This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the best posts of the week in blogging, business, freelancing, SEO, and social media on kikolani.com.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have seen on Google+, retweeted on @kikolani, and read in RSS subscriptions this week.

Blogging / Writing

• How to Gain 2,281 Subscribers—and Increase Traffic by 69%—in 27 Days – Today the author shows you how I increased blog traffic by 69% and gained 2,281 new blog subscribers in 27 days with this simple 3-step formula.
• How the 80-20 Rule Affects Freelance Writers – The Pareto principle — the 80-20 rule — should guide how freelance writers and business owners choose clients and projects.
• Develop Irresistible Content with this 4-Point Formula – If you want to create blog posts, white papers, and even ebooks that clearly communicate your idea and compel your readers to do whatever you ask, you need to use this little formula.
• How to Fast Track Your Blogging Career with an Authority Statement – In this post the author talks about what exactly an authority statement is and how it can have a dramatic impact on your blogging career.
• A Picture’s Worth 1,000 Links: How To Find and Cite Images – Keep out of hot water by understanding what photo use legal jargon means, where to find images, and how to give proper attribution.

Business / Career

• 35 Headache-Free Split Testing Resources to Increase Your Conversions and Sales – Split testing sounds difficult, doesn’t it? Yet we know it’s good for business. Do what I do: let others do the work and you apply the results!
• How to Create a Domino Marketing Effect for Your Business – If you are looking to figure out how to create sustained attention for your business, personal brand or product you should check out this EPIC post. It really helps break down the concept of layering your message so it has the greatest impact.
• Why Paypal Freezes Or Limits Accounts And How To Prevent This From Happening To You – Under the following circumstances, Paypal has certain triggers in place as a safeguard against fraud. Here are some reasons why some of these safeguards might be triggered.
• Business Name Ideas: The Secret Recipe for Cooking Up a Business Name That Brings In More Customers – The key to a choosing a business name that brings in more customers is to make sure you achieve two goals. First, good names get the right kind of people in the door. Second, good names are easy to recall.
• 15 Ways To Establish Authority in Your Field – If your business is about you and you’re building a personal brand, then it’s essential that you look for ways to stand out against the competition by establishing authority in your field.

Freelancing

• Top 10 Free Time Tracking Apps for Freelancers – An overview of 10 top free apps for time management for freelancers.
• 20 Best Online To Do List Apps for Freelancers – How a to do list task manager implements these features has a big impact on it’s user base. Here are some of the most prevalent and useful features to consider in reviewing task based productivity software.
• Three Easy Tips to Help You Effectively Estimate Project Time – Do you know how much time your next project will take? As a freelancer, you should at least have an idea.
• Freelancing Bad Habits You Should Avoid Doing – In order to make your own name in the field, you have to make sure that you are on the right track. Part of that is doing away with habits that will not be help you succeed.
• How I Made 6 Figures as a Freelance Writer in 2011 – A description of each major client I had in 2011, roughly what percentage of my income came from each client, and how I found them plus 12 additional tips.

Personal Development / Productivity

• How to Lovingly Support Someone Who is Experiencing Hopelessness and Depression – If you have a friend or loved one who is experiencing hopelessness or depression, it can be difficult to know exactly what to say or do. While there isn’t any one magic thing to say that will alleviate their pain, there are many ways to offer support.
• Why You Hold On To A Miserable Job – Holding on to a job that makes you miserable: What are the reasons, rational or otherwise, behind not leaving a miserable job?
• 25 Quotes For When the Going Gets Tough – A list of favorite quotes to shed a positive light on less than sparkling situations.
• 101 Ways to Break Free and Level Up Your Life – Want to level up your life? Here are 101 ways to do that.
• How to Unleash the Power of Your Subconscious Mind – If you are one of those who often find your life a struggle, you may want to reverse the situation through harnessing the power of your subconscious mind. You do not have to settle with constantly being in self-sabotage, having a dark rain of cloud following you or living an uninspired existence.

Search Engines / SEO

• Google+ Optimization vs. Community Building: Pros & Cons of Google SPYW – There’s been no shortage of commentary about G+ and SPYW but the author thinks there are a few pros and cons that are worth exploring.
• 7 Smart Tips to Boost SEO Rankings and Traffic – Learn how to boost SEO rankings and traffic using 7 smart tips and without much of an effort. See where to start and what you need to do next.
• 4 Key Analytics Metrics That You’re Probably Underestimating – What are your site visitors trying to tell you? In this post, learn how to use analytics to uncover how and why visitors are interacting with your site.
• 12 Steps To Optimize A Webpage For Organic Keywords – The steps to take to optimize a webpage to try to improve organic search results – both increase rankings and improve click-throughs from the search listings.
• Anchor Text Distribution: Avoiding Over Optimization – For the sake of this post and to quell any arguments stemming from the phrase ‘over optimization’, the author, for this post, defines it as: building too many links with targeted anchor text such that they a) no longer provides value or b) actually takes away value – basically you’ve built too many targeted links and you’re not seeing your rankings increase.

Social Media / Social Networking

• 15 Twitter Hashtags for Web Design – 15 Twitter hashtags for web designers and how they can use them.
• How Google’s “Search Plus Your World” Should Change Your Social Media Strategy – Whether it’s shutting out Facebook and Twitter isn’t what we’re concerned with right now – all we need to know is that Google is telling us in no uncertain terms that it’s time to put Google Plus in the same realm as your heaviest-hitting social networks.
• 15 Twitter Tools to Boost Your Online Presence and Productivity – Overwhelmed by your Twitter stream? Use these free, effective Twitter tools to increase your productivity and enhance Twitter experience.
• The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Pinterest for Marketing – Learn everything you need to know about incorporating Pinterest into your company’s social media strategy. Also, don’t miss 50 Top Tips & Best Ways to use Pinterest for Business.
• 100 Ways to Become a Twitter Power User – How do you take advantage of this growing audience of Twitter consumers? You have to become a power user. So here are 100 proven tips to help you do just that.

Photo of the Week

This week’s top photo comes from inside Mossy Cave in Bryce Canyon, Utah. While it is called Mossy, during the winter it should be named Icy!

Be sure to check out my photography blog for more photos and follow me @kristihines for my photography tweets or become a fan of Photostry on Facebook!

A Week In Montana

This video was shot in various, beautiful locations around Montana.

Don’t Miss Out on Fetching Fridays!

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You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & A Week in Montana by Kristi Hines, originally posted on Kikolani. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+!

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Best Week Ever & Timelapse
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Week in Review & Poker Face
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Movie of the Week
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, 100 Greatest Hits on Youtube & Week in Review
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Less Than a Week to Blog World

This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the best posts of the week in blogging, business, freelancing, SEO, and social media on kikolani.com.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have seen on Google+, retweeted on @kikolani, and read in RSS subscriptions this week.

Blogging / Writing

• How to Set Up Blog Comments as Goals in Google Analytics Using WordPress Hacks – Learn more about the visitors who leave comments on your blog with two methods of setting up blog comments as a goal in Google Analytics.
• 10 Inspiring Social Networks for Writers – These 10 social networks can help you receive valuable feedback, gain exposure for your own work, brainstorm ideas and evolve as a writer.
• 7 Simple Ways to Get Your Readers to Spend More Time On Your Blog – While “great content” is always the best answer to most blogging questions, there are other techniques you can use to entice your readers to stay on your site longer.
• Kim Peek’s Guide for Creating Endless Blog Content – If you start compiling a list of draft posts, notes & thoughts using the ideas given in this post, you’ll have the comfort in knowing you’ll never be without blog posts.
• How Bloggers and Content Marketers Can Generate Unlimited Video Ideas – How to come up with great video ideas to create a regular video publishing schedule.

Business / Career

• The Simple Blueprint to Getting Started Plus 7 Ways to Consistently Make Good Choices – There is a way for you to earn more money without working too hard or getting incredibly lucky. Learn what it is and how to do it.
• 10 Form Optimization Tips For Landing Pages – Tried and true form optimization tips to improve overall form conversions on websites.
• A Stalker’s Guide to Competitive Research – Competitive research is an extremely lengthy, time-consuming and constant process. This post walks through how to investigate your competitors’ various online marketing strategies.
• 97 Ideas for Building a Valuable Platform – How to deliver value and stay relevant & visible in the social media landscape.
• How to Speak: 5 Ways to Become a Better Speaker – Speaking at events is a great way to spread your important messages and cement your status as an expert. However, being a great speaker is an art, not a science. Here are five ways you can quickly become a better speaker.

Freelancing

• Make Time for YOU: Part One and Part Two – Many freelancers are stuck in a rut. We don’t dare pass up work because we aren’t confident it will keep coming in. But it’s important not to forget that you do have a life outside of your office space.
• How to Deal with the Unique Challenges That Freelancers Face – Sure, everyone faces some challenges from time to time. But, due to the unique nature of freelancing perhaps freelancers are a bit more susceptible to some challenges than others.
• 10 Ways to Put Yourself in Pole Position for Repeat Business – There are a number of ways you can keep yourself “front of mind”, putting you in pole position should any more work come up.
• 5 Pros and Cons of Freelance Job Marketplaces – While online job marketplaces are a current trend worthy of your attention, you should consider the pros and cons before investing your time and energy into one. Let’s take a closer look.
• How to Get High-Paying Writing Jobs on oDesk – There are plenty of gems hiding between all the ridiculously picky clients and insultingly low wages. Finding them just requires a bit of time and patience.

Personal Development / Productivity

• The Habits That Crush Us – How is it that our best intentions are nearly always beaten? We want to be focused and productive, exercise and eat healthy foods, stop smoking and learn to get rid of debt and clutter, but we just can’t.
• 33 Reasons To Fiercely Embrace Life – The author’s wish is that this post stirs a part of you to fiercely remember why you live a remarkable life and to hold on to those reasons when routine sets in and when clouds take over and to brighten your days with that reminder.
• How Changing your Attitude Changes Your Reality – We have already established that attitude plays a huge role, but what does that really mean in practical terms? More specifically, how does changing our attitude translate into success?
• Don’t Do These 15 Things If You Want To Turn Your Dreams Into Reality – These are things we all do on occasion—things that quietly sabotage our dreams, sap our energy, and make us less alive.
• How Quitting Early Will Ruin Your Life – To accomplish great things, you have to put in the work.

Search Engines / SEO

• Content Auditing for Link Builders – Why You Should Do It, Tips, and a Spreadsheet – Find out why link builders should consider a content audit spreadsheet to organize link worthy content details in one place.
• 9 Search Query Combos for Scalable Link Building – Using the right search phrases to scale your link building process can be the difference between finding good prospects and finding great prospects.
• Google Penalty or Algorithm Change: Dealing With Lost Traffic – There is nothing worse for a webmaster/site owner than to wake up one day and find Google Armageddon has taken out all of their site’s rankings and traffic. This framework should help you keep your head should the unthinkable happen.
• Video Sitemap Guide for Vimeo and YouTube – Did you know that major search engines want you to make video sitemaps for all of your embeds, even if you’re hosting on Vimeo or Youtube? Find out how!
• How to Design Your Blog for Awesome SEO – A list of ten elements for good blog design that are also proven to help your search engine rankings.

Social Media / Social Networking

• 6 Tools to Learn More About Your Twitter Engagement – If you’re ready to dig into some great analysis of your Twitter world, then check out these 6 awesome tools that will help you learn how to get even more out of Twitter.
• 11 Social Media Marketing Gurus Revealed Their Best Social Media Traffic Source The author asks social media gurus what their favorite social media channel is to drive traffic and why.
• 4 Simple Steps to a Facebook Timeline that Tells Your Marketing Story – If you’re using your personal Facebook profile to connect to customers, your Facebook Timeline needs to tell a great marketing story. Here’s how.
• 10 Best Social Media Conferences to Attend in 2012 – The best social media conferences and events to attend in 2012, including BlogWorld, BlogWell, iStrategy, Social Fresh, Online Marketing Summit, and Gravity Summit.
• 10 Types of Updates to Power Your Social Media Presence – Learn what businesses should be posting on their social media accounts for better engagement, lead generation, and branding.

Photo of the Week

This week’s top photo comes from a random discover at a local park. Of all things we expected to see that day, a turtle was not one of them.

Be sure to check out my photography blog for more photos and follow me @kristihines for my photography tweets or become a fan of Photostry on Facebook!

Yosemite HD

Another beautiful timelapse, this time of Yosemite National Park.

Don’t Miss Out on Fetching Fridays!

Be sure to catch the weekly roundups by subscribing to Kikolani’s full feed via RSS or email. Or subscribe directly to Fetching Friday only via RSS or email.

You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Yosemite HD by Kristi Hines, originally posted on Kikolani. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+!

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & DoFollow Resources
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Herding Cats
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Cats on Catnip
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Ocean Sky
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Stand By Me

This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the best posts of the week in blogging, business, SEO, and social media on kikolani.com.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have seen on Google+, retweeted on @kikolani, and read in RSS subscriptions this week.

Blogging / Writing

• 5 Things Every Blogger Needs to Teach Their Readers & Why it Matters – Want to grow a successful blog? You need to teach your readers a few things.
• 81 Topic Ideas for Starting a Blog that Matters – Don’t know what topic to start a blog that matters about? Here are 81 ideas to get you thinking about what you could focus (or re-focus) your site on.
• Keep Calm and Carry On: How To Handle 4 Common WordPress Emergencies – Whether you’re getting the ‘white screen of death’ or accidentally published a post, learn how the average WordPress user can fix common panic-inducing issues.
• 55 High Quality Free Tumblr Themes and Widgets – This post includes some stunning free themes, widgets, and applications that will permit you improve your Tumblr experience.
• 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic – This post is intended to be useful to all forms of bloggers – independent folks, those seeking to monetize, and marketing professionals working an in-house blog from tiny startups to huge companies. Not all of the tactics will work for everyone, but at least some of these should be applicable and useful.

Business / Career

• 6 Branding Approaches They Forgot to Teach You in Business School – Study the following six companies and the branding lessons they learned as they overcame the obstacles in their markets.
• The Power of Transparent Marketing to Rock Your Business in 2012 and Beyond – This post focuses on blogging and the subjects you can address in your company’s content marketing efforts to not only completely stand out from the crowd, but also generate more leads and sales than you’ve ever done before.
• What’s the Secret to Monetizing Social Media – There are people and companies out there who are turning a profit with social media. Let the author introduce them to you and show you how they do it.
• Six Overused Email Marketing Tactics That Surprisingly Still Work – Email marketing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and neither are some of these sneaky, deceptive, and sometimes outright evil email marketing tactics.
• 5 Essential Tips for Building an Online Business Part Time – Here are 5 essential tips for building a profitable online business part time, regardless of your past experience.

Freelancing

• Do You Make These 5 Common Negotiating Mistakes – Read the post to make certain that you’re not guilty of making any of these errors yourself.
• 7 Effective Time Management Tips – If you’re trying to work out a timetable in order to help yourself work as efficiently as possible, there are several things you should take into consideration.
• 10 ways to boost your freelance writing income in 2012 – If you’ve made a resolution to make more money as a freelance writer this year, congratulations! You’ve taken the first step toward getting there – setting a goal.
• How to Stop Your Freelance Writing Career from Slipping into the Twilight Zone – If you don’t understand social media, you’re getting left behind as a writer. Here’s why you’ll need to learn about social media to get good-paying gigs in future.
• How to Find and Apply Vision to Your Freelancing Business – Fortune 500 companies, non-profits and other “serious” businesses have them. Should your freelancing business have one too?

Personal Development / Productivity

• 11 Questions You’re NOT Asking that Could Change Your Life – When Jayson Krause’s best friend died of cancer in September 2005, he realised that he had never fully gotten to know him. So he embarked on a year long project, asking 52 strangers the same 10 questions, one a week, in an attempt to challenge myths about connection and get people sharing more than just small talk.
• 50 Things You’re Putting Off That You’ll Regret Later – Why doesn’t our most crucial task get done? Or the thing that we have been meaning to do for months? Eventually things catch up to us. Either there are consequences. Or we simply miss the opportunity to do them.
• 101 Ways to Love Your Life – Obviously, you want to lead a life that is worth living. For one, love makes it worthwhile. It gives life meaning. You become alive. There are many ways to love life. Here are 101 suggestions.
• Living On Your Terms: Why Waiting for Acceptance Holds You Back – Approval and acceptance from others in your life: A look into why you seek it, and the risks for waiting for the permission to live life on your own terms.
• Productivity Made Simple: The Key to GTD – Your Daily Graph of Activity – The key to getting things done is to keep tabs on your daily graph of activity.

Search Engines / SEO / Traffic

• Meta Description Magic: Think Less about SEO & More about Click-Throughs – In this post, we will look at how search engines use meta descriptions, what the top SEO blogs say about meta descriptions.
• Linking Strategies For Google Plus Your World – Here are the simplest linking strategies I’m recommending in response to Google’s launch.
• 24 SEO Experts Discuss Links vs. Tweets – Check out what the top SEO Experts in the industry think about links as opposed to tweets!
• Minimum Viable SEO: 8 Ways To Get Startup SEO Right – How to get all the basics right and worry about the other stuff later.
• How to Get Actionable Data Out of Google Analytics – If you are ready to get actionable metrics out of your analytics, then here are the things you need to set up NOW to get actionable data out of Google Analytics!

Social Media / Social Networking

• 5 Ways to Make Your LinkedIn Ads Rock You Like a Hurricane – Advertising on LinkedIn should be a vital part of your marketing strategy, simply because it’s the best way to target to specific people.
• 9 Small Business Social Media Success Stories – Social media marketing: Discover how a variety of small businesses use social media successfully to transform their businesses.
• 10 Tips for Marketing Your Brand or Product with Pinterest – A simple list of tips for marketing a product or brand using Pinterest.
• 10 Taboo Topics to Take Off Your Social Media Account – Check this list before you post a social media update to ensure you’re not committing one of the cardinal sins of social networking.
• How To Know Instantly Whenever Key Accounts Tweet – There is a much simpler approach that will allow you to receive the tweets of your target account(s) via SMS or email. Click the links in the steps below for more information.

Photo of the Week

This week’s top photo came from Escalante, Utah. There’s something about wrecked vehicles that I can’t resist photographing.

Be sure to check out my photography blog for more photos and follow me @kristihines for my photography tweets or become a fan of Photostry on Facebook!

Timescapes

My husband is awaiting this DVD release like I’m waiting for What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

Don’t Miss Out on Fetching Fridays!

Be sure to catch the weekly roundups by subscribing to Kikolani’s full feed via RSS or email. Or subscribe directly to Fetching Friday only via RSS or email.

You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Timescapes by Kristi Hines, originally posted on Kikolani. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+!

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & a Cute Cat Commercial
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Cats on Catnip
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Herding Cats
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Unseen Sea
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Volcano Timelapse

This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the best posts of the week in blogging, making money online, SEO, and social media on kikolani.com.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have seen on Google+, retweeted on @kikolani, and read in RSS subscriptions this week.

Blogging / Writing

• How to Find Out Who is Stealing Your Content & What to Do About It – Some potential link building benefits to content scrapers, how to find out what sites are scraping your content, and what you can do if you to have them take it down.
• 10 WordPress Plugins & Other Enhancements That Will Make Your Business More Social – These tools can help you do just about anything, including make your blog and your website more socially engaging.
• New, Inspirational Ways to Develop Engaging Article Ideas – Check out my list of inspirational ways to develop engaging article ideas using new websites and sources for 2012 and beyond.
• 3 Tools For Managing a Killer Multi-Author Blog – There are three core ingredients in the special sauce that is a multi author blog: contributors, content, and editing. Let’s go over the tools that will allow you to manage these important blog elements.
• Forget Blogging as Usual: 5 Outrageous Tips for Super-sized Attention – Do you want attention for your blog? What about super-sized attention—the kind you get when someone likes Drudge or Time magazine links to your blog because of your work? Well, here are some tips on how to do that.

Business / Career

• How to Turn Complaints Into Compliments & Compliments Into Brand Advocates – This post will teach you how to monitor your online brand mentions, turn complaints into compliments, and turn those with compliments into brand advocates.
• The Ultimate List of Email SPAM Trigger Words – An exhaustive list of email SPAM trigger words to avoid using in your emails’ subject lines.
• Making the Transition From a Day Job to Full Time Entrepreneurship with Carmen Sognonvi – The challenges of growing an audience, why you can’t rely on previous success, building a brick & mortar business through blogging & social media, and more.
• 6 Ways To Tell If You’re Social Media-Ready – Some companies would fare better to run like hell from social media than use 2012 to join the conversation. Do you know which side you fall on?
• How To Deal With Competition – Ever find that you can’t stop thinking about someone you feel is “so much further ahead” than you? Knowing how to deal with competition in your industry is vital for success.

Freelancing

• 25 Ways to Boost Your Freelance Writing Business in Under 5 Minutes – Improve your freelance writing business with these 25 tips you can implement in five minutes or less, from contacting an editor to networking on LinkedIn.
• What Do I Do When My Client Will Not Pay Up – What can you do if your publisher suddenly finds it convenient not to pay you?
• How to Deal with Freelancing Change – Practical tips to help you keep the inevitable freelancing changes in perspective so you can stay at your best as a freelancer.
• The 5-Step Approach to Gathering and Using Client Testimonials – Here’s a 5-step process you can use to remove hesitation, improve response rates, and make the most out of your client testimonials.
• 3 Ways to Succeed as a Freelancer by Conducting Experiments – Are you stuck in newbie-land because you don’t know what to do? Here are three ways you can find the right way and move forward — by conducting experiments.

Personal Development / Productivity

• Your Top 10 Clutter Questions, Answered – This post is a quickstart guide to decluttering with the most common questions answered.
• How To Be Successful With Anything You Do – Being successful is made up of various aspects and you need to master all those aspects should you wish to achieve your success.
• 10 Practical Ways to Boost Your Energy Level How being deliberate about managing your energy level can make a big difference.
• How To Be Happy: 10 Timeless Principles for Lasting Happiness – This post focuses on intrinsic, permanent steps to achieve happiness, rather than extrinsic, surface-level tips which only have a temporal effect.
• 28 Ways to Stop Complicating Your Life – Life is not complicated. We are complicated. When we stop doing the wrong things and start doing the right things, life is simple.

Search Engines / SEO / Traffic

• 10 Hard-Hitting Link Building Tactics That’ll Boost Your Rankings – Ten more ways you can build links to your site…giving a jolt your linking building campaign.
• Yahoo! Site Explorer Alternatives: Hits and Misses – Yahoo! Site Explorer Alternative backlink checker tools are numerous, yet few of them lived up to my expectations. See which ones did in this post.
• Use This SEO Planning Template For Your Next Web Design Project – A template for building solid SEO into your next website design project.
• 5 Questions To Streamline Your Keyword Research – Use these five questions to streamline and simplify your keyword research, from your first meeting with the client.
• Testing the Accuracy of Visitor Data from Alexa, Compete, Google Trends, Doubleclick & Quantcast – These sites report massively lower and wrongly trending data – and SEOmoz isn’t alone in experiencing this frustration.

Social Media / Social Networking

• How to Strategically Dominate the Facebook News Feed – Facebook engagement is the secret sauce for Facebook marketing. When people start interacting with your page daily, you amplify your reach through the real-time Ticker.
• How To Never Run Out of Social Media Content – Stuck on what content to post on your social profiles? Learn how to create an editorial calendar for mapping out social media updates.
• 6 Essential Google+ Features for Marketing Your Business Online – If you think Google+ is a fad or a failure like Buzz/Wave etc. then you’ve got your head in the sand. This time they got it right. Here are a 6 tips to jump start your Google+ business marketing campaigns.
• What Google Personalized Search plus Your World Means for Marketing – Here are some observations for you as a marketer as it relates to Google Personalized Search and more specifically, the recommended personal and brand pages.
• Best Twitter Tips, Tools and Tactics of 2011 – How can marketers and PR professionals use Twitter more effectively? What’s the best way to build a quality, relevant Twitter following? Of the hundreds of third party Twitter tools out there, which are really worth utilizing? How can Twitter to used to support SEO efforts? Discover the answers to those questions and many more here.

Photo of the Week

This week’s top photo comes from southern Utah in Bryce Canyon National Park. This waterfall, probably about 10 feet high, is a wintery wonder – frozen in time.

Be sure to check out my photography blog for more photos and follow me @kristihines for my photography tweets or become a fan of Photostry on Facebook!

The Unseen Sea

Beautiful time lapses taken around the San Francisco Bay area.

Don’t Miss Out on Fetching Fridays!

Be sure to catch the weekly roundups by subscribing to Kikolani’s full feed via RSS or email. Or subscribe directly to Fetching Friday only via RSS or email.

You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Unseen Sea by Kristi Hines, originally posted on Kikolani. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+!

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Happiest Turtle
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & DoFollow Resources
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Mac vs. Windows Humor
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & a Star Wars Dance Off
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, 2011 Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals

This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the best posts of the week in blogging, making money online, SEO, and social media on kikolani.com.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have seen on Google+, retweeted on @kikolani, and read in RSS subscriptions this week.

Blogging / Writing

• 20 Bloggers to Watch in 2012 – These are 20 people who stood out to the author this year. There is no ranking, nor is there a competition.
• 16 Simple Blog Changes That Will Improve Your Content Marketing Results – The platform for your content will also play a role in your ability to be successful. Your platform should make content aesthetically pleasing, easily consumable, and simple to share.
• 6 SEO Secrets Every Blogger Needs to PWN Today’s Google – This is a huge topic and there are entire expert firms devoted to helping other big firms navigate this new science. With that in mind, you should consider this post a very small starting point for you own research.
• How to Grow Your Blog with the Rule of 10 – Who are the ten? These are your early customers, the ten people who will listen, read or buy whatever you are selling. If they love it, your idea will spread. Your business will grow… probably not as fast as you want, but faster than you could ever imagine.
• How To Maximize Conversions from Your Guest Post Traffic – Using the “priming” to maximize conversions from all of that traffic you’ll be getting from your future guest post endeavors.

Business / Career

• 31 Pro Tips for a Successful, Satisfying, and Insanely Profitable 2012 – 31 tips from the Copyblogger writing team (and friends) about how to make the most of your 2012.
• 11 Sure-Fire Ways to Increase Email Click-Through Rates – Learn how you can increase your email click through rates for better results and more leads from your email marketing.
• How To Make Business Videos For Less Than $200 – Step-by-step guide for creating business videos with less than $200 of equipment. Takes less than 10 minutes and no editing skills required.
• 20 Websites to Help You Hire a Company Blogger – Hiring an experienced blogger can turn your company blog into a brand-building tool. Here are 20 websites to help you find a company blogger.
• 19 Disciplines of Working and Running Your Business from The Road – The author learned a few things from the highs and the lows of her own self-discipline during the past month and share with you the top 19 disciplines on what it means to get real work done to keep your business going while on the road and how to strike the perfect balance between work and play in any circumstance.

Freelancing

• 8 Strategies to Get Your Business in a Distraction Free Zone – Physical and mental distractions are stunting the growth of your freelance business. In line with getting focused on her writing career for 2012, the author vowed to cut out as many distractions as possible, at the computer and beyond.
• 20+ Free Android Apps for a More Productive 2012 – With over 20 different free Android apps featured (some you have seen before and some you may have not), we are pretty sure that most of you will not be leaving this post without a few new apps in tow. Get ready to get more productive!
• Experts Speak: What Was Your Biggest Business Breakthrough in 2011 – Our panel of expert bloggers discuss their biggest accomplishments in 2011 and how you can accomplish your business breakthrough in 2012.
• Freelancing Un-resolutions to Make 2012 Your Best Freelancing Year Yet – These practices and habits are things that undo freelancers, keeping them small and stopping them from succeeding.
• 10 Firefox Add-ons to Level Up Your Freelance Efficiency – These extensions will improve your productivity and level up your freelancing performance.

Personal Development / Productivity

• 21 Positive Ways to Start the New Year – There are many ways that you can start the New Year on a positive note. Some may involve days of thinking over, whereas others a physical action. Here are 21 of the author’s favorite ones.
• 21 Things Not To Do if You Want to Succeed – Did you make a list of things you intend to do in the upcoming months to move you closer to your goals? Have you got your action plan in place so you can keep track of your progress?
• 20 Lies to Stop Telling Yourself and 20 Truths To Change Your Life In 2012 – Part 1 and Part 2 – If there’s one thing that makes it painful and nearly impossible to change your life, it is the plague of false beliefs (lies) that block your view of the greatness that lies inside of you.
• 20 Life-Changing Habits That Will Make 2012 Your Best Year Ever – Do you want to make 2012 your best year ever? Here are 20 life-changing habits that will make all the difference.
• 5 Lies Personal Development Gurus Like to Tell – These convenient little falsehoods are effective motivators because they play on primal human needs and emotions. Shouldn’t people who promote personal growth for a living be uncommonly straightforward in their marketing? Sadly, this is far from true, even among the popular names in the field.

Search Engines / SEO

• The 2012 Guide to Google Webmaster Tools – Analytics Integration, +1 Metrics, and More – This guide includes new ways to set up your website with Webmaster Tools, the new data included in Webmaster Tools about your website, important data you might have forgotten about, and how to connect it to Google Analytics to learn more about search queries driving traffic to your site.
• 3 Ways to Optimize Images: Search, Social Media & User Experience – To get the most out of your images as marketable digital assets, here are 3 ways you can optimize them for better performance in search, social media and as part of your customers’ user experience.
• SEO Pricing: 600+ Agencies Share Costs of Services & Pricing Models – Near the end of December 2011, SEOmoz ran a survey on this blog asking consultants and agencies of all sizes and geographies to contribute their pricing models and cost structures. These are the results.
• Using the PPC Mindset For Link Building – Think of using the PPC mindset for link building? Check out these tips for using keyword data to get great links.
• Google’s Love / Hate Relationship with Affiliate Marketing Infographic – A timeline of Google’s actions with affiliates, plus some great discussion in the comments.

Social Media / Social Networking

• How Google+ Uses SEO to Steal Search from Facebook and Twitter – Google wins by employing really smart Search Engine Optimization techniques – the same SEO practices available to any online business.
• 15 Ways To Put Quora To Work For You – If you dabbled with Quora and left—or never took the time to check it out thoroughly—here is a list of 15 ways to get the most out of it.
• 8 Stunning Facebook Landing Page Designs – Examples of beautifully designed landing pages organized by the primary conversion goal for the page.
• 5 Ways to Use Google+ to Improve Your Search Engine Optimization – How to use Google+ to improve your search rankings and get your website to appear higher in search results.
• 23+ Essential Facebook Page Applications to Improve Fans Engagement in 2012 – Improve fans engagement and enhance your Facebook Page in year 2012 with these cost-effective facebook applications! A total of 23++ facebook apps to rock your Page!

Photo of the Week

This week’s top photo comes from inside a slot canyon in southern Utah where my husband and I took our holiday vacation. He’s got a lot more great photos of slot canyons too, if you’re interested.

Be sure to check out my photography blog for more photos and follow me @kristihines for my photography tweets or become a fan of Photostry on Facebook!

Like Sock Monkeys?

This is the commercial that inspired The Daily Sock, a whimsical new blog about and by a sock monkey!

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You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Sock Monkeys by Kristi Hines, originally posted on Kikolani. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+!

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Unseen Sea
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & The Future
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, 100 Greatest Hits on Youtube & Week in Review
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Happy Holidays
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Sloths

This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the best posts of the week in blogging, making money online, SEO, and social media on kikolani.com.

Happy Holidays

Before we jump into the goodies from the week, I wanted to take a moment to let everyone know this is the last Fetching Friday post for 2011. Next week I will be out of town and it will be near impossible to get any work done. I also want to say a special thank you to my readers – without you, I would have no passion to write! I hope everyone has a very wonderful holiday season and happy new year!

From the Forever Friends holiday wallpaper collection.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have stumbled upon, retweeted on @kikolani, and read in RSS subscriptions this week.

Blogging / Writing

• 70+ Resources on How to Start a WordPress Blog – Just in case you missed it earlier this week, here are resources for starting your own blog on WordPress including choosing a domain name, purchasing your domain, hosting, WordPress installation, themes, plugins, settings, essential pages, backups, updates, and more!
• Atypical Tips for Writing Awesome Blog Posts – Over time the author had a lot of practice and picked up a ton of tips on blog post writing that he’s happy to share with you.
• 7 Reasons to Rethink Your Blogging Strategy: New Research – New research shows business blogging is here to stay. Check out the latest stats on professional blogging and how business bloggers are using their blogs.
• 7 Reasons Having a Twitter Feed in Your Sidebar is a Really Dumb Idea – Many people wonder if putting a twitter stream or feed in their website’s sidebar is a good idea. This article shows why it isn’t.
• 13 Vital Blogging Tasks for When You Can’t Be Bothered Writing – Sometimes writing a new post just isn’t going to happen. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of other stuff to do for your blog.

Business / Career

• The Entrepreneur’s Handbook: 101 Resources for First Time Entrepreneurs – 101 resources that will help you learn more about entrepreneurship, startups, small business, and much more.
• 50 Posts on Engagement for Bloggers, Businesses, and Social Media Enthusiasts – Ready to start increasing your engagement in 2012? Find out the best strategies for blogging, business, and social media engagement from these awesome posts!
• The Power of Persuasion: Storytelling & Personas in Content Marketing – What many companies are in need of today is understanding social technology adoption, social communications, knowledge transfer, community and collaboration.
• 4 Ways to Grow Your Business with Marketing Automation – If you want to increase your ROI, then implement the following 4 marketing automation ideas.
• 55 Business Marketing Mistakes – Answers from the contributor network of entrepreneurs, advisors and experts on the biggest marketing mistakes that they have experienced in business.

Personal Development / Productivity

• 5 Ways That Trying New Experiences Can Make You Successful – Have you ever considered that trying new experiences, such as eating new foods and trying new restaurants can make you more successful? Probably not, but there is in fact a very clear and profound link between the two.
• Make Goal Mastery Unavoidable: Put Everything In Its Place – Make reaching your goals unavoidable by putting everything in its place ahead of time; this post will show you how.
• On the Importance of Real Relationships and How Passionate Work Can Kill Balance – The world runs off relationships. So does our happiness. Sometimes deeply loving our work causes us to forget that. Here’s a reminder of what matters.
• Increasing Productivity with Home Office “Feng Shui” – Are you as productive as you could be in your office? Is your office a space that you like to be in or not? Perhaps it is time to get your feng shui on to increase efficiency and get more done.
• 20 Ways to Be Grateful – Here’s a list of 20 things you can start doing today to express your gratitude and to become a more appreciative person:

Search Engines / SEO

• The Best of 2011 – Posts & People Who Rocked Our World – The most popular posts from SEOmoz for 2011.
• 5 Great Keyword Research Tools That Are Cheaper than Ramen Noodles – This is a collection of five free keyword research tools that are not commonly known but are awesome.
• 5 Steps to a Better SEO Strategy – Having a great search engine optimization strategy goes beyond the basics… it actually starts from the very beginning.
• 103 High PR One Way Backlinks to Improve Search Engine Rankings – How do I improve my search engine rankings? The short answer is to get more backlinks. In this article, I list 103 sites that provide high Google PR one way links back to your site.
• SEO Strategies and Inbound Marketing Best Practices for 2012 – Here are some of the best practices on search, link development, social, content development, conversions and online branding for 2012.

Social Media / Social Networking

• 15 Sites That Help You Use Your Twitter Profile for Link Building – Want to use Twitter for link building almost on auto-pilot? These 15 sites will allow you to use your Twitter profile information for links!
• The Ultimate Guide to Optimized Social Media Updates – Learn how to optimize status updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
• How to Build an Effective Google+ Brand Strategy – Here are six steps to help jumpstart your brand presence on Google+.
• 10 Ways to Add Facebook Functionality to Your Website – By the time you’re finished reading this article, you’ll understand your options for turning your website into a social hub and how to get started.
• What You Should Be Getting Out of Social Scoring Sites – Think a little less about the number itself and be more concerned about the things you can learn from the top two social scoring networks.

Photo of the Week

This week’s top photo comes from a trip to the Grand Canyon last winter. This guy was having a little morning snack and was oblivious to us snapping photos of him!

Be sure to check out my photography blog for more photos and follow me @kristihines for my photography tweets or become a fan of Photostry on Facebook!

Forever Friends Christmas Movie

For those who celebrate Christmas, I hope this little movie warms your heart and makes you smile. For those that don’t, I hope you at least find the bears as cute as I do!

Don’t Miss Out on Fetching Fridays!

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You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Happy Holidays by Kristi Hines, originally posted on Kikolani. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+!

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Old City Bar & Happy Holidays
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & DoFollow Resources
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Cats on Catnip
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Slap Chop Remix
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Slow Motion Kitten

This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the best posts of the week in blogging, making money online, SEO, and social media on kikolani.com.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have stumbled upon, retweeted on @kikolani, and read in RSS subscriptions this week.

Blogging / Writing

• 4 Blogger Tools for Breaking Your Writing Block – Writer’s block? Use these keyword research tools for a fresh batch of blog post ideas to engage your readers and bring you good search engine results.
• The Why and How of Blogging Breaks – Since many of you readers are bloggers, you know there’s a general consensus that a blogger should write frequently and consistently. However, you also need to carefully examine your priorities for your life and your business.
• Your “How-To” Post Will Fail If You Don’t Use These Techniques – The secrets to creating these posts so you won’t have to work nearly as hard.
• Experts Speak: “How Do I Come Up With Great Content Ideas For My Blog?” – 16 bloggers tell you how they come up with new content ideas for their blog.
• 113 Things You Can Do to Grow Your Freelance Writing Income — Now – To help you take charge of your writing career, I put together a list of 100+ proactive things you can do right now to build your income.

Business / Career

• 60+ Unexpected Business Lessons – In business, you can learn something new and unexpected at virtually any time or any place. With that in mind, the CarolRoth.com contributor network of entrepreneurs, advisors and experts have shared their most unexpected or unusual business lessons.
• 8 Tips For Creating a Great Case Study – The following are some tips on how to make your case studies a powerful asset in soliciting business.
• 5 Reasons Why You Can’t Make Your Email Marketing Work – Would you like to know how to build a great email newsletter list without making the common mistakes that can ruin your reputation and cost you money? If so, avoid these 5 mistakes.
• The Renaissance Guide to Creating a Wildly Successful Online Business – When ideas from different disciplines come together, magic happens, because sometimes the solution to a problem already exists, but not where you’re looking. Could this be applied to online business? It turns out it can.
• 5 Internet Marketing Trends for SMBs to Watch in 2012 – While you’re putting the finishing touches on your action plan for 2012, let’s dig into some of the hot Internet trends for SMBs to watch over the next 12 months.

Personal Development / Productivity

• How a Shift in Your Vocabulary Can Instantly Change Your Attitude – This past year I have noticed how my vocabulary impacts my attitude. Words have power. They impact others, of course, but they can also have an impact on us. Here’s how.
• 12 Things You Need To Do Before 2012 – It’s time to make a list of the things that you need to complete before the end of the year.
• The 27 Principles to Teaching Yourself Anything – The old-school formal education is broken. It’s time to focus on practical application over theory. Enter the Self-Guided Education Manifesto.
• One Powerful Word 2012: A Simple Approach to New Year’s Resolutions – Is there is a single word or a phrase that captures what you would like to manifest in your self or your life in 2012?
• 35 Reasons You Should Work With a Coach – Coaching can take many forms, from individual sessions to group workshops, in person, on the phone or over the internet.

Search Engines / SEO

• An SEO Playbook For 2012 – Today, SEO means finding an audience you can connect with, become a part of the community, give them insanely awesome content and reciprocate.
• 6 Ways to Recover from Bad Links – Let’s assume you’ve done your homework, though, and you know you’ve got link problems. Here’s what to do.
• 5 Golden Links for Link Building and Beyond – Five golden link finds that can help your link development efforts.
• 20 Future-Facing SEO Blogs for 2012 – Instead of telling you what was hot yesterday, this post tells you what SEO blogs you should pay attention to tomorrow for the betterment of your career.
• The Decline of Organic Links Infographic – Links are still valuable in some areas of course, but where the search results are full of listings from Google.com, pushed below the fold from larger AdWords ads and/or heavily skewed by things like brand bias there is much less value in link building in numerous big money markets.

Social Media / Social Networking

• The Hidden Guide to Using Twitter Effectively – In this post, we are going to unearth some commonly unanswered questions in standard Twitter how to posts when it comes to getting the most out of your Twitter experience.
• Top 10 Facebook Apps for Fan Engagement and Building Community – Facebook applications for Facebook Pages: the best Facebook apps to enhance and build your community while making your life easier with a little automation.
• How To Get Twitter Followers by the Millions – There is no secret to gaining Twitter followers. Growing a Twitter following includes some of the following choices & habits.
• Facebook Timeline Cover: 40 (Really) Creative Examples – Ready to make your new Facebook Timeline profile rock? Check out these creative adaptations!
• Path: What You Need To Know About It And How It Plays A Role In Your Life – You probably heard something about Path in the last month or so but the truth is, the social network has been getting love from early adopters and media since its launch over a year ago. So how far has it come now?

Photo of the Week

This week’s top photo comes from the snowy Grand Canyon again. It was incredibly foggy, so we were lucky to get beautiful glimpses like this one into the canyon throughout the day.

Be sure to check out my photography blog for more photos and follow me @kristihines for my photography tweets or become a fan of Photostry on Facebook!

The Future

One of my favorite movies is Artificial Intelligence, and this video just goes to show how close we are getting to that.

Don’t Miss Out on Fetching Fridays!

Be sure to catch the weekly roundups by subscribing to Kikolani’s full feed via RSS or email. Or subscribe directly to Fetching Friday only via RSS or email.

You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & The Future by Kristi Hines, originally posted on Kikolani. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+!

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & the Future of Search
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Sock Monkeys
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Unseen Sea
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Happy Holidays
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Hi Def Puppy

This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the best posts of the week in blogging, making money online, SEO, and social media on kikolani.com.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have stumbled upon, retweeted on @kikolani, and read in RSS subscriptions this week.

Blogging / Writing

• 9 Habits Of Extraordinary Blogs – Every single one of the top multi-million pageview blogs and blogzines out there have these characteristics without fail.
• 10 Common Business Blogging Saboteurs and How To Overcome Them
• How To Organize a Messy Sidebar For Better User Experience – The sidebar is prime real estate of your blog and it displays on most of your blog’s pages. Make it relevant and useful for your visitors while making it work for you and your goals.
• How to Know Which Plugins are Killing Your Site’s Performance – How to use the developer tools available in Google Chrome, to work out which components of your blog are causing you issues.
• Writers, Unleash Your Inner Honey Badger – It’s hard to keep plugging away, sending queries, making cold calls, updating your website. Sometimes you just want to crawl into bed and just stay there. But don’t! Do this instead.

Business / Career

• 45 Awesome Posts on A/B, Multivariate, and Usability Testing – Learn more about A/B testing, multivariate testing, and usability testing for copy, design, landing pages, PPC, and much more.
• Proving Trust on the Web – For those of us who’ve been deep in the trenches of online marketing for years, the question of who to trust may seem inane.
• 8 Small Business Social Media Tips From the Pros – Small business social media marketing: hot tips from the pros on how small businesses can use social media to get more clients.
• Beware of Fancy Formulas and Slick Shortcuts – Sometimes, you get advice from an expert that embarrasses you because you should have known better. It may be great advice once you are ready for it!
• The Most Common Business Blogging and SEO Mistake in the World – Most business blogs are suffering from one major mistake, a mistake that kills SEO and future traffic.

Personal Development / Productivity

• 17 Unproductive Habits to Let Go – Our daily life is full of unproductive habits and rituals that we execute – whether on a conscious or unconscious level. This makes us less efficient and productive than we could potentially be.
• 14 Inspiring Life and Business Lessons From Richard Branson – 14 incredible life and business lessons that will inspire you.
• The 5 Absolute Worst Months to Start Getting Things Done – Here are the 5 absolute worst months to start using David Allen’s Getting Things Done – or GTD – methodology.
• 7 Success Secrets That 99% of People Don’t Know or Use – Some people seem to have it all; great relationships, love, friendship, money and success in every venture they go into. So what makes these people different?
• Musings from Australia: Luck Has Nothing to Do with Dreams – The inspiration from this post was not just by luck. It came straight from the wind and the sound of the waves crashing against these rocks.

Search Engines / SEO / Analytics

• How To Use UTM Parameters In Google Analytics 5 – If you want to get down to specifics about your traffic, you need to start using UTM parameters for custom campaigns in Google Analytics 5.
• How to Increase Your Google Website Traffic by 30.01% – Looking to improve your Google website traffic? One trick you can try is to re-optimize each blog post and get backlinks to them. The author shows how he did this and got an 30% increase in search engine traffic.
• Eric Ward Answers 10 Questions on BizDev Link Building – Helping stretch the mind of link builders into thinking more deeply about link building and its importance to business.
• The Number 1 Mistake New SEO Consultants Make – Hoping that people can learn from the mistakes myself and my colleagues often see new SEO consultants make when entering the industry, the author recently asked a group of successful search engine marketing folks what is the number one mistake they have seen new consultants make in SEO.
• Google Admits ‘Organic Results’ Are Filler To Pump Deceptive Ads at Consumers – Those who coddled Google & gave Google the benefit of the doubt now have egg on their face, and the industry as a whole is poorer for their poor judgement & lack of stewardship.

Social Media / Social Networking

• What is Pinterest & Why You Should Optimize For It – Learn about Pinterest, how it works, and why you should optimize your website for Pinterest users in mind.
• LinkedIn for Business – Building Your Professional Brand & Traffic – What you should be doing on LinkedIn to build your professional brand and authority.
• Answers to 31 Social Media Questions You’re Too Shy to Ask – Learn the answers to 31 social media questions you were too embarrassed to ask on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
• How to Create a Jaw Dropping Social Media Strategy in 5 Steps – Like most marketing plans, social media channels need to go through the following five goals in order to produce the kind of results that are truly profitable.
• How Ideas Spread with Social Media – Is your social media marketing based on social media myths or scientifically grounded methods? Find out in Dan Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness.

Photo of the Week

This week’s top photo came from the snowy Grand Canyon this past weekend. It may have been only 0 degrees, but it was worth it to come back with such beautiful images!

Be sure to check out my photography blog for more photos and follow me @kristihines for my photography tweets or become a fan of Photostry on Facebook!

Wonderful World

A feel good song with beautiful nature imagery!

Don’t Miss Out on Fetching Fridays!

Be sure to catch the weekly roundups by subscribing to Kikolani’s full feed via RSS or email. Or subscribe directly to Fetching Friday only via RSS or email.

You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Wonderful World by Kristi Hines, originally posted on Kikolani. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+!

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Blog World Preview
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• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup and Blog World Celebrities
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• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Best Keynote at Blog World

This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the best posts of the week in blogging, making money online, SEO, and social media on kikolani.com.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have stumbled upon, retweeted on @kikolani, and read in RSS subscriptions this week.

Blogging / Writing

• 10 Things I Learned from Publishing Every Day for 30 Days – What a blogger learned from publishing every day for 30 days.
• The 15 Top Blogs With The New Buffer Button, And Why Your Blog Needs One – With over 300 blogs using the button already, we got 15 of the most well known blogs out there on board.
• 7 Ways To Use Slideshare To Get More Blog Traffic – It seems that Slideshare has gone and done the impossible – turned the powerpoint deck into a content marketing darling.
• Less Blogging More Creating – Sometimes you have to slow down on the blogging and focus on creating new things for your customers and the world. What are you creating?
• 5 Actionable Articles to Help Your Writing Today – Articles from other great and experienced writers online to help you achieve something significant this month with your writing.

Business / Making Money Online

• 8 Ways to Back Up Your Computer Files – Freelance writers and all productive people need to diligent about backing up computer files. Here are 8 ways to create file back ups.
• Data Mining: The Ultimate Guide to Niche Analysis – In my post on how to become a niche rockstar I said that in order to be at the top of your industry (in a lot of cases online) it’s important to know as much about it as possible.
• 5 Tips to Sell Your Blog – How to sell your blog and position your blog to make it attractive for corporate buyers.
• 119 Free Internet Marketing Tools to Grow YOUR Online Business or Blog – Like free stuff? Check out these 119 free tools to grow your Internet business or blog.
• 5 Tips for Maximising Your Earnings from Amazon’s Affiliate Program During the Holidays – With the holidays almost upon us, now is a time for bloggers who are Amazon Affiliates to act to capitalize on what is usually one of the most profitable times of the year.

Personal Development / Productivity

• 111 Ways To Seize the Moment – There are many ways that you can seize the moment. While seizing the moment usually happens spontaneously, it is also possible to cultivate the idea of what to do first.
• 15 Productivity Tools to Play With – Super intuitive programs to use that will save you a ton of time each day.
• 27 Productivity Killers: Why Nothing Ever Gets Done – Which productivity killer effects you, and what can you do to bust through them?
• Follow Through And Get Good At It – We often make hollow promises, and fail to deliver on them. Here’s how to provide value by acting on those promises.
• 7 Mental Mistakes That Stop You From Living a Life of Freedom and Peace – If you identify with any of these statements, then you’re most likely making mental mistakes that may hold you back for the rest of your life.

Search Engines / SEO

• Search Engine Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing: The Showdown – The benefits of search over social, vice versa, and why you should invest in both.
• Google Personalized Search Results – There are HUGE pros and cons to search engines and especially Google personalizing search. Read what they are and what YOU can do about it here.
• Yahoo Site Explorer Alternatives – Some of the free backlink checking tools out there to fill the place of Yahoo Site Explorer.
• 5+ Ways To Automate SEO With Google Docs – One of my favorite SEO tools helps me with link building, project management, website crawling, and web scraping, and it’s completely free. If it sounds too good to be true, fear not, because chances are you’ve used the tool I’m referring to dozens of times: Google Docs.
• Google Longtail SEO Keyword Infographic – A look at how Google killed long tail keywords.

Social Media / Social Networking

• 5 Awesome Examples of Engaging Social Media Campaigns – Check out 5 creative examples of engaging social media campaigns.
• 10 Ways to Get More ReTweets – How to get more retweets by avoiding least tweetable words, timing your tweets, and more.
• Optimizing Your Social Profiles For Network (Internal) Search – What if I told you that you only had 55 – 160 characters to tell the world what your business does? Could you do it?
• Why Are People Following You on Twitter – Learn why people follow you on Twitter by using data from the Twitter lists you have been added to, Excel or Open Office Calc, and Wordle.
• Building Social Media Campaigns for Brands, The Importance of Google+ and Book Deals – Podcast with a real world example of building a social media campaign, key components in influencer outreach, why you can’t ignore Google+, and more.

Photo of the Week

This week’s top photo came from Lo Lo Mai Springs campground near Sedona, Arizona. It was the perfect first camping trip!

Be sure to check out my photography blog for more photos and follow me @kristihines for my photography tweets or become a fan of Photostry on Facebook!

Finding Oregon

Beautiful timelapse photography of the state of Oregon from Columbia River Gorge, Mt. Hood, Crater Lake, and many more locations.

Don’t Miss Out on Fetching Fridays!

Be sure to catch the weekly roundups by subscribing to Kikolani’s full feed via RSS or email. Or subscribe directly to Fetching Friday only via RSS or email.

You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Finding Oregon by Kristi Hines, originally posted on Kikolani. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+!

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & DoFollow Resources
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• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Red Pandas
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup on 11-11-11
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, 2011 Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals

This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the best posts of the week in blogging, making money online, SEO, and social media on kikolani.com.

The Resources Mashup

Here are some of the best articles I have stumbled upon, retweeted on @kikolani, and read in RSS subscriptions this week.

Blogging / Writing

• How To Make Your Content Interesting and Useful – How to make your content useful in a boring industry, creating content that brings people to your website, and more.
• 8 Ways to Make Money With a Blog (And the Major Mistake You Should Avoid) – If you carefully survey the world of successful bloggers, you will find a variety of revenue generating opportunities.
• All Your Writing Clips on One Site: Cuttings.me Review and Interview – Freelance writers, journalists, and bloggers need to show editors and prospect clients examples of their work. British journalist and fellow freelancer Nicholas Holmes has come up with a brilliant way for you to easily showcase your clips in one slick portfolio on one website.
• A ‘Thank You’ to 21 Bloggers for Kicking Butt, Taking Names, and Creating Greatness – Some bloggers write, others kick butt while creating greatness in the process. Here are my thoughts on a 21 bloggers who are taking action!
• 100 Questions to Help You Write, Publish, and Sell Your Ebook – If you want to write an ebook but are having difficulty getting started, these 100 questions will give you the jump start that you need.

Business / Career / Making Money Online

• How to Find Out Which Online Marketing Strategy Drives the Best Traffic – Do you participate in so many different types of online marketing strategies that when your boss asks you which one is the most effective, you don’t know what to say? This is where Google Analytics Advanced Segments come into play.
• 10 Ways for New Writers to Market their Business and Get Into the Spotlight – 10 solid tips to help your business get more results as a writer.
• The 10 Brand Questions Every SMB Must Answer – 10 questions intended to help you take a more strategic look at your brand to identify what’s working and where you may want to improve.
• Screw Overnight Success: How to Really Build Long-Term Growth Online – Despite what the ads will tell you, very few business people earn a comfortable living after a few days or weeks in business. A more reliable – and more profitable – way to approach your business is with a long-term plan.
• How To Increase Adsense CTR: Tested and Confirmed – Multiple tests on how to increase Adsense CTR keep confirming that you should not display ads all over your blog.

Personal Development / Productivity

• 50 Ways to Show Gratitude for the People in Your Life – From the people who love you, to the people who challenge you, to the people who support you at work, here’s how to show your gratitude.
• 10 Ways to Find Balance and Serenity After a Productive Day – 10 simple ways to relax and reflect after a long day of productivity. Everyone should be rewarded for working hard.
• The Path to Long-Term Productivity – The real secret to your long term productivity lies in your health and your well-being.
• 18 Ways to Find Direction Over Your Holiday Break – The holidays are a great time to step back from your work-life and rethink what and how you are trying to get things done.
• 10 Powerful Productivity Tips You Can Practice – What actions describe the remarkably productive? What routines, principles, and tactics establish a few people persistently more productive than the rest?

Search Engines / SEO

• Is Google+ Imperative For SEO? – We all know that Google has over 200 signals it uses when ranking content, but you know what Google loves to rank well when its relevant? Google stuff.
• 5 Press Release SEO Posts & 10 Bonus Tips for Better Google Rankings – A list of Press Release Optimization tips plus a few extras at the end of this post.
• 6 Cool Ways to Supplement Your Open Site Explorer Data – Today, we’re going to take some fresh link data from your favourite link information mining tool of choice and supplement the hell out of it with even more data.
• How I Keep My Bounce Rate Under 2% – Keeping visitors on your website is a key component to success. The more time a visitor spends on your site, the more likely they are to follow through with whatever action you want them to take, whether that’s subscribing to a newsletter, purchasing a product, or making an inquiry.
• About Link Building – This post is for any new linkbuilders out there who wants a one-stop resource to guide them focusing on the different linkbuilding factors, linkbuilding methods and linkbuilding results.

Social Media / Social Networking

• How to Find and Add Facebook Apps to Your Facebook Page – How to find and install third-party Facebook applications easily to improve your Facebook Page and incite fans to come back again.
• 10 Creative Ways to “Level-Up” Your Presence on Facebook – Pat’s shared a lot of tips about Facebook over the past two years, but nothing like this. Here’s what you can do to LEVEL-UP your presence on Facebook today!
• 10 Productive Tasks You Should Be Doing On Google+ Right Now – The following list of things that you should be doing on Google+ will keep you both productive and effective, not just entertained.
• 3 Steps To Boost Conversion From Social Media Profiles – 3 super-simple methods to boost conversion from social media profiles.
• 25 Google+ Tips and Tricks – From making your profile pop to mastering your stream, I’ll share 25 of the most useful Google+ Tips and Tricks to get you going.

Black Friday / Cyber Monday Deals for Bloggers

Want to skip the crowds and still get some good deals? Here are some great Black Friday & Cyber Monday deals for bloggers and online marketers.

1. 25% off StudioPress – From Tuesday, November 22nd through Monday, November 28th at 5pm PST, use the discount code THANKS for an additional 25% off of StudioPress Genesis Framework, child themes, and packages. Don’t miss this great deal! Read my comparison of Thesis vs. Genesis for more information.

2. 40% off Income Blogging Course – For 100 members only, get six months membership to the Income Blogging Course for $27 per month – a total savings of $120 off the entire course! Read my course review for more information.

3. Only72 Hour Sale – Get $1,033 worth of courses from big names in the online marketing and blogging industry for only $97 beginning Monday, November 28th at noon EST through December 1st. Be sure to check out the interviews now and sign up!

4. ProBlogging Action Plan – Get 50% off Jane Sheeba’s ProBlogging Action Plan eBook from now through Monday, November 28th at midnight. Use the discount code bfcmpbs to take advantage of this Black Friday Special.

5. HostGator – Hostgator is offering 50% off all hosting services on Black Friday only (from midnight to 11:59pm CST) including shared, reseller, VPS, and dedicated servers. No coupon code is needed – just place your order during the designated time frame today!

Photo of the Week

This week’s top photo came from Jerome, AZ. Along the way, while scoping out a way to get to an urbex scene down the hill, I looked up and noticed what remained of the fall colors in the town.

Be sure to check out my photography blog for more photos and follow me @kristihines for my photography tweets or become a fan of Photostry on Facebook!

HDR Skies

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You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, 2011 Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals by Kristi Hines, originally posted on Kikolani. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+!

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