Looking back, the comment does come off as quite douchey, but it worked. The post I commented on was appropriately titled “One Thing You Don’t Need To Be An Entrepreneur: A College Degree” - or in my case, a high school degree (which I got.. barely). The comment got the attention of Fred who was kind enough to shoot out an email to a variety of his friends/contacts, Boris Wertz being one of them.

Boris is the CEO of W Media Ventures and Nexopia, among many other things. I sat down with Boris for coffee and once again a couple months later for a quick follow-up. Within 30 minutes of my follow-up meeting I had a job offer sitting in my inbox.

As the new Content & Marketing manager my responsibilities are to manage site SEO and traffic generation, monetization and general site strategy across 2 of the Techvibes Media Inc. properties - Techvibes.com and CarrieandDanielle.com. Bringing a variety of skills to the table that I have acquired over the years running a few other successful websites and working as a freelance SEO/Marketer.

Now being an entrepreneur doesn’t involve working for someone - as many of you are probably thinking while reading this. At this point in my life it’s about the experience of being around other entrepreneurs in a great environment where I have pretty much free-reign on a handful of projects - with the ability to move around and work with dozens of other sites in the W Media portfolio.

EDIT: This is my comment from Hacker News - I agree this post does lack substance, so hopefully my reply will add something:

Totally agree with both of you guys (and yes the comment was crude - I can be an asshole).

I agree, looking back the post would’ve been better minus the ‘How’ - but it was really as simple as I stated in the post. Leveraging social media to work for your benefit isn’t that hard.

From that one comment with my linkedin profile (in the replies of my original) I was given 3 or so offers for other startups/companies. Just from the link. 1 crude comment got the attention of Fred (and about 5 other people who emailed me telling me I was a stupid kid).

Fred connected me with as many people as he could and Boris actually took the time to sit down with me. Now Boris is an awesome guy - but I don’t think he would’ve taken me as seriously without Fred Wilson behind me.

One of the points I’m trying to make is, use whatever connections you can. The old saying “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” still is extremely true to this day - of course, once you’re in the door you have to know what the hell you’re doing or you won’t last long.

All is fixed now, but I did grab this screenshot during all of the chaos.

I find it hilarious that Twitter stayed up during the whole fiasco and Google broke. A day for the record books.

I want to focus more time on school work and get it all done so I can take the rest of the year off. I also want to work with a friend on some small projects and developing them into a business that generates some sort of revenue.

So all I really want is some more time and with Twitter in the picture I can’t get a whole lot done (I’m sad, I know). If you want to contact me just email me, I setup a contact page with a simple Wufoo form. I am also on aim/gtalk quite a bit so you can chat with me on aim ( michael.yurechko [at] mac.com - aim only).

Bye bye Twitter.

P.S - I’m going to be developing out a domain I bought and still haven’t used, it’s microblg.com. I will probably setup a tumblr account this week for it.

I came across yet another client today while browsing, it’s called DestroyTwitter. It is another Air app, but what I really like about it is the simplicity, style, and ease of use. Twhirl was probably the best Air Twitter client but it’s ugly and has a few flaws. DestroyTwitter isn’t perfect but it works well enough and looks good enough for me to consider its use as a full-time Twitter client.

I’ve attached a couple screenshots, download it and let me know what you think. Also, be sure to follow @destroytoday, the guy who developed it all - he seems really open to feedback so if it’s missing something let him know.

Ooh, almost forgot. You can follow me on twitter too @yurechko

Having a Twitter account does not make you a social media consultant.

Anyone who labels themselves as one deserves to be shot. Having a couple hundred followers does not make you a ‘guru’ or an all-knowing being.

Now, I’m just going to take a step back for a second before I get bashed into the ground. There are people who understand social networking and how to use these free tools online to help a business. These people are called marketers. This is what they do, help the image of companies using the web and tools such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. They do this day in and day out for a living and understand the ins and outs of these tools and how to use them effectively.

My problem is not with these people. My problem is with the seemingly endless supply of amateurs who know how to setup a WordPress blog and attempt to market themselves as consultants. These “consultants” all recommend the same steps to ‘building an image online’ that have been listed repeatedly before online, let me just give you a break down:

1. Create a blog.
2. Create a Twitter account.
3. Create a Facebook account and Fan page.
4. Establish your brand on each network (logos on profiles) and offer your hand to help people with their problems (relating to your company/product)

This is the gist of what these people will offer you. If you own a company and have hired someone to do this sort of work for you and this is what they gave you.. I feel bad for you, you got screwed. If you’re looking for someone to do this sort of stuff for you, the right way, please avoid ‘Social Media Consultants’ at all costs and find someone who really knows what they’re doing.

My name is Michael Yurechko and I am NOT a social media consultant

Update: Wyatt wrote up a blog post giving a different take on the ‘everyone is a social media consultant’ line.

Edit: Andreas just reminded me of the ‘New Media Douchebags’ video that KommonKraft (Cinnamon Pants) did awhile back.

For awhile I thought it was just my feed, but the other day Loic Le Meur (@loic) twittered that his feeds weren’t being updated quick enough either and received a bunch of responses along the same lines. At one point he mentioned a 24 hour delay in post delivery.

To me this is unacceptable and it sets off the “never rely on web services” fear that gets triggered from time to time. Some may think I’m acting irrational but I think you should rely on yourself and never expect a web app to always be there or perform properly.

So, if you’re like me and looking to toss FeedBurner out the door for a younger and cooler option, what should we do? Well, I’m sure there is another service around somewhere that does the same thing but I don’t want to have to rely on them either. How about we self host our own RSS feeds? For those of you shocked at the thought, don’t be. We did it before FeedBurner, we can do it now and we can do it after FeedBurner is gone.

Now I’m sure you’re asking “but Michael, what about all those features?” FeedBurner offers a lot of tools that many people have gotten used to, so lets see if we can replicate these in a self-hosted situation.

The Tools

What’s the most popular feature in FeedBurner? Well, to me, it has to be the ability to track how many subscribers you have. So the first thing we need to do is figure out how we’re going to track all those readers we have.

FeedStats

FeedStats is a plug-in that does just what we’re looking for, it tracks how many RSS subscribers you have. Nothing more, nothing less. It works across the multiple types of feeds your blog may have, such as RSS and Atom, and gives you an exact number of how many people are paying attention to your blog.

One thing you’ll notice is that it’s not as pretty. There are no super fancy graphs or pie charts. Personally, I’m not looking for pretty, I just need something that works and will tell me how many people are interested in what I’m writing and FeedStats handles this task with ease.

[Download FeedStats]

Subscribe2

Now a lot of people use the email delivery feature in FeedBurner to let their readers get the latest blog updates right in their inbox. So how are we going to replicate this?

If you have a fairly small site or a powerful enough server, I would recommend Subscribe2. The plugin allows you to collect your readers’ email addresses and automatically update them when you write a new post. You can also use their email addresses to send out a newsletter, or any type of update, if need be.

The only problem with Subscribe2 is that if you have a very large site, or don’t know what you’re doing, you may get in trouble with your web host. Sending out a lot of emails at once from your server can put strain on the server and also come across as spam to your host which may get your account suspended. Please, I repeat please, read the Subscribe2 FAQ and all included instructions to avoid getting in trouble. If you can’t find everything you need there, or are unsure about something, talk to your web host before using the plugin.*

[Download Subscribe2]

Aweber

Aweber is a tool mostly used by businesses to send out newsletters to their clients/customers. The typical use is to put a form on a web site and collect names and email addresses, but Aweber has recently added features that let you manage your RSS-to-email needs.

Unlike the others, Aweber isn’t free and it’s not a self-hosted service. If your site is large enough you may want to consider using Aweber though to keep the strain off your server. As I said, Aweber isn’t self-hosted, but because they have been around for so long and a pretty good reputation, I have much more faith in Aweber than I do in FeedBurner to get your messages delivered.

[Aweber.com]

Conclusion/Disclaimer

For the average user FeedBurner is more than sufficient, but for the paranoid/geeky out there a self-hosted solution lets us sleep a bit easier. Plus it’s more fun.

If you have any recommendations for other services or have something to say please leave a comment. If you like the post feel free to subscribe to my self-hosted RSS feed.

*Disclaimer: I am not responsible for anything that happens if you use these tools. It’s all on you, do your research.

Disclosure: The Aweber.com links are affiliate links.

FAQ

How the hell do you pronounce your last name?
It’s more fun if I let you guess forever, but it’s actually pronounced yurr-etch-co. Not ‘your-echo’ or ‘your-chen-ko’ (as some do, despite the fact that it doesn’t have an N in it).

Despite my long-ass name, I usually go by just ‘Mike.’ If you can’t remember the domain I have registered MIKEYUR.com and that forwards to this site. That’s MIKE YUR . COM - all you need to remember.

Are you on Twitter?
Who isn’t these days? I’ve been on Twitter for close to two years now, I go by @yurechko on Twitter. I don’t care about my follower count and I don’t follow everyone. Please, if you add me, introduce yourself with a simple “@yurechko …” - if you tweet interesting stuff and are a pretty cool person, I’ll follow you. Spammers looking to gain follow-backs need not apply.

I think I’ve heard your name before, you did that cool site thing, right?
Be honest, you’ve never heard of my name before and I don’t do anything cool. If you’re interested in stuff I’ve done in the past then check out my about page. A couple sites I’ve run or worked for in the past include MacApper.com (co-founder) and Appletell.com (editor).

So, what do you do for a living?
I have worked the last 3 years of my life as a freelance writer, and sometimes editor, for a variety of sites - mostly tech/gadget/apple-related ones. I am an amateur SEO and marketer, I tinker with SEO because I find it fun and interesting (geek) and I work doing marketing-related jobs here and there.