The Organ Grinder’s Monkey

This is Part 3 of my field test of the Blogger’s Guide to SEO. During this series, I’ll be starting at the beginning of this guide and working my way down, trying out the advice (or noting why I’m not going to). In the end, my hope is to wind up with a more optimized blog while demonstrating the why’s and how’s of blog SEO.

Todays tip is all about keeping your ear to the ground, your eyes on the horizon and your radar pinging. In short, it’s about how to keep tabs on what’s happening in the world and your competition are up to.

Advice: Use sites such as TailRank, Digg, YouTube’s top videos listings to keep on top of what’s happening in the world (so you can write about it, of course).

They also recommend using Bloglines, Technorati and Google Blog Search to find, subscribe to and keep track of what your competition are up to, as well as what’s being said about you. Sneaky, sneaky.

Monkey Status: Not as plugged in as I should be, but making progress. To get up to speed on this tip, I need to get busy cleaning out and keeping up with my Google Reader inbox. It also wouldn’t hurt for me to set up a few more Google Alerts (just to make sure I’m not missing out on any juicy gossip about myself or my blogs), and maybe make an effort to be a little more proactive when it comes to keeping up with bloggers in related topics.

Comments: It’s lame being the last person on the bus to realize that something is happening. It’s even lamer being the last blogger on earth to be pointing to something. Keeping up with popular meme-tracking sites helps you stay on top of what’s hot, what’s not and what’s going down when you’re not around.

This is a short section, so I’ll make this message short: If you’re going to be blogging, you have to keep up with what’s going on in the blogosphere and the world at large. Otherwise, you’re just typing up yesterday’s news.

But there’s so much out there - so many ways to keep in touch and on top of things - where do you start and how do you know which one to get started with? Allow me to share a few of my own favorites - maybe you’ll find some useful ideas there.

Welcome To My Lair…er, Home, Mr. Bond

Personally, I’m fond of PopUrls, which is basically a meta-aggregator page of other aggregator and meme tracking sites. It serves up hundreds of the most recent/popular links from dozens of different sources, including top blogs, news sources and “popular links” sites like Del.icio.us and Digg, video and podcast sites like YouTube, iFilm and Odeo, the latest photos on Flickr, recent Twitters from the public feed and much, much more.

I like to think of it as my evil overlord Master Control Panel, from which I can get a quick overview of the world that lies at my fingertips in one reasonably fast visit.

I have also set up Google Alerts on my name (and I should create a few for my blog, as well), which send me email whenever my name turns up on Google. It’s basically automated ego-surfing. But it’s damned useful for finding out who’s talking about me and where, as well as for getting a feel for the range of available pr0n, spam and splog sites where my content has been ripped off to, which is both an occupational hazard and a reliable source of morning entertainment (I am sooo rocking the bondage world with my smokin’ hot self-help articles, yo! W00t!).

Finally, I have a Google Reader account, through which I subscribe to a hefty handful of marketing, blogging and writing blogs. And this is where I fall down on the job. Whereas I usually make a round of PopUrls most nights, I continually forget to check my Google Reader, even though if I cleared it out daily it probably wouldn’t take more than half an hour to skim that day’s haul. As a result, I have something like 350 unread items sitting in my inbox and a constant, burning sense of guilt in my gut. Yes, folks, I’ve got Internet heartburn, caused by having undigested bits of infomatter lodged in my RSS stream. Urp.

So yeah, I could be doing better. But some people don’t bother doing a cursory sweep of the web’s top-level content at all.

Just Because It’s Fun Doesn’t Mean It’s Not Work, Too

The fact is, it’s hard enough coming up with something to write about every day if you stay up to date. So why would someone cripple themselves by dropping out of the loop altogether?

Some people resist because they feel like it’s a waste of time, nothing more than glorified web surfing that’s keeping them from doing their real work. But if you are blogging as part of your business (and especially if blogging is your business), this meme-tracking stuff is your work. Or at least part of it, anyway.

Now this isn’t an excuse to go bury your head in Fark and not come up for air until you run out of midget pr0n Photoshoppery. Unless you blog about Photoshop techniques. Or midget pr0n.

But keeping up with A) what’s happening today, and B) what your competitors are up to, is as vital to your business and your blog as reading one or more trade journals is to practitioners in other fields.

So, where are you on this subject? How much time do you spend keeping up with the news in your field, or just current events in general? Where do you have “holes” in your coverage, and what can you do to plug them? Let me know what your favorite mem-tracking or ego-surfing tool is. I’d love to see where you guys get your great ideas from.

blog, BoingBoing, current events, digg, Google Alerts, Google Reader, meme, news, popular links, SEO, TailRank, Technorati, youtube

Tags: Blogs and Blogging //