Since everybody seemed to enjoy my Get More From Google Reader Guide, I figured it was about time for a sequel. Although a lot of things were covered there, I did not get into many tips that will make Google Reader more usable. Here are a few productivity tips that should help you get through your feeds a little faster.

Tip 1 : Use Expanded View – I like expanded view because it makes it very easy to scroll through all the feed items and speed read my way through them. No I don’t read every single item from every single feed. I quickly browse and watch for things that get my attention.

Tip 2 : Use the “J” Button to Go From Item to Item – Now you could scroll down or use the down arrow key to slowly make your way down the list. If you want to skip down to the next entry though, all you need to do is hit the “J” key. If you want to go backwards, use the “K” key to go back to the previous post you have already viewed. (awesome keyboard photo by paolovalde via Flickr)

Tip 3 : Ditch the Sidebar to Get More Reading Room – To hide the sidebar that shows your lables and links, just hit the “U” key. This will give you even more room to read when you have a long list of feed entries to go through. To un-hide it, just hit the “U” key again. Get more keyboard shortcuts here.

Tip 4 : Get the New Stuff First – I don’t need to see the home page for Google Reader when I want to go catch up on my RSS feeds. Click on the link for “Settings” and then “Preferences” and find where it says “Start Page”. Here you can select what page or selection of labels you will start looking through when Google Reader starts up. I have mine set on “All Items”.

Tip 5 : Watch Your Feed Reading Trends – If you point your browser towards the Google Reader Trends link you can see a plethora of information about how you read your feeds. You can see popular tags, subscription trends, and reading trends. Seeing what time of the day you check your feeds is cool. They will give you the most popular day of the week for your feed reading ways as well. You can also see the number of posts you have read per day in the last 30 days.

Tip 6 : Star Items to Save for Later – I subscribe to a lot of wallpaper related RSS feeds, so when I find one I like – I might not have time to save the wallpaper at this very moment. That is where “staring” entries in the Google Reader can be helpful. You can do so by clicking the star icon at the bottom of any entry. To view all the ones you have starred, click on the “Starred Items” link on your left sidebar.