Blogging is a way to take note of what was going on around you, it is a way for you to start a conversation without meeting a friend or a group. Forums were popular long before blogs, but with blogs, your topics would bring out individuals with whom you have stuff in common.

With blogging, you have chance to given and received advice on different topics by provide valuable advice in your field, as well as sharing your expert opinion on a matter.

With blogging, you can open the doors for potential businesses and make it easier for current clients to refer you to their customers and explore the new opportunities.

Today a blog is an effective tool for positioning, no matter it is a corporate blog for a company or a niche blog for building a personal brand. Learn How to Blog is not a rock science, as long as you follow the principles and work on it, you will have the fruits fall into your basket soon.

On other hand, social media is the tip of the iceberg of a bigger picture which is the online marketing. Unlike the traditional media described as a one-way street, with social media, example Facebook, customers can provide essential market research opportunities by just commenting on a product or service online.

Social media can help your businesses by knowing the network the user is on, IP address of where the user’s logging in from. However, there are some significant difference between blogging and Facebook.

Keep words short, here are the infographic from Word View Editing, it listed down 10 very clear reasons of why blogging is better than Facebook. Take your time go through it and then back to work on the content of your blog.

Here is a sample of my Pinterest Board

Until today, Pinterest remains an invite only website. It originally launched in 2010, in the year 2011 alone, the site has grown by the millions. There are over 12 million people using Pinterest, and many of the major brands are now start to signed up as well.

As with every other effective social media marketing, when you plan your strategies, you must treat Pinterest exactly as it is, it is same as every other social media platform, you will be judged and liked based on the quality of the content you post.

Pinning Basics

Before get into how to pin, there is some basic terminology that you need to know to get out of the way.

Boards: To give you a visual, pretend this is like a wall, fridge or corkboard that you would pin things to. You can setup different types of boards such as “Favorite Foods” “Product I Like” etc.

Pin: The idea is to “pin” pictures to your board. Anytime you find something interesting, you can “pin” it to your board.

Like: If you see a pin that you like, but don’t think you want to re-pin it, you can always just “like” it (see purple circle in below image). If you want to get more followers you should like a lot of pins as this will get your name out there more and give you more exposure.

Re-pin: This is similar to Twitters “re-tweet”. When you like someone’s pin you can re-pin it to your boards so that everyone can see. I want to focus on this later because this is what will make your pins go viral.

How to Pin

When you first sign into Pinterest, you will be asked to create some pinboards. A few good suggestions would be to create boards such as “My Favorite Products” or “My Favorite Food”. Try to create boards that would be relative the products you plan on promoting.

When signed into Pinterest, there are two ways to post a pin to your pinboard. You can either post a pin from a URL or photo on your hard drive, or repost someone else’s pin.

If you want to repin an already pinned item, you just hover over the item and a “repin” button will appear (you can also click on the image to have the repin button appear). Repinning is an excellent way to fill up your pinboards when you are first starting out in Pinterest.

The second way to pin is using webpage content by adding the “pin it” button to your browsers favorite bar. You can do this by going to your about section on your Pinterest page. Within this page you will find the pin it button that you click and drag your bookmarks bar.

Demographics of Pinterest

To successfully market on Pinterest, you must understand the demographics.

Ignite Social Media have some great statistic towards to the demographics, you can click on the link and check the detail out.

Affiliate Marketing on Pinterest

After you understand the basics of how Pinterest works, it is time to explore the lucrative possibilities Pinterest provides for you – affiliate marketer.

To gain maximum exposure in Pinterest, you need to follow others, like their posts and repin other pins, here is how to get this part of work done.

1) Sync your Pinterest account with your Facebook and Twitter

This is extremely simple to do, just go to the ‘Setting’ section, turn on that link to your facebook and twitter, you are done. Once it is setup you will have easy access to the messaging and following option, which allows you to send out endless Pinterest invites to friends and family. And you will also be able to see which of your friends are pinning.

2) Creativity

When you are creating your boards and naming them, be as creative as possible. Pick unique names for your boards that will spark interest and encourage other users to follow you, try to do your best to make your boards appear as if they tell a story.

3) Keep the focus on you market and build a brand

Stick with your niche. If you plan on promoting electronics, build your boards around this. You will attract more people who are interest in your niche when they see this is all you want to pin.

4) Use #Hash #Tags

Most people are unaware that Pinterest uses hash tags. The hash tags really makes it easy for people to access what they are looking from, if you can tagging other Pinterest members with the @ symbol, it can encourage conversation hype and really attract followers.

5) Use your blog

If you have other traffic sources such as a blog, you need to grab harness this traffic into more Pinterest followers. You can easily install a Pinterest button on your blog or use various plugins.

6) What is trending

To catch up the latest trend, you can see it by visiting Pinterest’s Popular page. From there you can see what is being pinned from you site or blog, as well as seeing what is hot. Pin some topics on the hot trends and make sure you hash tag them for maximum exposure.

7) Follow and Comment

This is one of the most effective ways to get more followers. When you follow or comment on people’s pins, they will get a notification on their dashboard. This give you chance to be able to get connected to many users and gain more exposure for your brand or product. Do make sure that you leave witty and appreciative comment to users who leave good posts.

In regarding to the content, it is same as you produce it for your blog or affiliate website, if you continue to post quality content and pins you will continue to attract more followers. Every time you create a new post you will have the opportunity for that post to go viral in no time, and to help your business gain more exposure, generate massive traffic to it.

There is one very important thing for affiliate marketers to keep in mind, which is you should not immediately begin posting affiliate links and products right after you sign up for Pinterest, people will immediately catch on to this and have no interest in following you.

So begin by following people and re-pinning their posts, create 6-8 boards and make sure that the first 9 images are filled in each one. If you don’t have your own, you can easily do this by re-pinning other people’s content.

Pinterest is on the verge of a massive user explosion. It is currently being searched more than every other social media site (except Facebook). Catch the opportunity, get out there and take this new found knowledge and grow your affiliate profits.

To your “pinning” success!

If you haven’t heard or don’t know about this theme, the information in this article and in this article can give you some help.

One of the best thing that Socrates got is its incredibly easy-to-use, and it has great features that niche bloggers demand.

Here are the features that included in this massive update:

• Custom header design system
• Built-in AdSense and Clickbank monetization
• Sales page and squeeze page templates
• Member site and more

The newest update also includes the following new features:

• Two New Magazine Layouts
• Portfolio Templates
• New Skinny Templates
• Featured Sliders on Magazine Layouts
• Shortcodes
• Contact Form Builder
• And More!

For a limited time, you can get $10 off an unlimited use license to v3.0 of Socrates Theme. Simply just click here and claim your discount.

If you are the bloggers who want to put up niche sites quickly and easily, Socrates theme is the logical choice for you. Its an unlimited license can open up new opportunities for you, so I recommend you download and install your copy today!

Prose Child Theme

This flagship theme is from StudioPress. The new version of the Prose 1.5 theme has been completely overhauled, making it one of the easiest to use in the Genesis child theme family. It will put you in control of your website has just gotten WAY better.

The goal that StudioPress has is to empower *you* to easily build a beautiful website that is focused entirely on your content. Now the goal is met and now they’re making online publishing even easier with the release of new Prose 1.5.

* It has *even better* point-and-click design controls

* It is completely mobile responsive, which means that it automatically adapts to allow your audience to view your perfectly displayed content, whether from a desktop, laptop, smartphone, or tablet. In the other words, you create the content and Prose will automatically display it correctly for you, no matter where your audience views it from (you only need one website to serve every device).

* It introduces automatic theme updates, which gives you the ability to auto update with one simple click

In a nutshell, with the new version Prose 1.5, here’s what you get “out of the box”.

- Customize virtually every element of your site
- New Design Settings UI, presented in a single, easy column
- Expanded spacing to show off your content
- Beautifully updated typography
- Even more detailed control of the Genesis framework
- Easier custom header switching
- Effortless background image control
- Custom Code page, for custom CSS (if you want to get tricky)

Once you have purchased Prose, you will benefit from a lifetime of free updates, also get continue benefit from its stability, security, and ease-of-use — at no further cost.

Pick up Prose 1.5 today and you will never have to worry about scary theme updates again.

Now, I am so happy to share with her coming up FACEBOOK MONEY MASTERY™ – Turn Your Fans Into Fortunes: 8 Social Media Case Studies Exposed!. In this course, there are lots of income-building strategies Mari will share with you. She will teach you the money-making secrets of 8 successful businesses and show you exactly how you can apply their tactics to your business for huge profits too.

EXTREME FANBASE GROWTH™ was largely focused on expanding your fanbase.

FACEBOOK MONEY MASTERY, on the other hand, it goes deep into monetizing your fanbase!

This jam-packed course itinerary of in-depth case studies, Mari will show you exactly how you can get the dollars flowing in from your ever-growing Fanbase, simply by following in the footsteps of successful entrepreneurs who have already figured out what works.

Success with social commerce rarely happens in one massive, bank-busting tidal wave of cash after a single tiny tweak to your strategy. Even if it did, your business would stumble over the next “weak link” in its operations — and believe me, many carefully-crafted solutions that look great on paper don’t always pan out quite so well in real life!

More importantly, when you work on your Facebook marketing, you want to create more than merely an occasional spike in your engagement metrics, product sales and you want to see consistent, predictable results, and substantial profits over and over again. To achieve your income goals, you have to reach beyond quick-fix tactics and vague “shiny object of the month” tricks.

That is what FACEBOOK MONEY MASTERY about. It will help you discover those issues confronting every business as it grows from a “one-woman show” to a thriving market leader. You’ll see how to take your business from a catchy idea to a real, recognizable and sustainable presence in your industry, following the lead of businesses like yours who have already done it!

With each information-rich session, Mari will examine a different topic that all growing companies eventually run into. And show you how each successful business leader pushed through the problem in front of them and came out the other side.

So go ahead and sign up the course today and attend the entire course totally RISK-FREE.

I tried many different ways; also used proxy server, but no luck, every time disrupting websites and Internet connections error message shows up, they are a standard tactic the authority in dealing with companies that fall out of government favor.

This whole ban and block sites stuff made me feel really bad. I remember last trip while I was in China, I can access the sites without have any problems, but this time I don’t know why it doesn’t allow my sites to show up? It looks like the government has tightened its grip on electronic communications

Since the content of my sites are all business and marketing related, I think there should no point for government to block it.

To find out why, I did further online research, guess what I found? – the government are not only blocked my sites; they actually blocked the hosting service provider (in the blacklist) that my sites are sit on, which located in the Austin, USA.

To get a clear picture, I went further to check out some other people’s sites who are using the same hosting service provider as mine, guess what, none of their websites working and all got blocked as well.

Due to various reasons, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+, Foursquare, Vimeo, Blogger, Blogspot, Wikileaks, Hulu and some others are already got ban by the Chinese government.

Stamping out foreign competition is nothing new. All countries do it. But I think China is quickly becoming the most aggressive and protectionist country out there.

I understand China is keeping YouTube out because it has its own domestic video sites – Tudou and Youku, the government wants them to grow and prosper. Likewise for Facebook, as what I see, the government actually doesn’t mind social networking, they have their own domestic Facebook clones, Renren and Kaixin001.

Same as Google’s departure, it has hugely benefited Baidu and now Alibaba, which has pushed the US giant into third place in the Chinese market.

In addition, Sina Weibo is the Chinese version of Twitter. The number of users of its microblog rose to more than 300 million in Q4 2011, according to the report.

I was in China by the time of writing this post, tried to Google more information about the censorship, but too bad, many sites are got blocked and can’t go through.

Can’t access my sites really make me feel bad, I have spent so much time and effort on my sites but till now I found that I let my sites settle for bad hosting. I deserve the best, and so does my site.

After back to Bangkok, the first thing I did to change the website hosting service provider!

We all make mistakes, but this time I will not choose an unreliable web host for my sites.

After did some intense study, I decided to take advantage of Hostgator’s FREE website (1 site free) transfer, which means they can handle the entire website transfer process from domain, file, database, and script transfer for you for FREE.

What a difference? – not to mention their 24/7 top notch service, the landing speed of my blogs also got faster than the previous one (I paid high price but load very slow) that I used. Plus the price is great too, they have different hosting package for you to choose, currently, they are running a 20% off special.

Later I will share with you more about how my sites doing after move to Hostgator, more in detail.

See, free access to information is a need and a privilege, my China experience make me wonder how many talents, students and teachers who want to have more access to information are not dissidents anymore and will leave China? (this could become the mainstream).

It has been about 4 days since my blog and sites transfer to Hostgator, so far everything is going so well, I am very happy about the decision I made.

Honestly speaking, after all those frustration, Hostgator make me sleep better!

But often time when we write, we forget that one most critical issue – Grammar Goofs.

I came across an infographic this morning that I think it is good to share with you.

It was created by BlueGlass.com based on various posts found on the Copybloggerwebsite.

I believe that you may find them as interesting as I did. When you go through it, your seventh graders should commit to memory. My advise to you, also to myself – start memorizing!

Like this infographic? Get more copywriting tips from Copyblogger.

Below is an overview of the changes they made?modifying PPC policy. Essentially, they are prohibiting any trademark/brand name and trademark/brand name + bidding (i.e. HostGator coupon) on PPC search engines.?

You are free to bid on PPC networks for keywords related to web hosting with the intent to direct traffic to HostGator. We do NOT allow any brand name / Trademark bidding (HostGator) or Trademark + bidding (I.e HostGator Coupons). Some examples of prohibited keywords:

??”hostgator”
??”hostgator.com”
??”www.hostgator.com”
??”host gator”
??”Hostgator coupon”
?“hostgator review”

You are prohibited from bidding on any HostGator and HostGator KEYWORD (example: coupon, etc.) terms on any PPC search engine. When setting up the display advertisement in a PPC campaign, it is not permitted to use the display URL “www.hostgator.com” or “hostgator.com”, and ad text in a display ad may not contain the “HostGator” trademark. We do NOT allow direct linking from PPC campaigns.

New TOS Section:

Minimum payment threshold (Section 6 in our TOS). Due to the increase in cost associated with management and processing of single sale referrals as well as the amount of fraud associated with 1 off referrals, we have implemented a minimum payment threshold. This is something that is seen industry wide and will be beneficial for all affiliates in the long run allowing us to continue to payout large amounts per sale referred.

Minimum Payment Threshold:

Affiliates must earn a minimum affiliate account balance of $100 or more before their account is eligible for payment. Commission amounts earned for less than $100 (for example, 1 sale for $50) will remain pending until the full $100 minimum balance has been earned. All sales still pending due to the minimum payment threshold must remain active and in good standing according to our TOS requirements in order to be eligible for payment. Sales that are found not to be valid according to our TOS requirements at the time of the additional sale and earnings will be marked as invalid and not payable. Therefore there will be the requirement that 2 sales, or $100 in minimum earnings be valid according to our sale requirements listed in our TOS in order for payment to be sent.

Both of these policies take effect immediately?

One of the most important factor to be considered in Google SERPs (we have been taught) is knowledge about content and Links. But how exactly do you go about getting links and where to get it isn’t talked about very often in SEO forums. Add to that, some of the information in SEO forums are simply wrong. A lot of time, they don’t tell you what to do, why do this and that and how to do etc. That’s I want you to look into the SEO Book today.

It is a guide by search engine optimization expert Aaron Wall who teaches the fundamentals and best practices of SEO. He is a well recognized profession for his work on search engine optimization, and his SEO book provides an easy to understand guide on how achieve better search engine ranking for your website.

If you have even a wee bit experience of search engines from an optimizers’ point of view then you must be aware of the fact that if there is something that Search Engines are actually notorious about, it is the Speed at which they change their ranking algorithms.

There are over 100 training modules in SEO Book that covering all gamut of search engine optimization, from keyword research, site structure optimization, on and off page optimization, SEO linking, link building techniques and strategies, pay per click advertising and site monetization.

It is pretty comprehensive guide and it can take you a while to go through all of it. The information you get in SEO book is not based on theory but based on years of testing and tracking with dozens and hundreds of sites.

The best of all, SEO Book comes with lifetime updates which is especially important in search engine optimization since it almost changes every day. It isn’t terribly difficult to understand, Aaron tries to explain it in laymen terms so even people with no technical web background can read and learn.

As you know, there is no quick way to get your site ranked well in the search engines immediately but by using best SEO practices, you will eventually see your website ranked well in the search engines.

It offers free news and tips to help you to improve your ranking and search engine placement, it also have lots of interviews with the most successful SEO specialists. It has recently created a suit of cool SEO tools for FireFox that I highly recommend, install them today – its FREE.

Anyone that interested in SEO – from newbies to advanced webmasters, should pick up a copy of the SEO Book.

Now here is the good news, below is a great visual list from Copyblogger. The infographic is informative, practical and will help bloggers from every niche to improve. It’s like a cartoon cheatsheet for beating writer’s block. Also, it is simple, easy to understand with awesome advice. I think this can help lots of bloggers and writers who always struggles lot with coming up a new content topics.

Like this infographic? Get more content marketing tips from Copyblogger.