How to Find New Blog POSTS to Comment on
With an overwhelming number of blogs out there — even just blogs about spirituality or personal development — how do you discover new blogs in your niche?
I use robots to search for new blogs for me.
You know there are thousands of well-written blogs you haven’t found yet that would present great opportunities to expand your network of peers and linkage:
- posts where you can leave meaningful comments
- perfect places for you to guest-author
Do you feel like you’ve “hit a plateau” with discovering new blogs? Like the same relatively few blogs already appear on everyone’s blogroll?
Search Engines return That Same List of blogs — the “A-list” seems to be perpetuated everywhere, yet you know there are better writers out there that are flying under the radar. Digging through the search engines can feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack — who has time to troll the search engines on a daily basis?
You need some robots to conduct these searches for you.
Google Alerts
I let Google search itself and simply notify me each day by email.
You can set up any number of Google Alerts with distinct search terms, keywords, and phrases — use your own personal list of targeted keywords to discover bloggers who are writing about the same things you are.
Tip for Best Results:
Just as with any web search, use “quotation marks” around your queries to discover exact uses in a similar context.
Google alerts also allow me to monitor how well my own blogs are indexing for specific keywords and phrases — you should ideally find your own posts returned by the robots (at least every once in awhile).
How do YOU break outside the same old overlapping blogrolls to discover new territory in the bloated blogosphere? Leave a reply and share your strategies and techniques.
Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.
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8 Responses to “How to Find New Blog POSTS to Comment on”
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Hi Slade, thanks for the tip, re: Google Alerts. I often find that it’s enough for me to follow my bliss. Just yesterday, I received an e-newsletter announcing a new blog, which in turn drew me magnetically to yet another blog, a blog that resonated beautifully with what I’m currently writing about. As of this writing, I also noticed that you have a dozen spiritual bloggers in your blogroll, some or all of whom in turn have their own blogrolls, with bloggers who have their own blogrolls, who have their own blogrolls, who have their own …, who have …, who …
Ah, yes, the magical link surfing web voyages — they always work, but I don’t always have the time!
: )
Slade, yes, I must admit that the magical mystery tour through the blogosphere does sound rather like a time-intensive, time-consuming proposition. Suppose, however, you have a question of consequence that you wish to have answered sooner rather than later. You gaze upon your blogroll, you pose your question with a peaceable, practicable expectation, and you issue the following request of those who guide you in a game-like manner: take me to the one who has the answer to this question …
Seriously, though, here’s a technique that might be helpful to your readers. I have a friend who, when he wishes to gauge the quality of a book, turns to page 100 of said book and reads a passage from it. Depending on how hooked he gets, he gets a good feel for the book as a whole. Perhaps the same might be done with a blog in or beyond your blogroll. Taste the blog, get a feel for its essence, and respond accordingly: read more, check out the blogroll, click on more links, et cetera, gauging relevance and being ever mindful that time truly is the essence.
Here’s a working example of what I’m talking about:
My blog Shift Your Spirits is dependent upon the conversation in blogosphere about “communicating with spirits, contacting your spirit guides, connecting with spirit guides and guardian angels” — etc.
There are not a lot of blogs dedicated to this one subject, however there are thousands of bloggers every day who write about this topic in A SINGLE POST. My own personal blogroll and the bloggers I read on a daily basis are NOT talking about spirit guides (rarely, not often).
While I do lend my voice in comments on the topics these other bloggers write about, MY conversation in the blogosphere revolves around spirit guides.
I’m not suggesting using Google Alerts to discover “general topics” — I’m specifically using Google Alerts as a strategic marketing and commenting tool. I want to know, on a daily basis, who posted about spirit guides and comment on THAT.
That conversation thread winds its way through a variety of personal blogs, scattered across an enormous range of blogging platforms, niches, etc.
Waiting for my favorite bloggers to mention my targeted keywords and phrases… doesn’t happen often. And I don’t believe in forcing comments and turning the conversation back to me in a stretch.
But, my goal is to very genuinely provide links and mindful, relative comments — every day.
Your targeted keywords and phrases are not necessarily the overarching mission of so many blogs — they are scattered all over the place.
This is one way to go straight to those individual POSTS — on any type of blog — that are potential connections to your own.
Priscilla Palmer has got bloggers putting together a list of recommended personal development blogs (at least 250 so far). You can view the list at
http://priscillapalmer.com/priscillapalmer/2007/08/21/personal-development-list/ One of the contibutors has developed a Google search engine where you can search all the blogs listed.
Now for a piece of serendipity. 2 days before I read this post i.e 28th August, I chose Spiritual Blogging as one of my three picks for this list. I said:
“Slade Roberson of Spiritual Blogging writes with a clear, authoritative voice that guides writers who feel they’re on a mission.”
Galba,
You ROCK! Thank you so much for nominating me!
That list is HUGE — I honestly don’t think there’s any Personal Development blogs I could add that aren’t already present and accounted for…
And thanks for including a link to the list here for everyone to find.
Hi Slade,
I’m actually finding stumbleupon to be very useful in finding new places. it is very easy to find profile pages of people you like and then see what entries they are reading.
Shane,
Thanks for sharing your tip. [Your blog looks great!]