The videos at WebPro News are amazing. They are really informative and are well put together. Chris Winfield was interviewed at PubCon South in Texas about how Twitter helps him in his daily life and how people can utilize Twitter to help them be more productive and even build their business. It’s a must watch for anyone who’s interested in Social Media as a tool for business.

More WebProNews Videos

Google’s Matt Cutts explains on the latest Webmaster Help Video that Yahoo, Best of the Web, other Web directories with an editorial process are not considered paid links. This is because they have guidelines that need to be met and will reject low quality submissions if they don’t meet the right criteria.

This is very helpful and makes sense because both BOTW and Yahoo Directory are actually useful to users as well as Google and the search engines. One thing that always gets me is how Cutts says that you don’t have to worry about going overboard on SEO to rank high, just provide great content. This in some ways is true. Great content should out-weigh Optimized sites, but in actuality it doesn’t always happen that way. I know Cutts really can’t say otherwise, but it just gets a little annoying that he keeps saying make great content and everything else will fall in place, when he knows full well that often that isn’t the case.

Here’s the video. I’d love to hear what you think of this and what you think about Yahoo Directory and Best of the Web.

These are my links for June 19th through June 21st:

• Hubspot Has Some Solid Twitter Stats | chrisbrogan.com – Great recap post by @chrisbrogan of the Hubspot Twitter paper on the state of the Twitterverse
• 6abc.com: Remembering Gary Papa – 6abc is mourning the loss of Action News Sports Director Gary Papa, who passed away Friday, June 19, 2009.

  Rest In Peace Gary! We will never forget you!
  Gary died at 2:57 p.m. at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania after a long fight with prostate cancer. He was 54 years old.

• The Ups and Downs of Paid Tweeting | WebProNews – The pros and cons of sponsored tweets. You can make money but does it hurt your reputation and community?
• Revision3 > HP Insight – Insights from the Experts: Technology Tips for Small Business
• Qtpfsgui – Download – Photography open source program for HDR photo making

I haven’t been a big sports fan for some years now, but when I heard about Gary Papa’s passing today, I got quite choked up. Growing up in the Philly area and later becoming a journalist myself, I always looked up to the local newsmen as role models. Gary was one of them. His demeanor and friendliness was well known.

Jim Gardner another Philly news icon did a very stoic and proper announcement today on 6ABC. See the video below:

Rest in peace Gary! You will be missed!

6abc is mourning the loss of Action News Sports Director Gary Papa, who passed away Friday, June 19, 2009.

Gary died at 2:57 p.m. at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania after a long fight with prostate cancer. He was 54 years old.

Gary leaves behind his wife Kathleen, his two sons Tucker and Nathaniel, of course his Action News family, and all of you.

“We loved Gary Papa and, you know what? He loved all of us,” said Action News anchor Jim Gardner while announcing Gary’s death Friday afternoon during a special report on 6abc.

Gary was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1954. Upstate New York would be his home for most of the next 27 years.

Gary went to Cornell University as an undergraduate, and actually considered a career as an attorney. He even earned his law degree at the University of Buffalo Law School.

But that’s when the combination of sports and broadcasting got its hold on Gary. He went into television in Buffalo, and in Steubenville, Ohio.

In April 1981, Gary Papa came to Action News and the Delaware Valley. Gary’s first report was from Milwaukee, where the Sixers were playing the Bucks in the NBA playoffs.

Action News viewers will remember that Gary spent 9 years as weekend sports anchor, working alongside Rob Jennings.

He also spent 3 days a week reporting from the field, often on the Phillies, Flyers, Sixers and Eagles, and often on ordinary people doing extraordinary things.Action News wasn’t Gary’s only program here on Channel 6. He was also the host of the long running weekend show Prime Time, taking over from Jim O’Brien in 1983.

In 1990, Gary was named Action News Sports Director.

But it would be a mistake to think that a Monday through Friday anchoring job would let Gary spend his weekends at home. Where ever the sports story was, whenever it took place, Gary was there. So when the Eagles were playing on Sundays, he was working. And if they were on the road, so was he.

Source: http://abclocal.go.com/

More about Gary Papa:

MOM the acronym synonymous with marketing and now social media marketing. It is three simple concepts that needed to really get the most out of your social media marketing campaigns.

@skydiver

Revision3 is doing these great small business video interviews with noteworthy people in the various topics. Rev3 CEO Jim Louderback did an interview with Peter Shankman, a web entrepreneur guru, who founded HARO (aka HelpAReporterOut.com). The interview is a must watch and explains many of the same points I tell my clients on a daily basis.

These are my links for June 18th through June 19th:

• Why Twitter Needs Its Bottom Spanked – Is Twitter turning into Second Life or even worse…. Myspace?
• Google Changed How It Handles Nofollow (And How It Might Affect Blogs) – So apparently Google changed how the NoFollow tags effect PageRank. This was to discourage people from PageRank Scuplting. But according to this post it could have much wider implications.
• Google Page level penalty for comment spam – rankings and traffic drop – It can happen to all of us.
• Twuffer – Schedule Twitter tweets. – Twuffer allows the Twitter user to compose a list of future tweets, and schedule their release.
• 5 Reasons Why Blogging is the New Internet Marketing Tool – Blogging is a concept that started in late 90s. It used to be a way to comment an existing webpage, an opportunity for visitors and readers to react or voice out one’s opinion on the said page. What started as a single-sentence commentary has evolved into pages of personal take on just about anything and everything under the sun. As it continues to move forward, online advertising has tapped into the blog’s potential. Here are 5 reasons why you should use blogging as an Internet marketing tool.

Everyone wants to be at the top of the Search Engine Rankings. Unfortunately there are only a maximum of 10 spots on each page (less if there is some type of universal search). Out of all of the SEO tips out there one is steadfast and true — Links count. Quality Links that is.

I’d like to hear what you have to say. Post your comments below.

I got a Facebook message from a guru in the Social Media Marketing space tonight Shama Hyder. She wrote the members of her ACT Blueprint group on Facebook that there is something called RUI that always (and should) comes before ROI. What is RUI? RUI, or otherwise known as Resistance, Understanding, Integration, are the steps that most clients will go through before really adopting a Social Media Marketing plan.

You know, I always talk about ROI in social media marketing and new media marketing, and it always comes back to ROI. Well, you know, this past week I’ve spoken to some organizations and I’ve realized that they aren’t even to the point to really discuss ROI (“Return on Investment”). They were at a whole different acronym which I called RUI, and I think a lot of businesses, non-profits, and organizations fall under this category. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you think about it.

But to me, RUI is “Resistance, Understanding, and Integration,” and I realize that this is the process most people go through every single time that anything new comes out. You know, when web sites came out, when Email came out, and now it’s social media, you’re seeing this. Before you can talk to people about ROI, you really have to talk to them about RUI and figure out where they are, because the first thing people feel is resistance. It’s a new idea. They’re not sure. They’re resisting it. And I’ve noticed this but, you know, as people who are very accustomed to doing [things the] way they’ve always done things; you see the resistance level is higher, so there is resistance.

Then there’s understanding. So they understand what social media can do for them. They understand the mindset. And then there is integration where they actually start making it part of what they’re doing, whether it’s their marketing activities, [or] their daily life, and once they understand RUI, once they’ve been through that process, then you can talk to them about ROI.

I’ve noticed this quite a few times with clients with whom I’ve broached the topic of marketing their site on Social Media. I’ve gotten a variety of reactions and responses. Some clients seem intrigued and almost excited about using this new medium, others are more cautious and still others look at me like I’m on some kind of 1970′s hallucinogen. With each of these types of business people in mind, Shama’s suggestions on how to use RUI to your benefit are right on. In the end, it’s a fact, in order to get your clients to integrate Social Media into their marketing budget and plan they need to see the ROI and to get to the ROI you need to get past the RUI.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on what Shama’s saying. Post them below in the comments.

These are my links for June 17th from 16:00 to 20:12:

• RateItAll Launches Interactive Review Widgets with 100 Partners – RateItAll, the fun and social way to share reviews of anything, today announced the launch of its interactive review widgets, which allow site owners to quickly and easily add consumer review functionality to their sites, simply by copying and pasting. The new widgets are showcased on the websites of 100 launch partners ranging from web applications to products to local businesses.
• WordPress: To ‘Follow’ or ‘Not Follow’ Blog Comments? Now You Have a Choice | SearchRank Blog – WordPress by default “nofollows” all links within blog comments. This includes whatever is added to the URL field of the comment form (if applicable) as well as any links that are dropped within the actual comments themselves. While there are measures that can be taken to remove the rel=”nofollow” from links in WordPress blog comments, it has typically been “all or nothing.”
• How It Works : Google News Forum Publisher FAQ – Google News (publishers) Help – Google Explains how to get your news on Google News
• Adobe Labs – Adobe Flash Builder 4 – Adobe's NEW Flash Builder 4 Beta! FREE DOWNLOAD – No Joke!
• Bing Keeps Growing: Has Microsoft Finally Cracked Search? – In its second week since launch, Microsoft’s new Bing search engine has continued its steady growth, according to comScore. Bing is up about 3 percentage points in both average daily penetration among US searchers and their total share of search results pages (which indicates the percentage of all actual searches, though is not an exact measure), compared to the week prior to launch. Bing now has 16.7% searcher penetration and a 12.1% share of search results pages among all US workday searches. Those numbers are also both up compared to its first week in the wild.