Aspects to consider before subscribing to a feed

Feeds are a major source for knowledge and gathering news. It comes handy and is one stop for all information you need.

However some discretion is needed before adding a feed to your feedreader. Ask yourself these simple questions before subscribing to a feed.

1. Does the site or blog contain material on one niche which you are interested in or is it a mix of contents covering many topics?

When you are subscribing to a feed, it is best if you choose the one which caters to one niche in particular, as you can expect to get the best. It won’t hurt if you subscribe to another blog which provides contents in an entirely different niche in which you are interested too rather than to a site providing a mix of contents.

Moreover subscribing to a blog having contents on one topic of your interest would help you not miss any of the updates in that blog. Subscribing to a blog of varied content may make you skip certain posts, doing so, you might miss some of the interesting contents on the way.

And also it will help you organize your feeds later on in separate folders if the blog falls under one topic rather than multiple topics.

2. Is the site regularly updated, with new contents flowing in?

Not all good sites are meant to be added to your feeds how much ever good the contents be. Some sites are of excellent quality but the ones to be added to your feed list needs to be updated regularly.

It becomes useless if the site is an excellent repository of knowledge but which is not updated. It is better to add such sites to your favorites/bookmarks than adding them to your feeds.

3. Does the quality of posts remain the same or vary from poor to best?

Some sites have multiple authors and the quality of the posts vary depending on the author or sometimes depend on the topic on which the author is blogging about.

If the posts’ quality varies to the extremes, think twice before subscribing. Because this puts the reliability of the blog to question.

It is natural for some posts to go bad and we need to respect the author for his/her effort and a few ‘not so good’ posts could be pardoned but if you find them repetitive in the entire blog, better bookmark them and don’t subscribe.

4. Are you interested only in the content of the site alone or also on the other aspects of it like social aspects, chatting, forum and stuff like that?

If you are not interested in the contents alone but also on the other social aspects of the site, better not to add the feed to your subscription list because inevitably you are going to visit the site and in that way you could keep up with the contents.

This would prevent cluttering your feed list unnecessarily and would also make you visit the site regularly and in a way make you feel more socially connected.

That is, think twice before registering as to whether you are attracted to only the content or other features of the website. Subscribing to a website which falls under this category could remove the charm and joy that you experience visiting the website.

Finally, to help you decide whether to subscribe or not to subscribe to this blog iPENthisBLOG, here is a pointer for you to decide.

iPENthisBLOG is a blog on blogging and caters contents(designs, domain names, blogging tips, technology) targeted especially at bloggers.

If this blog is of your interest, don’t forget to add to your feed under a trial period for a week and check it out. If not, don’t feel bad in not subscribing, this site is not for you. Book mark it and feel free to drop in when free and check it out later. You might like it then : )

Is there any other thing that needs to be considered before subscribing to the feeds? Share your thoughts through the comments section.