Be a Better Blogger: Manage Those Goodreads Notifications

I love Goodreads. It's a fantastic way to keep track of the books I've read, post and read reviews and meet other readers.

But what do you do if your Goodreads notifications are driving you nuts? It's easy to fix!  Say you really don't want to get another one of these event notifications in your email:

You can set your account so that you receive NO invitations in your email at all. Here's how:

First, go to your profile tab. It's on the far right of the screen when you're logged in to Goodreads:

Now select "edit profile."

Then you'll get a set of tabs that look like this. Select "emails."

Then you can go in and customize the emails you want to receive.

Here's another great tip: you can filter your timeline, so you see only updates from the people you choose.  I swear this will CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

For optimal results, you may want to make sure that you have the people you want to hear from selected as "top friends." You can read all the way through the post and decide.

Goodreads is sneaky and "top friends" is the default setting. So if you haven't already, you need to pick your Goodreads BFFs.  

First, go to your friends page.  You'll find that on the Goodreads home page in the middle of the right sidebar. I would click on "725 friends," as seen below.

Then you'll see this. Just click on edit friends in bold green:

And you'll get page after page of friends. If you have no idea who someone is, or they are that person with 4000 friends and one book, uncheck their "top friend" box. According to Goodreads, they will never know that you demoted them, so be brutal. 

Yes, this is time consuming, depending on how many friends you have. But I swear it is life-changing.  

You can watch some TV while you do it. If you can't bear to do it, you can also filter the timeline so it shows only people whose reviews you are following. I'll explain that below.

Helpful tip: the next time you accept a Goodreads friend request, be sure to decide if that person is a "top friend" or not. If not, uncheck that box when you accept the friend request.

Whew, you're done? Awesome. Time to filter your timeline. Go back to your home page. So you see on the right where it says "showing: top friends" with a little downward arrow? Click that and ...

You'll see something that looks like this:

You can choose what shows up in your timeline. I need to change that setting to "top friends and following" probably, but you can experiment. Now my timeline shows updates and reviews from people I know and trust. I don't have to filter through a bunch of updates from ... "who IS that, anyway?"

Try it out and let me know what you think!