Setting up Feedly, good-bye Google Reader

By now almost everyone has heard that Google Reader is going away.  There are several companies that have stepped up to take its place, and I’m sure they’re all great.

 

But, I like Feedly.

So, here’s my lazy man’s guide to Feedly.

 

When you first log-in, you’ll be prompted to access Google Reader, say yes, and it will import ALL of your subscriptions.  Then your screen will look something like this.  It looks a bit like pinterest.  Which is intriguing, but not super helpful if you just want to scan titles like I do in my reader.

 

So, that’s my first Feedly tip:

You see these little buttons?

• First the checkmark, that marks everything in the category as read
• The cogwheel lets you change the look:

• titles- this is just like Google Reader
• magazine- picture with a short summary next to it (usually first two sentences)
• timeline- more compact with some fancy buttons on the side
• cards- this is the pinterest view
• full articles- each post is in a box with a short summary or full article depending on the feed set-up
• Arrow thingy- refresh, to check if there’s new articles
• carrot arrow- jump to next category

I immediately changed it to title view, I like this better:

Doesn’t it look pretty?

 

Next tip: Adding new content to feedly:

You see the little button in the top right corner?  Click that, you can then either look up the blog name or (like I do) just paste in the URL, hit enter and it’ll bring up the blog you’re looking for.

Then you get to add it to a category.  I like sub-dividing my blogs into different categories, it helps me go through and read different types of things, and then I can spread out what types of things I share, so it’s not all 20 posts about a cool craft.

Here’s my categories today.  I tend to separate it by types of blogs or what group they are in that I know them from.  It’s arbitrary really, and I could just as easily have called them fuzzy monkey, Vulcan, splash bomb……  Other random phrases.

 

The best part about Feedly:

You ready for the best part to my mind?  Easy sharing of other people’s posts

Those little buttons are awesome.  I can click on them and share posts on any of the major social media networks.  Many blogs still do not have an easy +1 button on their site, which if you don’t you really should because it’s great for getting your blog out there in search engines…..

The little ribbon thing is save for later, and you can also tag the posts, I haven’t really done that because I prefer to save stuff on pinterest.

 

So, that’s my quick and easy guide to Feedly. What are you using now that Google Reader is going away?