If you’re like me, you often rush through your RSS feeds skimming for the best stuff. Recently, I’ve found that more and more, I’m simply marking everything ‘read’ and moving on. Realizing this probably isnt the best use of my time, I’ve decided today to cut many things.
What I’ve found to be the least useful are tech updates – I usually see many of these via Twitter. Therefore, there’s really no reason for me to maintain them in my feed. Also, I tend to gloss over items from Mashable due to following them on Twitter.
Google Reader has a ‘Trends’ report section that allows you to see not only how often posts come through, but how often you read them. Looking through my report, I deleted anything that I read 5% of the time or less. That cut 4-5 blogs right there! Of course there are the obligatory feeds that I have to maintain from university accounts, but just being able to sort through them this way and cut them knowing what I tend to not read was phenomenally helpful.
I also created new folders – this way, I dont miss out on content I actually want to read. I tend to get caught up in wanting my reader at ‘zero’, so often things I’d like to read get tossed. Yes, I could recall them if needed, but really, once they’re marked ‘read’ I rarely go back to hunt through them.
After a cleanup, I’m at 59 subscriptions, which is manageable. To share, my reader folders are as follows:
- Analytics
- Career
- Content Marketing
- Fun
- Higher Ed Marketing
- SEO
- Suffolk
- Tech & New Media
- Web Design/Development
Do you use folders and trends? How many blogs do you subscribe to? How often do you purge without reading or otherwise handle getting through them all?
