One of the most important and sometimes difficult things to do when building a blog is to find a steady flow of things to write about. My approach has evolved over the last year or so, and here’s how I do it now.

First, you have to figure out what you’re writing about and to whom you are writing. This is the broad, but not too broad part of my Steps for Good Blogging. It’s important, I think, to note that the content and focus of many blogs evolve over time. Newsome.Org was a very different place when I started blogging than it is today. Another good example of blog evolution is A Consuming Experience, which evolved into a must-read blog via a change in focus and content.

For purposes of this post, I’m going to assume you’re on your way to defining your focus, content and breadth and just talk about how to find ideas to write about.

The very fact that you have a blog online means that you intend for someone to read it. Maybe the world, maybe Scoble or maybe just your family. Regardless, that means you have to write about something your intended audience (whoever that may be) is interested in. This is part of the stuff I talked at Stowe Boyd about the other day. I say at because we never quite made it to Stowe’s Rule 2, though we did sort of demonstrate my corollary to his Rule 2.

So the trick to finding something good to write about is a three step process:

1) Find something that interests you;

2) Which is relevant to the focus of your blog; and

3) Which would be interesting to your target audience.

Of course you also have to have something to add and add it in a compelling way, but that’s a topic for another day. This is just about finding topics.

I mine for topics in 5 major ways, and here they are:

Original Ideas

These are the best posts as well as the hardest to do well. An original idea post is more likely to be one of Stowe’s big ideas (see I am still talking to the back of his head, but that’s OK), which I call the 10/90 Post (since I believe 10% of your posts will get you 90% of your links).

Other original content, while less likely to be a 10/90 Post, is easier to come up with. For example, you could do a series, like I am doing with Scoblefeeds and Web 2.0 Wars. You can do a bunch of installments of your series at a time and save drafts to publish later when you don’t have a fresh idea. For example, I have 11 draft posts right now that I can pull up and post if I get busy or temporarily uninspired.

But original ideas, especially the non-series, big idea kind, are hard to do, and you can’t try one every day because if you try too much and fail, readers will lose interest.

Joining the Discussion

As I have said before, the first place I read every morning is Memeorandum, followed by some of the other meme trackers, including now, the Newsome.Org Megite page (whose slogan ought to be “All Doc all the Time,” but that’s not such a bad thing). My Megite page pulls related content from blogs not in my blogroll, which is a good way to find new voices.

If I see something on one of these pages that I have thought about a little, sometimes I’ll add my two cents in a post. I have a couple of informal rules about this. First, if I don’t have anything meaningful to add, I’ll take a pass. I respect my presence on the meme tracker pages and don’t want to clutter them up with posts by me that say only “I agree” or “that’s nuts,” etc. Second, if there are already discussion links I read them and, if possible, address some of them too. Meme tracker pages are supposed to be about clustered conversation, not one big post and a bunch of immediate “me too’s.” A lot of people don’t do this, and I think that makes the topic pods less interesting than they would otherwise be.

Once I read Memeorandum and a few others, I generally have at least one idea on my mental list for something to write about that day.

My RSS Feeds

The next thing I do is read my RSS feeds.  I almost always find something interesting via reading my RSS feeds. Often, I will add my thoughts via a comment on another blog, but sometimes I add a post here with a link to the other blog.

I generally get an idea or two for my mental topic list via my RSS feeds.

Reading My My Yahoo Page

I have defended the good old portal site several times here, and I still use My Yahoo every day. The recent changes to the interface make it even easier to add all kinds of content to your page, including via RSS feeds. I don’t use My Yahoo for blog feeds, however, I use it for news feeds (meaning feeds from the AP, Reuters, MSNBC, some newspapers and a bunch of tech-related publications). Because I only want headlines, I configure my page to show just the headlines, but you can configure it to show a blurb from the article, if that’s your preference. You can also add podcasts that can be streamed directly from your My Yahoo page.

As I’ve said before, My Yahoo is my de facto newspaper, and I find a lot of good stuff to write about there. For example, that’s where I found the Amazon story I wrote about yesterday.

Via Emails

Another way I find things to write about are via emails from readers and other bloggers. Let me assure you of one thing I learned from my prior gigs as a column writer for a newspaper: writers are always looking for something to write about. I don’t care if you’re the blogger writing your first post, Darren Rowse or Marc Canter, there are times when you wish you had something new to write about.

Emails used wisely can and will result in coverage.

I don’t get as many emails as I’d like from new bloggers telling me about a story they have written, but I welcome them when I get them. The chances of me using suggested stories has only increased with my Second Opinion series, which I hope some other bloggers will also adopt.

Conclusion

Picking the right topics is a big step in the climb up bloggers hill. Everyone struggles with writer’s block from time to time, and sometimes it’s better just to write nothing for a while. But if you set up a system to mine for ideas and topics, you’ll have a better chance of coming up with good things to write about.

Many thanks to Om for his link last night. I guess hell did freeze over and I’m grateful for that.

And I wrote a heartfelt email to Steve thanking him for his kind words today. I am very grateful for his encouragement.

It’s hard to make it anywhere in the world or in the blogosphere without the help of others, and I really appreciate all of the advice, links, comments, emails, etc. I have received over the last few months. It cements my resolve to keep writing and it helps me remember that all of us, from the top A-Lister to the blogger who started writing today, are just people trying to make our way from wherever we’ve been to whatever lies ahead.

And the best thing we can do is help each other along the way. I hope one day before too long it will be my turn to reach out a helping hand, be it in the blogosphere or elsewhere.

Now that I’ve got that Hallmark moment out of the way, back to our regular schedule. Coming up: more Web 2.0 wars and a deeper look at Tailrank.

As a Valentine’s Day present to those of us trying to scrape and claw our way up bloggers hill (and there are many of us), Scoble hands out some tips for joining the A-List. Obviously he knows what it takes to get on the proverbial A-List and he has some good ideas.

Here are a few of them, as always with my commentary:

1) Use a Clever Headline.

I agree with this, though the advice of the so called professional bloggers is mixed in this regard. Some like clever headlines, some don’t. My newspaper-type article background (for the Houston Business Journal among others) almost forces me to try to come up with a clever lead in, as well as a tag (the lead out, not Technorati kind). I try to be clever or funny without going over the top.

Who knows if I succeed, but that’s my goal at least.

2) Use Technorati, and with a Photo

I am still stuck in Technorati Ground Hog Day, so I haven’t had time to figure out why my uploaded photo never shows up beside my outbound links. Maybe I’ll get that worked out after I save my rapidly disappearing old links.

3) Be Different.

That’s also good advice. But you have to make sure it’s good different and not bad different. This I think is the key to any writing, be it a blog or a book. When you are speaking to an audience, it’s easier to be good different by being excited, prepared, funny and modest. But when you’re writing, it’s more difficult. I try many approaches to this problem, but if I had to describe my approach in a few words it would be to aim for thoughtful analysis dressed up in humor.

Or perhaps someone could do a blog in latin, or pig-latin. I guarantee you some A-Listers would be all over a blog in latin.

Bad different is easy. Good different is hard. Try hard for good different. And link to Om at least once in every post. He won’t link back, but at least he’ll feel a little guilty about it.

Another good technique is to pick a fight with Dave Winer. He’ll be compelled to scream at you and to do that he needs to link to you or at least go to your site and leave a comment. Mathew Ingram is the father of this approach.

4) Use graphics and good design.

I think this is actually a huge part of it. Most blog nerds like me read blogs via RSS feed readers, but approximately none of the rest of the world does. So how the page looks probably has a major effect on first impressions and a reader’s likelihood of returning.

Having said that, I actually think I have a really good layout on this page and I’m not exactly shooting up the Technorati 100 list.

5) Use Tags

I agree with this one to. I tag almost all of my posts and around 15% of my traffic comes from Technorati. That’s actually a lot from one page.

6) Make Friends with Other Bloggers

This is also huge. I have developed a great relationship with a bunch of other similarly situated bloggers. If not for this loose association, we would all be stranded alone out here at the end of the long tail. As it is, at least we have created some sort of wagon train to get us through the rough areas.

Having said that, I have genuinely tried to reach out to a lot of Scoble’s blog buddies through links, comments, humor, etc. Scoble and Doc responded a little. I earned up to a link from Steve (thanks, Steve, and I mean it). But most of them haven’t responded at all. So I don’t know how realistic it is to expect a lot of these guys to truly involve you in their conversations, even if you write thoughtful posts. Candidly, I think hell will freeze over before Om, Mike and a few others will link to me, even though I write a lot about the stuff they’re interested in. I don’t even want Calacanis to link here any more. And trying to get a link from within any of the major blog networks is like trying to go hunting with Dick Cheney and not get whacked. Highly unlikely these days.

In many ways the blogosphere has been a humbling experience for me. Having written and published extensively in the old media and being a very active speaker on the seminar and convention circuit, it was a bit of an eye-opening experience when I started blogging and realized that so few of the established bloggers wanted to hear what I had to say. To be honest, it irritated me at first. But then I realized it was a chance to start over and try to earn my stripes again. And as someone who loves to build, that was a challenge I couldn’t resist. The secret, I think, is to make sure you have fun along the way. If so, then the worst thing that can happen is you have fun.

As far as bloggers hill goes, I am close to concluding that the only way to actually get near the top of that hill is to form a wagon train with some people you like, set off towards parts unknown and have fun along the way. If we do that, we just might make it.

After all, time and history are on our side.

Another problem with the new Technorati Authority filter is that many of us are Bill Murrays caught in our own little Groundhog Day where authority is concerned.

Duncan has posted about the problem twice at The Blog Herald and I have posted about it here as well. While I am a self-appointed customer evangelist for Technorati and Dave has a perfect track record of fixing the problem when I go long, it does seem to be a recurring problem.

For whatever reason, my link numbers and those of several others get stuck. I’m stuck at 80 sites and 142 links right now and have been for a few weeks. Every time I get a new link, my oldest one falls off. I probably have between 50 and 100 links that have been temporarily lost (they come back when Dave asks Niall to reboot the list). So this means that as I get more and more links (hopefully due to all the hard work I put in writing and conversing), more and more links fall off the back end. I’m working hard every day, but my authority level stays the same because of this problem.

As I have said before, I am certain Technorati will get this issue fixed. And if I were the only one it was happening to, I wouldn’t even post about it. In fact, I feel like a whiner talking about it, but Technorati is a great service and it’s more important that we iron out the wrinkles than it is to protect my manly image. So I’ll take one for the team and whine a little.

It will be fixed. But in the meantime, it’s frustrating. Especially now that our link counts affect the way the filter treats us.

Technorati Tags:
technorati, authority

I fight authority, authority always wins
I fight authority, authority always wins
I been doing it, since I was a young kid
I’ve come out grinnin
I fight authority, authority always wins

-John Mellencamp

God willing, I’m through talking about the whole Gatekeeper thing. As John Perry Barlow wrote in the song I named my oldest daughter after, “let the words be yours, I’m done with mine.”

But at the risk of stumbling a little close to the cliff, I was interested in Steve Rubel’s post today about authority.

Steve says that the concept of links as a measure of authority turns the quest for blogging success into nothing more than a popularity contest. Sure it does, but there’s more to it than that.

He asks “does this mean Britney Spears is an authority too just because she’s popular?” Well, she’s clearly not an authority on car seats for babies, but let’s say you do a search for, I don’t know, whatever Britney is- maybe “good looking women who claim to be singers but are really only creations of the old media.” And then let’s say your search results (generally determined by links) indicate that she is the person most people link to when talking about that sort of person. Does that make her popular? Not really. Does it indicate that she might be the best example of that sort of person, certainly. So links are about more than just popularity. They are evidence of the collective determination of the linking population.

Do a Google search for “founder of RSS” and you get a link to a story about Dave Winer, certainly nobody’s Sandra Bullock.

Steve quotes the Oxford Dictionary, but I’m a working man so I’m going to quote the American Heritage Dictionary and put forth the definition that Steve omitted- the one that is the closest to the meaning of the word authority as used in this context:

“An accepted source of expert information or advice.”

There are two important words there:

accepted, which implies consensus, which is demonstrated on the blogosphere by links, perhaps partly out of necessity, but there is certainly some correlation there; and

source, which requires a least some method of quotation, again done in the blogosphere largely via links.

There’s some logic in Steve’s argument, but the fact remains that authority in the blogosphere is measured by links. Always has been, and probably always will be.

It almost makes me want to look noisily at Scoble and scream brrreeeport!

Scott Karp continues to bring it over at Publishing 2.0. Today he asks if the only people who read blogs are other bloggers, and he even has pictures.

Bloggers reading bloggers is sort of a precursor to what the internet will be like when we each have our own internet, thanks to Google. Of our course we’ll be paid by Yahoo to search it, but again I digress.

Scott also admits what a lot of us would rather keep behind the locked doors of our Web 2.0 intoxicated minds:

[A] lot of my blog reading is motivated by my will to write- sure, I read lots of interesting things on blogs that I may never write about. But it’s the writer in me that pushes me to be an avid reader.

Absolutely that is the case with me and I bet it’s the case with most other bloggers too. In fact, if you are reading this and you aren’t a blogger or related to me, please give us a shout in the Comments below.

I think that 90% of the flow (to use Dave‘s word) in the blogosphere is generated by people who either blog now or are reading blogs in contemplation of joining the nerd parade. The other 10% are developers checking up on the competition, venture capitalists looking for another online calendar to invest in and our parents.

It’s the first cousin of the question I posed the other day about Web 2.0 in general.

For me, blogging, both the writing and the reading, is mostly about the conversation. So as long as I’m talking about topics of interest with other people, whether it’s just some other nerds or the rare non-blogging reader doesn’t really matter all that much. But the bloggers reading bloggers thing certainly supports my Step No. 3, which means that even if we do make it off the B-List, we won’t get a tour bus.

That’s OK. I suspect Calacanis has already rented all those anyway.

Technorati Tags:
blogs, blogging, web 2.0

Dave Winer posted some thoughts about the gatekeeper thing. Primarily that those of us talking about it are whiners. As I said the other day, this is why I read Dave’s blog- he isn’t afraid to challenge people about their conclusions.

So now that I’m allowed to be heard (or read) at Dave’s blog, I decided to take up the debate.

I won’t post my entire comment, you can read it at Dave’s blog. But the gist of it is:

1) While I recognize and even said in my posts that my gatekeeper discussion might be viewed as whining, I don’t have much of a reason to whine at this point, since I get meme tracked and linked to fairly regularly. My point is merely to promote inclusion for everyone based on merit and not affinity or greed.

2) Blogging done primarily as a way to make money perverts the pure conversational purpose that I and others believe (or at least wish) blogs should serve by injecting an element of competition. Whining, maybe. Accurate, absolutely. See JKOnTheRun’s post today about blog networks changing links.

3) The formal or informal establishment of a blogging elite (be I a part of said elite or not) creates a de facto gatekeeper between the content providers and the content readers that is not unlike the old media system where the media companies control who sees and hears what. Inevitable, perhaps. Inconsistent with the move to the edge engendered by citizen media movement, I think so.

I don’t know if we’ll change each others’ minds, but at least there’s now a platform to talk about it.

Sort of. Dave has added comment functionality at Scripting.Com.

He provides one centralized comment post for every day. He says it’s an experiment and it sounds like the longevity of comments at Scripting.Com will depend on how effectively WordPress’s comment moderation tools work.

I’m glad Dave is giving this a try, for all the reasons I have talked about the last few days.

Now I’m going to go read his posts. Maybe I’ll have something to add and maybe not. But comments are sort of like your car. It’s nice to know they are available even if you don’t need them at the moment.