How I Monitor My Followed Blogs

Before I learned about the Lists feature in the Reader in today’s Blogging 101 assignment, I had developed a system to keep track of the many awesome blogs I came across. My Blogs I Follow list was getting longer by the day. And I wasn’t keeping track of which blog was about what. Today’s assignment showed me another way to view blogs by category. I’ll give it a try until I decide which method will be more efficient for my use.

Follow 5 New Topics in the Reader: I had actually begun doing this before the assignment. The only difference is I set up categories in my left navigation panel (described below) to keep up with the blogs I wanted to read regularly. The assignment, however, showed me how to use a similar feature in the Reader. I’m always open to learning new or multiple ways to do things.

Follow 5 New Blogs: As for the new blogs, I had already added four from interacting in the Commons. I’ll surely add more than the one required to complete this assignment. I appreciate the level of instruction in the blogging course. They provide a lot of detail to show us around WordPress. I’ve been looking forward to this so I can quit stumbling around on my own.

I quickly learned that I don’t remember what many of the blogs on my followed list are about. So, rather than continually add to a lengthy list of blogs I think I want to follow, I’ve limited my followed blogs to 12. (I just used 12 as the cut-off to keep it brief and because I wanted to name that section, “The Dirty Dozen”.) Then, after I visit the 12 on a few occasions, I determine whether to promote them to a link category (left nav) or stop following. When unrelated blogs come off, it creates room for more to be explored. This is the only way I could come up with to manage all the blogs I was finding.

I’m just hoping that, even though I’ve removed blogs from my “Blogs I’m Following” aka “Dirty Dozen” (see bottom left menu) list, the bloggers I’ve promoted to my links categories know I’m still following them via links. We’ll see how it works out.

How do you keep up with all of your followed blogs?