Trending Upward

I’ve decided to start a new, semi-regular, series called, “What’s in my RSS reader?”

At least once a month I want to share some of the rss feeds I subscribe to that pertain to *anything* website-oriented. Most of them are higher education related, but not all.

The rules (can you tell I like rules?) – The subject of the blog can be web analytics (yay!), design, usability, copywriting, or anything else. The only rule is that it pertains to websites (web design, development, marketing, anything – but it has to be about the web). Again, hopefully most of them pertain to higher education as well, however, sometimes you have to broaden your horizons.

So, here is my list for the month of September, 2008 …

BlogHighEd – If you are in higher ed (which I’m thinking 95% of the readers of this blog are), then subscribing to BlogHighEd is essential. There are a wide range of higher ed websites that are members which makes for very interesting and diverse posts. BlogHighEd is a blogger network – an aggregate of a bunch of member higher education websites. If you do not subscribe to the BlogHighEd rss feed, do so now! Do not pass go. Do not collect $200 until you subscribe.

BlogHighEd members include these blogs that I read religiously. I do read almost all member blogs pretty regularly, but these are the ones I *always* read.

• .eduGuru (I mention Kyle and his crew a lot – a *must* subscribe for everything web and higher ed).
• Karlyn Morrissette (Karlyn blogs on .eduGuru, but she also has a blog of her own. If email marketing is your thing, Karlyn’s blog is the blog for you. She blogs about way more than just that, but she has fantastic posts about email marketing).
• Mark Greenfield (At the Penn State Web Conference 2008, I attended Mark’s seminar about social networking. What a great seminar. I’ve followed his blog ever since).
• Squared Peg (Brad J. Ward, co-founder of BlogHighEd has his own blog. I have to admit that the name of this blog is what first intrigued me. It brought me back, way back, and the Square Pegs theme song was instantly playing in my head. Ok, so I just dated myself. Squared Peg is a great blog with higher education tidbits galore. If you’re into Twitter and using Twitter in higher education, Squared Peg is for you).

Ok, on to more blogs.

Boxes and Arrows – If you’re a designer, then you probably already subscribe to Boxes and Arrows. Boxes and Arrows is the perfect intersection of design, function, usability. For you designers and application developers out there, do yourself a favor and subscribe.

Copyblogger – As soon as I see a new post on the Copyblogger, I read it immediately. Such great stuff. There are so many great posts and articles on that site for free that, elsewhere <cough>MarketingSherpa</cough> you’d spend hundreds of dollars getting the same information. Take, for example, the landing page series – complete with case studies. This stuff is free? Wow. What an awesome resource. What are you waiting for? Subscribe to Copyblogger already!

SEOmoz - Everybody in the field of SEO is very familiar with Rand Fishkin and his website, SEOmoz. I’ve subscribed to SEOmoz and have been reading it for, boy, what seems like at *least* 2 years. I’m not sure how long it has been in existence, but I’ve been reading it for quite a long time. Rand has an army of writers, each with their own niche. Anyway, if SEO at your college or university is your gig and you’re not subscribed to SEOmoz yet, I’m not sure what rock you’ve been living under.

So tell us what blogs you subscribe to – what’s in your RSS reader?

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