Atheist Revolution: Blogging Tip #12: Keeping Track of New Blogs

Monday, October 20, 2008

Blogging Tip #12: Keeping Track of New Blogs

Image by indieink via FlickrNew blogs can be a great source of inspiration for any blogger. As the Atheist Blogroll continues to grow, it is becoming harder and harder to keep up with all the new blogs. What a nice problem to have! I suspect that we all have our preferred means of doing so, but I'm going to share mine just in case anyone finds it useful. I should also mention that I found myself thinking about this thanks to running across a new blog called Separate Spectrum.

In a nutshell, my method for tracking new blogs is as follows:

When a new blog comes to my attention that sounds interesting, I pay it a visit right away if I have time. If I'm running short on time, I often bookmark it via delicious so I will know to check it out when I have time.
When I visit the new blog for the first time, I read a couple recent posts and skim the titles of previous posts to see the sort of material the blogger addresses. I look for an "about" link or an introductory post - something that explains the blogger's vision for their blog. If something catches my attention (e.g., excellent writing, interesting topics I'm not seeing on dozens of other blogs, or anything else to make this blog stand out among the countless others I read), I subscribe to the blog's RSS feed by including it in a "Atheist Blogs (New)" folder I keep in my aggregator.
I generally keep blog feeds in my "Atheist Blogs (New)" folder for up to one month. If I've been reading them regularly, I promote them to my primary "Atheist Blogs" folder. If not, I hit the delete key or move them to one of my many second tier organization folders.
I make sure that all blogs I am reading regularly appear on my main blogroll since those on the sidebar of my main page are intended only to provide readers with an example of what I've been reading lately (i.e., I change what is included here frequently in order to feature whatever I want to feature at the moment).

Separate Spectrum caught my attention right away because it is a team blog focusing on everyday sorts of beliefs and experiences through a "non-religious, humanistic, grass roots, all accepting" lens. I thought that sounded like something worth checking out. Oh, and they linked to me too (funny how that seems to make blogs more attractive, isn't it?). I just added them to my RSS aggregator.

How do you discover and track new blogs? I'm always eager to learn new methods.