Recently I was in a meeting with a client and we were discussing ways to stay current in her field. One of the easiest ways I always suggest is to subscribe to the RSS feeds of the leading industry blogs and websites.
My client, like most people I speak with who aren’t “web geeks”, had no idea what RSS was, how to use it, or how it will help them. So ,after explaining the basics, I offered to help her set up Google Reader and find some feeds to subscribe to.
I have decided to share the information with everyone instead of keeping the secret between us. I’ll also share the top blogs that I follow sometime soon in case anyone is interested.
What is RSS?
In short, RSS (”Really Simple Syndication”) is a format for displaying website content, similar to HTML. However, instead of reading RSS Feeds in a browser you “subscribe” to them in a program that automatically gets updated content without the need for you to visit the website again.
If you’re wanting a more detailed explanation of what RSS is here is a link to the Wikipedia page.
Ok, but why should you care?
The feed reader automatically gets updates for all the websites you subscribe to. For this reason alone RSS can save you hours every day. I personally am usually subscribed to over 500 feeds at any given time. Clearly there is no way I could follow that many websites manually.
Another use I couldn’t live without is the ability Google Reader gives me to tag, sort, manage, and search the sites I’m subscribed to. How many times have you read something but forgotten where it was? I’ll cover some simple tips later on how to organize your feeds in Google Reader.
Convinced? Here is what you need to read RSS.
Like I said before RSS feeds are read through an “RSS Reader”. You can also get RSS in your email but I don’t suggest that method for several reasons namely the amount of space and time that method would take up. The only RSS reader I’ve used for any length of time is Google Reader.
Since I read my RSS feeds on several different computers I needed a reader that made that easy to do. Google Reader is web based so combined with its top of the line features the decision was easy. Netvibes and Bloglines are a couple web based alternatives, but I can’t vouch for them.
Ok, I’ve got Google Reader. What now?
Alright! We’re almost done. Simply visit the blogs, news sites, and other websites that you like and look for a little orange RSS button. If you’re using a modern browser you should also be seeing the RSS buttons in the address bar for most websites. You would think that Google’s browser would be able to auto detect RSS but that’s a rant for another day.
When you click on the RSS button you will need to tell it that you want to subscribe, and that you want to use Google Reader. Sadly the process is different for every browser, and some websites have different processes. Luckily it won’t take long to figure out and after you have done it a few times it will become second nature.
This is Awesome! But how do I find anything?
Unless your only subscribed to a dozen feeds or so it will get really messy really fast. For that reason its important to create folders to organize your feeds. To do this select the subscription you want to move (on the left navigation sidebar) and then using the feed settings dropdown you can move it to a folder you have already set up, or create a new folder. It is important to know that a subscription can be assigned to more than one folder at a time.
5 Bonus Google Reader Tips!
Here are a few other tips that can make your experience faster, easier, and more efficient. All for free! Anyone else would have tried to pass these off as a blog post all their own. Not me! I feel if you read this far you deserve a treat. Enjoy and don’t forget to use your new found powers for good and not evil (”psst, that means subscribe to my blog”).
- Use the “star” feature to mark articles that you want to read again, or that you want to save. This also works great for marking articles to read when you’re short on time.
- Use tags to further organize articles by subject. For example, I get a lot of feeds about WordPress and I try to tag any with new themes. This lets me find articles that are related easily.
- You can share articles that you liked, and you can follow others and see what they have shared.
Finding and following others is a great way to find new stuff that you would have missed otherwise. - Try to get out of the habit of reading everything that goes through your reader. Just skim the headlines and then read the stuff that looks good. To make this easier switch from Expanded view to List view.
- Don’t forget to visit the blogs you follow from time to time to leave comments. Not only is it good for link and traffic building but it’s good for staying connected to the bloggers that you like.
I hope that this helped answer some of the questions you may have about RSS and how it can help you. If you have any questions at all please leave a comment and I will be happy to help out.