5 Tips to Turbocharge your Bloglines Account
Are you new to RSS readers? Did you just set up a Bloglines account and now need some ideas for content worth syndicating? Here are some tips to help find content that may be interesting for you. The following tips are written for Bloglines users, but could be easily be applied to similar feed readers.
- Look for Bloglines links on your favorite blogs. Many bloggers have added bloglines icons to their sites that allow you to subscribe to their site's feeds in a single click. Look for links like the one below:
- Add a Bloglines Bookmarklet: While many sites have Bloglines subscription links most do not. SBut it turns out that you can bring your own by creating a Bloglines subscription bookmarklet. Scroll to the bottom of the left frame, click the "Get a Subscribe to Bloglines button" link, then click and drag the appropriate button onto your bookmarks toolbar. Now you can subscribe to sites with feeds by simply clicking your new bookmarklet. It should look something like this after installed:
- Keep an eye out for site feeds: Not all sites have feeds available for syndication, but more do every day. One easy way to track which sites you're visiting have feeds is to look for an RSS icon in the address bar. This currently works in FireFox and will be available in the soon to be released IE7 browser. If your browser shows this icon while visiting a site, it has a feed available:
- Review Co-Subscribers: Wouldn't it be cool if you could find out who else reads RSS feeds that you find interesting? It may be a great way to find other feeds that you'd find interesting. Here's how you can do this using Bloglines. Click the subscriber count link near the top of the feed you find interesting:
In the image above, clicking on 3,387 would take you to a list of the subscribers to Mark Cuban's Blog Maverick blog. Only subscribers who've chosen to make their subscriptions public will be displayed (currently 1055, so ~1/3). Clicking on any of those 1055 subscribers will take you to a list of that subscriber's publicly subscribed feeds. You can subscribe to new feeds you discover in other user's subscriptions, adding them to you own reading list.
- Check Related Feeds: The other link near the top of the Blog Maverick screen shot will display feeds Bloglines has determined are related to the feed you are currently reading. I haven't researched how Bloglines generates this list, but my guess is they're using "people who subscribe to this also subscribe to this" logic. This tends to work best with popular feeds, but seems to be getting better with lesser known feeds as well.
Following the tips above should increase both the quantity and quality of your Bloglines subscriptions. Happy reading.
Do you have any Bloglines tips worth sharing? Add them to the comments section below.
