Every week, we share one of our favorite ‘how-to’ posts about blogging, social media, and the community we LOVE to love. Our desire is you consider HLB a resource in your efforts to blog BETTER – we want to be stronger bloggers ourselves, and we see the desire for stronger posts and cleaner designs. We understand wanting to know the BEST plug-ins, aps, programs, and resources to keep your site in tip top shape. And nothing makes us nerd-out more than getting super meta about all things blog-world. We’re not experts, we’re simply bloggers ourselves – sharing our own experiences, tips and tricks of the trade each Thursday with a BTT post. We welcome your questions, your suggestions for future topics, and your ‘how-to’ post recommendations at healthylivingblogs@gmail.com!
Today’s post comes from Emily of Relishments!
A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting up withHeather for lunch. In addition to yummy food and a nice break from the hardcore shopping that Brian and I were in the midst of, Heather and I had an awesome conversation about blogging and blogs in general. If you ever want to have a conversation that really makes you think, I suggest you schedule lunch with her.
Heather mentioned that she’s reducing the number of blogs she subscribes to via Google Reader to 28. Mind=blown. There was no way I could reduce my Reader to that few. But then I was unable to stop thinking about the way I use Reader and how I might change that.
First, some background about Google Reader and how I use it. Reader is a RSS feed aggregator that brings all the content from my favorite blogs to one place. Despite the theory held by many that blogs are meant to be read on their actual sites and not in readers, I read almost all the blogs I follow using Reader. I only go to the actual sites to in order to leave comments. I look at all the titles of the posts in my Reader in collapsed view, star the ones I want to come back to, mark everything as read and, when I’ve got time, click on “starred items” and then read the posts I actually want to read. This method allows me to sort out a lot of the stuff I don’t care about, such as a NY Times recipe for beef brisket, which I’ll probably never make. On the day that Heather and I talked, I had over 200 blog feeds coming into my Reader. How did I manage to not get completely overwhelmed? Well, I didn’t, really. My Reader was a constant source of stress. I spent the better part of last summer trying to get to the bottom of my starred posts and, though I was successful and have generally kept it that way since, I’m constantly looking to see if I have new posts and trying to get time to sort through the influx, leave comments, save recipes, get links for Highlights posts and find inspiration for Relishments.
An actual screenshot of my actual starred items
No comments yet.