I’ve certainly got a lot of the Northern Bloggers’ meet-ups.

Polls may be helpful but I agree with Andrew. Polls may not reveal what your readers truly want. Instead, I rely more on the other methods you mentioned, Chris. I look at whatever people are buzzing about and then try to take it a step further. What are the implications? How will it affect us? How can we use it? What’s next? If our readers could see this themselves, synthesize it and then formulate it into something informative, entertaining and/or enlightening they wouldn’t be reading us. So our job is to listen in, think about what we’re hearing and then add something to the conversation – or not. Either way, I always write what I want to write – even if it’s based on what other people are talking about. I can’t imagine writing anything worthwhile otherwise.

My polling never produced a clear answer, and when I used a suggestion tool the few suggestions that I got simply weren’t relevant to the topic of my blog.

I decided that that point that I would generally do what had worked so far, i.e. what I wanted, until the reader numbers started to fall and then do something different.

Tips are always welcome though.