The following are the best business and productivity web articles I’ve come across in the past week.

I try to find only the stories that won’t waste your time and have the potential to positively impact your business.

1. 11-point Checklist for a Healthy Social Media Strategy

Really nice list of things that you should go through to ensure you are maximizing the potential of social media.

2. 17 Steps to Guarantee a Successful Guest Posting Campaign

Some great tips for bloggers looking to attract more traffic through guest posting. Thanks to Tyler Tervooren for bringing this story to my attention on Twitter.

3. How to Write a High-Quality eBook in 30 Days

Nice article that gives all sorts of great advice for writing a well thought-out eBook quickly.

4. Why Failure Drives Innovation

Great article by Baba Shiv Berry describing how ultimate success requires one to get over a fear of failure. Related to the article I posted earlier on patience and persistence.

5. The 11 “Secrets” of Prolific Content Creators

Great article that gives some tough but helpful tips about how to get a lot of content out of yourself quickly.

6. The Steve Jobs Pivot

Describes how even the master himself, Steve Jobs, had to learn how to change his company’s direction. Thanks to Steve Markowitz for tweeting this out.

7. How to Discover in 5 Minutes if Your Blog Will Ever Make Money

Good article that doesn’t just answer that question, but also gives you great tips on refocusing your blog to make sure that it does make money. Thanks to Srinivas Rao for tweeting this.

8. How I Raised a Family of Entrepreneurs

Cool and unique article written by very interesting guy and CEO of  Palo Alto Software, Tim Berry. Tells a couple ways in which he encouraged his kids to take initiative. It paid off and they ended up becoming entrepreneurs themselves. Tim always has really interesting tweets so check him out at @Timberry.

9. The 5 Surprising Factors Behind the Most Shared Tweets (and How to Use Them)

Article scientifically analyzes what makes a tweet really spread. Definitely useful information for those who use Twitter as part of their social media strategy.

10. The Instant Consultant

Really cool article that talks about how to become a ‘consultant’ by examining and getting specific about your areas of expertise.