When it comes to promoting your blog online for free I consider blog commenting to be one of the best methods together with link baiting and guest blogging. Earlier on I have told you how I keep track of my comments and today I will talk about how to make the most out of Google Reader.
Google Reader with blog commenting
Since I consider blog commenting to be such a valuable method to promote my blogs and niche sites I have actually scheduled time every week where I go through my blog list and comment on their posts.
Having a simple text file with blogs was a great idea in the beginning but as soon as you continue to build upon it you will have problem remembering which posts you have commented and which posts you should comment.
This is where Google Reader comes into the picture and saves the day. My first step was to include all of my blogs into Google Reader and as you can imagine this did not work for long since I had no idea if I were following a blog just to comment on it or if I really liked the information.
Advantages of organizing
Since it was so difficult to keep track of my subscriptions I thought about how I could make it easier for me. After some thinking I ended up creating several different folders depending on the purpose of my subscription.
I ended up creating one folder for every domain I was promoting. In this folder I listed all the blogs I could comment on to promote my site.
To keep track of these folders I added a simple – before the title so I could be sure they would be in the top when ordering them from A-z. Beneath them I still had my regular niche folders with blogs I’m interested to read.
List interesting blogs on first page
Unfortunately all the posts were shown on the first page. The whole point of organizing Google Reader was to only show these posts when I wanted to promote my sites, so I had to exclude them from my first page.
I solved this by creating an additional folder named “interesting” where I listed all of the blogs I find interesting. Thanks to Google Reader you can list a blog in several folders, which is a great feature.
When this was done I simply excluded all folders except the folder “interesting” from my first page by doing this:
- Press “Settings” in your upper right hand corner.
- Press the drop down list titled “Start page” and choose the folder with interesting blogs. In my case the folder “interesting”.
By doing this I will get all of my interesting subscriptions on the first page.
Google Reader keyboard shortcuts
There are several different keyword shortcuts in Google Reader but I would like to highlight a few of them since organizing is all about saving time.
j/k – Use this to navigate by selecting the next/previous item in the list.
s – Stars or un-stars the selected item.
m – Marks the selected item as read/unread.
If you want to see the complete list you can find it at Google help center.
Subscribe
Now you know how to organize Google Reader and get the most out of it so head over to my RSS and subscribe for my posts.
That’s interesting. Thanks for sharing Stefan!
Hi Stefan,
Once again, you have simplified a very obvious tool for newbies & helped them improve their efficiency. I would say that you might be giving most important or usual tips, they does help make their life better. Really cool!
Hi Stefan,
It very interesting to read your post about reader management.
I am wondering that before read this,I was little bit lazy to manage Google reader.
Thanks buddy.
I am a new reader of your blog and found your blog interesting. It is out of the box. I have bookmarked you Stefan, hope to see some nice post.
I rarely use Google reader but I love it when I read articles.
I’m glad you found it useful Himanshu. Looking forward to see more of you then.
My google reader is a mess because I have not taken the time to organize it, so I am still going from my own blog to the blogs of those I comment on. Great idea re the “interesting” folder and putting all the others off the front page.
I had the same problem Christie. It actually took me about 3 hours to order it and I managed to remove over 100 feeds. The problem about using RSS-readers is that we have a tendency to subscribe for everything, resulting in us not getting the chance to read what we was initially interested in.
Stefan if you have no used feed-demon. You should use it, its again a great desktop based feed reader which is seamlessly integrated with Google reader. I’m sure you will come back and say thanks to me, once you will use it.
I also use blog comment as my prime promoting tools, and also use google reader to keep the list in where i will put my comment. I organize my google reader in many folder to make easy.
I am not using Google Reader that much. Your article inspired me to look at Google reader.
A while ago I added a bunch of blog to my reader so that I could check it regularly and make comments – it never happened! But only because I’m spinning too many plates and have a hard time keeping up with things in general …
With that said, when one doesn’t have time to leave a comment or can’t think of anything very intelligent to say (sometimes it’s late at night) one can always bookmark, retweet, or vote for the post on a social network. That’s a good way to acknowledge a good post – even in a hurry
You have a good point, Anna, mentioning there are several other methods you can use to show your appreciation. Personally I recommend everyone to link back in a future post since this is the highest appreciation you can show.
When it comes to subscribing I think the key is to organize your subscriptions in Google Reader from the beginning. By doing so you will have the possibility to go through a specific folder when it suits you.
Meanwhile I gave you some bookmarks and votes, to make sure I put my mouse where my mouth is
You are right – links in future posts are a great idea! I am going to add this to my big long list of Posts I Wish I had More Time to Write … but I think doing this regularly would be well well worthwhile for everyone!
Thank you Anna, it’s important to practise what one preaches. Especially when it comes to promoting me.
I also ended up subscribing for your blog, so you will see some more of me in the future. Great example of me practising what I preach.
Lol! You are right.
I think in the end we are demonstrating the same phenomenon we promote. Collaboration, communication, and exchange are so integral to blogging!
I have personally made folders in my Google reader mentioning the niche of the blogs. I categorize different blogs according to their Niche. And I read article in the niche I am really in mood of reading.(at that point of time)
I’m glad you do Rohit. This is exactly what I want more people to do since it saves a lot of time in the end. Another important aspect is that you should make sure to only subscribe for blogs you are interested in. There’s no point subscribing for posts you are not reading.
I’m not using any aggregator for now..But planning to use one. Google reader seems to be best from your article
Will try it then.
I’m sure you will find it useful Lax. Probably the best thing about using it is that you will have all of your subscriptions saved online.
I have been using Google Reader for a long time and I am glad my all subscriptions are very well organized, but this is the first time I have realized that I should have a new folder where I put those blogs where I want to be more active in participating into conversations.
I currently use Feedly, I need to start a “comments” column to manage the comments I want to follow.
Stefan, great post on how to use it and the shortcuts. I’ve never known about them or used them until you pointed it out. Another tip for staying on top of what interests you is to also subscribe to Google Alerts and put the RSS feed in your reader. That way you can stay on top of them instead of getting emails all of the time.
I agree with you and I actually did this recently to keep track of blogs writing about me and so far so good. Highly recommended.