Tips for using Google Reader

My series about switching over to Google contains some of the most read posts on this site. I thought I’d extend the idea a little further and give you some in depth guidance on one of my favorite Google products, Reader.

If you’re a blogger, you read a lot of websites, and it’s an area where you can spend, and sometimes waste, a great deal of time. Anything that can help you streamline the process has to be a good thing and Google Reader does exactly that.

Like any RSS reader, it simply takes the RSS feed from whatever websites you select, and then presents you the feed. But it’s the features around that which make it special. Let’s have a look first at the opening screen:

You can organize the various panels how you want, but I have mine in the original format. On the left panel at the top you’ll see the folders – key ones in this example tell me that I have 26 posts I haven’t yet read, and that there are none in my starred items – we’ll come back to those later. Below that I can see friends with whom I share posts, again more on that later. And at the bottom of the left panel you can see some of the sites I subscribe to. By clicking these (and the number of unread posts is indicated) the feed for that site will then fill the main screen. At the opening screen, however, we have a pretty neat summary of what’s in there. So if I’m short of time, I can just scan those and pick out the ones I really want to read right now.

Over on the right panel, there are recommendations. These are chosen automatically by Google and are based on the types of site I already subscribe to. Below that you can see a quick synopsis of my recent activity, which tells me which posts I have starred, kept unread or shared with others.

Now let’s get into how I actually use Reader. I basically work my way down the left panel, so I will click the first feed with unread posts in it, in this case it will be Chris Brogan’s site, and his feed will now appear in the main window, like this:

The convention is that most bloggers put their full feed into RSS, so you’ll generally be able to read the whole post, and even watch a video, right in the feed. Here’s my process now:

I’ll scan the post, and if the topic or post is of no interest, I simply scroll to the end and that marks the post as read
If it looks interesting, and I have time, I’ll read the whole post, and sometimes I’ll click across to the site to leave a comment
If there are actions I want to take, or I want to re read it later, I will “Star” the post. This will then place a copy in the “Starred” folder at the top
If I think some of my friends would be interested, I will “share” the post. It then will appear in their Readers next to my name as having been shared by me – I can even add a comment
Occasionally I will share a post via email with someone who doesn’t use reader

All of the above can each be accomplished with a single click, using the buttons at the bottom of each post, as shown here:

By doing things this way, I can get through 60 new posts in about 15 minutes, but by using the star facility, I can easily highlight those which warrant more attention. Google Reader has transformed my ability to stay on top of a lot of reading. If you don’t already use it give it a try now – you can set it up here.