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Bloggers, Beware of What You UnPublish

Published by Joseph Ferrara January 5th, 2007 in Blogging, Tips and rss.


i-made-a-mistake.JPGYou have just written a great rant and in your excitement you rush to hit the publish button. Then you realize you made a major goof. Maybe you named the wrong person or just got your facts totally wrong and anyone who reads it will think you’re an idiot. And your readers will surely point it out to you. Hey, we’re all idiots at one time or another, and we all make mistakes, but we wouldn’t want them to follow us forever. Luckily, you realize your mistake and take down the post. Ahh, you breath a sigh of relief. You will not be a laughing stock after all. Not so fast.

If you have an RSS feed of your posts, your “unpublication” removes the post from your blog but NOT from the feed. All your subscribers will see what you originally posted when they check their feedreader.

I saw this happen recently. A blogger posted what some might object to as blatant self-promotion and solicitation of their readers for some future ego gratification. Frankly, we have no problem with any of it. We’re not against self-promotion and we like our ego stroked as much as the next person. Who doesn’t? Besides, it’s their blog to do with as they wish. But, for whatever reason, the blogger removed the post from the blog. But, unbeknownst to them, it was, and still is, in the feedreader (Bloglines, at least).

TIP: If this happens to you, fellow blogger, we think we have a solution. Take down the post and write it over. Then re-publish. Your hastily published original post is now gone, replaced by the edited one. And no one is the wiser. Except maybe a clever blogger who took a screenshot of it. Welcome to the transparent web.

Unrelated Tip: As a fan of Bob Marley’s music, I Made A Mistake is a classic Wailer song. No mistake about it.

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  • i always end up finding errors or typos after I publish it no matter how many times I proof it. My email subscribers get a new one every time I republish then.

    If "I Shot the Sherrif" applied to this your post some how I would have been scared.
  • "A blogger posted what some might object to as blatant self-promotion and solicitation of their readers for some future ego gratification."

    A shorter version of that sentence would read:

    "A blogger posted."
  • John - THAT was funny!

    I'm pretty sure I know of which post your speak, and I use Bloglines too.

    And you're right, it is still there. That's disturbing, in some ways.

    I had/have no problem with the original post either, though some would. But hey, someone, somewhere will have a problem with anything.
  • Well said Jay. Personally, we think self-promotion somehow got a bad rap on the internet, especially on blogs. I've even seen tip cups on blogs. Who cares? And anyone who says they don't self-promote on their blog is merely splitting hairs.
  • Thanks for pointing out the one of the benefits of having no subscribers. :)

    I learned this lesson myself lately after writing a bit of a rant about pushy investors. For some reason the arrogant tone of my post was not apparent to me until after I published it. Once I did, the post started to dog me in a big way and after about an hour, I rushed to my dashboard and hit the delete button, but of course, it lives on in my feed.

    I suppose when a guy is bent out of shape, he should take that old approach of writing today and posting tomorrow.
  • "And anyone who says they don’t self-promote on their blog is merely splitting hairs."

    Agreed. I'm not a big fan of "in your face" marketing on blogs. And contrary to some opinions, I don't put listings on my blog (there are plenty of other places to find them).

    But really, I'm "The Phoenix Real Estate Guy". It's the URL for Pete's sake. If that isn't a form of self-promotion, I'm not sure what would be...

    (and I AM *The* Phoenix Real Estate Guy, despite what Greg Swann, Jonathan Dalton and 40,000 other agents might say/think! :) )
  • Whether it be Phoenix or the blogos, you're The Man to us Jay. :)
    The proof is in the puddin'
  • Hey, thanks, Jay.

    By the way, be sure to buy a house from me online.

    :)
  • Thanks for the excellent advise to a new blogger. I'll try to keep that in mind when I actually do have some readers.
  • Marty
    You cover an interesting market. If we can help get you some readers we will. You are welcome to contribute a post through our Open Mike. Here's the link. Email us. We'd love to know more about you.
    http://tinyurl.com/y7scww
  • michael
    gosh...feels like you're referring to me...but I bet I'm not alone. md
  • Yeah, that sounds pretty typical of something I'd do. I guess I'll just add it to my 'Out-Take List' of all those other things I've thrown out to the Universe (both written and verbal) and couldn't take back---the 'Un-ringing of the Bell Experiment' I've been working on my whole adult life. Who has time to re-write anything, anyway? I'm not sure but I think that's why I started blogging in the first place.
  • Hah! After reading this and even commenting on it a couple days ago, I just deleted a post I made this morning. It bugged me all day, it was too negative. It wasn't anything about the market but just about something going on in my local community.

    Just because I now have the ability to send my words out there doesn't mean I need to voice my every opinion.

    Thankfully, my brand new baby blog doesn't have any subscribers yet, I don't even know if anyone except my Mom in Washington state who proofreads for me even sees it.

    But still, it bothered me to have that up.
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