I have a daily ritual each morning I come to work: first I fire up the computer, followed by making a cup of tea, checking my Outlook, opening my browser and then scanning my RSS reader.
Now it’s only been six months or so since I discovered this little gem. It was one of those things I kept hearing about and thinking to myself, “I must get onto that”. Well I did and now can’t imagine life without it.
I add more and more blogs, websites, Twitter searches and interesting stuff all the time. So instead of trying to remember to check my favourite sites, I get them delivered to me in bite sized chunks which I can choose to devour whole or ignore.
I monitor competitor websites and Twitter posts for clients, other PR’s blogs, news sites and more. This isn’t to say I read it all, that’s the beauty of it, my RSS reader lets me easily scan the feeds for the things that are important, relevant or interesting.
Setting up an RSS reader is easy and free. Just set up a Google account, iGoogle page or Gmail account which will then let you set up a Google RSS Reader. Then start adding subscriptions. Most sites will display an RSS symbol, which will link to a RSS page. All you do is add the URL to your RSS reader.
Then combine this with my Delicious account and I have two of the best PR tools that make my job just that little bit easier. But I’ll tell you about that another time.
Joanna Gitsham
