One of my biggest resolutions for 2017 is to get more involved, organized, and strategic about my blogging. Blogging can be an incredibly time consuming hobby, and between reading books, creating content, keeping up with my corresponding social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, etc.), and responding to comments, it’s hours of dedication per week. That’s not even including the time to visit other bloggers and engage with their content. Therefore, I decided I wanted to try a new approach this year to better organize myself when it comes to interacting with other bloggers.
When I first began book blogging, I predominantly used the wordpress.com reader to keep up with and follow blogs. Soon I became active on Bloglovin’ as well, which serves as both a blog reader but also a social network site of sorts, as you can claim your blog and become notified of how many followers you have and who is interacting with your posts. While I still frequent Bloglovin’, I’ve recently started using Feedly as well and I have to say I am loving it.
Feedly has a super minimalist look and approach and I find it to be a bit less overstimulating than Bloglovin’. I was easily able to transfer over all of the blogs I follow via Bloglovin’ to Feedly so I can follow all of them on both platforms. It even kept my separate categories, or feeds, in place. I was thrilled to find that Feedly can now easily tell me how many unread posts I have overall, and in each category as well. There’s also a nifty “Read Later” function to remind me of posts I want to look more closely at another time. I’ve found that Feedly also works super well for me because of its ability to show posts in different formats. Below is the “Title Only” view, which almost mimics the look of an email inbox. I LOVE this view because it allows me to quickly scan and see all of my unread posts and decide which to initially bookmark, visit, or mark as read. I don’t have to scroll through multiple pages, images, and thumbnails to get a sense of what I want to read.
There’s also the “magazine view” option, which is a bit more similar to Bloglovin’s layout. I usually use this view when looking at my specific feeds that aren’t as overwhelming and large as my general “All” feed that includes updates from all the blogs I follow. There’s also a “Cards” view option that shows posts in larger tiles, similar to how the view on Bloglovin’ is if you go straight to someone’s profile to look at their posts or the posts that they’ve liked.
Another thing I love about Feedly is the ability to create Boards. I like that I can see all of my board in the left hand side bar and that they’re all really easily accessible. These are similar to Bloglovin’s collections, but in a much more convenient layout for me to navigate. I’ve started building boards not only for topics to put posts in that I want to revisit, but also for posts I enjoy from a particular month. Then at the end of the month I can do a much better job of quickly finding all of my favorite blog posts from fellow bloggers and sharing them in my monthly recaps. Honestly, the left hand sidebar in Feedly reminds me a lot of my Outlook email inbox and I love how I can see everything at a glance and file things away like I would with my email for future reference.
I’ve also found the Feedly app for my phone to be a really streamlined and beautiful user experience, and it’s really easy to mark posts as read and review my feed while on the go, and its integration with the website is seamless. Now my blog reading routine is two pronged: I continue to use Bloglovin’ to engage with other bloggers in a way that notifies them, and use Feedly to streamline and categorize my feed and save posts that I want to reference later much more effectively.
Let’s Chat!
I’d love to hear about how YOU use RSS readers to keep up with the blogs you follow! Do you use one or multiple? Feedly, Bloglovin’, or something completely different? How do you keep up with all of the various duties that come along with blogging? Let me know in the comments!
I’ve mostly stuck with Bloglovin’ since moving away from the WordPress reader. I’ve dabbled in feedly a bit for news-feeds and whatnot but never kept up with it. I honestly never even considered following blogs there too! Maybe I’ll slim down my newsfeeds and add my blogs and see if I do a better job of keeping up with both by having them in one place 🙂
I highly recommend it! I’ve only been using Feedly for a couple of weeks but I just find it to be so user friendly!
I never heard of feedly, but it sounds awesome! I used bloglovin a lot, I just prefer it compared to wordpress, so maybe I should give feedly a try!
I hope you enjoy Feedly! I think everyone finds the combination of RSS readers that works for them, and it’s definitely still a work in progress for me as well!
Feedly is how I keep up with all of the blogs I read too! I love it so much more than Bloglovin’! I’ve been using it for about 4 years now but I had no idea about the magazine view! I’m definitely going to be changing that one mine! I love how it has preview images in the app but having them on desktop will be a game changer!
Yes I can’t believe I didn’t really know about it sooner…it’s sooooo much easier to use than Bloglovin’. I’ve been having trouble finding the number of overall unread posts I have on Bloglovin’ (and I’m really neurotic about making sure I have no unread posts) so I love how Feedly almost mimics an email inbox!
I definitely need to start using Feedly instead. Bloglovin has been such a headache lately. I love their frame feature, so I can click through the posts in order, but lately they’ve included blogs I DON’T follow and it’s pissing me off haha.
I actually was never a huge fan of the frame feature, but I definitely know what you mean about random blogs showing up (and ads). I like that feedly just brings up a blog post as like a slide out image on the right hand side and then you can chose to either go to the website or read it right there, and it doesn’t require reloading the whole page to bring up the blog post. (If that makes any sense lol)
I hadn’t previously heard of Feedly, but I will totally be checking it out after reading your post. I mostly just use Bloglovin’ to keep up with the blogs I follow, but it definitely has some issues. I like the streamlined look of Feedly. And the fact that it has a “read later” option makes me so happy! Thanks for the tip, Cristina!
No problem! I hope you find that Feedly works for you! It can definitely take a while to figure out the best organizational style to keep track of all of the blogs that one follows, and I’m definitely still working on it after 3 years!
Huh, I use Bloglovin’, but I always feel like it’s not showing me every post and that I’m missing some. I’ve never used Feedly, but from your post, it sounds fantastic! Will probably give it a try soon 🙂
Right? I get that feeling from Bloglovin’ too. I also noticed a lot of blogs being added in (and advertisements) ending up in my feed. I still use Bloglovin’, but I find incorporating Feedly helps me keep track when I feel like I may be missing something.
I wanted to start using Feedly and set up an account but got frustrated at having t refollow all the blogs I follow on Bloglovin. I kind of gave up. I think maybe it is time to revisit!!
I would definitely try again! I found a super easy guide to exporting all of the blogs I follow from Bloglovin’ to Feedly, it literally probably took all of 3 minutes. A quick google search should do the trick, and then they’ll all be imported for you to follow in Feedly as well!
I first tried Feedly when Google Reader was retired; I never really jumped on the Bloglovin’ train. I had no idea you could make boards though – I’ll have to explore that!
Yes it’s a super helpful feature in Feedly! I’ve actually heard that Google Reader is more like Feedly than Bloglovin’ is. What have you found to be a good method for you for keeping track of the blogs you read?
Thanks for sharing this app, Christina. I’ll look at it. I’m still new, still learning the best ways to blog myself. This info is very useful. 🙂
I’m glad this post proved to be a useful resource for you! And welcome to the blogging community! I know it can seem overwhelming at first, but I hope you love it!
[…] Incorporating Feedly Into my Blogging Routine at Girl in the Pages […]
Interesting post. I’ve never thought about trying Feedly. I honestly had no idea what it was but this looks awesome. I used to love Bloglovin’ but they changed up their platform, throw in sponsored posts, and you’re right, it’s a bit overstimulating. I will have to give Feedly a try and see how it goes. I used to love when my blog was on Blogger and I could just scroll through the small “magazine” feed. I would love to go back to that.
I know, it’s always so hard when you have a system that really works for you and you have to adjust to something else. I would really encourage you to give Feedly a try if you haven’t been super thrilled with Bloglovin’ lately. I literally feel sooooo much less stressed than I used to when scrolling through my Bloglovin’ feed, which feels so disorganized lately.
I come from the days of Google Reader so Feedly was pretty darn easy for me to adapt to. I put close to every RSS feed I want to follow in it [including Tumblr blogs and Youtube subscriptions!] a lot of blogs move so fast with updating so Feedly definitely helps me to not miss anything! 🙂
Oh I haven’t even thought about putting Youtube subscriptions in, but that’s such a good idea! I love having everything in one place, or else I feel like I’m never able to keep up on everything effectively.
I left Feedly for Bloglovin when I first started blogging, mainly because I liked that you can keep track of your followers on Bloglovin and everyone seemed to be using it. But the feed feels really cluttered lately, not to mention the whole fiasco recently about them scraping your posts. After reading this post, I’m thinking I should give Feedly a shot again!
Did you end up giving Feedly a shot? I’ve still stuck with since publishing this post and I have to say that I really love it!
[…] so helpful, and found many a helpful blog post and new blogger to follow that way. Now that I’m using Feedly to keep track of the blogs I follow, it’s easier than ever to create boards and track the posts I would definitely recommend to […]
Oh this sounds so useful! Bloglovin has been stressing me out a bit lately, so this sounds perfect 🙂 I’ll definitely try it out
YES have you tried it yet? It’s made my blogging life a LOT less stressful!