I’ve searched the web, and here are the top social media and blogging posts this week…

How To Grow A Targeted Social Media Following

For those of you that are now starting to squirm in your seats in hopes I don’t use the “A” word, you are about to get uncomfortable. Automated tools are a necessity in effective social media marketing, but lets clarify this a little bit. I am referring to anything that can improve your efficiency and effectiveness that does NOT automatically post, follow or engage with others in the social graph. Tools that help monitor, find and manage is imperative!

Positioning Yourself Effectively for Personal Branding

This is one of the most important steps as well since it helps you clarify your value and how you are different than your competitors. It helps you understand and your customers understand why they need you and whatever you’re bringing to the table – it helps you and them make sense of the many different options that are available. And most importantly it begins to speak for you, keeps you on the tip of their mind as your customers continue on in life and will help establish a long-lasting memory imprint. It’s you, your brand – make it memorable.

15 Wasteful Habits of Unproductive (and Unsuccessful) Part-Time Bloggers

While it’s always a good idea to study those who are successful, sometimes it works equally well to examine the reasons why many fail to thrive. With this in mind, I share with you the most common wasteful habits that will torpedo a part time blogger faster than a submarine can sink it’s unsuspecting prey.

5 Ways I Kill Two Birds With One Stone and Generate Ideas for Blog Posts

I love making the one piece of work pay off multiple times. One of the ways I do this is by turning other activities that I do into blog posts. Here’s five ways I’ve done it recently…

6 Tips for Creating a Good Call To Action

What is a call to action? Simply put, a call to action is telling a reader, visitor, or potential customer exactly what you want them to do. Here are some tips for creating good calls to action…

How to Get Website Visitors from Social Networks

Up there with the search engines, social networks are among the most common entities on the web. As a matter of fact, the most current research has shown that Facebook, a social network, is now head to head with search engine giant Google when it relates to day-to-day traffic statistics. Regardless of whether this is correct or not, it still speaks of the reality that social networks are powers to be reckoned with online. Social networks generate substantial amounts of web traffic.

5 Creative Ways to Increase Engagement With Your Facebook Fans

Now that you’ve driven targeted traffic to your Facebook Page, the next step is to keep them interested in your Page by coming up with creative and fun ways to engage with them. The goal here is get them to like, share and comment on your posts. Here are 5 ways you can increase your fan engagement…

The Beginner’s Guide to Twitter

Over the last few years, I have helped several friends and a few family members get setup on Twitter. I found myself explaining the basics over and over again, so I decided to write a simple, step-by-step guide. If you are new to Twitter, this will get you up and running fast. If you know someone who needs a little help or motivation getting started, send them a link to this post.

How Email is Still the Best Networking Tool You’ve Got

Email is not dead – it has been, by far, the most important and effective way of communicating with other bloggers, writers, and people in the online world. In fact, I’d suggest it might be vastly more important and better than Twitter and Facebook combined, with a cherry on top! Email has become the lifeblood of networking, sharing of insightful tips and stories, and opportunities at guest posts.

10 Productive Tasks You Should Be Doing On Google+ Right Now

Google+ had a hot start, but has since cooled down. For a lot of people, that means ignoring Google+. I want to warn you that is a bad idea. Although the lights are on and it seems like nobody is home, trust me: there are people there. And they are the very people who can have a huge impact on your blog and business.

Social Engagement is the Way Forward for SEO

SEO is one of the most used—and most mysterious—words in the blogging world, but it is one of the best ways to gain free organic traffic for your blog. Till now, the strategy for SEO has been to create a new post with good on-page SEO techniques, and do the promotion to create a great off-page SEO. This ends up generating a good rank for your post and brings traffic.

Copyright Fair Use and How it Works for Online Images

Copyright laws were established not to give the author the right to deny their work to other people, but instead to encourage its creation… It’s a delicate balance between the rights of the creator and the public’s interest. When in conflict, the balance tips more heavily toward the public’s interest, which is often contrary to what the creator believes to be fair or just.

10 Non Technical SEO Strategies You Need to Know

Tactically-speaking, making your blog search engine optimized doesn’t take too much time, especially if you  start from the first blog post onward. Most bloggers learn things as they continue to pursue blogging and have to adjust as they go or even refactor and double-back on their efforts so as to optimize posts that were published without the now new knowledge.

3 Tips for Blogging Organization

The more I blog, the more my blogging to-dos overwhelm me. For a long time, I thought if I could just get organized, I could coast in my new system. Not so. The reality is, the amount of information we encounter on a daily basis is astronomical. We must constantly push against it, otherwise it will almost certainly bowl us over.

Time for Blogging

As I came back to this world we call blog-land, I wanted to do it responsibly. Christin posted about the ebook, Simple Blogging, and I bought it right away. I came away from that book with a vision and a plan.  A way for my blog to fit into my life, and not the other way around.

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The weekly round-up posts are brought to you by Ashley Pichea.

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