I’m not going to write yet another post about how to grow your blog subscribers (in my experience working for blogs like TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb, our key tactics were to write regularly and to break news on topics of widespread interest) but instead I want to share some thoughts on the personal and professional growth opportunities presented by ongoing reading of subscriptions to one or more specific blogs.
You may follow bloggers on Twitter or email, but I find it useful to subscribe by RSS for an interface dedicated to long articles. I do that through Feedly and lately through Pocket, via IFTTT, in order to get the articles read to me aloud on my phone when I’m in transit. (My new favorite is The Living Library, about data and society.)
There’s a four part “growth mentality” model I’m going to use here to talk about the benefits of subscription, but you might appreciate using the model itself for other things as well.
What are the benefits you could capture by growing in this way? I’m motivated to subscribe to blogs for one reason in particular: they are a powerful way to be exposed to thoughtful perspectives on matters that may be useful to me later. I regularly get to cite something at work that’s really useful and that I read on a blog. I high five myself in my mind when I do. Regular reading of high quality longer form sources is a fast track to building out (Read more...)