Google Alerts is a free service available to any Google account holder that allows the user to choose specific search terms and ask Google to inform them via email, when this search term is used throughout the Internet. To set up a search simply go to your Google home page and login. Next, at the very top left of your screen you will see the link “more.” Click on this and scroll all the way down to “even more.” Here, you will find on the very top left, “Alerts.” Choose alerts and it will take you to the alerts screen… Now, you will see a box on the upper left of the screen entitled, “Create a Google Alert.” Choose a search term, I chose Stockton Real Estate, or Stockton Foreclosure, or Stockton Housing… Choose “Comprehensive” to receive all the news from web pages, blogs, etc. and choose “Once a Day” to receive your alert daily. Enter your email address and press “Create Alert.” Voila. That is all there is to it.. Google will know keep track of any chatter, anywhere on the web and send you one email per day with links, and excerpts to the site it appeared on. AS you can tell, this is great information and a great way to aggregate information for your readers, or simply use the information for inspiration to create your own blog posts.
Google Reader, combined with RSS feeds and Googles Blog Search feature is another way to have pertinent information delivered to your desktop. If you have not downloaded Google Reader, it will really change the way you use your computer for news gathering and information. Google Reader is an RSS feed aggregator. Simply put, it displays any and all of your RSS feeds in one place, real-time for you to read. Now, if you are a bit behind on RSS, here is the short description. RSS stands for (among other things) Real Simple Syndication.

Almost every blog, news site and a fair amount of general information web sites have RSS feeds. RSS feeds are indicated by a small orange “chicklet” like the one shown to the right. IF you find a site that you feel is interesting, and would like to read more from the author(s), you simply click on the RSS chicklet and choose Google Reader. The site will now send all new content, (posts) as they are uploaded to your Google Reader… which know lives as part of your Google homepage. Even Microsoft Outlook 2007 includes the ability to capture RSS feeds. This allows you to keep up to date with all of your favorite blogs, and news sites, without having to go to each one, every day and see if there is any new content.

As, you can see, both Google Alerts and Google Reader (with RSS feeds) can offer you lots of daily news. And this news can be great fodder for additional blog posts. So keep your ideas fresh, current, and plentiful, with these two great services.

Content may be King… But Content Ideas are surely Queen!!

• Fighting Poverty- Rocky Turner
• Fighting Poverty- Tom Vanderwell
• Fighting Poverty- Ginger Wilcox
• Fighting Poverty- Craig Barrett
• Fighting Poverty- Drew Meyers (yes, that’s me and I’m humbled to be included in this list)
  
• Fighting Poverty- Gina Kay Landis

Thank you to everyone who devotes some of their time toward fighting poverty — no one can alleviate poverty by themselves, but if everyone acts together, anything is possible.

Now, the point of StumbleUpon is not to promote your own blog, but if you tag and review a number of sites, then submitting your own occasionally is okay. Even better is to get your blog readers to submit on a regular basis.There are a growing number of social bookmarking sites where bloggers and readers are frequenting to find new and interesting sites. Getting involved in these can make a huge difference in getting you and your blog noticed. Just about everyone on the internet knows the power of MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube these days. But here are a few rising stars in the social network commentating world that can help you promote your blog and you should be participating in.

– StumbleUpon is one of my favorite sharing sites. To use this one correctly you’ll need to install a toolbar on your browser. Some people have reported problems with the Internet Explorer Add-on, but I haven’t had any problem with the Firefox version. When you need a break and you have a few minutes during the day it’s fun to stumble through the recommended websites. You can set preferences to avoid topics you’re not interested in and thumbs up or down to sites you like or dislike. I think submitting sites and adding comments various sites gives you credibility when you submit blogs form your own site.

– Delicious (formerly called del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking service that started out as a site where you would store and sync your browsers bookmarks on different computers and then share them if you wish. I never really got into that because I use Foxmarks with Firefox. It just seems more secure to me. Delicious still does this but they have grown since acquired by Yahoo to be more of a tagging, saving, and sharing source. If your friends use Delicious, you can send them interesting bookmarks that they can check out the next time they log in. Of course, they can do the same for you. With a five million + user base this is one site you want to be part of.

– Digg is pretty well known now. But for those of you who don’t follow, this is a user-defined rating system of stories and blogs across the internet. One of the co-founders, Kevin Rose, also co-hosts a weekly vodcast with Alex Albrecht called Diggnation, which reviews the weekly top stories and blogs from Digg over beer and banter. This has a hard-core following of 20-something techies with deep roots in gaming. It’s become so big it’s a little hard to get noticed here. And real estate related topics are not what they are known for. Yahoo recently released Yahoo Buzz, which is trying to compete and may end up with a more mainstream following.

– Mashable is one of the largest blogs on the Internet. Mashable regularly writes about large networks like MySpace, YouTube,etc. But it also reports on less high-profile social networking sites. The website also features its own social network and is a great source of widget code and layouts.

– FriendFeed is a great way to aggregate your friends from numerous websites into one feed. You can see RSS feeds, Twitter posts, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, etc. from everyone all in chronological order. Friendfeed has a “create a room” feature, which I have not mastered yet. Dustin has been the only so kind as to invite me to his “front porch”. to share posts among friends.

– Twitter is my favorite. I have to admit I’m hooked on it. It’s the closest thing to digital crack I have ever seen. I keep telling Facebook and other friends if you really want to keep in touch, let’s Twitter. This is the fastest growing micro-blogging platform right now. I make sure and post a note about any blogs I do there. I know it brings traffic. When I post pics via TwitPic I can see how many views I get. This one is easy to use from your cell phone too. The iPhone has a great app for this called Twitterrific that you can get at the iTunes App store.

– Pownce is sort for the whos-who of micro-blogging and social networking. This was started up by Kevin Rose of Digg.com fame and has a following of his fan base. They are trying to compete head-to-head with Twitter. While they do offer some threading abilities, I prefer the fluid open nature of Twitter. If you already have friends here, you’ll like it though.

Sharing your profiles to these sites so people can find you is also critical. MyBlogLog by Yahoo is one of the most popular and you may have seen there widgets on other blogs. But I like retaggr. It makes my profiles accessible at the top of my blog posts next to the byline. It offers lots of other options too, like IM or Facebook widgets and embedding your profile on your website.

There are new sites springing up daily as social networking on the internet mushrooms. There is no way to keep up with and be a part of all of them. It’s important that you give people a way to easily share, submit, or add your blog posts to these through some kind of tagging mechanism with your blogs. I use a plug-in for Wordpress that puts network icons at the end of the post called ShareThis.

One thing is for sure. The number of options to get your blogs noticed is skyrocketing.

Why do iPhone users always get all the cool tools?

The nominees for the Inman Innovator Award in the blog category were:

• 1000Watt Blog
• Big Picture Blog
• FBS Blog
• Agent Genius
• Homegain Real Estate Blog.

Congrats to Benn and Lani, and the rest of the Agent Genius team, for taking home the trophy!!

[via Ubertor]

Head over to the Zebra for read Daniel’s take on the change!