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Danny is an awesome video creator… He teaches you stuff and it’s fun to watch!

Ah, yes… time for another post about… TWITTER!

Aren’t some of us spending inordinate amounts of time there?  I was at a conference with Carrie Wilkerson–the Barefoot Executive, who has like 52,000+ followers, and I thought she was going to wear out the keys on her Blackberry, I swear. She’s amazing.!

I’m lucky if I get to tweet a few times a day, and really feel inadequate there to be sure. But I try to offer blog posts and such to help people along the way, as well as retweeting cool stuff and communicating with the followers on my list and the people whom I follow. ‘Course I follow just about everyone that follows me. Why not? It’s only respectful. The only ones I don’t follow have no avatar and are obviously trying to scam the Twitterverse.

And then, there are those who follow you and then, unfollow you right away just to build their Twitter list. That’s really sleazy, in my book. And I used to hunt those people down and unfollow them back. Sheesh. It’s what they deserve, right?

But it’s nearly impossible. Qwitter works sometimes. I’ll get a whole bunch of emails for a day or so from Qwitter, and then, pffft!!! NAda.  I’m hoping that nobody is being an ass, but somehow, I’m thinking not. There will always be as many asses as there are chairs and you just have to run into one every now and then, right?

But to track them manually?

Here’s the thing: You can’t trust Twitter! When it looks like there are a bunch of people who aren’t following you, it might just be that they are following you and that Twitter is messing things up. Unfollowing them will do you a world of  hurt People who are following you don’t like it when you unfollow them. They take it as a personal affront.

And, you can’t use the services that tell you who the people are who aren’t following you back. They mess up because Twitter messes up, and tell you so in their terms of service.

What’s the solution?

Even though it might piss you off, you have to go about your business and just not worry at all about the people not following you back! It really doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, sure… it would be nice to nuke the nasties off the face of the planet, but there are just too many things to do in a typical entrepreneurial day, right?

The moral is: Don’t waste your time worrying about who’s following you or not following you. Use Twitter for the fun application that it is, and make lots of friends that are interested in the same things as you are. That’s really what’s important and what will keep your Twitterverse clean and clear. Just Tweet away and ignore the rest. There just aren’t enough moments in the day.

Some people are really sick and tired of hearing about Twitter, and it’s true… Twitter has become the new fad for online enthusiasts, marketers and non-marketers alike.

But if you’re a marketer, have you thought about this?

It’s like having a sub-list. I mean, you can’t email these people, but you can tweet your followers anytime you want. So, if you’re like me, you write a blog post and BOOM! goes directly to Twitter.  That way, I’m connecting with my followers on a bigger scale than a mere 140 characters, right? When people like my post, they sign up for my list or at least, subscribe to my feed.  But you can’t just send blog posts. You need to interact.

That’s not to say that you should post marketing stuff to Twitter. That’s out, pretty much. I mean, if you tweet every day, folks might be OK with you dropping an AWeber message into Twitter every now and then, especially if you’re giving something away. But direct marketing is out, frowned upon, and if you do it very much, you’ll lose tons of followers. So, you’ll be defeating your own purpose.

Twitter is more like a guerrilla marketing tactic.

But then, making friends with people is the key to all marketing isn’t it? Who trusts you more than a friend?

If you want to get more friends on Twitter, be sure to participate in a quasi-nouveau tradition called #followfriday. The # tag will allows folks to go to TwitterSearch and find all the tweets that have #followfriday. Tags can be created for any purpose.

So, pick a few cool people from your list and tweet away, like this:

#followfriday @BrianEdmondson @tellman @kylebattis @michaelpurvis

And so on up to 140 characters. People on your list see that you like the folks in the #followfriday tweet and if they like you, they’ll check out your pals, too, and probably follow them, as well. It’s fun and very cool. And if you’re consistent with your #followfriday’s, you’ll be in lists that other folks send out, too.

Only one caveat about #followfriday… Only do it on Fridays. Otherwise, you have to find another # like #woofwednesday or something else.

Come follow me at http://Twitter.com/PatMarcello and let’s get acquainted.  Put #OVBlogger into your post and let’s see how many people we can get in that #!

It allows you to highlight the cool part of a web page, and it saves whatever you choose as an entry in your Inbox on the site. You can go there, and compile a blog post from it or you can just Twitter stuff.

Very sweet!

You can also publish what you find to Wiki-Lights, a sister site by the same people.

You have to register, but TwitterLights is free to use and enjoy. It will make tweeting a tad simpler, if you’re someone who likes to present interesting finds to your Twitterverse.

Blogging what you find along your day is made simple, too, which will really come in handy for me. Plus, you can add notes to what you find, like adding a Post-It® Note, right? It’s totally cool.

Take this one to the bank, my friends! It’s a winner!

So, it’s been a loooooooong day, and I’m just wrapping things up.

Thanks to a Twitter friend, Kat Tansey (@kattansey), I found this very cool background template for Twitter that you can make right from your PowerPoint program. Pretty sweet, eh? Get it HERE

I haven’t actually tried it yet, but thought I’d pass it along as a very neat element of a site called “The Closet Entrepreneur” at http://TheClosetEntrepreneur.com The site owner, Tomas Carrillo, gives you some cool ideas, like how  to clear the clutter from under your desk to making your own laptop stand. Lots of neat little goodies there. But there’s serious stuff, too, like creating a business plan, and “Elevator Pitch 101.”

Everything on the blog is delivered in a light tone, making the whole website just totally appealing and fun. I plan to keep a watch on this blog and just added it to my Google Reader.

Tomas, two thumbs up! Keep those tips coming! I love it.

Ah, yes… Back to Twitter, as one of my commenters said.  I agree. I do talk about Twitter quite a lot these days, but hey… it’s HUGE right now, so why not? I enjoy it every day between 5 and about 6 p.m and if you track my stats at TweetStats.com, you’ll see that’s true.

But I get some interesting sites from Twitter, some of which I write about. Yet, some I don’t because they really fall outside my niche. But… here are some fun and interesting sites I got from my Twitter pals today:

Twipocalypse Now: Warnings of a Twitter Bubble at http://www.twitip.com/twitter-bubble/ Sorry to say that it flew out of Tweet Deck before I got the person’s UN that found this.  Grr… Moves fast when you have a lot of friends.

From @ShermanHu 10 Features That Will Make Twitter Better at http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/10-features-that-will-make-twitter-better/ ( I totally give this one two thumbs up. Be sure to check this out!) The only suggestion I have here is that if Twitter is going to have a URL shortening service built in, it should be trackable like with BudURL.

Trust Price Software Wholesale (thanks to @EricaBiz): http://www.trustprice.com/ Very cool person whom I met at JVAlert. She knows her tech stuff, people. Smart, very smart.

Free Seamless Background Textures: http://www.absolutecross.com/graphics/textures/ from @MarkDulisse. These are great. Use them for Twitter or your site. Tons of usable stuff and it’s free! Thanks, Mark!

From @MariSmith: Facebook chatter http://demo.com/live/ Not sure how long this will be going for now, but looks totally interesting and something worth watching for when available.

Those are just 5 fabulous sites to check out. I have some pretty cool Twitter friends, eh? I get this stuff all day long, and love it!

‘Course I can’t touch Twitter much until work is done, but you see this? And they say that Twitter is a waste of time.

Feh.

So, I’m always on the lookout for cool new Web 2.0 stuff, right?

Today, I’m over at GotoWeb20 and I found “Twesents,” a whole bunch of cute, funny, rude, and otherwise interesting virtual presents that you can send to your Twitter friends. I just sent my pal Carrie Wilkerson, the Barefoot Executive, a pair of baby seals, just to try the service out. She posted a pic of me on Facebook yesterday, and I wanted to thank her. This was just a fun way to let her know I appreciate her, right?

The downside is that if you have a lot of friends, you have to sift through them all until you find the one(s) you want to send things to. It took me a good 5 minutes just to find her.  Or so I thought. I went back and found the “search” function after the fact… duh. I have a tendency to half read instructions, to just blunder ahead on my own, and I often pay for it. Grr…

Anyway, it’s just a fun site that I thought my Tweeple would like to know about.

However, GotoWeb20.net is a much more fascinating site than you can imagine. I heard about it a couple of years back from Jack Humphrey at a Stomper Net conference and have been a huge fan ever since.

You can find any number of interesting and cool things there that have nothing whatsoever to do with Twitter. I can’t tell you how many of them I use and have accumulated over time. The Web just gets more and more fun all the time.

Check out both of these sites. I know you’ll love ‘em.

Go to http://SeesMic.com and open a free account!

Keep in mind that the quality of my webcam isn’t that great. If you have a better one, your mileage may vary.

Search for PatMarcello, and be my friend. I have about 70 videos in there now that answer various questions about Internet marketing.

Be my friend, and I’ll check out your videos, too!

Thanks to Brian Edmondson, who makes all the videos for Overcome Everything’s ListBuilding Club, I found a new flash player for my EasyBlogTricks.com blog. I need to do an overhaul there because of the changes to WordPress 2.7, but haven’t had the time. Still, this new player will really make things easier for me. I’ve had lots of trouble keeping the videos (especially the video on the front door) working.

I think I have a solution!

The site is LongTail Video at: http://www.longtailvideo.com/

There are complete installation instructions, and you can download the player free, as long as you’re not using it for commercial gain. Since EasyBlogTricks.com is just an information site, I can use it with the non-commercial license. But if it works as well as I think it will, I’ll definitely buy a commercial license for only 39 Euros, which translates to about $50. You may think that’s a lot for a video player, but this one is very customizable. It rocks!

There are plugins for things like:

• Running rolling ads in the player. Stick one into your blog’s sidebar.
• WordTube converts your site to a “YouTube” type environment in a WordPress blog. Neat.
• Viral allows you to have a share function and will allow viewers to see other videos you have created

There are different skins you can choose from, as well, from simple to insane.

The add-ons are quite interesting, too. Here’s one made just for my specific purpose:

“The Simple Flash Video Plugin builds on the plugins that already allow easy posting of .flv or .mp4 files on the popular Wordpress platform. It also enables advanced stats tracking of your viewership via Simple Stats.”

Sweet! Tracking stats and a cool player, too!

If you’re into video, and you should be, this is a site you should definitely check out. I’m learning more about video and all the cool things you can do with it every day, and it’s becoming the medium of choice online. Think of these things:

• People are used to watching TV. It’s only natural that since the speed of our connections continues to improve that video will become more and more popular with the Internet audience. Just look at YouTube and how fast it’s grown over the past 3 years.
• Creating video is often easier than writing. Many people hate to write, and video is a perfect solution. Video products will become the norm, rather than the exception.
• Video is fun to create and to edit. Making short films and editing them to show to an audience is getter easier and more fun to do all the time.

So, it’s time you jumped into video. If you’re already there, trust me… you need to check out LongTail and their very cool product.

Found a cool site today, thanks to one of my Tweeple. The bad part is that I went to check out this site, and lost the person who recommended it. Argh. Hate when that happens. The Tweets are just coming faster and furiouser these days, you know? If that person would like to speak up… I’d love to give people your “follow” address. DM me: @PatMarcello

Anyway, good news for you, my readers…

Have some PowerPoint presentations hanging around that you don’t know what to do with?

Take ‘em over to SlideShare.net

You upload the slides, and just add audio to make a pre-recorded type webinar.

But with SlideShare, I can put this stuff on my website or even use it for a call with my members. I can prepare a presentation for a call, assign it to my listeners as “pre-call homework” and then, do a Q&A from that presentation. I want to do stuff like that now because my folks are running out of questions, and it’s really important to me that I help them push their businesses forward. Sometimes, people just don’t know the right questions to ask, right?

Just by putting the slideshow up on SlideShare, you’ll get traffic to whatever site or blog you want to direct them to, as well–if they like your show. Pretty sweet.

I’ll be trying out this service very soon. Let you know my results!

And thank you for the recommendation, whomever you are. Let me know, K?

Everyone is all about Twitter these days. It’s all anyone was talking about last weekend.

I like Twitter, too, as you know, and what’s totally cool is that since JV Alert, I’ve picked up almost 300 new followers.  Wahoo!

Yesterday, Andrew Devine (@adevine1) posted an awesome tweet about 14 cool Twitter tools from Kenny Hyder. Some of them I’ve not heard about before, and I thought I’d share. Check this out: 14 Tools of Highly Effective Twitter Users

• Ever wonder if you should follow someone or not?
• Check out the plethora of # tags that exist
• Stalk people on Twitter (Follow them incognito.)
• Get some very cool stats about your usage
• Download and Save a copy of your Twitter account
• Get beyond TweetBacks
• Enter yourself in the Twitter Business Directory
• Host your own short URL
• Add your photographs to Twitter easily
• Post to Twitter from your Firefox address bar (I like TwiterFox for that better, really.)
• Post to your Google Calendar by sending direct messages
• Find stats on your Twitter relationships
• Grade yourself as a Tweep
• Schedule and post Tweets

All there!

I started this yesterday, so sorry I’m behind. We started a new program at Overcome Everything — ListBuilding 411, where members can ask one question per day and a member of our crack OE staff will answer in video. It’s pretty cool for the members, but we’re experiencing some growning pains and guess who gets to manage all that?

Moi.

So, I’m behind.

But not for long. Bear with me.

Well..

Not really.

But Ed totally has a point. Read his blog post at http://tubbynerd.com/2009/02/10/its-not-you-its-me-my-goodbye-to-facebook-friends/#comment-6149124

When you’re so big that you’re at your 5,000 friend limit, most of what you’re getting in your update stream is stuff you know little or nothing about. You can’t use Facebook the way it was meant to be used, which as Ed says is keeping up with friends and just kind of virtually hanging out.

He’s right.

I don’t know at least a quarter of the people that are my friends at Facebook. I mean, I’d like to get to know them better, but all they seem to do is invite me to stuff I could care less about or flood my inbox with garbage. They mean well, I guess, but I’m not interested in their marketing messages. I’m interested in knowing them as people.

One of my high school (actually grade school) friends found me there and an old neighbor, which was totally cool. I’d love to stay in touch with them and see what’s going on in their lives. But what? It’s nuts. Barbara, my high school friend, wrote to me and said, “I still have no idea of what you do.”

Hmm…

Neither does my family or anyone outside of the Internet marketing arena. It’s really funny when they say that because what do I tell them? I write in my blog every day? I help people to set up autoresponders? I’m immersed in Web 2.0? Ha! That would mean what to them?

So, Ed, I totally get it. You can delete me, if we are friends. Not sure we are. I’m don’t usually just ask people to be my friend because I know who they are. I know Ed Dale well, but not personally. I just think he’s a smart guy and I like his style. Anyway, I won’t be offended, if you divorce me, Ed, because you don’t know me from the guy that mows my lawn.

And you shouldn’t be offended either. Let Ed use Facebook the way it was meant to be used, and stop sending me stupid crap that I don’t give two hoots about. I don’t want any more plants. No more eggs. No more STUFF. I’d rather have a message that says, “Hey, Pat, How’s it going, girl? I am yadda, yadda, and I like cats.” Now, that’s someone I can relate to. Anyone who likes cats can totally be my friend.

When you make a post to your blog, do you bookmark it in the social sites? Every time?

Do you favorite anything but your own stuff?

Do you know that you might be link spamming?

I mean, you really shouldn’t bookmark every single post you make, unless your posts are chock full of incredible information. If you’re posting about what your cat had for lunch, don’t bookmark it. People won’t be interested in reading that stuff.

Be discerning. When you write a great post, totally bookmark it through OnlyWire, Tell-a-Friend Social Twist, or whatever you like to use. Tell the world!

Then, other folks will find your blog. They’ll visit you and become interested in what you have to say.

Also be sure to bookmark other interesting things you find on the Web. You can make friends on places like Digg and StumbleUpon, who will check out everything you bookmark. That’s what social sites are all about.

My idea is that at some point, people will decide what appears in the search engines, rather than an algorithm. We can vote on what we like and don’t like, and have the people decide what is important to them and what isn’t.

Cool?

Do you have it? I mean, do you have the Twitter bug?

Well…

As I’ve said before, you need to get it.

And, you need to hook your AWeber account up to it, as well. It’s simple.  All you need to do is to create a broadcast email, just as you would any other day. And then, when you’re finished at the bottom, AWeber asks if you want to syndicate your email. Open that drop down menu, and be sure to fill in your Twitter username and password. AWeber sends a quick link to the email over to Twitter for you. That way, you’re not just mailing to your list, but also to your followers on Twitter. Sweet!

Just be sure that it’s an email you want your Twitter followers to see. For example, if you write something about a call that you’re having for the members of your membership site, don’t Twitter that, usually. I mean, if you have a paid membership site, and you’re giving out the details of your call in the email… bad idea.

But if you’re trying to get more members, you might talk about the call in your email without mentioning the call-in number, time, or date, and use it to get people interested in a membership to your site. That works out well.

Also use Twitter for blog posting. I mean, if you write something very cool that you want your Twitter list to see, great! Get the plugin Twitter Tools and let it tweet the blog post for you.

Just don’t make the mistake of only using Twitter for emails and blog posts. I try not to do that, and lord knows I’m incredibly busy. I don’t have a lot of time for Twitter, but I try to make as many posts as I can throughout the day. It’s not a ton, but it keeps my hand in the networking part of it, and it’s a lot of fun. I usually try to do more posting on the weekend.

So, Twitter isn’t just for goofing off. It’s for networking and for marketing your stuff. Just don’t abuse your Twitter list by sending nothing but marketing messages. People won’t like it and will stop following you. But, be nice to them and they’ll love you forever.

Come follow me at http://Twitter.com/PatMarcello and let’s have some fun!

Do you love all things Web 2.0 like I do?

Well…

Do you love video?

I have a great place for you: Seesmic.com

You can go there and post really short videos and get to know people on the site. They respond to your posts by making return video comments and such, and it’s a whole lot of fun. Kind of like the old bulletin board days, but with moving pictures, rather than text entries. It rocks!

You will need a webcam, though. The Flip Video just doesn’t seem to work with Seesmic. They don’t accept the .avi format that Flip Vid uses, so you have to convert your video to .flv or .mp4. I tried that and it still didn’t work for me, but oh well… I’m not a video genius. If anyone can help with that, it would rock. Flip Vid is far superior to what I’m using.

I have this crappy web cam that I got free with something I bought. It’s really old and makes fuzzy pictures, but nobody cares. Everyone is there having fun and communicating with the rest of the world.

Check it out: http://seesmic.com

It’s a blast!

So, the more popular Twitter gets, the more sites that pop up about Twitter. It’s amazing to me to see all this activity and how many people are truly getting into this community. It seems to be getting bigger and bigger every day. I mean, there are more apps, more sites, more people following me (which is kind of creepy… wish they’d think of another term, LOL), and on and on. I mean, some people have tens of thousands of followers! I’m still a small fry with only… let me look… Today, it’s 763.

Oh, and I have 1,237,358 second order followers. Holy smokes!! That’s the number you get when you add up all the people that are following the people that are following me.  But sad to say that my centralization is “fragile.”

I suck.

But wait… Maybe not. The more followers you have, apparently, the lower your centralization.

But my Social Capital is “High Average.”  That’s kind of mediocre, right? I mean, it’s like a C+! I do suck!

Oh well…

How do I find all this out?

Twinfluence, of course!

Just put your Twitter username and password in there and bingo! You can find out if you suck, too.

And unless you’re an online rock star, you probably do.

But wait…  My rank is 3,306. If I have all those millions of second-tier followers, that doesn’t seem so bad, right?

Maybe I don’t suck, after all.

I’ll have to look for another site that tells me I don’t or I just won’t sleep tonight.  Quick, throw me an anchor!

You realize, of course, that video is taking over the Web, right?  I mean, with all the video sites online, it’s become so easy to just watch instead of read. We’ve been trained to watch since birth. Yes, even people my age grew up with television.  But the Internet brought us back to the written word. The connections just weren’t fast enough to make video viable.

I remember way back in the  late 90’s when I was amazed that someone could actually watch a video on a 56K modem, and was pissed because mine was only 28K. I had to upgrade!

Well…

How things have changed in a little more than a decade. Now, the Internet is full of site, sound and moving pictures. It’s awesome!

There are several ways that you can get online with your own personal movie. You can use a web cam, which is pretty inexpensive, or perhaps you have one of those newer laptops with the web cam built right in. Sweet.  Yet, there are drawbacks to web cams. You can’t leave the computer.

In steps the Flip Video from Pure Digital Technologies. I have the Mino. No, not the HD version. Got mine before that was available. But as my husband says, I don’t need you folks seeing every line on my face. It’s bad enough, already.

But I love it. You turn it on, point, and record. That’s it! It even has it’s own USB connector, and you just open it up and transfer the film into your computer.  It comes with software built right in, as well. You can’t do much editing with it, so you’ll still need Camtasia, Cam Studio, Windows Movie Maker, Sony Vegas, or another editing software to make the films A-#1, the Duke, but it’s fun.

Yesterday, Tellman turned me onto Seesmic.com, where you can post a question and start a conversation on video. I answered a couple of his, but I’m going to start posting questions of my own soon enough. It’s a blast! Only problem there is that I can’t seem to upload from the Flip Vid to Seesmic. I was able to make videos with my crappy web cam and post them, so before I really get into the swing there, I need a better web cam.

Anyway, if you aren’t into video yet, get into it! It’s an awesome SEO tool, as well. When you post to multiple directories, and use the proper keywords and descriptions, you’ll see traffic to your site. And now that Google has universal search going, your videos will actually show up in the SERPs. (Search engine results pages.) Cool, non?

Do you know about  Blip.fm? It’s an awesome site! You can look up all the great music you like and add it to your playlist. Become a DJ! I just started today because I’m always reading Tweets from @frankparker (who’s bluebrummie on Blip.fm) and enjoying the tunes he posts. So, I decided to become EclecticRocker there and just do some of my own tuning. Totally fun!

Here’s another set of apps for Twitter you might enjoy: http://twtapps.com This is cool… TwtCard… Twitter greetings, like greeting cards. You choose a little square-head icon and write a Tweet message, then just send the link. Cute.

With TwtPoll you create a poll with a 140-character question, and TwtPoll keeps the stats. Neat!

TwtVite lets you create an event and invite all your Twitter friends.

I swear, every day people are coming up with the coolest Twitter apps and it’s tons of fun. If you aren’t on Twitter, you’re really missing the biggest thing online right now.

My Space?

That was so… yesterday.

And while we’re on the subject of cool Web 2.0 apps, have you tried TechSmith’s Jing yet? You can create short films of your screen, kind of like Camtasia. Well… that figures since Camtasia is a TechSmith product. Jing doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but still pretty cool. And what’s really cool is that it’s free.

Oh, and there’s Animoto. Did you see the testimonials montage that Tellman made for the launch? Wow! Sweet. Check it out here: http://budurl.com/OEtestimonials I have to say that it really touched me to see how many people we help. It’s not about the money, really, is it? It’s about the relationships and the people we can make happier in life. God, I love my job! Anyway, Animoto allows you to take photos and text and such and upload it. You choose music, and Animoto makes a really cool professional-looking movie from your stuff. Neat-o times two.

There are so many cool things to do in Web 2.0, and a lot of it is totally SEO helpful. Get ou there and explore!

You know, there is no better search engine spider bait than good content. It’s like their sustenance, their mana, their raison d’etre.

But I’m talking good, relevant content, not crap that you throw together, swipe elsewhere, or buy rights to. I mean good, unique content that teaches, explores, reviews, or entertains. You need to learn either how to make this or how to acquire it, if you want to rank in the SERPs (search engine results pages).

Blogging is awesome, of course, or I wouldn’t do it almost every day. It’s a great way to communicate with the people in your niche. Hopefully, some of them are on your list or even better, if they aren’t, you have a lovely big optin box in the topmost widget of sidebar.

But there are other cool places to put content that can give you great spider juice because you’re making incoming links from high-ranking websites.

We all know about article directories, right? The premiere directories are, of course, Chris Knight’s Ezine Articles. It’s just the best. And then, there is Go Articles, also good, and if you want to distribute, just to get traffic (because dupe content won’t really help your SEO cause), there’s iSnare.com, where you can pay $2 and have your article distributed all over the Web.

But what about the Web 2.0 content sites? Do you know how many of them there are, and how awesome they can be?

We’re talking…

Scribd: With a page rank of 7, it’s a heavy hitter. Just never, ever put a link in there or your entire IP address will be banned. I’m back in their good graces as an author, and that pleases moi.

HubPages: What a cool site. You can be commercial there all you want, even add modules from Amazon and eBay.  Page rank: 5

Zimbio: You can upload your blog feed articles and have them distributed to different Wikis. I would allow the spiders to find the content on my blog first, though. You’re serving dupe content. So, check the cache date of your blog first, then Zimbio the stuff. Or, better, just write something new. Page rank: 6

PBWiki: Create your own Wiki free. You can add articles, videos, press releases, or whatever. You can link pages together. Like if you’re writing an article about Web 2.0 content sites, you could link the Zimbio and HubPages pages together. You can categorize posts. And anyone who want to can add to your wiki.

Ning: Create your own social network around your Niche. Very neat. You can add video, audio, pictures, make blog posts, and so on. Nifty.  Ning is a PR 7, but you’d have to build your own page rank there by building up your membership. Not hard to do when you’re offering cool, free information.

Tumblr: Much like Ning in its composition and what you can add. Yet, this is strictly NON-commercial. If you put a link to an affiliate site into Tumblr, they’ll just suspend your account without warning, and all your hard work will be for naught. So, instead, link to another of your Web 2.0 properties, right?

Squidoo: This was probably one of the first, if not THE first Web 2.0 content site. Squidoo is tons of fun and they have plenty of different modules you can add from RSS feeds to polls to pull quotes. It’s a blast.

Gather: This is a great site and it promotes the group atmosphere. Each time you submit something there’s the ability to send it to whatever groups you belong to. Pretty sweet. Of all the sites, this is definitely one of my favorites.

But there are many more content sites in the Web 2.0 arena, and they’re all great. The only thing you need to remember, if you’re a marketer, is to read the terms of service first and see what each site will and won’t allow. There’s nothing worse than having your site yanked from under you, especially when you’ve spent time building it up.

I try to add something to each of my content sites every week. Over time, you’re really building a body of work. If it’s good stuff, it’s not only the search engines that will notice, but people in your niche will notice, as well.  When they like your stuff, they’ll join your list and the bigger your list, the more you’ll make from it.

There are all kinds of reasons for wanting to put as much cool, unique content out there as possible.  The most important of them is that you’ll start to be noticed. With all of the gazillion bloggers, article writers, and Twitterers there are online, you need something solid to give you a leg up.

So, I’ve tried the Facebook ads. They’re pretty cool in terms of placement and presentation, but they produced no results. So, I abandoned them. I’m wondering if any of you have had success. I’d love to hear about it. Leave me a comment and tell me what you think made that happen.

The prediction from eMarketer Daily is that Web 2.0 advertising will rise from $1.175M in 2008 to $1,295M in 2009. Not a huge jump, but it shows how people are getting more excited about placing ads on Web 2.0, but they’re predicting $1.64M in 2013, so a constant rise in advertising in Web 2.0.

But who’s doing it?

On MySpace.com, it’s the big boys. There’s a huge flash ad for the new blockbuster movieTwilight spread across the entire screen. There’s another smaller banner at the bottom for that movie, too. And we have Ashton Kutcher, Don Cheadle, and the World Poker Tour. Not one Internet marketer from our circles. Not one. Inside, we have ads all over the page. I really think that MySpace is getting just the tad spammy, and because it annoys me so, I rarely go back to visit.

I like Facebook 100 times better. The only ads there are the pay-per-click ads and they’re unobtrusive. They don’t smack you in the eyeballs like the MySpace ads do. I mean, it makes you wonder whether you’re at MySpace to socialize or be in a virtual mall lined with nothing but billboards. But MySpace is kind of for the younger generation. Maybe they’re so inured to all of the ads they see day after day that they just don’t notice.

HubPages.com has a couple of banner ads on the front page. Not really annoying because I’m banner blind, I guess. I just don’t see them.  They’re there when you sign in, too, and from companies like AT&T, so I’m guessing that the HubPages owner is making a tidy sum from those banners. I don’t mind. They should be making some money for their service.

Squidoo? No ads at all on the home page. Very classy. We have some advertising on the lenses themselves, but again, not annoying at all. The banners blend in and well… again from big companies. I’d expect nothing less from Seth Godin.

But, what’s the deal with Twitter? I mean, it’s HOT, hot HOT! And they have NO monetization for that service whatsoever. I mean, how many of us could jump right in and give them a pointer or two? Have any of you guru types contacted the people? You’re missing a huge opportunity there!

Anyway, I’m seeing these numbers and they’re looking pretty good, but we’re talking major companies coming in and making money with Web 2.0. I’m really hoping they won’t come in and overwhelm the sites and make a carnival-like atmosphere like they did at MySpace.

Of course, I’m into advertising and all things marketing, but there’s a delicate balance, isn’t there? We all hate email spammers, so there’s a line that we all, marketer and non-marketer alike don’t like crossed.

When the ads come in to pollute the sociability of Web 2.0 — bad news, and the predictions for big ad revenues? Out the window.

I say keep Web 2.0 sociable. Keep too many ads out and people reaching out to people in. That’s the part that makes Web 2.0 special.

No, it’s not in my mind. Really. I have happy places all over cyberspace.

So, OK, you already know that I’m into the SEO, blogging, and IM thing, but did you know that I’m a total cat person? Yep. If I could have a kitty ranch and be a kitty wrangler for the rest of my life, it would make me very happy.

One big problem… I’m allergic to cats. Sigh. So, I have two now (had three once, and that was the most ever), and love them to pieces, but I can never have more than that. I shouldn’t even have one.

Anyway, our first cat, a big orange tabby, was a replacement kitty for one that was lengendary for his exploits and died of old age. I still miss Draco and that was 10 years ago that he left us.

But the replacement kitty is every bit as precious to me, and we call him “Rain Kitty,” though his real name is Fitz. He had a stroke when he was about three years old and it addled his brain. We think he was poisoned, which caused the problem, but he’s uber-cautious and doesn’t cotton to other cats because he can’t see out of one eye or hear on that side, either. So, he’s defensive.

The other cat is a foundling. He was in the bushes in our complex, and though we took him in to find his owners, that never happened. His name is Blue and he’s bad to the bone! He goes into other people’s houses and begs whatever they’ll be willing to give him. But people just love it! He’s like the mayor of our condo complex and everyone knows the blue cat. People say to me, “I don’t like cats, but I like Blue.” He’s a trip.

Yet, he and Fitz don’t get along at all, so all day, we spend letting one cat in one door and the other cat out the other door. It’s been 2 years!

So, if this is an Internet marketing blog, why am I telling you this?

Because you can have any niche you want to have and still make money. You can be in the cat niche, too. Or, you can be in the dog niche, the golf niche, the sailing niche, the cell phone niche, or any other niche where you’re totally interested in the topic.

And when you are, you can build sites in what I call my “fun” places.

I’ve written about HubPages.com before, and I have a site there for my cat interests called “Captivating Cat Breeds.” I also have a wiki about cats at PBWiki. And, I have a Ning site about cats, too. These are all fun for me because I can add articles, videos, polls — whatever. I want to create a fun place to be.

And where do I send people? To my cat store, of course. That’s where I make money from the cat sites. But I could just as easily be selling ebooks, movies, or anything else in regard to cats (and I will be in the future). It’s my fun side.

Just don’t make the mistake of linking your store or the site where you make money to any of your Tumblr blogs because that will get you booted. They don’t like affiliate marketing. So, no problem. Link it to a Squidoo lens and use that to send people to places where they can purchase your wares.

Getting as much content into Web 2.0 can be as powerful as anything else you do online. Just be sure to do some diligent keyword research and to use those keywords in everything you do. Hook one to the other (in a Round Robin, like, not each to each other and back again), and you’ll do well in the search engines, too.

Just decide what makes you happy. If you’re in a niche right now that’s making you money, that doesn’t mean you can’t have another, too. I mean, come on… what’s more fun than that?

Social media is expanding and contracting at quite a rapid rate. And Pownce announced yesterday that it would be closing on 12/15.  I was suprised when I went in to update my account, but also have to admit that I hadn’t been there in weeks.

It’s all about Twitter, after all, isn’t it? I mean, there are apps out the ying-yang for Twitter, Twitter grader, Twitter pix, Twitter this and Twitter that. How could another micro-blogging site co-exist? I know there are others, but am wondering if they won’t suffer the same fate as Pownce.

And what about  all the networking sites? I mean, once MySpace was King, now, it seems it’s Facebook.  But what about Social Marketing Central? Or, Victory Online University, or Sta.rtUp.biz? Or all the gazillion social sites inundating the Internet? Do we have time for all of them… NO!

I mean, social marketing is great, no doubt about it, and it’s a lot of fun. Yet, Powce is one example of how enough is enough. People like Twitter, cool… so do I. People like Facebook, and so do I. And though I really like all these new places, there are just too many. Being the social butterfly is fun, and good for business, but at one crucial tipping point, spending too much time socializing has to give way to real production.

Plus, the more places that spring up, the less and less likely they will be to succeed.

My advice?

Pick the places where you can relate to the people in the group. Hell, build your group in Twitter or Facebook or wherever, and spend time there. You may have time for a few. But when you get right down to the nitty-gritty of it, you’ll get some traffic, but you’ll also lose sight of your prize. Focus on what’s important to you and then, allow social media to fill the gaps.

Wow! There’s a very cool article in the Web Success Diva’s blog today about…

Social marketing.

First she takes you on a tour, and explains the power of Social Networking. Not all of this is obvious. I mean, you and I know that social media is important for getting yourself out there with a target audience. Bang! Big boost for your brand, right?

But did you think about how cool social marketing is for SEO?  If you search for me right now, the first two entries are this blog and My Blog Log. My videos are on that page, including a horrible audition I did last year for Thor Schrock for his Top Affiliate Challenge. That was a kicking and screaming event. It was the end of a long day and it’s just impossible to say no to Thor, but I digress…

Aside from my own sites, there’s LinkedIn, GoodReads, Facebook, and on and on… all social media sites. Anyone who wants to know more about my brand, which is me and blogging, can do that easily.

The Diva also shows you how to use social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Plaxo. And tells you how to find even more stuff specific to niche marketing. You really should go over and read her post. It’s a winner!

Read Social Networking Taken to the Next Level Here.  And tell her Pat sent you.

So, I used Blog Talk Monitor to create this post, and wow! I found some very cool stuff for you to try. Well… one site you’ll have to wait a while for, but it WILL be awesomely cool when it “arrives.”

But first things first… I found an article on Blogger Breath entitled, “50 Blog Tools to Help You Blogging.” Well, I’m all for that, right?

I looked at all 50 tools, and of those, I found a bunch of cool Web 2.0 sites that you’ll love. Three of them were really, really cool.

The first one is DomainScour.com where you can plug in a keyword for your niche and it comes back with all the available domains. It also gives you some creative domain hacks like Blog.ging.com. Yeah, not good for biz, but interesting.

However, DomainScour is still in alpha and it didn’t work for me, but I’ll go back. Do you know how hard it is to come up with a blogging domain? Me & Tellman sat on the phone for about an hour trying to come up with something cool for about an hour one Saturday last year and bupkiss. Every cool domain we came up with was taken. I finally figured Blogging4Boomers.com would be a good one; he disagreed, and there you have it. I agree with Tellman most of the time, of course, but it was just impossible to come up with something that hadn’t already been taken. So, when Domain Scour gets it together, it will be a very useful service.

The next site I liked was GenFavIcon.com which takes any image and turns it into a Favicon. Kewl. I think I’ll change mine. Since this was so easy to do. Very cool.

And finally, the most indubitably cool site is WebsiteGrader from the same people that give you TwitterGrader . This blog got a 95.4, though the .4 doesn’t show in my sidebar. Still, not bad, eh?

I was thrilled to find that I have 1,763 inbound links. And this particular blog is only a bit over a year old. Yes!  It also gives you on-page SEO evaluation and shows you how you’re doing in the blogosphere. Interesting stuff.

The only problem is that some recommendations for improving my blog were things I can’t control, but others, I certainly can, which will help me in the SERPs. Very, very cool.

My advice? Wait for DomainScour, get yourself a cool favicon and see how your site ranks. It certainly can’t hurt, right? And imagine how it might help.

Not too shabby, huh? I love Web 2.0! It’s the most fun I have online.

If you want to see a whole bunch more cool Web 2.0 stuff, just go to http://GotoWeb20.com and have fun!

So, I’m on Twitter a lot, right? I got my grade up to like 93 and I have almost 500 followers. That’s not a lot. I look at some of these people with thousands following them, and it’s like, OK… Still growing, but that’s not why I’m writing this post.

Did you ever notice how Twitter shortens some URLs to TinyURLs? That’s cool. I’ve used that site a lot over the years. It really makes ugly links look a tad better.

But I’ve been noticing that the links are sometimes http://budurl.whatever, right? And I figured that Twitter maybe changed over to BudURL. And curious me (because I’d never heard of BudURL before), I had to go there.

Well…

No wonder people ar using it! BudURL tracks your click throughs! So, like you can put a URL for your blog posts or whatever you Twitter about and bam! Change the URL to a BudURL, and you’re tracking Twitter traffic.

Check it out at: http://BudURL.com

Free to join, too. Pretty sweet!