Battling Blogger’s Block Using Google Reader

I was talking with Darren Rowse of ProBlogger on Ustream a couple of days ago and he let slip his secret to coming up with creative post ideas when he is experiencing “blogger’s block“.

The Secret

Darren shared that he subscribes to over 700 different feeds.  Most of us could never imagine subscribing to any more than 50 or 60 feeds, let alone 700.

I subscribe to only 27 feeds and that can get out of hand if I don’t check it for a day or two.  Especially for the blogs that update at least twice a day.

Darren says many of these blogs are within the same niche as him and he uses their posts to help generate ideas for his own posts.  But how he does it without feeling overwhelmed is the greatest secret of all.

Managing the Unmanageable

For any of you that haven’t played around much with the features of Google Reader, you probably don’t know that there is an option to create folders.  If you do know, then you’re already a step closer to understanding how Darren manages those 700 + blog feeds.

Under the manage subscriptions link in your Reader there is a “Folders and Tags” option that allows you to create your own folders.  Doing this and moving specific blog feeds into those folders is how you manage the unmanageable.

Put all the posts you subscribe to specifically to generate ideas, into one folder, then all of the blog feeds you simply enjoy reading in another folder.

Now anytime you need some inspiration for a blog post, just scan quickly through your ideas folder and find something that interests you.

Managing your feeds in this way will keep you from feeling so overwhelmed when trying to read the blog posts you enjoy.

Do you use this method to generate blog post ideas?