Pro Blogger dilemma: dropping feeds you like vs need
Related entries in Professional BloggingI’m facing a dilemma in my blogging. More particularly, in my reading.
As I take on more blogs (I think I have enough now), my reading list grows. Logical, yes? Well, while a niche list develops with 20-30 feeds (blogs/tracking), so does the time involved to read those feeds.
Multiply this by all the blogs I cover (16) and you get to the quandary I’m at now.
I am covering so many different niche topics, and some that post at such high frequencies, that stuff I enjoy reading is being shunted to the sidelines. As the volume of posts increases out of some of the celebrity blogs I follow (yes, I blame that section), it becomes more difficult to stay on top of my other niches, let alone my interests.
I want to prune back my feeds to a manageable level (which I do regularly). From experience, my best feed level is 350 feeds.
I’m about 45 feeds over, but have been for days trying to figure out what to prune, with no luck. I keep my feeds pruned regularly - dropping stagnant feeds, picking up new ones. The past 2 months, however, my growth has exceeded my pruning efforts.
At this juncture, I have a tradeoff. Either I prune back niche feeds, and risk missing news, or I stop following my interests (personal and professional). I’m not happy doing either. One will slow my growth and the other will make me quite dissatisfied.
So this is my pro blogger dilemma: the balance of focus and personal satisfaction.
Right now, I don’t have a solution. I plan to keep the feeds as they are for now, but will manually refresh some folders on a consistent basis - too many ‘new’ items in bold stresses me out. I won’t necessarily have time to scan the posts, but the feed is there for my perusal at any time.
What is your solution? Have you reached a point where you don’t know how to scale back?
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January 23rd, 2006 at 8:17 pm
I pruned back almost all my A-list bloggers.
Most of the time they were just regurgitating posts from digg, google or slashdot; or posting banal non-blogworthy topics to keep up posting frequency.
Next step was to realise that some niche blogs that I read, I actually only skim read and don’t even click through to the main post… gonsky!!!
150 is my target, anymore and my work/family life suffers.
January 23rd, 2006 at 8:41 pm
Time Management and RSS Feeds
February 2nd, 2006 at 6:31 am
I passed that need last October unfortunately and, as of this morning I’ve “cut back” to 837 feeds in my Bloglines. I found an easy solution at first. Only sleep 6 days a week, and use one night as an alnighter to either catch up on the blog reading or on your failed and falling behind work schedule! However, this gets tiresome after a few months so I have a new plan now, which since November has been working relatively reasonable for me - that being how you sort your Bloglines or other feeds. This is how I do mine.
Level 1: I have one folder for each blog named appropriately, “articles for PetLvr” “articles for 1800hart” etc. This is the must-read-daily research/news/etc. Usually twice daily - in A.M. and late at night
Level 2: These are the groupings of links of all my blogs - if I’m linking to other sites and reciprocal linking, I feel I should watch their sites and see what they are saying. I may not always read everything, but I click and read every headline every day.
Level 3: These are groups of links that I think I should be watching and/or researching for my blogs, but I’m either too lazy or too busy. I also have one for every blog and, on one of them is at 1363 unread … I only read these when I’m absolutely can’t find anything useful to post about in my other stuff. It’s unfortunate that Bloglines stops at 200 otherwise these numbers unread would be higher
Level 4: I have three folders strictly for “Amusement” purposes, that don’t relate to anything but I enjoy following.. like dilbert, maddox, stuff like that that some might be embarrassed to admit they follow :)
Level 5: This is everything else, and is neatly sorted. I have a folder of every blog network and the ones that I find interesting to read, and general ones for ‘blogging’ general for ‘technology’ and other general topics. This is what I read for enjoyment, but only when time permits. Usually - I spend more time than was permitted! However, I tend to stick to a folder at a time. Sometimes, you might see me comment on one network of sites for the whole day and other times, not for a week or two - that’s probably the time I get around to coming back ..
Level 5-1/2: This is part of my 5th level. There are blogs that I keep in my bloglines, but NEVER read - yet, I refuse to read them for some reason. I don’t even skim the headlines, yet I will click on them to clear the unread ever day or everytime I’m reviewing that folder. I think the main reason was to follow how many posts people around the world are putting out on an average day.
~~ // oops - sorry, just realized how long this comment was. I’ll stop now. G’day, eh.