I’ve been working the past few days on setting up RSS feeds and link management systems for my clients, and for my own sanity. There are some nice tools out there to help manage reading, commenting and sharing blog posts.
I’ve set up a Google Reader account to keep track of all of the blogs we’re tracking for clients, which have been arranged into separate folders. This is a great way to have a one stop shop for checking out links, and making sure the posts I’m reading are current. If you’re a user (and lover) of Gmail, then you will find the interface to be similar.
Google Reader has the ability to:
- Automatically get the latest news and updates from your favorite sites.
- Sort your reading list based on what’s most relevant to you.
- Organize what you read with labels and stars.
- Quickly share interesting items with friends via email or by blogging them, directly from Reader.
On top of Google Reader, I’m also utilizing del.icio.us for my clients by offering them a personal URL to tag relevant postsf or them to read and potentially comment on. This is a nice and simple way to share posts with clients and also getting them really into social media and all it has to offer.
There are many other services out there to manage all of the blogs that we follow. Simple RSS feeds are no more, and there are companies that are focused primarily on providing widgets (such as rollSense, reviewed briefly on twopointouch) and services that make it easier to find relevant and interesting information based on your company.
As more and more people are searching for ways to efficiently manage blog following, more companies are going to be creating services that do just that. It’s simple supply and demand.
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