A collaborator just asked me how to best find great blogs to subscribe to on a topic we’re working on and I thought I’d answer the question publicly. I feel like I’ve shared some thoughts on this every 3-5 years for the past 15 years or so and my answer is always changing. New tools emerge, old tools go offline. Here’s what I’m using now:
1. Feedly recommendations
Subscribe to one blog you like on the topic and see what Feedly recommends as related. Then see what Feedly says is similar to those blogs.
2. Twitter recommendations
Most of the time when you follow an account on Twitter, you’ll get 3 social-graph based recommendations for related accounts. You can also unfollow accounts that you’re already following, refresh the page (essential), then follow them again – and you’ll get more recommendations. I regularly find 1 or 2 great ones here, and then I click through their home pages to find their blogs.
3. Google related:
If you use the query related:[URL] Google will give you some good recommendations as well. Here’s an example.
4. Ask people
If you can have a conversation with leading people in the field, tell them about the project you’re doing the research for, ask them to tell you about their most recent work (see if you can help), then ask them what blogs they’d recommend. Do that with a handful of people and you’ll not only get good recommendations, you’ll develop relationships as well.
That’s how (Read more…)