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Top Bloggers Share Their Favorite Research Tools

The other day, I posted a few of the top tools I use to keep up with the massive flow of information I follow for this blog and my work in general. Then I asked a bunch of top bloggers to share their tools with me. What we have in common: we all use Technorati, Google Alerts, and Firefox. And all of us read online newsletters and follow forums and lists on topics of interest. There also are a number interesting tools that are new to me and maybe also to you. I'll run these posts over the next week or so, and welcome your additions.

Doc Searls, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and Sr. Editor, Linux Journal:

#1: I subscribe to keyword searches at Technorati and through an aggregator that also sees searches from PubSub, Google Blogsearch, Blogpulse and IceRocket. Mostly because I follow subjects more than people.

#2: I don't subscribe to specific blogs. Sometimes I'll look at my blogroll (which is full of errors and rot, hate to say). Sometimes I look at my "favorites" at Technorati, but not much.

#3: Email. People send me stuff.

#4: Newspapers and magazines. Lots of offline goodies there, requiring work to find online.

Besides that, I just surf around, basically.

Steve Hall, publisher of adrants

My list is very similar to yours:

Bloglines
Technorati
Digg

But, oddly, I also get a lot of my info from reader tips and press releases. I subscribe to industry email newsletters too, and participate in the Adrants forum.

Shel Horowitz , publisher of Principled Profit blog and creator of the Business Ethics pledge (which we've taken):

158 RSS feeds! My god!

I closely monitor several Internet discussion lists, read dozens of e-newsletters, have lots of friends who send me interesting clips, and occasionally open my Google News feeds and follow the links. But I'm not doing well at keeping up and often trash much e-mail unread.

More to come... some as guest posts. Watch for them.

Please share your tools with us.

Categories: B.L. Ochman, Blogging and Moblogging, Case Studies, Internet strategy, Resources, Thought Leaders, Top Bloggers Essential Research Tools

BL Ochman | Apr 14 06 12:14 | TrackBack (2)

Comments

Another tool to have in the bag is http://del.icio.us/. Use it for finding popular bookmarks on any subject (many are blog posts). Look at the bookmarks of the screen names listed early in the posting history. There’s something to be said for the people who link to the web pages that eventually become very popular.

Posted by: Stephen Turcotte at April 14, 2006 2:38 PM

I subscribe to 257 RSS feeds, but thoroughly follow about 100. Omea Reader lets me sort them in views so that I can look at the only blogs that apply to the blog I am writing for. I force myself to "mark unread" anything I haven't reviewed by the end of the day - otherwise I'd go nuts. I also use Omea to clip information when I see it.

CoComment to track my comments on blogs - a little buggy, but I couldn't track conversations without them.

Technorati and Del.icio.us, of course.

Believe it or, an open text document. When I'm aggregating information on a certain topic I cut and paste quotes and URLs to one text document for easy access as I'm actually writing the article.

Posted by: Diane Ensey at April 14, 2006 8:24 PM

And here's a useful list of some other tools which could be worth a look.

http://tinyurl.com/l7d7c

I forgot to mention Ecto which I've tried and really liked, but had trouble purchasing online. Think it could be especially useful for those with multiple blogs...

Posted by: Graham at April 14, 2006 11:41 PM

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Learning from what's in the tool box of top bloggers from SCOUT - Corporate Blogging
We're living in an age of information overload. Knowing how to sift through the streams of information for gold nuggets without breaking a back is the skill that we all need to learn and develop. No doubt, the next generation... [Read More]

Tracked on April 14, 2006 4:35 PM

Top Blog Research Tools from WebMetricsGuru
I was reading some very good posts on WhatsNextBlog, whose B.L. Ochman I've interviewed last month at SESNY06. Most of the bloggers are using a variation of the same technique, including Doc Searls (I'm a subscriber to his RSS Feed).... [Read More]

Tracked on April 14, 2006 7:27 PM

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About BL Ochman

Blogger, social media strategy consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and sought-after corporate speaker B.L. Ochman heads the creative team of whatsnextonline.com. She also publishes the Ethics Crisis blog for SRF Global Translations

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