How to Set-up Google Reader
Google Reader is a great tool to help you stay on top of information that is available on the web to you. It can be used to help organize the blogs you read as well as organizing the alerts that you have set up in Google Alerts. Combining Google Alerts and Google Reader together will help you stay organized and current on information in your industry.
The following steps are what you need to take in order to set up a Google Reader Account:
Establish a Google Account
- If you already have a Google Account, which many people do you can skip this step
- Sign-up
- Keep your login information in a safe place
Set up a Google Reader Account:
- Go to http://www.google.com/reader
- Sign into your Google account
- You may see a screen with some pre populated items
This screen shot is of a Google Reader Account that is already established:
Once you have logged into your Google Reader account you can begin to add subscriptions. These subscriptions will be the RSS ( Real Simple Syndication) feeds from blogs that you read on a regular basis. ( you can also add your Google Alerts into Reader – we will share that in a later post)
There are two ways to add subscriptions, one from within Google Reader and the other when you visit a site and click on the RSS icon
Adding from within Google Reader
- Click on the Subscribe button
Now you can type in the site you wish to add or a search term to look for a feed to add
Once you have located the blog you wish to add then click on the ADD button and the site will be added to your reader
Adding from the Site’s RSS feed
The other option for adding a site or a feed into your reader is to visit the website you wish to add and then locate the RSS Icon that is shown on the site and following the steps to add it to your reader:
This image shows the RSS Feed icons both for the News Feed and the Comments posted on this site. You can set up a subscription in Reader for either feed.
Click on the feed you wish to subscribe to and you will then be shown something that looks like this image
You can then select the Subscribe Now box and you will be subscribed to the feed in your Google Reader
In the next couple of posts we will cover how to organize your Google Reader feeds as well as how to use Google Reader with Google Alerts.
If you would like assistance on setting up any of the Google Tools please feel free to contact us via the contact form:
