If you’re new to, or simply investigating, the concept of content marketing, you’ll discover that one of the primary tenets is based in content generation. But looking for content inspiration can be daunting. One common practice is to use RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for topics related to your content strategy. But if you use Google Reader, you’ll soon be looking for a new solution.
Google recently announced it is retiring Google Reader effective July 1 of this year. For those of us who use Reader to collect our favorite news feeds, that means finding an alternative RSS reader tool, and the options can be overwhelming.
OSD software engineer Matthew Green is an information junkie (he has over 1,000 feeds!) who has done his homework on this issue. Taking into consideration factors like storage, sorting, filtering and syncing, he settled on Blogtrottr as a replacement tool and found he actually prefers it to Reader.
“I was able to export my feeds from Google reader and import them into Blogtrottr. Now I get an email in real time whenever a site pushes a feed. And Blogtrottr pulls updates every hour for sites that do not push their updates,” he says.
If that’s too much for your inbox, you can choose a variety of daily digest options.
“It’s the best of both worlds. I don’t need to worry about syncing; I can access my feeds from anywhere through my email account and I can share even easier without needing multiple apps on my phone or computer.”
And it’s free.
Here are the quick steps to exporting your Google Reader feeds:
- Go to reader settings
- Select Import/Export option
- Download your data through takeout
- Click Create Archive
- Download Archive (ZIP file) to your local drive
To import your feeds into Blogtrottr:
- Sign up for a free account
- Select OPML Import
- Browse for the subscription xml file
- Click Import
Your list of feeds will populate the My Subscriptions page. From there, you are able to manage your feeds, subscribe to new feeds and much more.
Why not connect with us and add the OSD feed to your list? Just click “Subscribe to a news feed,” enter www.outsidesource.com/feed/ and then “Feed Me.”
Then leave us a comment and let us know if this worked for you or if you have an alternative you’d like to recommend.
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