There are more tools on Google than you could possibly ever need for getting ideas, getting information, and producing your newsletter.  In fact, those first two items (ideas and information) are what Google does best and Google has several tools you can use to make it easy and quick.

Anyone who writes a newsletter, blog, or other publication knows that keeping your ideas fresh is not easy.  When you first begin publishing a newsletter, for instance, you’re chuck full of energy and have tons of ideas for content.  Eventually, though, you’ll start to run low.

There are a lot of ways to keep your ideas fresh and your newsletter full of great information, though.  In fact, using nothing more than your Google account, you can have all that you’ll ever need to keep your content fresh.

Google Reader

This is your first tool of choice.  In fact, for many, this is the only tool they need.  If you follow a lot of blogs, news feeds, etc. related to your newsletter’s content, Google Reader can make it very easy to keep track of them without visiting individual websites every day.  Just ad the RSS feeds to Google and check them all in one place, whenever you’d like.

Your Google Reader can be fed directly into your Gmail account, read through your browser, etc.  All of the articles syndicated in your Reader can be clicked to link to their source and read on the website that published them.

Google News

For many of us, this is an all-in-one news source for everything going on in the local, regiona, national, and world wide news.  You can even have news subjects (like weather for your area, specific subjects, etc.) fed into your Google Reader.

Google Trends

Wondering what’s the hottest, right now?  If your newsletter is all about the latest trends, memes, or something similar, then Google Trends might become your best friend.  There is a ton of great information here, all up-to-the-minute and from all over the Web.  This is also an awesome way to find things to stuff your Google Reader box with.

Google Alerts

Similar to Trends, Alerts ties in the latest, right now, up-to-the-second information and shows it to you immediately.  Not just when you look for it, but as soon as it appears.

Basically, Alerts are search terms whose results, when the update, are sent as a list to your email.  So when a new piece of content or series of stories on a specific search subject is put online, Google will find it and immediately send you an Alert through email.

All of these great tools can boost your idea stream and give you a lot of great flow for your newsletter’s content.  Take advantage of the easy tools available and automate your content triggering process.