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
- 50 Successful Blogs That Prove You Don’t Have to “Blog About Blogging” To Create A Winner – Successful blogs of all sizes and in a huge variety of topics, to prove once and for all that blogging can be used to build an audience in nearly every topic imaginable.
- 6 Dumb Blogging Mistakes That Are Killing Your Credibility – Your email list is growing and people aren’t buying what you have to offer. You have a nice looking blog design, you’re consistently writing fresh, new content. Still, nada. You’re doing nearly everything right. Here’s what you’re doing wrong.
- Practical Tips to Make Your Blog More Useful & Interactive – These tips range from process and efficiency advice to ways of inspiring more user generate content, content repurposing and growing subscribers.
- 9 Ways to Increase Visibility for Your Best Blog Content – Learn how to make the most of your successful business blog content by resurfacing blog posts for more reader visibility.
- 11 AP Style Guide Rules That Are Easy to Mess Up – Improve your writing by learning these AP style rules.
Business / Career
- How to Optimize Your Business For Local Search and Social Marketing – If you have a local business or one that targets audiences in a specific geolocation, then you will want to move beyond general guides for search and social optimization. This post will take you through several marketing strategies for local search and social media marketing.
- A Fool-Proof Formula for Easily Creating Compelling Content – The secret to prolifically creating excellent content isn’t inspiration or brilliance — it’s found in structure, planning, and research.
- 25 Clever Ways to Grow Your Email Marketing List – Digest 25 new and simple ways to grow your email marketing list.
- 30 Ways Your Business Should Leverage Social Media This Year – Here is a list of the top 30 ways your business should leverage social media this year. The list is by no means exhaustive and any other ideas you may have are welcome.
- 7 Ways to Increase Sales by Creating Trust – We often advise on how to gain trust in our website reviews, and I’ve compiled a list of some of the advice we’ve given over time. Of course, trust can be earned in more ways than this, but we’ll give you these seven to start with.
Freelancing
- The Well-Organized Freelance Writer’s Home Office – Freelance writers must organize their home offices to minimize distractions and maximize writing time. Here’s how!
- The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Successful Freelance Marketer – In this post we’re going to go over the real meat and potatoes of starting a freelance marketing business, from the ground up.
- 40 Plus Ways to Unwind and Relax – Over forty things that freelancers can do to relax. Some of these will take a few minutes. Others will take a few days. Some may even take a few weeks. But if you’re stressed, it’s worth trying one or more of these ideas.
- Why You Should Avoid Job Boards Like the Plague (And How to Get Clients Instead) – Job boards are one of the worst ways to get clients. They’re great for entry-level gigs, but if you want to thrive, then you need to figure out how to move beyond that. The best way to get a job is to not even apply.
- 10 Personal Finance Apps to Help You Manage Your Money – Reaching your financial goals doesn’t mean you have to be a financial wizard. Nor do you have to hire a money manager. What could be valuable however, is a personal finance app that helps you keep abreast of your finances. Even if you have achieved freelance success, and don’t have money worries, you can still learn to sharpen your money management skills right in the palm of your hand.
Personal Development / Productivity
- The Hunger Games Guide to Survival – A post about what we can learn from Katniss, the book’s main character, in our continued quest for survival on this planet.
- The Power of Positive Thinking: 22 Thoughts to Change Your Life – It is better if you train yourself so that you can apply this change to every thought by using the examples above.
- 27 Top Bloggers and Writers Share About Fearless Living – Fear loses it’s grip when you learn how to take your power back. 27 top bloggers and writers tell you how.
- 8 Thought Leaders Who Are Worth Listening To – If you’ve never heard of the term ‘thought leader’, allow me to help you out. They’re the people who uncover new ways of understanding and knowledge in the world.
- A 10 Step Checklist to Start Your Week Right – Everyone wants to be more organized and have less life friction during their work week. However, most do not want to spend hours and hours managing their workload. Here is a simple 10-step Checklist to help you start your week:
Search Engines / SEO
- What to Do When Link Building is Not Enough to Outrank Competitors – Smart SEOs analyze their competitors’ weaknesses and strikes where it will hurt the most. We all know that links are important in this business, but if you can’t beat their links, beat their content.
- 7 Shortcuts to Take While Doing Keyword Research – While doing keyword research, the digital marketer normally tries to accomplish two things: spend as little time on it as possible and cover as many potentially profitable keywords as the niche provides. However, hitting both these targets at once is one heck of a task.
- Link Evaluation Survey 2012 – We know what we look for in a link for our clients but we wanted to survey as many members of the SEO community as we could to get a real idea of the kinds of methods and metrics that SEO professionals all over the globe are using to assess the quality of a link.
- 40+ SEO Tools of the Trade – Some of the top minds in the search industry shared their list of tools for the advanced and aspiring SEO professional to investigate at SES New York 2012. Here’s a rundown of nearly every SEO tool you’ll ever need to help you do your job better.
- Why A Diverse Link Profile Is More Critical Than Ever – For a diverse profile, it’s all about getting your content out there through the use of social media, guest posting, reviews, and many other forms of interaction.
Social Media / Social Networking
- 8 Tactful Ways to Use your Personal Facebook Account as a Marketing Tool – Learn how to set up your personal profile for marketing and eight things you can do with your personal profile that can’t be done with Facebook business pages.
- The Top 100 Twitter Tools of 2012 (Categorized) – A list of cool and highly useful Twitter tools, some of which you may have seen before and plenty that are sure to be new to you.
- 14 Ways to Build Strategic Relationships With the Who’s Who of Social Media – Remember that online influencers are people just like you are. Networking is 98% about being a nice person and having good manners. So go ahead and use these “secrets,” but use them with respect.
- How to Get Traffic and Sales with LinkedIn – A four post series on how to create the ultimate professional profile, build your network, get recommendations, gain traffic in Groups & Answers, and create a company page.
- 21 Unexpected Ways Brands Can Use Pinterest – A new medium requires some creativity, so I set out to find some of the most creative uses of Pinterest out there today. If you’re planning your own Pinterest strategy, use these 21 examples to help get you going.
Landscapes
Take a moment out of your busy day to enjoy these beautiful scenes of natural beauty!
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About Kristi Hines
Kikolani covers blog marketing and blogging tips for personal, professional, and business bloggers to succeed in search and social media marketing. Kristi Hines is a 
Love your list Kristi!
The landscape catches the eye instantly! Beautiful indeed with lovely colors. I do look forward to this wonderful complied list of wonderfully chosen posts.
Thanks so much for sharing them.
Harleena Singh@Freelance Writer recently posted What are the Health Benefits of Fasting?
Thanks Harleena! I’m glad you enjoy them every week!
Thanks for the wonderful list Kristi, great for my weekend reading. Seems I’ve missed a lot this week lol.
Jane @ pro blog tips recently posted How To Stand Out Among 989756329 Bloggers With Your Writing
You’re welcome Jane!
Thanks for including me once again Kristi.
And I love all the beautiful photos and vids you share about the Southwest. I’ll likely share this week’s video on my hiking blog.
John Soares @ Freelance Writing recently posted Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Freelance Writers
Glad you like them! My husband deserves a lot of the credit – he got me hooked onto Southwest timelapses.
Hi Kristi,
Thank you for including my 14 Ways to Build Strategic Relationships article. People should definitely use with care and respect! I’m looking forward to really digging into the hubspot 25 ways to build your email list post and trying out some new ones. Thanks for a great list as usual!
Tom Treanor recently posted 6 Little-Known Reasons Guest Blogging Is Essential To Your Development
You’re welcome! Love your post – sometimes people are all about strategy, but not about relationships. It’s a good reminder!
Kristi
How to Get Traffic and Sales with LinkedIn, this one looks pretty good I learned something because I bearly used linkedin
Kenny Fabre recently posted On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO
You should definitely dive into LinkedIn – it’s a great network for professional networking!
Great list as always Kristi, not sure if anyone else is having this problem but the 30 ways to use social media this year link doesn’t work for me for some reason. Apart from that some great resources once again. And the landscape video really catches the eye. Have a great weekend everybody.
Aliosha Kasin recently posted 30 Amazing Business Card Designs
Hmm, that’s odd. Their site must have been having a glitch at the time. Joys of hosting companies.
Great list!
Liked the first one really, those are some solid niche blogs, some of them are well popular but surely many others on the list as just as good.
I had already gone through a few in the last week or so, for example, Tom Treanor’s post on copyblogger and i follow Tess Marshall and a few other closely.
cheers,
Uttoran Sen recently posted 47 Outlandish Ways to Inspire Writing
Hope you discovered some new blogging heroes in that one!
Once again awesome list. Best link for me was the first link coz there are other niche on which people can write and earn quite decent money online.
Bishwajeet @Comptalks recently posted Comptalks Social Geek Guest Blogging Contest – Win Samsung Galaxy SII
Glad you liked it Bishwajeet!
Hi Kristi,
Great round up as always. I always find a few that I know I have to read. I am going to take a look at “9 Ways to Increase Visibility for Your Best Blog Content” post. Its what I need now. Thanks.
satrap@ Make Money recently posted How to Make Money With Coupons
You’re welcome Satrap!
Once again, thank you Kristi for all your incredible lists! Every Friday you give us homework for weekends. Nowadays I’m very interested in interactive blogging.
Nick@Outdoor Gear Reviews recently posted Backcountry Coupon Code and Review
That’s a fun way to think about it – as blogging homework!
Every week I obtain so much value from the SEO and social media sections of the mashup that it’s unbelievable. Just when I think I know it all… Something new pops up. Knowledge is power and anyone who needs a good place to start definitely needs to see these weekly posts.
Chris @ Homes in Austin Texas recently posted Finding Homes in Austin, Texas: Time to Make the Move!
With the number of changes that are always coming in the world of SEO and social media, just assume you’ll never learn it all – there will always be something new.
Kristi, You have created a warm atmosphere that catches one’s interest. Your lists are masterfully done, and they are a great resource to learners like myself. Thank you, you are an inspiration!
David Sneen@Earn more money recently posted The Best Advice for a Newbie (Who Wants to Earn Money Online)
Love the landscapes. Great list again. Checking out a lot of the SEO stuff. Ooo! And the pinterest marketing post! Gonna check that one out too. Thanks for this.
Hi Kristi,
Home in bed with feber, so I now have to spend another 45 -50 minutes reading many of this articles without any phone calls in peace. Thanks Kristi.
Nice Kristi,
I like your all Fetching Friday post, specially snaps which you use always awesome and different, this post’s snap beautiful scenes of natural beauty is nice and seem to be like a dream landscape..
thanks for such a nice post…
Brainpulse recently posted callback
Alright. I admit it. I clicked on the Hunger Games survival link. It makes sense. People who read it will probably keep on scarfing hamburgers and spreading on the couch, but maybe one or two won’t. Good article for living with your blood pumping.
Samuel recently posted How To Write A Good Article!