Insights, Inspiration, and Ideas – Best of the Web!

It seems like just yesterday we were putting together a Best of the Web feature for February, but another month has gone by already.

And what a month!

The Marketing that Works training program has a new, and very promising, crop of students. Write Like Freddy is incredibly popular, showing hundreds of people how to improve their writing…

…and at the same time, all of these great blog posts appeared on the internet!

So keep reading, because we’ve got a boatload of great stuff for you to check out today, including lists, tips, how-tos, insights, inspiration, some counter-intuitive ideas, and a whole lot more…

Lists, Tips and How-Tos

Let’s start this off with some solid instructions for how to get some valuable stuff done. These are some of the best tips, pieces of advice and lists that we’ve seen over the last month:

• Three Specific Problems Content Marketing Solves (Content Strategy Hub)
• 5 Lessons Learned After One Year of Entrepreneurial Bliss (Ruth Zive)
• The Ultimate Step-By-Step Guide to Dealing with Blog Trolls and Stupid Comments (The Sales Lion)
• Exactly How I Wrote an Ebook That Made $10K in 1 Week (Traffic Generation Cafe)
• 5 Epic Blogging Lessons Learned from Parenting Five Rowdy Kids (Problogger)
• How to Stand Out Among 989756329 Bloggers With Your Writing (Pro Blogging Success)
• The Secret to Growing a Massive Audience Quickly (Get Busy Living)
• How to Do a Webinar Using Free or Inexpensive Tools (Right Mix Marketing)
• The 3M’s Of Highly Effective Marketing (Naijapreneur)
• 8 Ways to Increase Facebook Engagement (Xcellent Media)
• How to Create Instant Credibility (Apps Blogger)

Insight and Inspiration

There definitely hasn’t been a shortage of insightful, valuable, and inspirational content this month. Here are my favorites:

• 5 Ways a Minimum Viable Audience Helps You Create a Successful Startup (Entreproducer)
• Building Leadership… What? Why? And How? (New Internet Order)
• Customer Psychology Marketing: WHY Do People BUY? (Naijapreneur)
• Digital Clutter Is Different than Physical Clutter (The Minamalists)
• Taking Chances and the Cure for ED (Apps Blogger)
• How to Discover & Market Your Own Value In The New “Empathy Economy” (The School of Online Business)
• Why Flexibility Is the Key to Being Super Productive: A Conversation With Bill Nickerson, WAHD Internet Marketer (Critical WAHD Productivity) (Productive Super Dad)
• Why Blogging without a Plan Leads to Failure + How to Fix It (Think Traffic)
• When Good Clients Go Bad (Dempsey Marketing)
• How to Start (Marlee Ward)
• Traffic Generation Cafe Monthly Income Report: February 2012 (Traffic Generation Cafe)
• The Get Paid Manifesto (Pocket Changed)

Videos and Other Fun Stuff

There have been some interesting videos lately: inspirational, informative and just plain fun. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have!

• Return On Influence – Video Interview with the Author Mark W. Schaefer (DIY Blogger)
• How Noah Kagan Built A List Of Over 600,000 Followers (After Getting “Fired” from Facebook) (Marketing Show)
• Why Inspiration is More Effective than Motivation; What Great Leaders Know (Steve Baines)
• Young fellow makes, tests and celebrates outstanding Rube Goldberg machine (Boing Boing)

It’s a Little Counter-Intuitive

Over the past month, several of my favorite bloggers have explored their topics by going in directions that might be a little surprising at first glance. While these posts may seem a little counter-intuitive, I think you’ll be surprised about how right they really are:

• How a 19.98% Traffic Increase Can HURT Your Site (Steve Scott Site)
• Today I feel Like Quitting (Traffic Generation Cafe)
• The ONLY 3 BLOGS that YOU will REALLY REMEMBER (Nischala Murthy)
• Painful Withdrawal from a Different Kind of Addiction (Ryze Online)
• How I Lost My Biggest Fans (How This Website Makes Money)
• 3 Reasons Why It Pays to Break the Rules (Teaching the Future)

Interviews and Kind Mentions

I’m always thrilled when someone wants to take the time to chat about marketing, what we’ve done with Firepole Marketing, my book, our productivity survey, Write Like Freddy, and different ways to achieve success. March held some great interviews that I was excited to be a part of, and am now excited to share with you:

• Productivity Survey: Finding the Answers to Successful Entrepreneur’s Habits (Motivated Mastery)
• Want Rock Star Status? (Steven Archard)
• Ask the Readers: How is Your Productivity? (Get Busy Living)
• Where is your Marketing Broken? (Debi Z)
• Money, Marketing and Monkey Business – The Alphabet Series Continues (Kaarina Dillabough)
• How Danny Iny Launched a Successful Blog in a Year and Partnered with Brian Clark and Guy Kawasaki (Young Pre Pro)
• Blogging Your Way to Traffic, Subscribers, and Sales with Danny Iny (Kikolani)
• Write Like Freddy Krueger (Freelance Zone)
• Best Successes of March 2012 (Ryze Online)
• 20 Ways to Engage in DIY Health and Lifestyle Change – Advice from Digital Thinkers (Behave Your Health)
• 7 Social Media Secrets Gleaned From the Experts (Right Mix Marketing)
• What do Superman, Freddy Krueger and a Blogging Process Freak have in common? (Right Mix Marketing)
• Small Business Marketing Essentials (The Cogent Coach)
• Author Marketing: Guest Blog Your Way to Stardom (TurnDog Millionaire)
• Book Bash – 3 Days Only – Engagement from Scratch by Danny Iny (Writing Innovations)

…and a whole lot of guest posts, too!

Of course, I couldn’t launch Write Like Freddy without making the rounds of all my favorite blogs to write for!

Here’s what I published over the last little while:

• How To Create The Winning Angle For Your Content Every Time (The Daily Egg)
• The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Successful Freelance Marketer (Freelance Switch)
• A Fool-Proof Formula for Easily Creating Compelling Content (Copyblogger)
• The 3 Worst Blog Writing Blunders – Don’t Make These Mistakes! (Make a Living Writing)
• How to Launch a Product on Your Blog (and Sell Out in 12 Hours!) (Problogger)
• Blog Writing Training: Danny Iny’s System for Writing 1,000+ Quality Words in 60 Minutes (GrowMap.com)
• Super-Efficient Writing: How I Consistently Write Over 1,000 High-Quality Words in Less Than 60 Minutes (LifeHack.org)
• My Go-To Traffic Strategy for Kick-Starting a Brand New Blog (Traffic Generation Cafe)
• Is Writing Sabotaging Your Social Media? (Pro Blogging Success)
• The Secret Source of Never-Ending Customers for Freelancers (Freelance Switch)
• Get More Comments: Focus on the First Comment (Problogger)
• Stumbling Your Way to Social Media Stardom (Mass Musings)
• The Single Most Important Step to Building a Blog Community (Cait Lavender)
• Three Simple Steps to Becoming an Engagement Rockstar (Cait Lavender)
• New Blogger Blunders to Avoid at All Costs (BK Walker Books Etc)

We’ve listed a lot of great content here, but if you think we’ve missed out on anything important, please let us know in the comments!

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).

Tagged as: Best of the Web, Danny Iny