How to Find Content to Share to Your Social Media Accounts

This blog post roughly covers news aggregators in general, what they are and how they can help you find and share relevant content for your respective online audiences.

You can find a list of different news aggregators to explore at the bottom of this entry, but the majority of this blog post will focus on the news aggregator: Feedly.com as an example, including: How to signup, add content and adjust your preferences.

A Bit on News Aggregators

News aggregator Websites (click here for the wikipedia entry) are essentially an online location, where you can organize, save and share a variety of your favorite news sources in one spot.

For example, if you like CNN, Fox, The Economist and Huffington Post, you can add each of these sources independently to your news aggregator and receive automatic updates about new stories from these sources in real-time as they are posted.

Essentially you would no longer have to search out articles to share from random places online - You could instead go to your Feedly (or any news aggregator you choose) and click through the various updates from your news sources.

A Quick Example from Feedly:

An example screenshot below shows added news sources on the left and the quantity of new updates available (highlighted) on the right.

If you were to click on one of the four news sources, a display window would open on the right hand side of your Feedly account displaying these articles, which can then be shared to any variety of your social accounts or email contacts.

A Quick Overview on Signing Up

To sign-up for your own Feedly account (click here), you can use your email, or link any of the following accounts you may already have: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Evernote or Microsoft.

Once you are signed up with an account and successfully logged in, you can begin adding content. Feedly is quite user-friendly on its own, but if you have any trouble I put together a few screenshots of how to add news sources below:

Adding Content Sources

Step 1

Once logged in, locate and click the 'Add Content' button, found near the upper left hand corner of your page.



Step 2

Click into the search box and enter a topic to explore; I used: 'Business' as an example and clicked the first option in the dropdown menu - the 'Business' hashtag

Step 3: 

Review your suggested sources, and add the ones you like. You'll find a green plus button to click for adding content to your list of feedly sources.

Step 4:

After clicking the Plus Sign, a sidebar appears to the left, where you name your source, in this case I went with Feedly's auto suggestion of HBR.org and then I housed this source in a Folder (Feedly calls them 'Collections') where I will put all my other 'Business' related sources. Once you're all set, locate and click the 'Add' button at the bottom left hand corner of your page

Step 5 (Last Step)

After clicking the 'Add' button you will see your 1) 'new source' has been added to the 2) 'collection title' you have selected.

In this way you can create a ton of different Collections to house a wide variety of sources, ensuring that you always have something to share at your fingertips.

Mobile Apps

Feedly integrates well with both iOS and Android.

• Try their iOS App here: bit.ly/1vCsqCL

• Try their Android App here: bit.ly/1vCsLWd

Customize Your Feedly Preferences

You can customize your Feedly setting through their 'Preferences' link - just scroll to the bottom left hand column of your profile page, find and click on preferences:

Once you've clicked into your preferences you'll see a variety of options you can use to customize your article viewing experience on Feedly, connect your social media & email accounts, and quite a few other personalization features.

More Info - Further Reading

As you will see in the links below, a variety of news aggregators aside from Feedly are out there, which work great as well, it all depends on your personal preferences. I linked a few additional news aggregators below in addition to a few helpful articles which might assist in exploring this topic a bit further.

http://bit.ly/1Fgt3TN - How to Use Feedly - blog entry via www.LifeandSocial.com
http://bit.ly/1vChsNB - 18 Best News Apps (For iOS, Android & Windows) via DigitalTrends.com
http://bit.ly/1xmsLoa - For a Google Search of News Aggregator Websites for 2014
http://bit.ly/11oYRH8 - For LinkedIn Pulse
http://bit.ly/1y2ehfZ - For Digg Reader
http://bit.ly/1usgFYA - For Netvibes
http://bit.ly/1zeKj7Q - For Google Currents
http://bit.ly/1toZVRI - For Flipboard

*Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any of the companies or businesses mentioned in this post, which is intended for educational purposes. Thank you :).

How to Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a usable Resume

If anyone's ever performed a job search before, the first thing you usually need is a resume...but where to begin in this day and age right? Turns out there's good news for anyone with a LinkedIn account. LinkedIn has a resume builder, found at: resume.linkedinlabs.com which can help you set one up with just a few clicks.

Image from the Grovo Blog at blog.grovo.com

Something to remember with this tool, is that information is pulled directly from your LinkedIn profile...so the more filled out your profile is, the better your resume is going to look. It is worth taking a few minutes to refine your LinkedIn account profile first if you have the time.

Once you're happy with your Account Profile just head over to: http://resume.linkedinlabs.com and sign in. You will notice quite a few options they provide for you after you've selected your resume format including among others: 1) A public url where your online resume is located and can be accessed from anywhere, 2) a 'PDF' option lets you save the document elsewhere for printing or whatever else, 3) You can manage the share settings to send to social networks if you wanted, & 4) There are privacy settings you can enable per resume regarding the visibility of the document.

So if you've already taken the time to fill out a profile on LinkedIn, and find yourself needing a resume, this option might be a great time and stress saving tool. Hope it helps and have a great day!

Creating a Complete Profile on Google Plus

Creating a Complete Profile

If your using a personal profile, your 'About' tab gives the option to fill in personal information about yourself. It's similar to the type of information Facebook or LinkedIn might ask you to fill in. Depending on how you want to use your Google Plus account (business, networking, just for fun) you can just fill in what is relevant for you.

Intentions

A helpful thing to think about before filling in your 'About' tab, is how you intend to use your Google+ account. Is it going to act as an online resume, just for fun account, networking and business connections only, or maybe a bit of everything? Figuring this out beforehand can help you streamline the type of information you choose to include and will help others determine if your a relevant account for them to follow.

Privacy Settings

When you click on your 'About' tab, you'll notice that when you scroll down your page, you'll see a bunch of sections, each with an 'edit' button in the lower left hand corner:

When you click on your 'edit' link you'll have the option to change the privacy settings for each of the sections of your Google Plus profile. After clicking the 'edit' link, look toward the upper right hand corner, for a box which will say 'Public' (depending on your settings)

Once you click on the 'Public' tab you'll see a menu of privacy options to choose from. Select the one most appropriate for you and you're all set with that section.

In this way you can control who does or does not see any piece of information about you, but it can still be unnerving to enter phone numbers, addresses or other bits of personally identifiable info - so use your best judgement when filling in personal info about yourself, while still trying to be thorough.

In Summary

Ultimately the more information you include in this section, the more your potential followers can learn about you in determining if they want to follow back. It also alerts others to the type of content they can expect you to post, which can help them decide to follow or not. In my own experiences, I've found that I'm more likely to follow an account with at least the basics filled in including a profile photo. 

Tactics for Increasing Your Google+ Following

Search out Widgets or Extensions

If you use Chrome as a Browser, the Chrome Webstore has a ton of helpful apps and tools you can use to enhance your Google+ Experience. Click here for a link to the Chrome Webstore and run a quick search for any Google+ related tools which may help you with photos, photo editing, sharing, connecting accounts, or link shortening.

A few sites that have been helpful in my own experiences are:

Widgets Plus: Helps you create a Google+ Profile Badge at: http://widgetsplus.com/

All My Plus: for Google+ Account & Profile Statistics at:  http://www.allmyplus.com/

A few great blog articles for enhancing your Google+ Profile can be found on:

Lifehacker: 15+ Awesome Google+ Tricks You Might Not Know: http://goo.gl/U3raXc

Webtrickz: 30 Google+ Tips to Enhance Your Google Plus Experience: http://goo.gl/obQ2N

Gizmodo: 10 Tricks to Make Yourself a Google+ Master: http://goo.gl/d0o5U