When I was a kid eating breakfast I used to read the writing on cereal packets. That’s after I’d taken out the little toy at the bottom of the packet. We’d go on family holidays and I always had my ‘nose stuck in a book’ according to my parents. I’d read anything.

Nothing’s changed except the mediums I read from.

I’ve moved on from Enid Blyton books and cereal packets but I still consume a heck of a lot of content.

This is how I consume content now. Or more specifically how the content I consume comes to me.

RSS feeds

When I first started blogging nearly a decade ago I found a bunch of blogs I liked, linked them up on my blog and every day would click on the link to see if they had anything new. Imagine my joy when I discovered RSS feeds would deliver them to me.

Yes, Google Reader is no more, and neither is The Old Reader (my Google Reader replacement).

Since then I’ve been using Digg Reader which has many of the Google Reader features that I was used to and liked.

If you’re new to RSS (Real Simple Syndication) then read this little RSS guide by Problogger. Remember though that Google Reader is NO MORE. If you’d like to subscribe to this blog, then use this link http://contentis.co/feed once you’ve set up an account with an RSS reader.

Twitter

People I follow are always adding interesting links and if I’m not subscribed to them with RSS then hopefully I find them on Twitter. Naturally if I do discover an interesting website that I want to keep reading, then I’ll subscribe via RSS.

Because of the immediacy of Twitter the interesting content can pass you by without you even realising it especially if it’s posted by someone in another timezone. But of course, you can create lists in Twitter to see what that cohort’s saying and talking about. I’ve created an editors/writers list which is pretty broad and encompasses content strategy people too. My only problem is remembering to add people to it. I try to remember to add people to lists as soon as I start following them.

LinkedIn

Similarly, there is quite often interesting content posted to LinkedIn whether it’s directly from connections or from groups I’m a member of. It’s easy enough to search for groups, join them, and participate in discussions and read what’s posted to that group.

Swayy

This is fairly new in my consuming content arsenal. I’m still trying it out. In fact if you want to try it out using this link I’ll get advanced scheduling priveleges from them. It uses a Freemium model – free up to a point and if you want more you pay. You can connect Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn accounts – or all three and you can also define which topics you’re interested in.

One very handy aspect of it is that you can easily share content from within, and there’s some analytics as well.

How do you consume your content?

The inaugural blog post on a new blog. Where do I start? Afterall it’s not like I’ve never written anything before so it should be easy, right?

So what are my plans for this blog?

I’ve brainstormed a bunch of ideas around content to include here which revolve around digital content and how to plan for it, maintain it, and how to create it.

I’ve been working on websites both professionally and personally since the mid 90s and  have learned a thing or two during that time. And added to the mix is social media which has has had a huge impact on the digital content space and diversified and created jobs.

It certainly impacted me when I had a job revolving around websites only then all of a sudden there’s Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter accounts to look after.

However, I still see websites which are created and left, or worse, websites that are added to but not properly maintained. Afterall it’s dead easy to create a new webpage and not properly consider how it fits into the overall communication and business objectives of the business. And I won’t get started on the dead webpages that are still available because they’ve not been removed.

In an ideal world there would be enough resources to maintain websites so that they’re easy to use for their intended audience. Most organisations I’ve worked in have people to put out the daily spot fires but there’s never enough time to plan and act more proactively around digital content. That’s a pity because if it was an ideal world I’d have more work than I could possibly do.