blogs

LinkedIn, Twitter, Google +, Facebook, conferences, journals, and more continue to come across our desks as ways to do professional development.  (See previous blog on this topic).

So how do we manage all this information?  I found that there are key people out there writing about topics meaningful to me and that if I follow these key people, they will either sift through the volumes of topics and synthesize for me or they write topics I am interested in.   

I also use feedly.com to organize various blogs & news I want to follow.  This is an aggregator application which compiles news feeds from a variety of online sources. I have three categories, CAREER, NEWS, and SOCIAL MEDIA. I can then add people / organizations that I want to follow under each category.  Currently I follow two news feeds, one social media marketing feed, and six career feeds.  This does NOT have to be overwhelming.  Keep it simple.  Less is best.  Based upon the input I received in a different LinkedIn groups, I’ve actually added a couple to my feed.

By using Feedly I can log into one place and get a quick snapshot of current blogs, articles, and news.  I
can skim the list and if there is something that looks interesting, I read it.  If I like it, I share it on LinkedIn or PeakCareers Facebook, or Twitter.  This allows me to manage my time and if I had all of these coming into my email I would be overwhelmed.  If I had to actually go out to each person/organizations site, I would never go.  

Here is my list of bloggers I follow.