Nothing is better than RSS for getting a real-time indication of what’s going on in your industry. And there are lots of options out there for tracking your field through RSS – from simply following your favorite industry blogs to more advanced methods where you have to do a little goundwork yourself.

Case in point: One of my favorite methods to track trends and news is through Twitter Search (once known as Summize). Here, you can search for specific words or phrases mentioned within Twitter and then add your search as an RSS feed. Genius!

Here are a few ideas of terms related to PR and marketing to get you started with creating your own Twitter Search feeds. The link goes to the page where you can subscribe:

Digital Marketing

SMPR (i.e. the social media press release)

Political PR

PR Campaign

Horn Group (example if you want to track what’s going on/being said about a specific agency)

ad:tech (example if you are tracking an event and want to see what people attending are experiencing and hearing from speakers)

Lead Conversion

PR San Francisco (example if you want to track specific mentions of a term related to a geographic location)

The possibilities are really endless. Try it out for yourself.

Also, look for options where you can add feeds for the other industry or community conversation sites you follow. Even if there aren’t built-in feeds, I would suggest you try out Dapper, which allows you to build an RSS feed out of thin air. It takes a little time, but you’ll feel like a super sleuth, I swear.

Happy feed-ing.

Photo by Striatic