(Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes)
RSS is an incredibly efficient method for keeping track of blogs.
Given millions of blogs on the internet, how in the world can anyone keep up with all that information?
It’s not that hard.
The first and by far most important action you can do with your RSS feed is learn to clean it up fast. Here’s how I do it:
Marking All Read in Google Reader
Here’s some helpful tips:
- Not every post on every blog is worth reading or commenting upon. Don’t leave dumb comments! Just move to the next.
- For most blogs, you will find there’s a certain “periodicity.” That is, you’ll be interested in every 3rd, 4th or 5th article published on the blog, not every single article. Hubspot Inbound Marketing is a perfect example for me. They publish at least daily, but pique my interest about once a week. They know their business, so I continue to follow their feed.
- You will see that titles matter a lot. When you’re scanning 100s of titles, what doesn’t stand out doesn’t get read. There are exceptions. Hazel Dooney’s articles (NSFW) have very short titles, but I read them all. Other blogs post really long titles, but I’m not interested in another “313 SEO Tips to Make You Sexier, Better Looking and Cure Insomnia.”
- You need to clean your feed regularly. See instructions above. When you have a clean feed, you can run your reader continuously during the day, and comment on articles as they get posted. Very convenient. Before you shut down for the day, clean your feed again.
- Some feeds are title only. I’m watching uncrate, zappos and gearculture for a client in the retail travel luggage space. Retail travel luggage is her bailiwick, but I need to know just a little bit about what’s being marketed, and how it’s being marketed, to better help her.
I bet you have a tip or two of your own. Would you like to share in the comments?
