I’ve been talking about RSS feeds for about 13 years now, and have been using them much longer than that. I recently suggested that most everyone should be using them, and you can see how they fit into my larger system here.
That said, I’m constantly adjusting how I use them, which is part of the benefit of them. You can control exactly which sources reach you and which don’t, with no filters or algorithms in the way, so I frequently tweak who I follow and who I don’t.
To that end, I recently made two big changes.
Cut out some noisemakers
The first thing I did was cut out some of the sources that publish a lot of content, specifically TechCrunch and Lifehacker. Both sites put out great content, but just SO much of it. Any big story that I might pick up from them I’ll likely see elsewhere, so I’ve removed them both for now. So far I’m very pleased with that decision.
Added more humans
At the same time, I’ve started adding more humans to my feeds — people that I respect and follow. I’m enjoying their content, but this is where the beauty of RSS really kicks in.
If they post something, I see it.
If they stop posting, it doesn’t affect me. It’s not like I have to go to their sites periodically to see what’s new; they simply have nothing in my reader.
Some good folks to follow
That said, here are a few people you should consider adding to your reader. If they keep posting regularly, you’ll get great content. If they don’t, no worries.
- Chris Lema, largely focused on WordPress stuff.
- Tim Villegas, who works a lot on inclusive education (along with many other interests).
- Robert Carnes, our marketing manager at GreenMellen, who covers a wide variety of marketing and writing topics.
- Jennifer Bourn, who talks about various marketing topics but focuses a lot on sales and client management. She also has a separate personal blog here.
- Jenny Munn, who covers topics about helping your site rank better in Google.
- Tom Tortorici, who writes about “optimizing for humans”.
I still follow quite a few larger companies so I can stay current on my various interests, but I’m really enjoying seeing more solo bloggers popping up again.
What other blogs do you think are must-follow?
