Thursday, December 9, 2010

The Good News, and The Bad News

So first, here's the good news. I finished my revisions for "The Girl Most Likely" and sent off a query to The Wild Rose Press. Yay! I'd love to be part of their Class of '85 series, a series of stories about the graduates of Summerville High School coming home for their 25th year reunion. Soon after I sent in my query, I got an email from the editor of the series asking me to send her the full manuscript. Which I did as fast as my little fingers could type. The editor has promised to give me an answer by January 7, 2011. That's one thing I love about The Wild Rose Press; they give you a definite date and they stick to it. So now I wait. I hope I did enough work on the revisions to interest her in the story. Like I told you earlier, these revisions have been something of a struggle. But I finally made myself buckle down and concentrate on the story, and I think it came out okay. Thanks to Janet once more for her critiquing expertise and her cheerleading. Wish me luck!

And now the bad news. I hate Facebook! I spent a good part of Monday trying to upload this blog onto Facebook so that it appears there as well. I found instructions for this procedure on Facebook Help. They are as follows:

1. Go to you Page and click "Edit Page" beneath the Page profile picture.
2. Select "Applications" and next to "Notes" please click "Go to Application."
3. On the bottom left hand side of the page select "Edit Import Settings."

I did exactly what it said. In the spot where it said to place the URL of my blog, I typed in http://janarichards.blogspot.com/ because that's my URL. Right? Wrong. According to Facebook, this blog does not exist. You are currently reading a figment of your imagination.

I thought perhaps Facebook didn't like the way I typed. So I copied and pasted the URL directly from my alleged blog. Still no go. I knew that I set up an rss feed on my website to have the blog appear there, I had to include an extension at the end of the URL. So I tried that. Nothing.

My husband suggested I go to Google and look up some information about putting the blog on Facebook. I found numerous You Tube videos on the subject, all of them giving the exact same information that I typed above. Except in their situations, the end result was always a message that they'd successfully imported their blog. ARGHHH!!!

I tried Facebook Help again, which, by the way, is not very helpful. But I did discover that I'm not alone. Apparently there are others out there who can't get their blog to import. Some said they'd reported the problem to Facebook and have never heard back from them. After several months! Others said they had a blog importing from an external site for some time and it suddenly quit, with no explanation.

I'm convinced technology is out to get me. I tried on Sunday to upload a video onto this blog. You might notice that there are no videos here. I'm not even going to tell you how much trouble I had uploading the cartoons on Tuesday's blog. It's enough to make me want to go back to paper and pencil and lock myself in a cave somewhere.

What I really need is a twelve year old boy to take me by the hand and show me how to do stuff. Since I don't have access to a twelve year old, I decided to do one of the things I usually do when I can't figure something out: take a class. As we speak, I am participating in a webinar on Social Media given by Writer's Digest. I'm a little afraid the class is going to be more advanced than I am, but I'm hoping to get something out of it. I'll keep you posted.

I'm tired of feeling like the dumbest kid in the class when it comes to technology, especially Facebook. Does anyone know a way to get around the problem I'm having importing my blog? Can I just cut and paste it into the Notes section? Janet mentioned a hot link to me before, but I don't know what a hot link is! What sort of things do you put on your Facebook page to keep people interested? And how do I insert a video in my blog? And I am the only one who feels this stupid? Help!

31 comments:

  1. Hi Jana, back in the summer Kat and I held an SRW meeting on Twitter, Facebook, blogging, etc, which of course you couldn't make it to. We extended a standing offer that anyone's welcome to contact us if they want help on anything or have questions about how to do things. If you're having trouble with anything, the same goes for you.

    For importing your blog, have you tried inserting the feed address rather than the blog site address? You can find it via the link at the very bottom of your main page that says "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)" In your case its: http://janarichards.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default If you paste that in, it may work. Hard to say. Facebook does get inconsistent about importing blog content sometimes. I often have a week's worth of blogs all show up at once.

    If it won't work, you could always set up a twitter account to announce when you post new content (I can tell you how), and then set it to cross-post twitter to facebook. It'd be status-update style links to posts, rather than notes in facebook with full content.

    And if you want, you can also paste each blog manually as a note in the meantime.

    For video, I haven't tried uploading a video directly through the blogger tools, but I think the simplest way might be to upload it to youtube, and then grab the embed coding for it to share on your blog (again, I can show you if you like).

    As far as content goes, I like to share worthwhile links with a mix of industry stuff and just interesting/funny stuff, a bit of insight into my own life and work so I seem human (and I like knowing how authors work), and that sort of thing. The authors I follow do the same, and those with good reader bases start discussion and such as well.

    My two (four?) cents :)

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  2. K - Hayley can get you going on Facebook because if I had to remember how I did it, well, let's just say I won't. I had a hard time importing my blog, too. Very frustrating!

    As to the video - are you posting an already established youtube video? Because if you are - you need to click the 'embed' just under the youtube video and a html code will appear just below that. Then copy/paste that code into your blog (but you have to be on the edit html side (at the top right of your 'new post' there's the two tabs - edit html and compose - it won't let you embed the code into the 'compose' side.

    Hope that helps!

    And Woo Hoo on getting a request for the full. Cara and Finn's story is great - got my fingers crossed for you :)

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  3. Hi Jana! I have the same problem w/ FB. I just manually "share" (there's a SHARE button on Blogger page) with my FB. It's more work, but since I'm technologically challenged - and especially since FB doesn't play nice with blogs - it's a solution I can live with.
    Best of luck!

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  4. Hey Jana, don't feel bad, I'm totally social media challenged. Haven't even tried to do a feed from my blog to FB. I just post manually if I want someone to go to my blog.

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  5. I don't follow directions well. I keep looking for a shortcut which always gets me into trouble. I simply write in my comments/updates that I'm blogging today about X and Y, then add the link.

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  6. Hi Hayley,
    I talked to Kat (by email) last summer and got some good information from her on starting up a Facebook page. But now that I've got it started, I'm not entirely sure what to do with it. Well, that and the technical difficulties. Yes, I did try a few versions of extensions on the URL: janarichards.blogspot.com/feed and janarrichards.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss (that's the one that worked on my website). I'll give your version a try and see if it works any better.

    I really wish I lived closer to you. I'd love to have your in person guidance on this stuff!

    I'll contact you soon about Twitter. Maybe I can figure that one out!

    Thanks for your two(four) cents,
    Jana

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  7. Hi Janet,
    So that's how you do it! I copied the embedded code into my blog and all I got was a bunch of code. So now I just have to remember to be in html code. Thanks Janet! Great advice.

    And thanks for your good wishes on my story. Couldn't have done it without your help, yet again. I can hardly wait until I can return the favour. I was reading Mac's interview on your blog - I love him! He definitely needs his story told.

    Jana

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  8. Hi Jana, I use Networked Blogs to interface my blog onto my Facebook fan page. It's under apps and is very widely used. Maybe that would be easier?

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  9. I am so bad when it comes to this stuff. You ain't the only dummy on facebook. I am bigger!
    I have no clue what I am doing! but I try...

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  10. Major congrats on the request, Jana! It sounds like a great story. And sorry, no Facebook help here, but I am taking notes :D

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  11. Breaking news! I tried Hayley's solution for getting my blog on FB and success! Yay! So at least I've got that working. Now what do I do? More on that in later posts.

    Jana

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  12. Hi Jennifer,
    I have so much to learn! I'm not sure I know how to manually share a blog. I have made my blog shareable, but I don't know if that's the same thing.

    I can certainly understand feeling technologically challenged. I'm right there with you.

    Thanks for weighing in.
    Jana

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  13. Hey Marie, if it's working for you, go for it. I've tried to ignore social media to this point, but I'm anxious to try to make it work for me. We'll see how it goes.

    Glad you were able to stop by.
    Jana

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  14. Hi Vonnie,
    I think it's probably still important to let people know what you're doing by sending them updates. So I think I might still want to let people know what I'm blogging about.

    Thanks for letting me know how you deal with FB.
    Jana

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  15. Hi LK,
    I read in Facebook Help that some people use Network Blogs, but I didn't know what it was. Thanks for shining a light on that. Like I said, I have so much to learn.

    Jana

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  16. Hey Mary, I'm glad I'm not alone! At least you've been trying to use FB. I've just begun. Wish me luck.

    Jana

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  17. Hi Karyn,
    If you're looking for Facebook help from me, you're in big trouble! Good thing people here know more than I do.

    Thanks for the congrats. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

    Jana

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  18. 1. Go to you Page and click "Edit Page" beneath the Page profile picture.>>>>>>>>

    Oh wow! I didn't know you could do that (or not as the case may be).

    <<>>>

    I've always thought I had a rich and full fantasy life -- and you've proved it! The good part is that in my fantasy life people like me!

    <<<months! Others said they had a blog importing from an external site for some time and it suddenly quit, with no explanation.
    <<<

    Retrograde Mercury? Starts tomorrow....a precursor maybe?

    <<<when I can't figure something out: take a class. As we speak, I am participating in a webinar on Social Media given by Writer's Digest. I'm a little afraid the class is going to be more advanced than I am, but I'm hoping to get something out of it. I'll keep you posted.
    <<<
    You go! Take heart -- these days Facebook seems to be doing a lot of things to people that make them unhappy.

    I'm tired of feeling like the dumbest kid in the class when it comes to technology, especially Facebook. Does anyone know a way to get around the problem I'm having importing my blog? Can I just cut and paste it into the Notes section? Janet mentioned a hot link to me before, but I don't know what a hot link is! What sort of things do you put on your Facebook page to keep people interested? And how do I insert a video in my blog? And I am the only one who feels this stupid? Help!

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  19. JANA--me, too. I had to delete my Facebook account because little made any sense to me. I hate the format, and even though I had a big group of friends, my messages went into a black hole--I guess--it seemed like a big waste of time. The news feed I got every morning from FB were a long string of stupid messages, and many of them had to do with building a farm. I saw no benefit to me.
    I think we're expected by publishers to get on FB, but of all the things I do to promote, FB definitely was the loser for me. I, too, could not figure out how to add anything....and decided I was wasting time.
    I was on there to promote myself, but....I guess I do that all I can now.
    I hope you get all your technical problems cleared up--I'll cheer you on! Celia

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  20. Yes, Networking blogs works very well for me too. Then your blog automatically gets put on FB. The problem with FB and Twitter is that there are so many people at it that when you post something, it disappears down the line and probably no-one gets to see it. Then you repeat it later in the day and it feels like spamming. (Sigh)

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  21. I sympathize with you totally. I've only been on Facebook for a little while. I spent a long time ignoring it. "Everyone" (who know, the ubiquitous "they") said it was so user friendly. I guess I haven't found that part yet. There are days I think my mother might be right. She says computers aren't here to stay. :)

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  22. Hi Jana,
    I'm a day late, but I definitely relate. I'm computer challenged. My advice probably would lead to more frustration. Sometimes when I type the link to my blog in the "News" line, it starts to link to my blog automatically. But, it doesn't always have the picture that goes with the current blog, so that can be a bit confusing, and I have no idea what to do about that. For me, it's a hit or miss thing.

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  23. Jana, I am soooo not technosavvy. I got this guy to fix it so my blog appears on Facebook and Twitter, Goodreads, and my Amazon author page. He charged thirty bucks. Believe me, to me it was worth much more!

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  24. Hi Regan,
    I don't think FB is as user friendly as everyone makes it out to be, especially to people like me who are not tech savvy. But, the good news is that I figured out (well, Hayley figured it out and then told me) how to get my blog to automatically go up on FB. That's one problem solved. Now I've got a ton more things to figure out to make FB work for me.

    Jana

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  25. Celia, I'm sorry you had such a lousy experience with FB, but I certainly can understand it. Publishers do expect us to promote but it's not that easy, especially when you don't understand the technology or how to get it to work for you. The best thing is, I think, is to use those promotion tools that you enjoy most, rather than making yourself crazy.

    Thanks for stopping by,
    Jana

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  26. Sue, that is a problem. So many people are posting it feels like shouting into the wind. I guess we just have to hope that someone hears us.

    Jana

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  27. Hi Samantha,
    I resisted FB for as long as I could too. But like you said, "everybody" is on it, so we writers have to jump on bandwagon too. I'm not yet convinced of its merits but I'm determined to give it a go.

    Glad you were able to stop by.
    Jana

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  28. Hi Gail,
    I hear your frustration. But at least you've been using FB and getting the word out about your blogs. Hopefully the more you use it, the more comfortable you'll feel with it. Or at least that's what I'm hoping happens, in my case as well.

    Jana

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  29. Wow, Caroline if I could get a guy to do all that for me for $30 bucks, I'd hire him in a minute. It would be totally worth it. I didn't even know I could put an rss feed on to my Amazon page. I'm going to have to look into that. Thanks for the info!

    Jana

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  30. Hi Jana, I've just embraced my dumb kid thing. I am so useless when it comes to technology, it's laughable.

    As for FB, I have noticed some (small) merits. People know I'm a writer. People I barely know ask me how the query process is going. It's minor, I know, but I figure it all helps, right?

    Good luck with your technical difficulties. It looks like you got some good advice here.

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  31. Hi Joanne,
    Yes, my grasp of technology and social media is pretty laughable as well. It's sad, really.

    I'm trying to figure out what to say that doesn't sound like I'm constantly promoting myself, like "please come read my blog" or "please come read this guest blog I wrote". I guess I have to just jump in and hope I don't tick anyone off!

    Jana

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