I know that our blog doesn't have a ton of traffic, but I do know of a few people who visit it fairly regularly. I know that Mary and I both follow several people's blogs. Visiting each website just to look for an update can get old really quick. Wouldn't it be great if there was a way you could go to one place to find out if there are any new posts?
Well, good news. There are several ways to accomplish this! I, personally, use Google Reader because I follow many blogs and websites. It requires you to have a Google account and does take a little bit to get used to the layout of the web application, but it saves so much time! Think of it as a DVR for your blogs or a magazine subscription. If you only follow a few, though, most newer web browsers have built in capabilities for this by simply bookmarking a feed URL (see below).
Once you have a Google account and are ready to start subscribing to blogs, you'll need just one piece of information from each blog: a feed URL. Feed URLs are often referred to as syndication URLs and come in a few different formats. The most popular feed formats are RSS and Atom. Therefore, when you're on a favorite website that has frequent content updates, look for a link that is labeled Syndication, RSS, or Atom. When you find that URL, copy it and enter it into your feed reader (e.g. Google Reader).
For our blog, you may notice on the left side at the bottom, links for both RSS and Atom feeds. You can use either one of these to subscribe to our blog by entering those URLs into your feed reader. Voila! One-stop blog shopping!