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February is here and already most everyone’s well-intentioned New Year’s resolutions have fallen by the wayside like a used hamburger wrapper – all crinkled up and never to be thought of again (or at least not for the next 11 months). Historically, my resolutions have suffered similarly quick and painful demises. Recently, however, I had a personal epiphany that holds promise in reversing this pattern and yielding positive results multiple times throughout 2012 and beyond.

And I stumbled upon this thought purely by accident.

Now, please understand that this idea is certainly not new or novel (i.e. Stephen Covey, no need to worry about being replaced on the bestseller list). But for me, a self-diagnosed sufferer of Attention Deficit Disorder (forget the Hyperactive part), this “light bulb” thought resonated strongly. I’ll cut to the chase and share its essence:

Create actionable and measurable goals for the next 2 months, as opposed to daily/weekly or year-long goals.

I know what you’re thinking – this is so elementary an idea it’s almost laughable. Admittedly, this may not be for everyone but for me it was the Goldilocks moment. For goal-setting periods, it dawned on me that a whole year is “too long”, one week is “too short”, but 2 months seemed “just right”. By setting goals in 2-month increments, I get to measure performance six times during the course of a year and the time frame lends itself naturally to goals that are highly actionable. I am liberated from the pressure to perform day-to-day but, at the same time, don’t have to wait too long to see how I’m doing. If I don’t like the results after the first 2-month goal period, I can re-set and move on to the next 2-month window.

The unplanned catalyst for my “2-Month Goal List” was the booking of flights for my family’s upcoming spring break (with an April 2 departure). This led to thoughts on what I wanted to accomplish before vacation, which coincidentally was 2 months in the future. I have about 8 goals on my list, but I’ll only share a few here for illustration:

Goal 1

Lose 10 pounds. Egads, I don’t want to be mistaken for a beached whale on the beach and will need to fit comfortably in my soon-to-be-ordered Winky Boo board shorts. Losing 5 pounds a month seems reasonable and achievable in a healthy fashion.

Goal 2

Accomplish Projects A, B and C at work. In case you didn’t notice, project names have been changed to protect the innocent. Many of us pursue our entrepreneurial endeavors outside our daytime jobs and it’s important to keep the fires burning there as well. I have three projects that I am currently working on that I plan to deliver successfully by April 2.

Goal 3

Print 2 more shirts at Mutated Tees. Another measurable goal that I will strive to achieve. As a business bootstrapper, I am building my product offering one shirt at a time, only going to print when I break even on the previous one. I sold two shirts tonight so I am cautiously optimistic!

Like I stated earlier, this approach may not work for everyone, but if sharing this is helpful to you in any way, I am happy. Good luck selling.

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If you’re like most bloggers, you probably have a few projects going on at once.

This can be incredibly frustrating when trying to convey what you do to people interested, because when you try to describe it all to someone interested … you ultimately end up with nothing more than an incomprehensible description.

Make it easier on yourself and check out CarbonMade — it’s all about the online portfolio.

With nearly 500,000 portfolios already published, carbonmade is making it a lot easier for people to organize, display, and share their multiple creative projects. Here are a few features that might make your mouth water:

• no html knowledge needed
• customizable subdomain available
• customize footer blurb
• customize header
• two font face options
• two color schemes
• add 3 projects free
• upgrade to $12 month for logo options, 50 projects, and other cool stuff.

The Portfolio Page

Take a look at the portfolio of fellow fuel editor and friend, Christopher Jackson.

The About Page

You also get a page for your bio, so you have a chance to reveal more about yourself as an artist, professional, or ninja in a clean, presentable area of your portfolio.

Do you have a carbonmade portfolio?

If you have one, share it with us here in the comment section so we can check ‘ya out!

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You know when you write something and you are really proud of it? That feeling of accomplishment and certainty that others will be just as impressed fills you up. But then come the comments, and for a blogger those come from people all over the world. Some will be honest, some will be encouraging, but many will be critical or even cruel.

It is easy to just ignore those and put on a “They don’t get me!” face. While those that are obviously being mean just for the sake of doing so are best ignored, the ones with constructive criticism have to be appreciated for what they are…even if they are harsh. It is those comments that will help you with the revision that is a necessary (if annoying) part of being a writer.

Of course, you might have to do that before ever putting your blog post online. I like to have someone I trust and respect go over my posts before I publish — someone who will catch mistakes, issues and give an honest look into how the whole thing reads. This Literary Ball-Buster is one of my best friends. Under her careful consideration I have seen a massive improvement in my work.

It was her that pointed out that my approach to taking feedback and revising was similar to the five basic Stages of Grief. Using this somewhat dramatic interpretation, I thought I would share with you what we writers commonly go through. Who knows, maybe it will help you as you grapple with your own constructive comments and revise once again.

Stage One – Denial

Hiding behind ego and confidence is often one of the greatest protections for anyone in an art or literary career. With bloggers it goes a step further. It is just so easy to look at a comment that is negative to put it off to ‘trolling’, or someone who is being catty for no reason. After all, we see examples of pedantic and pointless antagonism on websites all the time.

But using the “It doesn’t bother me” or “It’s their own loss” line is actually more hurtful than helpful. It is the first stage: denial. Until we get past it and accept that we wrote something someone didn’t like, we can’t grow. But it is one stage that will never go away, no matter how much rejection and criticism you face.

Stage Two – Anger

This is one I know well, especially from my early days. I am ashamed to admit that with my first blog job I got into more than one argument with a commenter. Often I was able to hold my own, and I never went with the expletive-filled ranting that was going on in my head. But the fact is, I should never have engaged them that way and instead listened.

Now, I still get angry. However, I take a deep breath and sometimes leave my computer to consider if it is something I have to address in revision, or if it is something I can ignore. But I never personally attack a commenter, no matter how much I would sometimes like to tell them in ALLCAPS to go screw themselves.

Step Three – Bargaining

My friend I mentioned above catches me on this all the time. I have a tendency to start trying to bargain on what I will cut and what I will keep. She will tell me the intro is too wordy and that I need to rewrite the second example with something less aggressive. I will try to agree to do one but not the other. She will give me a verbal slap on the wrist and I will agree to do both, because if I knew better I wouldn’t need her in the first place.

Aggravating, but as necessary as all of the rest.

Stage Four – Depression

No one will ever want to read my blog. I will continue to write sub-par, unfunny drivel and it will make no difference. I should go back to my day job ghostwriting content where it is safe.

Sound familiar? Welcome to the stage of depression. This one is hard to get past, because you will lose your motivation as it sinks in. We are our own worse critics and enemies, and so it can be east to give in. But if you force yourself forward and realize that it is only insecurity talking, you will get through it.

Stage Five – Acceptance

Eventually you will accept that revisions just have to be done. Rewriting is frustrating and sometimes painful. But when you step back and see that no one gets it right the first try you will be less angst-ridden about the process next time.

Even if you have to write the post four times in a row, or even go through old posts to fix them one by one, you will end up with better content. That is work worth putting the work in for, is it not?

Post photo: cc licensed ( BY ND ) flickr photo

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twitter logo

Facebook is not only the largest social network, it may also be the most influential. Just recently, we have seen both Google and StumbleUpon introduce business-friendly features that are obviously inspired by the social giant. The latest to follow the trend is Twitter, perhaps Facebook’s most serious rival in the social space. If you’re lost here, we’re talking about the new pages the microblogging service recently launched with its redesign.

You heard it correctly. Twitter has taken a cue from Facebook and decided to launch its very own brand pages. Pretty much like the familiar feature now offered on various other sites, this one is specially made to allow businesses to take their efforts beyond the limitations of the personal profile. This aspect of the recent update has generated a lot of excitement, so lets dive into how businesses can put the new Twitter brand pages to use.

Pick Your Tweet

One of the many great things about the new Twitter pages feature is how it allows you to showcase a tweet at the top of your profile. This is similar to company’s Promoted Tweets advertising product that gives you the ability to showcase your sponsored posts at the top of the search results. Whatever tweet you choose will be seen by all users who visit your page. You have a lot to work with here as posts could contain images, videos, and other content that can be extremely useful in engaging and drawing them to your page.

Divide and Conquer

Another cool feature that comes with Twitter pages is the ability to conveniently separate @replies, which in the world of Twitter, refers to tweets directed at your business, and @mentions, posts that mention your brand using the @username. This particular feature should really come in handy for the marketer that understands the importance of staying on top of their identity in the social space. By having the luxury to easily differentiate between the two, brands should be able to respond faster and carry out their Twitter communications in general with streamlined efficiency.

Establish Your Brand Identity

Perhaps the best part to like about the new Twitter pages is how it gives you so much freedom in terms of customization. For instance, brands can insert a custom header that stretches across the top of their page. We have already seen some interesting examples of how this real estate can be used effectively by some of the early testers. From the looks of it, Twitter is providing brands with a great deal of power by allowing them to control the look and feel of their page. This freedom is a perfect complement to the business looking to establish their brand’s identity.

Right now, the newly introduced Twitter brand pages are being tested with a small group of launch partners. Notable names on the list include American Express, Coca Cola, and Dell. The rest of us – we will have to wait until some time in 2012, hopefully in the first quarter.

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One of the most exciting new features ColorLabs is bringing bloggers with Backbone is drag and drop customization.

As you may have noticed on Google+ and WordPress, drag and drop is becoming a much bigger player than before due to it’s the way it enhances the ease of use as well as the overall design of how you interact with something online.

Let’s take a sneak peak behind the scenes and see what a blogger can do with a Backbone child theme.

1. Simplicity is the ultimate understanding of complexity

The new drag and drop features bring bloggers both the ultimate power in editing and beauty, because it combines not only a brilliant design but also access to just about anything you might want to customize on your blog.

2. Subscribe Settings

Bloggers now have the option to quickly update everything they need to control their subscription settings, including a the feedburner widget, the text that appears encouraging people to subscribe, the email subscription option, and even a mailchimp option.

I don’t know about you, but having all this in one area is definitely going to help me stay organized and on top of how my readers will connect … which, to be honest, can sometimes get lost in all the noise.

3. Analytics Settings

If you’ve been blogging for a while, or at least tracking some form of analytics, then you’re probably comfortable with working with a snippet of script from Google … but for some this is still way beyond their level of comfort. Backbone addresses this by enabling bloggers the option to control their Google Analtics statistics from their drag and drop admin panel. In addition, you also have the option to control your GoSquared and Feedburner analytics, which I’m sure is only the beginning.

This is truly one of the most powerful features, as it enables you to quickly and efficiently begin tracking your analytics.

4. Blog title and logo options

Another are a lot of bloggers have trouble is with the customization of their logo. While the title has been pretty easy to tackle using the WordPress options built in, the logo’s always been more tricky. For some, it means hacking into the header and manually inserting the html. For others, it means finding a plugin to do this for them.

Now, you can control this right from your drag and drop admin panel, which makes it easy not only to opt whether you want to use a logo for your title or the actual blog title for your title.

5. Add a favicon and look really cool

Let’s admit it, we’ve all looked up how to customize or add a favicon to our blog. The favicon was created to visual the favorites option in your browser, but since then has become more of a status symbol setting apart the cool bloggers from everyone else. With the framework and themes from ColorLabs, you have this option built right in so you can join the cool kids club.

6. Social Settings

Keep all your social information in one place, and pull from it when you need to. This area is an awesome way to save you time and keep you focused.

7. Customize the header styling

If you’d like to make a little change to the color, margin, or border in your header, now you can swiftly.

8. Customize the widget styling

Same goes for the widgets in your sidebar and footer … control the borders, titles, text, and other stylistic aspects in your widgets.

9. Optimize your blog title and description

Use this area to customize your blog title, separators, and even the default layout you’d like to use for pages and posts.

10. Control Indexing

Let search engines know what you want indexed and what you don’t want indexed, such as tag archives, author pages, or search result pages. This can help keep the search engines bot focused on what matters … like your latest post.

11. Tap the Open Graph

If you’re a facebook developer, you’ll find this little addition handy … for the rest of us … time to do some research of buddy up with savvy developers.

12. Customize your footer

Control your ColorLabs affiliate link and logo that appears in footer of your theme. This is a nice gesture from ColorLabs, as some companies include this into the code of your theme, which makes it a bit more difficult to remove it if you wish to do so.

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On January 18th, 2012, there was a massive digital protest — the biggest of it’s kind in history.

It was against two very dangerous bills, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). If you haven’t heard about it yet … watch this:

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Check out SOPAStrike.com and AmericanCensorship.org for the essential links and find out how to take action.

Where were you during the blackout?

I’d be interested in hearing what you experienced during the blackout, so please share your side of it in the comments section below. Were you in NYC alongside others protesting in the streets? Did you take any action? Was your blog dark?

Share what happened on your end of things!

The blackout may be over … but the battle is far from it

If you didn’t get the chance to go dark with your own blog, there’s still plenty you can do. Check out the two websites linked above to learn what you can do, then consider spreading the word on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ using the appropriate hashtags.

If you’re like to change your profile picture to help catch attention, swing by blackoutsopa.org for a quick and easy way to do so.

I created one in PhotoShop a little earlier than I found out about this tool, but had I not I definitely would have used it.

Did the blackout make a difference?

In a word … yes.

Take a look at some of these quick stats.

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One of the most mint features from WordPress is the page feature.

In addition to creating posts, bloggers have the capability to create pages, including the all important about page, the contact page, and even a welcome page if they prefer to move the index portion of their blog to another area of their overall design.

With this capability came new challenges.

Each page you create should be designed to enhance the visitor’s experience on your blog, while helping them discover what you have to offer. Whether you want people to discover your email sign up form, the products you sell, or links to your social profiles, it’s important to make it as easy as possible.

The squeeze vs. The sidebar

If you sell products or services through your blog, or funnel visitors aggressively toward a particular asset on your blog, such as an ebook or online course, you’re probably already familiar with the squeeze page and it’s important role in increasing conversions.

If this sounds a little too advanced for a beginner … let me assure you it’s really not.

The main difference between a squeeze page and a regular page has to do with the sidebar mostly. You see, the sidebar is a distraction depending on how you customize it … it gives your visitor places to go.

A squeeze page is designed to hold your visitors’ attention.

If you’re wondering how you create squeeze page — or any page — that has no sidebar … I’d like to introduce you to the Backbone Theme Framework … it gives you six page layouts to use every time you create a page or post.

The best part … you can change them on the fly, without having to worry about losing your content.

Flex your post n’ page power

This was the first thing I noticed while testing the Beta Backbone Theme Framework. Because it’s a framework as opposed to merely a theme, bloggers that use it have the power to separate their design from their code, which means no more headaches or wasted hours hacking away at code in order to customize your theme. The option is still there, of course, but ColorLabs (the company behind the framework) has addressed a lot of the most popular customization needs, including page layouts.

When creating a new page, scroll below the post until you see this:

Select the layouts that fits your needs. The image above features the full-width layouts selected, which is optimal for creating squeeze pages, landing pages, and others you’d like to limit distraction.

Take a look at this sample post I created, and how it looks with each layout.

Full-width layout

Right sidebar layout

Left sidebar layout

Double right sidebar layout

Sidebar sandwich layout

Double left sidebar layout

The layout work seamlessly

From what I can tell so far, the Backbone Theme Framework provide a smooth experience for the blogger interested in using the page layout.

I’ve been tweaking all six of the layouts for this sample page, as well as switching the theme entirely to two other Backbone child-themes (featured to the right), and I’ve yet to run into any problems.

This type of flexibility makes me wonder what the future holds for both designers and bloggers, as well as for the companies leading the way with beautiful, innovative design.

Which templates would you use?

I’m guessing a lot of bloggers out there would love to get their hands on a way to create full-width pages for their email sign up form, column content, affiliate products or services, and more, but I’d love to actually here what you’d use for your own blog if you had access to the six templates mentioned above.

Swing by ColorLabs to learn more

I’ll be testing and reviewing the Backbone Theme Framework all this week, so you can look here for more throughout the week until the launch.

If you’d like to learn more, swing by ColorLabs or connect with them on Twitter.

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I’m a big ColorLabs fan.

I fell in love with the company when I discovered Arthemia … in my eyes, it struck the perfect balance between the minimalist style and magazine style theme. I use it for a few projects, including creativeblogger and my personal blog (far from ready to be seen, but I don’t mind sharing it with ya).

A few days ago, ColorLabs asked if I’d be interested in testing the beta version of their new theme framework, Backbone … I think my response was something along the lines of “ohmyawesomeyouguysrockIloveyourthemesandframework…waitnewframework!?”

Explore Backbone With Me

If you’re interested in seeing what the Backbone Theme Framework has to offer, or you’d like to learn more about what a framework does in general, consider this week dedicated to you — I’ll be covering various aspects of the framework throughout the week, including the advantages of page templates, the ease of updating your design, how the separation of code and design helps your search engines optimization, and much more.

From what I’ve seen so far, this is the solution most bloggers need to kick it up to the next level. Watch FUEL all this week and I’ll prove it.

Kick Me Your Questions on Twitter

If you have a specific question you’d like me to investigate for you, kick it my way on Twitter (@fuelblogging or @christophrRice).

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If you’re like me, you probably find yourself in a difficult position — you want to talk about blogging with people, but most of your friends aren’t bloggers. I’m not sure about you, but as much as I love blogging, it’s not the same as one-on-one communication with another person … because between publishing, sharing, moderating comments, filtering through spam, and posting replies, it’s more of a process.

Though blogging makes it possible to spark conversation with the world, it isn’t as immediate as other forms of communication.

I’m talking about Twitter.

If you’re interested in connecting with other bloggers from around the world and chatting about blogging, swing by #blogchat on Twitter for a stimulating stream of conversation.

Tip: Get there early and introduce yourself to everyone possible. Interact with as many people there in the beginning, as the stream will most likely become unreadable due to the speed it’s unfolding. The reason it unfolds so fast is because of all the conversations taking place at the same time — if you’re not involved with them, then you’re probably going to feel a little lost.

The gathering is an awesome way to meet new bloggers, share your work, get answers to your questions, help others, and learn from the guest of the week.

It takes place every Sunday night from 8pm to 9pm (Central), but conversation tends to bookend the gathering for about an hour. I tend to watch the stream all week as people have begun chiming up throughout the week.

Hope to see you there!!

#blogchat happens every Sunday nite at 8pm Central (unless noted) on Twitter! Every week we discuss a different professional, business or personal blogging topic. Come join us, #blogchat is open to EVERYONE!

IMAGE CREDIT

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If you’re thinking about getting more clicks or reaching more people or attracting more links, you’re probably not approaching your blog with the right mindset.

Sure, blogging is as much of an art as it is a craft, so there’s no right or wrong way to go about it — unless you’re not publishing new posts … that’s definitely the wrong way to blog, — but by approaching it with these little measurements of success at the front of your mind, you’re probably going to hit a wall at some point and wonder what happend.

That wall may be the realization that your content isn’t as powerful as it used to be.

That wall may be a reader asking what happened to your blog.

That wall may be this post, encouraging you to let go of the numbers and instead focus on the conversation.

Do away with your obsession over numbers and instead focus on what matters … your readers. Your readers are the people that make your blog worth while, so if they stop coming around, you’ll soon find yourself frustrated because your stats continue to decline no mater what you try.

Think about your approach to blogging and what your overall mindset is.

Is it positive?

IMAGE CREDIT: Tillwe

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A couple days ago, Google announced it was integrating Google Plus into Google Search, which we’ll look back on in a year and wonder how it survived as two entities.

If you haven’t checked it out yet, do now … visit Google and search for your name.

You’ll probably see a bunch of results connected to you in some way or another; whether it’s a friend of yours, something you posted on G+, or an album from picasa.

We haven’t explored the integration completely yet … takes a while to surf the entire web, but we’ll touch base with you once we learn more about it. There’s a lot of heated discussion surrounding this move … a lot of people think it’s the wrong move, some people thing Google is even eviler, and some believe it’s awesome.

Here’s a quick little video the folks at Google put together:

Twitter isn’t happy about any of this.

What do you think?

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You are a blogger.

You maintain your site and post regularly because you feel like what you have to say is worth hearing. The problem is that few people are viewing your site, so your message is not getting out. There are countless blogs scattered across the web and if you want people to view yours you have to be proactive.

Here are a few techniques you can use to attract eyes to your site; supplying the content that keeps them coming back for more is up to you.

Contests

People like getting free stuff. That’s an indisputable fact. Contests are always a good way to grab people’s attention. If you have a sports blog you can have trivia questions daily, weekly, or monthly that test viewers’ knowledge of the sports you cover. Offer some type of reward like a hat or T-shirt from their favorite team. People may come to the site just for a chance to win the prize; that is okay because something may catch their eye and keep them there.

Get social

In reality you may have a handful of good friends (if you’re lucky) but on Facebook there are users with thousands of “friends”. The same applies with Twitter, where people can literally amass tens of thousands of followers. Since you have these social channels, you might as well put them to use. Posting links to your blog over these sites with a short summary or teaser of what you are discussing is a great way to gain viewers. People will see a topic that interests them and retweet it or post the link onto their Facebook page. It is okay to post the link multiple times throughout the day or week to make sure people see it. They should support your effort because that’s what friends are for, right?

Email blast them

I know what you’re thinking, but remember that there is a difference between spam and an effective email blast. Create a section on your blog for people to leave their email address. If they do, that means they are interested in what you have to say and emailing them about new posts being uploaded would be welcomed. There is email marketing software available for people who are looking to expand on that.

Just Cause

Blogs that promote a good cause or raise awareness of a disease are normally easy to promote. If you are writing about cancer treatments, walks to raise money for cancer studies, and things related to that topic you will have thousands of people interested because they share that concern. The same thing can be said for a number of different topics:

Sports: You can be broad and cover an entire sport such as basketball or football, or even multiple sports. Or you can narrow it down and cover one team in one particular sport. Either way, there will be a large number of people who will be interested.

Politics: You can separate the blog by choosing a side, Republican or Democrat, or you can choose to speak about politics as whole and remain neutral.

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I love WordPress.

It’s the most popular blogging software out there, the people behind it are awesome, and it just keeps getting better and better!

With the WordPress 3.3 update, bloggers have a few new tools at the ready, which will make their job much easier in terms of focusing on creating content and streamlining the process.

A new interface

WordPress now features a responsive HTML5 design, so the dashboard will automagically resize itself for the optimal user experience. As it shrinks, sidebar elements collapse. You’ll notice the overall design has been polished up a bit as well.

New toolbar

Along with the new interface, we have a new toolbar! It seems WordPress is modeling the toolbar after the simply Google+ bar that now runs across their web properties. In addition to clean design, the toolbar continues to give blogger the capability of jumping to the place they want to be no matter where they are on the page.

Drag and drop media uploading

Finally!

Again, I think WordPress has taken note of what has created an extremely smooth user experience at Google+. The drag and drop media upload reduces the amount of buttons in your kitchen sink, gives you the power to quickly upload a file, and let’s you avoid that oh-so-annoying break in concentration that happens when you dig through your files for that one image.

From what I’ve read, you can also upload RAR and 7z archive formats.

And more

The update also includes a few other features you may or may not notice depending on your use, but one two of the more notable include a Tumblr Importer and Co-Editing.

Now you can import your Tumblr blog content direct and edit your content even when others are working on the same content.

Read the details about WordPress 3.3.

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Wish there was less spam, malware, and content farmed lame sauce throughout the search engine index every time you search for something?

Blekko is working on it.

As a new search engine, Blekko is approaching the world of search a little differently. The search engine has introduced a new way to browse the web, called slashing, which enables you to search not only a keyword, but a category as well.

Slash the web

If you were in need of a volleyball, you could search for “volleyball /shop,” and the results would provide you with pages related not only to shop or volleyball, but volleyball and where you could buy one.

Flag spam, create, and share

In addition, the little search engine provides tools to flag spam as you find it throughout the engine. On top of that, you can create your own slash, which is just another way to save a page for later or categorize it for friends.

Check it out, and start slashing the web!

www.blekko.com

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Understanding the SEO values from Social Media sites are crucial for your website or blogs’ search engine rankings. If you are an Internet marketer who leverage social media for SEO, you are ensuring your marketing success. But if you are not aware on the importance of your social profile to your online business brand, then this article will explain to you this particular aspect of SEO.

Topping the search engines is the most sought after goal of every webmaster or blogger. Why? Because this is the best opportunity to gain lots of organic traffic, plus giving your business gets enough exposure. This means that the higher you rank in Google, Yahoo and Bing, the more conversion you get from your online business. Social media marketing is one of the best methods that can greatly help in promoting both your brand and increasing your SEO rankings. So how to take advantage of social media marketing for your Internet business?

Promote your site content

Do you believe that content is king in Internet marketing? Well, search engines love content and you must be able to synchronize your content through various social media sites and blogs. Most Internet marketers only share or bookmark their sites’ links which is not a bad idea. But did you know that sharing the actual content is much more meaningful than just a simple link. Your social media profile alone can give you lots of organic and targeted traffic to your site, plus engaging a more SEO-friendly marketing scheme.

How does it work? Social media marketing depends on quality content that you feed, making your social community a reason to start healthy conversations. This results in increasing your social profile popularity over social networking sites plus it also works like a bait which slowly but surely trapping your readers to your own brand, gaining more targeted followers and converting more from your site offerings.

Sharing your content on your social profile is the common way to increase readership and blog traffic. You can share your content through various means depending on what social media you are working on. You can actually post the whole content or you can use a summary or image link when posting content in your social media profile. Just don’t forget to put your site link in any of your shared content.

Make a social media profile link wheel

Do you know what link wheel is? Link wheel is an SEO method that aims to strengthen the link power of your niche site by creating various similar web 2.0 properties like blogs, hubs and squidoo lenses. These mini sites contains your article which includes a back link to your main website or blog. Also, these mini sites are also linking to each other which derives the term “link wheel”.

Well, it’s a complete legal way of creating back links and it’s a powerful one. You can apply similar tactics by just connecting each social media profiles you have, which are all pointing to your main website. If you apply this method, you are widening the scope of your marketing campaign which helps reduce your social media profiles’ bounce rate. Linking all your social media profiles can keep your readers connected to your business brand which can increase the chance of getting targeted visitors and getting them to convert. This strategy can also help add more value for your sites’ SEO.

Market your social media profile

If you are talking about marketing, it usually refers on how and where to promote your site. But did you know that doing the same marketing methods for your social profile can give more relevance to your website or blogs’ SEO? Wonder why most popular bloggers and Internet marketers are moving heaven and earth just to promote their social media profiles? Yes, it’s because promoting your social media profiles have a positive impact on your website SEO campaign.

How it can affect your sites’ SEO? Social media profiles are also web pages that can rank individually in Google. It can have its own page rank, which obviously can pass link juice to your own site, increasing its own search engine rankings. Plus, if you insert keyword love when marketing your social media profiles, you can assure that you are targeting the right people for your business brand. So basically, optimizing your social media profile can give additional SEO benefits for your online business.

These simple steps can give a big impact on your website or blogs’ search engine rankings. Many Internet marketers are applying social media marketing because it has endless benefits. Now use your social media profile to boost your over all SEO efforts, increase your readership and double your site conversion rate.