Why I’m Lovin’ Bloglovin’

So I discovered bloglovin’ yesterday.  I thought I was super late to this party, but after asking around, I think I might just be fashionably late.  Now that I have had some time to check it out, I want to invite you to party with me!

After I made the big scary move from Blogger to WordPress, GFC went away.  I have never loved Google Reader, but I didn’t know how much I didn’t love it until I found bloglovin’.  Since I have been using bloglovin’ I’ve noticed that I’m able to visit the blogs I really want to read and I am leaving more comments.  We all love comments!  I don’t know what the change was, maybe I was just so beat down with Google reader that by the time I got to the post I wanted to read I didn’t have the energy to comment ha-ha. 

New to bloglovin’?  Here is what it looks like (with my lovely added callouts):

Ahhh… isn’t that clean and inviting?  Let’s break it down:

From the Account settings you can get the widget codes, manage your blog (see how many total followers you have, how many new followers since last week), manage the blogs you follow (subscribe, unsubscribe, assign/change groups), as well as the standard help, settings, and sign out.

Bloglovin’ makes it so easy to manage the blogs you read.  I don’t know what the problem with Google is, but I have been trying to ‘unsubscribe’ from one blog for a while now and it just will not update! So frustrating.

Now… if you were paying attention you picked up on that exciting little piece of news in there.  Groups!  That leads me to my next section, and maybe my favorite feature.

Check out that lovely little sidebar!  See that blue smiley face there… I can sort by those options.  I leave mine set to “All unread posts”.

See the red heart?  Those are the blogs I follow… separated into groups!  I have a group for “Big Time Bloggers” (you know, Pioneer Woman, Bakerella, etc), and I have a group for my “Texas Bloggers”.  Being a part of that group has been great, and I love having a separate group for them so that I can easily access their blogs.  I plan to make more groups, maybe food bloggers, mom bloggers, life bloggers, bloggers like me.  I don’t know yet, but the fun part is it’s so simple to set up and change!

For me it’s way less overwhelming to be able to sort through my blogs to read them.  Neither the Blogger dashboard nor Google reader have user-friendly sidebars!

Now this little green arrow at the bottom: I have my sidebar set up to only show me my unread blogs, but I can click “Show read blogs” to see everyone.  I love this “hide” feature, it helps keep things looking clean.

Now for the “meat” of this reader.  Again, more sort options at the top, but my favorite is the “Mark as read” feature.  You can click the button at the top to mark all, or if  you scroll down to the bottom (circled in orange) you can mark per post.  I love this.  Let’s be honest… we don’t read every post that every blogger publishes.  We need an attention grabbing picture or intro to entice us to click. 

Especially with my food blogs… if they are posting about a spinach salad with shrimp and curry sauce, I’m probably not going to read it because honestly it kind of scares me (lol) and I know I won’t eat it!  So in that instance, I would just ‘mark as read’ and move on!  Now if they posted something that contained chocolate and peanut butter, I also have the option to “like” the post and it will move it into my “Liked Posts” on the sidebar.  Neato, right?

I hope this post helped you see the benefits of bloglovin’!  If you would like to follow me, click here:

P.S. If you haven’t done so already go visit Carly’s blog and enter into her HUGE 300 follower giveaway!