Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Sock Monkeys

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!

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.