Strange title, eh? Well, let me explain.

So, for the past month or two, I have been helping my friend Bobby promote his valet company‘s website, and it seems to be paying off pretty well. But all that aside, I just wanted to take a few minutes to update everyone about my life. I haven’t had a lot of time to blog because so much has changed in my life in the past 4 months.

Here’s a breakdown of my life:

• I quit working for that company that I was bragging about before. Didn’t really work out the way I wanted it to, so I left. Sometimes something great can turn bad fast, and that’s what happened. No hard feelings on my side though.
• I got my old job at Amex back. I love that place; although I didn’t get my old position back, I got back in the door with no significant pay cut and bridged tenure, so needless to say, I’m happy. Plus, I have a bunch of vacation time that I need to use, and I don’t have any plans to use it on, so…
• I’ve been working on several amazing web projects with/for friends, and that has been pretty fun. I’ll post some links soon.
• that’s it…

There’s a bunch of other stuff that I’ve been doing, but who cares? Once I get back in the swing of things, I’ll update my blog more frequently. I can’t promise anything, but I’m sure I’ll find some extra time somewhere.

WUUUUURD!!!!

On this blog, I have been running the same version of WordPress for about a year. I decided since all of my other blogs are running 2.7, I would upgrade this one as well. Oh man, what a mistake.

Whenever I try to post something new, I get a 404 error, then I refresh the page and it works fine. Also, when I try to embed images, the lightbox doesn’t load, it just tries to load for about 5 minutes, then I give up. I have never had this problem before, and I have upgraded DOZENS of sites to the latest version of WordPress.

I may just need to optimize and repair the MySQL tables, but I don’t know. I’ll try a few things and let you know what worked (in case others have the same issues). ARGH this is annoying!!!!

To blog, or not to blog? – that is the question. The answer??? Friggin blog already, dang. It is painfully clear how much a well written blog can help you build your brand and image online. I’m going to explain how blogging can be one of the most important areas of focus in your online strategy; however, you cannot just start blogging and expect the masses to flock to you like you’re Barack Obama. You have to use techniques, simple and affective techniques.

You know when you are searching google for something, and all of the results are blogs? Doesn’t that tell you something? I apologize for posing these questions, but I am the type of guy that looks at what works, and what doesn’t work, and then go with what does work. I’m not saying that you can run your entire business from a blog, no, that is a bad idea. It’s not really professional enough for most of your customers, and there is more to business than talking/typing heads. So, here are some things that you may want to consider when you start your blog.

Know Your Audience

You will need to know who is reading your blog. What is the general demographic? Do you offer services to businesses? Do you offer products to teens? If you cannot answer this initial set of questions, you may want to do some market research before officially launching your blog. You need to make sure that you can write in a way that interacts with your audience and do it in a way that keeps them wanting more.

Don’t Write Like a Drone

The main difference between an awesome blog, and a not so awesome blog is the writing style. Sure, both blogs may say the exact same thing, but it’s all about the delivery. With this in mind, you don’t want to write TOO casually, still make sure that you are using proper grammar in all of the right places, but always try to remember that you are not writing an academic paper. Slang is OK as long as it’s not offensive or difficult to understand.

These are the basic fundamentals of succesful blog writing, and I will post more pointers in the future. I hate to leave things hanging, but I also hate to sound like a blowhard.