Like many professionals, you are busy at work, maybe putting out fires or keeping up with your members, but you still want to stay on top of what is going on in your industry and the association community.  Maybe you have tried to bookmark some sites or read the newspaper, but you know there has to be an easier way in this digital age. There is – RSS feeds make it possible! You may have seen this image on websites or next to your web address bar and wondered what to do with it.

An RSS feed makes accessing content easy and saves time on reading articles, newspapers, blogs and other content available on the web. This video, created in April 2007, clearly explains what RSS is in simple terms.

So now you may be convinced that RSS feeds are amazing, but won’t it take time to set up a reader? Nope. Go to www.google.com/reader; or if you don’t have a Google account, many email services like Yahoo and AOL have similar services. If you use Outlook, you may want to try NewsGator Inbox 3.0 for Microsoft Outlook. Click on the RSS icon above to see other reader options.

Hopefully, your reader is now set up. Here is a list of some of my favorite blogs to follow; including our McKinley blog 501(see).

SocialFish
Mashable
Association Trends
Acronym Blog - ASAE
Get Me Jamie Notter
TEDTalks (video)
New Yorker

And a personal favorite of mine…Zen Habits.

If you find any new favorite blogs or articles you want to share, feel free to email me. I always love to find new sources for good reading. Enjoy and happy reading!

~ Post by Rachel Friedmann, Marketing Manager

I have profiles everywhere these days – from association communities (including AMA, ASAE, YAPstar and Ad Club), to my personal accounts (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), to McKinley’s corporate accounts. It seems that all of these platforms want you to register, create a profile and connect to people; it is time consuming and exhausting. But what if there was one place where all of these accounts and your contacts converged? What if it even connected you to contacts in your address book?

Enter Google+. I received my invite a few days after its launch and from what I can decipher; Google+ is trying to be the only social media platform you need. It even has functionalities similar to Twitter and Quora, where users ask and answer questions from other users. You can be specific about which of your “circles” can view elements of your profile and the information you post. For example, instead of going on LinkedIn to share something work related, I could use Google+ and only share that information with those in my “work” circle. The other plus to Google+ is that connections can be placed in more than one circle, because we all know people who fit into more than one category in our lives.

In an ideal world, this could be the solution to everyone’s daily social media habits. You even have Google monitoring your analytics for you! But Google+ ignores one important element of social media; the innate desire to belong. I do not feel like I am part of a community on Google+, well, except the community of “lucky” people to have received an invite. The reason Facebook, LinkedIn and others work is that they give that sense of community people are looking for online. It remains to be seen whether Google+ can replicate that feeling and replace these other platforms.

~ Post by Rachel Friedmann, Marketing Manager