As you know if you have been following this blog, I’ve been on vacation and haven’t had a chance to post regularly. However, I’m still doing some work here and there while I’m away.

If you’re interested in what I’ve been researching and writing about, check out some of the following links:

ON INTERIOR DESIGN:

• Making Books a Part of your Home’s Design
• How to Add a Jacuzzi to your Home
• Pool Furniture

ON BUSINESS, MARKETING and PRODUCTIVITY:

• MySpace for Marketing
• Innerpreneurs are Changing Business
• Go Offline to Get Online Links
• Why Employers Should Block some File Downloads
• How to Streamline Social Networking
• Use Time Tracking to Create a Productivity Plan
• Monitoring Company Printers
• When 9-5 Isn’t Working for Your Business
• Professional Employee Surveys

ON SAVING MONEY:

• Getting Food Fresh from the Farm
• Cheap Summer Activities for Kids
• Organize your Online Coupons
• And lots more!

Tags: articles, blog links, kathryn vercillo, links, writing

One of the things that bloggers and web writers are always seeking to do is to drive more traffic to their sites. One of the key ways of doing this is to get links in to your site from other credible sites.

Here’s a look at some of the most common ways to get incoming links:

• Ask for them. Many sites are open to giving you reciprocal links if you are appropriate about asking the right people in the right way. Learn more about the right way to use reciprocal links.
• Writing link bait articles. Linkbaiting is the practice of writing articles that are likely to draw attention around the web. Controversial articles and Top 100 articles are examples of link bait.
• Write guest posts. You can volunteer your writing efforts to post articles on other people’s blogs in exchange for a link in the article back to your site.

There are many different ways to get incoming links but those are the three that I’ve used most often with varying degrees of success. What I’ve discovered is that writing great content and putting it out there around the web as much as possible is going to bring attention to my site. Guest posts and link bait are some of the best ways of doing that but I’ve definitely also exchanged links as appropriate.

What do you think are the top ways to get incoming links?

Tags: backlinks, blog links, get links, kathryn vercillo, linkbaiting, reciprocal links, websites

Diary of a Smart Chick is a blog that I started to put together in 2008. I wanted to create a place where I could write about my top twelve areas of expertise – the smart things in the world that I find most interesting to write about.

Originally, my plan was to have incoming news feeds from all of those topic areas which I would discuss in associated blog posts. I also wanted to add a social networking aspect to the site where people also writing about these topics could come together and vote on the best of the best articles that were written here as well as the best headlines that were coming through those news feeds.

What has happened instead is that I’ve found myself content to continue writing in my many normal places across the web (various blogs, HubPages, eHow, etc.) and to read my usual news feeds from my favorite RSS feed sites. And I’ve found that I can have smart discussions about these pieces with people on my existing social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, etc.) So it turned out that there wasn’t a need for a new blog for more writing and social networking.

However, I have wanted to do something with this blog ever since and I’ve decided that it can be a great place to compile links to all of my writing that I’m doing everywhere else online. I am interested in so many different smart topics that there aren’t too many great places to put together links to all of them (except for my writing website of course). So that’s what this blog is about.

People who are smart and who like to read about smart things will find regularly updated links to what I hope are smart topics across a wide range of different categories. I also plan to post links and information to the many other smart things I’m reading but don’t have time to write about more extensively. Welcome to my new blog – Diary of a Smart Chick!

Tags: blog info, blog links, blog updates, diary of a smart chick, kathryn vercillo, new blog, smart blog, smart chick, smart chick blog