This post is part of a weekly series, Fetching Friday, featuring the resources mashup, some tidbits on Affiliate Summit West, and a free ticket to Social Media Marketing Las Vegas 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
- Great education for bloggers – a review of the Blogging Success Summit, the fully online conference put on by Social Media Examiner and Blog World Expo.
- Year end blog reviews from Skool of Life and Prolific Living – great examples of how to do a 2010 wrap up and see the development of your blogging.
- How to use blog commenting as a networking superweapon – a great guide to commenting that has everything for those who want to know why you should go from 0 to 70 when blog commenting.
- How to manage multiple blogs – an infographic plus a great post (and even better discussion) of owning multiple blogs and multi-author blogs.
- How to ask bloggers for links and reviews – a guide to requesting support from bloggers, including a sample email and how to cultivate relationships with bloggers.
- And the Oscar goes to… 2010′s best Facebook pages – a look at fan pages in a variety of niches / industries.
- 13 hardcore reasons every business needs a Facebook page – if you weren’t convinced before, this will get you there.
- How to customize the new Facebook profile – how to change the top photos, where your tabs have gone, and more.
- Facebook in 2010 – great infographic about the changes that Facebook has undergone and user stats.
- Fake Facebook notification spam – something to watch out for.
Making Money Online / Online Business
- How to failproof your business – or how to get people to do what you want them to do.
- 5 must for integrating a new shopping cart – things to look for when choosing an online shopping cart software.
- Business isn’t fun – a look at the things you will have (and not) when running your own business.
- The good, bad, and ugly of list building – perspective on all sides of list building (including a link to an article on why a list hater built a list of his own).
- Save money and time by avoiding newbie traps – don’t get sucked into these make money online / affiliate marketing traps.
Personal Development / Productivity
- 58 noteworthy resolutions for the New Year – if you’re looking for good things to do next year, try some of these suggestions (or these for ways to live healthier).
- The proven power of goals and you – how to become more goal oriented and unleash the power of goals.
- 77 things I did in 2010 – want to know what you can accomplish in one year? Get inspired by this list!
- 11 awesome self-improvement ideas for 2011 – great ways to better yourself in the new year.
- Why money is not a good motivator – does money destroy motivation?
Photography
- Beautiful nature photography – for your inspiration.
- Christmas across the globe – wonderful pictures from this holiday season (although, is it just me, or does it feel like there is a heavy concentration of photos from one religion in particular)?
- 10 great examples of wave photography – ok, one is the wave of liquids out of a glass, but still creative.
- 50 awe-inspiring examples of bokeh photography – a collection of bokeh photography has been chosen for the ‘naturalness’ of the bokeh effect.
- How to make your smartphone photos look like they were taken with a nicer camera – video tutorial.
Reputation Mangagement / Branding
- Evaluating your personal branding success in 2010 and 10 things to try in 2011 – a great way to figure out where you are and make plans on where you need to be.
- Have you tried googling your name? An important reason why you should, and ways to take care of any problems that come up.
- Personal branding & SEO – a look at About.me and Flavors.me personal offsite splash sites.
- Reputation management – how to protect your brand’s reputation.
- Interview with Lisa Barone, Chief Branding Officer of Outspoken Media – her thoughts on search and online marketing.
Search Engines / SEO / Link Building
- Breaking down the Mormon SEO strategy – sounds a bit strange at first, but interesting info on traffi acquisition, anchor text distribution, and takeaways from the LDS.
- How to create link bait content – a guide to creating content that goes viral.
- 7 ways to improve your blog SEO with inbound links – innovative ways to improve your search engine rankings.
- 9 Internet marketing predictions to ring in 2011 – some predictions for SEO, social media, and online marketing.
- 5 creative solutions to tough SEO challenges – ways to work wiht high budget reputations, getting e-commerce sites indexed, generating unique content in large quantities, overcoming competitors, and earning natural links.
Social Media / Social Networking
- Why you must be a liar online – the difference between transparency and stupidity.
- 5 privacy alerts to watch for in 2011 – social networks, location based leaks, and more.
- How to keep your resolutions using social media – using social networks for fitness, finances, and more.
- How to create social media buttons using CSS3 – be sure to get your content shared with social media buttons.
- 10 social media thoughts you liked best – the top 10 posts from Jay Baer.
- How to track Twitter’s growth – you have to have an iPhone for this one, but it’s interesting.
- 10 of the most popular PGA golfers on Twitter – learn about the lives of your favorite players on and off the golf course. Best part – they all share pics on yfrog, Plixi, and Twitpic.
- The followship of Twitter – a look at reasons why one user won’t follow people on Twitter.
- 5 free tools to backup your Twitter account – a great idea if you want to save your data.
- How to launch a successful Twitter contest – a five step guide on running a good contest.
WordPress
- How to revove the acrossuniverseitenet malware – the latest WordPress / GoDaddy attack.
- WordPress 3.0.3 critical security update – be sure to apply this to keep your site secure.
- How to edit a WordPress theme – part one about the basics of how and what you can edit in your WordPress theme.
- WordPress shortcodes the right way – a crash course and tutorial for what shortcodes are and using them.
- How to integrate WordPress into any site using TwentyTen 2011 – a great video tutorial.
Preparing Your Blog for the New Year
In case you missed it, if you are looking to get your blog ready for some major exposure next year, be sure to get it ready to handle the surge of traffic with this guide on 8 ways to get your blog ready for 2011!
Do these tips work? I would say so, because I took a little stroll through my Google Analytics to discover this:
Apparently one of my pages had an image that ranked #1-2 for happy holidays, which caused the biggest three days of traffic that my blog has ever seen.
And not only did my site not crash (on shared hosting even), but I gained new RSS and mailing list subscribers. So I would say these tips definitely came in handy on my site when the traffic hit, so hopefully they will on your too!
Who’s Going to Affiliate Summit West?
As you know, I am attending Affiliate Summit West thanks to Deborah of ABCs Plus Forums and a free gold pass (although I am bidding for a platinum pass and expenses paid travel in Shoemoney’s Affiliate Summit Contest.
Since it’s my first time I’ll be reading this guide for newbies and picking my parties carefully. So what I want to know is who out of my readers is going to Affiliate Summit West so we can meet up in the bloggers’ lounge! And that leads me to my next offer…
Free Ticket to Social Media Marketing 2011 Las Vegas
If you’re going to be in Vegas the day after Affiliate Summit West, then don’t miss Social Media Marketing Las Vegas 2011 on January 12th at the Flamingo, spearheaded by Murray Newlands who just made John Chow’s 5 Internet Marketers to Watch in 2011.
The day long event covers viral social media campaigns, A/B testing for social media, B2B social media marketing, reputation management, getting digital PR for your business, and building communities for brands. Speakers include Murray Newland, David Koloski, Neil Glassman, and others. Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, and Ben Parr have been involved in other seminars/events by this group, so it is definitely solid. I would be going, but I have to be back at work that day.
Interested? Want to win a ticket? Just tweet the following to get entered into winning a free pass.
Win a ticket to Social Media Marketing Vegas on 1/12 #asw11 #smlasvegas http://bit.ly/smlv11 from @kikolani http://bit.ly/ff123110
The winner will be announced at 12PM Arizona time. And if you don’t win a pass, you can still register at Eventbrite. There are a limited number of tickets left, so don’t miss out!
Don’t Miss Out on Fetching Fridays!
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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 
Kristi keep up with your great FF series and excellent posts on this New Year coming!
Wow spike for an image I guess that it wasn’t foreseen – good for you!
I’m having traffic for the term “Happy Holidays” and I didn’t know why, because it’s too generic – mysterious of the net.
Wish You a Wonderful 2011 & Happy New Year
and off to read some articles – others I’ll do it Next Year 
Cheers with Champagne!
Gera
Gera just posted Guest Post on BizChickBlogs – Best of the Week in Blogging- Social Media- Food- Facebook and Internet Tools (dofollow)
Some great articles on this week fetching Friday Kristi! Haven’t still checked all of the links, but have to say that the once I did were pretty good. The one about blog commenting from SocialMediaExaminer was a pretty good read. Some interesting research techniques for finding quality blogs to comment on. The post on improving inbound links also had some useful insights. Seems like getting those links through press releases gets more popular by the day. Should read more on the subject. Thanks for sharing!
Daniel Sharkov just posted Successful Social Media Campaign in 4 Steps (dofollow)
What a killer resource/information list Kristi. Need to set aside some time this weekend and go through it, as well as the “8 ways” post. Great blog you have here, and it’s one of my “must reads” moving into the New Year. Nice to see people sharing on their blog instead of (not-so-subtle) selling! Thanks for the excellent content and your redirection to other awesome bloggers.
Best to you,
Scott
Scott just posted New Year’s Resolutions 2011 (dofollow)
Ahhh, you did it to me again, Kristi! Now my weekend will be filled up with all this reading, lol.
Boy I’m glad I’m not hosted with GoDaddy! Good looking out alerting him to the malware problem so quickly. I could only hope someone will do that for me should it happen to my site.
Have yourself a great new year!
John Garrett just posted A Drawing of Joan Holloway of Mad Men (dofollow)
Great one Kristi,
I liked Tristan’s post about how to manage multiple blogs and his awesome infographic, I highly recommend reading his post and the mazing replies on his post!
The “How to Ask Bloggers for Backlinks and Reviews” post explains a lot of emails I am getting
And WOW! I can not believe that finally I could an article talking about WordPress shortcodes that way exactly I need it, I waste a loft of time trying to find this kind of resources as some times tuts are not actually working, or not exactly what you want!
Happy New Year to you and to all your readers!
Hesham just posted Awesome Options Control Panel For Thesis Theme (dofollow)
Hey Kristi, thanks so much for including one of posts, it’s always a highlight to my day when that happens.
I reckon I should go and look at Tristan’s post about managing multiple blogs, especially as I have so many. I reckon I may be able to pick up a tip or two.
I hope you had a good Xmas and that you will have a super New Years day and that 2011 will be a great year for you.
Sire just posted Sometimes It’s Better To Just Not Give A Shit (dofollow)
Happy New Year Kristi and as always it was a great surprise to see that you included me this week. Thank you so much for a great year and including me in Fetching Friday along the way, a massive part of my social media addiction comes from this blog.
Extreme John just posted 3 Reasons I Love Being a Business Owner (dofollow)
Dear Kristi, a great mash-up yet again….I love going through this list! Thank you for being so faithful to doing these reviews….I enjoy the social media section the most and I know that is also your main area of expertise.
Thank you yet again for the kind mention to my year-end review. Funny enough, Srini from Skool of Life, persuaded me to do it!
PS: Happy New Year!!!
Farnoosh just posted 2010 Year-End Review in Relevance to You (dofollow)
Wow, nice reading list for Sunday
Thanks Kristi!
PR i Marketing Agencija just posted Punom parom naprijed (dofollow)
Some really great posts here. Especially like the Mormon SEO one, since I’m LDS.
Thanks for the reading list.
Alison Moore Smith just posted No More Roll-Over Goals (dofollow)
Thanks for the mention, Kristi! And thanks for contributing to the great discussion on that post
I really do appreciate it.
And now I’m off to check out and use up my morning on the rest of these!
Tristan just posted How to Turn a Lousy Blog Headline into a Great One (dofollow)
It was a very successful 2010 campaign for Fetching Friday and your generosity and reporting has raised the bar. You have come a long way since the inception of FF. Kudos to you Kristi and all the best in 2011.
Oooh, I loved the nature photography website. Should have stumbled upon that much sooner. Gave me some ideas for a few novels I’ve been working on. Inspiration at its best! I only wish I lived my home was perched in one of those photos.
Christian just posted I don’t worry about anything… (dofollow)