Happy Friday, everyone! Here are my favorite recent reads from around the business and marketing blogosphere:

• 12 Link Bait Techniques for Improving Your SEO
• 6 Common Storenvy Myths – If you want your own online shop away from Etsy, Storenvy is a great option. Check out this article to get the facts.
• How to Use Your Competitors to Grow Your Business
• A Stalker’s Guide to Competitive Research
• Optimizing for Search Engines With Keywords and Content – Part 3 of a great SEO series on Practical Ecommerce (parts 1 and 2 are linked in part 3).
• Why Paypal Freezes Accounts and How To Prevent This
• How to Handle Downtime During Site Maintenance

Happy Friday! Hope everyone had a great week. Below are my favorite recent reads from around the web, check ‘em out:

• 5 Reasons Your Gut Feel Stinks – why your business decisions shouldn’t be based on your gut or your opinions
• People Will Share What THEY Do Not What YOU Do – Great reminder that it’s easier to get customers to talk about your brand if you make the conversation about them.
• The Difference Between Good SEO and Great SEO – A round up of some great SEO articles by Search Engine Guide
• How to Analyze Your Ecommerce Competitors

I’ve been so behind in sharing links. The holidays were crazy busy and my Smaller Box updates get a little behind. I realize today’s list is a bit long but it’s chock full of great stuff. Here’s what I’ve read that you should check out:

• The Best Social Media Campaigns of 2011 and What We Can Learn From Them
• Megan Auman’s List of “The 3 Best Things I Did for My Business”
• How to Hire a Good Virtual Assistant
• 5 Marketing Lessons You Can Learn from a Weird “Real World” Business
• Turn a Face to Face Meeting into a Product Experience
• How To: Format Your a Spreadsheet for Google Merchant Center
• Headline Hacks – This free download gives terrific advice on creating magnetic headlines. Great for writing blog posts, email subject lines, etc.
• Copy Blogger’s Cure for Information Overload
• 8 SEO Tutorials for Beginners
• 40 Facebook Marketing Tips
• How To: Create a Unique Selling Point for Your Homepage
• How To: Increase Your Conversions From These 5 Consumer Psychology Studies
• Let Your Customer’s Participate – Great example of how Cheerios helps their customers support our troops.
• 21 Types of Social Content to Boost Your SEO
• Creating Color Schemes for Web Design

Happy Friday! While you’re here, check out my newly beefed up resources page. I’ve added links to a ton of products and services I personally use to run my creative business. I’ll be adding more resources in the coming months so that my readers can benefit from my favorite finds. Many of the vendors I recommend are the result of exhaustive searches to find suppliers with the perfect combination of best price and great products. If you need promotional items, web hosting, domains, graphic design, etc. the resources page has great suggestions.

On a personal note, I’m pleased to announce that an Ex-Boyfriend tee (my clothing company) was featured last week on an episode of ABC’s Modern Family. I’m always touting the benefits of publicity and this placement was a result of hard work from my partner and our PR assistant. (If you want to know how my partner and I do our own PR I’ve written an ebook about it.)

Now, on with my favorite reads this week:

• Quick, Easy and Almost Free Ways to Close Sales During the Holidays
• Get Elastic Serves Up a Terrific Guide for Link Building, Specifically for Ecommerce Sites
• Great Read About Keeping Your Marketing Fresh and Trying New Tactics
• Color Psychology Showcase — What The Colors We Use in Web Design Mean to People
• Can Visualizing Your Success Actually Lead to Failure? — Interesting Departure from Conventional Wisdom
• Awesome Data Mining Tips from Viper Chill — Tons of great tools for researching keywords, competitors, consumer demand, etc.
• How To: Setting Goals in Google Analytics
• 2012 Publicity Calendar

Happy 11/11/11 everyone! And it’s Friday, woot!

Here’s the best stuff I saw around the business blogosphere this week:

• Web Design Showcase: Designing Above the Fold – nice set of examples of professional web designs that keep important information above the fold.
• Holiday Email 12 Point Checklist – Check Get Elastic’s list of dos and don’ts before you plan your holiday season email campaigns.
• 8 Businesses on Tumblr – Nice showcase of ways businesses are using Tumblr
• UPS, Fedex and UPS – Great detailed comparison chart including pricing, that helps you choose between the top 3 delivery services.
• 5 Ways Small Business Owners Can use Online Video
  

Happy Friday! I’m sure you’ve all got awesome Halloween’ish plans for the weekend. Before you get gussied up and OD on candy, check out my suggested reads from around the web this week:

• How to Protect Your Trademark Online
• 7 Steps to Successful Subject Lines
• Advice from Practical Ecommerce on Writing Excellent Subject Lines
• 10 Ways to Never Run Out of Blog Ideas Again
• 5 Simple Ways to Promote Multi-Item Orders
• Entrepreneur Describes Selling Her Business (must read if you’re thinking of selling your biz one day)

Just got back from an awesome vacation in Australia! I’m now super busy catching up on stuff, but more blog jamz will be forthcoming. In the meantime, check out my suggested reads from around the web this week.

• Short Term ROI vs Customer Lifetime Value – One of my fave ecomm bloggers touches on one of my favorite hot topics
• Solving the Free Shipping Dilemma – ideas to make free shipping work for you
• How to Search a Trademark
• Private Vs Personal in Your Blog and Business – an important distinction people often get confused. Create Hype does a great job of explaining the difference!
• Great Idea to Reframe Discounts – take a page out of Saks playbook to make your discount promotions sound sexier.
• 10 Bizarre Things That Influence Customers Online
• The 5-Step Process that Solves Three Painful Writing Problems – Great step-by-step approach to help you write your blog posts, product descriptions and more.

Hooray it’s Friday! Don’t forget we’ve just opened up I Shop Indie for holiday season members, get more details here. Now on with the links…

• Hard Thoughts About SEO & Link Bait
• How To Ensure That Your Content Will Go Viral
• 9 Pointers for Selling Common Products
• The Value of an Email Subscriber
• You’ve Got to Spend Big Money to Make Big Money
• 23 Reasons Your Blog Isn’t Making Any Money (And What To Do About It!)
• How to Conduct Competitive Research
• Fringe Benefits: Why startups mustn’t appeal to the masses
• Hidden Friction: The 7 Silent Killers of Conversion
• 50 search marketing tips for beginners
• Understanding Basic A/B Testing

Below are my favorite reads of the week from around the marketing and small business blogosphere:

• 4 Free Photoshop Alternatives for Image Editing
• Copyblogger Echoes My Sentiments on “Digital Sharecropping” (A.K.A. why you shouldn’t build your business on Etsy)
• How to Keep Your Promos From being Tossed Out
• Mind Control Marketing – How to Quit Begging and Make People Want to Help You
• What I Learned From Selling Wholesale
• Adding Punch to Product Images

Happy Friday, all! Here are a few reads to kick off your weekend:

• Should Your Order Form Include a Coupon Code Field?
• 3 Tips To Reduce Email Unsubscribes
• How to Buy Booth Space and Exhibit Like a Pro at a Festival or Fair
• Are You Wasting Your Welcome Emails?