When gathering resources for a new blog topic, not only the research methods are very important, but also the locations. Some online resources offer more in-depth and trust-worthy information than others, or simply more information.

Where should one start when researching topics? What are the best research resources? Some would say encyclopedias, others would say specialized informational websites. I’d say both.

This is one post you’d like to bookmark for further use, as the list of categories, resources and links will grow each day, and THIS post will get updated each time.

If you’d like to suggest an entry, feel free to contact me.

Please note that the following list is based on my preferences.

Important: Content theft is not research! Respect the authors of these resources and do not copy their work.

List of covered categories of resources

1. Astronomy & Space
2. Automotive Industry
3. Biology
4. Career & Jobs
5. Computers & Gadgets
6. Encyclopedias
7. History

Astronomy & Space Research Resources

1. NASA
   www.nasa.gov
2. Google Space
   Includes Google Sky, Google Moon & Google Mars
   www.google.com/space
3. Hubble Site
   hubblesite.org
4. Space.com
   www.spacecom/
5. Space on About.com
   space.about.com
6. Discovery Space on The Discovery Channel
   dsc.discovery.com/space/
7. Absolute Astronomy
   www.absoluteastronomy.com
8. Encyclopedia Astronautica
   www.astronautix.com
9. Space Today
   www.spacetoday.org

Back to categories list

Automotive Industry Research Resources

1. Car and Driver
   www.caranddriver.com
2. Motor Trend
   www.motortrend.com
3. AutoBlog.com
   www.autoblog.com
4. Bikez.com
   www.bikez.com
5. Motorcycle.com
   www.motorcycle.com

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Biology Research Resources

1. Biology Online
   www.biology-online.org
2. Biology Browser
   www.biologybrowser.org
3. Discover Life
   www.discoverlife.org
4. Biology on About.com
   biology.about.com

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Career & Jobs Research Resources

1. WetFeet.com
   www.wetfeet.com
2. Salary.com
   www.salary.com
3. Vault.com
   www.vault.com
4. Sparkplugging
   www.sparkplugging.com
5. Simply Hired blog
   blog.simplyhired.com
6. FreelanceSwitch
   freelanceswitch.com
7. Freelance Folder
   www.freelancefolder.com
8. Careers on The Wall Street Journal
   online.wsj.com

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Computers & Gadgets Research Resources

1. Tom’s Hardware
   www.tomshardware.com
2. Hardware Central
   www.hardwarecentral.com
3. PC Magazine
   www.pcmag.com
4. Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB)
   www.esrb.org
5. CNET Software Reviews
   reviews.cnet.com/software
6. PC World
   www.pcworld.com
7. Gizmodo
   www.gizmodo.com
8. Engadget
   www.engadget.com

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Encyclopedias

1. Encyclopedia
   www.encyclopedia.com
2. Wikipedia
   www.wikipedia.org
3. Britannica
   www.britannica.com
4. MSN Encarta
   encarta.msn.com
5. Symbols.com
   www.symbols.com

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History Research Resources

1. The History Channel
   www.history.com
2. World History Connected Journal
   worldhistoryconnected.press.uiuc.edu
3. History of Nations
   www.historyofnations.net
4. U.S. History Site
   www.ushistorysite.com
5. History Orb
   www.historyorb.com
6. The History Guide
   www.historyguide.org

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Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

In blogging, there are two elements that can transform a blog post into a masterpiece. The first one, it’s not a very exact thing. It differs from blogger to blogger, and that is passion. That you’re either born with, or you learn by experimenting and writing more and more.

The second, on the other way, is more precise, it is the quality of the information that you provide. Is that information appealing? Is it helpful? Does it offer real insight?

How do we improve the value of the information that we provide through our blogs? Through research.

For the dedicated blogger, topic research is probably the most time-consuming part of the whole publishing act. Ideas might come in a matter of seconds, words are written at a certain speed, but the information behind those words is gathered in what can extend to even days (if not more).

Sure, some articles are based on the blogger’s own experience and aptitudes, and can take a lot less to research, but for others, time can become a pretty serious issue. To shorten that time, here are a few tips and resources to help you in your research activity.

Topic Research Tips

Ask Google

Whenever one of my colleagues asked me a question to which I did not have an answer, I told them to search on Google. Sometimes, they said they couldn’t find the information through searches, but once I searched, there it was.

It’s all about the “query”. Just as you would think about which keywords to optimize your posts for. Going too complex will most likely give you no results, or too many unrelated results. Be very specific.

For example, a few days ago I need to find in which WordPress file is a function defined. Believe it or not, such information is quite hard to find at a quick search. But, in the end, and by using the right query ( function-name defined in .php ), the result I was looking for was right at the top.

Niche blogs and forums

It is almost impossible that at least a similar topic hasn’t been approach on other niche blogs or forums. Topic research on blogs has its own rules. Bloggers took time to create that information, so, it would be nice considering a link back if the post helped you with your research.

It’s just like writers do with books, adding “bibliography” at the end, mentioning their sources of inspiration.

While you’re on those blogs, do take a look at their comments. Usually, you can find valuable additions or related posts there.

When it comes to forums and blog comments, you have to be careful with the information you choose to use. Topics usually become debates between sides with different opinions, and it’s up to you to choose the right ones.

Wikipedia knows best

Or so they say. Of course, being a human edited project of such a big size, errors can appear, but still, chances are you’ll find what you’re looking for.

When doing topic research on Wikipedia, take a look at the related entries. You might find additional information that you did not even consider introducing the first time.

The selective process

After talking in so much information, the hardest part is to select the gold from the dirt, the information that would generate a unique and valuable post in the end.

In your searches, you have probably seen what other bloggers wrote about, which areas of the topic they covered. Those parts will definitely not generate an unique article, unless you’re sure you can add more unique personal views.

If not, instead of redeveloping them, rather limit yourself to a paragraph explaining what people can read about in the post/article you’re about to link to.

Also, compare and confront information gathered from all sources and make sure that you go with the ones widely accepted, or at least the ones that your experience trusts most.

Take out what does not pass the standards and there you have it, the perfect information, the result of you assiduous topic research!

Photo credits to Sergio Guidoux Kalil.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

I am always astounded at the speed I can do research nowadays. What could have taken weeks or a few months suddenly can be accomplished in 30 minutes or less. When it comes to blogging, you can now gather a lot of data for free.

This can help you even before you start a blog around that topic, so you are aware of the amount of work you need to do to be one of the best in the market.

A simple competitive analysis, for instance, can help you determine what you should do next and create a strategy to better penetrate the market. (Like it or not, when you blog, you are communicating with the market.)

What’s astounded me most is the fact that more bloggers don’t take advantage of the Internet from this standpoint.

For example, if you are looking forward to start a blog about gardening, it is impossible to dominate that niche alone unless you have a team working full time for years to build massive content for for the blog. Gardening is a huge industry. You are more likely to get into the top 10 if you target a sub niche. Rose gardening comes to my mind — not that I know anything about growing roses.

By the way, why getting into the top 10?

The Beauty of Being the Market Leader

Don’t get me wrong. You can make very good living by keeping your business small and self-manageable, if you prefer to be a solopreneur. A friend of mine is silently making six-figure income by selling to a quite crowded niche. He was not even known as the expert in the market. If that’s what you want, it is perfectly fine.

However, if you want to grow big, here are a few facts. You need to think about the 80-20 (Pareto) principle. Basically it says that…

“For many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.”

In niche blogging, perhaps the number is more like 95/5 or even 99.9/0.1. Only a few blogs are really going to make it to the top. Consider yourself lucky if you find a crowded and rabid niche with moderate amount of competitions.

A top 10 niche blog is only going to be more successful because of the following reasons:

1. It will only grow stronger. Once you have a lot of traffic, every time you update your blog, there will be tons of people link to you, sending you even more traffic.
2. People want to be part of it. Engagement rate becomes higher. People will spend more time on the blog than any other sites combined.
3. Credibility and trust. If you sell anything online, you should know how trust affects sales.
4. Higher advertising rates. When a lot of advertisers compete to tap into the blog’s audience, you can charge even more.

How to Become One of the Best

If you have the chance to start over, or even if you don’t, you can do the following to focus (and refocus) on your niche to zero in on something that you can possibly handle with the amount of resources you have, and become one of the best blogs in the topic. Take into account that you can always hire or outsource once you are getting the momentum and start earning from your blog.

So here it is. The key to dominate and win the game is to study the battle field and the enemies. Find out what they are doing and create strategic plan to do better. Simple enough, but how do you actually implement it?

Identify the top 10 blogs in your niche

Use keyword research tools to determine top 10 most frequently searched keywords in your niche and feed those keywords, one at a time, into Technorati or Google.

Write down the list of blogs that appear in the result pages. For Google, you may have to go to the second or third page before you come down to the 10th blog.

Using a Firefox add-on like SEO for Firefox, you can get a lot of data like Google PageRank, number of inbound links from Yahoo, Alexa and Compete ranks and other information.

Tips: You may find spreadsheet software extremely useful in organizing these data.

Perform a Detailed Analysis of What They Do

Once you get the list of 10 blogs, now it is time to visit them and do some home work.

• Subscribe to the RSS feed. You definitely want to get the blogs’ feed into your news reader. Chances are good they have a strong blog’s subscriber base.
• Pay attention to their content model and see why it works so effective. Popular blogs doesn’t always keep their blog updated several times a day. You may be able to determine the publishing schedule based of the pattern you notice.
• Observe the writing style. Some people have natural talent in writing. If that is a factor that contributes to the success, you want to know it. You will be surprised that a lot of bloggers really don’t write perfectly. They just have the passion to write conversationally and get across their message very well.
• Identify marketing strategies. You can’t always see what they do behind the scenes but sometimes you can figure out things by doing a bit more research. If you see a blog post that is very popular in social media, start thinking strategically what made it work.
• Find out how they build responsive audience. If the bloggers choose to enable comments, you will often notice a blog with 1,000 subscribers will have far more comments per post than one with 10,000 subscribers. There should be a reason behind it. I recommend make it a part of your analysis.

I’m sure there will be some other things I have missed, so be flexible and creative when analyzing those blogs.

Expand Your View to Include More Blogs

One reason why we only perform detailed analysis on the top 10 blog is to keep you from a syndrome called analysis paralysis. While this is important, you should not overdo it. At the end of the day, what really matter are content, promotion, and networking (with the audience and other bloggers).

However, once you have done the analysis above, you can expand the horizon and enrich your research by including more blogs. Not all top blogs are going to have the best of everything. Some ideas will be available in other blogs.

What you can learn from those blogs:

• Design details. I got the idea to include a content feed icon at the end of every of blog post from a new blog. I really like that idea so I test it. Perhaps it will turn more of the social media traffic into subscribers but I haven’t figured that out yet. (It seems like a few other more popular bloggers also use the same technique so I’m quite sure it will work.)
• Diversity of content formats. I started to see a few smaller blogs complement textual content with video and audio podcast. Some of them were doing very well when they posted reviews. There were always a surge in comments every time the bloggers posted new reviews, perhaps due to how he balanced the information between the drawbacks of the product and promotion.
• Methods to jazz up the posts. In recent years, I’ve seen bloggers include images from Flickr and other image hosting sites to make the structure of the blog posts more dynamic.
• Additional moneymaking opportunities. Many smaller blogs that provide monthly earnings report show that creating an e-book can help building traffic and also income. This is an example of one of the most overlooked promotion strategies bloggers make. For beginning bloggers, this means a tremendous opportunity to reach people who are otherwise not available if they don’t tap into this one idea.

Ideas are around us. You can often trigger your mind by stimulating it randomly, such as what we use in this section.

Review

I hope you jot down ideas as you go through the process above. Based on your notes, you should now have an idea about what to do to build your blog and dominate the niche.

It is hard to work based on scribbles of notes though. The next step is to plan your approach to produce content, promote it and use marketing strategies appropriately.

Finally, if you haven’t yet implemented an action management system like Getting Things Done, I recommend you to take a look at it. It will make your life more organized.

Take action!

Photo credits by Luis Alves.

About the author

This is a guest post by Hendry Lee.
Hendry Lee helps bloggers overcome technology challenges in starting and growing their blogs. Get daily tips, techniques and strategies by visiting his blog at http://blogbuildingu.com.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive