How I organize my Google Reader

In our social media training we talk a lot about creating listening stations and using RSS readers to help us keep up with online conversations. “How do I keep up with all of these feeds that I’ve added to my feed reader” is a question that always comes up during these sessions. For me, the answer lies in how I organize my feeds and the system I use to manage all of my social media activities.

I’m not claiming there is a right or wrong way to organize your RSS feeds. I have reorganized my feeds a few times over the past 5 years and this is what works for me. In my opinion, the “right way” is the way that helps you get the information you need in a timely fashion.

What is a feed reader?

Not everyone may be familiar with feed readers, so let’s begin there. A feed reader is a piece of software that allows you to manage your RSS subscriptions. It will also periodically go out and check for updates, and if it finds them, adds the new entries to your reader. Readers look similar to email clients; in fact many email clients (such as Outlook) include the ability to read RSS feeds as well as email. Feed readers come in online only, desktop, and combination varieties. Some popular feed readers include Google Reader, Bloglines, and RSS Bandit.

When I first started using a feed reader, I used to organize my feeds by topic. As I began to follow more and more feeds, I struggled with getting information in a timely manner without spending hours reading all of those feeds. I decided to organize my feeds by how often I want to read them. This is influenced by 1) how often the feed is updated; 2) the urgency or relevance to my business; and 3) how actionable the typical items in that feed are.

How often the feed is updated – Some blog authors post once or more per day. I was finding that when I read a feed that had 10 or more new items, I tended to skim through them and feel like I didn’t have time to give them the attention they deserved.

Relevancy to my business – Early in my career, I was a software developer. I still follow bloggers who write about software development issues. But since that is not my primary focus, I need to prioritize those posts accordingly.

How actionable the items are – Some items are “nice to know”. Others I collect because they will be of interest to my customers. Others may be about events I want to attend, industry news, what my competitors are up to, etc.

Using this criteria, I organize my feeds by how frequently I feel I need to read them in order to get the information I need in a timely manner. Here is how my feeds are organized in my reader:

• Daily – These are typically blogs of people that I like to follow, who post fairly frequently about topics relevant to my business. For me, fairly frequently means three or more times per week. I also included Google alerts that I have set up in this category.
• Weekly – This category contains feeds of blogs I like, but don’t need to read every day. When I find a new blog to follow, I will typically put it in this category or the “someday” category until I am familiar enough with it to decide where it will live.
• Monthly – These are items that I want to be aware of. Typically, I will scan these items and maybe fully read one or two posts out of 10 in entirety.
• Someday – Things not directly related to my business. Maybe they occasionally post items I find interesting. Typically, I haven’t decided if I want to follow this blog yet, but I don’t want to lose track of it until I’ve read some more posts.

How much time to spend

Here is another trick I use. I used to set goals like “I will read my feeds for at least one hour a day”. Depending upon the last time I had read items in my reader, it would be easy for this one hour to double into two or more hours.
Now I set my goal as a maximum, rather than a minimum, amount of time that I will spend reading. For example, I may set my goal this way: “I can only spend 45 minutes today reading my feeds”.

This does a couple of things for me. It helps me decide what goes in (and what stays in) my daily category. I also use this goal to give myself permission to read items in other categories, once I’ve finished the Daily activities and as long as I don’t go over the 45 minutes.

One last note. I’m a big fan of David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. One of the big lessons I took away from David’s book is the importance of separating collecting from processing. Here is how this plays out in my feed reader. As I am reading, I will find things that I want to comment on, share with clients, or use as the starting point for a post of my own. Since I only have 45 minutes to collect items from my feed reader I must follow the rule of either doing it in two minutes or putting it into my collection system. Since I use Google Reader, I “star” items that I want to put in my collection system for processing at a later date.

RSS feed readers can be a powerful tool to help you collect and manage information to help you with your business. The system that I use may not work for you, but I hope that by sharing how I organize my feeds, you will see that it is possible to keep up with a large amount of information without it turning into a full time job.

Bill Brelsford is the owner of Rebar Business Builders. As an Authorized Duct Tape Marketing Coach, Bill works with professional service firms and independent professionals who want to spend less time chasing business and more time serving profitable customers.
phone: 913.962.9261
email: bill@rebarbusinessbuilders.com
web: http://www.RebarBusinessBuilders.com
blog: http://blog.rebarbusinessbuilders.com

Tags: Bill Brelsford, Duct Tape Marketing Coach, how to, social media

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Posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 3:14 pm within Duct Tape Marketing Coach. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.