Thursday, June 28, 2007

Discovered - The Joy of RSS feeds

There are so many blogs I like to read, that Ive reached the point beyond what I am able to surf to in a day. Ive got full blown blog addiction now.

Yesterday I discovered The Joy of RSS feeds and feed readers. Once the penny dropped, I saw how this could save me heaps of time while still allowing me my blog fix. I even added an RSS feed to this site (see "Feed Me" in the right hand column), so I can share The Joy of RSS.

As I surf my fave blogs, if they offer thier content in a feed*, I add them to my feed reader. If you arent familiar with this concept - all you do is click on the RSS icon and it will guide you thru the rest of the process. Often you will be given a choice of which reader you want the feed served to. To keep it simple, just make sure you select the same reader with each blog you subscribe to. I can recommend Google Reader. Its what Im using and its a no brainer as far as how to work it goes.

Now here is the beauty of it: When Im ready to read my blogs, I sign into Google Reader, and Wha La! Theres all the new posts for each blog - all on one page - I can just read and scroll till Ive had my fill. No more waiting for each page to load - which can add up to alot of time if you have many blogs you visit. You can still see pictures and links, and you can still click thru to the site to make comments, check older posts etc.

If you have a blog, and would like to offer your readers this very convenient service, visit Feedburner, its not hard to set up. And from a readers standpoint - oh please go do it now - pretty please?

* If they dont offer thier content as a feed, its still possible to add them to Google Reader! With the Google Reader window open, look to the left hand side of the screen, click on "ADD" and an address box appears. Just type the address in and hit enter - every blog address I entered this way was added to my feeds if the blog was on either Blogger, Wordpress or Typepad. Groovy!

2 comments:

Young Werther said...

ha another marketing executive... You've sold me. Have included a Feedburner. Now I'll have to figure how it all works : )

Thanks for the tip.

Lavender said...

;) never thought anyone would call me that! Ive got 43 blogs loaded into it so far.
Good to hear youre going to give it a go - Atta Boy! And no worries, you'll have it all figured out in no time, Cheers!