Yesterday, I visited my friend Tara’s place and noticed that she put a large piece of paper on her bedroom wall, next to where she slept.

On it was written some quotations and general life principles. Tara wanted to remind herself of these words when she woke up everyday and before she went to bed. It’s a self-improvement trick to overcome negativity and focus on the important things.

So I got curious and read what she wrote. After I came home, I tried recalling what I read but could only come up with two lines. The rest were a blur.

Return on Investment (ROI) is a simple concept: You set aside something of your own, be it time or money and expend it with the hope of getting something in exchange. ROI measures the profitability of your returns, when compared against your costs.

Many people have talked about ROI in relation to social media and one usually examines the performance of a social media marketing campaign using specific metrics like traffic, links or comments.

Some measure ROI in an more abstract way, by monitoring the amount of buzz or conversation in a community and the opinions of the public.

Villains are the perfect foil for heroes in movies. Their actions provide stark contrast and add depth to the hero’s character. This enemy usually takes the form of a human persona or a situation.

You cringe and fear for the heroine when the enemy hurts her. When she overcomes the enemy, you feel happy or relieved that order is restored. Hollywood movies usually end at this point: closure is secured by the elimination of the villain.

I’m busy with some other projects now and instead of leaving the blog alone for several days, I thought I’ll do a quick post on a helpful tool that I’ve been using for more than a year.

It’s called Dark Room and its a minimalist fullscreen word processor which forces you to focus on the writing process and nothing else.

This free Windows/.Net application transforms your entire computer screen into a dark background and removes all the usual word processor toolbars and quick buttons. The only thing you’ll see is the words. I feel that it really improves my ability to concentrate on the blog post or school essay I’m writing.

One way of attracting visitors to your website is to create content or webpages that are entertaining or filled with valuable information. If you own a blog and have been publishing for some time, you’ll have more than enough material to use as traffic or link magnets.

You might not even need to develop new content. You could simply collect articles or media you’ve produced and situate them in a frame which appeals to a specific audience profile.

The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men — the man he is and the man he wants to be. - William Feather

Behind every recommendation or online purchase is a human being. One with emotions and personal likes or dislikes. This person pays more attention to certain things more than others because of his/her creed, feelings and belief-systems.

When we talk about marketing on the web, we’re talking about selling a perceived benefit/value by communicating in a way which suits and modifies your target market’s interests/needs. Some theorists will also suggest that marketing (and advertising) is in the business of creating new needs or wants.

I’m a pretty active Digg user and I thought it’ll be helpful if I talked a little about the Digg tools that I use everyday. Don’t worry, I’m not going to overload you with 50+ redundant tools, most of which only look good but are quite useless.

Trust me, you really don’t need many tools when it comes to Digg. There are only a few which are truly essential. If you want to use Digg efficiently like a power user, try the ones in this list.

News blogs are fast-paced blogs which track, aggregate and disseminate current news on a set range of topics. Their main selling points are comprehensiveness and timeliness: a good news blog must cover the field throughly and speedily by pointing readers to new information or developments.

Content for news blogs is published regularly on a daily basis and sometimes multiple times throughout the day. Apart from the value of the actual opinions offered by news bloggers: people subscribe to or follow these news blog largely because they help them to stay on top of current issues, innovations or ideas concerning a industry.

If you’re blogging, you’re most likely publishing content and making it freely available for public consumption. Everyone is able to access and read your articles as long as they have an internet connection.

Time to stop and think a little about this. Why are you giving away content for free? What are trying to achieve by doing so?

It is important to keep in mind the reasons why you are publishing blog post after blog post, all full of ideas and information and giving them away.