How to Make the Most of Your RSS Reader

by Caz Makepeace on November 3, 2011

6

I am loving my RSS reader lately. It is proving to be an invaluable tool to help me get my reading done throughout the day, most of which is now done in the early morning hours during feeding time with Savannah.

Subscribe to my feed

My RSS reader is helping to keep my scattered brain organized and on task. A couple of months ago, I never even used an RSS reader. I had subscribed to many blog’s RSS feeds but found it very overwhelming when I went in there and saw hundered of posts waiting to be read.

I threw it in the too hard basket and walked out.

All I had to do was get a little organized and have a structure to how I use it.

Help me to read your work

First, there are many blogs whose work I want to read but cannot for a few simple reasons.

Subscribe to RSS feed button

They don’t have an easy to subscribe RSS feeder button on their site. Mine is the orange button in the top right corner. Click on it now to subscribe.

Some have only a subscribe by email. It is very difficult to get readers to subscribe by email. Most people are struggling as it is to deal with the influx of spam, newsletters, and junk that comes through their inbox. They guard their email address quite closely as to be something only for the most essential of mail.

RSS is an easy way for readers to read your work without them worried about you crowding their inbox and so never reading your work.

Use Google Feedburner

This makes it very easy for me to subscribe to your feed. Always check your feed on your site too. Press the button and see where it goes. Sometimes all it will display is a bunch of feeder code which I cannot read nor subscribe to.

Make your headlines catchy

I subscribe to hundreds of blogs. I cannot read every single post from every blog, as much as I would LOVE to. Make your headlines stand out to entice me to click on it.

Make your feed a full feed.

I am mostly using my RSS feed reader on my phone. I am shattered by the number of great posts I begin to read, only to discover they have teased me with a partial feed, wanting me to click through to their site to read the rest.

I know that this is beneficial in driving traffic to your site, but I am never going to click through to read the rest. And readers is what you ultimately want- readers will comment and share.

I’m using my RSS feed for a reason. It is a quick and easy way to keep updated with my favourite blogs in the one place. Clicking away to your site takes time and on a smart phone, too much time. If you have a partial feed I will mostly likely unsubscribe from your feed.

To make it a full feed on wordpress go to your reading settings and click the Full Text feed button.

Making the Most of your reader

Organize your blogs into categories.

I have a category for travel, mummy blogs, blogging, and personal development. This makes it so much easier for me to find new post to read in what I am interested in at the time.

Star your favourites

This is a function I only just discovered. I was reading so many great posts of a night, wanting to go back to them in the morning but always forgetting.

Now I just star them and in the morning, I get on my computer, go to my starred items in my reader and then begin commenting and sharing. So quick and easy. I love it!

Mark All As Read

I would leave the posts in my reader building up, convinced I was going to get a chance to read every single one somewhere somehow. That meant I would enter my reader and see 256 posts waiting for me.

My brain would freak out.

Now once I am done of a morning, starred the ones I need to come back to, I mark them all as read. This is so much more manageable to me, and I am actually now getting more great posts read as I can see them amongst the clutter.