5 Steps to Effective RSS Management

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8,210

That’s how many RSS feeds the most prolific subscriber on Share My OPML has. Even tech experts Chris Pirillo and Robert Scoble subscribe to more than 600 feeds themselves to stay on top of the fast moving tech industry. (I subscribe to ‘only’ 200 feeds).

With that many feeds in hand, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of information being thrown at you – so how do you stay on top of your feeds effectively?

Step 1: Use an offline RSS reader

Don’t get me wrong, I love online readers like Pageflakes, but I’ve found that offline feed readers are much more powerful tools which offer an array of advantages. Among which…

• You don’t have to wait for feeds to load as all the updating is done in the background
• You don’t have to be online to read your feeds, and in fact can flag stories for later reading
• You can sort, and manage your feeds better. For example, I group related feeds together so I read all of them at one go.

My recommendations for free offline feed readers? Try out RSS Popper if you’re on Outlook, or Thunderbird if you’re not.

Step 2: Subscribe generously

With proper feed management you don’t have to be particularly choosy about what you subscribe to. As long as the content is good, you can give it a try without having to worry about how many feeds you already have on your list.

Step 3: Read selectively

Reading your favourite feeds are supposed to be fun. Avoid the trap of trying to read everything you subscribe to as it slowly turns into a death march when you subsribe to increasingly more sites. I may subscribe to over 200 feeds, but I only read 8 of them on a regular basis.

Step 4: Use a desktop search tool

What good is 200 feeds if only a certain portion is read regularly? Well over time, the articles which pile up inside your offline RSS reader becomes a treasure trove of content. A desktop search tool will help you instantly search through everything at lightning speed, and this may at times deliver even better results than Google, because the sources of the content are what you personally handpicked.

Step 5: Backup your feeds

No matter how good you feel your RSS reader is (online or offline) – you need to ensure it has an export to OPML option! This acts as a backup and also allows you to switch feed readers in a blink of an eye. I do a backup of my feeds at least once a quarter just to be safe.

Bonus link: What is RSS and how can it save me time?

Bonus tip: Robert Scoble shows you his method of staying on top of his RSS feeds

That’s the beauty of RSS. You don’t go to the web, it comes to you.

How do you manage your RSS feeds? Tells us in the comments!

[tags] RSS, feed readers, productivity, opml [/tags]