So, Trish and I were talking the other day. { Our husbands think we should just have an intercom system from house to house by the way! } How many of you knew how to follow a blog before you were bloggers? How many of you non-bloggers do not know where to start, but would love to follow blogs?
Well, you are in luck! Trish and I are going to walk you through some aspects of following your favorite blogs…
Yep, see those 2 questions? We get asked them A LOT. As bloggers we tend to forget that unless you blog for yourself, you may not understand all the blog lingo, much less how to actually follow blogs.
So today, we are going to go through a few basic aspects of following blogs. We are by NO means techie experts, but this information has been helpful to us and we want to share it with you.
Before we get into the “how to” on following your favorite blogs, let’s give a few basic definitions…
- RSS: Also know as Really Simple Syndication and Rich Site Summary, it is a way for websites to distribute their content. The symbol is that funny little rainbow looking icon.
- Feed: Basically your blog content produced in a different form. It is the blog content {posts} delivered in a different form…directly to you in a reader,email, etc.
- RSS Reader: Also known as a Feed Reader, it is a means for organizing all the RSS Feeds you have subscribed to in one place and receive the latest “feed” or content from the websites or blogs, in one place.
- Email Subscription: Delivery of the RSS Feed to your email address at a set time {usually once a day} each time the blog has new content to deliver.
Ok…whew..is that enough techie/blog lingo? But this way you kind of understand the idea behind following blogs.
In a nutshell..you sign up either by RSS Feed or by Email Subscription, so that you don’t miss a new post from all your favorite blogs! They are either delivered to your “reader” or to your email inbox. Got it?
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Following By Email
If you choose to follow a blog by email, you will enter your email address in a box typically on the blog’s sidebar, at the bottom of a post, or in the header. You will then get an email feed delivered to your inbox when there is new content on the blog.
If you are planning on following a good many blogs by email, you may want to consider setting up an email account exclusively for your followings.
Also, if you do not want to set up a separate email, did you know that in Outlook and Mac Mail, you have an RSS folder? Yep, you can add your sites there and the RSS Feed will be delivered to your RSS Folder in those email programs. All you feeds will be in one place.
Our email subscriptions are delivered to your email inbox each time we post new content . Want to follow us now? Simply enter your email below…
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Following by RSS Feed
When you sign up by RSS Feed, you simply click that funny looking RSS icon and you will be taken to another screen, where you are able to choose what reader you would like to follow the blog in. Our RSS icon looks like this…
…and you can find it in our header and at he end of each post.
Once you choose which reader you would like to follow in, you will get an email asking you to confirm the subscription. Once you have confirmed, the feed from that blog will show up in your reader each time new content is published on that blog.
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RSS Reader Options
There are LOTS of different readers out there to follow you blogs on. We are currently trying out a few different ones to see what we are going to ultimately switch to since our go to reader, Google Reader, will no longer be an option as of July 1st, 2013.
Some of the RSS readers we are trying out include Bloglovin’, Feedly, and The Old Reader.
Stop back by for Part 2 of our Blogging 101 series to get a good look at each of these. We hope it will make your decision on which RSS Reader is right for you a little easier!
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We hope that we have helped you to understand some of the aspects of how to follow along with our little blog so that you do not miss a post!
We would be thrilled to have you follow Uncommon Designs.
Bonnie
Trish Flake
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Great descriptions here! btw: I’m enjoying following you via Bloglovin’ 🙂 Little Bit
I love Feedly-I chose it over Google reader even before google did away with Gr.
Thanks for the info! I’m curious to see which RSS reader you end up choosing. I love my Google Reader, and so far I’m not enamored with Bloglovin’. I’ll have to check out Feedly and The Old Reader. Thanks!
Great tips! You know what I hear a lot from some of my followers…and as myself as a follower to other blogs– why is it other blogs (including mine) post one minute after midnight, but we don’t receive the email notice until literally 18 hours later?
Ah yes…I think that is because the emails are set to go out in a specific time range..like between 7am-9am. I know for us we have choices as to when the email feeds go out in out feedburner settings. You can adjust those, so if you post after the feed has already gone out that day, it waits until the next day to grab it. At least that is how I understand it! 😉 Hope that helps!
Thank you so much! I am going to check it out! (=
Good info. You have cleared the muddy waters just a bit! Thanks.
Great tips for following a blog! It can be hard to understand….and you made it so easy!
Have a great day rock stars!
karianne
where is the print button? so many blogs do not have a print button and because i have such a terrible memory i need to print things to be able to set up any techy things. I would love to have printed this, step by step. I also do not know how to add badges etc. do you have an article on adding those to your blogs?
I follow many blogs by email. However, if I want to comment, in many I cannot because unless I have a URL, ID, or other things listed, I can’t leave a comment. Can you explain how you can follow by email AND leave a comment on those blogs?? Thank you!!
Great resource Bonnie! Thanks for sharing!
I could have sworn I already left a comment on this but maybe not. Great tips! I think we often forget that sometimes it’s not so simple for people that don’t write blogs.
This is a fabulous post! Soooo helpful!
Thanks for partying with me last week! Can’t wait to party with you again tomorrow evening at The DIY Dreamer… From Dream To Reality!