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

• How to Promote Your Blog With Social Media – How to share your blog articles on tumblr, facebook, linkedin and twitter to increase your reach.
• A Technophobe’s No-tears Guide to Podcasting – After pulling out half of my hair grappling with a half-dozen different podcasting platforms and audio-editing programs, I discovered there is a simple way to create, embed, and play audio on your WordPress blog. So I’d like to save all of you the agony and share how I now do my podcasts.
• How to Follow Up With a Blogger Without Being Annoying – Knowing how to proceed when you need an answer will make your outreach more efficient and can actually improve your results. Learn when to follow up and the most effective ways to go about it.
• Get Inspired and Organzied: Mind Mapping for Content Marketing – One way to generate ideas for content marketing and keep them organized is through mind maps. Here are 4 examples to get you started.
• The Inbound Marketer’s Complete Guide to Newsjacking – Learn what newsjacking is, and how you can do it to amplify your inbound marketing success.

Business / Career

• The Customer Lifecycle: How Following-Up Can Increase Your Conversions – Here are some ways to keep in touch with your prospects and in turn, increase your conversions and keep your acquisition costs low by not adding extra advertising and marketing expenses.
• The Real Truth About Overnight Success – Many experts will tell you that overnight success is all about how hard you work and how passionate you are about what you do. The basic theme is that if you care enough and work hard enough, then success will come your way.
• Four Incredibly Useful Metrics For Small Business Blogging – As a business owner you should expect your blog to pay its own way.  Knowing your numbers will help you focus your efforts and achieve your objectives.
• How to Build Your Email Marketing List with a WordPress Website – No matter how many unique daily visitors you get — or how amazing your service or product is — if they aren’t finding your valued subscriber content, all the likes, tweets, pins, and pluses in the world aren’t going to build that loyal following you need to grow.
• 20 Revealing Stats, Charts, and Graphs Every Marketer Should Know – Read 20 of the most telling inbound marketing statistics and data points that will help position your progress against other marketers.

Freelancing

• Finding Freelance Balance – How to find balance in your freelance writing work and life.
• 10 Ways to Make More Money as a Freelance Writer — Fast – Fortunately, there are many basic steps you can take quickly to help you land new assignments at better rates. Here are 10 strategies for growing your writing income fast.
• The 20 Essential LinkedIn Groups for Aspiring Writers – With the plethora of groups hosted by the site it’s easier than ever to build a seriously great network of those in the industry. If you’re not sure where to start, use these groups as a starting place.
• Billing Yourself as a Local Freelancer: What You Need to Know – For those prospective clients who want to make sure that they get a chance to get to know who they’re working with, working with a local freelancer can be worth a premium over working with someone who is only accessible online.
• Why We Keep on Freelancing Despite All Warnings – There are many compelling reasons why freelancing is becoming more and more popular. With all the negativity, it’s important not to lose sight of those reasons.

Search Engines / SEO

• 5 Ways to Build Relevant Local Links – If you have a local business website, then take advantage of local link building strategies and these five ways to build relevant links.
• A Simple Step by Step Guide to SEO – Easy things you can do to start your website’s SEO on the right foot – even if you can’t hire a professional to help you out.
• 7 Achievable Steps For Great SEO After The Penguin Update – It’s not that what you are doing is wrong or bad, the reality is that the march towards relevance is coming faster than ever before. Google doesn’t care what used to work, they are determined to provide relevance and that means big changes are the new normal.
• Why Google Penguin Mauled My Sites and What To DO About It – Where do you go after the Penguin Update smashed your organic traffic to bits and pieces? Here are my test results and plan for traffic.
• 15 Different Ways On How You Could Manage Your Online Reputation Using SEO – Most people more than likely equate SEO with a system in which you can promote a business site or an affiliate site in order to get more business drawn to your site so you can make some profit. However, that is not all SEO can do for you. In fact, you can, if done properly use this same system to help you manage your online reputation.

Social Media / Social Networking

• 14 Social Media ROI Metrics You Can Use Right Now – The new social metrics include social connections like Facebook likes, Facebook engagement rates, social chatter, and Twitter retweet rates.
• 9 Practical Tips to Improve Your Facebook Page Performance – Wonder why your Facebook page is not performing well? Could there be anything you missed? Go through this checklist and improve your Page with minor tweaking this week.
• 5 New Twitter Tools to Boost Your Marketing – Discover the latest and most promising tools to get the most out of your Twitter marketing. Check out how to use Twylah, NewsMix, SocialBro, Ifttt and Tweriod.
• Simple Step-by-Step Instructions for Setting Up a Facebook Ad Campaign – Learn how to set up an ad campaign on Facebook with this simple, step-by-step approach.
• Measuring Social Engagement: 3 Ways To Identify High Value Content – Measuring the social engagement elicited by different types of content can help social media marketers pinpoint what is effective — and what isn’t worth precious time and budget. Here are three ways to do it.

Photo of the Week

This week’s top photo is from Bear Canyon near Camp Verde, AZ. There’s nothing my husband loves more than canyoneering adventures and photos like this one!

Be sure to check out Jason Hines’ photography blog and Arizona wedding photography website for more photos. Also, be sure to follow him on Twitter @jasonphines or Google+!

Jack’s Point

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You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Jacks Point Timelapse, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

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• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Timelapse Journey

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 / Content

• 3 Ways to Get Blog Content When You’re Strapped for Time – To make the content acquisition and publishing process a bit easier for folks who are barely getting any sleep as is, I figured I’d share three tried-and-true ways of securing quality content for your company blog without breaking the bank.
• WordPress SEO Hacks: A Cheat Sheet for Getting More Traffic – Learn how you can optimize your WordPress blog to rank higher in search engines and get more traffic.
• A Guide To Developing Your Content Marketing Strategy – From the webinar “Implement These 10 SEO Tips, You Must” comes a guide to developing a comprehensive content marketing strategy.
• How To Write Fast: 8 Secrets To Better, Quicker Content Creation – No-fail secrets to better, quicker content creation. Click play to learn a combination of techniques and mindset shifts that will help you write faster and feel great about it too.
• WordPress Essentials by Industry [Infographic] – A table of the top tweaks that webmasters were applying to their WordPress CMS (by industry), to save you the build time when it comes to seeing what they recommend.

Business / Career

• How to Stalk Your Competitors in 10 Minutes – Learn how to track your competitors and improve your online presence in just 10 minutes a day with this free app.
• 25+ Tools for Real-Time Marketing – We’re about to document the 25+ tools marketers need to know about if they’re serious about real-time marketing.
• Your Unique Selling Proposition: Why It Matters, and How to Find One That Really Works – Your unique selling proposition (USP) is literally the foundation of your business. Today I’ve got a great pair of interviews that will help you find (or strengthen) your USP… and not take forever to do it.
• 7 Enlightening Infographics About Email Deliverability – Take a look at seven of the best infographics about SPAM and email deliverability.
• 5 Ways to Optimize the Business Value of Attending Conferences – If your company is considering whether to send you to events because of uncertain return or benefits, show them the following list.

Freelancing

• 12 Quality Job Boards Every Freelance Writer Should Check Out Today – Are you in need of quality freelance writing jobs? If you’re tired of the junk job offers everywhere online, here are 12 freelance job boards for you.
• 40 Photos of Creative Offices & Freelance Workspaces – Need some office inspiration? Here are 40 offices of regular freelancers.
• Understanding the Design Audit: Getting the Biggest Benefits for You and Your Clients – When a company’s brand fragments, there is an opportunity here for freelance designers to provide a much needed service. Let’s look deeper into this problem.
• Are Freelance Writers Introverts – Are freelance writers introverts? I discuss my introversion and I review Susan Cain’s excellent book Quiet.
• How to Get Tons of Freelance Writing Assignments by Pumping Up the Volume – Too many writers send out a query or LOI here and there, or connect with an editor every once in awhile on Twitter or LinkedIn, and then get upset when they don’t see immediate results. But here’s the thing: If you get a huge volume of stuff out there, you almost can’t not succeed.

Personal Development / Productivity

• The Truth About Piles and Your Productivity – The next time you are looking for something that is buried in your piles, think twice about adding to the problem. Here are just a few tips to help you avoid the piles:
• The 9-5 Guide to Staying Active – As someone steadily entrenched in my chair over these last few months in the office, I’ve had to get creative. I’ve had to try and puzzle out how I can devote my daily 9 to 5, in other words, to the betterment—not the detriment—of my health. Here’s what I’ve come up with.
• 75 Day-Brightening Stories of Generosity – 75 real life stories of everyday giving from our sister site, Makes Me Think, that will put a smile on your face and inspire you to pay it forward.
• 5 Ways To Take Absolute Control Of Business Productivity – More time to spend with your loved ones. More time to try new things. More time to work on a killer project. How valuable would that added time to you? It would be priceless right? This post will go through 5 ways to take control of your productivity.
• How a Relapse Begins: The Key To Removing Bad Habits From Your Life – A common view of relapses is that the start of the relapse is when you fall back into your former state of being. Learn how they happen and how to stop them.

Search Engines / SEO

• Google Launches Knowledge Graph To Provide Answers, Not Just Links – The Knowledge Graph is being used to provide popular facts about people, places and things alongside Google’s traditional results.
• 7 Time-Saving Google Analytics Custom Reports – Instead of spending time digging around for important metrics, you can find what you need separated neatly into columns for some analysis that will lead to some actionable insight.
• 17 Types of Link Spam to Avoid – Going forward, the wise SEO would want to take note of the types of link spam to make sure that what they’re doing doesn’t look like a type of link spam. Google’s response to and attitude towards each type of link spam varies, but every link building method becomes more and more risky as you begin moving towards the danger zone.
• The Worst Kept “Secret” in Local Search: My Thoughts on the Impending Plus-Places Merge – The inevitable integration of Google’s Plus and Places products, obvious since Day One of Plus, finally seems like it might be imminent. We’ve seen several signals from Google in the last couple of months that this integration may be coming sooner rather than later:
• How to Get Rid of Unwanted Backlinks – If you’ve been hit by Google Penguin or an unnatural links penalty, you’re gonna want to drill, baby, drill. The more backlinks you can evaluate the better.

Social Media / Social Networking

• The Top 10 U.S. Cities With Social-Savvy Small Businesses – A look at the top 10 U.S. cities with small businesses using social media.
• 5 Creative Ideas to Spark New Engagement in Facebook Timeline for Fan Pages – Facebook Page Timeline engagement ideas. Cover Photo, Pinned Posts, Highlighted Posts, Milestones, and Tabs and Apps are all covered.
• 6 Ways to Grow YouTube Subscribers and Your Exposure – YouTube Marketing Strategy: How to get subscribers with strategically placed annotations, call-to-actions, your blog and Featured Channels.
• 9 Experts Tell You the Top 3 Things to Do With Your Social Media Accounts – Social media is all the rage nowadays. Everyone is doing it, but it can get noisy and frustrating if you are a business trying to blaze your own path. There are a number of things you can do, but what do the experts recommend?
• 5 Reasons That Twitter’s New Email Matters for Marketers – So what are the big takeaways here? Why did Twitter add this feature? And more importantly, what are the potential benefits for marketers?

Photo of the Week

This week’s top photo comes from Yosemite National Park. It’s one of my favorites from my husband’s recent trip there in April.

Be sure to check out Jason Hines’ photography blog and Arizona wedding photography website for more photos. Also, follow him on Twitter @jasonphines or Google+!

Baboons Testing a Hyundai

What better way to test the durability of a car than to release a lot of “cheeky monkeys” on and in it!

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You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Baboons in a Car, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & DoFollow Resources
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• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & a Star Wars Dance Off
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Black Friday & Cyber Monday Blogging Sales

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

• 19 Ways to Build Relationships With Blog Comments – Business blogging strategy: use these blog comment tactics to build and cultivate better relationships with your business community.
• Building Community on Your Blog – If each fan spends $100 per year on your products and services, and you have 1000 “true fans”, you will have a nice six-figure income of $100,000. The question then becomes… how do you build a community of fans?
• 20 Simple Ways to Boost Blog Subscribers – Find out 20 ways you can increase the number of visitors who subscribe to your business blog.
• 10 Real Ways to Beat the Beast that is Writer’s Block – Will you let writer’s block eat up your productivity, and come back for seconds to devour more free time?
• Your Blog, Your Rules – Why Marketing Should Always Begin at Home – Don’t rely solely on social platforms for housing your content. Read the benefits of having your own blog and using social media to market it.

Business / Career

• 6 Tools to Find Online Influencers in Your Vertical – Want to get more exposure for your brand, business, or website? Try finding influencers in your industry using these six tools.
• 26 Tips for Success With Location-Based Marketing – What’s SoLoMo? How can you improve your location-based marketing? Discover more about optimization for local businesses and mobile marketing campaigns.
• 20 Mistakes that Will Undermine Your Call to Action and Cost You Sales – The most profitable sites use this tactic to convince readers to sign up for a newsletter, download an ebook, attend a webinar, or purchase a product. This is the difference between a highly profitable website and a failed marketing initiative. Yet most screw it up.
• Info Product Rookie Mistake You Don’t Wanna Make – Learn one of the biggest mistakes many of us make when launching our first info product and, most importantly, how to avoid it.
• Build Brand Awareness and Business with Creative Video Blogging – Is entertaining people, while indirectly informing them of what your business offers a good strategy for video business blogging? I’d say, yes, everyone has what it takes, no, not all content will entertain people, and yes, entertainment with a bit of indirect promotion is a solid way of generating business from video blogging.

Freelancing

• The Two Kinds of Fears Freelance Writers Face — and How to Slay Them Both – There are two basic types of fears that paralyze freelance writers and keep them from having the writing careers they want.
• Kickstart Guide to Breaking into Freelance Illustration – I’m going to introduce you to five talented Freelance Illustrators. They’ll tell you how they got into freelancing and what advice they can give you on getting started in a career in Freelance Illustration.
• 30 Essential Tools and Web Apps for Freelancers – Gregory Ciotti delivers a stellar list of 30 essential tools and web apps for freelancers that should be in their toolbox.
• How To Find Out Exactly What Your Writing Client Wants – For the most part, you’re being hired to solve a problem. Obviously the customer thinks a piece of writing will solve that problem. You need to find out exactly what problem the they are trying to solve.
• The Starving Writer’s Quick Guide to Finding Good-Paying Freelance Blogger Gigs – What sort of clients pay more for blog posts? Here is my guide for sleuthing out a better class of blogging client.

Personal Development / Productivity

• 10 Destructive Faults in Our Way of Thinking – The human mind is wonderful and powerful, but it’s far from perfect.  There are several common judgment errors that it’s prone to making.
• Have You Ever Time Traveled? Because I Just Did – Things you can learn by reviewing the past.
• 21 Things You Could Do In Just 5 Minutes – We all get the same amount each day. But, you can make more of the time you have. You can be more productive. Not letting life’s little moments slip by.
• 14 Effective Ways to Survive a Stressful Day at Work – It’s a challenge to keep your high spirit and stay sane in stressful working days. Here are some easy tips I used in order to avoid another weeping session in the office bathroom.
• What Are You Restless and Hungry For – Do you ever feel this way, at least somewhere inside, despite your greatest efforts to create a clandestine front?

Search Engines / SEO

• Google’s Matt Cutts Talks Search Result Popularity Vs. Accuracy – This video was his response to a user-submitted question: Does Google feel a responsibility to the public to return results that are truly based on a page’s quality (assuming quality is determined by the accuracy of info on a page) as opposed to popularity?
• In-house SEO, SEO Agency, or Both? 17 Points to Consider – While efficient, SEO is also a complex online marketing channel for acquiring new customers. Is it better to have one or more in-house SEOs or collaborate with a specialized SEO agency? Here are arguments for both and how to find the right mix.
• The Noob Guide to Link Building – Sites with unnatural link profiles create a footprint that is easy to identify from a 10,000 foot view and of course Google has that perspective. Don’t put yourself on their radar by engaging in spammy tactics.
• 12 Killer Resources for E-commerce SEO – This post will provide 12 killer resources on how to improve your E-commerce SEO. Use these resources to help give you ideas to increase organic traffic, revenue, and conversion rates.
• Can There Really Be 85 Types Of Unnatural Links – I don’t want to make light of an issue that is impacting livelihoods, but at the same time, there is a certain aspect the this current “unnatural links” meme that is just silly.

Social Media / Social Networking

• 5 Steps to Hosting Successful Twitter Chats: Your Ultimate Guide – Twitter chat guide: what you need to start a twitter chat event, create a plan, checklist, promotions, analytics and archiving.
• 20+ Overlooked Facebook Timeline Tips You Must Know – Some overlooked tips in managing your Facebook account and Timeline pages effectively: security tips, new features, news feed management, important links and more!
• The Right Way to Use Social Media for Outreach – In this post, learn how to use Twitter and LinkedIn to cultivate relationships with bloggers BEFORE sending a pitch.
• How to Get a Boatload of People to Pin Your Products to Pinterest – Pinterest is now the third most-popular social network in the U.S., and the best part about Pinterest is that it is an image driven site, and people love browsing image after image. And if your business is a product based one, you’re a great fit for Pinterest.
• 10 Mistakes You’re Making on Your Brand’s Facebook Page – A look at some of the goofs brands are making on Facebook. Give it a read, and add to the list in the comments.

Photo of the Week

My husband, Jason Hines, is an awesome photographer. And this week, he outdid himself by getting this amazing shot of Supermoon 2012 which was featured on Mashable!

Be sure to check out his photography blog for more photos and follow him @jasonphines for photography tweets or become a fan of Jason Hines Photography on Facebook!

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.

You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Supermoon 2012, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & DoFollow Resources
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• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & a Star Wars Dance Off
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, 2011 Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals

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 / Content Marketing

• 8 Surefire Ways To Increase Engagement On Your Site – Assuming you’ve created great content already, what tactics can you use to increase engagement? There’s a ton of effective ways to do so, and in this post you’ll find out 8 ways to maximize engagement.
• 28 Keys to Successful Blogging – Marko Saric’s 28 keys to successful blogging learned through his blogging experience.
• 21 Seriously Strong Content Marketing Magnets – Content marketing is the process of creating and delivering valuable content to your target customers. While the essential ingredient is, of course, content, the recipe only works when a bond forms between your brand and customer.
• The Real Truth About Blog Comments (When They Matter and When They Don’t) – I’m going to tell you why it’s crazy for some kinds of blogs to care much about the number of comments they receive.
• I Confess, Every Blog Post I’ve Ever Written is Link-Bait – Writers and bloggers are constantly being accused of “Link-Baiting”. But instead of disagreeing with this statement, I’m here to say every post I’ve written is link bait.

Business / Career

• Competitor Research 101: 15 Questions to Unravel Your Competitor’s Online Marketing Strategy – Want to get the scoop on your competitor’s online marketing strategy? Here are 15 questions to ask about their content, SEO, and social media.
• Be Sure You’re Looking At Bounce Rate For The Right Thing – Bounce rate is a great metric of how much your visitors like your site, but it can also be completely misleading when taken out of context.
• Is “Junk Traffic” Destroying Your Conversion Rate And Distorting Your Analytics – Sherice Jacob cites examples of junk traffic destroying website conversion rates and distorting website analytics.
• 17 Ways SMBs Can Survive the Google Penguin Update Effect – How can a business protect itself from the potential crush of Penguin or the next Google algorithm change? There is something to be said for not putting all your SEO eggs in Google’s basket. Read on for advice from veteran online marketers on life beyond Google.
• How To Organize Your Mobile Website To Maximize Usability And Sales – One of the hardest parts of designing a mobile optimized website is that the screen is so tiny. You have as little as one-tenth of the screen real estate compared to that of a desktop or a laptop, yet you still need to convey the same level of information to your potential customers.

Freelancing

• What Freelance Writers Must Know About Inbound Marketing – How freelance writers can use inbound marketing techniques with websites and LinkedIn to get new clients and assignments.
• Should You Create a Free Sample for New Clients – Providing a free sample of your work is not the same thing as working for free. The sample should be specific and to the point. You should have clear direction, and if you don’t have clear direction, be sure to ask for it. You do not want to waste your time creating something that might be close to what the client is looking for.
• 7 Smart Ways to Use Your Writing to Grow Your Freelance Business – This article will be sharing 7 smart ways you can use your writing to grow your freelance business; some of these tactics will only take a few hours, but they can contribute immensely to your freelance business.
• 5 Secrets No One Tells You About How to Write for the Fortune 500 – Ever wondered what it would be like to write for a big company? Hint: The pay is great. Here are five tips from my own experience writing for major corporations.
• What Freelance Writers Need To Know About Ebook Readers & The Environment – Ebook readers like most of our technology are environmentally sound only if we use them for years.

Personal Development / Productivity

• 7 Ways to Leverage Your Time to Increase Your Productivity – Leverage is an awesome force–it allows us to multiply our abilities by applying a little pressure to something. In life, we can leverage our time, and here are seven ways to do just that.
• Your Guide to Daydreaming – Daydreaming puts you in touch with creativity, intuition and play. When you actively imagine, you are able to see things that others do not see. An uncluttered mind also lends you greater clarity. If it’s been a long time since you daydreamed, here are some tips to get you started again.
• 20 Bad Habits Holding Good People Back – Here are twenty bad habits many of us repeatedly struggle with and what to do about them.
• 14 Action Inducing Lessons from Benjamin Franklin – Benjamin Franklin was clearly a man who knew how to get things done. Here are some things you can learn from him.
• How YOU Can Change the World – If you had the power to change the world and to fix any single problem in the world, what would you choose to fix and why?

Search Engines / SEO

• Anti-Penguin Link Building Plan – Everything that I’ll be stating below are just several options that I’ll personally be implementing in case I work on a site that has been hit by this recent Penguin update, wherein most are based on my own understanding of how search works, and everything listed here are theoretical and I’m not saying that they will certainly work.
• 20 Ways to BE Authentic in Your Internet Marketing & SEO, Not Just Look Authentic – There are many different ways that you can approach your SEO efforts to get to the top of search engines, however you must be authentic!
• Your Rank Tracking Reports Are Now Useless – Checking keyword rankings is a regular part of SEO campaigns. With Google’s Venice update, however, the process just got a lot harder. Read on to find out why!
• 12 Timeless Link Building Tips for Business Blogs – Here are a few timeless tips for building natural links that will attract and engage customers to your business blog.
• Google Penguin Update: 5 Types of Link Issues Harming Some Affected Websites – The main purpose of the Penguin update is to put a deep freeze on web spam in Google’s search results. By extension, a big piece of that web spam appears to be links from low-quality networks.

Social Media / Social Networking

• 6 Content Marketing Tips For Google+ – Getting more comfortable on Google+ meant settling in, adjusting to site-specific features, and finding different ways to attract my audience. Below are 6 ways I’ve found success using Google+.
• 13 Ways to Create a Cringeworthy Social Media Presence – this post is going to outline all of the worst offenders we’ve seen in social media. If none of these apply to you, congratulations! Otherwise, consider these cautionary tales to help protect your own social media strategy.
• How to Use Facebook Ads: An Introduction – What you need to know to make smart decisions about how to promote your brand and engage with fans through advertising on Facebook.
• HootSuite Workaround: See (and Respond to) Retweets You May be Missing – A Hootsuite workaround that lets you see and respond to native Twitter web RT without having to leave the Hootsuite dashboard.
• How to Fight For More Social Media Resources In Your Company – Having enough social media resources is an issue in many companies. In this educational post, Jay Baer show how to wage an effective internal fight to get more social media resources.

Chinchilla Love

Definitely not what you would expect to find in a wine glass!

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.

You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Chinchilla Love, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, #FollowFriday, & Some Tennis Love
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• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Cats on Catnip
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, 2011 Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals

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 / Content Marketing

• 6 Reasons Why Content is a Must for Online Marketing – Content creation, development, and marketing are an essential part of online marketing. Here are six reasons why!
• How To Use Keyword Research to Optimize Blog Posts – Learn how to easily conduct keyword research to create and optimize great blog posts for your business.
• How Savvy Inbound Marketers Get Results From Guest Blogging – Learn the benefits of guest blogging for inbound links instead of referral traffic to improve your SEO.
• 9 Real-Life Rules For Creating Shareable Content – Here are nine reasons people share in real life, and some tips for using those sharing impulses to create shareable online content
• My Blog Made Over 2 Million Dollars in Sales: How’s that for ROI – Some people say blogs don’t have a strong ROI. Those people are clueless. Here’s why.

Business / Career

• Is Business Blogging Dying? The Research Says Yes, I Say No. Here’s Why – While the research says business blogging is on the decline in 2011, I believe there are still many powerful ways that businesses can leverage a business blog!
• Viral Content Ideas for Boring Industries – In this post, I’ll share other content types that might help attract visitors, links as well as fascinated customers to a business, particularly to the ones who think that their niche is not that interesting, to which content marketing and link baiting may not be as feasible if compared to other industries that have larger market.
• 7 Characteristics of Compelling Calls to Action – 7 most common characteristics that can be found in calls to action that guide the user towards your designated business goal. The characteristics listed below can be applied to any site in any vertical; you just have to know what your goal is.
• 5 Content Marketing Assets You Forgot You Had – Great content marketing and brand storytelling doesn’t have to be an arduous, from scratch process. Stanford Smith of Pushing Social finds 5 content marketing sources at your fingertips.
• Designing A Mobile Optimized Ecommerce Website – The Tradeoffs That Webmasters Must Make – Knowing the best design practices for creating a mobile optimized site is all fine and good, but implementation is the hard part.

Freelancing

• Dealing With Procrastination – Catching yourself in the act of procrastination is the first step in getting past it. Here are some of Fast Company’s tips.
• How to Eat Your Way to Freelance Success – Do you want a successful career as a freelance writer? Then you must be very careful about what food you put in your body.
• The 15-Step Freelance Writers’ Guide to Writing for Magazines – The vast majority of writers who try to query or submit articles to magazines get nowhere. How can you get your articles published in magazines? Here is my 15-step guide.
• Freelancers’ Guide to Balancing Work and Life – Balancing work and life is very important, and it is necessary to manage both sides perfectly to ensure success in the professional world. Although it sounds simple, managing both sides can be very difficult at times. This is more difficult for freelancers because they need to manage their own time between work and life.
• Outsourcing: Friend or Foe – Outsourcing can be both a friend and a foe to freelancers. When it’s done right, it’s a real time saver; when it’s not, it’s a thorn in your side, if you’ll forgive the cliché. I know what I’m talking about because I’ve been on both sides of the equation, taking outsourced work from other people and outsourcing work of my own. There are lots of lessons I’ve learned on how to do it right.

Personal Development / Productivity

• 12 Things You Should Be Able to Say About Yourself – You know you’re on the right track when you can repeat each of the following headlines to yourself, honestly. And if you can’t, this list gives you something positive to work on.
• How Tony Robbins Plans His Week – Five years ago I learned how Tony Robbins plans his weeks. Since then I’ve used this exact process every Monday. It’s made all the difference.
• The Two Types of Procrastinators: Tomorrow, and… – The two most common types of procrastination, what causes you to procrastinate, and a solution!
• The Success Mentality – R.C. Thornton writes a great post for CYT on how to adopt and make habit of a success mentality.
• Stop Apologizing for Your Crazy Wild Eyed Dreams – It’s time start marching to the beat of your own drum. Bang it so loud that people think there’s a parade going on.

Search Engines / SEO

• Winners and Losers from Google’s Latest Webspam Update – On Tuesday, Google rolled out a new search algorithm it says should better prevent webspam from polluting its search results. Who won and who lost?
• A Marketer’s Guide to Optimizing Images for Google Search – Learn the best practices for optimizing your images and visual content for SEO.
• 7 Ways Links Cause Search Rank Changes – Before you pursue the time consuming process of cleaning up “bad” links, it pays to understand a variety of potential reasons your site might have dropped in the rankings in the first place. Not all rankings drops have to do with your site’s links.
• Overcoming “Not Provided” Keywords – Learn how to get back your lost data through these alternative data collection techniques from Marty Weintraub and Alan Bleiweiss.
• Auditing Your Link Building Portfolio BEFORE Google’s Over-Optimization Penalty Hits – To review these six flags, you’re going to want to look at your OpenSiteExplorer.org link data. Once your data has loaded, review the following steps, as they are the most used, manipulated and abused.

Social Media / Social Networking

• A Look Inside LinkedIn Premium Account Features – Whenever people write about LinkedIn, they mostly focus on the free features of the networks and say that those are all you need. And for most people, a free account will get you great results. But if you’re looking for more, then here are some things you will get with a LinkedIn Premium Account.
• ROI in Social Media: How Important is it to be Everywhere – When you first start getting interested in blogging, online marketing and social media you feel like you need to be everywhere. So at some point you have to ask a very interesting question: how important is it to be everywhere?
• 9 Tweet Types For Your Twitter Strategy – To help those that may be stuck, below are nine types of tweets to try and incorporate into your Twitter strategy. If you don’t know where to start, start here.
• What Your Klout Score Really Means – Your Klout score is gaining in importance: A high one might bring perks, but a low one could dash your career dreams.
• 27 LinkedIn Social Media Marketing Tactics – We have broken down the tactics and features into free and paid categories that businesses (or their advocates) can use to promote their brands, products, and services.

Canary Sky

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You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Canary Sky, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & DoFollow Resources
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Slap Chop Remix
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & the 2nd Largest Aquarium in the World
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & a Star Wars Dance Off
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Black Friday & Cyber Monday Blogging Sales

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

• 75 Top Marketing Blogs to Make Your RSS Reader Fat – 75 online marketing blogs and blog categories for online marketers. Included are the RSS feed links and average number of posts per week so you know what you are committing to when adding to your reading list!
• The Power of Your Blog’s Hidden Community and How to Find It – Do you realize there is a hidden, untapped community to your blog? Sadly, most folks never “talk” with this community.
• How I Increased My Email Subscribers By 500% In One Week – How to increase your blog email subscriptions by 500% by implementing a few simple changes.
• Get Off the Plateau: Growth Tips for Mature Blogs – Some of the starting points that I’ve used to change gear on my blogs over the years.
• The Psychology Of Going Viral: 12 Proven Ways to Craft Content That Gets People Talking – Are you really creating the style of content that gets people anxious to share it (and that allows you to generate interested traffic)? You no longer have to guess, because today, I have research that will show you how.

Business / Career

• Ask the Entrepreneurs: 11 Bloggers to Follow for Lifestyle and Productivity Tips – Entrepreneurs answer the question: Name one productivity/lifestyle blogger that you follow for advice/tips on staying balanced and why they are so great.
• 10 Foolproof Ways to Earn Your Landing Page Visitors’ Trust – Learn how to establish trust on your landing pages so visitors are more likely to convert into leads.
• Embracing Failure on the Path to Success – Leading entrepreneurs and innovators learn from their mistakes and accept that failures are inevitable in finding success.
• The 7 Bad Habits of Insanely Productive People – 7 “bad” habits that crop up a lot in successful people.
• The Pros & Cons of Twitter Advertising for Small Business – Learn the pros and cons of using paid Twitter ads as a small business marketer or a reputation management company.

Freelancing

• 3 Insights You Can Learn About Your Freelance Business from Google Analytics – I’m here to tell you that you have a little tool to give you the answers to many of these questions, which provides insights into how to grow your freelance business. That tool is Google Analytics.
• A Tale of Two Freelancers, Which One Are You – In this post, I’ll be profiling two different approaches to freelancing and discussing the challenges, drawbacks, and benefits of each approach.
• 9 Key Steps to Freelance Success on LinkedIn – If you’re not making the most of LinkedIn, you’re missing out on some quality writing assignments.
• 30 Best Resources for Beginning Freelance Writers – Here is a primer on how to get your freelance writing business up and going, and bringing in real money.
• 7 Resources to Take Your Writing to the Next Level – Over the years, I have read various books and blogs related to writing that have truly inspired me and helped me become a better writer. I’d like to share these with you.

Personal Development / Productivity

• 107 Motivational Quotes & Videos That Will Inspire You – When you get tested to your limits, you’ll find the need to turn somewhere to draw upon some motivation because you’re running on empty. Here are 107 great quotes, videos, and images to motivate you.
• Sleep Hacking: A 21-Day 4:30am Early Rising Challenge – How to wake up early, how to rise early, and how to make early rising a habit.
• 30 Life-Enhancing Things You Can Do in 30 Minutes or Less – Here are 30 things you can do in 30 minutes or less that will have a positive emotional effect on you and those closest to you.
• Ask Yourself These 10 Time Management Questions Today – If you aren’t conscious about your actions and aware of your surroundings, then you are simply flying by the seat of your pants.
• 48 Psychological Facts You Should Know About Yourself – The key to figuring out what isn’t working in your life is understanding some basic psychological facts about yourself — like why we can’t resist paying attention to sex and danger, or that people see what they want to see.

Search Engines / SEO

• Link Building: Anchor Text Optimisation Best Practices in 2012 – Anchor text is not just a simple signal from each and every link. Your whole backlink profile will get analysed to find out whether your anchor text distribution is natural or artificially inflated by over-zealous SEO practicioners. How can you influence your anchor text in a manner that still works in 2012?s
• Google On What Will Get You Demoted Or Removed From Index – Matt Cutts talks fighting webspam.
• Your Website Might Be Over Optimized If – Please place your tongue in your cheek as we present to you some thoughts and suppositions about how you too might be able to recognize that a website has been over optimized.
• 52 Top SEO Tips from BrightonSEO 2012 – This tips include SEO, social media, content, launching a brand, and more.
• How to Check Which Links Can Harm Your Site’s Rankings – There are some actions that can help SEOs assess the backlink profile of any website. Because, in theory, any significant number of low quality links could hurt, it would make sense gathering as many data as possible and not just examine the most recent backlinks.

Social Media / Social Networking

• 5 Ways Businesses Are Using Facebook Timelines – Follow these examples to learn how your business can use Timeline more creatively with Milestones, photos, Facebook apps and calls to action.
• Putting the Social Back into Social Media: 40 Ways to Build a Loyal Audience – There are a lot of different ways to rekindle that spark of excitement between you and your readers. But they all involve putting a bit more effort into building your bond.
• 10 Twitter Tips for Public Figures – Whether you represent an A-list celebrity or a public figure, here are ten tips and strategies for how to manage a related Twitter account.
• 7 Creative Social Media Marketing Mini Case Studies – Check out how these businesses are implementing innovative social media marketing practices with great results and pick up a few social media marketing tips.
• Top 5 Tips to Protect Your Privacy from Facebook Timeline Apps – 5 major tips to make sure your personal profile is free from spammy & unwanted apps. A must read for all Page Admins who install third party apps to their pages.

Dalescapes of Time

Yes, I’m obsessed with timelapses. This one is from The Dale of Jelenia Gora, Poland.

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You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Dalescapes of Time, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Hong Kong Time Lapse
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Ugg Boots & Upcoming Vacation Time
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & DoFollow Resources
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Happiest Turtle
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Mac vs. Windows Humor

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

• A Systematic Approach to Writing Successful Blog Posts – Your blogging success depends heavily on the success of your blog posts. If you can systematize your blogging, you can create a more reliable path to whatever you’ve defined as success.
• Redesigning Your Blog to Drive Reader Behavior – Jay Baer maps out the blog redesign for Convince & Convert, and how blog redesign should yield desired behaviors among readers of his popular social media blog.
• The Secrets Behind Content With 10,000+ Shares – What makes content go viral? Learn the 5 key traits shared by the Web’s most popular content.
• How Should You Handle Expired Content – Expired content is content on a website that is only relevant for a limited period of time. Here are examples of different scenarios that would need to be considered expired content and what you can do about them.
• 20 Ways to Kill Your Writer’s Block Forever – Here are my 20 best tips for defeating writer’s block and getting the writing done.

Business / Career

• 35 Beautiful Landing Page Design Examples to Drool Over [With Critiques] – This post is all about showcasing awesome landing pages, to give you some inspiration for your next design. It’s worth stating that no page is ever perfect – or conversely, every page can be better.
• Introducing The Remora Method: Earn a Side Income of $500/Week (or More) – There are a group of people who are consistently earning money with a strategy that is the complete opposite of what most people do. Find out what it is.
• How The Mobile Version Of Our Online Store Has Performed Along With Some Real Data To Back It Up – While I’m going to show you some actual data taken from my mobile ecommerce site along with some of my observations, today’s article is actually only going to be part 1 of a 3 part series about my experiences in the world of mobile website creation.
• 5 Ways to De-Clutter Your Website For Better Conversion Rates – How to de-clutter your website and improve conversion rates in 5 simple steps.
• Why Marketers Should Invest in Visual Content Creation – Learn why visual content is a critical part of your content creation strategy.

Freelancing

• New Freelance Writer Community: About Writing Squared – Interview with Anne Wayman and Lori Widmer, the founders of About Writing Squared: The Supportive Community for Freelance Writers and Other Creatives.
• 5 Tips to Ensure Maximum Performance When Working for Multiple Clients – Here is a secret that most freelancers who have been in the business for a while are aware of: You won’t reach full earning potential until you move past this fear of handling multiple clients, simply because you waste time that could be broken up among multiple orders trying to find one new project at a time.
• How Freelancers and Other Writers Can Use Pinterest – Are you using Pinterest? If not, you could be giving up a new outlet for showcasing your writing, whether you’re a freelancer or author, or do other type of writing.
• 65 Fresh and Creative Portfolio Website Designs for Inspiration – We spent the last few weeks to compile this list of highly beautiful, creative and most importantly inspirational portfolio designs which might help you to get inspired with their past work and gives you bright directions for your next project.
• Freelance Tasks To Do Without the Internet – Yes, the internet is essential for many of our tasks, but we often forget that quite a few of these can, and maybe even should, be done without it. The next time you can’t connect, don’t get mad – get efficient.

Personal Development / Productivity

• Travel with Confidence: How to End Your Excuses and Go – How many years will you be waiting to take your dream trip? And what exactly is making you wait?
• How Podcasts Can Fuel Your Personal Growth – Podcasts have become an indispensable part of my personal growth strategy. Here’s why you should take advantage of them and how you can get started quickly.
• Why People Suck at Getting Healthy and What to Do About It – Today, you’re gonna learn why most people suck at getting in shape, and how to avoid that trap.
• 12 Questions to Ask Yourself to Simplify Your Life – Asking yourself the following questions will help you get clear on your priorities, be honest with yourself, and hopefully, make steps towards a more balanced and simple life.
• 10 Commandments for Happy Relationships – Happy, healthy personal relationships are one of the greatest joys of life. So starting today, choose to take control of your relationship with your significant other. Here are ten commandments to follow together.

Search Engines / SEO

• How to Track, Analyze, and Improve Your SEO Strategy – Learn how you can make actionable improvements to your SEO strategy by looking at your marketing analytics.
• How Accurate are Alexa, Compete, DoubleClick and Google Trends – Back in January, SEOmoz did a test of free statistics services like Alexa, Compete, DoubleClick, and Google Trends. Their conclusion was that the visitor data provided by these services did not match their own analytics. I tried these services again to see what value they really have to offer.
• 18 Advanced Link Building Secrets – When link building experts Patrick Altoft, Kristjan Hauksson and Mikel deMib Svendsen got together this year at London SES, the result was an insight into the world of advanced link building Here is what these experts had to say.
• Steps to Take After Receiving an Unnatural Links Warning from Google Webmaster Tools – If you’ve received this warning recently, your situation is a bit like one of those “Chose Your Own Adventure” books—Which door will you choose?
• 7 Link Building Mistakes You Ought to Avoid – Some significant changes have been made through those updates that can affect your link-building strategy. So let’s explore those changes and others to help you maintain if not increase your rankings.

Social Media / Social Networking

• Famous Bloggers and Internet Marketers Facebook Timeline Images – I thought it would be a cool idea to feature some of the top names in the industry and see what pictures they are using for their Facebook accounts. As you will see, the majority of images are quite personable, while some are used for branding and marketing of their companies, brands and web sites.
• 5 Tips for Managing Your Community on Google+ – Today I want to show you five ways you can use Google+ to engage more with you community, all the while helping your site and brand page show up more in searches.
• Facebook Custom Tabs Are Not Dead, They’re More Alive Than Ever – Why you need to create multiple tabs and how to use a tab as a landing page.
• 15 Essential Twitter Chats for Social Media Marketers – If you want a few tips on how to best create a great chat on Twitter, here are 15 hashtags that fit the bill.
• 5 Top Google+ Tools and Apps for Marketing Pros – The tools you need to enhance your marketing, manage and promote your Google+ business community.

Photo of the Week

One thing I didn’t expect to find while out hiking in Sedona was a little bit of urbex heaven. Yet, here I was, standing inside this little rundown building, looking at two perfectly aligned doorways.

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!

My Arizona

A lovely timelapse shot in my home state!

Don’t Miss Out on Fetching Fridays!

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You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & My Arizona, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & DoFollow Resources
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Slap Chop Remix
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Mac vs. Windows Humor
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Happiest Turtle
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Black Friday & Cyber Monday Blogging Sales

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

• Bloggers: Win 1 of 10 Trips to The Great Barrier Reef in Queensland Australia – From June 5 to June 10 this year, Tourism Queensland and Darren Rowse will bring ten of what he thinks are the most intriguing bloggers from around the globe to Queensland to meet me and experience the Great Barrier Reef as Queensland Blogger Correspondents.
• The Blogger’s Guide To YouTube: How To Absolutely Dominate Your Niche With Video Content – Video is in, and YouTube is king, and as bloggers, we need to embrace the coming changes, or risk getting left in the dust.
• 5 Creative Tips to Increase Blog Traffic and Boost Your Business – How t o create the blog content you need to generate traffic, increase leads and sales for your business.
• 21 Things I Did to Get My Blog to Top 10 Status – Here are some surefire strategies to grow your blog.
• The Top 10 Qualities of High-Quality List Posts – Learn what the qualities of the best list posts are so you can replicate it for your business blog.

Business / Career

• Starting Over – What Would You Do Differently – We asked top Marketers and Bloggers this question — If you had to start over and knew then what you know now, what would you do differently?
• The Killer Commute – An infographic on all the ways that your commute to work is bad for your health.
• 63 Free (or Almost Free) Ways to Market Your Business – 63 free (or almost free) marketing tips and tactics that any business on the planet can use big or small to generate publicity, buzz, and awareness on the cheap
• Claiming Copyright Protection for Your E-Book – E-book writers/authors have concerns about copyright violations. I discuss copyright protection, disclosing affiliate links, and ordering information.
• How Pinterest Has Increased Sales For Our Online Store Along With Some Real Numbers To Back It Up – The good news is that Pinterest is the real deal and anyone who has an online store should probably invest some amount of time with the tool.

Freelancing

• Freelance Longevity 101: Forging Great Relationships – In this article, I want to share how you can begin forging great relationships and why they matter more than some one-off social interaction – it’s about long-term success.
• 7 Ways a Freelance Writer Can Create Retirement Income – Do you worry about whether you’ll ever be able to retire from freelance writing? Here are seven ways you can prepare to quit and enjoy your golden years.
• Manage Your Time Effectively Using the “Four List” Method – Freelancers are busy people. There’s no doubt about it. That’s why today I’m going to share a very simple time management To Do list technique that I use myself.
• 8 Things I Learned Analyzing My Yearly Freelance Writing Expenses – Expenses were up and income was down slightly, which hit my bottom line, just one lesson learned from doing my 2012 taxes. What about you?
• 10+ Ways to Get a Better Night’s Rest – The problems associated with sleeplessness can be severe. They range from overeating to poor driving to irritability. A sleepless freelancer is also more likely to make mistakes in his or her work.

Personal Development / Productivity

• Spring Cleaning from the Inside Out – This year start Spring cleaning from the inside out. You may find that fewer belongings = more freedom. Less mass equals more energy.
• Why You Should Try Yoga Today – Just as button mashing will only advance your character so far before timing and dexterity is needed to advance, will power and endurance can only take you so far along the path to true fitness before muscle control is required.
• Trading in Your Insecurity and Doubt for Self-Confidence: 8 Starter Tips – You can awaken your giant within and these 8 starter tips may just help nudge him from his slumber, and that alone will be worth your while for a very long time.
• 12 Truths to Tell Yourself After a Mistake or Failure – Failure is a prerequisite for great success.  If you want to succeed faster, double your rate of failure.
• How to Go From Fear to Freedom, One Step at a Time – What fear is holding you back? Where do you feel incapable? What daunting task can you complete, one step at a time? Read on for action steps that will propel you forward.

Search Engines / SEO

• 5 Things You Should Not Do on Google Places – People tend to violate, consciously and unconsciously, the Google Places quality guidelines more often than you could imagine. Here are 5 of the most common mistakes.
• 10 SEO Reasons to Add Facebook to Your Content Strategy – Learn 10 reasons why your organization needs a Facebook presence to optimize your SEO content strategy.
• 30 Link Building Experts You NEED to Follow -A great list of link building experts that everyone should be following.
• How to Build Links Through Guest Blogging – Here’s how you can get the most out of guest blogging and link building to drive more traffic to your website.
• 55 Top Tips and Tricks from LinkLove London 2012 – Wordtracker was at LinkLove London last week, and we’ve put together a list of link building tips and tricks picked up from a very practical conference.

Social Media / Social Networking

• 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report – In our fourth annual social media study, more than 3800 marketers reveal where they focus their social media activities, how much time they invest and what the rewards are. Download for free!
• 25 Timeline Ready Apps for Enhancing Your Facebook Page – Enhance your Facebook Pages with these timeline ready apps. A total of 25 facebook apps to choose from, including BONUS app suggestions to improve fans engagement.
• 101 Best Stores to Follow on Pinterest – After some serious digging around, we came up with a hefty list of 101 Stores Worth Following on Pinterest!
• 7 Ways To Craft A Consistent Social Media Brand – Want to create a consistent social media brand? Be sure to follow these seven tips (plus examples).
• How to Take Control of Your Facebook Privacy – Facebook privacy settings keep changing and it’s time to give yours a tune-up. With all the Timeline changes, you may not have updated your settings or even known where to find your settings!

Photo of the Week

This week’s top photo comes from the inside of Upper Antelope Canyon near Page, Arizona.

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!

BRNO HDR

Don’t Miss Out on Fetching Fridays!

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You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & BRNO HDR, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & DoFollow Resources
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & the 2nd Largest Aquarium in the World
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & a Star Wars Dance Off
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Cats on Catnip
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, 2011 Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals

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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Also, if you’re interested in developmental research, don’t miss Huntingdon Life Sciences.

You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Landscapes Volume II, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

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• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, 2011 Black Friday & Cyber Monday Deals

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

• 5 Link Bait Post Types That Get You More Email Subscribers – Let’s take a look at five link bait post structures that really get people motivated to read, share and eventually give you their email.
• How To Connect with These 6 Influential Bloggers – While everyone is different, bloggers in the same niche have similar end goals. This post features 6 types of bloggers worth getting to know and how to build a relationship with each.
• The Marketer’s Guide to Blogging – As a marketer, have you ever wished you had a resource with all the essential and advanced information about blogging in one place? Here it is!
• How To Increase Your Blog’s Conversion Rate – Increasing your conversion rate is one of the most important things you can do as a blogger. Find out how to get more subscribers here!
• The Lazy Blogger’s Guide to Effective Blog SEO – A handy 7-Step guide to doing the absolute minimal SEO tweaks while getting the best results.

Business

• How to Use Webinars to Create Great Relationships with Prospects and Customers – Webinars are a great customer communication tool because they bring together three powerful elements — customer or prospect interaction, audio, and visual elements including video.
• 19 Email Deliverability Terms Every Marketer Should Know – A list of the email deliverability terms marketers should know plus a presentation!
• Creating an Editorial Calendar for Content Marketing – Planning your content calendar in advance is a vital step in your content strategy. This means you must also understand the process and timescale for your organisation to create content of certain types, and allocate the resources of your team members.
• The #1 Sales Killer On Your Site—And How to Get Rid Of It For Good – How would you enjoy having an influx of people ready to buy whatever it is you’re selling? Learn how to captivate customers with this video and audio.
• 7 Rules for Business Success in a Wired World – Carving out your niche, claiming your space, and applying the 7 rules below can help you succeed and take advantage of this opportunity!

Freelancing

• What is Pro Bono Work and Why Should You Embrace It – Pro bono work is a Latin phrase mostly used to describe a professional work delivered voluntarily and without payment or at a highly reduced fee.
• 20 Pricing Principles for Freelancers – Here you will find not one, but twenty different pricing principles for freelancers in one handy place. You don’t have to apply all of these principles if you don’t want to. However, in my freelancing experience, these really work.
• Is a College Education Necessary to Be a Successful Freelance Writer – Is having a college degree/college education necessary for a successful career as a freelance writer? My college degrees have been crucial for my writing career, but I know several very successful freelance writers who don’t have college degrees. Let’s discuss…
• 7 Ways to Toughen Up Your Freelancing Game – If you want to boost your mettle as a freelancer, here are seven ways to toughen up your freelancing game.
• Answers to 10 of Your Most Urgent Freelance Writing Questions – Got questions about how to make it as a freelance writer? I’m bringing back my monthly mailbag post and answering readers’ questions here on the blog today.

Personal Development / Productivity

• 21 Counter-Intuitive Break Ideas to Boost Your Productivity at Work – Every self-help program talks about the importance of taking a 10-15 minute break to boost your productivity. Read about 21 fun ways to boost your productivity at work.
• Tips to Overcome Your Fear and Live Your Dreams – You have what it takes to succeed. You’ve got what it takes to overcome the obstacles and make your dreams come true. Begin today!
• The Matrix Guide to Rapid Skill Acquisition – Today I want to show you how I go about channeling my inner Neo to acquire skills as rapidly as possible.
• 25 Useful Brainstorming Techniques – This one is an all-time classic among managers, project teams, students and teachers – brainstorming techniques!
• 25 Labels in Your Negative Self-Talk – It does not matter even if others may have used the label on you once. The most important thing is how you have viewed yourself because of the name-calling. You may mistakenly even blame others for causing you to feel miserable. However, it is really you who have inflicted more misery inwards.

Search Engines / SEO

• How to Build Links to Your Website – Getting authoritative websites to link to you is one of the most demanding tasks in SEO. Our latest infographic is a great reminder of 11 creative ways you can get links without asking.
• 25-Point Web Copy Checklist: How to Write for Google – Wondering if you’re writing web SEO copy for Google the right way? Use this 25-point checklist to find out!
• Excel for SEO – Powerful Cheat Sheet to Boost Productivity – What I am going to present to you is actually a worksheet we use internally for training purpose and quick reference. This cheatsheet is for Excel 2007.
• Building Awesome Relationships For Links, Likes, and Love – Link building isn’t really link building. It’s relationship building. Links are just the proof of the relationship, as are the tweets, likes, sales. Relationship building is link building. Your social graph is your linkerati.
• 5 Ways To Get The Best Links For New Websites – When you’re a new website with no established clout, no established authority, and no gaggle of swooning fanboys (or angered skeptics) waiting with baited breath over your every move, links are your lifeblood. So where should you start?

Social Media / Social Networking

• 25 Social Media Tips Provided By 25 Creative Minds – Social media tips that are valuable for businesses and marketers who are looking to benefit from social media.
• 9 Social Media Marketing Tips From the Pros – Hot social media marketing tips to simplify your social media marketing, use custom tabs, post strategically, interact on YouTube, connect on LinkedIn and more.
• Why Is Pinterest So Addictive – Is Pinterest just different enough from other social networks that it frees us from incessant updates and checkins? Or has it just replaced one addiction with another — a sort of social media gateway drug?
• Going Viral on Pinterest: Driving Big Traffic and Making Pinterest a Real Marketing Solution – So how did I go about getting 46 thousand repins from one piece of content on my personal site? It’s all about the content.
• 8 Social SEO Strategies To Start Using Right Now – Social media should already be a part of your business strategy. Now it’s time to harness the power of those social media accounts for your SEO strategy – or risk falling behind while your competitors cash in on their social chips.

Last of the Great Unknown

This is what my husband plans on doing this year!

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.

You're reading Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup & Last of the Great Unknown, originally posted on Kikolani and copyrighted by Kristi Hines, freelance writer and professional blogger. Be sure to follow Kristi on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & DoFollow Resources
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Slap Chop Remix
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & the 2nd Largest Aquarium in the World
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Mac vs. Windows Humor
• Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Black Friday & Cyber Monday Blogging Sales