Tweet about this giveaway and automatically enter for a chance to win your very own Wibiya iPhone case!

About the Prize:

• We’re giving away 15 iPhone 4/4S cases & 5 iPhone 3G cases.
• Winners will each receive one case via mail, free of charge.
• The winners will also receive a 50% off voucher code to buy additional cases directly from LikeMyCase.

Guidelines:

• Tweet about this giveaway and make sure to use this tweet to win:

I’d love to win one of 20 @Wibiya iPhone cases. You can too! http://bit.ly/zSlQzV

• 20 winners will be chosen randomly and notified via Twitter and/or email.
• The contest ends one week from today on Tuesday, February 28 at 6 am EST.

Added bonus: If you want to buy your own customized case, we’re offering a 20% discount from LikeMyCase with this code: WIBIYA20

Make sure to follow @wibiya so you don’t miss your chance to win!

Good luck!

Not long ago, I sent an email to a blog owner with a guest post – a blogger who doesn’t take more than a day or two to reply. But this time around, it took him an entire week before replying with a “your post is live” email. When I clicked on the reply button and started to type, the first thing that came to my mind was, “Thanks, I was starting to worry.” Of course, that wasn’t what I actually typed, but the mere thought made me smile: getting worried just because someone has taken a little more time to respond, getting anxious because someone is not taking your calls or replying to your texts…Sound familiar? Well, guest blogging is certainly not as enthralling or anywhere near as crazy as the teenage love, but there are times when it triggers feelings akin to what you’ve felt back in those days.

Keep on reading and let me know if you agree or not.

Rejection hurts:
I’ve been writing for more than two years now, and while there’s hardly any blog or website that hasn’t accepted my writing, I still get the dreaded rejection from blog owners once in a while. Even if it hasn’t got anything to do with my writing, it always hurts (ok, just a little, but still). Quite surprisingly, I don’t get offended so easily with any other type of rejection, which is quite common in a freelancing career. But for some odd reason, getting that “Sorry, we can’t use this post” breaks my heart more than “Sorry, we don’t think you are the right candidate for this job.”

Looking at other posts makes you a little jealous:
How many of you guys have been bamboozled by the girl asking you a seemingly tender, yet incredibly moving question of “Is she prettier than me?” Jealousy is not an emotion specific to girls only; as guys have their own reasons for getting envious, especially when they are in love. And jealousy is what I feel whenever I see someone else’s post going live on a reputable blog and getting all the applause. Even more so, when the post or the idea appears to be within my capability, these are the times I feel like asking, “Is he/she a better writer than me?”

Touchy? Well, I might have added a bit more drama – but you get the point.

You look at your published work and feel happy:
Again, no matter how many guest posts you’ve written, and no matter how many reputable blogs you’ve got in your guest blogging portfolio, getting published for the first time on a new blog – in fact, getting published for the second, third, or fourth time on a popular website – will give you a certain joy, which is a little different from any other professional accomplishment. And that’s not all. Every now and then you come across an old post of yours, and you stop what you’re doing for a second to read through a couple of lines – and you feel delighted all over again.

You’re never sure that you’re good enough:
In spite of being a reasonably accredited writer in the blogging circle, I am never sure or confident about my skills when reaching out to a new blog and submitting an article – not even after it is published. (Unless some readers who have read the post give me feedback via comments.) Again, this nervousness is not something I experience in everything I do, and I certainly don’t look out for the nods of approval all the time, but when it comes to guest blogging, I often do.

Anxiously awaiting the reply:
What actually prompted me to write this post were my feelings of anxiety when I got no response for quite some time. Even more gripping is the feeling when you get an email and anxiously click on it to see the response, feeling overwhelmed when not only the post is approved, but published as well. You move on to the published post and head straight to the comments section to see if somebody has made a comment.

Ah, the joys of guest posting.

This is a guest post written by Bashir Jutt, if you’re interested in guest posting on Wibiya’s blog please see the guidelines.

As it is evident from the post, Bashir is in love with guest blogging. Apart from that, he writes for a discount code website featuring yahoo merchant coupon and west host discount .

A fresh Conduit and Wibiya production, here’s our take on your typical reader of each of the major blogs…

But here’s a better question: Do you want to get inside the minds of the superstars that know how to do it best?

I did, and that’s what I set out to do back in the spring. I made a list of the most successful audience-builders that I could find, and invited them to contribute to my new book, Engagement from Scratch! This post isn’t about my book, though.

This post is about the stuff that turned me on to these engagement superstars in the first place – their work that I found so interesting, compelling and thought-provoking that I reached out to them and asked them to participate in the first place.

So without further ado, let’s get to it…

Food for Thought

What Self Confidence Can Mean to Your Business – Adam Toren talks about the impact that self-confidence can have on you, your business, and your relationships with your audience. The benefits of having exceptional self-confidence range from demanding the best work from yourself, to being able to say “no” to clients or projects that don’t really serve your goals. This is something that is important for every business owner to keep in mind – having self-confidence really means being able to trust yourself to make decisions.

Reverse Engineering Facebook’s Business Model – In this post, Alexander Osterwalder reverse engineers Facebook’s business model. Although that giant is bigger than almost anyone else on the net, Alex’s one-step-at-a-time walk through (with reader participation) makes the whole thing seem rather reasonable and entirely possible. The lesson to take away is really that although something can seem huge and overwhelming when you first look at it, there are always ways to break it down into more easily-digestible chunks, and there are
usually people around you can ask for help, too!

The “Content is King” Myth Debunked – In one of the most incendiary posts on this list, Derek Halpern over at Social Triggers talks about how, while content may be the magic element that turns visitors into customers, it’s not what gets them in the front door. For that you need killer design. Derek goes on to list ten “red flags” that could be turning visitors away before they ever have a chance to read your content. Does your website have any of them?

Google+ Will Put Twitter and Facebook Out of Business and Here Is How – Google+ has been around for a while now, and most users are still working through its kinks and getting used to its interface. Some people, like Dino Dogan, have taken to it like a proverbial duck to water, and think that, moving forward, newer generations are going to use it above all other interfaces. Is Google+ on your radar?

Who Needs an MBA (or any Degree) When You Have Hustle? – JK Allen of the Hustler’s Notebook doesn’t mess around. He asks the really excellent question: Who needs an MBA when you have hustle. As a guy with an MBA, I completely agree with him! Apart from the professional fields (engineers, doctors, lawyers – yes, they need degrees!), most people can get the jobs and success that they want in life without the financial burden of an advanced degree. The post-secondary myth is deeply ingrained in our culture – but there are always
other ways to get what you want and need.

How Social Media Amplifies Competitive Advantage – Try to complete the following sentence for your company: “Only we…” A little tough, eh? But the answer to the question is the key differentiator between you and everyone else out there. Mark Schaefer is no slouch when it comes to differentiation, and in this article he talks about how social media can amplify either your awesomeness, or the problems that you have. This is something very fascinating to keep in mind when you’re developing your online strategies.

Redundancy and the Things It Brings – These days, if you work at any kind of job whatsoever where someone else signs your paycheck, it’s hard not to worry about being laid off, or “made redundant,” as Stuart Mills was this past summer. But what could have been an earth-shattering experience for him became a reason to excel at his blog and follow his passions. This is an inspiring post about the different ways you can look at life, and Stuart’s personal commitment to excellence with his projects.

The Biggest Successes Are Often Bred from Failures – In this video from Stanford University, Randy Komisar talks about how sometimes it will be failure that leads to your best and brightest success. Because we live in a world of risk where failure is a real possibility, how we choose to deal with that risk and failure determines whether or not we succeed at what we set out to do. Very interesting food for thought.

By the Numbers

7 Tips to Make Your Comment Stick Out Like a Sore Thumb – We’ve all been told again and again – heck, we’ve told you again and again – how important commenting on other authority and topical blogs is for building traffic and relationships. Ana Hoffman takes this one step further and talks about exactly how to create those great comments that will deliver the traffic and begin the relationships. From how to format your comments so they look clean and easy to read, to small tricks and courtesies you might not notice otherwise, this
list post is jam-packed with useful advice.

10 Quotes to Examine Your Business By – Anita Campbell of Small Biz Trends and BizSugar went to Inc Magazine’s Growco Conference last year and took notes on some of the most memorable and important quotations that can influence business owners today. From Chris Guillebeau to Bo Burlingham, these are thoughts to judge your own entrepreneurial activities by, and provide inspiration as well as food for thought.

How to Kill Your Blog in Ten Easy Steps – Just in case you’ve had enough of blogging, Danny Brown has outlined the ten quickest, easiest ways to completely kill off your blog, offend your readers, and generally free your time back up for you! If, however, you do want to continue blogging, engaging and audience building, you can just take everything he says, strike it, and then reverse it. It’s fun to play the “opposite” world card once in a while.

Modeling the Masters: 3 Business Lessons from David Ogilvy – David Ogilvy was one of the most influential marketers who ever lived, and Evan Carmichael takes us through three incredibly important lessons that we can learn from his life and work. Operating on the premise that you can learn how to do what you love by observing people who have done similar things successfully, the “Modeling the Masters” series is a hit!

Seven Sneaky Ways to Use Facebook to Spy on Your Competition – Kristi Hines is a thoroughly ethical and moral individual, so when she provides a list of ways to get the statistical goods on your competitors using Facebook – we’re in! Facebook is so ubiquitous that it’s sometimes difficult to remember that they have an absolute wealth of information about everyone at their disposal – and a track record of sharing it! These tips are simple and super effective. We can’t wait to try some of them out, and encourage you to do the same!

4 Social Behaviors Invading eCommerce – While “social currency” may be the newest thing, plenty of online retailers are using it to make sure they get more real currency as well by integrating their shopping platforms with the kind of social interaction that customers know and love. As always, Linda Bustos is thorough with her topic, answering every question before you ask it and providing thought-provoking information about eCommerce and how it’s changing.

9 Lessons I Learned from the Biggest Blogging Jerk Ever – We all have horror stories about awful encounters or terrible service we’ve received online, but Marcus Sheridan doesn’t just bitch and moan about the experience – he distills it into really salient information that all bloggers can apply to their online interactions. Way to go Marcus! Also kudos for being too cool to actually list this jerk’s name; the temptation must have been there!

51 Online Business Ideas for Female Entrepreneurs – Thinking about starting an online business? You need to read this mega-list post by Marlee Ward. She lists just about every online business imaginable, and some we’d never thought of! This is a great place to kick-start your creative thinking, and Marlee is just the kind of person who will be interested in hearing how it goes for you. What have you got to lose? Gentlemen, you just might find inspiration there, too, so don’t let the title keep you from clicking through!

The Nine Challenges of a Freelance Writer – You’d think that by now people all over would understand automatically that any job description containing the words “freelance” and “writing” is difficult at best. But no, there are some people who still insist upon believing that freelance writers have it easy, and all you need to build a career in writing is announce your intentions to the world. Onibalusi Bamidele quickly and succinctly dispels this notion in his post about the challenges of freelance writing. Enjoy!

101+ Killer Blog Post Ideas – Need inspiration? Out of ideas? Writers’ block? Tristan Higbee’s got your back with this monster post of awesome blog ideas. From product reviews to infographics, notes to your future self, historical anecdotes, and more, it’s hard to find an excuse not to write when you’ve got so many good ideas staring you in the face. A good page to bookmark and come back to as needed.

Hows and Whys

How to Make an eBook – If you’ve ever wanted to know absolutely everything about writing and giving away an eBook to create your list, then the Blog Tyrant has the post for you! It may be one of the oldest tricks in the Internet marketer’s book, but that doesn’t make it any less effective. If you can create a high-value eBook, your audience will thank you for it! BT has outlined the whole process in a simple, step-by-step fashion – so there are no more excuses! Get writing.

How to Enchant Your Customer – If there is one expert in the art of “enchanting” customers, then it has to be Guy Kawasaki. In this post, he gives ten suggestions for how small businesses can enchant their customers, and create the brand evangelists that everyone wants so badly. Ideas range from the seemingly obvious (make it easy to pay!) to the much more esoteric (show me you trust me), but all are guaranteed to have a hugely positive impact on your business, if applied correctly.

How to Write a Mindblowing Headline for Twitter – These days there’s no excuse for not being at least familiar with Twitter and how it works – people are using it, the audience is there, and if your content isn’t in front of them you’re missing out. Of course, not everyone who gets exposed to your content will click through to it – this is where headlines come in. Jeff Bullas goes through the absolute best tips and tricks for getting those click-throughs from Twitter – something no one can afford to miss out on these days.

The Gentle Art of the ReTweet – Mitch Joel, it can be fairly said, is a master wordsmith. Who else would come up with “The Gentle Art of the ReTweet”? Mitch Joel, it turns out, kind of sucks at Twitter. That’s okay – we get it. Twitter can be hard and mysterious, and the learning curve really does take forever. That’s one of the reasons it’s so nice to read a post like this that is both honest, and informative! Pro tip: If in doubt – say thank you!

How I Stopped Being Stupid and Started Making Money as a Writer – Sean Platt is a prolific writer. The term prolific is not being used lightly here. Sean has written whole novels in a matter of weeks. Prolific. It wasn’t always this way for him though, and in this post he talks about how he started actually making money through his writing. This is a lifetime dream for many people, and beliefs you may erroneously hold about ghostwriting shouldn’t prevent you from making a living!

How a 30 Day Habit Can Revolutionize Your Internet Business – Now here’s an interesting idea: Make a commitment to do something every day for thirty days, and see if it can change your business and your life. Steve Scott usually has some interesting ideas on his blog, but this is one of the best. If you make sure the habits that you cultivate are all geared towards improving your business, imagine where you could be in a few months! Scott breaks down the process in his must-read article.

Words of Wisdom

Why People Don’t Want the “Real” You – Brian Clark goes against some pretty deeply ingrained (for the Internet) conventional wisdom in this post. While being yourself, authenticity, and total sincerity in a bare-it-all-fashion are great, they can also be a little too much. Tempering all-out honesty with good sense, concern for others’ comfort, and your long-term goals doesn’t make you a jerk – it means you’re focusing more on your audience than on yourself – which we can all agree is the most important thing.

Write Epic Shit – In his now legendary post, Corbett Barr talks about how the most important thing you can do for your business, on or offline, is to write or create content or products that are so good people have to respond to it. Corbett always tells it like it is, and in this post he hammers home something that most of us, deep down, know already – mediocre isn’t good enough. It never has been and it never will be, so as a content producer, it’s up to you to make sure that what you create is – if not the best in the world – the absolute best that you can do. Every time.

Your Mom Tells You What You Want to Hear – Gini Dietrich, the brains behind Spin Sucks, gives us all an excellent reminder that it is through dissent and disagreement that we can learn the most. If everyone agrees with you, you will never have a reason to learn or change or grow. Of course, everyone who has read this post pretty much agrees with her! Make sure to sign up for her blog to continue receiving wonderful content.

Why the Money Really Is in the Email List – Natalie Sisson, we see what you did there! Puns aside, Natalie is completely right – having an active list is a hugely valuable asset for your business. If you don’t have one – get started right now. Really. Stop reading and go set it up! Natalie explains in her post how developing relationships with people and getting them to welcome communications from you, is a key element of any online business. Since over 50% of online purchases are made
as a result of email, it’s not a segment of your market that you can afford to miss.

What The Hell are You Waiting For? – That’s a fair question from Steve Kamb, because in his post he goes over every single excuse you might have for not getting into better shape and decimates them one by one. If you can read that post and not feel a little chagrined at your laziness, then you must be in the best shape of your life. Steve’s expertise may be in lifestyle development and fitness, but the lessons he teachers are applicable to marketing and entrepreneurship in a really, really big way.

The Simple Secrets of a $100 dollar business. – While you might not always be able to cover every start-up expense with $100, lack of funds should never stop you from trying things out and starting new projects. Tyler Tervooren explains the concept behind the $100 Business Idea, and frankly, it’s exciting. There’s something to be said for starting out small – there’s no shame in beginning within your means and making some money before adding every single feature you can imagine.

Where to Start with Content? Follow Your Idols – Co-author of Content Rules, C.C. Chapman writes about how you can figure out what your audience would like from you by thinking about what you would like to see from people you admire and respect. It’s an extension of the Golden Rule, and something all bloggers should keep at the top of their minds day-in and day-out.

Want More? There’s Always Engagement from Scratch!

These posts are a great window into the minds of my talented co-authors, but there’s a lot more where that came from!

If you want more insight from these guys – about their experience, the lessons that they’ve learned, and what they would do better next time – then you might want to check out the book that I co-authored with them.

And you don’t even have to shell out the usual $20 that a good book would cost. If you want, you can get it for free. Just visit the book’s website, click on the download link, and tell me what email address to send it to, and moments later you’ll have the full-length PDF waiting for you in your inbox.

So get the book. Learn the lessons. And do the work.

And that’s just the beginning…

This is a guest post written by Danny Iny, if you’re interested in guest posting on Wibiya’s blog please see the guidelines.

Danny Iny (@DannyIny), a.k.a. the “Freddy Krueger of Blogging”, teaches marketing that works at Firepole Marketing. Together with Guy Kawasaki, Brian Clark and Mitch Joel, he wrote the book on building engaged audiences from scratch (available on Amazon, or as a free download).

1. Topsy Analytics

If you want to see information about how many tweets your site is getting, you can start with Topsy Analytics. Simply enter your site:yourdomain.com to see the tweets for your site for the past day, week, two weeks, or month. Beneath the graph, you can also see the top links in the past 24 hours at a glance with the number of tweets each. Use this tool to see your own site’s activity, or enter two other competitors to see how their site is trending compared to yours and what their most popular posts & pages are.

2. Google Analytics

Have you ever wondered about how visitors from social media sites compare to the rest of your visitors? If so, don’t just look at your traffic sources to find your social media referrers. Add an Advanced Segment to your Google Analytics instead. To create one, click on the Advanced Segments dropdown and then the + New Custom Segment button. Name your Advanced Segment Social Media (or similar). Then start adding in referral traffic sources by changing the dropdowns to Include > Source > Containing > domain.com. Click the Add ‘OR’ statement to include more than just one traffic source. Social media traffic sources and related tools / shorteners include, but are not limited to, the following:

• facebook.com – Includes traffic from the main site and the mobile site (m.facebook.com). Consider adding the Like button for more traffic and sharing on this network.
• twitter.com – Includes traffic from the main site and the mobile site (mobile.twitter.com). Consider adding the official retweet button for more traffic and sharing on this network.
• plus.google.com – Google’s own social network. Consider adding the +1 button for more traffic and sharing on this network.
• linkedin.com – Top professional social network. Consider adding the LinkedIn share button for more traffic and sharing on this network.
• youtube.com – Top video social network. Consider adding video networks like vimeo.com and others if you use them.
• hootsuite.com – Twitter management tool.
• paper.li – Service that allows users to create a custom or automated “newspaper” with the latest tweets from their followers, hashtags, or Twitter lists.
• twitterfeed.com – Service that allows users to automatically update their social accounts (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) with the latest blog posts from an RSS feed.
• t.co – Twitter’s official link service – one of the few shorteners that is trackable in Google Analytics.

You can continue on to add social bookmarking sites like the following to your Social Media segment, or create a separate segment for them”

• stumbleupon.com – This social bookmarking network can lead to more visits in one than all other social media sites combined if you’re lucky. Consider adding the StumbleUpon badge for more traffic and sharing on this network.
• digg.com – While traffic is down, it’s still a great social bookmarking network to get featured on. Consider adding the Digg button for more traffic and sharing on this network.
• decicious.com – Delicious has changed a lot since it’s Yahoo days. Consider adding a Save this link for more traffic and sharing on this network.
• reddit.com – Reddit took over the social bookmarking scene when Digg dropped off. Consider adding the Reddit button for more traffic and sharing on this network.
• bizsugar.com – If your content is focused on business related topics, this is the perfect community for you. Consider adding the BizSugar voting button for more traffic and sharing on this network.
• blogengage.com – This bookmarking community is dedicated to blogging. Consider adding the Blog Engage vote buttons for more traffic and sharing on this network.
• myseocommunity.com – This is the new bookmarking community on the scene for SEO lovers and Internet marketers.

When you’ve finished adding social media referrers, click the Save Segment button. You will now be able to see all of your Google Analytics data based on visitors from social media and bookmarking sites. Select multiple segments (including All Visits) from Advanced Segments to compare social media visitors with all of your traffic to learn more. Creating other segments for your search-related traffic, direct traffic, and traffic from other sources can help you determine which area of online marketing is working the best towards bring traffic to your site. Add goals in Google Analytics to further determine what traffic sources (including social media) are driving the right kind of visitors to your site as well.

3. Google Webmaster Tools

Want to find out how much impact Google’s +1 button (the equivalent of the Facebook like button for their social network) has on your rankings and click through in search results? Find out in Google Webmaster Tools. If you have Google Analytics set up, then add your site to Google Webmaster Tools and verify it using the Google Analytics tracking code. Wait a few days, then start looking under the +1 Metrics section. Under Search impact, you will see a graph of the times people saw your website in search results with the +1 count annotated. Below that, you will see statistics about the click through rates of impressions with the +1 count annotated vs. those without. Under the Activity section of your +1 Metrics, you can see the number of +1’s you have attained on your website and its content. Beneath that, you will see details of specific pages on your site and the +1’s they have received. Under the Audience section (if you have enough +1’s), you will be able to see some demographics about the people who are socially engaging with your site via the +1 button. This is a screenshot from Distilled showing the types of demographics you’ll see.

This will give you a better feel for the type of audience that is socially engaged on your site and help you to see what type of content gets the most interest by your targeted demographic.

This is a guest post written by Kristi Hines, if you’re interested in guest posting on Wibiya’s blog please see the guidelines.

Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast.

What tools do you use to see the social media engagement and referral traffic on your blog or website? Please share them with us in the comments!

PunchTab is the world’s first instant loyalty and rewards platform allowing bloggers, brands, and businesses to create free social and mobile-enabled giveaways and loyalty programs. By adding a PunchTab loyalty program, you can increase engagement, improve conversion, and drive long-term loyalty among your customers. Reward your users with points when they show up, share, or shop on your website or blog, in your store, or on Facebook and Twitter.

Our out-of-the box solution takes less than 5 minutes to get up and running. Just fill out some basic information and we’ll generate a code you simply embed into your website, blog, or Facebook page.

Your users can sign up with an email address or log in using Facebook, and instantly begin earning points!

Use our suggested reward-enabled actions, or customize how your customers can earn points. When they earn enough, they can redeem their points, SWAG, or free upgrades in your customized prize catalog.

Add the PunchTab app to your Wibiya Bar now!

There are 5 ways that you can use social media to your advantage to get more comments directly on your website or blog.

1.

Social media is ongoing. It will go on with or without you, so you might as well cave into the inevitable and start letting it help you instead of fighting it. Set up accounts with each of the different websites, primarily Facebook and Twitter. Make it easy for visitors to view you on your social media accounts.

To make this easier, you can download the Wibiya toolbar for your webpage so that it provides everyone with the links they need without you going through a lot of programming efforts to get it all on your page. When you have the same topic going on with all of your social media accounts, it will generate more comments because it will reach a wider audience.

2.

More comments can generate more traffic. More traffic means more sales. So it’s all about generating interest. Interest can be very hard to come by, so Wordpress has offered a number of ways to focus on traffic to the site, found here. When there’s more traffic coming in from all of the social media accounts that you’ve created, there’s a greater possibility that they will leave comments.

3.

Get a post to go viral. Look at the videos on YouTube. Many of them are featured on the front page of the website because they’ve been viewed so many times. Think of an outrageous video that you can post and share it on Facebook and Twitter. As everyone clicks on it and enjoys it, they, too, will share it with their friends and their friends will share and so on. Before long, the video will have so much attention that even more people will have seen it because it will be on the front page of YouTube. Videos are a great way to get comments through social media because everyone will have an opinion, whether it’s good or bad.

4.

Blog posts can be shared with an RSS feed on Twitter. Have you ever wondered why some blogs have thousands of comments while you’re not getting nearly as much as you anticipated? It’s all because of the ability for people to share the blog with the click of a button. The websites that have the app installed on the site allow people to click it and immediately have the post shared on their Twitter feed for all to read. This type of app is available from Wibiya so that social media can work to your advantage when you’re trying to get more comments.

The only way to get more comments is to have more people actually read it. Using the power of social media to let other people do the sharing will be the best way to get the desired comments. One person’s comments can be enough to fuel hundreds and even thousands more.

5.

Friends on social media accounts need to be in high places. Look at the friends that you have on Facebook. If you don’t have anyone that you can count on to spread your message, you need some new friends. Join groups and network within your industry to establish a stronger base of friends. What this will do is help your blogs, questions and general articles get out to a more influential group of people.

When you have a group of friends that are Twitter fiends, ask them for help. Tell them to share the blog and to comment. Soon they will send it out to their friends who will most likely do whatever they are told as well. Before long, you’ll have more comments that you can use to fuel your business and increase your SEO rankings.

This is a guest post, if you’re interested in guest posting on Wibiya’s blog please see the guidelines.

Tom Demers is an avid blogger on a variety of topics and contributes to a variety of publications, including Assisted Living Today, which is a leading provider of elderly care information and is home to a database of senior housing listings for properties such as Texas assisted living facilities.

1. WP Super Cache

As a blogger, you surely have discovered the importance of page load speed. Site speed is now a routine factor considered in determining your search engine rank. You can have the best blog in the world, but if it takes forever for your page to load, readers will go elsewhere. This plugin converts your page into static HTML, which has a faster load speed. This plugin can be installed in less than five minutes, and the benefits of faster page-loading can give your blog the extra boost it needs to succeed.

2. Fast Secure Contact Form

Every blog needs a contact form, otherwise it would just be an online journal. This plugin features all the bells and whistles you need to satisfy the interactive needs of your readers. You will find multi-forms, the ability to create multiple fields, a spam blocker feature and a URL re-direct for your readers after they make their submission. Additionally, there are plenty of customization options that make this free plugin surprisingly better than those that require a fee.

3. Drag-To-Share eXtended

This plugin is designed to mimic the Mashable functionality, allowing users to share news stories and other articles of interest via social network sites. A cool feature of this plugin is the ability to click and drag an image associated with a story. The image and accompanying story becomes accessible from your toolbar so content related to your blog can be easily shared.

4. Align RSS Images

This plugin allows you to bypass the standard alignment of most feed readers. The beauty of this plugin is in the way your page looks when all images are properly aligned. Scattered images can break up text and be a distraction to your readers. When you view your blog, images you add may look perfectly aligned. However, when others view it, the feed can knock the alignment out of whack and create a scattered look on your page. This plugin is easy to install and fixes the alignment problem.

5. WP Frame Breaker

This plugin is designed to streamline the appearance of your blog’s toolbar by eliminating distracting frames on your page. Ow.ly’s wraparound frames can often keep visitors from spending too much time on your blog. This plugin is mainly to improve the appearance of your page.

6. SEOquake

This plugin comes in handy when you want to check how your blog is ranked on popular search engines such as Google. SEOquake is designed for use on browsers such as Firefox, Chrome and Opera. You can view a variety of stats, including search engine rank and page rank. Installation only takes a couple of seconds. If you are interested in seeing how much traffic your blog generates, this is a handy plugin.

7. GrowMap Anti-Spambot Plugin

One cross to bear when running a blog is an influx of spam. Routine spam blockers aren’t always highly reliable. This plugin has proven to be more reliable than the generic anti-spam software offered by most blog hosts. When your readers leave a comment, they must check a box to confirm that they are not a spammer. The concept is similar to those boxes with an image of letters and numbers that you have to retype, only less annoying.

8. Google XML Sitemap

This plugin is designed to add a Google compliant XML sitemap to your blog. You have several configuration options or you can just stick with the default settings, which provide you with a setup that works just fine. Additionally, your sitemap can be added to Google’s Webmaster Tools. Features include creating a priority for each blog post and a user interface to customize certain guidelines, such as specific priorities for your blog.

9. Digg Digg

This plugin integrates popular social buttons, including Google +1, Facebook Share, Facebook Like, Twitter, DZone, Yahoo Buzz, TheWebBlend, BlogEngage, Topsy and Google Buzz. This free plugin has already been downloaded more than 200,000 times. It is the easiest to install and use of all the free social plugins available for your blog. You have the choice of several effects, such as right scrolling, left scrolling, vertical mode, normal mode, compact mode and excerpt mode. Floating Social is a similar plugin that allows you to add the services you want.

10. AntiVirus for WordPress

Every blog should have some form of anti-virus protection in addition to what is already offered. Readers are constantly accessing your blog and adding their own content in addition to what you post. Unfortunately, everything that is added to your blog is not always safe. This plugin is designed to search for viruses, worms, malware and other potentially harmful attacks. Installation is free and easy.

Bonus: Wibiya Bar

Of course, let’s not leave this one off the list. If you are going to use one toolbar to help run your blog more efficiently, this is it. Wibiya provides quick and easy navigation of common social websites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter along with access to a wide selection of free apps to further boost your blog. No coding is necessary, meaning that you can add and remove items from your bar with no fuss. The Wibiya Bar can be personalized with custom colors and other design features. Additionally, it can be easily edited to fit the needs of your blog.

This is a guest post, if you’re interested in guest posting on Wibiya’s blog please see the guidelines.

Brenda Ankley frequently contributes content to Assisted Living Today, a web publishing company that deals with issues ranging from how seniors interact with the Internet and social media to memory care and how social media is impacting our memories.

1. Set the tone

Don’t forget that you are in control of your blog. It is easy to let readers dictate the topic and tone if you are not updating your blog on a regular basis. Think of yourself as a teacher with a bunch of students who take over the minute you appear to be losing control. You don’t need to crack the whip, but you do have to keep readers focused on what your blog is about. Check in daily and add posts to keep readers focused.

2. Make a list

Lists always generate interest since you can pretty much guarantee that someone is going to have a different opinion of what should or shouldn’t have been included. Keep the lists short and fun. The list should still be related to your blog’s general topic. Change the list on a regular basis and archive the old lists so new readers can leave comments on those, too.

3. Pose a question

Instead of the usual “So, what do you think, readers?” question at the end of your post, throw out a question or two to leave readers with something to think about and comment on until your next post. The response to these questions can, in turn, give you something to talk about in your next blog post.

4. Take a cue from your readers

Sometimes you may notice that your readers are delving into other topics. Sure, some of the topics may have nothing to do with your blog. However, if you notice your readers talking about something related to your topic that you are not covering, you might want to consider adding it to your blog to keep your readers interested in what you have to say.

5. Add video/pictures

Let’s face it, this is a visual world. Adding related pictures and video to your blog is a great way to engage your readers. Just remember to update your pictures and videos. For example, if you are talking about your favorite breakfast cereal as a child, add a video clip of breakfast cereal ads from back in the day to pique your reader’s curiosity. Your readers may not care that you liked Fruit Loops, but they may have fond memories of the commercial with Toucan Sam.

6. Pick a “hot button” issue

You don’t necessarily have to spark outrage from your readers or get them engaged in a virtual shouting match, but choosing a few “hot button” issues is a good way to keep your readers interested. For example, let’s say you have a blog about books. Discuss the current popularity of e-readers and whether or not they will eventually replace actual books.

7. Be seasonal

People are generally seasonal in nature. This doesn’t just include holidays. Make your topics related to spring, summer, fall and winter along with major holidays such as Valentine’s Day, Halloween and Christmas. This way you can still keep the focus of your blog and keep readers interested. For example, if you run a travel blog, mention places to go to get away from the winter weather in December.

8. Narrow your theme

One reason readers tend to veer off into sub-groups is because your blog topic is too general. If you notice that your readers aren’t really engaged in what you are talking about, narrow your theme to a more specific topic. This attracts an audience that is more interested in your blog and what you have to say on the topic.

9. Offer promotional items

You don’t have to give away Oprah-style trips, but offering items such as t-shirts or hats with your blog name on them are a good way to keep readers interested. Realistically, you probably cannot afford to give something to every reader. Instead, offer promotional items on certain days and make it clear you only have a certain amount, but suggest that you will have other “stuff” to give away later.

10. Have a contest

People love contests. Again, you cannot offer something on the scale of “The Price is Right,” but you can have little contests off and on to keep your readers engaged. Maybe have a “comment of the day” contest or turn your blog over to a reader for a day and let them be in charge. Make it something fun.

Have any other interesting ideas? And of course, Wibiya is another a way to engage your readers, feel free to sign up for free.

This is a guest post, if you’re interested in guest posting on Wibiya’s blog please see the guidelines.

Tal Baron writes for Smart Meetings, a corporate event planning guide for event and meeting planners.

Blog Engagement

• Is A Blog Really Meant For Engagement? – Blogs were created for publishing content not for engagement. Do we need to do something different with blogs or do we need a new platform?
• The Top 7 Social Engagement Plugins To Drive Free Traffic To Your Blog – All of these plugins have been designed with one goal in mind: to keep your readers interested and to get them to share your content within their social networks.
• The Engagement Factor – What You Need to Know – Engagement is all about involvement and participation. When people participate in something they feel included. They feel like part of the team and that they’re contributing in one way, shape or form.
• Add a Social Sharing Toolbar to Build Traffic and Engagement – Building traffic is the key to successful Web sites and blogs. Make it easy for visitors to share your content with a social sharing toolbar.

Business Engagement

• How B2B Companies Can Create Long-Term Sales Engagement with Social Media – The top brands are able to use that skill to establish authentic communication — authentic in that it creates trust and a willingness to keep the relationship alive.
• SMO vs. Engagement: Why They’re Different and How You Can Rock Both – There are two key methods for supercharging your social strategy: social media optimization (SMO) and engagement. Although they’re equally important for getting more people to your website via social networks, far different rules apply for each.
• The Rules of Smarter Engagement – A discussion on how businesses should rethink a marketing-driven social media approach by not just engaging, but activating a market-driven strategy defined by smarter, more meaningful engagement.
• How To Maximize the Engagement of Your Audience – This is a hot button issue with brands and businesses because of how difficult it is for them to look at an audience and not be pushy or convincing to get their sales pitch out there.
• CMO’s are at the Crossroads of Customer Transactions and Engagement – Engagement is measured by the takeaway value, sentiment, and resulting actions following the interaction.
• 3 Tips for Improving Customer Engagement in SaaS Applications – Customer engagement is key for software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses. Correct interpretation of consumer actions is the basis for running a successful SaaS business. However, determining what your users choose to do in your application can be difficult.
• Dear CMO: Complexity Does Not Equal Engagement – Adding ‘register’, ‘login’, ‘save for later’, ‘create my memory book’, ‘create wish list’, ‘build my custom collection of every page on this site that I like and whatever else we need to do to get you to like us’ buttons to the top of your web site won’t win you any friends.
• Are We Killing Our Customers with Engagement? – Social media consultants and bloggers have long urged companies to create Facebook pages and Twitter accounts and start a conversation with their customers. So, lots of companies have done just that. The problem is, most customers don’t want a conversation with a company or its representatives.
• Report: 58 Percent of SMBs On Social Media Sites, Most Have Only Limited Engagement – A new report from Palore, not relying on survey data, confirms that large numbers of SMBs are on social media. The data reveal that 58.2 percent of SMBs have a presence on either Facebook or Twitter, but only 22 percent are on both.
• An Engagement Checklist for Successful Business – A quick checklist to help you pinpoint opportunities and create new customer touch points.

E-mail Engagement

• Strategies to Improve Your E-mail List Engagement – Perhaps you desire a better open rate, or you’d like to engage your subscribers better. This post talks about list engagement.

Engagement Case Studies

• How Samsung Used Angry Birds to Generate Over 12 Million Minutes of Brand Engagement – Media communications agency Starcom took an interesting and innovative approach with the recent global launch of the Samsung Galaxy SII by creating an exclusive level of the super-popular mobile game Angry Birds.
• FIFA Twitter Promotion Sees Followers Grow By 25% , Engagement At 11% – EA Sports ran a recent Twitter promotion using promoted tweets and promoted trends which saw their engagement level reach 11% while their overall followers grow by 25%.
• How Baylor Athletics Brought Fan Engagement To The Next Level – Having looked at how MLB used social media to promote their brand , Nigel Taylor focuses on the innovative ways that university team, Baylor Athletics have engaged with their fans.

Facebook Engagement

• Facebook’s Secret to High Emotional Engagement? Faces [STUDY] – If you’re trying to understand why Facebook elicits such an emotional response, look no further than the name. Facebook scored highest on attention, emotional engagement and memory retention. Faces explain much of the emotional appeal.
• Improve Facebook EdgeRank & Fan Engagement with Top Fans App – Now you can easily identify & give kudos (or more) to the LOYAL community that makes up your Facebook page while letting them “compete” for the top honors!
• Creating Social Content to Build Engagement – A Facebook content strategy is essential for any brand looking to succeed on the social network.
• 32% More Engagement On Facebook During The Weekend – There have been a few “research” reports that talk about optimal times to post on social networks. Publishing and tracking dashboard Argyle Social (partner) decided to readdress this topic and do it right. They went through 250 thousand posts and 5 million clicks to put together this nice infographic.
• How the 10 Most Popular Facebook Brands Rank by Engagement [Chart] – Brands with the greatest number of Likes don’t necessarily rank as highly against the new engagement metric.
• Does Facebook Fan-Gating Hurt Facebook Engagement? – Find out if it’s a good practice or not to display certain content only to users who Like your Facebook page.
• How Facebook Giveaways Can Enhance Wall Engagement – Based on these statistics, one of the priorities for any brand leveraging Facebook should be getting their content into the Newsfeed.
• 14 Facebook Applications to Encourage Fans Engagement – Discover how these 14 facebook applications can help to encourage fans engagement for your business page!

Network-Specific Engagement

• Foursquare Badges Level Up to Encourage Exploration – In an effort to increase user engagement and encourage exploration Foursquare has revamped its badge system and will introduce leveling up based on check-ins.
• Add Some Juice To Your Hotels Engagement With LinkedIn Plugins – Make it easy for your network and peers to share your information with their network. As you keep build better relationships with your network and peers they will start share your information with their network.

Online Engagement

• The Ultimate Freelancer’s Guide to Community Engagement – An engaged and loyal audience means that you can work on the projects that you like working on best, and that you never have to worry about business, because there are always more prospects waiting in the wings for you to have time to service them.
• Keys To Engagement, User Generated Content & SEO – Adding user generated content to your site should be about engagement, not about adding blocks of text. Google’s Panda update made it more obvious that user engagement is a SEO ranking factor, and I expect the influence of engagement metrics to grow.
• Why You Should Care About Audience Engagement – Engage. Ask. Discuss. Interact. Take feedback, and give the people what they want. That’s the recipe for efficient success.

Social Engagement

• Social Engagement is the Way Forward for SEO – Search engines are moving toward a non-static ranking system, which will be based on a user and their groups. Google is trying to create a more personal and refined search in which a user has more chance of finding the required information (always a goal for Google).
• Social Media Engagement Tools – Social Media Engagement tools are communication platforms where users take action and can respond, engage, interact or communicate directly on social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, and more.
• The Blogger’s Guide to Meaningful Engagement on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter – If you are on these sites, however, you probably know that getting meaningful engagement with your followers isn’t easy. You can easily drown in the noise, so you need tips and tools to help you break through that noise. The following ideas will help you do just that.
• Timing Your Social Media for Effective Engagement – By looking at exactly when you’re getting the most responses from your social media output, you’ll be able to develop a much more effective strategy by saving your messages for times when they’re likely to be seen by the most people.
• The 5 Pitfalls of Social Media Engagement – Social Media can and has enhanced life greatly. It can also complicate things if certain pitfalls are ignored or overlooked.
• A Few Simple Tricks For Engagement: Photos, Questions, Quotations – These are not magic steps but they are still worth adding to your top hat. Pull them out when your audience is watching and test the results for yourself and your business.
• Social Media Engagement and Long Term Relationship Building – One of the greatest benefits of social media is creating real long term relationships with your audience- this post highlights several stories and examples!
• Measuring and Optimizing Social Engagement – Learn how to measure and optimize the social engagement on your website.
• Social Media for SEO vs. Customer Engagement – Studies have shown that many corporate social media initiatives are managed by Public Relations departments and outcomes often focus on awareness, influence, engagement and relationship-building.

Twitter Engagement

• Struggling to Increase Engagement and Exposure on Twitter? – So you send your tweet, sit back, and wait. And wait… What happened? Why hasn’t anyone retweeted you?
• How Do You Determine The Engagement Of Your Twitter Audience? – Should you be more concerned about followers, retweets, or clicks on links to your content? Smart questions from a very interesting study.
• A Look At Twitter Users and Brand Engagement – Now we have entered the era of the Promoted Tweet. Will it work? Will people be turned off? A survey by Lab42 that was reported by eMarketer provides some insight that is sure to please Jack and company.
• How to Create More Engagement on Twitter – A few tools have been emerging recently which boast features that allow you to be more creative on Twitter. Using them can help a great deal to stand out from the noise and be noticed for adding value instead of clutter to your followers timeline.

Video Engagement

• Harnessing YouTube: Secrets of Engagement with Video – Not only is putting videos on YouTube a great way to build an engaged audience from scratch – it’s one where you can still get in as an early adopter. The fact remains that in most niches there are very, very few serious competitors on YouTube.
• 5 YouTube Marketing Tips for Better Engagement – Treating YouTube not only as a platform for video distribution, but as a forum for engagement deepens the customer experience. So how do companies make the most of the conversations happening on YouTube?

Website Engagement

• Optimize & Prosper: Discovery, Consumption & Engagement – For effective optimization as a state of mind, there are three key components of brand and customer interaction to optimize for: discovery, consumption, and engagement.
• 3 Ways to Increase Engagement On Your Website – Putting your best people forward (through rich social profiles) and letting your visitors decide if they want to interact – when, with whom, and how – leads to true customer engagement.
• How To Cultivate Emotional Engagement In Web Design – Cultivating an emotional bond with your customers is important—and it’s becoming more difficult to do. If your website isn’t tuned to resonate with your audience’s emotions, you could be losing business.
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Tracking Website Engagement – Everyone wants to know what the magic metric or metrics are to track website engagement. Here’s the secret.

This is a guest post written by Kristi Hines, if you’re interested in guest posting on Wibiya’s blog please see the guidelines.

Kristi Hines is a freelance writer, professional blogger, and social media enthusiast.

Where will your engagement focus be in 2012? What other resources would you recommend for building blog, business, or social media engagement? Please share them in the comments below!