During a recent drive I caught some of Coach Mike Krzyzewski’s show on SiriusXM. While I’d heard the show before, this time I was really struck by how well informed he is, not just about college basketball and other sports, but about business in general. It got me thinking about how we go about finding information and really educating ourselves. I find the Feedly RSS Reader really useful. It’s a super-simple and clean way to gather, use, and share information in your particular fields of interest.
I could just say “use Feedly” and leave it at that. You’d figure it out just fine. But I’ll go a little farther and talk about what this app is and why I like it, just like I did with Scannable a while back.
RSS readers let you collect all the online periodicals you want right in your smartphone so you don’t have to visit 20 different websites every other day. There are a lot of different readers out there—Feedly is just my favorite. Here are five ways you can use the app to help you stay as informed as Coach K.
1. Set up a folder for your industry
You already know the websites that are important for your industry. You probably even know which are your favorites, the ones you keep telling yourself you should read every week. Now put all of them into the same Feedly folder and you can read them distraction-free. No pop-ups, no click-bait, just you, focused on what’s really important.
2. Set up folders for your interests
As I’ve said before, not everything has to be serious. Maybe you like to read about the movie industry or fashion or…sports! Give your mind an outlet. Set up your favorite websites under the “Sports” folder” and you will have all the information on your favorite sports team right there.
3. Push your blog
So, you’ve got your own blog—great! You are pushing out awesome content, but it’s hard for people to find it (that’s normal, trust me!). When you are meeting with someone you think would be interested in your content, either suggest they add your blog to their RSS reader or, if they don’t have one, offer to download Feedly for them and insert your blog in the app.
4. Share your favorites
Once you have subscribed to enough feeds, you’ll have a great resource for finding great content you now you can send on to your followers, friends, clients and prospects via Hootsuite (a multi platform social media tool) or even by email or text note.
5. Save it with Evernote
I’ve mentioned Evernote on Sportsepreneur before and will do so again. While you can bookmark articles you want to re-read or read later, you can also email the article to Evernote and save it there. Then you can always go back to the piece for more in-depth reading or analysis.
Staying informed
It’s critical to stay informed, just like Coach K, and not just by reading up on your industry and your interests. It’s important to stay fresh by learning in general, in topics from technology, politics, breaking news, and more. But instead of bouncing around, simplify your process–use a reader. Feedly is just the one I use and recommend. If you use Feedly, or any other reader, I’d love to hear about how you use it and how it works for you.
Image of the Feedly logo was created by Graham Smith under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license