Finding Prominent Blogs August 30, 2007
Yesterday I attended the Modern Media Strategies Workshop at The Heritage Foundation. There were many panels during the conference about how those in the political sphere can harness new and social media.
While blogging was one of many topics, many people from political organizations and congressional staffers asked the speakers about how one can find prominent blogs. Panelists suggested Google Blog Search and Technorati, among other blog search engines, as places to get a general idea about different blogs.
I would like to add two other resources: e-newsletters and blog aggregators.
Some newsletters track blogosphere chatter about a specific topic, and following this coverage is an excellent way to determine which blogs are influential. The Exoro Group's Utah Policy Daily is a great example from my old stomping grounds.
Blog aggregators cull posts from a set of blogs focused on the same topic. Thus, you can use these sites to easily track many blogs at once to determine which are the most prominent. Staying close to my previous example, UtahPolitics.org is an example of a site that captures political blog chatter in the state.
These are just two types of helpful resources. What do you use to find important sites?
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A couple of other tips:
1. Don’t rely on Technorati’s “authority” ranking — it conflates authority with popularity. (Although if you conflate authority with popularity, then go for it!)
2. Take the time to start reading blogs (subscribing in a feed reader makes it less of a time sink). Pay attention to blogs over time. What communities do they attract? Are the comment threads useful? who do the link to, and who links to them?
3. Hang out in online discussion forums (web-based and e-mail lists) for relevant communities. Which blogs are getting discussed there?
- Amy Gahran
You might check out http://www.blognetnews.com
We’ve completed databases of the most influential political blogs from across the spectrum in the majority of states, the rest shortly. (Alabama will be up next week.) BNN is a lot more than an aggregator. We have super targeted search, tools for bloggers to promote each other, a weekly influence ranking and all kinds of stats tracking for comments, links etc.
Building these sites myself over the last year has been really interesting, particularly in getting to know the personality of the blogospheres. Each one really has a character and tone all of its own.
For those states where BNN doesn’t offer a full spectrum of blogs, you can try leftyblogs.com for at least that side of the aisle
Here’s what Tish Grier had to say about us back when we only covered 21 states.
http://www.poynter.org/column......aid=116321
I wish you could have been there, David. I did a short 10-minute presentation about tracking the conversation. In addition to highlighting Google Blog Search and Technorati, I also showed off BNN and mentioned the forthcoming RightyBlogs.com.
Amy, David, and Rob,
Thanks for the comments.
Amy, I wrote a sentence or two explaining that Technorati and Google are imperfect resources for this purpose but help give a general idea, but that didn’t make the final edit.
David, your site — BNN — is also another great example of a blog aggregator.
Rob, I enjoyed the workshop.