A couple of weeks ago in my weekly newsletter I shared the three key information sources I use to consume information. I then went on to discuss how it is important to not only consume information, but to act on what you learn and shared three recent lessons I learnt and how I applied it to my life.
In the newsletter I also went on to ask if readers would be interested in finding out more about the tools I use to consume this info and I had a great response to this! Over the next few weeks I will share the tools I use.
Last week I shared information podcasts – How to listen to podcasts + 5 podcast recommendations and today I am sharing a tool you can use to make reading blogs easier.
There are a few tools out there to help you read blogs, but my favourite is Feedly. And what is Feedly?
Feedly is a news aggregator application for various web browsers and mobile devices running iOS and Android, also available as a cloud-based service. It compiles news feeds from a variety of online sources for the user to customize and share with others. {source}
What these means for me is I load it up with the blogs I want to keep up to date with and it brings the information to me in one spot without me having to search for it. To use Feedly you will need to sign up online at Feedly (free). You will then need to download the appropriate app to use on your phone (also free):
Feedly have some great tutorials which you can see here, but below is how I use Feedly.
Feedly on desktop
This is what my Feedly currently looks like. I keep it in title view and mainly read the blogs in the all view as highlighted by the arrow. I like title view as I can skim through the titles and the small amount of text I can see and work out whether or not I want to read it.
You can change the view, though if you are more of a visual person. Card view is quite good to use as well and looks like the screen shot below. To change views click the settings button in the top right hand corner.
With the card view you get a short amount of text, plus an image if there is one associated with the post. You can also see how many people have saved the post by the number in the bottom left hand corner.
Adding content to Feedly is simple. You click on the add content button as highlighted by the blue arrow and then enter the name or address of the blog you wish to add in the place highlighted by the red arrow.
It will bring up options for you and you click on the one you want. You then click on +Feedly button (highlighted by arrow) to add the blog to your feed.
Feedly allows you to organise the blogs and you can add them to collections. It will suggest some for you most of the time, but you can also create your own collections.
To read a post in any view, simply click on the title of the post. From there you can read or share the post. Some blogs don’t allow for their full articles to be published in Feedly and you will have to click on a link to go through to the blog to do so. You can use the sharing options to share on social media or mark it to save it.
Once you have read articles in your feed they will be deleted. It is rare for me to keep up with all the posts in my feed. If you scroll back to the first screen shot you will see I have over 2.5k unread posts! I don’t worry about that. New content comes in as each blog publishes content. The latest content is sorted to stay at the top and I just make my way through what I can. If the numbers worry you or you want to get rid of old posts you can always press on the tick in the top right hand corner to mark all as read.
If I feel like reading on a particular topic or checking in to see if a favourite blog has posted something new I can use the menu on the left hand side. This screen shot shows the mum blog collection in my Feedly. The collection has sub heading for every blog which I can click on individually if needed.
The same information is carried across to the mobile app.
Feedly on mobile
Like on the desktop, I have my Feedly App view set to all. This can be changed by clicking the lines as indicated by the red arrow in the above image. It will bring up a menu.
This menu allows you to read blogs by collection or to access posts you have saved for later.
I like to use the saved for later function when I am reading blogs on my phone. On my phone I most often scroll quickly through my feeds and mark ones I would like to share to save them.
You can however share directly from Feedly on your phone. You press the dots as indicated by the arrow and choose the method you wish to share by.
I have also hooked Feedly up to Buffer using the Buffer app which allows me to schedule some of the posts for sharing on my social media networks at a later time. I can choose which networks I would like to share it to and I can also add comments in the text to be shared.
To save a post to read or share later, you click on the flag as indicated by the arrow.
Let me know if you have any questions on Feedly. I find it a super useful and efficient tool for reading blogs. I have the free version and find it works well for me.