You don’t need to be told we live in the information age. Or how the attention economy has placed a strong emphasis on content creation in order to keep us rapt in front of our devices.
Minimalists are actively talking about digital decluttering and major lifestyle choices in relation to how we approach media consumption. There’s no denying its value and you should consider the best tools to restructure your habits.
RSS readers come to the foreground and certainly have a profound effect on how we spend time online, discover and follow content.
What is RSS feed and how to use it?
To those who missed the initial popularity of RSS, it originated in the 90s and syndicates content from their point of origin to a third-party client called an RSS feed reader. End users use readers to follow headlines from multiple sources in real time without having to leave their dashboard.
To add a subscription to an RSS reader one would need to visit the site and search for an RSS feed URL. Given that RSS is not as popular as it once was, this is a bit of a tricky task. Thankfully you have RSS readers like Inoreader who give you the option to search for an RSS feed internally.
Choose the RSS feed that you like the most
The best aspect of RSS is that you choose what you read. You don’t have to scroll through dumb articles posted by your friends on Facebook or dig through Twitter threads in order to get to your favorite journalist’s latest publication.
You are in charge of what you add to your RSS reader and it’s made incredibly easy. Inoreader emphasizes on the importance of discovery as we’re going to see below.
How to start?
Search and discovery are the main tools users take advantage of when building their subscriptions base early on. Inoreader prides itself in centering usability front and center, which extends to how you are able to subscribe to publications, social media pages, podcasts and newsletters.
First, we’ll explore the search to give you the lay of the land so to speak.
Find general news sources
News is perhaps the first thing that users often look for and you’ll get credible news sources in Inoreader’s database. Whether you type in the name of the news media you want to follow or just keywords pertaining to the type of news you’re interested, you’ll receive the best possible feeds for you to subscribe to early on.
Find related topics
You’ve typed up a query and have received a list with articles. You’ll notice that right above the search results there’s a button called ‘subscribe to topic’ – this is how you can turn your custom search into a related topic that consolidates articles matching your keywords from all your current subscriptions.
Outside of Inoreader, you can turn most searches across social media into a custom RSS. You can follow a Twitter hashtag or Twitter list for instance. Job hunters can also use this capability to turn custom searches on job boards into relevant topics to their interests.
Find articles with specific keywords of your interest
Advanced RSS feed readers, which definitely includes Inoreader, prioritize search in a meaningful way in order to connect end users with the content they desire with the least amount of barriers along the way. What does this mean for finding specific articles?
Users enjoy excellent search capabilities. We’ve shown you have you can search for specific topics and subscribe to them based on a search word. In the same search results page, you can see articles and you have further options in order to narrow down the article matching your keywords from a specific feed.
Don’t want to be limited to just your subscriptions? Go bigger. Go Global with our Global search, which casts its net over its entire database.
What are the next steps?
I want to walk you through how you can supplement your subscriptions with Inoreader. Inoreader prioritizes user satisfaction and to this end, end users discover built-in options to discover more as soon as they create their own profiles. You will be asked where your interests lay and you can go as broad or as specific as you wish.
Let’s explore what you can add either at the start or later on when you explore what interests you more.
Subscribe to topics you are interested in
Inoreader groups its indexed sites into broad categories, which provide an easy jumping-off point to better content discovery. The Inoreader team has created a catalog, which spans 50 topics that include Technology, Creative, Business, Science and Lifestyle. Under each big topic there are also sub-topics, which can help you narrow down your interests to a specific field and receive relevant articles without having to perform active filtering or searches. You’re given the keys to the car and it’s up to you where you head in your exploration.
Subscribe to popular feeds
If you’re not sure where to start on a specific topic or you want better recommendations, then you can also preview popular feeds on Inoreader. These are the feeds in the Inoreader database, which boast the most subscribers on the feed reader. Users are able to gain insight into the type of content the publication publishes through a nice sample number as well as learn average posting numbers per week. Sampling RSS feeds before subscribing benefits end users, because you don’t have to immediately commit and clog your dashboard with irrelevant articles.
Subscribe to popular collections
Personalized curation is also highlighted from the get-go. Inoreader power users create their own collections that round up specialized publications on a subject and present them to other users for subscription. Rather than having to do your own research and discovery, which can take up some considerable time why not trust in the judgement and taste of others that share your interests and have done the groundwork. Prime examples of this include MedEd Journals via Neil Mehta and the incredibly popular Google collection, which sources feeds on all Google products and news.