A few weeks ago I decided I needed to be more productive with my work and how to stop social media being a distraction, I even wrote a post about it last week – 5 Step Plan for Organising your Social Media Usage.
One of the time saving tips I didn’t mention was RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s something I implemented myself a few months ago and it is saving so much time I needed to let you all know.
What is RSS?
If you’re not sure what RSS is or what is does, What is RSS? is a simple explanation from one of my favourite blogger’s Darren Rowse of ProBlogger and this video below is a quick overview if you’d rather not read the whole article.
This explains it really well and will also help you set-up RSS, but I want to explain how I use RSS – in my email software (Outlook).
I follow a number of blogs, it increases all the time when I come across more and more great content. There is no way in the world that I would be able to physically visit all these blogs each day to check for new posts, which means I could potentially miss some useful content. So when I come across a great blog I subscribe by RSS and add it to Google Reader.
I can access Google Reader wherever I am so I can even check my blogs subscriptions on the move. But what I really love about it is I can import my RSS feeds into Outlook and I can check them as I would emails (check the Help section of Google Reader for instructions). It’s become part of my morning routine, I check my emails and then check my blog subscriptions.
Skim Read
I can quickly scroll down the various new posts and see if there are any that I’d like to read. I generally skim read the posts that catch my eye (a tip in my post Reading List Overwhelming You? 6 Tips That Will Help!) and if it looks like I would benefit from reading it properly I assign a category colour to it which I’ve called ‘To Read’. I can then go back to the posts I want to read properly when I get the time.
To get you started here are some of the blogs I subscribe to via RSS and of course you can also subscribe to my blog via RSS too.
Good tip Jo. In fact, I (of course) already subscribe to your RSS feed and read your post via iGoogle (which happens to be my Google Chrome home page).
Not sure I would want more clutter in my inbox though. My iGoogle page shows just about enough at a time to glance through when I’m ready. There’s a chance I could miss something if I don’t visit enough, but then for me there’s even more chance of it paging out of sight in my inbox.
Martin Jarvis recently posted..How do I get more people to read my blog? Step 3 – Tell friends, fans and followers about it
Hehe… pleased you already subscribe! :) The emails don’t go into my inbox, they would certainly get lost… they sit quietly in my RSS Feed for when have a moment to look through them!
Great minds Jo!
I wrote “Top Tool: Google Reader (Cut Procrastination)” back on the 6th of Feb. It must be a common theme for business owners and bloggers at the moment. It’s no doubt a sign of how busy we all are.
If you want to check my post out: http://bit.ly/wwQfHl
Cheers, Caylie
Caylie Price, Better Business Better Life recently posted..A Small Biz Owner’s Guide To Their Valentine’s Day
Ahhh I didn’t see that Caylie, will pop over and have a read! It certainly helps free up some time… :)
Thanks for the post Jo, some nice little tips in there!
Stacey Hoepfner
Thanks Stacey, glad you found some useful tips! :)