“What Do Bloggers Know Anyway?” (The Benefits of a Feed Reader)

Not all people are fans of blogs.  There are many people that rarely read blogs much less bookmark them or ever revisit any that they may have bookmarked in the past.  Many people probably don’t even know how to find good blogs if they wanted to.

Important and fair questions that are often asked include:   “Can I even trust blogs?” and, “What do bloggers really know anyway?”  My answer to that would be:  “Probably more than you realize.”  And, the best way to realize and appreciate what blogs have to offer is to find out  for yourself by simply taking a closer look.  Here’s how…..

First, it’s always easiest to start small by reading just a few blogs at first to figure out what you like and find useful.  As your selections increase, it will become more efficient f0r you to subscribe to Blog Feeds and manage those subscriptions through a Feed Reader such as Google Reader. 

The benefits of subscribing to multiple blogs in a RSS Feed Reader (a.k.a., Aggregator)  include the following:

• There are some bloggers that regularly write so many great niche-relevant blog posts that you can practically make yourself a free custom-made book by organizing your favorite blog post printouts in a three-ring binder which you can continuously update with the latest information for free (e.g., for perspectives on using social media consider following:  Problogger, Copyblogger,  and/or ChrisBrogan). 
• Other bloggers, who are newer or not so niche-specific in their writing yet, will write the occasional great and relevant-to-you posts.  Skim through headlines to jump to the ones that catch your attention.
• Some bloggers have PhDs, others are experts-in-the-rough.  Words-of-wisdom do not become truer if they have a higher-education degree behind them.  Lesser-known or ‘differently-educated’ bloggers can have just as valuable nuggets of  life experience to share as the established writers and philosophers.  Consider them all.
• Being skeptical isn’t  always a bad thing.  I find that over-generalizations or blind acceptance of any idea is where we often get ourselves into trouble.  Social proof or group think might be good for a marketer’s pocketbook, and while it can be completely accurate and reliable, it can be just as wrong, too.  Consider this quote from this CNBC post entitled “Timeless and Time-Tested Warren Buffett Watch Predictions“:

The crowd will make mistakes.  Buffett cites this piece of advice from his mentor Benjamin Graham: “You’re neither right nor wrong because other people agree with you. You’re right because your facts are right and your reasoning is right—and that’s the only thing that makes you right. And if your facts and reasoning are right, you don’t have to worry about anybody else.”

• So, for me, I think it’s always important to stay open to considering alternate counter-opinions even for beliefs that you hold strongly.  At the very least it helps you understand other people’s perspectives about why or why not they believe certain things while also helping you consider things that you may not otherwise have come across yet.
• Above all, trust is a powerful and fragile element.  In this free medium, trust differentiates the great and respected writers and philosopher from the rest.  The more exposure you have to someone, their behaviors, and their opinions, the more you are able to get a truer sense of what they are really about.  Trust must be earned over time. 
• Yet, trust can be misplaced, too.  In this CNBC post: “How to Tell the Madoffs From the Buffets“, you get an extra glimpse at how to figure out who to trust.  Look for bloggers that teach, share freely, and build relationships for the long-term. 
• I also like to notice how often an idea is repeated or referenced by others.  Sometimes you might find that the person you might be idolizing for his or her “unique” ideas might just be referencing commonly held theories from circles of people that you have not encountered yet.  On the other hand, unconfirmed beliefs and theories can be supported and refuted further as well.
• To further round-out the broad array of writing out there, you may even want to monitor bloggers from other niches that can provide ideas that are transferable to your field of interest.

I hope some of these ideas resonate with you and that I was able to show you the value that blog reading and Blog Feed Reader subscriptions have to offer. 

Let me know if you have additional thoughts, ideas, or questions by leaving a comment below. 

Happy Blog Reading!

Extra Bonus:  To get started, if you are interested in Social Media, Writing, and Psychology-related* blogs, you are welcome to download and use the List of Feed Subscriptions that I’ve put together.  Here’s how you can import my manually created list of Feed Subscriptions into your Google Reader:

1. Download my (OPML) Feed by right-clicking on this link and “Save Target As” to a location on your computer that you’ll be able to find later for Step#6.
2. Go to Google Reader.  Sign up for your free account.  Log In.
3. In the lower left corner, below Subscriptions, click on the “Manage Subscriptions” link.
4. Go to the “Import/Export” Tab.
5. Click on the “Browse” button under “Import your subscriptions”
6. Locate the file you downloaded in Step#1 (i.e., google-reader-subscriptions.xml)
7. Click on the “Upload” button.  And, that’s it!
8. Click on the “Back to Google Reader” link to see the Subscription Folders on the left.
9. Expand the different folders to find the RSS Feed subscriptions listed within each folder.
10. Feel free to delete, move, rename, add, and “star” your favorites as desired.

Consider finding and adding other blogs of interest via Google Blog Search.   Enjoy!!!!!

*Note:  This feed subscription list  includes 100 Fascinating Brain Blogs.