New Year's is always a time of renewal and change. That's what resolutions are all about, right? Although sometimes unpleasant, New Year's resolutions help make us better people in the end. And if personal resolutions make us better people, then surely resolutions for what we read as a part of our 2011 blog research process will make us better bloggers, right? Today we'll take a look at two resolutions you can make to improve your blogging strategy in 2011.
Resolving to Organize What You Read
As of August 2010 there were nearly 150 million blogs on the Internet with nearly 60k more being created each day. How do you possibly keep it all organized? Long gone are the days of simply keeping a folder of bookmarks on your Internet browser.
These days we have Twitter, Digg, and Facebook flooding us with articles to read. It's important to organize your favorite sources of information so you don't forget about them in the constant deluge of content facing us as we begin 2011.
Google Reader helps organize blogs you follow.Organizing the blogs most important to generating ideas for your own blog is simple with tools like Google Reader, but can easily become filled with noise if you don't manage your subscriptions from time to time. Take a few minutes early in 2011 to manage the blogs you follow in your RSS reading system.
Also, don't be afraid to try new ways of keeping blogs you follow organized. For example, I recently brought my RSS feeds over to Feedly, a magazine reader-style system for keeping your RSS feeds organized. I'm not sure I'll use it permanently but it's a novel way of consuming content at the moment.
Feedly creates a cool magazine-style start page.
Resolving to Read More
When was the last time you read a good book about your industry. For that matter, when was the last time you read a good book in general?
Don't get me wrong, blogs are great. In fact, I happen to think the one you're reading right now is excellent. But blog posts are just bite-sized morsels of knowledge. Sometimes you need more than even the most long-winded of blog posts. Sometimes you need the many meaty courses of information that a book provides in order to truly understand the complexities of a particular topic.
Bloggers/friends Arik Hanson and Patrick Garmoe tend to agree with me. Based on an idea by Julien Smith, we're setting the goal of reading 26 books during 2011 take on some complex topics and stay fresh for our blogs.
Audio books by Audible make reading easy.Join Arik, Patrick and me in resolving to read 26 books in 2011 and improve your source of blogging inspiration and content. Not sure how to make it happen? Personally, I'm going to give audio books by Audible a shot. Each day I spend about an hour in the car. And with each audio book running about 10 hours, the math works out to about a book every other week or, 26 books.
An hour a day or 20 pages a day. It doesn't sound like that much when I put it that way, does it?
Make 2011 a Great Year for Blogging
Even if you don't take either of these suggestions, it's a good idea to do something to shake things up and improve your blog. What types of resolutions have you made for your 2011 blogging strategy? Leave a comment or write a blog response post about what you plant to do differently in 2011. Also, don't be afraid to suggest a great marketing book that you've read or want to read.