Don’t suffer media indigestion. Streamline what content you put into your body - in this case, mind. Focusing your daily reading habits using an aggregator can help you digest all of the content you need, and want, to take in daily.
I personally use Google Reader as my aggregator, and I’ve never used anything else so I can’t make recommendations on whether this is the “best,” but I like it. I hear good things from folks who use MyAlltop, too. An aggregator make it so instead of searching for news or visiting a huge array of websites everyday, everything you want to keep up with, for business or fun, is in one, organized place. Google Reader is an RSS (really simple syndication) reader, which pulls new content from a website (articles, photos, and videos) and displays them in one location. Like this:
I start every morning and end every night by skimming through my RSS feed. I subscribe to about 40 social media and marketing blogs, 8 magazines/news sites, and 5 sites just for fun (silly things like LOLcats and my Harry Potter fix.)
Setting up a comprehensive aggregator from scratch can be a pain in the ass, especially if you don’t currently have ingrained in your mind the sites and topics you want to keep up with, but it’s worth it. Aside from simplifying your media consumption, a strong subscription will allow you to keep up with thought leaders in your professional industry or blogging niche and, for bloggers, provide inspiration for your own content. Also for bloggers, you can use the best posts to compile weekly or monthly best-of lists to share with your readers (like I do) - they seem to enjoy it.
What’s your process for digesting content? Is it working?
columbus imPRessions says:
Yeah, I’m in your Google Reader!!
I have both Google Reader (which you are in as well) and My AllTop. I tend to use Google Reader more. It’s become my 2.0 newspaper.
Aug 05, 2009, 2:19 pm