My Web 2.0 List Blog

I hope this simplified look to myweb20list.com is easier to read.

I see that I must re-format a number of paragraphs in previous posts, but that’s ok.  The previous wordpress theme was ok on a 22′ monitor, but on a regular monitor, it was to much chaos and didn’t fit the screen.

http://www.ustream.tv/

Within minutes, broadcast and interact with a global audience of one to thousands!  All it takes is a webcam and high speed.

Set up your own Free Hosted Wordpress with a range of specialized Wordpress Plugins pre-installed.

Aimed at a financial audience, www.forexfrat.com is a community of blogs on futures trading, stock trading and the forex markets.

I’ve been working all morning with upgrading websites and blogs that are powered by Wordpress.

The new Wordpress 2.5 is a big change from all previous versions.  The layout is much less cluttered in the administration area of the site

- and I’m completely thrilled
with the new automatic Plugins Upgrade option! 

My standard Wordpress installation routine includes two dozen plugins, and upgrades used to be the bain of my love afair with Wordpress. 

           First, I upgraded a static-page website using wordpress as a content management system rather than as a blog.  My first upgrade went from 2.2.3 up to 2.5, so I was expecting it to go smoothly after I read the upgrade directions. 

           My second upgrade was more nerve-wracking… I updated an older blog with almost three years and 205 posts… from Wordpress 1.5 to wordress 2.5 - following the same directions -

And everything worked like a charm! Which is great for me, I’ve been putting off the upgrade to  www.douglampi.com - not wanting to mess up the site… However, it was time to take the plunge and see what repairs I had to do afterwords. 

Turns out that upgrading a wordpress blog that’s had no version upgrades in two years is just as easy as how to update a wordpress blog I installed last week!

I have another dozen wordpress blogs to upgrade today, I better pay attention to my ftp program and keep those files flowin’.  As I complete the upgrades across my client sites and my own blogs, I’m taking screen captures and video clips as I experiment with the changes in the new Wordpress 2.5 update.

Cheerio!

Here’s a great way to view your network of friends on Facebook.

TouchGraph Photos


This is the first screenshot I’ve taken while using the Touchgraph Facebook Photo Viewer.  I like how you can easily view the photos of your friends if you are on a highspeed connection, but the images are not cached, and if you return to view the same friends images later, they must be re-loaded.  This app is NOT for dial-up users.  Sorry.

The photo viewing aspect is cool, but it’s more interesting to see who know’s who amoung your friends!

Facebook Fans will love this App - and Business Owners should take note.

Cheers.

Quetico Internet Marketing is your Online Traffic Specialist

Douglas Lampi provides Internet Marketing insight into more that just top Search Engine Rankings. Today, visitors should be coming to your site through many differnet sources - and your business is at risk if your main source of traffic is from Google.

An Online Traffic Specialist must have broad knowledge and actual experience publishing in all the various media formats in order to benefit from visitor sources like

video sharing sites,
podcast sharing sites,
photo sharing sites
news feeds,
blogging sites,
social bookmarking,
social networking and
special interest groups,
from joint venture partnerships,
from purchased advertising sources like PPC and interstitials,
from Blog commenting,
from article writting - as well as
from link trades and
gaining consistent top search engine rankings.

In the new world of Web 2.0 - your ideal traffic footprint should include dozens of referral sources.  Including bringing Offline sources to view your online messages.

Your Online Traffic Specialist can help you
Achieve Internet Marketing Diversification!

Barry Siskind of www.siskindtraining.com offers invaluable marketing advice.

While he aims to help people master the art of making a success of your Trade Show Marketing, his timeless advice can be applied to any marketing format.

I was delighted by the clear, and easy-to-follow format. And I took 19 pages of notes.

Below you can download the Podcast Report that explains why you should add siskindtraining.com to YOUR best kept secrets.

I paraphrase Barry Siskind as he shared

• “How to select the best trade shows to attend”,
• “How to pre-market a trade show”,
• “How to make your booth do it’s job”,
• “A Seven Step Process for Making Trade Shows Work”.

 

 Review of Making Trade Shows Work by Barry Siskind [21:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (36)

Trade Show Marketing How-To.  Exhibition Marketing How-To.

Cheers

After I created the first internet guru watch podcast, my sister reviewed it, and she asked - “who is your target audience” - I gave her a quick answer, but, after thinking about it for some time, really, the audience is… me.

I’m doing this podcast for my own eductation, and so, you may not be on the same path as me and you may not find all the tips that I’m searching for and that I’m finding useful, they may not apply to you.

But you never know when I’m going to talk about something that could be useful for you, as I share the path of my quest.

Many of you have been thrown into this quest of learning how to market on the internet, because, all of a sudden, you busines is dependant on getting your bookings online.

And so you’ve been thrown into the internet marketing business and you’re on the same path as me now,

• Learning how to make your website convert,
• Learning how to connect with your visitors.
• Learning how to make money,
• How to make a living,
• How to sell your product over the internet

 …to people you may have never met before.

In the spring of 2008, the Internet Guru Watch Podcast is going to focus in two main areas. Mostly because of the projects I’m working on, and that I want to develop.

I’m taking some good advice from Micheal Campbell, to only bring into my marketing mix, the strategies that are going to go with will the projects that I currently have ongoing right now. Strategies that will push and add to what I’m already doing, rather than start me off in a different direction.

And so, as you listen to the Internet Guru Watch podcast through the spring of 2008, I’ll be focusing on how to set up and interconnect with people using all the social networking and social bookmarking sites that are out there.

Right now that process may seem daunting and overwhelming, there’s just so many of them, if you go to prophilactic.com, you see over a hundred of different places where you can set up a profile and start building a community.

Just the hours of registering to all those places and setting up your profile, and managing all those logins and all of those accounts, its overwhelming to start off with. But, like most hills that we choose to climb, the effort of the climb is well worth the view at the top, and it’s sure easy coasting down the other side…

The other area the Internet Guru Watch Podcast will focus on, is the process of launching an ebook - The pre-launch and the launch process, and I want to learn from Gurus who know how to set up venture partners for Launching the eBooks.

 

 Internet Guru Watch March 2008 [15:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (24)

Hi everybody and thanks for tuning in to the Internet Guru Watch Podcast by ipmal.com. I’m your host, Doug Lampi. My website can be found at ipmal.com.

When you get a moment if you haven’t already, sign up for my free tips newsletter where I cover more information on this same topic, and where I answer your questions on the Internet Guru Watch. Also, as part of my tips newsletter I give out exclusive resources that have been bookmarked by the top Internet marketing gurus and you don’t want to miss out on those.

You never know when I am going to talk about something that may help you. So go to your computer. Go to ipmal.com and sign up for the free tips newsletter now.

You know you are in great company of people from all over the world who are listening to the Internet Guru Watch. Our top listening countries are Canada and the United States. But this podcast is being listened to in all corners of the world. It’s just amazing. And it’s just amazing to get emails and success stories from people everywhere.

Thank you for listening to the Internet Guru Watch and for passing it along to all your friends and colleagues. Truly the Internet is such an amazing tool that anyone can use to share their passion and connect with similar minded people.

OK. So let’s get the show going. In each Internet Guru Watch podcast I introduce one new successful Internet marketer. We look in on their current projects and I collect any of their RSS feeds on ipmal.com so we can easily keep updated on their latest activities.

PART ONE 

In this, the premier edition of the Internet Guru Watch, I’m going to feature one of the most consistent sources of cutting edge marketing strategies there are - Michael Campbell. For 136 months Michael Campbell has been publishing the Internet Marketing Secrets website and email newsletter.

In September of 2007, Michael started podcasting his newsletter. I highly recommend that you visit iTunes right now, search for Internet Marketing Secrets and subscribe to Michael Campbell’s podcast.

The last two podcasts by Michael Campbell were particularly interesting. In response to his recent survey, Michael has conducted a series of interviews to uncover the best traffic generation strategies, the biggest marketing pitfalls to avoid and some little-known tactics that most people underestimate.

Maybe you have heard of some of these heavy hitters that Michel Campbell interviews - Dr. Neil Shearing, Colin McDougall and Ginette Degner in the first podcast and Jerry West, Mike Liebner and Sherman Hu in the second podcast.

Each of these successful marketers that Michael interviews offers a unique and different approach to making money online. The first time I listened through these podcasts I was traveling in my car. The second time I listened, I was sitting at my computer, and I was able to implement the specific strategies as I listened through.

Just one week later, I’ve already received over 1000 unique visitors from new traffic sources that I set up in less than 30 minutes.

One of the reasons I have remained a loyal subscriber to the Internet Marketing Secrets newsletter is because Michael Campbell always provides real-world examples and he is enthusiastic about sharing statistics that demonstrate what really brings traffic.

But the biggest influence - his most important lesson - is that you should focus on gaining traffic for keyword phrases that people use when they are in the ‘buying’ frame of mind.

I recommend the Internet Marketing Secrets newsletter and podcast for three main groups of people - first of all for a business owner who contracts a web designer to do their website, second of all, for web designers and third of all, for the work-at-home entrepreneur.

PART TWO

In the second part of this inaugural Internet Guru Watch podcast, I’m going to feature a lesser known Internet marketing expert from Ontario Canada by the name of Todd Lucier.

Todd is a motivational speaker who has become an Internet marketing expert by jumping into the trenches and promoting his own tourism business.

He has given workshops and seminars for tourism-based businesses across Canada, from the Yukon to Newfoundland. Recently Todd completed another series of workshops that has become an annual event across northern Ontario. The participants in this sold-out venue learned about more than just website technology. In just a few hours we were introduced to a full range of various media that one can use to market online.

In his live, hands-on workshop Todd had us create a Gmail account and a blogger blog. We registered with Picasa and uploaded 12 to 15 sample images that we had been asked to bring along. Then we registered at animoto.com and used our images from Picasa to create an animated video with music.

Todd demonstrated how the video could be easily embedded into your blogger blog by copying and pasting a small bit of code. Starting from nothing, Todd showed us how easy it could be to create some pretty amazing content in just a few hours.

And to demonstrate just how far blogging technology has come, Todd snapped a picture with his cell phone and made a voice phone call. He spoke his message and hung up his phone and continued on with the seminar. A few minutes later, he refreshed the web page of his blog. And there was the photo of our seminar. In addition, his voice message had been transcribed to text and was included in the blog post.

Todd introduced us to Really Simple Syndication, or RSS feeds, and showed how travelers can subscribe to the RSS feed of your blog with a feed aggregator, such as iGoogle.

The two-day seminar was chock full of dozens of important and useful marketing technologies and strategies that could be used for tourism businesses. One of the biggest media types that Todd introduced - and that I had overlooked - is that of Google maps. But more than just publishing, Todd shared studies that helped shed insight on the shopping behaviors of people who are searching for a vacation.

While it’s easy for everyone to agree that a word-of-mouth referral is the single most powerful method for gaining new clientele, Todd pointed out a new opportunity to use social networking sites to connect with your customers and gain some new, free exposure with all of your customers’ friends and family.

You can find more information about Todd Lucier’s most recent workshops by visiting tourismkeys.ca.

You’ll also find that Todd is an active blogger. It’s part of my morning routine to look over Todd’s shoulder, so to speak, by checking his RSS feeds to which I have already subscribed. Visit tourismkeys.ca and click on the ‘blog’ link to follow along with this great marketing instructor. 

With all the publishing media available online today, a typical search result page in Google can include a video from YouTube, a PDF document on scribd.com, a social bookmark on StumbleUpon, a listing from Wikipedia, and maybe a tag page from Propeller or WordPress.com.

It seems like marketing on the Internet has become more and more complex, and organizing and managing all of the various media forms can seem like an overwhelming task.

But the truth is, it’s easier to market online today than it has ever been before. All you need is a coordinated sequence of RSS feeds and you can power an entire content distribution network from one single source.

For example, you could use your digital camera to record yourself giving a brief tour of your facilities. With just one post, you can syndicate your video on over a dozen video sharing sites and automatically post your video to your network of blogs and update your Facebook page all at once. Your video is also converted to an audio podcast and transcribed into text that can be added to your blog later to gain even more natural search engine traffic.

Now, the process of setting up this network of sites so that you can power your videos on YouTube, your podcast on iTunes, your text, your blog post, your social networking sites and your opt in email newsletter all from one source, is easier than it might sound. However, it is a rather tedious process, and it does require a thoughtful organization of the various services that make it possible to tie everything together so neatly.

If you want to learn more about coordinating your online publishing, visit ipmal.com and click on the ‘Build Me a Network’ link.

Well that’s it for this episode of the Internet Guru Watch. Thanks for listening to this podcast and a special thanks to those who have shared this podcast with your friends and colleagues.

OK. The question I’m going to leave you with today is a bit of a survey. You can answer these questions in your head or you can visit ipmal.com, click on the ‘Survey’ link and see how your answers compare. Check off all that apply:

My website provides the following ways to connect with people:

• an email newsletter
• an RSS feed for subscribers
• a Facebook page or MySpace profile
• social bookmarking links like del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or Reddit
• a free download in exchange for contact information

So, how did your website compare in the survey? Did your website provide all of those five ways to connect with people and bring them back to read your marketing message a second time?

If your website isn’t performing the way you want, don’t worry. You can start today and in no time, you can start bringing new traffic and building relationships with new potential customers.

You can make this happen. I know you can.

So keep checking in on ipmal.com as I have been adding new Internet Gurus that you have suggested and a variety of services and products that could help you on your quest to have the better website marketing that you really do deserve.

I would love to help you out in any way that I can, and it might be something you would be interested in if you have listened your way through this podcast.

I’m now offering an exclusive marketing opportunity for tourism businesses in Canada. Visit ipmal.com and click on the ‘Build My Network’ link where you will be presented with two options. You can opt to have your own network of sites organized so you or your staff can manage your content distribution across the full range of media types, all from one post.

Or two, you can opt to test out the waters and have your content distributed across my network of 17 video sharing sites and 12 blogs and a one-year listing on five fishing lodge directory websites for a single one-time fee.

So, go to my website. And if you haven’t already, sign up for my free email newsletter. It’s free, and it provides a list of hot resources that have been bookmarked by the Internet gurus we watch.

Thank you so much for joining in today. Please pass this podcast along to friends and colleagues and thanks to those of you who have already passed it on. You are helping to make the Internet Guru Watch a worldwide phenomenon.

Until next time, remember: creating content is fun. Creating content is easy. It’s taking pictures. It’s shooting video clips. It’s just talking about the benefit of your product or service the same as you do every day.

Podshow PDN {podshow-043f449c62de2fc078f8ec663f7590f5}

I’m currently participating in the Launch of a new ebook - a useful guide that will be of interest to millions of people who are active in this niche.

Launching a new product into a new niche is vastly more successful when you enlist some established heavy-weights to partner up and give your project a boost. 

After all your preparations are in order, the product is completed, days of detailed attention has gone into your sale copy, the website is tested and working, the promotional materials are ready for affiliates to run with - after all your preparations - it’s the partnerships that will make or break the success of the project.

Finding good Venture Parnters is no easy task - and many people don’t leverage this amazing power.  After focusing so intently on the product creation, many capable entrepreneurs create worthy products that just don’t make it out to benefit the people who could use the information. 

A Joint Venture Product Launch is another process in itself.  Almost as much work and planning must go into the proper launch of your product, as goes into the creation of the product itself!   Over time, it should be the goal of any website owner to continually seek out and develop online partnerships with other businesses in your niche.   Because of the enourmous audience potential, and because of the established trust that these partners have with their email lists and customers, the relationships with your potental Venture Partners is actually higher leverage than the relationships you have with your individual clients or customers.

The importance of your Venture Partners to your success cannot be under-estimated, nor can it be exaggerated.

On the same note - start positioning yourself NOW - to learn where to find a valued Joint Venture Partner.  You will start receiving requests to partner with others, and your business will re-launch to a whole new level!

Cheers