It’s a never-ending refrain in the social media world: “There’s just so much content out there!” So many good blogs to read and think about. For a while my Google Reader was getting out of control as I continued to add RSS feeds.
I’ve tried various ways to get a handle on the many blogs I read, but my latest incarnation is to group all my social media/marketing blogs into folders, labeled by the frequency with which I want to read them:
Blogs in my “Check Daily” folder are my top priority. These bloggers typically post regularly and it’s content that I continue to find valuable or thought-provoking. Currently blogs from folks like Amber Naslund, Olivier Blanchard, Dave Fleet and Todd Defren are in this folder.
Next is my “Check Weekly” folder. It consists of interesting blogs that either don’t post as frequently or that I’m not as religious about following. Their posts might not usually be as time-sensitive and I can wait until later in the week to catch up. Or they may tend to be bloggers who write longer posts that take me more than just a few-minute scan in the morning to digest. I try to rotate different bloggers into this folder every so often. Right now people like Tom Martin, Brian Solis, Jason Baer and Mack Collier live here.
My “Twitter Friends and Tweeted Posts” folder is where I put a lot of bloggers I’m friends with whose content I’m likely to see on Twitter long before I get around to checking my reader. Arik Hanson, Lauren Fernandez, David Mullen and Scott Hepburn are all in this folder. Usually I see tweets and retweets to their new posts throughout the day and so I really just use this folder to scan headlines and peek at any posts that I might have missed. For the most part, though, the posts that end up in this folder are ones that I’ve already seen.
The folder I call “Popular and Prolific” features blogs like Chris Brogan, Danny Brown, Copyblogger and HubSpot. These are “big name” blogs that post a lot of content. I don’t necessarily have time to read them every day, but I can count on their content being good and useful and I want it all in one place to go back and access later.
My last folder is the “Check Infrequently” folder. These are blogs that don’t update frequently or that I haven’t found a real connection with yet – but I still want to be alerted when new content is available. I find that I enjoy blogs that are less frequent but more thoughtful. Every once in a while I’ll check this folder to see if Lisa Hoffmann or Shonali Burke have anything new.
To see what posts I like and am sharing, you can check out my Google Reader public share page.
The result of this folder system: It’s still way too much content, but at least now I feel like I can take it in chunks and read a little at a time based on how I’ve prioritized the blogs I’ve subscribed to. Every few weeks I’ll look at the trends and analytics that Google Reader provides and see if there are blogs that I’m consistently reading or not reading and move them to a different folder (or unsubscribe) as a result.
What works for you in organizing your RSS feeds? Do you use a plug-in like Postrank to help you sort through content? Do you find yourself relying less on your feed reader to discover new content? I certainly see plenty of posts shared on Twitter, but I’m in no way ready to give up RSS because I feel like I’d miss too much.
Share your strategy for managing the beast that is your feed reader in the comments.
Good suggestion, Amy. I always feel overwhelmed by my Google Reader and need to figure out a system that works for me. Even if I don’t read stuff regularly, I like to have the feeds so I can search across everything.
Currently, I group things into folders like “technology blogs,” “friend blogs,” and “Articulate on the Web,” which contains a mix of Twitter and Technorati searches, as well as the RSS feed for specific users on Twitter.
I like your approach, though, and may implement something similar.
I started by topics still have some subject-area folders (local stuff, finance, travel blogs I like) that still fall into those categories. But I found what I was doing was putting too much into the “Social Media and Marketing” folder and that’s where it was getting unwieldy. So within that grouping is where I started to focus more on reading frequency.
So far I’ve stayed away from subscribing to RSS of specific users on Twitter, but I like that idea as Twitter search can be pretty unreliable and doesn’t catalog all tweets from beyond certain dates.
Good post and I like your method, Amy. I’m interested to see responses on how others use Google Reader.
For me, Google Reader is my main source of news and blog posts. I have it broken up into different categories like “Social Media”, “Baltimore News”, “PR Blogs”, “Friends’ Blogs”, “Boston Sports”, and “News”. Like you, there are certain sections that I read every day and others that I check only when I have time. I may try your way to make that easier!
Thanks,
Tom O’Keefe
@TomOKeefe1
For me, a lot of it was psychological. Putting blogs in the “check weekly” folder took off some of the pressure/guilt I felt about trying to keep up! Once I had segmented things out, I felt better about not trying to read everything all the time.
I like the way you grouped this – although I have to admit, I get a thrill out the clear all button when I have 1,000+ unread things in Google Reader.
Great suggestions – and thanks for the shout out! :)
out of* – Way to mistype LAF.
Amy, I don’t have nearly the RSS intake as you, but I found using the shared/follow option works well for me. This is assuming others that I follow share content. This exposes me to new blogs that I may move down into my folder structure.
Again, since I don’t have the content intake, I was able to break my down by topic. This seems to work well for me. Granted I use the google reader on my iphone for a lot of my “scanning” I can quickly go through and filter. I use the star method to flag those I want to comment on or save for later reading.
Also, Damond Nollan http://www.damondnollan.com/ had some great posts on google reader as well.
Thanks, Alan. I hadn’t heard of Damond Nollan before and so I’ll have to check him out. I’ll admit that I haven’t really dug in to some of the new features that Google Reader added a few months ago, like friending/liking/following people. Baby steps, right? :-)
Thank you! I’ve been struggling with how to tackle my reader as it is sometimes way too overwhelming. Thank you for great tips. I also look forward to seeing how others utilize the reader.
Great post!
Grouping by frequency is a good idea. I tend to group by topic (news, blogs, sports, etc) but I may try your method.
One thing I’ve found is that the fewer folders/tags you have, the better. Don’t feel bad about lumping dissimilar blogs together. The more you can just keep scrolling down without having to select another folder from the left pane, the faster you’ll get through posts.
I’ve also made a “top feeds” folder, which is especially useful for vacations (when you want to maintain a little connection but without wasting your precious time wading through anything that’s not top-shelf). All of those feeds are also contained in other folders, so if I can just ignore it if I intend to read everything.
I actually had the opposite experience – the more things that were in one folder the more overwhelmed and hopeless I felt in trying to get through everything! For me, it works better to have things segmented so that I can knock out one folder at a time.
I really like the idea of a folder that just contains feeds that you’d want to catch up on if you were traveling or on vacation and may try that.
Wow, lady, you are super organized! I use a similar system — filtering weekly, monthly, and by topic — but I still get overwhelmed. I’ve found that my blog interests and tastes change relatively frequently (every 6 months or so), so I force myself to do an annual reader clean-out. Much like spring cleaning. :) There are times in between I’ll do a smaller cleaning if I notice a few that I never get to.
I really try to keep the number of blogs in my reader down to a relatively roar so I don’t get completely overwhelmed. It’s too easy to get lost in Blogland! :)
Amy,
Thanks for the tip. I’m still a newbie but I can see a time soon when I’ll need to use this.
I like your tiered approach, Amy. Categorizing feeds by priority has helped me, too.
I’ve found the PostRank extension you mention at the end of your post *extremely* useful, especially for blogs like Mashable, where if you turn your head for a few hours, you’ll find 10 new posts to wade through when you get back. It’s impossible to keep up with that volume of content and get anything done, so the PostRank extension quickly answers the question: “Can you just show me the most important stuff?” in one click. I’d encourage folks to give that one a try.
But what’s helped me the most is to simply stop thinking of Google Reader as a “to-do” list (or rather a “to-read” list) and simply as an archive. Sure, like you, I have a handful of feeds in my “Daily Read” folder that I can’t afford to overlook. But as for the rest, I’ll get to them when I get to them, be it later in the day, the week, the month, or if at all.
One final thought: even if Twitter has started to replace RSS in some instances because of its real-time speed, I still think Google Reader remains a fantastic tool for archiving and thus, for searching through your content. Here’s a great screencast from @steverubel on this idea: http://www.steverubel.com/screencast-google-reader-isnt-just-for-news-i
Cheers,
@mikepilarz
Mike, thanks for weighing in as I know you are a big advocate of Postrank and I wanted to hear your take on that. I’ve avoided it so far because I tend not to subscribe to the blogs that I think Postrank is most effective at parsing (like Mashable, e.g.). Most of the blogs I read are on a smaller scale. But I’m definitely starting to reconsider. The other issue I have, and correct me if I am wrong here, is that Postrank is a plugin, so it “lives” on a specific computer and it’s not part of my Google Reader itself, right? I use three different computers (work, home, laptop) pretty regularly so I’d love a solution that actually sorted or ranked posts in Google Reader without it being computer-specific.
Your second paragraph is very sage advice and I think it’s why I was often feeling overwhelmed with Google Reader – I felt like I had to “get through” everything instead of just treating it as a place to store posts, alerts and info. Thanks for sharing Steve’s screencast.
Another thought – Let’s say we all start treating Google Reader as an archive. It’s added some new features that allow you to like, share, comment on posts and follow what friends and connections are reading and enjoying. So if you can do all of those things…. what is the point of Delicious now? Hmm…
Okay, answering my own question here: I think Delicious is still useful because it allows you to share/save things on the Web that you don’t necessarily subscribe to. I have the Delicious toolbar installed on all my computers and will tag sites as I stumble across them. It helps me catalog and organize things I discover, while Google Reader helps me catalog and sort things I subscribe to. Now if we could get them to combine forces…
I believe you’re right, Amy; PostRank requires installation on every machine you use. (It doesn’t operate “in the cloud,” in that regard.) I do most of my reading on my laptop, which goes with me everywhere, so it’s not an issue for me but I feel your pain.
Your last point is interesting. Yes, Google Reader has evolved quite a bit and has become a heck of a lot more social. But I still see Delicious as a critical tool for two reasons: tagging, and saving web goodies found in ways other than RSS. Let’s say a friend sends me a website via email for a great new craft brewery. If I want to bookmark it and tag it with “breweries,” “beer” or “places_to_visit” to make it easy to retrieve later, Google Reader doesn’t help me here…unless there’s a new web geek tool I don’t know of. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if Delicious remains relevant.
(There is a Greasemonkey extension for Google Reader that allows you to tag and toss items into Delicious in a couple of clicks: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7957. Again, here you have the issue of installing it on every machine.)
Whew. I’m headed back to the nerdery.
Amy, thanks for this great post. Often times I don’t subscribe to blogs (like Mashable) because I find the feeds overwhelming. I love your method and can’t wait to take a moment to re-organize!
I can’t resist weighing in on Delicious. I have always been a huge advocate of the site, but find lots of blank stares when I ask how many people have accounts. I frequently need and want to save information. Delicious makes it easy to organize research and to share your articles with others via a unique URL. I have yet to find a better site…thought about trying Evernote, esp. b/c of the iphone app.
@valerieelston
Evernote is awesome. Check out this presentation one of our customers created (it took silver in our Articulate Guru Awards this year).
Wow, thanks for sharing that. I have barely been scratching the surface on Evernote and didn’t realize it had some of those capabilities. Now I just need an iPhone…
Yeah, the Evernote iPhone app is really cool, too! I don’t use it enough. :)
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Thanks Amy – a helpful post for getting our arms around all the great content out there.
Hi Amy, we haven’t met (tis my first time here on your blog; I came over from Valeria’s site). In any case, I really like your way of sorting content much more than I like my own. I have folders for the various kinds of content that I read (Social Media, Tech, Real Estate, etc.) and I simply organize my subscriptions in the order in which I like to read them. I have two folders in particular that stand out for me: Local Bloggers and Blogs to Comment On. Since local bloggers are folks that I run into frequently at social events, I stay up to speed with what they’re doing pretty regularly. As for the “Blogs to Comment On” folder, these are folks that I stay connected with to offer support or also because I like the discussions that they generate.
Again, I like your way of organizing content much better than my own. The only thing that scares me at this point is renaming my folders! But I can see how/where it’s a bit more effective. I do tend to read a lot but I’ve also learned to skim through content pretty well…
I guess the main tools I use are probably fairly obvious given my email address and URL. :)
One additional tidbit, there are actually two ways to integrate PostRank into Google Reader to help cut down the noise. One is the Google Reader extension, which you mentioned. With that you don’t have to do anything with the feeds you already have. (One feature some folks don’t know about: if you press Ctrl Z, it toggles the PostRank drop-down to a text box, enabling you to filter numerically. E.g. 7 will display all posts with a score of 7 or above.)
The other is a bit more complex, but also more flexible and powerful. Create an account and import your feeds into postrank.com, then custom filter them by PostRank score, keywords, or topics, and then export them back to Google Reader as individual or aggregated topic feeds. Voila! Full PostRank filtering and you keep all the goodness of Google Reader. :)
Melanie – thanks for sharing more info on Postrank. I will have to create an account on Postrank and check it out. Trying to keep track of all the good content out there is always a moving target!
Please do, and feel free to give me a holler if you have any questions, etc.
Depending on the size/shape of your analytics needs, you might find PostRank Analytics useful as well. (And would love to hear your impressions.) It’s intended to help bloggers better track their performance and audience engagement, and better connect with their readers. Plus there’s a 30-free trial so it’s pretty risk-free. :)
Thanks for sharing Amy! You motivated me to re-design my feeds in Google Reader. I did it by topic, as you at the beginning, I guess I am not ready for a revolution ;) Cheers.
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Google Reader Magic?
Right-click on the folder and select Magic.
Sorts by popularity and other pixie dust…
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