Guest Post: Graham Holliday, Journalist & Blogger, Shares His Top Blog Research Tools

Graham Holliday is a journalist and publisher of Noodle Pie and Stillbop blogs. Here is his answer to my question, how do you keep up with all the information coming at you from every direction?

I take the old school blog tool approach. I use a pair of feet, pen and paper, a camera, a cameraphone and a Powerbook.

I don't use any geekery for my Saigon streetfood blog, noodlepie. Simply put, if I don't pound the pavements I can't blog. Work is different. Particularly some of the articles I write about new media. Likewise, how I track people talking about my blogs and work. Here's the late adopter-non-geek approach I take,

RSS - I use NetNewsWire Lite. I subscribe to between 100 and 200 feeds at any given time. I have ongoing favourites, but I prune and allow for new growth regularly. When I'm working on a story I subscribe to the feeds of relevant keywords in Technorati Watchlists.

To keep track of who's talking about my own blogs, noodlepie and stillbop, I subscribe to those keywords in Technorati. When a story of mine is published I add a Technorati watchlist for the url of the story. Like this one. Incredibly useful for following up with readers. Lastly I subscribe to keyword feeds from Flickr.

Bookmarking - Del.icio.us is excellent for information related to stories I'm working on. If I bookmark something I can see who else is bookmarking. Follow other bookmarkers and (potentially) you'll find nice wee nuggets. Them's the theory. I used it on the upyourbudget story. Del.icio.us is also a fabulous example of how a crap name and crap url does not hinder a great idea.

Statistics - I use StatCounter because I like to keep a minimal look on my blogs and StatCounter is invisible to readers. It's not perfect, but it's useful to see where folk are coming from. I also publish my stats on Flickr for no reason apart from the fact I can.

Email Alerts - I subscribe to keywords relevant to feature stories, plus my name, my blogs etc. with Google Alerts. You receive an email whenever something pops up. Easy. Sign up and forget about it.

Notetaking - I use Stickies. It's always open, for notes, pasting text, urls etc.

Tea - This post and 92% of my blogging is fuelled by Phuc Long's Dragon Pearl tea.

Related What's Next Blog posts:
How I Keep Up With It All: My Top Blog Research Tools
Guest Post: Bob Cox, Media Bloggers Assoc President's Top Blog Research Tools
Top Bloggers Share Their Favorite Research Tools

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