I Love Blogs + Feedly

I love blogs. They have replaced my pre-teen and teenage love of magazines. I used to spend hours pouring over the newest issue of Girls Life and then later Seventeen. I lived for the quizzes, the embarrassing moment recaps, the advice columns, and stories about girls in other parts of the country and the world (but really, didn’t you love the quizzes or am I a lone nerd on this one?). As an adult, blogs give me the same enjoyment and reading variety when I need a break from non-fiction or the news. 

Over the years, the list of blogs that I follow has grown and some of these bloggers feel like friends (in a non-creepy way!). They’ve given me great recipe, restaurant, travel, and book recommendations. They’ve inspired me with their insight, creativity, and courage to share their personal stories. My absolute favorite blogs I check everyday and the rest I save for lazy Saturday or Sunday mornings. I open them up in multiple tabs and enjoy them with a cup of coffee. The blogs I follow range from the purely fun and entertaining (Suri’s Burn Book – so funny) to informational (The Blog of Author Tim Ferris) to business and career enhancing (Women2.0). 

I used to follow everything through Google Reader out of convenience and habit, but as you all now know from our last post, it’s going away at the end of the month. But have no fear, because I have found a tool that is way better than Google Reader and it’s super easy to migrate over. Here’s an in-depth look at my blog-reading savior – Feedly. 

How I use it

I have my blogs grouped in folders:

• Favorites (that I check daily)

• Pals (personal friends who have blogs)

• Lifestyle (read: pretty things!)

• Vegan (recipes)

• Start-ups

• Social Entrepreneurs

• New Orleans blogs

• Los Angeles blogs, etc. 

Once you’ve read through a particular blog’s current posts, you can “mark as read” and Feedly pops up the next available content.

Feedly makes it easy to share posts that I find interesting. There are buttons on top of each post for emailing to a friend or posting to Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

I also use two additional tools when going through blogs:

• Instapaper – allows you to save articles to read later. Many times a blog post will reference several other related articles which I end up opening in a million tabs. Instapaper allows me to save articles in one place and keep the number of open tabs under control.
• Pinterest – Feedly has Pinterest integration! That means with one click on a picture in a blog post, you can create a pin.

I also have Feedly installed on my phone so I can read wherever I am. Feedly syncs across your devices so you’re always up-to-date.

Why I love it
First of all, Feedly is way more visually appealing than Google Reader ever was. It has a really nice design and tons of options if you want to play around with it. I use the “Magazine View” but you can also choose the Title Only View (similar to Google Reader), the Cards View, or Full Article (one post at a time).

Magazine View

Title Only View

Cards View

Full Article View

Just like reader it’s available on your phone, tablet, or desktop.

And finally, the Feedly team went out of their way to make migrating from Google Reader SO SIMPLE. It will take you less than thirty seconds and all of your blogs and folders will be saved and beautifully available in Feedly. Hooray for simplicity!

How to get started
It’s so easy!

1. Visit: http://cloud.feedly.com
2. Login to Google Reader to sync all of your current feeds.

For more info, check out Feedly’s tips for users migrating from Google Reader so you feel right at home.

And some lagniappe, my favorite blogs:

• Cup of Jo – if I read one blog each day, it’s Cup of Jo. She’s just so good! She always has interesting posts and recommendations and writes with a very down-to-earth tone.

• Young Married Chic – another favorite! More focused on recipes and fitness and always entertaining!

• Suri’s Burn Book – Purely fun, makes me laugh out loud.

• Jenny Blake – Inspiration for starting your own business or following your passions in life in general. Jenny is a former Googler and amazing life-coach / solopreneur with great, practical advice.

• The Everygirl – one of Forbes’s Top 10 Sites for Millennials, The Everygirl has a wide variety of posts from current events to fashion to interviews with “Everygirls”.