Believe it or not, I’m not an early adopter. I’m pretty tight with my purse and I don’t buy the “next big thing” as soon as it hits the market. I’m interested, yes, but I like to see how things shake out before I buy. Invariably, the first edition of anything is just aching for some quick updates so I like to spend my money after those updates are made.

Yesterday, Steve Jobs and Team Apple rolled out the new iPad. And, although I’m not interested in owning one, I’ve been interested enough in the buzz to pay attention. As soon as it was rolled out, everyone posted about how wonderful, futuristic, and game-changing the iPad is. Then the jokes about feminine hygiene started. Finally, the posts started coming about how iPad isn’t that great after all because it’s really just a big iTouch. I’ve been surprised, not at the circle of praise and insult, but at the short-sightedness of comparing it the iPad to the iTouch.

The complaint I hear from most people is, “but it’s just a big iTouch/iPhone, why would I need that if I have a laptop?” What I think they’re missing is the fact that the iPad bridges the gap between the iTouch/iPhone/laptop by incorporating iWorks (Apple’s suite of professional tools that includes Keynote (equivalent to PowerPoint), Pages (equivalent to Word), and Numbers (equivalent to Excel). The iPad is smaller and lighter than my laptop, but can have the same basic software — it’s more portable and it allows me to do my work. If I’m a road warrior, that matters.

Also, I think the iPad is going to be much more popular with the teens/college/20-something crowd. Those are the people who are already watching TV and movies on their computers instead of the actual TV. They can research their papers, download textbooks, and write their papers all on one device. That would have been indispensable to me at that age (if I’d known how to use a computer then). I think it’s harder for us codgers to be on board when we’ve already spent the money on the laptop, iPhone, Kindle, etc. We see one more device, those “kids” see a consolidation and more portability.

What are your thoughts? Is the iPad just a big iTouch? Or is it the next big thing you have to have?

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Update: AT&T Will Spend $2 Billion to Improve Wireless Network

Yesterday, Apple unveiled it’s new iPad and discussed the future of portability. It was suggested that the event would also lay to rest–one way or another–the rumors that Apple is ending it’s exclusive deal with AT&T. Unfortunately, those rumors were neither confirmed nor denied and no one knows for sure just what’s going to happen.

The Background

The iPhone has had an exclusive deal with AT&T since the beginning. If you purchased an iPhone, you had to purchase the data plan from AT&T if you wanted to use the iPhone to its potential. Users have complained of arbitrarily lost calls, high overage costs, and limited signal availability in some parts of the country (including major cities).

Last week, rumors started floating around that Apple may be ready to end it’s exclusivity with AT&T–something users have been begging for. Ending the AT&T exclusivity deal isn’t such a bad idea, not only for the sanity of users and the Justice Department (which has concerns over the exclusivity policy), but for AT&T as well. As Barb Dybwad of Mashable points out, “It even makes sense for AT&T, who in some ways are arguably shouldering an excessive burden by being the sole carrier of the data-intensive device. Many of the customer complaints about AT&T’s service (or lack thereof) can be traced to network troubles that are primarily a result of the bandwidth-hungry Apple phone.”

The Rumors

Bloomberg reported that “T-Mobile USA Inc. will get the phone this summer, followed by Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Corp. in the fall, and Clearwire Corp. in 2011″. And Shawn Oliver of HotHardware reported that “we have been led to believe by an inside source that AT&T will lose their iPhone exclusivity on the same day [of Apple's big event]“. When Steve Jobs took the stage on Wednesday, he confirmed that Apple is the largest global device company in the world (their earnings for last quarter were $15.6 billion dollars) and he unveiled the new iPad. What he did not do was fire AT&T.

In fact, the new iPad will be powered by AT&T’s 3G network. And in a quarterly earnings call on Monday, Apple’s COO defended Apple’s relationship with AT&T:

“First of all, AT&T is a great partner. We’ve been working with them since well before we announced the first iPhone. And I think it is important to remember they had more mobile broadband usage than any other carrier in the world. And in the vast majority of locations we think that iPhone customers are having a great experience, from the research that we have done. As you know, AT&T has acknowledged that they are having some issues in a few cities and they have very detailed plans to address these. We have personally reviewed these plans, and we have very high confidence that they will make significant progress toward fixing them.”

The bottom line is that rumors of an end to Apple/AT&T exclusivity are still rumors. I’d like to know your opinions on this. If you currently own and iPhone, would you try out a new carrier if you had the choice? If you don’t own an iPhone, would you buy one if you could choose your carrier or would you stick with what you’ve got?

This article was cross-posted at BlogHer.com.

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When I do them, the Friday Helpful Blogging Links are some of my most popular posts. I’ve had people tell me they look forward to that weekly feature. To come up with those weekly links, I used to just save links from my reader and randomly select three to five to share each week. The result is that some of the link are new and some are a bit dated (but still offer relevant information).

A few weeks ago, I researched Tumblr for an article on mini- (or micro-) blogging. I created an account for Blogging Basics 101 and I started using it. What am I using it for?

• I share links to the articles I’m reading and, lately, I add my own discussion of the article.
• I encourage you to ask me blogging questions so I can answer them.
• I provide a feed to the Blogging Basics 101 Tumblr account so you get links to the top stories relevant to blogging.

So, if you love the Helpful Blogging Links feature at Blogging Basics 101, might I suggest that you visit and subscribe to the Blogging Basics 101 Tumblr account? I’ll still post a few links here every Friday, but if you want to know what I’m reading every day, Tumblr’s the place you’ll find it. I’m adding about 10 or more links to the Tumblr blog every day.

If you’re using Tumblr, Posterous, or another mini-blogging platform, please feel free to tell us about it in the comments and leave a link to your account. Unless you’ve commented before, your link may be held for approval. I won’t be approving any NSFW links.

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Blogging in 2004 was significantly different from blogging in 2009. Over the past five years we’ve seen an explosion in how people use social media and how we make money from it. In 2004, it was hard to find a professional blogger; blogging was still very much a community-based hobby. These days, it’s unlikely to find a blogger who’s not making a little money (whether from affiliate links, an ad network, or selling their own ad) or at least being offered products in exchange for a review. And if you’re making money (even a little bit), you are required to pay taxes on it. But what about products and services? What about deductions? Just what, exactly, does the IRS expect bloggers to report? I’ve gathered a list of helpful articles and blogs to help you figure that out. (Of course, since I’m not a tax professional or a lawyer, I also strongly suggest you hire a tax professional who is familiar with social media and can help you file your taxes properly.)

The first thing you’ll most likely reach for as you prepare your 2009 taxes are tax forms. You need your W-2 forms from any employers and 1099s from any companies you worked with that paid you. If the company does not send you a 1099 by the end of January, you should contact them to see when you can expect that information from them (note that if they didn’t pay you $600 or more, they are not required to send a 1099, but you are still required to report the income). Keep in mind that if you went on any marketing trips this year, those companies should provide you with a 1099. Even though you may not have been paid monetarily for those trips, the flight, hotel, food, etc. is all considered income and you have to pay taxes on it. In her article Taxes for Bloggers, Mrs. Micah provides a list of items (in addition to your W-2s and 1099s) you’ll want to gather before going to your tax professional. She also provides links to handy spreadsheets that help you track your income over the year and a deductions spreadsheet that lists possible tax deductions as they relate to your blogging business.

If you have questions about bloggging and taxes, the most complete resource I’ve found is Tax Girl written and maintained by Kelly Phillips Erb. Here are a few of the articles that specifically address how your blogging career affects your taxes:

• Ask the taxgirl: When is it income?
• Ask the taxgirl: Deductions
• Problogger guest post: 7 Things that Every Blogger Should Know About Tax
• Problogger guest post: 46 Tax Deductions that Bloggers Often Overlook

In 3 Ways to Reduce Your Freelance Writing Taxes and Help Yourself, Thursday Bram explains why freelancers (and bloggers) may want to consider funding your own retirement and health insurance options. She writes, “One of the reasons employers can afford to offer benefits like health insurance and retirement plans to their employees is because there are tax benefits available when they do so. They’ll have to spend money either way — the question is whether they spend that money on benefits for employees or on taxes. The same is true for freelancers.”

Mom in the City’s article Mrs. CPA Answers Your Questions Regarding Blogging and Taxes tackles issues like

• whether you’re conducting a business or a hobby (and why it matters to the IRS)
• whether you need to pay taxes on goods or services you receive
• what to do if a company doesn’t send a 1099
• whether you need to report giveaways
• how to handle donations

Taxes, as they say, are inevitable. Knowing what you are and aren’t responsible for or what you can and can’t deduct can be confusing. Do your research and consult a tax professional to avoid any problems down the road.

Additional articles on bloggers and taxes:

• 7 Year-End Tax Tips by Karin Mueller via Entrepreneur.
• June Walker: Tax & Financial Advisor to the Self-Employed
• Top Tips on How to Avoid an IRS Audit by Cody via Your Frugality Advice
• Year-End Tax Tips for Freelance Writing Businesses by Bob Younce via Business Tips for Writers

A version of this article was cross-posted at BlogHer.com.

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Growing up, I *loved* the end-of-year wrap-ups on various news shows. I enjoyed looking back at everything that happened with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Of course, now, I rarely turn on the television and I find most of my news and recaps via the Web — including my end-of-year recaps. I’ve seen so many Best Of lists over the past week, I decided I’d like to share some of them with you. A sort of Best of 2009 link round up for techies.

Twitter Trends for 2009

If you weren’t on Twitter this year, you weren’t getting your breaking news. Here are two articles that look back at what happened on the second-biggest social network this year:

• Twitter Reveals Most Discussed Topics of 2009 by Ben Parr via Mashable. This list provides a break down of what we Twittered this year. From Michael Jackson to Google Wave to Harry Potter, Twitter was the way news broke and was dissected and discussed.
• Twitter’s Top 10 Tech Trends of 2009 by Jolie O’Dell via Read Write Web. Not surprisingly, Google Wave is number one. As techies, you’ll be interested to see what the other nine most talked about topics were. It was interesting to me that conferences made the list. If you’ve had any doubt that your hashtags are important, worry no more.

Most Popular Downloads for 2009

I love efficiency. This year iPhone apps, Mac apps, and even Windows apps enabled me to achieve a higher level of efficiency. Oh my word, I love technology and it’s ability to make my life faster and easier.

• The App Store’s Biggest (Official) Hits of 2009 by John Herrman via Gizmodo. Mr. Herrman provides Apple’s official list of what’s hot and what’s not this year in the App Store. The lists include apps and games divided into best sellers and top rated. I was surprised there weren’t more free apps included in the lists. I’d love to know what your favorites were this year. Will you leave me a comment and let me know what apps or games you can’t live without? (If you happen to remember the cost, please include that as well.)
• Most Popular Free Mac Downloads of 2009 by Adam Pash via Lifehacker. Two things in my life that I love? My Mac and efficiency. So many times those two things go together. This list provides some of the most fun and efficient tools you can download for your Mac.
• Most Popular Free Mac Downloads of 2009 by Adam Pash via Lifehacker. Although I love my Mac, my family also has a PC running Windows. This article lists some of the most popular downloads for that OS.

More Best of 2009 Lists

• Check out Lifehackers entire Best Of series. It includes lists for Linux, photography, how-tos, and more.
• Jennifer Wagner links to 15 Best of 2009 lists including The Best TV Lines of 2009
• 2009 Best of What’s New via Popsci is broken into categories like Engineering, Home Tech, Gadgets, Health, Green Tech, and more.
• Gina Trapani breaks down why Google had a banner year in 2009 in her article This Year in Google: The 2009 Edition. She says, “When technologists of the future look back in time, they’ll remember 2009 as the year Google got serious about an internet operating system, speeding up the web, and indexing EVERYTHING in sight. Take a look at the year 2009 in Google.”
• AdWeek Media has their picks for the best of marketing and media Best of the 2000s.
• Mashable has several lists, but I found The 10 Most Innovative Viral Video Ads of 2009 to be quite entertaining.

This article is cross-posted at BlogHer.com.

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BlogHer.com did a short series on mini-blogging and some of the popular tools for joining in the party. This article is part of that series.

So far in our overview of microblogging tools I’ve introduced you to Tumblr and Denise admitted her addiction to Posterous. Those two tools are the most popular options going, but there is a third option: TypePad Micro. If you’re a TypePad user, you’ve noticed that Six Apart (TypePad’s parent company) has made some significant changes over the last year or so. The goal of those changes has been to allow users to create an online hub where they can manage all of their social media accounts and TypePad Micro is just another tool to help you to that end.

In November, TypePad introduced a new, free blogging option called Micro. Here is an overview of the features you get with your new Micro account:

• Cross-post your Micro entries with your Twitter, Facebook, or FriendFeed accounts.
• Allow readers to sign in and comment with their TypePad, Facebook, Twitter, or OpenID account.
• Use the Re-Blog feature to share a snippet from a Micro blog to your own blog (and allow your readers to do the same).
• Post to your Micro account via e-mail, an iPhone app, or via a bookmarklet.
• Allow other TypePad users can follow you and have your status fed to their dashboard.

As for design, TypePad Micro falls somewhere in between the many options for Tumblr and the no design option of Posterous. A basic Micro account offers two design themes: Chroma and Avatar. The Chroma design allows you to upload your own banner image and then pulls the color scheme for your Micro blog from that photo. The bolder the colors, the better. The Avatar theme is based on the movie coming out this month (but you can still upload your own banner image and change the color scheme based on that image).

Setting up a TypePad Micro blog is a fairly easy affair, just follow the wizard at their site. If you already have a TypePad account and would like to add a Micro blog, the TypePad Knowledge Base can walk you through that. Once you’re up and running with your Micro account, you can start posting text, pictures, or video.

When Ginevra Kirkland from TypePad contacted me to alert me about the launch she explained why Micro would be of interest to new and established bloggers alike:

“[T]he opening of the TypePad network to new bloggers expands your audience. It also allows your readers and commenters to participate in your community in whole new ways: through favoriting, following, commenting, reblogging and, ultimately, blogging with a free TypePad Micro blog.”

Want to see how others are using TypePad Micro? Here are a few sites for you:

• Dollarshort by Six Apart co-founder, Mena Trott
• Awesome Blog by Leah Culver
• Mookie’s Musings by Mookie

You might also be interested to read Laurie’s take on why she’s not using TypePad’s Micro option. In a nutshell, she says, “I want a better blog, here–not a microblog. That’s why I come here. I can micro everything everywhere else. I do micro everything. I tweet all the livelong day. I also have an abandoned Vox, and a Posterous, and a Tumblr. I don’t know what I’m doing with any of those things, but I have them. . .My blog is not Twitter. I don’t want it to be Twitter.”

I disagree with Laurie to an extent. I think mini-blogs do have a place, but it depends on how you’re blogging and who your audience is. These mini-blog options–Tumblr, Posterous, and TypePad Micro–are absolutely poised to be the next thing in social media. Granted, many people are already using these tools, but I think you’re going to see an explosion in the next few months. Over the last year I’ve seen plug-ins that allow you and your readers to share your articles and updates with every social media account imaginable. You can automatically Tweet your blog updates, save interesting articles to your Delicious account, and update Facebook and Twitter at the same time. With microblogging tools like Tumblr, Posterous, and TypePad Micro, you can do all of that with the click of a button.

As Denise points out when describing why Posterous works for her, “It feels like it could be the tool that I use to manage most of my other online presences. It feels like it could be the tool that allows me to record and share my lifestream. It has every single option and tool that I would need to achieve that goal.” Whether you choose Posterous, Tumblr, or TypePad Micro, don’t think of it as choosing one more thing to keep track of; think of it as choosing the tool that lets you keep track of everything else.

This article was cross-posted at BlogHer.com.

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Somewhere between traditional blogging and Twitter there lies a sort of half-blog option. If your primary blog is your heavyweight and Twitter is your featherweight, then sites like Tumblr, Posterous, and TypePad Micro would have to be your lightweights. Those sites aren’t quite as much as a full-fledged blog, but they are more than a microblog (though, technically, they are considered a part of microblogging). These lightweight blogs offer more than Twitter (you can use more than 140 characters and display media within a post instead of linking to it) and more than Facebook (items you link to or display at Tumblr, Posterous, or TypePad Micro are easily found if you need them later). These middle-of-the-road blogs are sort of like a social bookmarking site (e.g., Delicious), but again, they are more because they’re set up like a blog: you can choose your design and have multiple authors.

Today I’m writing about Tumblr and I’ll be honest, I haven’t really done anything with microbloging beyond Facebook and Twitter. As I researched Tumblr, I found that most people are using it as a place to keep track of media they find or to keep track of links that may be useful later.

Tumblr is incredibly easy to set up (just follow the wizard) and get started with. You can create either a public or private (readers by invite only) Tumblr account. Once you’re set up, you can customize your site with themes, include your avatar, and link to your other social media accounts.

I am impressed with the number of widgets and options Tumblr provides to help you integrate your Tumblr account with your other social media accounts:

• Tumblr offers a bookmarklet you can drag to your browser’s toolbar and use to add links and media to your Tumblr site.
• There’s also a Facebook application that allows you to cross-post your Tumblr items to your Facebook account.
• You can download the iPhone application so you can take photos or record video while you’re out and about and post those directly to your Tumblr page.
• If you have a Mac, you can download a dashboard widget so you can share things directly from your desktop without going to your browser.
• You can choose to automatically or selectively share your Tumblr posts on Twitter.
• You can even post to Tumblr via text or e-mail from your phone.

They have a whole page of third-party applications for the Tumblr platform.

The one thing Tumblr doesn’t come with is comments. Which, to me, seems a little counter-intuitive. Social media is almost always about the community and the give-and-take of ideas. You can get around this one-way communication and open your Tumblr site to the masses in two ways:

1. Allow people to submit their own stories and comments about your content on your blog. Just go to Account > Preferences > Customize your blog > Advanced. Then scroll down until you see the option to Enable audience submissions. Now your readers can submit their own thoughts about your content and submit their own stories. Note that the submissions will show up in your main content area as an article. Two sites that take advantage of this option nicely are Clients From Hell and My Parents Were Awesome.
2. Use a third-party comment application like Disqus. Disqus has easy instructions for you to follow and you’ll be up and running with comments in no time. You need to be aware, though, that not all Tumblr themes support the Disqus commenting option. In those cases, you’ll need to follow Disqus’ manual instructions (there’s a link in step 3 of their installation instructions) and install the code to your template yourself. Once installed, your Tumblr blog will have a link after each post titled Comments and, you guessed it, that’s where your readers can click to leave their comments.

At first glance, I thought Why do I want to start one more account? It’s one more thing to keep track of. So I started asking people how they use Tumblr. What I found was people using their Tumblr blog as

• an RSS for their Twitter account (sort of a backup with easy navigation in case you need to find exactly what you said and when). You can see how Alli Worthington of Blissfully Domestic uses Tumblr for this.
• a place for press releases, sales information, and media kits. Jo-Lynn of Musings of a Housewife uses her Tumblr site as her press page so she can add new items as necessary and point interested marketing reps to a single place.
• a supplement to a regular or “main” blog. Meredith at Food for Thought told me she started using Tumblr because she wanted to comment on and share interesting frugal links without diluting the content on her primary blog, Like Merchant Ships. Now she uses her Tumblr account every day and says, “The best part of having an established blog is the ability to introduce  new blogs and share particularly great work. Food For Thought has become a great way to direct traffic AND serve my own readers.”
• a repository for items you may need later. Colleen Morgan at Middle Savagery writes that she appreciates Tumblr “as a sort of visual short-hand while I’m doing research–I tend to tumble what I’m reading about or thinking about, select quotes and photographs. It makes a nice, general record of your research trajectory.  I like that it is an explicit acknowledgment of the marginalia created during the construction of knowledge.”

Lynn d Johnson, who has a Tumblr site in addition to her primary blog, suggests you consider what your goals are for your content before you decide where to post it:

Let’s be honest, no one (and I mean no one) has the bandwidth to be that many places at once. But where you end up producing most of your content, and sharing, really depends on quite a few factors.

1.    What is it you want to share?
2.    Who is it you want to share with?
3.    Are you more interested in building a brand or building a community?
4.    Is it more important to be where your peers are, or to bring people to you?

These are just some of the questions you have to ask yourself when considering whether you’d rather dabble in one space over the other, or use one space to feed all of the others. What’s your end goal?

Have you used a microblogging site like Tumblr in an interesting way? Leave me your thoughts and links in the comments. I’m interested to know you’re finding these sites useful and how you’re using them to build your brand and community.

This article was cross-posted at BlogHer.com.

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For the last six or eight months, a friend of mine has told me that she uses Twitter as her RSS feed. She follows everyone she’s interested in and follows the links they provide via Twitter (whether to personal or news blogs). She doesn’t use any other aggregator. Her experience made me stop and think: do all bloggers think to link their blogs to their Twitter account? Depending on where you are in your social media journey, this may be a new idea for you. You may not be aware of the tools available to help you link your accounts so readers, no matter where they are, can find you.

Twitterfeed
Twitterfeed allows you set it and forget it (wow, I really hope that’s not trademarked by the Ronco guy–it’s just so snappy). By associating your blog’s RSS with your Twitterfeed account, any time you publish a new article on your blog, the URL is shortened via bit.ly and fed directly to Twitter via your Twitter account (you can also feed it to Facebook). In addition, the confirmation email I received said, “If you use Feedburner and have authorized their awareness api then you can also see those stats on your dashboard, making it easy to compare your traditional RSS distribution with Twitterfeed’s social distribution.” If you take advantage of that feature, you could find some interesting correlations.

To set up a Twitterfeed account:

1. Go to Twitterfeed.com.
2. Complete the sign-up form with an email address and password.
3. Choose whether you’d like your feed to be sent to Twitter or Facebook.
4. Connect with the appropriate account by clicking either the Authenticate Twitter (to send your feed to Twitter) or Connect with Facebook (to send your feed to Facebook) button.
5. Type in the name of the feed you want to send out.
6. Type in the URL of the feed you want to send out.
7. Click Update Feed.

If you like, you can use the advanced settings to set

• update frequency (every 30 minutes, every hour, on up to every day)
• whether to include the title and/or post description
• which service to use to shorten your links (e.g., bit.ly, SnipURL, TinyURL, etc.)
• post prefixes and suffixes

TypePad
TypePad has recently unveiled some new feature to its software. One of those features allows you to share your newest posts with Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed as they are published. To use this feature, though, you’ll need to link your TypePad account with those third-party social media tools. Just go to Settings > Sharing and choose which accounts you want to share your TypePad posts with. Right now you can only share your posts with Twitter, Facebook, or FriendFeed. Once you’ve established a connection between your TypePad account and your other social media accounts, follow these instructions for sharing your posts with Twitter (and/or Facebook and FriendFeed):

1. Write your post as usual.
2. Check the box next to Twitter (and/or Facebook and FriendFeed) under Share This Post in the right sidebar of the New Post page.
3. Save/publish your post as usual. When the post is published, TypePad will send the permalink of the article (shortend via bit.ly) to the accounts you checked.

Do it yourself
You may not want to tweet everything you post. Many people choose to tweet only posts by others or posts they’ve written themselves only if it relates to a specific, current conversation. In those cases, you can simply paste the permalink into your tweet and Twitter will automatically shorten the link via bit.ly.

You’ve probably noticed that the tools I’ve recommended all use bit.ly to shorten your URLs. It’s by far the most popular URL-shortener and I encourage you to try it out. The feature that makes bit.ly so popular, I think, is that it allows you to set up an account with them and track how many click-throughs your bit.ly links receive. If you’re tracking that information, you can really get a good idea of which social media communities are using your information consistently. You can also track which topics are more popular than others. When it comes to data tracking, the possibilities are endless. Bit.ly is just one more tool for your arsenal.

Related interesting reading:

• Twitter’s Chief Talks About Lists, Traffic and Revenue by Claire Cain Miller
• Basics: Grow Your Blog with Twitter’s List Feature by Neicole Crepeau
• Real-Time Google Reader Shares to Twitter–There’s an App for That by Louis Gray
• How to Make Your Blog and Tweets Work Together Like a Charm by Alex Cristache

This article was cross-posted at BlogHer.com.

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Google Alerts is one of the most versatile online tools. It allows you to listen to conversations you may not be aware of. Conversations that involve you or your brand (and maybe even your competitors). As you manage your online presence, it’s important to listen to what people are saying and how they are saying it. You want to know if other sites are linking to you, quoting you, supporting you, or complaining about you. You want to know what your competition is up to and how they are faring. Enter Google Alerts, the free online tool that lets you track keywords and phrases effortlessly so you never miss another important conversation.

What is Google Alerts?

In Get Started with Google Alerts, Rebecca Leaman explains what Google Alerts is: “You can think of Google Alerts as a customized Google Search — on-going — that delivers the search results to you automatically. You can set up any number of Alerts (up to 1000 per email address) to help you monitor online activity for the search terms of your choice.”

How can I use Google Alerts?

Using Google Alerts for Blogging Ideas suggests using Google Alerts as a sort of writing prompt: “By using Google Alerts for your keywords and key phrases, you can find a lot of ideas for future blog posts. You’ll be led to other websites and blogs with ideas you can continue on with. And you’ll receive news and press releases on brand new items coming out that you can alert your readers to.”

How do I set up Google Alerts?

Setting up Google Alerts is a simple process–you don’t even have to have a Gmail account to use Google Alerts.

1. Go to http://www.google.com/alerts/ where you’ll see this page:
   
2. Sign in if you have a Gmail account. If you don’t have a Gmail account, you can just start filling out the Google Alert form.
3. Enter the search terms you want to track, separated by commas. You can edit this later if you find you have too many or too few terms. If you’re not sure what to track, start with your name and your blog’s name. You may also want to include keywords related to your brand and your niche.
4. Choose the Type of search you want Google Alerts to create. Rebecca Leaman’s article on setting up Google Alerts explains each type of search and what you can expect:
   • News (includes the latest news articles that mention your terms and “appear in the top ten results of your Google News search.”)
   • Blogs (includes blog articles that mention your terms and “appear in the top ten results of your Google Blog search.”)
   • Web (includes web pages that mention your terms and “appear in the top twenty results of your Google Web search.”)
   • Comprehensive (includes results from News, Blogs, and Web, etc. that mention your terms. It’s, um, comprehensive.)
   • Video (includes videos that mention your terms and “appear in the top ten results of your Google Video search.”)
   • Groups (includes posts that mention your search terms and “appear in the top fifty results of your Google Groups search.”)
5. Choose how often you’d like to receive your Google Alerts. I like to receive mine once a day simply because I’m trying to cut down on the time I spend checking e-mail. However, if you’re tracking a timely project or news story, you may want to choose as-it-happens. Likewise, if you’re just keeping tabs on something that mildly interests you, but isn’t critical, you can choose once a week.
6. Choose where you’d like the Google Alerts delivered. If you have a Gmail account, you can receive them via gmail. If you’d rather, you can receive them via RSS or another e-mail account.
7. Click the Create Alert button and finish.

That’s it. Easy and free. Honestly, does it get better than that?

This article is cross-posted at BlogHer.com.

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