Google Reader is a great tool to help you gather, read, and share information on the web. Many people like to use Google Reader to help them keep current by getting information delivered to them without cluttering up their email inbox. But if you are not careful, your Reader can become another cluttered inbox. I had people tell me more than once that they stopped opening up their Google Reader because they didn’t want to deal with the huge mess that was waiting for them there. Here are a few tips for keeping your Reader inbox manageable and relevant:
1. Nuke it! – Don’t be afraid to start delete everything (or mark everything as “read”) and start over. Just because you subscribed to a feed or set up an alert doesn’t mean you have read every item. Give yourself permission to not read everything and start again.
2. Revisit your organization scheme – or create one. Many people organize their feeds into folders. Make sure you pick an organization scheme that works for you. Some people like to organize by topic. I like to organize by how often I want to read a feed, so I have folders labeled “daily”, “weekly”, “monthly”, etc.
Once you have an organization scheme, review it periodically. Make sure that it is helping you manage your information. Also, look for items that may need to be re-categorized. For example, I often categorize a new blog that I subscribe to as weekly. After I have had a chance to read it for a while, I may decide that it should be moved to the “daily” or “monthly” category.
3. Refine Your Alert Queries – or delete them. Google Alerts (https://www.google.com/alerts), if you are not familiar with them, allow you to be notified whenever a new result appears for a search query you have saved. For example, many people will set up a Google Alert for their business name, so that every time their name is mentioned on the web they will receive a notification.
The more general your search query, the more results you will receive. This can lead to a large number of alerts that you are not interested in. Using the Advanced Search (https://www.google.com/advanced_search) features of Google, you can refine your search to help make sure that the alerts that you receive are relevant to your business.
Over time, you are bound to accumulate alerts for things you thought were important but you no longer find useful – that’s what the delete button is for.
I hope these tips will help make Google Reader a tool that helps you rather than just being another inbox to deal with.
