21 Amazing Tools For Effective Content Research

As a blogger, especially if you blog about breaking news, you’ve got to be alert and always have content at the ready, for your blog.

Bloggers are not magicians that ideas for posts come to them on-the-fly. You need to have a system in place to help you find fresh content and ideas to blog about. You need researching tools.

Here, I’ve compiled several tools and services that you could use for your content research. You might know all or none of them, but remember, this is not an exhaustive list!

RSS Readers

First off is a list of online RSS readers that help you aggregate all the latest content from your favourite blogs.

Netvibes

Netvibes has a clean and usable interface. Its AJAX based, and therefore quite fast. It isn’t only a feed reader, it’s a planner too, allowing you to display ‘widgets’ on your ‘dashboard’. You can add as many new feeds you want, each of which has its own widget, and you can configure options such as feed header colour, how many posts to display, display only titles or a summary and such. On clicking a feed title, the content opens up in a frame inside your dashboard, so you don’t have to navigate to the site.

Perhaps the best thing about Netvibes is that you don’t necessarily have to signup for it. Arrive, and start creating your widget! But signing up is recommended if you’re mobile.

Bloglines

Ah, the ever so famous Bloglines. Bloglines is a nice, no nonsense feed reader, where it’s just you and your feeds. But at times, it can become incredibly slow, and even get stuck, when the infamous ‘Bloglines plumber’ is at work.

But, Bloglines is nevertheless popular, and rightly so. It even allows you to add ‘playlists’ of feeds, which update themselves automatically, and you can presumably then ‘play’ your playlist of feeds, to read new content.

Google Reader

Google Reader is a fantastic RSS reader. With the power of all things Google behind it, it packs a punch.

AJAX based, with a simple design(Google, again) it is quite a usable RSS reader. Moreover, it even features keyboard shortcuts to share items and do loads of things.

Quick, no-nonsense, and packed with functionality, this is the tool for the productive
blogger.

The Latest In News

If you have a news blog, you know how important it is to stay at par with the latest in news. Even if your blog isn’t a news blog, you still need fresh content to blog about. However, it is not easy to always remain on top. So, here are a few tools to help you along the way, using which you can get the latest about anything, really.

Google Blog Search

Google again! Google Blog Search is a blog content aggregator, and just like a search engine, it allows you to search blogs for specific keywords. Indexing times are pretty quick, so you find the latest information from the blogosphere.

Google Alerts

If you haven’t been using Alerts, it’s probably time you should be.

Alerts is a cool service which sends you email messages or ‘alerts’ whenever something that you’ve set your alert for is updated (like developing news stories, sports tournaments, celebrity news, etc). In effect, you can be at par with the latest.

In the above screenshot, I’ve created an alert with the search keywords ‘us elections’. The type is set to ‘comprehensive’; so if anything related to the keywords ‘us elections’ is added or updated in Google’s massive search index, I get an email telling me so. Ain’t that handy?

Technorati

Technorati needs no introduction. As a blog aggregator, Technorati has the latest from millions of blogs around the web. It is good enough to be a one stop shop for researching for content.

Yahoo News Search

Don’t confuse this with Yahoo Search, though the two are similar.

Yahoo News Search is similar to Google Blog Search, in that it shows the latest, real-time stories. While not as elegant and useful as Google’s Blog Search, it is a useful tool nonetheless.

What’s Everyone Talking About?

When you know what people are talking about, that gives you ideas. But, most importantly, you can guess the popularity of those topics, and improve upon them.

Technorati, again!

Alongside being a blog aggregator, Technorati displays the latest content from blogs too. Moreover, it also has several ‘channels’, which are targeted to a particular topic updated in real-time.

Techmeme

Techmeme is for tech buffs. This aggregator service brings together the hottest news in technology from around the web for your reading, and more importantly, researching pleasure. Enjoy!

Directories

Directories, if you still remember, are those now-almost-antique collections of categorised sites. They are a gold mine of information, if you come to think of it. If you want information about a particular topic, why not look up sites related to that topic and explore them for information and ideas?

Google Directory

Google Directory is a massive directory, categorised into many categories, and with the ability to search within sub-directories

Yahoo Directory

Probably the oldest directory around, Yahoo Directory is truly massive, with thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of sites included in its index.

Open Directory

The Open Directory is a premier and well respected directory. One which every webmaster craves to join. The quality of the sites in it is top class. What more could you want?

Encyclopaedias

Research really should begin with encyclopaedias, since they contain massive amounts of useful content. Here are some of them:

Wikipedia

Who doesn’t know Wikipedia? A massive and growing both in popularity and content, it is truly the first place to start your research. It contains extensive information on just about everything. Also, its sister sites (such as Wikinews, Wiktionary, etc) are treasure chests of information too.

Google Knol

Although new, and controversial, Google’s Knol does contain some useful stuff. Check it out!

Encarta

One of the oldest encyclopaedias around, Encarta’s content base is absolutely huge. Don’t believe me? Check it out yourself.

Social Networks/Social Media

There’s absolutely no denying that social networks and social media sites are a sustainable gold mine of ideas. I myself use them to conduct what’s called feasibility studies for posts, and my, have I gotten fantastic post ideas!

Plurk

My social network of choice, Plurk has it all in it. It’s fun, enjoyable, and easy to use. You can earn karma by actively participating, and unlock things like more emoticons, backgrounds, and such. What fun! Befriend me at Plurk!

Twitter

Twitter is my second favourite. A quick way to keep updated with friends and the latest. In fact, twitterers almost always break news first, even before the actual news sites! Consider how important and good that is for a news blog! Befriend me on Twitter too!

Even otherwise, Twitter is a great place to hangout.

Pownce

Another social network, where you can share files and videos and media with your friends and have fun. Pownce away!

Jaiku

A social media network, with a professional oomph too it. Currently, sign ups on Jaiku are invitation-only. *Ahem* I have some… *Ahem Ahem* *Hint!*

And let’s not forget…

Digg and StumbleUpon. Both are great places to explore and research for content. I especially like StumbleUpon, for it allows me to stumble jaw dropping and awesome content that is an inspiration.

So…

What tools do you use for your content research? Any or all of the above? This was not an exhaustive list. There are many more awesome services that I haven’t mentioned. Do share your favourites!

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