Postcards from the Funny Farm

Today I feel like I am writing the manual on how to succeed at my life. It may not be the manual for anyone else, but smart people oughta find some carryover ;) The working title I think is: “Create. Innovate, and Integrate.” Like a tv plugs into a HDMI cable, plug into this message and get inspired!

I’ve gotten to used to being the one to do the job right. If you knew me, you’d know that isn’t self-congratulatory … it’s the truth. I’m a teacher and I have seen half-wits come and go from the profession like moths to a flame. Some people (many people) just don’t have what it takes. I’ve been watching a bit of The Academy on the Fox Reality Channel lately and seen the same thing happening with their recruits. Some just can’t do what is necessary to get to be cops. In teaching, you can usually see right away the ones who can’t cut it. They flip out on kids, lose kids, fail to raise test scores, they offend other teachers, etc … These folks come passing through the profession but never really take it by the reins and make it their own. I hope I’ve done that. It feels like I have. I worked my first day of summer school today and I have to tell you I am WORKED OVER! These 28 6th graders are going to give me a test like I may never have felt before. In the second six weeks, I teach 7th grade for another three. At that point don’t be surprised to read the confessions of a depressed teacher … that very well may be my state of mind. Nahhhh not me. But seriously, stay tuned to read those accounts, it should be a drama-filled challenge of a time.

Okay, now onto my point. If you are one of the “frozen chosen” in your field, as I have already shared I am, make sure you create, innovate, and integrate your ideas while you are in your working years. You owe it to the next folks to make the profession better after having passed through it. It’s a heavy burden but you can do it. More importantly, if you don’t, no one else will. My point today is this: If you want to have an impact and be successful in your trade, DO IT THE LONG WAY, no short cuts. Seek out books and trainings to be better at what you do and when you get home, make sure you have a jacuzzi (LOL). -Or- some way yo know to relax and get away from thinking about work.

Now, get your rest (if you are reading this from home). If you are at work: GO BE THE STAR THAT YOU ARE! Here’s an example of what it might look like in my job:

Create: Write your rules on the board

Innovate: Develop a foolproof way to teach them, be unique.

Integrate: Get up there and teach it and have success.

Are you creating, innovating, and integrating your profession?

This article is Part II of my series “Finest Hour of Social Networks” where I examine social networks and their effectiveness in raising real traffic (low bounce rate/readers who stay more than the duration of two clicks!) This goal is important for monetization and for building a following to your blog. If these ideas are something you’re interested in, this series will help you achieve those goals.

In this article I review and offer some tips on using: Facebook and Fuel My Blog. Here at the second article, I have found I am learning a lot about what a social network is and can be for me as a blogger. I am looking forward to looking at more of the leading social networks for bloggers and sharing my findings with you in future articles. Stay tuned!

Facebook started buzzing around the sphere about 2-3 years ago as I recall. It looked like a vanilla MySpace. For that reason, I never bothered with it much back then. I have a myspace music account that I barely update, how could another “buddy” system get any of my attention? Eventually about a year ago, I joined the service and found it visually slick looking, less cluttered than Myspace. But Facebook is really pointless unless you have “friends” there.   I emailed everyone in my Yahoo! address book and found that out of 30-something people, only three signed up to make me their friends. Then after a long tome of not logging in, I began to get requests from old friends from high school. Some people I only vaguely even remembered. Since gettingonlne now with friends I have found all the addon applications to be really fun. You can waste hours playing around on Facebook.  But, alas, killing time is not one of my 2008 goals, so I limit my time there to about once a week. The good news is though, the service emails you where there are new notices or emails from your friends. You don’t have to hang out there all the time.

In conclusion, I think making a FaceBook account and pimping it as much as you can will help your blog’s traffic. I’ve had at least two comments this past month from people who say they surfed in through Facebook. I recommend it! If you do decide to register, feel free to make me your first friend: I am rileycentral on Facbook.

Thumbs up for Facebook! Now, what about this other mysterious service they call “Fuel My Blog?” Let me tell you what I have found:

Fuel My Blog is a quasi social network where you can “fuel” blogs you like thereby bringing them closer to the top of the list in their category. Sort of like trying to scale Google, this process can make you feel powerless over your own success. Once you join, you can put a widget in your blog that shows your favorite blogs on the service. People can “fuel” the blogs there through a three-click process that is fairly easy. My hope is that their great idea of boosting blogs through clicks will develop further. Three clicks away is too much clicking when I am trying to make merss reading rounds. It’s also discouraging when you know that your clicks probably won’t do much to boost the blog anyway. Fuel My Blog is very new and has a small number of blogs in their system. You can’t be part of this unless you are registered with them and you have their widget. I’ve been good about fueling my 7 a day, but is time consuming. In the end with Fuel My Blog you have a great name with a marginaludea that looks like all the other social schmoozing sites. It would be fine to have it if it offered something new, but as of yet they haven’t. I’m getting a little tired of clicking 10-20 times a day just to boost sites I have only just met through the service. When I find someone I know , I get excited and fuel them immediately just because I know them but that is not the best motive for promoting a blog, it should be spectacular right? Finding blogs to fuel is very cumbersome and the blog must be a registered member of Fuel my Blog for your to fuel them. This lags in much the same way Alexa lags in requiring it’s toolbar to build rank for a site.

My final word on Fuel My Blog is a “sideways thumb”: a little up and a little down. They seem like very nice people (they asked me to guesblog as a regular contributor and I have done 2 blogs for them) and the company looks good on the screen with nice bright graphics. Because of reasons I listed, however, I haven’t found their service to produce the best blogs. Then again, neither does DIGG, SU, or any of the other netwrks I use. I’m alwasy on the lookout for that company who can create and innovate a social system that really gets the good stuff to the forefront. I think much has to evolve for Fuel My Blog to be something the masses will spend their precious online minutes on.

Coming next in the series:

Part III

Twitter - What can that little light blue “t” do for ya! In addition to writing on Twitter next, some may recall I was going to write on 9Rules. I changed my mind and and instead, I’ll be writing something about IZEA and Social Spark. Stay tuned!

Now it’s your turn!

What do you think of using Facebook and Fuel My Blog to build traffic?