Desiree and Joe give you a little peek behind the curtain on this edition of The Bella Buzz podcast with a glimpse at the news aggregators we use to keep up with all of the goings on in the world of social media and online marketing and how we find topics for our podcast. It is a significant challenge to stay informed in this fast paced field and without the various blogs, podcasts and online tools that are available, it would be much harder to keep up with it all. This is how we do it.
We start with Desiree detailing her iGoogle start page in her Chrome browser with RSS feeds coming into her Google Reader such as Mashable, Chris Pirillo and Chris Brogan. She also watches CNN, LinkedIn and Typepad blogs for information.
The key technology that has allowed the web to build this structure where information can be easily distributed is RSS or Real Simple Syndication. RSS subscriptions can be created for almost any content imaginable, including mentions of you or your company through Google Alerts, so you can stay on top of anything that you might need to respond to right in your Reader.
Besides the blogs listed above we discuss how TechCrunch is a great source of information, and locally we have watched a news aggregator called Regator sprout up and start to really gain some traction in this space.
If you use the Google Reader and don't have a good sense of what blogs you should be following, try the Bundle feature. Here are some great instructions for activating the bundle feature of your reader.
As we talk about the use of an RSS reader it becomes apparent how important a great headline becomes in this format. With lists of hundreds (thousands?) of blogs feeding content into our readers every day the headlines that are catchy and interesting are going to get clicked and read more often than a boring one.
There are a couple of iPhone applications to get when you want to read news articles including the New York Times which is a great app and Desiree recommends Fluent News.
We share that many of the topics for discussion are saved up for future reference as the most relevant timing comes about but as Desiree pointed out on the #BlogChat taking place this past Sunday, a nice mixture of spontaneous and planned out topics makes for a more interesting podcast and blog schedule.
Although it may be Web 1.0 of us to admit, there are actual print magazines we like to keep up with. Desiree reads Inc. Magazine, Fast Company and Entrepreneur while I get excited every time my Wired magazine appears in my mailbox.
Here's our Listener Challenge. In the comments for this post please tells us the blogs, podcasts or individuals that we should be subscribing to in our RSS readers. We want the entire community around The Bella Buzz podcast to help surface some great content that is out there on the web to be discovered.
Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.
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