In 2010 I ran a Simple Tip Saturday series here at Simple Scrapper. (I can’t believe that was four years ago!) I’m excited to bring back the series for a new run in 2014. Here’s the premise:
Simple Tip Saturdays are all about giving easy ideas for you to grab and run.
These first few posts will feature some of the tools I use every day to simplify my life, but I imagine we’ll go into other topics as well. My goal is to leave you with a single nugget of knowledge you can use right away!
This week I want to share the tool I use to make blog reading super easy and even more enjoyable: Feedly.
Some of you may already know of and even be using Feedly, but I expect just as many do not. Feedly is a service that allows you to aggregate all of your favorite blogs in one place, using RSS feeds. There is the main cloud version as well as apps for iOS and Android.
Feedly keeps track of which posts you’ve read and helps you share them with others. There’s even several views, depending on how you like to browse. For example, here’s what you would see if you subscribed to Simple Scrapper and chose the magazine-style view.
The organization features of Feedly allow me to group blogs by topic and even mark certain ones as favorites. Here’s how I have my favorite blogs organized in Feedly:
Do you see the little +Add Content button in the top right? With just one click you can subscribe to your favorite blogs. You can also look for “Follow on Feedly” buttons, like this one for Simple Scrapper.
Note: While I personally prefer Feedly, you can also follow Simple Scrapper with Bloglovin. The two services are quite similar.
I love feedly! Looking forward to this series, too
Perfect timing. I was just about to write my mom an email explains Feedly and RSS. Now I can send her this. 🙂
I’ve been using Feedly since the demise of Google Reader. They really stepped up at just the right time and we’re really responsive to Google users needs. The only complaint I have is not being able to send posts directly to Evernote (unless you upgrade). I’m curious how Bloglovin compares.
I’ve been testing Bloglovin this week and it’s more simplified than Feedly. You can only share to Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. And to read the blog entries you are sent to the original source with a Bloglovin toolbar at the top.
That doesn’t sound ideal. Thanks for the tip.
Is there a way to import your blogs from Bloglovin to Feedly?
Yes, you can. Here are the links:
Export from Bloglovin: http://www.bloglovin.com/export
Import into Feedly: http://feedly.com/index.html#cortex
I also love Feedly. I don’t think I would be able to keep up with the 75+ blogs I follow without it! I’m looking forward to your tips.
I tried Feedly (and other RSS services) after Google Reader went away and hated them. They did not work with the way I used Google Reader at all. I need to be able to read offline so the RSS service has to work with my Reeder app. I also need to be able to very quickly jump from post to post. I found feedbin.me. It works with my Reeder app so I can read offline. They are a paid service. I think it was $30 for a year and for me it is well worth it. It does everything I need it to.
Thanks for sharing this tip! Very helpful for those who have specific needs like offline reading. I will check out Feedbin too.
I did look up Reeder and it is now compatible with Feedly as well as Feedbin.