@Paul – Totally, totally agreed! I have the luxery of not trying to sell something on my blog – it all started as a complement to JibberJobber and my hope was that it would serve as a strong marketing arm. I can see SEO peeps having a hard time divulging all of their tactics and strategies online, though, because the DIY crowd wouldn’t hire them. Perhaps they wouldn’t hire them anyway.

Also, perhaps people don’t share because (a) they don’t want others to steal their ideas, or (b) they don’t really know what they are talking about and exposing too much in a public forum (blog) is a great way to get called on the carpet

@Gil – The carnival was fun. I even posted about two people that got let go right after participating!!

Great question on the type of content to include. I don’t think there is anything wrong with linking out. Scott Allen does it on LinkedIntelligence, Jeff Barr (Amazon evangelist) does it on his personal blog, Trent Hamm does it on The Simple Dollar… it can certainly be a good thing. But you don’t want to look like a cheap splog. I’d recommend checking out those three for their style, and then go for it I would “loosen up and spread the link love” (especially to blog posts, remember) and keep your voice.

I came in too late for the carnival, but looks like a great idea and implementation!

One of things I’m struggling with in my blog, is a resistence to just post to interesting stuff, without sounding my own voice. It feels lame (to me – I’ve done it a couple of times) just posting and saying “look here – it’s great!”. Itry to voice an opinon a bit more than that.

Is it just me? Should I loosen up and spread link love, with the risk of losing my voice?

Thanks for the post,

Gil

You think this would be obvious in the blogosphere, but how many SEO blogs do you know that openly share their SEO expertise. Most of them share just enough fluff to show that they are an expert, but rarely do you have a post with the real meat and potatoes.

This has been the number one lesson that I’ve learned in the last month. I received more traffic on my eBay post, that openly shared my techniques and secrets, than any other post I have written to date. Believe it or not, it also generated more interest in my consulting then any other post.

I think we worry that if we share all our expertise on a given subject that we will undermine our expertise. Instead what we really have done is place ourselves above our competition, and open up many more opportunities. ~Paul

Paul Wilson
blog: http://MyMarketer.net
profile: http://linkedin.com/in/mymarketer

I enjoyed the carnival as a reader but struggled how to copy it for my own use. Love that “all of these A-listers really are human”. They weren’t always A-listers, it’s easy to forget that.

Now, I have some thinking to do . . .

Pete Johnson
HP.com IT Chief Architect
Personal Blog: http://nerdguru.net