Guerrilla Marketing Your Blog with GMail, Reader And GTalk

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Guerrilla Marketing Your Blog

I discovered a wickedly easy way to use Google’s new sharing feature to attract readers… I shouldn’t reveal it all here. But it’s so obvious that I can’t figure out if anybody else thought about it. Here’s what you do:

  • 1. Sign up for a Gmail Account and import your contacts;
  • 2. Activate the Reader feature by clicking on the Reader function at the top of your Gmail account (in the drop down menu);
  • 3. Subscribe to your target blog that you want to advertise;
  • 4. Then just simply click on the share button on the posts from your blog that you want to share when you find them in the Reader Window – you’re looking for a button or icon that looks like this… Click to share; click again to unshare.

    greader share function

  • 5. You can see my ‘shared’ items in the feed that Google Reader provides. Then chat away on GTalk; and if any of the people are using Google Reader, they’ll be able to see your feed here. See my friends’ from Gtalk who have shared publicly in the way I described in step 4.

my friends subscriptions

  • 6. Now you can add even more friends, too. Look in the Manage friends tab, just below the list of friends. Click on that and you can invite even more.

    reader setings

  • 7. You can hide these subscriptions, but Google has, in their infinite wisdom, allowed sharing as a default!

Have you tried this? I know it’s difficult to measure traffic this way, but I do know that I got my blog noticed by some readers who hadn’t dropped by in a LONG time!

Quotation: Joseph Stiglitz

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This good story about Well-being vies for credibility, published yesterday in the Taipei Times, offers a great discussion of why GDP isn’t the sole or even the best measure of human economic or non-economic happiness. Here’s a quotation from the story.

“…Stiglitz said that economists have felt for a long time that GDP is not a good measure because “it doesn’t measure changes in well-being … It doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be a replacement of current measures, but maybe a construction of complementary measures.”

Joseph Stiglitz, Taipei Times, Monday January 14th, 2008 on page 11.

[ed. note And ‘yes’! I still read real newspapers made from paper! Now for some good stories from yesterday’s newspapers, just in case you didn’t read them already.]

Dreamhost: is it turning into a nightmare again?

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Frustrations of Dreamhost

Dreamhost is billing me for bills that don’t exist! I’ve been using their hosting for nearly four years now, but this problem (and no host is without ‘issues’) is vexing. I emailed them questioning them on this.

This is just a notice that your DreamHost Account #####
(“*** Account”) has a balance of $40.80 (including any charges not
due until 2009-01-30), with $40.80 due (since 2008-12-30).

You also have $40.80 past due (owed since 2008-11-30), and if
by 2009-01-30 you do not pay at least the $40.80 part, your
account will be automatically suspended until payment is received.

If you would like to CLOSE your account with DreamHost, just visit:

Since I always pay on time, I knew this to be an error. In fact, I checked yesterday’s billing for something else… So I replied as I was nervous about losing my account!

Dear Dreamhost…

I’m sorry but I don’t understand what is going on with my billing… I
paid my bills on time, and the panel (when it works) shows no
outstanding amount… so could you advise urgently what is going on.

Kenneth

Then I tried to login to my billing in the Dreamhost Panel. Not loading. So then I sent an email to support but it was rejected because it didn’t have an account number or any details. The rejected email told me to login to my panel and request support. Hah!

We’re sorry.. your email was unable to be processed by our automatic
support system, and so is being returned to you.

Our system could not find the open support case you were replying to,
and so could not automatically tie your message into our system. If this
was a reply to an EXISTING issue, please be sure to keep the:

[blah 123456]

in the subject line of your reply!

If this is regarding a NEW issue, we must ask that you submit it
through our web panel at:

So then I sent another email as an attachment to my original billing problem with the following words because Panel is still not working…

Also, and this is a major problem, your Panel is NOT WORKING… And I
can’t send email advising you of this… because the email that I
originally sent. There is no phone number or contact number so how on
earth are we supposed to contact you when there is a panel outage, we
don’t already have a ticket in the system, and your system rejects
emails addressed to support@dreamhost.com

I’d say this is a pretty serious issue.

Kenneth

As if this were not rebuke enough, it was similarly sent back with the following error…

This is the Postfix program at host kitty.sd.dreamhost.com.

I’m sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be
be delivered to one or more recipients. It’s attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

So then I checked the Dreamhost Status Website, no support is provided, just notifications.

So then checked the contact page, and the contact form wouldn’t load, and there was no telephone number, only a fax number and address.

I’m so very unimpressed that I had to blog this. I will be filing a formal complaint with them once the panel issue is resolved, and I’m removing the link to their ‘rewards’ program as a punishment for them.

I’ll be interested in a response from them on this issue. What do you think about Dreamhost?