First you must select your personal river from the overall ocean. For most people, we’re only interested in a tiny fraction of the overall categories of information that are streaming around the world. To the extent that we can define what information is beneficial to us and then find the best sources, we’ve discovered a powerful flow of information we can act on.
Most people have little idea how much information is available in their field. Truth be told, many people would tell you they have 80 percent visibility into the information they need, when the reality is they have 5 percent at their fingertips.
To locate valuable sources of information for your river, you have a couple of options.
The first is to interview lots of people around you and find out what they’re using to gain information. This provides a great start.
The second step is to search online for sources you haven’t found to this point. This can be done by using tools like blogged.com to search through their index of bloggers to find ones in your field, or twellow.com, which provides the same service for Twitter users.
Industry associations put out many sources of digital information these
days. Industry analysts provide reports, some free, and others for a fee. Depending on the field you’re in, the government provides information that could be helpful.
Running alerts on keywords can yield new sources of information, as you can discover
people commenting on your field that you wouldn’t have found otherwise.
You only need to invest a few hours asking people around you what electronic sources of information they’re using and another few hours of intelligent searching, to build a strong initial source of information. Once you tap into a new list of information sources, you’ll see immediate results. This step is critical because the steps that follow won’t matter much if you don’t have a powerful and relevant wellspring of information coming in.
Media Accent Nigeria
Posted by Dominic Nwelih
KEYWORD ALERTS
Using alerts on specific keywords from your industry is a simple task. There are numer-
ous free services such as Google Alerts, Yotify, Socialmention alerts, and Alerts.com that will let you track any mention of a keyword from your industry, and send you an e-mail with the link where you can find the information. Run a sophisticated set of alerts for three months and you’ll discover hidden streams of information that others may never find.
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