I confess to being a bit of a news junkie. This can be challenging at times particularly when it comes to zeroing in, and focusing on, specific topics. Fortunately, I have found several tools that all provide me with great news sources and some even create a vehicle that promotes conversation with like-minded people. Here are my current top 5 applications. Like all things in my life, my favor is subject to change. So, and in no particular order ….
Google Reader/Google Alerts: Google Reader is a great way to keep on the latest articles published by sources that you trust. It is as simple as subscribing to that site and you will then be notified of new posts as they occur. Google Alerts adds provided flexibility by going out to the web, searching for articles that contain certain keywords, and then feeding those articles directly to your reader. This can also be used to monitor what things folks may be saying about you and your brand. Powerful!
Paper.li: I wrote about this tool in a previous article titled “5 Free Tools For Tracking Topics On Twitter”. You can create daily newspapers of your own based on a number of things including Twitter hash tags and you can also subscribe to the daily papers that others have created. This is a very slick and very cool tool and it also promotes interaction as you can reply to or retweet any article and do that from within the paper itself. You can even follow the author without ever leaving the paper.
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LinkedIn Answers: I continue to have a soft place in my heart for this tool. LinkedIn means business and if you have a question, this is a great place to post it! I’m always amazed the the quality and quantity of responses you will receive. The LinkedIn community, for my money, is far more engaged than say Twitter or FaceBook. More engaged and more business focused. LinkedIn answers was where I went to two years ago and asked the question .. “Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn. I don’t get any of this! Can somebody please help me!?”. Fortunately, somebody did hence my “soft spot” 🙂
Quora: Quora is still relatively new to me but I am very much liking what I have seen thus far. Take LinkedIn Answers and put that on steroids. Massive steroids. There are conversations going on literally everywhere and on every topic. You can post a question, answer one, follow specific topics, follow specific people, and Quora also has an extensive email notification system. On top of all that, it has a very slick UI and is extremely easy to use …
Google Groups: I have Google Alerts searching for keywords like “crm”,”scrm”, and “social crm”. One of the sources that started to pop up on my radar was called Social CRM Pioneers. This is a fascinating site if this topic is of interest to you. The interface is clunky but the content is amazing! I have not jumped into conversations yet but I will tell you that there are some incredibly well known people in this area of expertise that are sharing frequently. This is an open group which is good. Otherwise, I’m pretty confident that they would never let me in 🙂 I also have it send me a daily digest of conversations that have taken place.
Thanks for visiting!
Craig
Related articles
- What Does Quora Know? (forbes.com)
- For Quora, the Community is Everything (gigaom.com)
- Platform – Google Alerts (kinlane.com)
- What Should I Tweet? 5 Ways to Find Great Content for Your Twitter Followers (windmillnetworking.com)
- Tips For Using Google Alerts (tlmarketing.net)
Craig M. Jamieson
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