In the first post in this series on becoming a Flipboard Pro we explained how to setup your account and link it to your other social media. But obviously you want to find some fresh, interesting content as well. So today we’ll show you just how to do that.
Flipboard’s Own Categories
The first way to find content is by choosing some Flipboard categories you’re interested in and go from there. Just tap the ones you like and choose subcategories where possible.
Your connected social networks will also show up as a category, as will magazines you’re subscribed to. You can always edit your categories with the edit button in the bottom of your screen.
Searching on Flipboard
Now here’s where it gets a little tricky. There’s not that much content on Flipboard itself (yet), especially if you’re interested in a niche (like I am: youth ministry). The main categories Flipboard offers aren’t all that appealing to me, so I have to find my own content.
One way of doing that is by using the search function on Flipboard in the right upper corner. If I search for ‘church technology’ for instance, this is what I see.
The little ‘book sign’ on the right of a result means it’s a Flipboard magazine, a collection of interesting articles, photos, videos, etc, curated by a Flipboard user into a magazine. We’ll discuss this concept further in a next post.
I can tap on any of these results to have a look at them and if I think they’re interesting, I can subscribe to a magazine. Anything the curator of that magazine now adds will show up on my ‘Cover Stories’, the Flipboard equivalent of a news feed or timeline if you wish. Just like with other social media, you can also ‘like’ and ‘share’ articles you come across in a magazine.
You’ll notice that my search also gave me some Twitter results and if I’d chosen a term more of my LinkedIn or Facebook friends would have posted about, they would have shown up as well. In that way, Flipboard helps you search through your social networks easily and at once.
Websites and RSS Feed
Search results can also be websites, which you can subscribe to via Flipboard, making it a sort of RSS Reader. If you know sites you want to follow, you can also type in the URL directly into the search box, or add the RSS Feed address. In the search results, you may have to scroll down a little to find the ‘RSS section’. Tap on the RSS Feed you want.
It will open the Feed in a new screen (see the ChurchMag example below) and in the left upper corner there’s a blue ‘Subscribe button’ you can use to subscribe to new items in the feed. These will then show up in your Cover Stories. Beware though that if you follow many blogs via RSS, as I do, that you can’t browse through your feed as quickly as with for instance Feedly.
This brings me to the Google Reader question I mentioned earlier. As of now, I still have access to my Google Reader via Flipboard but with it being shut down that probably won’t last long. However, there’s no integration with Feedly yet, which has become my RSS Reader of choice. That’s in a way understandable, because Flipboard is a competitor of Feedly, It wants to become your primary way of reading websites.
Despite that, I still hope Flipboard will make Feedly integration possible so I can access my feeds easier and faster than just through the ‘cover stories’.
How do you find great content on Flipboard?
shawn says
Thanks Rachel for sharing this. I’ll definitely try these methods for my blog.