Three easy ways to find blogs about your chosen subject when starting from scratch

I am often asked the same question by people who are about to start writing a blog. “Where do I start to find blogs about my chosen subject?” In answer to the question, here are three easy steps. What are you suggestions?

1. Absolutely the first step is Addictomatic. You simply type in a word or phrase and it spews back every mention of such content on a Twitter, blog, YouTube….It is endlessly fascinating.
2. Just get reading. Use a blog aggregator like Technorati to refine your search or preferably Alltop.com, as suggested by CeCe SolomonLee in comments below. I used to spend long Sunday mornings lost in the Sunday Times and holidays lost in the latest Booker Prize winning novel. Now I spend every moment skipping like a stone form one blog to another, endlessly fascinated by what I find, endlessly learning, signing up for RRS feeds and email subscriptions.
3. Sign up to Twitter and look for people in the sector you are interested in. Start following them – don’t worry whether they follow you, that’s for later – and click through on their tinyurls to the articles, postings and pictures they are spewing out.

I am glad people ask the question where to find blogs, to be honest. I bang on and on that the key act of blogging is going out and commenting on what is being said. Just by asking the question, it suggests that the people are stepping right over the old-fashioned style of “broadcast” blogging (stick it up and EXPECT people to come to it) and starting out afresh with “social media” blogging (get involved with the conversation and pull readers in).