Blog Tracking – Bloglines

The best way to begin blogging is to read other blogs. Reading blogs is the listening part of the conversation. It will also help you know what your customers/prospects are talking about – not to mention that it’ll make you a better blogger.

One of the easiest ways to get started is with Bloglines. Because it’s an web-based tool, you can access your feeds from any computer – and it’s free.

I use stand-alone apps for news and business, but for IowaBlogs.Net, I track Iowa Blogs with Bloglines.

By typing in the URL of the blog, Bloglines will automatically detect the feed. You can quickly subscribe and add it to your list.

When you visit your Bloglines page, any site that has been updated since your last visit will appear in bold with the number of new posts in parenthesis. You can read either partial or full feeds, depending on how the author has set that up.

You can also search for blogs, using the search in the upper right corner. Just type in the keywords or phrases and quickly subscribe to the blogs that appear. You can also subscribe to the search so you don’t have to keep repeating that step.

Bloglines makes it easy to follow conversations that are important to you. You can also find out who else thinks like you do and what they’re reading – and even find related feeds.

Keep your bookmarks clean and your ear to the ground. Next up: SharpReader.

Technorati Tags: Bloglines, Feeds, Blog Monitoring, Business Research

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I hear it from a lot of business owners: “Where is the ROI with all this Social Media?“ If this is a question you ask yourself, maybe we should work together a bit more. We can work together solo, or via a professional learning community. Find and increase your ROI. There is a “there” there.