Really Smart Guy » Blogging Tips

Yet another blog promo tool (Use Facebook to Promote your Blog)

Johnny Fuery — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 23:43:53 +0000

Duh. Why didn’t I write this?

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How to Lose 90 RSS Subscribers in 48 Hours

Johnny Fuery — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:23:27 +0000

Activate Google Apps and switch your mail server mx settings over to the big G.
Absentmindedly change the email system that has been working for you for half a decade, realize the contact management and history migration are going to be painful, then come up with the temporary solution of mail forwarding.
Inadvertently create a circular reference (an infinite loop for those of you that happen to be programmers or just know Apple’s corporate address off the top of your head) by forwarding messages to yourself. To yourself. To yourself. To yourself. To… oh, you get the picture.
Be busy enough so that you don’t notice PHP errors or Bandwidth Exceeded messages appearing on your web site/blog.
Have the alert email on your web host configured to forward to an address you don’t use any more.
Realize you have a problem, call your web host, have them give you a solution that seems inherently risky and prone to data loss.
Do it anyway.
Repeat step 4.
Get a message from one of your contractors (1099 employees) that your site is down. Get another message from a client. Realize you’re an idiot and should never have listened some douchebag answering the phone at 10pm telling you not to worry about the crazy hack he’s about to perform on your income-generating site when you know he really hasn’t considered the impact of what he’s suggesting.
Logon to wordpress, realize that your site has been down for at least two days, and sigh heavily. (So that’s why I suddenly got so much comment spam… from 8 comments a day to 300 over the last 48. Dammit! Repeat step 4.)
Fix issues, realizing that the problem is due to the fact that the 20 plugins you have installed have all been deactivated. Feedburner, Akismet, Threaded Comments, you name it. Sigh more heavily.
Do a 3 minute round of QA on your site. Note dead links.
Log back into wordpress and realize you’ve lost all your static pages.
Log into MySQL and search for said content.
Realize you’ve lost those pages, probably forever.
Post said experience to blog, deferring the broken link fixes for the time being, noting to self that a site redesign is long overdue anyway. Hey, the 96 readers left will have a good laugh at your misfortune. Right? RIGHT?

Everyone clear on that? btw, I could use a full time LAMP developer if anyone is interested… must not think Ajax is a cleanser. Email me at… aw crap. The contact page is down.

Friday Fun

Johnny Fuery — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:05:39 +0000

81%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

In other news, back home in the San Francisco Bay area, the authorities busted the guy who probably profited from the catalytic converter that was stolen off of my vehicle last fall.

Blogging Tip: Feeding the Content Alligator

Johnny Fuery — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 23:20:11 +0000

By “content alligator”, I’m referring to that difficulty we all have coming up with fresh ideas at times. Now, as a blogger, we’re all generally interested and have expertise in the subject we’re writing about, but sometimes that creativity wanes.

This isn’t necessarily a brilliant idea, but I suggest using Yahoo Answers to come up with some new memes. There are more questions posted out there than anyone could ever answer, and after just moments of browsing your field of exposition, you’ll discover things you disagree with. You’ll also be struck by the types of question people ask. As an expert, it’s sometimes difficult to recall what sort of information your readers need in order to understand your niche better. What you know as second-nature is a newbie’s fresh idea.

Happy blogging.

Smart Guy is Today’s “Top Business and Technology Blog” on FuelMyBlog

Johnny Fuery — Mon, 21 May 2007 01:13:47 +0000

In a curious turn of irony, my post a couple of days ago expressing skepticism about the efficacy of FuelMyBlog inadvertently propelled my standings on the FuelMyBlog network. The screenshot in my previous post, as the one below does (hint, hint), linked to the FuelMyBlog voting mechanism. I didn’t even think about it when I did it, but quite a few readers apparently clicked through. I’ve picked up 14 votes just today!

Now, the $64,000 question is whether or not this will actually produce new traffic (and consummate readership). I’ll be watching my analytics over the next couple of days and will post the results here.

This is actually a really good test of the FuelMyBlog network. For me personally, if just 20-30 virgin readers are exposed to Smart Guy over the next couple of days, then my participation was well worth it. I might even move the FuelMyBlog badge on my sidebar to a more prominent place. What about you? What threshold of virgin readers would you require in order to make any promotional tool worth the effort? Do you analyze the possible results before engaging in any such activity, or do you just try things shoot-from-the-hip style?