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:

Twitter, Facebook, Social Media, these are all great tools for communicating. It’s natural to want to sell and make money of these platforms, but there is a way to do it and outwardly trying to sell and over-sell is not the way to do it.

Thanks to @waltpsu for sending me this link. Veronica Belmont does a daily tip segment for the ever popular Tekzilla show on Revision3. This tip was on itpints.com a new type of real-time search engine. When she demonstrates it my tweet shows up along with others! Wow too cool. The clip is below:

Several elements make up viral marketing. Not all of them need to be active in a strategy for it to be effective, but the more of them the better the results.

Six main fundamental rules that should be followed to helpy our viral campaign successful:

1. make sure there is an effortless transfer to others
2. give away products or services of value
3. make sure it can easily scale from small to large
4. take advantage of basic human behaviors and motivations
5. make good use of your existing communication networks (linkedin, face-to-face networking, social media, etc.)
6. take advantage of what’s already out there and other people’s resources

Their are 7 key secrets to any viral marketing initiative:

1. Get the headline right. Make the headline strong by putting in numbers and showing value to the reader.
2. Take advantage of buzz-worthy topics. Align your campaign to what is currently a hot topic being talked about.
3. Try and cram as much value you can into a small package. The more value that the reader/viewer can find in your campaign the more likely they are to pass it along and so on. More Value in One Place = More Impact.
4. Don’t event the rules as you go. Learn from what already works and use a proven formula.
5. Keep your viral content to the point and concise. Outline the overall value, otherwise you run the risk of having the viewer/reader moving on.
6. Links, yes, putting links into your viral content will add value and additional depth. But make sure the links are carefully chosen.
7. Finally YOU can start the chain reaction and get the word-of-mouth off the ground.

This topic can lead to quite a tome, but I’m going to save you and write a nice short piece on what my thoughts are on both Organic and Pay Per Click (PPC) search engine optimization.

There is an internal strife within the SEO community between the Organic purists and the PPC get it done even if you have to pay for it group. Now there will always be a disagreement between those who think that paying to be at the top of Google is the best idea and those who think paying for a link is just plain silly. I fall right in the middle.

To Buy a Link or Not To By a Link

PPC has its merits. There is no other way to be at the top of Google. Usually the top two slots are for paid links. If you have the pocket book to fight for those links or if you just so happen to be in a less competitive keyword then this is for you. But PPC does involve money and in turn tha takes capital. So where does that leave the little guys. There in lies the inherent downside to PPC. If you don’t have a huge budget and you’re in a somewhat competitive keyword area you really don’t even have a chance.

To be free and pure and full of goodness

Now you might be saying that Organic SEO is the way to go if you don’t have a big budget. This is true and false. If you just so happen to know what your doing it can save a whole lot of money, but if you need to hire someone to optimize your site it can be just as expensive as PPC if not more.

But don’t dispair. Studies show that though PPC gets you where you want for a price. The organic listings hold more trust and their for in my opinion are more important.

With that last statement in mind, the real perfect recipe is a combination of both PPC and Organic. If done the right way you’ll see the results.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on which is better: PPC or Organic. Post your thoughts in the comments.

Ever since the first Internet enables phone hit the market in the earlier part of this century, people have been fascinated with the idea of having access to not only their email but the entire Internet where ever they were.

As more and more cell phones start to come out with Internet communication and viewing capabilities it is becoming more important than ever for companies to make their corporate sites viewable to this new segment of Internet viewer.

There are many ways to make sure the right version of your site is being viewed:

• Have a new site developed that takes into account the small viewing capabilities of the site
• Have the current site URL automatically redirect to a mobile friendly page/section on your site that is mobile browser friendly
• Have your main site scalable to view correctly in most if not all of the browsers, both mobile and otherwise.

These are all excellent solutions. But, especially the last one, the overall development and maintenance of such a site makes it much more cost prohibitive than it needs to be.

For all three points, developing such sites in such a way that allows it to view correctly in the plethora of different mobile browsers out there is a daunting and costly task.

There is a solution.

Recently, Goldstein Media acquired a Mobile Web construction and management system that not only makes it simple to view a site on both a computer and in a mobile browser,  but enables  the site to view correctly on all of the major handsets. In addition this new technology allows for easy editing with an intuitive interface.

The technology does not stop there. In addition to having the site viewable on all the major handsets, Goldstein Media is able to provide an advanced platform to market and communicate with Mobile Web clientele through a variety of different opt-in SMS/Text messaging campaigns.

For more information, please call Goldstein Media at (215) 352-5216 to setup a FREE, no obligation demonstration of this exciting new technology.

I want to here your thoughts. Post them below in the comments.

Seth Goldstein.Net — Thoughts on Social Media, Social Media Marketing and thought who call themselves experts from Seth Goldstein on Vimeo.