Flickr Slideshow

These third party websites let you use the Flickr URL address of the user, photo set or group and tags to customize a slideshow to the dimensions you desire.

FlickrSLiDR allows you to easily embed the classic Flickr slideshows on your website or blog. All you need to do is enter the Flickr URL address of the user, photo set or group you would like to embed along with some options. You’ll receive the HTML embed code in return. Flickr Slideshow does the same thing.

Twitter for Wordpress

Twitter for WordPress displays your latest tweets in your Wordpress blog. Check it out to the right of our site!

Wordpress Widgets

There are so many great (and some not so great) widgets in this list.

Follow Me

The Follow Me Widget allows you to display links to all your social media profiles in one easy to access button or window.

Retaggr

Retaggr creates a central location for your personal info and a gateway to all your online profiles and networks. Your own content from those sites are automatically included.

Some “experts” posit the best solution is to just to slap badges on your homepage saying “Follow us on Twitter” or “Find us on Facebook.”  Or “make sure your site links are on all your social profiles” so people will see your link, click on it and visit you.  These are foundational points, but there’s more to successful social awareness for your company than showing your site visitors where your official socials account are.

The important and missing link  for some marketers may be adding a blog to their main site. Why?

Online social media users are constantly looking for new and fresh content. A site blog provides an opportunity to reach these users with fresh content related to your business.  With ongoing, strong and effective content creation – and sharing of the site blog content into social – you can create a tremendously effective link between your social networking presences and your main company website.

To demonstrate, here’s a graphic:

Site Blog Influence in Social Media (click to enlarge)

Though a blog on a corporate or product site is not a new idea by any means, it’s often overlooked for its added social sharing and conversion value.  If you are not a publisher, you’re simply not producing a lot of content that can be shared in social media.  Blogs provide this platform.  A blog provides an opportunity for visitors from social sites (who saw the content you fed in from your blog) to click back to the blog and then be only one click away from areas on your site where they may convert for product purchase, inquire for service or RFP, or perform another action such as CPC, email sign-up, RSS subscription, etc. And though social is not about selling all the time, all marketers have a responsibility to make their efforts pay off at some point.  Being able to access more opportunities for conversion is a true benefit with blogs.

There are deep considerations as to what type of content goes on a site blog, the technology to use, what the editorial schedule will be and who will contribute, but if you can settle these questions and a few other key strategy issues, a blog can be a fruitful effort and a core link in your social strategy.  It can drive deeper connections to your social profiles, sending traffic from social back to your blog and main site, and can provide greater reach to new audiences in search, social news, other blogs and mainstream press.

All blogs have certain visual features in common, no matter how you change the theme or appearance. Blogs are a part of a brand’s overall message, whether you are just a blogger or part of a larger organization’s site. Here are some do’s and don’ts that I have picked up along the way.

What are you about?:

Do you have an About Us page? What is it saying about yourself or your authors? Do you have a nice photo to go with your text? This is the place for new visitors to go and get an idea and or some background on what it is your blog and its contributors are all about.

Don’t make it look drastically different:

Keep it simple and consistent. Having a blog design that is extremely different from the style and branding of your main website could be disorienting to visitors and cause them to make a hasty retreat. The same goes for redesigning it all the time. Consider the blog as a part of the whole and not an entity onto itself. Throwing in a new color or design element that is not needed could clutter up the layout and add to visual chaos. Reviewing your blog at times for these extra elements can be a good idea and allow you to tighten up the design.

Embrace white space:

The spacing between elements on a page is considered  white space. This space can add to readability and the lightness of a page.

Do play above the fold:

Keep important information like RSS subscribe buttons, contact email and various calls to action on the top half of the page when it loads in a browser window.

Do use visual interest:

By using a title graphic or photo that helps tell the story you are writing about, you pull in the reader/viewer. Sometimes this will be the pull to read the article in the first place.

Don’t forget about usability:

Ask some friends or coworkers to explore the blog and listen to what they have to say. You may have been too subjective in the design phase and overlooked things. Check the blog in multiple browsers because each one may display things differently.

Do put it on a sub-directory if you can:

If you intend to sell goods or services from your site, putting your blog into a sub-directory has certain advantages. Your main page can then be freed to advertise your products or services and link to your shopping cart. From that page, you can still have a link to your blog (e.g., domain.com/blog). Any links your blog attracts will benefit the overall domain vs. if you were to have your blog on a separate website entirely (e.g., myblog.wordpress.com).

Integrating social profiles:

Integrating Facebook, Twitter and other social profiles into your blog is a great way to get extra exposure, whether you cross-promote your blog content on those social pages or supplement it with additional content. Check out Tim Marsh’s great technical read, Dummies Guide to Integrating Facebook into WordPress.

Do encourage comments:

Blogs can be the best way to establish a conversation. Make sure, if this is your goal, to make dialogue easy and rewarding for visitors. Reply to good or interesting comments as much as possible. Don’t just give the readers an impression that you care about their views, really care and learn from them all. By doing this you create a richer, more active community and this will be noticed.

These do’s and don’ts are simply suggestions to help your blog design/techniques become a success and flourish. What other ideas or tips would you suggest? Share in the comments or tweet at 10e20 with your response, and don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed for more great blog posts and tips!

1. Comments encourage a dialogue. The whole point of having a blog is to share information, experiences, and content in general with the public. A blog is like a newspaper or magazine editorial, and you always see people write in with their feedback about how they felt about the piece and their overall opinion. Why do publications bother posting feedback like this? Couldn’t they just publish their content and not have to deal with the hassle of sorting through reader mail and picking a few to showcase? They could, but they want to encourage a dialogue. Successful products and services are the ones that are able to create a dynamic with the user in an emotional, necessary way. If you publish a piece that strikes a chord with your reader, showcasing his feedback demonstrates to both him and the rest of your audience that you care about your users and encourage discussion. Magazines and newspapers have known this for decades. The only difference with blogging is that the feedback is more instantaneous and you don’t often get to pick and choose which comments to showcase.
2. They validate a piece and provide quality control. If you write something really great, people will generally respond positively. Controversial? You’ll attract opposing viewpoints and spark a debate. Poorly written? Readers will offer feedback on what’s wrong with the piece for future improvement (or future hires if your current writer keeps striking out). Comments are the best way to maintain quality control on your blog and ensure that you’re putting out the best content you can come up with.
3. They can pull in search traffic. When you compile comments on your blog, you’re having users create additional content for you. This content can pull in long tail search traffic and bring additional readers to your site.
4. They help brainstorm future blog posts. Blog comments often open doors to new blog posts. Someone might comment with a question or problem that’s arisen from a separate post, paving the way for a follow up entry.

What about some concerns to having comments?

“People are going to spam!”
Well, yes, they probably are, but once you build up an active blog and enact measurements to thwart spam, you won’t receive as many spammy comments than if you have an infrequently updated blog with no moderation whatsoever. You can implement things like plugins (Wordpress has a ton), putting first-time users in the penalty box until you can approve their comment, or approving every comment before it’s published (which can be time-consuming, especially for a popular blog).

Also make sure comment links are nofollowed to deter most folks from making the attempt. I’ve been a blog moderator for a few different popular blogs over the past few years, and I never ran into chronic bombardments of spam comments. Sure, there’s always the occasional jerkface who spams like there’s no tomorrow, but you can ban IPs and do some cleanup/deleting, and before you know it everything’s as good as new.

The bottom line is that you won’t be able to stop every spam comment that comes your way, but if you want to blog (and run a successful one at that), battling spam just comes with the territory. Better to clean it up as soon as you come across it — your readers won’t stick around for very long if they see that every comment showcased is nothing but spam. It’ll damage your blog’s trustworthiness factor.

“I don’t want to deal with trolls!”
Ah, trolls. The Internet is full of them, and although most of your users are probably loyal readers and enthusiastic members of your fan club, not everyone is going to love you. In my opinion, if you’ve made the decision to post your content publicly on the Internet, you have to take your lumps as well as the praise it will attract. If you’re cripplingly sensitive to criticism, you probably shouldn’t be blogging because even if you turn off comments, that won’t stop someone from posting his own blog entry about you and criticizing your work via it or a site like Facebook or Twitter. You could delete negative comments, but you run the risk of seeming like a heavy-handed editor who doesn’t like it when people disagree with you.

My suggestion is to remove comments that are inappropriate for your audience (e.g., offensive, lewd, racist) and approach legitimately negative comments (e.g., “This post isn’t well written at all,” “I completely disagree”) as the situation sees fit, either by ignoring them, responding to them politely, countering respectfully but firmly, etc. If you kill a troll with kindness, you’ll make him look like the ass instead of seeming like one yourself (“Shut up, you don’t know what you’re talking about” vs “Thanks for your input! I disagree with you and stand by what I wrote, but I appreciate you weighing in”).

“What if nobody comments?”
Not every post is going to instantly win a seat at the popular kids table. Some posts will incite more of a reaction than others, and that’s fine. You’ll also probably run into a lot of “0 comments” posts if you’re just starting a new blog, but give it time to build an audience and eventually some comments will trickle in. Even if you go a long stretch with nobody commenting, leaving the option open for people to comment is ideal because you never know when someone will come across one of your posts and want to post a response. If you don’t even allow that as an option, you might alienate that person and deter him from returning.

Thus, in the age-old question of “Comments or No Comments?”, I’m firmly in the “Comments!” category. What do you think? Are there any other benefits to enabling comments on your blog that I’ve left out? Also, if you run a blog and don’t allow comments, what is your reason for not allowing them and how has that worked out for you?

Why You Should Blog

Adding a blog to your site can be beneficial to your business in a multitude of ways, a few of which I’ll highlight below:

• It builds unique content. By posting new entries on a regular basis (daily, weekly, etc), you’re creating new, unique content for your site. You’ll get more pages indexed, meaning popular posts can pull in some good search traffic and other posts can rank for long tail search terms.
• It’s a great launchpad for linkbait and viral content. If you’re developing linkbait or viral content for your site, a blog is a great, easy way for you to launch the content. Deploying a piece of content via an active blog makes it seem less orchestrated/intentional than if you were to set up a separate page just for a list.
• It’s a good brand builder. Giving your company a voice via the blog can make your business stand out among the competition. If you provide really helpful information and stand out as an industry leader, your blog will become a valuable resource. Also, establishing a personality on the blog will create emotional ties to the reader and you can develop positive relationships with your audience (which can lead to sales!). You can also use the blog to address any reputation management issues and share company news with the public.

Why You Should Do Social Networking

One drawback to blogging is that it is time consuming. If you can’t devote the time to blog on a regular basis or if you don’t have the writing ability to crank out an interesting blog post, you could turn to social networking. While social networking can also be extremely time consuming if done properly and consistently, at its most basic level it still has some benefits:

• You can rank various profiles for your company name. Social networking can be great for reputation management — if you build profiles on strong domains like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, you can get those profiles to rank for your name in addition to your company website, thus taking up more real estate in the SERPs and potentially pushing down any negative mentions/results (check out KnowEm to register your business profile across multiple social sites).
• You don’t necessarily have to be creative to participate. While blogging often requires you to put on your thinking cap and come up with interesting topics to write about, social networking isn’t quite as demanding. Many sites (like Facebook and Twitter) involve having short conversations with each other (in the form of wall posts or 140 character tweets), so you don’t have to spend time researching ideas for posts. Of course, very successful accounts get more involved (sharing links, offering tips, etc), but if you just want to be active, it’s quite easy to do so socially.
• You don’t have to do anything on your website. If you’re taking the DIY approach and don’t know how to install a blog on your site or can’t build something custom, or if your site can’t handle large amounts of traffic, or whatever the reason, you can turn to social networking and not have to worry about hosting and all that other nonsense. By using other platforms to get in touch with your audience, you’re able to focus on more pertinent issues for your website, like improving the checkout process, testing landing pages, addressing dupe content, and so on. (Of course, a more savvy social media marketer will integrate social elements on his/her site via widgets/RSS/share buttons/etc.)

Why You Should Do Both

Obviously, if you can do both, absolutely blog and participate in social networking. You’ll reap great benefits from both strategies, and if you’re successful in one arena, it’s not very hard to incorporate the other. You can blog about starting a new social account and your first impressions, hold contests or release news on the blog and share it via social media and social networks, spread blog posts using your accounts — the list goes on and on. Marketing has evolved thanks to the Internet, and if you’re not evolving your strategies as well, you’re likely going to fail as your audience moves forward while your business stays frozen in time.

Why You Should Do Neither

If you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all.  Don’t join a thousand social media sites just because everyone else is, and don’t start a blog because it’s what everyone else is doing. If you don’t have anyone on staff who has decent writing abilities and can devote the time required to maintain a blog and interact with the readers via comments and feedback, you shouldn’t start a blog and just let it sit there and gather dust. The same goes for social networking and social media in general– if you’re going to start a bunch of profiles and then do nothing with them, it’s almost worse than not joining in the first place. Make sure you’re doing these things for the right reasons and that they make sense for your business — don’t just hop on the bandwagon and expect the money to come pouring in.

Lets dig into the way we read online and learn how to potentially format content that keeps the readers attention longer.

Last time you were in a book store, shopping for the next book, how did you go about this search? Assuming you didn’t have a title/author in mind maybe you cruised the non-fiction section looking at covers. Then a book cover with a picture of the president elect caught your eye, THE AUDACITY OF HOPE. What happened next?

You turn the book over and read the back, the synopsis, and get a feel if this is of interest to you. “Maybe this self-portrait of the next prez will be intriguing… or maybe I will wait till he writes the next one.”

This is also how blog posts and articles are read online.You are first attracted to any imagery or titles, then the summary or synopsis (first paragraph) and finally the article itself.

Jakob Nielsen, in a recent article about Online Literacy, calls the way people take in the page as the “F-pattern”. Users read all the way across the top and as they proceed their descent quickens and horizontal sight contracts, with a slowdown around the middle of the page. Towards the bottom of the page the eyes move almost vertically ignoring the lower-right corner of the page. This is all happening very quickly. “F for fast, that’s how users read your precious content.”

Lets break it down. How do you find your articles or blog posts?

Headlines First

The title or headline will be the most likely source of a link to the content. Maybe through a RSS reader or a link through another blog. Or maybe through a social media site like Digg/Reddit/Delicious. Here the headline is king and that must grab someones interest. However you can’t lie or be overly sensational, nor boring. Ask a question, tease them into the content, make it spark some curiosity.

Image and Photos

This will supplement the headline. Also back it up on some of the social media sites with a thumbnail, and this is important. The image should relate to the text. If you have an article about holiday shopping and a photo of a great white shark jumping out of the water towards a helicopter next to it then you will loose some trust in the reader and frustrate them, unless you back that image up somehow.

The Synopsis (or back of the book)

Great, you found a cool book cover (graphic/photo or headline link) now you turn it over (click through) to read a summary of what it is all about. This will be the opening paragraph. This should sum up the content and also lead the reader into the rest of the information.

Like the F-Pattern says, at the top of the page we still give more of our attention. Make it just like the headline, but with more emphasis- it should encourage readers to read on.

The Rest of It

The body of the post should be thought of in the same way as all the other elements. Be precise and make it scannable. How is your paragraph column laid out? Is it wide or more narrow like this post? This should be entered into the equation when deciding how to make the text more bite sized.

With me, I will sometimes read the headline and if it interests me I will skip right into the content and scan that for sub-headings and bold text that may summarize what I want to read. If I think that is interesting I will move back to the top of the page and read down, then skip what I already read or read again. Or if the headline grabbed me but the text was lacking- I am outta there…FAST. Weird, I know, but I find myself doing this.

Some articles may require long-winded text that everyone will consciously read because the content is so rich and has the audience already, but this is not always the case-more like the exception.

If the text is dense the reader may tend to drift into scan mode. Combat this by breaking up your content with shorter paragraphs an more digestible information. Here are some ways this can be accomplished:

• Lists (yup…this)

• Sub Headings

• Graphics and Photos

• Pull Quotes (shown above)

• Bold and Highlighted Text

• Text Links

Finally you need to wrap it all up. This should just be a few sentences on what the content said to the reader, repeat some main points and maybe ask a question for them to think about in the future or ways to keep the idea going. Today it is important to make all your content accessible and approachable for users, following some of these guides will surely help you do that.

What works for you when you read content online?

Images are an important way to add that extra kick to your blog posts. They are often the first thing that attracts visitors to read further. But where do you find good image?

After completing your masterpiece, you begin to search endlessly around the internet for an image that depicts the core message of your post. When you finally find that perfect one, it is locked up in licenses and conditions that require a lawyer or a credit card. You are obviously frustrated and find yourself spending more time looking for another image than writing that post. Let’s explore some resources that will help you find that image!

Stock photography sites require a paid subscription and offer many choices and sometimes the best results. It can also be the most played out, overused, politically correct looking fluff out there. However, there are so many sources available, from the super expensive sites like Getty, to the middle of the road places like Shutter Stock and iStockPhoto.

Creative Commons is a tax-exempt charitable corporation that works with artists to set various licenses for their work. They search various places like Flickr, Google, Yahoo, etc. For these ‘free’ sites, you will usually need to attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor. No matter which sources you use, it is important to credit the image. If possible, you should also attempt to inform the authors that you used their work and provide them with a link.

Here is an cool introductory video on the basic idea behind Creative Commons called “Wanna Work Together?“.

FreeFoto.com is another great resource that uses the Creative Commons license. You can only use images in an online setting, and must provide attribution and a link to either the photo or the site. Stock Exchange also allows you to re-use images available on the site. It offers more than 100,000 free images taken by amateur photographers around the world. Due to the overuse of the site, Stock Exchange can be a little slow.

National Parks Service Digital Image Archives has some beautiful nature images that are all free to use. The images may be used without a copyright release. Need a great shot of the Grand Canyon, a landscape or a mountain vista? This is a great resource for those types of images. I used a picture from here in the title graphic to incorporate it into my theme of the ‘wild west’ of internet imagery.

Public Libraries such as the New York Public Libraries Digital Gallery have some great images that can be used humorously or as historical points of reference. The low-resolution images available on the website are suitable for immediate printing or downloading to provide good-quality reference for a wide range of educational, creative, and research purposes.

Or maybe you need a photo of a chicken or maybe a certain crop? Check out some of the images, offered for low resolution download, on the USDA Agricultural Research Service site.

At Public-Domain-Photos.com , you have access to a collection of general images. Although this site does not offer the best variety, it is worth checking out. You don’t have to license or attribute the image to the original source. Another similar site is Pix, , it is a free ‘image repository’ project (sounds like Napster for photos to me). It allows you to download images without registering. More on the public domain front is Old Book Illustrations.com with a lot of cool woodcuts and engravings for free downloads.

Let’s move away from the web-based resources now and get a bit creative with what we have. Do you own a camera? Digital or film, doesn’t matter. Start your own library of photos! Shoot them on film and scan them in or get a digital CD when you develop them (almost every photo lab will provide this service.) If you need a photo ASAP for a post on video games correlation to obesity in children, snap a picture (with the permission of the parent) of your family member zoned out playing video games. The picture might not look like one from a stock photo site, but that may just be what will make it stand out as original and interesting.

Can you draw? Maybe not so well. How about stick figures? Think about how you can use the skills you have, even if they are primitive, to spice up or add imagery to your posts. It doesn’t have to be comparable to a Leonardo Da Vinci masterpiece, just get an idea across or support the main idea with your drawing. Have fun and be creative.

Still can’t find that image and you need to add something to the post to spice it up? Try pull-quotes. This is a simple way to grab a reader’s attention. By using graphical text, you can offer a bite-sized piece of relevant and thought-provoking information that will ‘pull’ them in for the rest of the ride.

To find that image that correlates with your post, search around the links provided above. You can also be creative and create your own images or photos to use in the near future. There are vast amounts of possibilities out there whether you want to spend some cash or do it on the cheap. Just remember to always read the fine print.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the 10e20 RSS Feed for more great tips and tricks!

The awards season has been a bust due to the writer’s strike and has left many people searching for a fun alternative. In direct response to this void in the marketplace, Matt McGee has created The SEMMYS:

The SEMMYS are an annual awards event honoring the great content produced across the search and online marketing industry. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has grown to include a variety of disciplines, including blogging, social media, reputation management, and more. The SEMMYS attempt to include all these elements into one awards event. We hope the SEMMYS serve as a complement to the excellent existing awards which honor blogs and bloggers.

I am judging two categories Google (along with Lisa Barone and Rand Fishkin) and LOL Funny! (along with Vanessa Fox). There are a ton of great nominees in both of these categories which will make it a tough job to be sure.

There are also a few 10e20 posts that got nominated which is really cool:

* Tamar’s awesome analytics rundown: Analytics on the Cheap: Six Free Stats Packages for the Startup or Small-Business Owner is nominated in the Analytics category

* Tamar’s definitive guide on How to Use StumbleUpon for Your Business is a really deserving nominee in the Social Media category

* My how to of Building Links Using Netscape Video was a nice surprise to see in the Link Building category

* And finally Tamar’s Using Paid Search? Here’s How You Can Maximize The Impact of Your Ads is in good company in the PPC category

Check out the rest of the nominees and the fun at SEMMYS.org.

There are lots of great resources being created everyday by bloggers in our industry and others. Aside from the obvious entertainment and Hollywood people watching sites like Perez and the like that have specific photos that are the pull, other bloggers, if they use images, have to get creative to a degree to give their content that edge.

This is sometimes supported by eye catching graphics or cool looking photography that draws the reader in further if they weren’t already sold by the title, idea or creator of the content alone.

Custom Graphics. OK, not everyone can afford a staff illustrator. Over at A List Apart they create and write top notch content. Yes, they are more of a web design web zine that come out less frequently with amazing contributors and a superstar like Jeffery Zeldman at the helm.

This may put them in another category altogether but their consistency with effective illustrations from their staff illustrator Kevin Cornell surely make them stand out in a big way. Look at this illustration he did for an article called Designing For Flow, it evokes that intuitiveness that they are describing with regards to getting in the zone and being able to move fluid like through a site:

Arrows and Pulls. At Closed Loop Marketing there is a good use of page highlighting with pull graphics and good photography. Check out this post on Evil Usability, it’s a good photo relaying the idea and some great screen shots with custom graphics highlighting the important information, as well as some nice big red arrows that remove any doubt that the reader will miss what you are referring to:

Thumbnails. Great use of thumbnails in this fitness health magazine roundup over at First Page Fitness with this post on Which Fitness Magazine Do YOU Like? They could have simply listed the magazines with the link, but they took it a step further and added the thumbnails:

Screen Shots. Li Evans’ (from Search Marketing Gurus) recent post about Wikia Search has some good screen shots too, which helps support the information written in the post:

Billy’s Blog has some great tips for creating quality landing page designs. With his 5 rules post here, he has some great examples with another example of highlighting specific information within screen shots:

Consistency. Skelliewag from Melbourne, Australia has some nice photography that is featured at the top of each post:

Manish Pandey from India is showing good consistency with blog photographs. Keeping with a standard size for his header graphic/photo he establishes a look. Check the appropriate photo he used for his post on 21 Blog Tips for the year 2008:

Another example here would be from Biznology Blog by Mike Moran. Every post that I came across from the preview page had a graphic that went with the text. Very simple, very effective:

Pull Quotes. Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger has a nice use of pull quoting going for him on this post about the Blogging Experiment the graphic of the quote is nice and large:

Graphic Titles. Sometimes repeating yourself is a great way to get your point across. Sometimes repeating yourself is… OK just kidding!

But a graphic title works the same way. You have the title in text and also as a graphic with some image or font supporting it further pushing the idea. It can be very simply, just like this post, or it can be worked further like what was done with my last posts here:

Don’t forget to subscribe to the 10e20 RSS Feed!

What is RSS?
An RSS Reader is a simple and easy way to read your favorite news site or blogs. Instead of going out to these site to read the most recent stories or posts, the newest stuff comes to you, all in one simple page. Even more convenient is having a Reader which is online, reaching it from any place in the world.

In my eyes Google Reader is one of the best online RSS Readers on the web. For the first time user, just getting used to the whole RSS thing, this post will talk about: a) How to subscribe to a feed b) view your feeds c) the cool features built into Google Reader and d) just some nifty little tricks you can use while you’re at it. Remember, being a master of your RSS feeds is also a very important way to build up and maintain powerful social media accounts

The first thing you would have to do, is head over to reader.google.com and sign up for a free account. From there, you would want to start building up your subscriptions.

Subscribing to some of your favorite RSS feeds is simple (here’s 10e20’s feed for example). All you need to do, is go to the blog you want to subscribe to and find the little (or big) RSS button on that page. From there, you will have to Copy that URL, and then in Google Reader you just need to click ‘add subscription’ and paste that URL there. From now on, whenever that site is updates you’ll be able to see the most recent post right inside of (the online) Google Reader. This obviously saves people tons of time when they’re reading over numerous sites daily.

Now that you’re setup with all of your favorite sites, its time to look at what Google Reader is really capable of.

“Tagging” different subscriptions is a simple way to filter out only the sites you want and don’t want to read at any given time. Tagging all your sites having to do with Apple, is a great way to see only the Apple news and keep everything else separated from it. The more tags you have, the easier it is to find what you want to read about. You also have the ability to tag a subscription with more than one tag, if it falls under more than one category.

“Starring” different post is also a key feature in Google Reader. Maybe you want to come back to that post at a later time or you want to show it to a friend. You can then see all the item you starred in the tab called “starred”.

Google Gears is built into Google Reader. What this means, is that you can still view your feeds even after you disconnect from your Internet connection. You can read the latest 2,000 feeds Google downloaded, the last time you were connected to the Internet. This is a really cool feature because you still have the ability to catch up on your feeds even if you’re on an airplane (or a place where there is no Wi-Fi.)

“Expanded view and list view” are two different ways you can read your feeds. If you are going to read all the stories in a subscription at once, I would recommend the expanded view, which shows the entire articles. If you are just going to pick and choose what you are going to read the list view would be the best, having the ability to just glance at each title.

“Trends.” There is a tab in Google Reader called ‘”Trends.” That’s where you go to see the amount of stories you read in a day, week or month and compare which days you read the most. You can also see which of your feeds are the most active and which are the least active. I try and check my most inactive feeds regularly and see which ones I should unsubscribe to and which ones no new content is coming from.

“Sharing” different posts in Google Reader a great way to keep your friends updated on the stories you are reading. Each Google Reader user has their own public page with all of their shared stories, which anyone can look at and read.

Here is a list of keyboard shortcuts you can use in Google Reader to become a little bit more productive and faster at reading your subscriptions.

• j – item down
• k – item up
• s – star
• t – tag
  
• r – refresh
• m- mark as read/unread
• shift+s – share
• shift+a – mark all as read

One last thought about Google Reader, is that there is about a 30 minute delay, between when the post was submitted on the site/blog and when it shows up in your Google Reader. So for the guys who love their breaking news and post it right away to social news websites… this may be your one drawback. If you need immediate updates a tool like Rasasa which pushes RSS directly to your IM might be the way to go.

But, overall, Google Reader is one of the simplest (but still feature filled) online RSS Readers out there and is totally recommended for the average user who just wants to efficiently check their news sites and blogs on a daily basis.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the 10e20 RSS Feed!