually find at least 1 new blog to read each week this way.

How do you find new blogs to read? Do you constantly add new ones or read the same group?

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Related posts:

1. Is creativity better shared?
2. How to create a blog management calendar in 10 minutes
3. How do I create blog categories?