Category: Technological Feats

Wherein I learn new things.


Oct
2013

I Learned to Embed Pinterest Boards on WordPress

categories: Technological Feats

Had to edit code and everything!
Now I’m just showing off.

(If it doesn’t show up I’m totally embarrassed.)(and it doesn’t show up when you change your theme so there’s that–seriously, what is UP with Pinterest embedding!?)

It was kind of a bitch so I figured I’d sum it up:

  • Use the Pinterest widget builder.
  • Copy and past the widget code into the post or page you want it to appear on. I made a board filled with covers of books and magazines I’ve worked on and put it on this page.
  • Then, in your dashboard view on WordPress go to Appearance and then Editor. Click on the Footer (or footer.php) and scroll to the bottom to find the < / body > tag and copy and paste the javascript code the Pinterest widget builder provides just above that tag. Reload everything and that should be it!
  • ONE MORE THING: You must edit your page or post in the html/text view! If you use the WYSIWYG/Visual editor? Your special Pinterest code might disappear. Very tedious but true.

Jul
2013

Writers and Editors: We’re All Inbound Marketers Now

categories: Publishing, Social Media, Technological Feats

So I’m an editor by trade. That means that I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about SEO optimization despite the fact that my job description makes me sound suspiciously like an inbound marketer. And I didn’t even know what an inbound marketer did until I stumbled across a webinar on YouTube a couple of weeks ago.

I write very little in the traditional B2B trade magazine sense. Of course, I edit copy for two magazines. But I post articles to our content management system (we use Joomla) on a near daily basis across two sites. I write SEO meta data and keywords. I manage and generate all of our social media content (that’s two Facebook pages, two LinkedIn groups, two Twitter profiles, a Google+ page, and a Pinterest page–there might be more I’m forgetting, honestly, and I’m always looking for appropriate ways to grow that presence).

The crux of this is that social media drives traffic to our websites (which gets readers to actually read the great content we produce) and also helps our sales people sell ads on our website. I am lucky to work for a company that cares more about content than the typical B2B (who, in my experience, cares a lot more about sales that content). We generate great content for readers in our niche and we want everybody who might care to read it to find it.

And that’s a whole new world.

I’m in a weird hybrid position. I’m not a coder but I need to understand everything Joomla offers to my small company (we’re small enough that we fit around a large dining room table). I’m not exclusively a social media manager but I need to maximize our efforts because we don’t have the luxury of expensive analytics or a team of people to manage it. I need to understand SEO writing and optimization so that I don’t waste my time (or the time of my co-workers) with pointless efforts.

I’m half editor, half inbound marketer. And the problem I’m facing is the gap between those skills.


Jun
2013

I Do Not Sell Concrete Statuary, FYI.

categories: Technological Feats

So! You might recall (unlikely) that I imported my old Blogger blogs to this website. I have been retagging old posts and doing some basic back-end clean up and a weird thing happened: I discovered how frequently my blog posts from my old Roadside Curiosities blog gets views.

I have tons of pics from my roadside America pit stops that I still want to post but I figured nobody cared but me. So maybe I’ll add that back in as A Thing because that would be fun for me.

However, since this website takes the posts out of the context of the Blogger site I have seen a bizarre uptick in contacts and comments related to how site visitors might purchase concrete statuary from me. I’ve gotten at least 5 queries in the last few days! People are looking for pineapple finials, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs statues, and an unpainted Venus de Milo, among other basic questions such as “how much is shipping?” I have an entrepreneurial streak and I had to stop myself from contacting a concrete place and becoming a reseller if they would only drop ship the crap for me.

Anyway, by far the most popular post on this site is Collecting View-Master Viewers and Reels (over 600 views, pretty much it gets a couple of people stumbling on it everyday). But, with 39 views just this week, Robinson Concrete Statuary is a real comer!

So, yeah, I don’t actually sell concrete statuary. I wish I did.

 

 


Jun
2013

Importing to WordPress & Other Impressive Feats

categories: Technological Feats

So my friend Lara has this website and I’ve been helping her troubleshoot some WordPress issues and it turns out I’m getting kind of good at this. I’m almost to the point of wanting to learn how to make WordPress sites actually attractive. I’m an epic fail at beautification efforts, which is why I had the super simple Wu Wei template for like two years.

The next crazy thing I think I want to tackle is importing my old blogger blogs to this site! I had Roadside Curiosities detailing my many roadside Americana side trips. I also had Bexcraft for my crafty endeavors. I wonder if I can import BOTH of them? Anyway, I think I’ll be trying to do that in the next couple of weeks so if anything looks crazy here? That will probably be the cause.

I’m importing partly because I want to see if I can and partly because I’d like all my wacky blogs under one umbrella on my website.

 

Edited to add: So it turns out that that was crazy easy! Ha! And it even imported all of my comments and categories. Holy crap! When I first moved from Blogger to WordPress with my husband on our old blog? It was HELLISH and took hours. Oops. Technology moved on.