Writing unique and relevant content for a blog or a website can be difficult. With the Internet, news is old minutes after it hits the most popular websites. With sites like Drudge and TMZ, a news story that is interesting will be read by thousands of people within minutes of a news aggregator posting it on their website or blog.
One way I keep my blog and websites updated is by subscribing to Google Alerts. I have key phrases that would be most relevant to my websites. Not only do I have certain keywords set as alerts, I also have key phrases in quotations. I know I won’t be the first person to post a news story, but it’s always good to have fresh content on your site.
Also, it’s important to credit the original source of the news story for a number of reasons, but most important for legal purposes and credibility. If the source isn’t generally the most reliable like CNN or NY Times, it’s important to see where they found the article, so you can investigate. To add uniqueness to the article, I recommend adding your opinion or spin of the story – what it means to you or to people who will read the article.
You might not be first to print an article or news story, but if you offer good analysis, people will still be interested in reading what you write.
I agree.
I’ve just started using Google alerts to let me know when a new story comes up, and its helped me out alot! 🙂
Great advice.
Be sure to use “keyword keyword” in quotes to force the two words to be together in the news alert. You can select only news or news and blogs.
I get dozens of them a day for non-domain related keywords so I get news stories for my Caribbean island related web site.
I always quote the source, dig for more information then I post my comments and sometimes ask a question to entice visitors to leave a reply.
I would recommend getting Yahoo news alerts too. Google and Yahoo seem to have different news feeds.