Make the Most of Google News Search RSS to Get Ideas for Blog Posts

With Google's new search engine getting more appropriate search results is even easier, and you can also easily choose what type of content you want to view. So rather than doing a general search for the topic you want to blog about, now you can actually choose different medium, whether they be News, Videos, Books, Blogs, Images etc.

Particularly good for blogging ideas are the News and Blogs categories. I slightly prefer News as this really gives you the most up-to-date developments in your subject area. What is more you can also generate an RSS feed from your specified News search, which means you can keep up to date easily with the latest stories and then turn these into ideas for blog posts.

Here's how you can generate News search results and turn them into an RSS Feed:

1. Do your search in Google - get as specific as possible if you can - you might want to set-up a number of RSS feeds to get better coverage.

2. Specify the Medium, in this case News websites.

3. Right click the RSS link and copy the link address

4. Copy it into your chosen RSS Reader and Hey Presto you can get the latest news for your topic area updated right in your RSS Reader

If you choose Blogs you can only get an email alert at the moment - not sure why, but probably worth seeing what the blogosphere are saying about Paperclips as well!

How Often Should You Blog

If  you write a blog for your business then you may wonder about how often you should blog. After all it may seem like  a lot of effort and possibly a distraction from your core business activities. Also it can sometimes be difficult to come up with ideas about what to blog about.

But if you want to seriously engage an audience online blogging is a core part of your online marketing resource pack. Blogging is an ideal way to build a rapport with your customers and to provide a means of communicating with them which isn't just about selling and promoting. You can actually use your blogging activities to provide a value-added service to your market, which means that their opinion of your business will increase and therefore they will be more likely to buy from you in the future.

So that's the why should you blog element covered. The big question is how often. My advice would be to blog as often as possible, and that means at least once a day, but more if you can.

Why should you blog so often?

1. Search Engines favour regularly updated websites. In particular the new Caffeine search engine used by Google favours recent content and content that is updated on a regular basis. If you want to get top hits on the search engines then you need to be posting regularly (as well as getting good inbound links and working on your keywords of course).
2. The more content you have on your blog then the more there is for people to read - the more hits you will get and the more likely you are to find an interested audience.
3. Practice makes perfect, or the more you do something the easier it becomes. I think this is really true. You find that if you get in the habit of blogging at least daily then it becomes just part of your routine - a bit like reading your email or checking your sales figures. It's just a business function that you do. Also you tend to get quicker at it and pick up ideas more easily - you will actually find that one idea leads to another. 

Happy Blogging!

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