How to research blog posts and reuse content effectively

Executive overview

Writing without research produces weak, uncredible content. Research serves two roles: finding the story, and supporting the story once found.

A permanent research habit — always collecting, not just collecting when writing — means good material is never lost. Always be in a state of researching, not just researching for the post in front of you.

Finding quality sources

• DeepDive — online archive of scholarly journals; paid, but credible and authoritative
• Google Scholar — some free content, but individual journal access gets expensive; abstracts are often enough
• Buzzsumo — shows article popularity on a topic; useful for trend research with budget to spare
• Google — still a solid starting point

Capturing and organising research

• Airstory + Airstory Researcher (browser extension) — highlight a data point, save it with source URL and metadata
• Clip one data point per save, not blocks of text — keeps each piece reusable across future projects
• Assign tags and project labels at capture time so you can find it later
• Tags are for your future self — use a system you'll actually understand, not one that looks organised