Google Reader is a powerful tool when it comes to collecting and managing lots of information within your market.
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m a relative novice when it comes to how to use Google Reader effectively, but there are a few things I’ve discovered that I think will be helpful to my readers. One of those things is how to use the tool as a way to quickly get the pulse of a particular market niche.
Want to start getting to know who the thought leaders and major players are in a given market?
Want to know what kinds of questions people in the market are asking?
Want to know what the *hot* topics are?
Want to find great places to ‘join the conversation’ and start interacting with potential joint venture partners?
The best way to quickly answer these questions is to find all (or most) of the popular and active blogs in a niche and subscribe to their RSS feed in Google Reader. Then you can use the search function in Reader to ‘mine’ these blogs for answers to your questions. At first, our goal is to amass a knowledge base, so you will need to subscribe to as many on-topic blogs as possible. You can start weeding out to improve quality later.
Here’s how, in 4 steps…
1) Open a Google Reader account.
2) Use Google Blog Search to find blogs in your market using your primary keywords. (Another way to find blogs is to look for the words “Best” “Top” and “Favorite” in conjunction with your primary keywords and the words “list” and “blogs” For example, “Top <insert keyword> blogs list” This will help turn up lists compiled by other bloggers. )
3) When you find blogs that are on the right topic, frequently updated, and have some comments, subscribe to their feed in Google Reader. At this point, you might want to organize your subscriptions into folders, but you can also save that for later. If you want to research multiple niches, at least create one general folder for each niche.
4) Now, in Google Reader, use the search function to begin finding answers to your market research questions.
For instance, you might search for the words ["how to"] (include the quotes to make it a specific phrase search) — this would begin to reveal some topics that are frequently addressed with ‘how to’ type answers. You can further refine your search by adding the topic to your search. If I search ["how to"] in my Google Reader account, I find this article on the list: Headline Writing 101: Taught by TechCrunch from Conversation Marketing. Now I know that at least one blogger is writing about Headlines. If I want to know if it is a hot topic, I can search for ["how to" write headlines] — this search returns 85 results, so it’s safe to say that the market is asking “how do I go about writing great headlines?”
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Thanks a lot, Doug. A very useful article. I didn’t know about this very useful way of conducting ‘quick and dirty’ market research.