Streamline your content monitoring and social shares with Feedly

This is a guest post from Paul Wickler, one of LexBlog’s Account Managers. Previously with Thomson Reuters and a creative agency partnering with XBox, Paul now works with LexBlog clients on blogging and social media strategies. 

Feel overwhelmed by the seemingly impossible task of trying to keep up with everything you need to keep track of online? Try using Feedly to help filter the flow of information while making consuming and sharing the work of others more manageable.

Feedly is a content aggregation application for both desktop and mobile platforms. It allows users to place text and multimedia content into categories for easy organization and helps saving time by creating a central repository for all of your media. Feedly is also great for online authors looking to keep a close eye on key issues, words and phrases pertaining to their blog.

Getting Started

Feedly requires a Google account to sign up, so your first step—if you don’t already have one—is to head over to Google and create one. Next, visit Feedly and click Get Started. Mouse over the grey sidebar on the left, click the My Feedly tab, log in, and you’re ready to start adding content.

Adding Content

Now that you are signed up it’s time to start adding and organizing content. Click the “+Add Content” tab to search for feeds by url, title or #topic and click the + sign to add.  Clicking Tracking tools, located under the list of feeds, prompts a search of the term or phrase on Google News or Youtube, a great way to find new sources and channels to follow.

Organizing Categories

Categories are key in getting the most out of Feedly. Keeping your reading/viewing materials well-organized allows for easy navigation to the sources or topics you want to see without the need to wade through unrelated items. When adding a feed, you will automatically be prompted to either create a new category, or enter the feed into one you had created previously. When you log in to Feedly, you can always on All on the left side to see a running list of posts for all of the feeds you have added, or on a category to see sources listed under that category only. Using the drop down arrows in the sidebar next to each category will also give you a quick view of what feeds you have added to each. Editing categories is also a snap. Click Organize to remove/edit categories and the feeds listed under them.  You can also move feeds to other categories just by dragging and dropping.

Customizing Your Views

View your content in a number of ways by clicking the Settings spoke in the upper right hand corner of the viewing window. View by titles only, full article, or others to organize according to personal preference. Experiment to find the view that works best for you.

Explore and Have Fun

Don’t make your Feedly use all work and no play. Discover the platform according to your hobbies and passions. Like baseball? Create a category with feeds from your favorite teams, writers and news sources. Love to cook? #Hashtag search your favorite ingredients and create a category featuring great food blogs.  Don’t be afraid to explore Feedly by searching out your interests and passions, it is the best way to learn that platform and will be a lot of fun in the process. With tens of millions of users, Feedly is the leading RSS reader available to legal professionals today.