Good Blogs: How to Find & Keep them

These days, every tom, dick & harry (and even his cousin) are into writing blogs. How then do you differentiate between the flotsam of the internet and genuine blog writers? At the insistence of Yuri, I am writing this article on finding & subscribing to good blogs around the blogosphere!

Searching for good blogs

Tip 1: Ask your friendsNothing beats personal opinion. Google blog search and other related devices for searching for blogs on the internet can only take you so far. For example, I am currently subscribed to two Arsenal related blogs - A Cultured Left Foot (ACLF) and Arseblog, which in my opinion offer damn good reading material for Arsenal fans. However, these two do not appear in the top 20 or so search results. Most of the top results will be populated by popular sites where the "aam junta" go for their daily kicks. However, when you are looking for specific reading which will appeal to the thinker within you, it makes sense to take advice from like minded people. Ask your friends, chat to people about blogs they like (with topics of your interest), ask on orkut/facebook/wherever.

Tip 2: Check wordpress.com / technorati for "happening" blogs of the dayThese sites display a list of the hottest blogs of the moment. There is a reason that a blog article appears on the front page of such sites: popularity. And not just popularity amongst the general masses; popularity because they are good blog articles appreciated by chronic readers! There is a blog I subscribe to: Angry Aussie. The guy has a knack for humour & I picked up the link to his blog via Wordpress. Another pointer for a good blog is the number of comments it has. A blog having multiple comments by different people over a period of time is more likely to have good content as opposed to the blogger interjecting to reply to every other comment.

Tip 3: Once you find a good blog, check for related linksThe best bloggers hunt in packs. Correction, make that "write" in packs. That is not to say that they know each other in real life. Writers write because they have read a lot and cannot control the urge to pen down their own two pennies worth. The very fact that they are writing well suggests that they are reading well. Check the "blogs I visit" section of any good blogger. You are bound to find some wonderful reading stuff over there as well.

Subscribing to good blogs

Tip 4: RSS & SyndicationNow that you have found a blog that regularly updates and has exceptional content, you want to ensure that fresh material uploaded there is made available to you at the moment it gets posted. There are three ways to this: RSS via browser, feed reading software, online syndication providers. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication where your browser automatically downloads latest posts on your "favourite" blogs. These are simple text downloads and will not be as effective if the blogger of your choice has a penchant for the visual media. Nevertheless, these are a very good starting point for you to decide whether a blog is worth reading or not. Syndication softwares download stuff to your PC and the best one around is FeedDemon (available for free download). Similarly, you can go online at google reader / bloglines / etc. to get fresh updates of your favourite blogs.

Tip 5: Sign up for emailSo you are tired of firing up your browser to visit that blog that you like reading the most. Check if there is an option to receive the feed via email. This is a very nifty option that most bloggers like to give to their readers. Nothing as convenient as getting the latest article in your inbox, is there? :)

Improving the content of blogs

Tip 6: Never thought that you could actually improve blogs in the blogosphere?Think again. Writers write because they want people to read. How will there be an impetus for a writer (unless s/he has a compulsive typing disorder) to keep on doling out good reading material? The answer is: feedback. Bouquets & brickbats are typically welcome and the best of bloggers take the time to read each and every comment posted about what they have written. Wherever improvement is warranted, it is usually implemented. So go ahead and type out that witty comment that you thought of. It might just make some one's day! :)

/Radgovin