ConverStations: Putting Your Ear to the Blogosphere

Ready to launch a blog for your company? What's the first step? Listening. Before you start to publish a blog, put your ear to the blogosphere.

If you believe, as I do, that blogging is a conversational tool - it's important that you practice listening first. Before you begin publishing, I encourage you to get familiar with a few other tools.

- A Feed Aggregator: I prefer GreatNews, a stand-alone tool which allows me to read content offline. MAC users seem to prefer NetNewsWire as their stand-alone of choice. For Linux, people I trust rave about Liferea. If you prefer a web-based tool, Bloglines or NewsGator work well.

- Technorati: Sign up for a free Technorati account. You don't need a blog to do this, and when you do start publishing, you can quickly claim your blog. There are three types of searches in Technorati: Word Search, Tag Search and Blog Search.

- Google Blog Search: I use the Google BlogSearch mostly for searching on specific URLs, such as client sites. You can easily subscribe to the feed from the mid-left side of the screen.

- Topix: For news, Topix.net provides a mix of mainstream and social - and you can subscribe to the search results.

Using these three tools are important for a few reasons:

Nobody wants to ADD to their "to-do" list. Instead, Search Once and Subscribe
Your writing well will never run dry. You'll be taking an active part in Both Roles of Blogging
Even if you KNOW you'll never publish a blog, it's your business responsibility to Listen & Respond