The SEO News Blog from Pat Marcello

I am a total Web 2.0 lover. There are so many different types of sites to visit, and they all have an element of sociability. About two years ago, I was at a StomperNet conference and heard a guy named Jack Humphrey speak. I had never heard of him before, but what he taught me at that conference has been a continual source of fun and useful information ever since.

Have you ever been to Go2Web20 (http://www.go2web20.net/ ) ?

If not, you definitely need to get your buns over there. It rocks!

Yesterday, I found a site that might be really great for Overcome Everything, which is good for me.

Today, I was noodling around and found a place where I could put up my business card (like a bulletin board for biz cards), a site where I could exercise my brain, and a whole bunch of other useful sites that I know I’ll visit again in the future, either because they’re totally useful or just plain fun.

Check it out! You’re going to love it. Thanks, Jack!

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.

One question that I’m often asked by my customers is, “How do I find stuff to post to my blog?”

Seems really tough to some folks. I get that. I really do.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with writing. I’m a professional writer, so the words just flow out of my fingers, more or less, but even for me, it’s sometimes hard coming up with what to write on my own. In fact, I rarely use my own brain to come up with topics, in case you haven’t noticed.

At the end of my work day for Overcome Everything, it’s time for blogging, which I try to do Monday through Friday. Sometimes, that doesn’t happen. This week, I spent most of my life on the telephone between the re-launch of The ListBuilding Club and the “Listathon” which we did Wednesday and Thursday. Ahhhh!!! It’s so much fun, but at the end of a day like those, you’re just exhausted.

So, I don’t rely on my own brain, which is very tired by the end of one of THOSE days.

First, I go into my email. I get newsletters from Site Pro News, Media Post and several other sites about search and Internet marketing, plus Jack Humphrey’s Friday Traffic Report. I can usually find something interesting in one of those that will give me an idea for blogging. I read articles on the SEO sites and such, too, so it’s easy to bounce off one piece or another.

Or, I can go to You Tube and find a video to post, or I post a video of my own.

I can go into my member calls from Blogging4Boomers and select a bit of audio to publish.

It’s totally easy for me to find stuff to blog, and it can be easy for you, too. Learn something you didn’t know before. Catch up on the news in your niche. Make a video or find one on one of the video sites, or interview someone — an expert — and post that interview to your blog.

There are so many ways to blog, it really boggles the mind.

Wow… Another great piece of software from social marketing expert, Jack Humphrey. And it’s free!

Get it here: http://budurl.com/vxtu

It gives you all kinds of cool information. You can use it just to find out what others are doing in your niche, or what I want to use it for is creating content. I mean, writing in a blog every day really isn’t that hard when you check out what’s going on around you.

You don’t have to come up with stuff on your own every single day, you know. If you’re one of my loyal and totally cool readers, you’ll know that I often write about other people, things going on around the Web or like this post, some useful tool that I’ve found and want to share with you.

Blog Talk Monitor runs your searches as often as you want it to from every five minutes to every 24 hours. You select the topic, plug in some keywords and this little program does the rest. It’s sweet!

The only issue for me was that my Microsoft .NET framework wasn’t up to date, so I had to go and download .NET 3.5 and then the .NET 3.5 SP1. Gotta have those service packs. So, that took a bit of time, but not a big deal really.  You can go to: http://budurl.com/gb2p to download .NET 3.5 and if you scroll down the page, the service pack, too.

So, now I have my services up to date and Blog Talk Monitor!

Oh, and you can monitor the same terms in Google Blogs, Google News, Technorati or RSS. Sweet!

What can I say, but again, “Thanks, Jack!”  (Now you know why I promote his stuff. Always, always useful.)

Thanks to Jack Humphrey yet again. This time he’s given us a compendium of very valuable lists at Mashable.com. You check out these lists on Jack’s Friday Traffic Report blog at:

http://tinyurl.com/4avo5b

This is awesome!

There are lists for podcasters, lists for WordPress, lists of business tools and on and on. I mean, the resources in this list are great! If you don’t find a tool or two to use in that list, you must be a zombie.

Or something.

Really. I would advise you also to subscribe to Jack’s newsletter, The Friday Traffic Report, too, which you can do right at the top of the blog. He gives tons of interesting and very cool information every single week. Thanks for the compilation, Jack, and all the great content that you provide week, after week!

I put some newsletters aside, but FTR is one I read every time it hits my inbox.

But ultimately, the thanks goes to Mashable.com for providing the lists on the list, right? Sweet! You guys rock.

Social marketing is getting bigger and more important every single day. The number of bookmarking sites, networking sites, video, content, and blogs is growing like kudzu all over the ‘Net. And it’s a blast!

Jack Humphrey opened Social Marketing Central recently, and it’s tons of great fun and information. You can join for free. There’s a forum, a section for the Friday Traffic Reports, which I love, and lots of other cool stuff. You should check it out at http://socialauthority.ning.com/ .

You can start a group, a discussion, and put your picture up, which goes to the “head of the class,” meaning on top of the site whenever you log in.  Pretty nifty. And lots of fun. Come over and make some friends!

And from there I found another cool place, just for small business. It’s Sta.rtUP.Biz. Check out my page at  http://sta.rtup.biz/profile/PatMarcello . Very cool. It’s like a FaceBook for entrepreneurs. Love it! Finally a place where we can place links and not get booted.

Check out both of those places. I think you’ll totally enjoy them.

Signed up for a cool new site today–Social Marketing Central, which comes from the Friday Traffic Report’s Jack Humphrey, where else? So, yeah… I really enjoy his kind of stuff, and it’s always top notch.

So, Social Marketing Central is really a Ning network site, which is pretty cool, but it connects you with other Social Marketing buffs. You can check it out and join at:

http://socialauthority.ning.com/

You’ll get your own page, and you can add videos, and photos, invite friends, and all the other stuff you like to do at social sites around the ‘Net. This group also has a forum and a direct link to Jack’s Blog Talk Radio. If you like Web 2.0, you’ll enjoy this site, no doubt about it.

I’m going to hang out there for a while. I’m hoping to meet other Web 2.0-aphiles and learn some tips and tricks… oh, and maybe give some away while I’m at it. Let you know how it does for social marketing in about a month or so, after I learn whether it has potential for business or it’s just a fun place to be. I figure I can’t lose, right?

Not me!

Really.

I mean, I totally love Twitter and enjoy seeing what other folks are up to all day with the Firefox plugin TwitterFox. It’s rad because I can quickly see it just by turning my attention (not even my whole head) for a split second and then, it’s over. Or, I can reply with a snarky “me” (yes, I’m a snark in real life) comment or whatever.

Generally, I only comment on other people’s Tweets throughout the day, though they have to be important. I mean, I’m picky. Really. John Reese was in a car accident in Greece! Worth a Tweet? I think so. “Hope you’re OK.” Simple. He had to make a “get the heck off the road fast move,” says he. And on with my day.

But I usually reserve my Tweets for blog posts or something cool like being interviewed by Early to Rise (which I was for the second time last week, BTW). And I don’t spend a lot of time messing with Twitter, really, because I have too much work to do.

Here’s the thing, though, and it really fries my bananas…

Some people Tweet about every stupid thing under the sun. I mean, I really don’t give a hoot what you ate for breakfast unless it’s something totally, incredibly funny or awesome. I mean, if you’re in Kawabunga and eat a tarantula or some monkey brains… Hey, that’s worth a Tweet.

But if you had cereal. Keep it to yourself, K?

So, don’t be a Twitter Whore. (I didn’t make that up, but the Friday Traffic Report had a cute video about that that I went to watch at: http://www.jackhumphrey.com/fridaytrafficreport/blog-marketing-videos/how-not-to-use-twitter-to-generate-traffic/. (Whew! Hey, Jack… That’s one long-ass URL, BTW)

Totally cracked me up, and then it dawned on me that people like that make me nuts. If you don’t have something really, really cool to Tweet about… tell your mom or your cat or someone who really wants to know this stuff, K?

I’ve been living under a bushel basket for the past few months due to the ListBuilding.com launch.  And as I do when I”m busy, I’ll see a piece of mail that I have to read, but… I have no time. So, I flag that puppy in Outlook and wait until I have a down day to go through the messages. I had built up more than 100.

Gawd!

But there’s a message that I always read, and that’s the one that comes in on Fridays or Mondays from Jack Humphrey’s Friday Traffic Report. You know I’m a huge fan and that I’ve mentioned Jack before here, but whoa. He comes across with some of the coolest and most exciting information that (like I’ve said before)… If you aren’t subscribed, what the hell are you waiting for?

Today, work’s a little light for the first time in a while, so I’m going through my stuff and came across a message from Jack from waaaaayyyy back in January. Oh, sure. Tons of people have already seen it and put this great information to task already, but well, I’ve been painfully slow to get things done for myself. I’m running a membership site and a teleseminar series at Blogging4Boomers.com, too, remember. Right?

OK, no excuse.

Here’s the deal: HubPages. Do you know what they are?

HubPages is a Web 2.0 site where you can build “hubs,” which are sort of like Squidoo lenses. You add text modules, video modules, Amazon modules, etc. And just generally build a hub around a topic. It’s totally fun. I have one over there about cats. In fact, I’m a cat junkie and have several Web 2.0 sites about cats and a couple of blogs and whatever.

So, back to my story.

I find this message in my Inbox from Jack that says “Get More Traffic to Your HubPages.”  I’m all for that! And whoa. Very cool. I find not one but 7 Hubs all about getting traffic to your hub. Pretty neat. I’m certainly going to take some of that advice. Instinctively, I think I already have some of that going from my SEO background, but I don’t care what stage Hub Meister you are, you’ll find some information to turn you on.

The first Hub by Mark Knowles–”How I Got My Hub to Be on Google’s First Page“– is really great.  Mark gives you a virtual recipe of making it happen. We’ll be adding that cool advice to our own Hubs (and Tellman’s).

But all of the Hubs in that blog post are totally cool, and you should definitely check Jack’s post and every single one of those Hubs out…

So, if you’re a fan of Jack Humphrey’s like I am, you’ll be subscribed to his Friday Traffic Report.

If you’re not… What are you waiting for?

Jack has a really cool little piece of software called “Utility Poster” coming out and I’m drooling.

Check out his video:

http://tinyurl.com/6qxbu7

Man. I love riffing off other people’s posts. I mean, I don’t do it every day, but when I read something that’s really cool, I love to let my readers know about it. This is one of those times.

This software finds blog posts around the ‘Net with the keywords you give it. I mean it comes back with hundreds of posts! If you optimize for the keyword in your post, whatever that is, and then, use Utility Poster to do the rest, you’re almost guaranteed top ranking for the keyword in a matter of minutes.

Utility Poster isn’t available just yet, but whoa. I’m in line line like one of those crazy people that camps out for rock concert tickets.

Don’t step on me, dude!