Use Bloglines to speed up your blog writing

If your current approach to blogging is something along the lines of “look for stuff; write about it”, here’s a way to get more organized, increase your inspiration, and write posts quickly.

• Get a Bloglines account (or whatever Feedreader you like that allows you to categorize different feeds)
• Set up folders for each of your blogs
• Put relevant feeds into each folder
• Open up your Bloglines page each day and go from folder to folder, finding stuff to blog about

It sounds simple and it is.  But it can really increase your productivity.  Additionally, Bloglines and probably other readers allow you to:

• Save “clippings” - URL’s to articles of interest, plus a space where you can enter notes.  I like to go through each day and clip everything that looks good, then go to the clippings later and read each article more in depth and start my posts.  If you work on multiple computers, this is a lifesaver: my old method of just opening up dozens of FireFox tabs wasn’t much help when I had to run off somewhere with my laptop.
• You can also get a feed with your local weather.
• You also have a blog with your account, which you can keep private, where you can make notes, keep a to-do list… whatever.

If Bloglines doesn’t suit you, Netvibes is another popular choice.