The world of IT moves fast and it’s hard to keep up with all the important developments as they happen. It’s tough to find the right news, especially if you have a long list of sites you want to check every day, so it can be easy to miss an announcement or fail to recognize an important breakthrough until it’s too late. To help you stay ahead of the curve, here are seven tips for choosing the best IT news for your needs.
Figure out what you’re looking for
To get started with your research, you’ll want to figure out what sort of stories you’re looking for. Are you interested in information about specific companies? The last time that some type of news broke? The future of technology as a whole? Answering these questions ahead of time will help guide your search efforts and keep them from getting derailed by irrelevant content when you come across it during your searches. It’s also a good idea to have a few sources pre-selected so that you can more easily monitor those on top of new information as it comes out instead of feeling like you’ve got to go searching every time there’s breaking news about your area of interest.
Use Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a free web service that allows you to get email updates when relevant new items (news articles, blogs, videos, etc.) are added to a website of your choosing. Google Alerts can also notify you of new results in Google search engine results pages (SERPs). Best of all, it’s completely free! You can set up as many alerts for as many topics as you want—how cool is that? With so much information out there about any given topic, setting up alerts lets you quickly cut through all of it by letting you know what has been updated recently. Alerts help you identify stories that aren’t receiving widespread coverage yet but might be interesting enough for your users or audience members to read about anyway.
Subscribe to newsletters
While you might cringe at how frequently some media outlets email you, it’s probably better than having a daily news feed filled with nothing but 10 ways your computer can be hacked articles. Your inbox isn’t an ad space, but if a source is trying to give away something free—whether it’s a newsletter or a downloadable PDF or whitepaper—it makes sense to at least click through once and takes advantage of their offer. If you’re hesitant, consider signing up for just one newsletter so that you can see what they have to offer without becoming overwhelmed by emails in your inbox. After all, they’re pretty good at sorting them into folders now!
Subscribe to RSS feeds
RSS feeds, or Really Simple Syndication is a great way to stay on top of trending stories. Once you’ve identified an area of interest, simply type in top 10 (or whatever number) at RSS4Torah or any other feed generator website and hit generate. This will bring up a list of sites that publish content related to your topic and provide updates via RSS when new stories are posted. You can subscribe by clicking through from your web browser, or directly from many social media platforms such as Facebook (scroll down for instructions). Or both! If you have trouble finding RSS feeds for your topics of interest it may be time to Google top 10 [topic] rss or search for them on Bing News.
Attend local events
Checking out what conferences or events are happening in your area will give you access to local speakers, networking opportunities, and inspiration for your future projects. If you have time off work scheduled anyway, why not turn it into a mini-vacation? Make sure to see if there’s an unconference option at any of these events: unconferences are typically less formal than traditional conferences, with more room for discussion and collaboration between attendees. They’re also a great way to build connections in your community without feeling like you’re sacrificing too much personal time.
Connect with key influencers in your field
You’re not always going to know who in your field is right for you, but there are plenty of places you can look to help guide your search: social media, relevant communities (Reddit, LinkedIn groups), and local meetups that can lead you in great directions. Local meetups are an especially powerful resource for new startups looking for leads—it’s a fantastic way to connect with up-and-coming ข่าวIT in your area. If you’re active on Twitter, Tweet #startupmeetup near your city or town; if you’re on Facebook, check out Startup Grind as well as Hacker News’ list of local startup events. There’s no need to have your business set up yet—let yourself get inspired by other people like yourself!
