Though I haven’t been blogging here as often as I should be, I’ve been more active lately on some other sites I contribute to. As any of you who blog surely know, it can take a lot of energy and creativity to consistently come up with new content to post. But, as you also know, frequent blogging is critical to maintain a healthy level of readership.

Mining for Content with Online Services

• Technorati - This is one of my top idea generators. I subscribe to RSS feeds for key words related to my niche sites and view them daily (sometimes multiple times per day) to find new blog posts related to those topics.
• flickr - flickr also lets you create RSS feeds for keyword searches. This is a great way to discover new people who are interested in your niche. flickr is also a fantastic community site in and of itself!
• Twitter - Rapid fire mini blogging, stream of conscious texting, all around fun
• StumbleUpon - Tell it a little about what you like by clicking “I like it” buttons on your favorite sites and StumbleUpon helps you find new sites that other people with the same interest have shared.
• Subscribing to other related niche blogs - Pick your favorite news aggregator and subscribe to newsfeeds directly. The benefit of this over sites like Technorati is that there can be a delay of days sometimes between when authors publish stories and when centralized aggregators pick them up. If you wire up the feeds in your own desktop newsreader software, you can control exactly when you check for updates.

I also get a lot of tips and ideas from my readers. Not only does this make my job easier, but it also gives me an opportunity to thank one of our community members with a public nod on the main newsfeed:

• Bubbling up forum posts to the news feed - If you see a particularly interesting post or thread happening in your site’s forums, why not give it exposure on your news feed? It’s a great way to drive new eyes to your forums and get other members to chime in with their opinions.
• Sharing good news about a community member - If something good happens to one of your community members, such as a birthday, a promotion, winning a contest, etc. share it with other members by posting it to your newsfeed. A community is as strong as the bonds between its members, and giving them something to cheer each other on about only helps. Note, be sensitive to privacy. You might want to ask your members if they mind being under the spotlight on your main news feed - some people just don’t like public exposure under any circumstances.
• Tips shared from readers - Make sure your site has an easy to find way for readers to submit blog tips. This could be an online form, a forum dedicated to tips, or even posting an e-mail address on your page (but be careful about spam). The bottom line is, if your readers have something to share, then make it as easy as possible for them to share. Also, it is critical that you read every submission in a timely fashion (i.e. same day), and thank your readers even if you don’t end up using their tip.

So those are some of my tips for finding ideas to blog about. What other techniques do you use? Do you know of any other great news tools I should be using?