Advanced Access Blog

Out. Of. Breath.

That is how I feel sometimes with all the information coming my way. It seems every day there is a new site to join. You sign up, create your profile, and think, finally I am on the right site – all my friends and/or coworkers are here. And then you get another “So and so has invited you to join them at [random social site] dot com.” I have so many logins and passwords, I just can’t keep track!

And then, all the articles and newsletters coming to your inbox…which ones do you read and which ones do you delete today? You think to yourself, “Did I voluntarily subscribe to all of these?!” I admit, sometimes I delete things just because the number of items in my inbox is so great, the scrollbar for the list has become a microscopic dot on my screen. And for just a moment I hold my breath and wonder – did I just miss out on the most important information of my career?!

Oh and don’t get me started on trying to save everything as a bookmark in my browser!

I wish I could tell you I have the solution to end all solutions. Alas, I don’t. However, I have a simple (and free) suggestion that may give you back some inbox sanity and help you keep up with the constant onslaught of information streaming into your world.

Google Reader.

Did you know that most newsletters and publications that you read or subscribe to via email also offer an RSS feed? For example, I used to subscribe to several REALTOR.org publications via email, but they offer RSS feeds for just about all of it, and now I can stay up to date in Google Reader.

In order to use Google Reader, you need a Google account, sign up here.  If you already have a Google account, sign in to Google Reader here.

Once you are set up on Google Reader, click the “Add Subscription” link.  Enter the URL for the feed into the box, click the “Add” button, and you’re subscribed.  You can adjust the settings of each of your feeds using the “Feed Settings” menu.

You can categorize your feeds.  I have categories such as, “Friends and Family”, “Real Estate”, “SEO”, “Marketing”, etc. I can go into Google Reader and check if there have been updates to any of my feeds, and comments as well. One of the best features is getting all the information from one site.  You don’t have to leave the reader to go to another website for the info.  You also don’t have to read everything – just check the headline and read it if you’re interested, mark it as read if you’re not.

If you don’t know what to subscribe to, we have some “Staff Picks” for you to check out.

The first one is most important (isn’t it?) – The Advanced Access Weekly Marketing Tips.  That’s right, we’ve had a feed available for some time now, but as of today, the Marketing Tips will be blog posts on our corporate blog at http://www.advancedaccess.com/blog/ (of course, you just need to add the subscription URL to your Google Reader, and you won’t need to remember that, or add it to your favorites, etc).

Other staff picks for your enjoyment are:

http://www.SEOMoz.org/
http://www.SearchEngineJournal.com/
http://www.searchengineguide.com/
http://www.ask-kalena.com/
http://www.copyblogger.com/
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/
http://www.seroundtable.com/
http://www.chrisg.com/
http://www.rsspieces.com/
http://www.Viperchill.com/
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/

Check them out, maybe subscribe to a couple to see how it works.  We will be reviewing many of these sites and why they are helpful in upcoming posts on the Advanced Access Blog.

Back to Advanced Access Marketing Tips Archive

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Weekly Marketing Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.