Blogging

As some of you know, my last blog post featured “20 of the most extraordinary blogs/bloggers around today”. (It’s just below this one if you haven’t seen it yet.) But how did I find all these cool blogs you ask?

According to blogpulse.com, right now there are some 172,000,000+ blogs out there in cyberspace. There’s no doubt it can seem overwhelming and nearly impossible to find a blog you genuinely want to follow. So, how do you find the best ones?

Below I’ve put together a list of 10 easy ways to try to answer that question. You might expect some of these tactics, others may be new to you, but overall I hope they help you better understand and better benefit from the Blogosphere.

Here we go…

1. From the Media

This is one of the best ways, if not the best. The media love to cover interesting stories, as well as engaging and influential personalities, and bloggers make their list quite frequently.

I’ve come across a number of great blogs thanks to traditional media. They typically give a little background on the blogger so you get a good feel of why they are blogging, their style and what they blog about. Newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and internet media all cover the blogosphere. So next time you hear, see or read about an interesting blog, why not take a quick second and check it out to see if it ‘speaks’ to you.

In addition to the media covering blogs, a lot of mainstream media also offer their own blogs and bloggers as well. The New Yorker (newyorker.com/online/blogs, Toronto Star (thestar.blogs.com) and Harvard Business Review (blogs.hbr.org) to name a few, are great examples. These journalist/media blogs are typically more text driven, but the writing is of high-quality, and if you have a favourite columnist, they probably have a blog you can follow too.

2. Blog Awards

There are a number of Blog Awards that have been developed over the years and you can expect more to come. Two of the most notable ones are the Bloggies (The Weblog Awards) and the Webbys.

The Bloggies began in 2001 and are the longest running Blog awards program. I recently had an email interview with the founder of the awards, Nikolai Nolan, and when I asked him what inspired him to start awards he said: ”Back in 2000, there was some discussion among bloggers about whether the “A-List” blogs were really better than the lesser-known ones. I decided to create the Bloggies so readers could vote on their favorites and determine which weblogs were really the best.”

The Webbys began way back in 1997 and are ”an international award presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for excellence on the Internet with categories in websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile.” They are known as “The Oscars of the Internet.” The Webbys first presented a blog award in 2005, and they now present 3 blog awards (Business, Culture/Personal, and Political).

There numerous others blog awards you can discover as well, and some are quite niche oriented. If you “google” blog awards you can find a bunch to explore. For these two particular blog awards, you’re able to check out the winners and nominees from the current year and all previous years, which is great.

3. Blogrolls

Many bloggers feature a ‘blogroll’ on their blogs. It’s essentially a list of links to other blogs and/or websites they like and recommend. These lists might say Blogroll above them, or they may be something a little different. For example, Blogger Reb Stevenson has her list under the humorous heading: “sites that don’t suck”. These link-lists might have a gem in them, so why not click on a few that a good blogger is sharing and see where it leads you!

4. Blog Comments

Ever read comments on blogs or news stories? Ever commented on a blog before? If you have, you’ll notice that a number of those who do post something, are bloggers themselves. They typically leave a link to their blog, or to a post they’ve written which is similar to the one they commented on. If someone says something interesting, or perhaps even something more interesting than that blog post itself, you might want to click on their blog link and see if they can back up their words. They just might.
 

5. Blog Aggregators

Blog aggregators – as I’m calling them –  are websites that organize and track blogs. Site’s like blogs.com and technorati have Top 10 and Top 100 lists, as well as categories to help you sift through blogs by popularity, by interest and more. Blogs.com has a neat celebrity ‘top ten list’ where they feature the favourite blogs of celebrities/ authors/ bloggers.

Another interesting blog-related site that I’ve come across recently is bloglovin.com. It’s the first site that I’ve seen like this where they not only help you find blogs by category, but also let you subscribe to blogs as well; They make it a little easier for you to track and follow your favourite blogs. On a side note, how to best follow blogs is another topic in itself, but a few considerations are: RSS, Google Reader, your Browser Bookmarks, and this bloglovin.com site. It’s also a habit you need to build, to remind yourself to check the blogs.

Also included in this aggregator group are sites that feature multiple bloggers, like Huffington Post. Huff Post is supposed to have a network of over 9,000 bloggers, and i’m sure most of those featured bloggers have their own blogs too. So if you like a blog post there, it may be worth checking out if that contributing blogger has their own blog as well.

6. Blog Books

There are more and more books on blogging these days. Most – if not all – blog books are on how to blog, or how make money blogging. But these books do typically feature a number of blogs as best practices. i.e. notable bloggers worth checking out. Books like ProBlogger and Visually WordPress are examples.

7. Word of Mouth

Blogs, YouTube videos, websites and apps come up in conversation all the time now, don’t they! Pay a little closer attention to what people recommend, and for the ones that interest you, check them out. As a conversation starter, why not ask your guests or friends if they follow or know of any good blogs?

8. Word of Web – Social Networks

My friends and acquaintances on twitter, facebook and linkedin post links to interesting videos, websites and blogs all the time. They might even post a link to their own blog. If you end up clicking on a link that sounds interesting, and it turns out to be a good blog post, why not check out a couple other posts of that blog and see if they have more good stuff to offer.
 

9. Search Engines

When you use a search engine to help you find tips for painting your ceiling, or how to take a better picture, it’s pretty good odds it will end up being a blogger who helps you out; or at least tries to. There are tons of specialty and hobby focused blogs out there. If that’s what you’re into, search engines can help you find them. Google even offers a blog search option.

10. Blog Conferences

I recently attended a blog conference in Toronto called Word11, which was the “world’s first 24 hour blogging festival”. As you might expect, there were a bunch of blogs mentioned throughout the day, some of which I knew, and some I didn’t. Believe it or not, I even met some real-life bloggers there too Another notable blogging conference is BlogHer. I’m positive online and marketing type conferences are the same way with this. Who knows, the keynote speaker could even be a blogger.

That’s it! I hope these 10 tactics helped you make some sense out of how to find the best blogs. I wish you all the best of luck in finding great blogs!

Do you know of any other good ways to find great blogs? Please leave a comment here.

 
~ Flickr photo credit ~