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Information overload is a serious problem for most of the bloggers. We constantly consume information in order to keep up to date with our blogging topic. Frankly speaking, a lot of time spent consuming information is wasted time.

Therefore I decided to start a weekly post series on how to deal with information overload. I will offer you some tips on information overload every week.

How I deal with Information Overload?

Today you are free to subscribe unlimited number of RSS feeds, and spend most of your time reading the popular bloggers. However, I argue that this is a waste of your valuable time. You need to take baby steps everyday to achieve your goals.

Since the beginning I have a simple principle: Spend most of your time on creating blogging ideas, not for reading other’s blogger’s posts hours and hours.

This simple principle helped me improve my blogging significantly.This does not mean that I don’t read any RSS feed at all. I do. But I limited it to five:

• making money online (problogger, john chow, caroline middlebrook)
• copyblogger (Brain Clark)
• entrepreneurship (Yaro Starak)

I did not even read every blog post from these bloggers. I scan their headlines using my iGoogle, and only click on the ones I am interested.

iGoogle is one of the tools I regularly use to deal with information overload. If you haven’t read already, please read iGoogle - Your Blogging Command Center

RapidReader - Deal With Information Overload

Rapid Reader is a simple yet powerful tool which lets you read text on screen faster. It takes a few days to get used to it. But as you exercise, you can reach at a speed of 500 words per minute with Rapid Reader. In other words, you can read a 50 pages blogging report in 10-12 minutes. Imagine the amount of time you are saving here.

Most of the top bloggers are using programs like Rapid Reader to consume the information faster than majority of the bloggers.

You can read PDF, DOC, TXT files with RapidReader. It also lets you import the HTML files to read blog posts faster than ever.

The faster, the better! We are living in an era where the fast fish swallow big fish. I strongly suggest you to take advantage of Rapid Reader. The prices are affordable. Standard Windows version is only $29.95. Your saving is priceless.

By the way, how do you deal with information overload?

Popularity: 23% [?]

• Imagine one morning you wake up, and start your computer to check your blog’s latest status. However, in a few seconds, you realize that it’s gone! I am not kidding here, It can happen anytime. I suggest you to backup your blog at least once a week. BlogBackupr provides free backup service for bloggers. No installation required, runs over the internet, works with any blog. WordPress users, you don’t need to give your userid/password. Even public feed is enough to duly backup your blog.
• I have recently started using Twitter regularly. (Follow me!) It is a good way of communication if you are not addicted to it. While I have been looking for a Twitter guideline, I found that Caroline Middlebrook has written a great guide: Twitter Guide
• Are you sick of long URLs? Tinyurl.com is making long URLs usable.
• Squidoo addicts, I have a very good news for you. With Squidaholic you can find out who’s talking about your lens, get the latest updates on your performance, and follow your competition.
• Do you know what is a #1 Google Ranking Worth? Take a cup of coffee while reading. It is a serious reading, yet worth spending your time and energy.
• Have you ever heard of Wikinomics? Read and learn how mass collaboration changes everything.
• Are you looking for a new blog design or changing your current theme? Don’t miss this one: How Do I Get a Professionally Designed Blog?
• Have you ever thought about life on MARS? Is there any Unknown Blogging Object (shortly UBO) living there? Why don’t you explore Mars now?. It is a realistic walk-though of a 3-D model of a Mars base for the first humans to land on Mars. There are over 100 images representing a Mars habitat.

Popularity: 19% [?]

There are nearly infinite online discussions taking place in the Web. Do you have any idea how many of them are related to your blog’s topic? How can you identify the problems&questions which you already answered with your previous blog posts? Wouldn’t it be great replying those discussions by giving one of your previous post’s URL?

However, there are more than 100,000 boards and forums, how can you keep track of all?

Well, you are so lucky that some smart people thought about this before, and came up with a remarkable solution. Omgili monitors what people are saying online about anything. Just type the keyword (be as specific as possible to get better results), and click on search button. You are done! That’s it!

Omgili search engine scans millions of online discussions worldwide in over 100,000 boards and forums for you. It is able to differentiate between discussion entities, such as, title, topic, answer and post date. You can use Omgili to find consumer opinions, debates, discussions, personal experiences, answers and solutions. Excellent tool, isn’t it?

You don’t believe me? Why don’t you check these sample searches I did for you?

(Remember to click on Advanced Search to get the exact search results you are looking for, you can set the time period, sort by date, even specify the words in title, topic, or reply)

Keyword : SEO - selected Yesterday as period - Omgili Search Results

Keyword : RSS - selected last week as period - Omgili Search Results

Keyword : Pagerank - selected last week as period - Omgili Search Results

If you check online discussions with Omgili  everyday, and then write your posts to answer some of the most popular (or sometimes the least popular, depends on your blogging niche!) discussions, you will add more value to your readers. Even you will gain more exposure, and eventually increase the number of your readers.

I hope you find Omgili very valuable to your daily blogging. Now, I would like to check whether you know alternative ways to monitor online discussions. Please share them with me and my fellow readers. Thanks in advance!

Popularity: 22% [?]