Reading RSS Feeds with Google Reader

Welcome to another installment in a regular Monday Series of posts called Buzz Tips. I will be answering questions mainly on Social Media, Twitter, and Wordpress blogging from the Girlstoys subscribers.  To those of you that know me around the twitterverse and on various forums, I answer alot of questions about the internet, internet marketing and Twitter among other social media and marketing topics so I figured, why not turn it into something regular.

To have your question answered all you have to do is join up to the newsletter by entering your email address and name in the form on the right sidebar – easy. Then send your question to ghada [at] girlstoys [dot] co [dot] nz

Todays’ question is:

Their are a handful of blogs that I try to read regularly, but I’m not sure the best way to do this. I know that RSS feeds can let me keep up to date with changes to a blog, but how do I use them and how do I read the feeds?

Google Reader is a great way to track all your RSS feeds in one place. All you have to do is locate the RSS button on the blog, normally they are in a pretty easy to find place in the header or the sidebar (Mine is under the “Stay in Touch” section of the sidebar – generally they are orange colored icons with a broadcast type symbol). Click on the RSS button and you will be taken to a page that will ask you if you want to subscribe to the feed. Choose “google” from the options. As long as you are logged into your google account, the feed will show up on your google reader page and will update automatically as the blog’s feed is updated. You can also choose to add RSS feeds manually by typing in the blog address after clicking on the “add a subscription” button on your Google Reader page.

The google reader interface is user friendly. If you already have a google account, and use gmail its all pretty similar. Just visit the Google reader page as often as you wish to check your RSS feeds in one place.

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• Google Reader and Why You Should Use It (frontofficebox.com)
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