If I were to cut out all of the articles and adverts that I read and found interesting, and placed them in a pile, I’m sure that pile would be much smaller than the pile of paper ready for the recycling bin. The sports supplement exemplifies this perfectly; I have no interest in sport so this huge wad of paper goes straight in the bin. What an utter waste!

Surely there must be some way for newspapers to provide a more tailored news service that gives their audience exactly what they want. Like an iPlayer for news.

RSS feeds go some way in providing people with a way of subscribing to the types of news they are interested in, but I think newspapers could go further in providing a customised service.

Newspapers could provide a totally tailored news service by employing RSS feeds to offer subscribers a wider range of choice. For example rather than being able to subscribe to news about sport you could subscribe to articles purely about badminton.

Using keywords to tag articles could allow users to subscribe to news about particular people, companies, countries or whatever. This could all then be fed into a single personalised and customisable RSS feed that the user can subscribe to and read on their smartphone, PDA or computer. Or they could pump all of this news into a Guardian24 style PDF that the user could read on their eBook reader or even print out.

I imagine this could be funded with advertising or a subscribtion service, but whether users would be willing to subscribe I’m not sure. Would you rather pay to subscribe to a personalised RSS feed or put up with advertising?

Blogs
Reading other blogs can be a great source of inspiration and has inspired a great many of my posts. Plus occasionally I get tagged in MeMe’s! Example.

Twitter
Links that have been shared by people I follow on Twitter have inspired a few of my blog posts and have even helped me at work. Example.

Newspapers / Magazines
Articles that attract my attention sometimes inspire my blog posts. They don’t even happen to be about social media or PR, often it’s just a case of commenting on an article from a PR point of view. Example.

Out of nowhere
I find that many of my best ideas come to me when I least expect them. A lot of my ideas have come to me when I’ve been lying in bed, trying to get to sleep and have had to get up to scrawl them down on a piece of paper. Example.

PR people
At least one of my posts has been inspired through creative blogger outreach. Example.

I tag Chris Norton, Richard Millington and Stephen Davies.

I’ve picked out a few interesting facts.

• 133 million blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002
• 76,000 blogs have a Technorati rating of 50 or higher
• 41 per cent of bloggers use Twitter
• Technology is the 2nd most popular topic for bloggers
• Corporate blogs make up 12 per cent of all blogs
• Professional blogs make up 46 per cent of all blogs
• 50 per cent of bloggers are aged between 18 and 34
• 44 per cent of bloggers are parents
• 42 per cent of bloggers spend 3-10 hours blogging per week
• Only 15 per cent of bloggers spend less than an hour blogging per week
• ‘Blog’ is the 5th most popular tag
• ‘Technology’ is the 11th most popular tag
• 83 per cent of blogs are listed on Technorati
• Just 4 per cent of bloggers pay to advertise their blog
• 46 per cent of blogs don’t feature any advertising
• Bloggers spend twice as much time online as U.S. adults 18-49,
• 82 per cent of bloggers post brand and product reviews
• 89 per cent of bloggers post about brands that they love or hate
• 37% of bloggers have been quoted in traditional media based on a blog post
• Half of bloggers believe that blogs will be a primary source for news and entertainment in the next five years
• 1 in 5 five bloggers don’t think that newspapers will survive the next ten years

That was in June. Two months passed and for many of us there was no sign of the relief pack. Not good news for blogger’s stress levels, or the nice people at Berocca who must have been quite concerned by posts like this declaring the exercise a PR fail. Since commenting on that post, I received a relief pack in just a matter of days. Coincidence?

To avoid this Berocca should have carried out a weekly send out of relief packs so that bloggers weren’t waiting too long to receive their goody bag. And, when they did send out the relief packs they should have taken a little time to address the nice letter inside with my name. Dear blogger doesn’t exactly build up a personal relationship with the brand. That said I’m very impressed by the campaign. It’s very brave for a non-techy brand to experiment with blogger outreach and I commend that. Also, it’s especially important to try relationship building exercises like this during a recession when premium brands like Berocca are in danger of being abandoned by consumers in favour of cheaper supermarket versions.

Well done Berocca, this blogger is now full of vitamin goodness and will stay that way.