You hear people gushing about Facebook marketing, but is it really working for you? Ask yourself these 5 questions to see if your Facebook marketing campaign is a success:

1. How many fans do you have?

More isn’t always better – after all, if your business is targeted at 30-somethings, a page full of 16-year-old fans doesn’t help! Successful Facebook pages focus on quality and quantity – meaning that you need a lot of fans that are also part of your target audience. The more targeted fans you have, the higher your chances of getting some word-of-mouth advertising.

2. Are you steadily getting more fans?

Facebook marketing has a lot to do with momentum. Consider it to be like rolling a snowball down a hill; the more it travels, the bigger and more powerful it gets. That’s why the number of Facebook fans you have should always be growing, and growing steadily.

If you suddenly stop getting new fans – or, worse start to lose fans – you’re making big mistakes that need to be addressed immediately.

3. Are people interacting with your Facebook page?

Having all of the fans in the world doesn’t help if people aren’t actually engaged by your Facebook page. Remember, Facebook marketing isn’t about talking AT people; it’s about interacting WITH people.

If your fans are truly interested in what you’re posting, they’ll leave a comment, “like” it, or share it on their own wall. If you’re not getting interaction like this, it’s time to come up with new ideas for getting your fans interested in what you’re doing.

4. How often do you update it?

If your company’s Facebook page sits unchanged for days on end or has comments on it that you take forever to respond to, you’re simply encouraging your fans to leave – and not come back.

A successful Facebook page needs to be updated at least once a day, so that people know to check back with you often for new stuff. The more stagnant your Facebook page looks, the more stagnant your business looks!

5. How much money have you made off of it?

This might be the measure you’re most interested in – but it’s also the toughest question to answer. That’s because Facebook-related profits aren’t necessarily immediate. Sure, if you offer a Facebook-only coupon or put a shopping cart on your Facebook page, it will be easy to tally up direct profits.

However, that’s not the only money you can make from a successful Facebook page. For example, someone may become your fan, keep an eye on your page, but not spend any money for 6 months. And, remember, it’s nearly impossible to put a price on all of the word-of-mouth advertising that Facebook gives you.

Bottom line – if you’re satisfied with your answers to the first 4 questions, you’re doing something right – which is translating into extra profits!

Kirsty LaVier is editor for Shopping Cart Reviews, the leading site dedicated to helping you find the Best Shopping Cart software.

This is a risky title for a post as I’m potentially opening myself up to what I like to call ultra-critique. Telling people how to write fantastic content is a dangerous topic to get into, as your own writing needs to be absolutely spot on. I’m not sure this is something that I’m going to achieve, but after writing (and publishing) what feels like thousands of guest posts in recent months I’ve definitely noticed a distinct trend in styles and personalities.

The first thing that almost goes without saying is that you shouldn’t be writing just to get a link. In doing that you would be devaluing one of the most effective and gratifying areas of SEO that, happily, has taken over from the horror that was article spinning. We’re now in a position where we can write great content and be rewarded for it – both through better rankings and increased exposure. In return, however, you should be giving other blog owners some of your best content.

Knowing Your Audience

When you write for yourself it’s usually the case that you know your target audience. Whether it be content for your pet website, or a post about SEO for your company’s blog, you’ll know the style and tone that should be used. What readers like. What they don’t. The same has to be done when you’re writing for another site. Spend some time to research previous posts that have done well.

An easy place to start with this, if social sharing is integrated, is to check what type of post gets the best reaction. Whether it’s a ‘how to’ or something focused on a particular subject matter there will usually be trends that are quite easy to spot. Remember to go back at least a couple of weeks so that you’re working from a level playing field. Finally, take into account the fact that social widgets may have only been installed at a certain point in time; if you notice a sudden drop-off prior to a certain date that’s more than likely the cause.

Pro Tip: Use the ‘Top Pages’ report on OpenSiteExplorer to see which posts have gained the most links.

Going The Extra Mile

There are times when you won’t know who you’re writing for, particularly if you’re using a service like MyBlogGuest. That doesn’t mean you can ignore your audience though, as you’re now writing for the site owners. Making your posts stand out will bring more, better quality offers. Don’t just write 4-500 words, go the extra mile and write a longer post. Include a good description, don’t forget the image, and make sure that your HTML is absolutely perfect. The easier you can make it for a site owner to post the more likely they are to take the time to do so.

On that note, don’t forget to break your post up into sections. Using header tags, bullet pointed lists and font formatting is a great way to make yourself stand out. For longer posts, add in an extra image or two and do your best to make the post look good. Linking to relevant sites within your content, not just your own, also gives you extra credibility and makes it more likely that the site owner will be receptive if you do the push the boundaries a little (3 links instead of 2 maybe).

And Finally…

Finally, when it comes to your author bio, be original. Don’t just add a sentence about who you are – be a little quirky. Let’s be honest, nobody’s really that interested in the anchor text that you’re posting but they might be intrigued to hear that you’ve just written a post about how a banana inspired you to come up with a great new link building tactic.

About the author: Although not recently inspired by a banana, Matt blogs about SEO and Web Design whilst also running Pet365 – an online store selling dog coats, jumpers and brands like Dublin Dog. He reserves his best content for other sites, hence the reason that his personal blog is currently quite average, although he does plan to change this very soon.

Greek mythology is present in our everyday lives whether we know it or not. It is deeply embedded into our everyday culture, and a lot of the movies we see, books we read, music we hear, and yes – even products we buy – are deeply influenced by the Ancient Greeks.

The ancient Greeks had many different gods and goddesses – hundreds of them – and they are reflected through us through our language on an everyday basis. Let’s take a look at 7 companies that use the ancient Greek mythology as their business name and logo.

The Tennessee Titans

You might not think that a professional football team would be considered a company – well that is exactly what it is! The titans were what were around before the Greek gods and goddesses, and are where the likes of Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon come from.

Nike

Yes we all have heard of the gigantic shoe and sportswear company (hopefully),but did you know that the Nike is the Greek goddess of victory? It only makes sense to name a sports shoe company after the goddess of victory.

Amazon

Yes the web site that is (at the time of this being written) currently ranked as the 14th most visited site in the US in named after a race of warrior women.

Pandora

There are many different companies out there that hold the business name of Pandora. Pandora Jewelry – and more recently Pandora radio are just a few of many out there. Pandora was the first woman in Greek mythology and her name means “all gifted.” “Pandora’s box” is a box that contained all of the evils of the world, and when she opened it, all of the evils were released into the world and the only thing that remained inside of the box was hope.

Saturn

Apart from being one of the planets in our system, Saturn – which is the name of a car company in today’s world – was the Roman name for Cronus, who was the father of Zeus.

Trident

The trident was the three pronged spear of the god of the sea Poseidon. Trident gum is a popular gum and Trident actually literally translates into “three toothed.”

Venus

Venus is another name that got changed (from Aphrodite) once the Romans took over the Greek mythology. Today, Venus is a very popular and famous beauty product for women.

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Creating a blog or website, through WordPress, doesn’t guarantee visitors. While you have created something that might have potential, there isn’t much chance that you will be able to get people to visit it by magic. This part requires a lot of hard work & dedication and WordPress designers & developers from all over the world are regularly involved in making this dream a reality.

However, there are plenty of sites that cannot handle the kind of traffic that their content demands, leading to a terrible browsing experience. To avoid that, you don’t have to move away from WordPress, a few simple changes to your work-habits and techniques is all you need to make sure that everything falls into place.

No Basic Shared Plans

If you plan to host your WordPress website on a basic shared hosting plan, then you had better ensure that there isn’t too much traffic pouring in. However, that is something that no one wants and if you’ve ended up booking a basic shared hosting solution, you will definitely be in a spot of bother. The website’s server and its software, the one that runs WordPress, needs to be capable of handling the traffic your content will throw at it.

The Hardware

Blaming slow performance on your WordPress platform isn’t right. The platform can handle only as much as its hardware allows it to. If you plug in better hardware, you will get better performance. There are plenty of reasons why some sites work better than others, and if you narrow things down, you will end up talking about two things – processors and networking.

Processor Limitations

Memory, both the storage and access kinds, needs to be optimal for a good browsing experience. If you are trying to get heavy traffic on your website, you will need a good amount of processing power behind your website. That means, you need to pick the kind of server your website or blog will be stored on, not the storage company. Pick your weapons carefully and if required, host it at your own home under your own supervision.

Networking Issues

Not only does the server determine the quality of your site’s browsing experience, how it is connected to the Internet also plays a vital role. Your server’s host will provide an ethernet adapter to connect your server to the Internet. The maximum data-transfer speed of this adapter will determine the maximum download capability of your website at any given point of time.

Physically, your server would be incapable of transferring anything more than these speeds allow. And then there’s more – each server transmits and receives a lot of information along with each packet of data. So that means, if your adapter reads 10Mb, you will never be able to transfer 10Mb of data because there are other stuff taking up space. Networking overhead limits your bandwidth to a fraction of what it is capable of.

There are plenty of other devices on your network that will be connected to your server. These devices are used to spread out the limited bandwidth to other servers at the location. Therefore, everything that is being used as bandwidth for data, will also be shared.

Whenever you are thing about making a website or blog, you need to keep this side of the equation in your mind. There is nothing that you cannot do if you plan for it and in the case of your WordPress production, just make sure that everything is right on the mark.

S. VISHWANATHAN – author

Vishy is a software engineer who has worked around the world working with a wide range of clients, including a London WordPress design & development agency.  Vishy has an unhealthy obsession with code, but also loves reading novels for pleasure.

We all know Twitter, we may not all be on it (if you not I suggest you do so), but we have all heard of it. If you are a business or a brand or just a person that wants to make a name for themselves, there are certain steps that you should take in order to become a Twitter assassin. It’s not just as simple as creating an account and then seeing your profile go viral (unless you are Charlie Sheen of course), no there is work required.  I myself have a passion for twitter and I am constantly trying to broaden my horizons with the untapped marketing potential of the Twitterverse.

So just what’s the plan of action here then, well take a look at the 18 tips sure to set you off.

1.       It all starts with setting up an account with an appropriate name photo and a bio. The bio should include who you are and what you are going to tweet about, this is a sort of an advertisement for yourself.

2.       To have a logo as a profile picture is ok, but people like that feeling of personalisation so try using a picture of yourself or if you are a business use a photo of a prominent member of the company. You can even add your logo to the picture so that you can have the best of both.

3.       Now there is a place to add your personal website or blog, so if you are a brand or business it would be logical to put your homepage there to build the connection. If possible it would also be good to have a designed background customised specifically for you eg. @calepissarra. In my experience it has proven to give your account a sense of authority and apart from the obvious branding benefits, it can make a user feel more connected.

4.       When you are followed by someone new, send them a tweet welcoming them to the family, but never send a direct message as they can seem spammy and prove to be irritating.

5.       The hashtag # is a wonderful marketing tool and can help you to find interesting topics to tweet about and find those people to follow. Who knows maybe you will be able to get something trending if you start an interesting topic.

6.       With this you can become interested in what is going on and start tweeting interesting things yourself and join into the conversation. After all Twitter is about making connections with interesting people, so why not @mention someone and spread the conversation.

7.       Tied to the above is never underestimate the value of a Retweet (RT), if you enjoy a tweet then share it with all your followers, it can be seen as sharing the love and users appreciate all the RT’s that they get.

8.       Ok this is a hard one, Twitter may be seen as a numbers game, you need to ignore this. As hard as it might be to resist the numbers game, you need to, if you Tweet good content then the followers will come, more importantly they will become loyal followers.

9.       Engage, engage, engage, if you take it upon yourself to actively tweet all the time, make sure you engage with people outside of your normal friends circle. It can be a great way to spread the brand, and even lead to viral following or at least bring a large amount of people to your profile to check you out.

10     Make sure Twitter is installed on your Smartphone, if you don’t have a Smartphone, then I would suggest you get in your car and go and get yourself one right now. You can’t always be next to you computer and often there are very interesting things that need to be tweeted on the move.

11     If you are at an event then why not tweet live from it. Tweeting from live events keep your followers engaged and makes you appear as though you are an expert, even if you are not one. You have to think of it from another person’s perspective, would you follow you?

12     Share Links, yes after all Twitter is a great marketing tool, so why not spread some information. Use Bit.ly and other URL shorteners to give your tweets more room and share the knowledge. If you take this on right and do it regularly you could be seen as an information hub and the reputation that goes with it is yours.

13     Saying this make sure that you keep a good balance. It is all well and good to promote your own links so that people share in your expertise, but it would be wise to promote others and not just promote them, promote them more than yourself. The reason being that spamming your feed with your own links can be seen as well…Spam.

14     If you are a brand, company or somewhat of a personality then search for people talking about you and follow them. What goes hand in hand with this is that if you receive an @mention from someone respond to them. Users will appreciate the interaction and feel more connected to you and become more loyal to your account as well as checking up on what you tweet regularly.  Not every business responds, but they should specifically because what I have said above.

15     Always try and keep it fresh with the latest trends and topics in your field of interest. It has proved successful to subscribe to a list of feeds from prominent information sites to make sure you are always a step ahead and tweeting the right stuff, and most importantly be yourself, people like to see a personality.

16     If you have idea’s; run them by your followers (of course not sensitive stuff), bring your followers along in the process. Imagine how this will make them feel, they will feel so involved in what you doing that they will unconsciously become brand ambassadors for you. They could even give you some great ideas and insight into what you need to be doing as well as allowing them to feel connected to your account.

17     There is a lot of fear of the damage that Twitter could do to your PR, but remember, human error is natural, people understand that we make mistakes, just be honest. In fact don’t be afraid to ask tweeps for help, Twitter is an amazing form of PR and can help you a lot more than it can hurt you.

18     Promote your Twitter on business cards, forums or even at a conference you may attend. It’s all about putting that human face to your brand and showing people who your twitter team is. This leads me to say never let interns manage your twitter accounts, they are not as interested, passionate or as involved as a full time employee might be, you would be better off running it yourself.

Cale Pissarra is an experienced online content writer who enjoys writing about various topics such as corporate team building Gauteng, smart business practices, magaliesburg activities and customer interaction. 

The Google Analytics application is a very useful tool for webmasters to analyze the strength of their blog. Among the many statistics available is something called bounce rate. This is listed as a percentage and details how many visitors to your site leave without ever visiting another page on your site. A high bounce rate means that viewers are not sticking around to explore everything your blog has to offer. They are simply brought into your site through a link or search engine, peruse one article, and promptly leave to go on with their Internet journeys. Analyzing your site’s bounce rate is a great way to determine whether readers are getting real value from your blog or just merely stopping by.

All serious bloggers go to great lengths to drive traffic to their blogs. There are many ways to do this. Some work hard at establishing links in by negotiating with other hosts. Others post comments on other blogs religiously, leaving a trail back to their site. Another technique is to guest post on another blog. By offering quality content on another established blog, a site can tap into another blogger’s fan base and bring more traffic to their site. These are all great strategies for building traffic, but the problem arises when the traffic is coming but they just are not sticking around. This is where the bounce rate comes into play.

The first thing to consider when trying to lower your blog’s bounce rate is how users are coming into your site. Look into search results and links in and find out what the average reader being enticed into your blog is coming for. A provocative title may bring in tons of hits, but if none of these readers stick around or subscribe for the RSS feed, little has been accomplished. The idea is to bring targeted traffic to you blog that will be enamored with your content and want to check it all out. Most importantly, they will want to revisit your blog later and see what your latest posts have to offer. So, the first step to lowering your bounce rate is to make sure that the traffic you are working so hard to drive to your blog is the right traffic. Post comments on other blogs in the same niche as yours. Don’t spam random blogs with links to your site. You might cause a temporary spike in traffic, but these are not quality hits. They are visitors that have basically been tricked into visiting your site while they were looking for something else. Most users that stumble on your site in this fashion will only raise your bounce rate when they quickly exit without soaking up much content.

Content, of course, is the other key. Make sure your blog offers value to the reader. Someone who has stumbled onto your blog needs to be impressed initially. Be vigilant in every post to provide value and substance to your readers. Make sure the site is dynamically designed so that readers can easily navigate to other areas. A ticker with relevant and interesting titles that relate to what the user came to your blog for will entice them to stick around and check out some other areas of your site. Getting visitors to stay awhile is the objective, and Google Analytics bounce rate feature lets you gauge your success.

Targeted traffic is another key to keeping bounce rates under control. By targeting traffic, you are using techniques to bring viewers to the site that are interested in what you have to say or offer. Stop focusing on driving mass traffic to your site, but focus on driving dedicated, interested traffic. Meaningful hits mean a lower bounce rate. A lower bounce rate translates to more return visits, and on down the road, more backlinks to your site. Cater to your audience and they will always be wanting more.

Jeff Gross is a blogger and writer, with four years of writing experience in the fields of SEO and internet marketing. Currently he is a writer and content contributor at Queens homes.

So, you’ve created a Facebook page that you’re pumped about…but no one else seems to be joining in on the excitement? Luckily for you, this predicament can be fixed in no time at all.

Here are some really easy ways to increase your readership and get more people to “like” your page:

1. Personalize, personalize, personalize. Call your page fans by name. Actively engage in conversation on your page, and try to make each reader feel as if they are special and unique to the conversation. When you see that people have joined your page, thank each person for the contribution they’re making to your cause. This will make people feel good about being fans of your page, which will result in positive word-of-mouth, which will net you even more fans!
2. Keep coming up with new and exciting content for your page. Nobody’s going to be exactly thrilled if your page doesn’t contain some variety. Try to come up with as much content as possible, on a daily basis – the more content you have, the more people you’ll reach. You also might try having contests or promotions on your page. Tell people that if they want to enter, they have to become your page fans. This has proven to be a great incentive for people to “like” a page – after all, who doesn’t like free stuff? Also, make sure the content you already have is universally engaging – this is crucial. Simply put, if people don’t like the content on your page, they won’t hesitate to “un-like” it.
3. Advertise like crazy. This is going to be a really important part of the process. If you think you’ve already done all you can to advertise your page, guess what? You haven’t. There is always more to be done, in this case. You’ve got to think outside the box, and outside your own virtual realm of friends. So, try getting some of your most loyal fans (ideally, they’ll also have substantial friend lists) to invite at least 100 of their friends. You’ll start to see an increase in your page fans almost immediately. There are countless ways to advertise your Facebook page.
4. Encourage the fans you already have to tag some photos. If you’re hosting events for your fans, take care that you always remember to take many, many pictures. Really, you can’t take enough pictures. Everyone loves to see themselves in pictures, right? Right. Upload the pictures to your page, and ask your friends to tag themselves. This way, the tagged photo appears on each and every one of your fans’ walls, and bingo! More advertising for you!
5. Add a Fanbox to your website. This is that nifty little box that allows people who visit your site to simply click “like”, and automatically become fans of your page. Most people will already be logged into Facebook anyway, so they won’t have to make much of an effort at all to become your fans. This is an incredibly easy and effective way to increase your fan base.

This is a post by The Thailander, covering Bangkok and beyond!

If your site is still suffering from the adjustment made to Google’s algorithm in mid October, I’ve got some ideas I’d like to share with you on how you can turn this trend around.

It’s been almost a month now since Google made the change that affected thousands of sites. According to the data that I have available to me, most sites that were affected suffered a reduction in ranking but were still on the first page or at the top of the second page. However I’ve read posts in various chat forums from some webmasters that say their traffic has been cut in half and their page rankings were in the toilet.

I know how disappointing it can be to see your hard work go poof overnight but if you sit back and take a hard look at what happened and why, I’m confidant you’ll be able to fix your pages so they once again get the ranking they had…or at least close to it.

But keep this in mind…as adjustments go this wasn’t a big one and I believe it is correctable.

Do a detailed “damage report”

In order to fix something you have to know what is broken. I suggest the first thing you do is to go page by page and evaluate each one in terms of traffic lost. I suspect you’ll find some key pages that are targeted to your best keyword phrases that took a hit. However you might find pages that have increased in ranking and traffic as well and those are important to keep in mind when analyzing what went wrong and what went right.

Put your data, including the page URL on a spreadsheet and then do a search for each one and record where you show in the SERP. This spreadsheet will become your base to measure improvement over the next few weeks.

Where to focus your repair efforts

1. Dealing with anchor text.

The duplicate anchor text issue jumped out at me the first time I took a crack at analyzing this change back in October. But it was brought home personally when one of my pages, which was nicely climbing the SERP took a dump. When I evaluated it I realized that a large number of the anchor text that was pointing back to it was coming from my “bios” that are included in all the articles that I guest post.

I had “standardized” my bio which meant the same anchor text was being used in each one. Well I paid for that on October 14th and one of the first things that I’ve done to fix it is go back to the bios and mix up the anchor text.

Spam is Google’s number one enemy and Google has done a really decent job of filtering it out and this adjustment is just another step in that process. Google identifies spam as “unnatural activity or patterns” and what could be more unnatural than 35 different webmasters linking to a page using the exact same phrase?

So, if you were trying to optimize a page for affiliate marketing podcasts and you used that phrase in all of your anchor text odds are you got hit once the adjustment was released.

How do you fix it? You have 2 options. The first is to make sure that all future anchor text is not identical. Add a word or subtract a word or use a plural form or use a relevant keyword phrase that you found on Google’s keyword tool. The more new content the more diluted you duplicate anchor text becomes. Or you can try going back to the webmasters involved and ask them to allow you to change the anchor text in existing articles.

2. Check your quality.

Take a look at your poor performing pages and ask yourself if they really are providing value to the reader. Quality content is still king and if you have pages that are less than perfect they are reflecting on the reputation of the domain. You have 2 options here, you can rehabilitate the page by rewriting the content or you can simply delete the page all together.

3. Where are your backlinks coming from?

This isn’t something new but while you’re fixing the problems you may as well examine this issue as well. Backlinks that promote your site and help in the SERP are quality sites, not the content farms that are normally associated with article marketing. If you have links from no value sites it’s time to look for quality blogs that accept guest content.

4. Freshen up your site.

Google has an unquenchable thirst for new content and there is evidence that it gives preference to some newer content over older content. This doesn’t mean you have to post new content daily, or even monthly, but it does mean that periodically you have to freshen the site up.

5. The role of social networks.

I’m not certain that adding a FB like button or Google 1+ button will do anything to improve your ranking…right now. I do know that if you go the social media route to promote your site you have to actively participate in it if you want to garner any benefit.

Look, Google has dumped a lot of money into social networking so you know at some point in time it will be used in some way to evaluate ranking. All I’m suggesting is that simply adding social network buttons today will not result in immediate improvements tomorrow.

So there you have it. It doesn’t matter what your topic is be it recreational vehicles or something as esoteric as Chinese butterfly collecting the rules of Panda are going to apply to your site and these tips can help.

If you have any questions or ideas on this new adjustment, please share them with the rest of us by leaving your comments below.

James Martell has be offering affiliate marketing tutorials for over a decade and he has been a successful full-time affiliate marketers since 1999. James is the host of the 1st EVER and longest running podcast (the “Affiliate Buzz) since 2003. James lives with his wife Arlene and their four children in White Rock BC Canada.

Social media is changing all the time and if you aren’t careful, you could easily end up in the slow lane to nowhere instead of in the fast lane to being a social media maven. Here are five social media trends which seem to be on the outs as opposed to being new and fresh:

YouTube Amateur Videos

It’s not so much that people aren’t still posting massive numbers of amateur videos to the original social media video sharing site so much as that Google, which owns YouTube is trying to move away from this as a focus. Instead, they want to focus more on the professional side of YouTube videos, offering scripted materials and professional quality.

Look for YouTube to deemphasize these videos and possibly even to remove some of them in favor of the videos which include professional quality, scripted materials. Other smaller video sharing sites such as Daily Motion are likely to take over from YouTube though in offering those amateur videos, so if you still want your daily dose of inanity, feel free to look for it there.

Telling Everyone about Everything

While Facebook’s status updates are great for telling your friends about the latest date you were on or even what you just ate for lunch, there’s really no reason that your boss needs to know about the fact that you had a hot date with some guy last night. Google+ introduced a new feature which allows you to choose whom you will provide what updates to and Facebook recently introduced a similar feature.

This means that you can hopefully expect a better quality and more useful stream on your Facebook wall than you otherwise would have.

Collaborative Document Editing

Google made a big fuss out of their Google Wave service, which was meant to allow people to share documents and to work together on editing them from different locations. While not so much a social media trend as a business social media trend, this concept is dying a slow and agonizing death. Google already dropped their Wave service quietly a few months ago and it’s beginning to seem that shared editing of a document will once again remain the exclusive province of the interoffice network rather than some kind of a larger social media mélange.

Location Sharing

Yes – we know, everyone seems to be in love with location sharing right now and it seems like it’s likely to be the next big thing in social networking. So how can we say that location sharing is a social media trend which is on its way out? We have two words for you: home invasion. Yep, that’s right. The economy is in the toilet with real unemployment in the 18% range and people regularly losing their homes. Statistics show that every time the economy tanks, crime and especially house robberies go up.

This whole trend of telling everyone where you are at the moment and how long you’ll be there for (so ostensibly your friends can what? Drop by?) is likely to end up being one of those things that people didn’t really think about in advance.

Think about it – you’re a thief looking for an easy mark where you can score some easy cash, maybe a few laptops and whatnot. If you have any brains at all, you log on to a site like Four Square and look to see who is currently out of the house. Boom – no need for surveillance or watching for patterns. The mark will tell you whatever you need to know and when to make your move. In short, this is a technology which has no real value and which can lead to a lot of heartache for a lot of people so we expect it to be one of those social media trends which will be on its way out in another year or two.

Plain Corporate Pages

Finally, now that every guy and his brother has a corporate Facebook page, it’s no longer enough to simply have a page where you post a handful of status updates periodically. You need to be able to show your visitors why they should like you and why they should spend time at your page. This means that you need to step up your game and offer unique and truly interesting content or you’ll find that your corporate image online is a social media trend which is definitely on the way out.

Frank Anderson is a regular contributor to many popular social media and tech blogs.  He also works with web hosting and other Internet technologies.

It has been said before and it’ll be said before: content is king.

Whether your blog is your business or you use it as a medium to drive extra traffic to your site, creating interesting and quality content is key. Without it, how will you get new readers to pay attention to you? What will keep readers coming back to your blog for more? What will get your readers to share your content? And, what will help your blog climb Google’s daunting ranks?

Aside from finding the motivation to write, which shouldn’t be an issue because the success of your business is dependent on this, sometimes it is a struggle to think of a worthy topic to write about.

Here are several strategies I use when I seem to be having a little writer’s block.

Update an old post

If you’re in need of a new post, look back to topics you’ve already written about. Skim your titles and the body of the posts to see if there is anything you can write about again. If something has happened or changed, you can write on the same topic as it relates to the changes. Or, maybe you briefly touched on an interesting subject. Take this subject and transform it into a full-length post.

This is an easy way to add new content to your blog. You’ve already done your research and have the post partially written. All you need to do is add the new details and examples to bring the post up to date.

Turn to a current event

In my opinion, the best way to create quality content for your blog is keep it current. What is important to your readers? Look what is in the news and relate it to your blog niche.

Rather than simply rehashing the news, make it your own. Share your reaction or opinion on the topic. Your readers will appreciate that you’ve thought out an analysis.

Other influential people

What are other bloggers in your niche blogging about? Turn to your favorite blogs and their Twitter accounts and see if you can discuss a similar topic for your blog.

To take it a step further, analyze their argument and reflect, react, and share your opinion about their post. Make sure to link to the blog post your discussing, and then try to notify the blog to see if they want to share your post with their readers. This is a great way to build a network, and an easy strategy to garner more readers.

Audience as inspiration

If you have a curious audience of readers who like to comment questions on your posts or email questions to your inbox, try turning their inquiries into blog posts. Rather than keeping your responses private, make them quality public content!

Also, analyze your previous posts and see which topics earn a lot of traffic. Write more about these topics because your audience obviously likes them.

August Drilling, from Forte Promotions which sells promotional products, loves social media and is a recent graduate from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.