Posts Tagged ‘Google Reader’

Following on from the latest Commoncraft video about Google Reader, I wanted to offer a few quick pointers that your business could easily implement using the free Google reader tool.

I’m sure you could get some quick wins, market insight or some competitive advantage from keeping up to date with your news more easily. How much more easily? well, Google reader uses a web site’s RSS feeds to deliver hundreds of pieces of new content, news, announcements and conversations directly to you - saving you a lot of time, and making it easy.

Who’s talking about you and your market.

Listen in and respond to new and potential customers within the blogosphere, and what they have to say about you, your business market or your competitors.

1. Go to Google.com/reader - you will need a Google account, so sign in or create a free one.
2. Once you’ve created your account head over to blogsearch.google.com
3. Enter your business or brand name (or a keyword to describe the market your business is in)
4. The resulting search page displays a list of the conversations on blogs that have mentioned your keywords. At the bottom of the results you can ‘stay up to date on these results‘ - select the  ‘subscribe to … in Google reader‘ option, and click the big yellow ‘subscribe‘ box at the top of the page.
5. You can easily view large number of feeds by visiting ‘All Items‘ from the menu on the left of your reader. (Total unread posts is shown in the parentheses) (HINT: You can review blog posts in expanded or list view, by selecting the relevant tab from the top right of your reader)
6. Log in regularly to keep up-to-date with the latest news and conversations about you and your market.

Competitor news, posts and updates - delivered to you.

Save time and keep a watchful eye on your market competitors by your finger on the pulse with Google reader.

1. Go to Google.com/reader - you will need a Google account, so sign in or create a free one.
2. In the green bar on the left hand side, click ‘Discover‘, then type the name of a competitor (one that you know are blogging) in the keywords search box.
3. Select your competitor from the list. (HINT: You can also get a glimpse for how popular each blog is, by the number of subscribers to it) and click the big yellow ‘Subscribe‘ box at the top of the page.
4. Rinse and repeat until you are subscribed to all your competitors that run a blog. On the right hand side you will see a list of all your subscriptions, click them to review what they are blogging about.
5. You can easily view all your feeds by visiting ‘All Items‘ from the menu on the left of your reader.
6. Log in regularly to keep tabs on the topics your competitors are talking about.

If you have anything to share about the advantage you get from Google reader or other RSS tools, feel free to comment - we’d love to hear about it.

Given the name of this blog and the fact that I also use Google Reader as my feed reader of choice, Commoncraft’s new quick intro video into how to use the latter to make sense of RSS and to organise your feeds was always going to appeal.

It was the team at Google Reader itself that approached Commoncraft, which is a fair indication that Sachi and Lee LeFever are seen as the creative team to turn to for explanatory video. Anyway, enough said: here’s the video.