Google reader is a browser based application that enables you to receive updates or notifications from anywhere on the web that has an rss feed – the little symbol (usually orange) with the embossed radio waves.
Basically, instead of you having to keep visiting all the websites you follow to see if they’ve made an update, you simply subscribe to those websites from your Google reader, and whenever there is an update, you’ll be automatically notified within the Goolge reader application. Think of Google reader like your email program. You don’t go to the outboxes of your friends and contacts to see if they’ve left you a message – instead, when they send you a message, you get automatically notified in your email program. Same deal with Google reader, except that it’s a program to receive automatic updates from websites instead of emails.
So, the first reason for you to start using Google reader is that it saves time and organizes new information.
But Google reader is so much cooler than that. Check this out – it can help you find the information you’re after. Rather than using Google’s search function to find websites, you can search for valid RSS feeds right within Google reader and easily add them to your reading list with the click of a button.
So, what do you do with all this information that is being automatically delivered to you? Simple – use it to stay on top of whatever it is you want to stay on top of – your hobby, your industry, your brand or product, your name, your business name, people you follow, politicians, celebrities, authorities, bloggers.
Anything else? You betcha – and this is huge – you can share information with other people. This is where Google reader stops being a simple RSS reader and becomes a social networking tool of sorts.
What does ’sharing’ mean?
It just means that you let your network know that you’ve found a cool and relevant article, blog, news story, image, video – or whatever – and you can do that from within Google reader. And not only is it just pushing a link to people, you can add your own notes to the ‘push’ so that when people receive the article, they can see it’s from you.
It gets funkier than that – but I think I’m done for this post. Stay tuned for more stuff from me on this. In fact, why don’t you subscribe to my RSS feed in your Google reader account before you forget. Hey – and if you don’t have Google reader yet – you can go get it here –> Get Google Reader.
Nic
Just a little over a year ago, I attended an introductory seminar on internet marketing – and now I’m speaking at the same seminars. A lot can change in a year.
When people find out that my background is in health care, education and medical research, it can seem a bit weird that I’m now in this internet marketing and entrepreneurial scene. It all makes sense though. In fact, I was speaking with a mate the other day who commented that everything I had ever done has led me to this place.
There were a couple of reasons for my initial internet in learning about internet marketing and online business.
First, I had a book I had started to write and I wanted to find out about self-publishing the book online.
Second, my research is in public health, and so I was interested to find out more about using the internet for promotional purposes – for getting a message out there.
Third, I had been using online education technologies in my role as an academic and was very familiar with online learning. I wanted to increase my knowledge about how the internet could be used to provide continuing professional development for health professionals.
Fourth, I was searching for business opportunities and a change of professional direction. I’d been an active property investor for 10 years and was looking for other opportunities.
So, I go along to this introductory event – and was blown away. I learned more in those 2 days than I had learned in a long time – essentially because it was all new. At that one event, I learned that I could use the internet for all of the four reasons I had for attending – which meant that this particular seminar delivered the goods.
I also came away with an additional understanding and vision – and that is that the internet provides everyday people with an opportunity to achieve their long-term aspirations and explore their ambitions. This was perhaps the most intriguing lessons of all. As a health professional and researcher working in public health, I had continuously come across people who appeared successful, but who were miserable – primarily because they weren’t actually doing what they really wanted to do.
IT consultants who wanted to run cafes. Cafe owners who wanted to become jewelers. Lawyers who wanted to be authors. Chef’s who wanted to be musicians. HR managers who wanted to be travel writers. This list goes on, and on, and on …
The most amazing thing is this – only a very few were actually doing something about it. Over the many years that I came to know thousands of people – hardly any took the plunge to make it happen. And I frequently saw this as a contributing factor to their ill-health or general feeling of stress.
They were unfulfilled.
Their external actions weren’t ‘congruent’ with their internal desires.
They felt ashamed, embarrassed, or had low self-esteem because every single day that they went and worked for someone else, doing something that wasn’t congruent, they felt weak, powerless, gutless.
And time keeps on ticking … into the future (as the song says).
So, I began to understand that the internet represented an unprecedented opportunity for people to finally start doing what they wanted to do – to finally start being congruent. And this was the most exciting aspect of it all for me.
Since then, I have helped people realize the same thing. I’ve coached them. Encouraged them. Helped them make their first money online doing what they love doing. As a result, and due to my background in education and lecturing, I’ve now ended up speaking about this in public – at the same types of seminars that I first attended and where I was exposed to this awesome world of the internet and internet marketing.
It was a blast to be invited to present at World Internet Summit in Perth, Australia, 2010. Here is a short video taken the morning of my presentation – as I was getting ready to get up on stage.
