I’m sure there are many of you that like me were devastated when Google closed ‘Google Reader’ last year. I relied on it for reading my Google Alerts and for a while feeds disappeared from Alerts altogether.
Just when I thought Google Alerts was no longer worth the effort the feeds came back, paired with RSS reader Feedly I have my social media monitoring and content curation dashboard back.
What is an RSS Feed
RSS stands either for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. It is often represented on websites by this orange symbol. 
An RSS feed will appear on blogs and websites that are updated regularly. By subscribing to this feed you can be alerted when that site is updated (a new story is published) without the need to visit the site.
RSS feeds can be brought into ‘readers’ that store all the updates as they happen. You can visit the RSS reader either on a browser or via an app and view all the content from the websites you have subscribed to.
What are Google Alerts?
Google Alerts are a tool that will keep you informed about content that Google finds on the internet related to a specific search term. Instead of having to Google your business name constantly to find out if anyone is writing about you you can set up an alert. Google will then either email you every day with results or, as I demonstrate in the video you can subscribe to the feed.
It’s a good idea to set up Google Alerts to monitor mentions of your business and your competitors businesses but it’s also a great tool for keeping on top of developments in your industry.
Google alerts are a great place to start with a content curation plan, you will find lots of interesting stuff that you may have missed otherwise.
How Does Feedly Work?
Feedly is an RSS reader, you can choose to subscribe to Google Alerts feeds, blog feeds and more and it will all appear in one place, on one website for you to find. It’s like your own personalised newspaper every day. As well as the website you can access Feedly via apps on your mobile devices.
I start each day by flicking through the various blogs and feeds I subscribe to on Feedly, picking out content that I think you will enjoy reading. Here’s my tutorial on how to add Google Alerts to Feedly
How To Subscribe to Blogs in Feedly
Feedly isn’t just for Google Alerts, you can subscribe to your favourite blogs on the site as well. All you need to do is visit your favourite blog, copy the link to the blog from the address bar and add it to Feedly the same way you did your alerts (see video above).
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