If I followed my own advice, then I’d be a lot more interesting than I am, but hey, what’s wrong with hypocrites? Here’s some tips for beginner bloggers so you can always find something to write about.

Get an RSS reader

Even if you have Firefox, with it’s ‘live bookmarking’, you sometimes need a lot more than 10-15 RSS feeds being monitored, plus Firefox has no update alert capability, to inform you when something’s new.

Some good RSS readers are:

NewzCrawler (free 14-day trial, $24.95 to buy)
FeedDemon (free 14-day trial, $24.95 to buy)
SharpReader (free)
RSS Reader (free)

There are also online versions, which keep your feed preferences remotely and allow you to visit the website (from anywhere, of course, which is a bonus) to check for news whenever you want. These include:

Bloglines
Feedster
NewsIsFree

Subscribe to great feeds

Of course, having a good newsreader is only half the job. You then need RSS feeds which are really going to interest you. Of course, yours will be different to mine, but one of my personal favourites is Boing Boing, which really lives up to it’s “a directory of wonderful things” tagline. Lifehacker also deserves a mention. Try searching on feed search engines like Feedster.

Keep track of links sites

Websites that track the current climate of the web are very useful. Sites such as Del.icio.us, while letting you keep track of your own web bookmarks, also let you view popular links from others. Their own Popular page, along with services such as Oishii, come with their own RSS feeds, allowing you to keep track of popular pages people are bookmarking right now.

Often new services, news and interesting blog posts will be bookmarked by hundreds of people, keeping you up to date with what other people are interested in. This is obviously very important to keeping your blog posts time-relevent and interesting.

That’s all I can think of right now, but if anyone has any more tips, do comment on this article and I’ll add them.