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Love is something we all long for and can't do without. From a small child we need and seek out the love and security from our care takers. Science has demonstrated that children who receive lots of love learn better. Children feel confident, relaxed and happy when they receive love, which promotes intellectual development. Likewise us grown-ups, we thrive, feel more confident and happy when we know we are loved.

There are thousands of songs written in the name of love; "I Will Always Love You", "Can't Help Falling In Love With You", "When a Man Loves A Woman", "Because You Loved Me", "It's Only Love", "Endless Love" and the list goes on and on. Some of the best ballads are songs about love. Love is such an essential part of one's well being, just like a painter paints what's in their heart, music artists writes what's in their heart - whether it be about new love or a love gone bad.

Although there are some people who would prefer to be shown they are loved by gifts, I believe most people prefer to be loved by touching their heart and soul in ways that no amount of money can buy. To me there is no better feeling of love then to look across the room at your loved one, making eye contact and know just by the way they look at you that you are special in their eyes and you are loved. I think love includes listening to your partners wants and needs and really hearing them, communicating daily, spending time with them, cooking together, working out in the yard, washing the car and having a water fight, sharing your life and making lasting memories that you can reminisce about as you grow old together. Putting a little love note in their briefcase to make them smile; giving a back or foot massage when you know they are stressed out; meeting your loved one at the door with their special outfit on . . . there are so many ways to show you love someone instead of materialist things. I would prefer a handmade card as opposed to a bought card, regardless of how silly it may look - it is the thought that counts and knowing that they made this especially for me.

This is a difficult one to talk about and one that might sound selfish, but loving yourself is so important; for you cannot love another if you don't love yourself. Communicate your needs to your loved ones, because if you hide your feelings, you are alienating yourself from the people who love you. I never understood the line "Well if they loved me, they should know!" Life is too short to think people should know what you want or need without you telling them - I don't know anyone who is a mind reader and if one tries, they may come up with the wrong conclusion. You can't continue to give and give and give, sacrificing your own needs, and not get anything in return - you will become bitter, angry and the relationship is bound to suffer. You owe it to yourself to love yourself enough to make sure your needs are being met too.

Love is so much more than buying flowers, presents or giving candy. To me sharing these happy and special moments with them is what love is really about. Happy Valentine's Day! I hope all your wishes, hopes and dreams come true and that you discover what the real meaning of love is for you.

"A baby is born with a need to be loved - and never outgrows it." ~ Frank A. Clark

A standard social media campaign helps spread the word about you and encourages other people to as well.

An explosive social media campaign has inherent viral exposure, inspires community driven communication, helps make the web a better place, and even brings joy to people, however fleeting.

When you share in social media, if your goal is just to get more people to see your links, you're on the right track, but at the same time, you're limiting your potential. You may think that getting explosive results from social media will take more time, energy and money, but this doesn't have to be the case.

If you're a business owner, you know that working harder doesn't necessarily mean better results - what if you're working hard on the wrong thing?

Sometimes the remedy is working smarter. Here are a few small changes you can make to your social media approach that can propel your social media results from lukewarm to smoking hot.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #1 - Hot Content

The cornerstone to any social media campaign is the content. If you get this component wrong, it doesn't matter if all other elements are perfect. Study what's going hot in your targeted topic and find a unique angle to tailor your content into what people already like, without stealing their ideas.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #2 - Niched Network Nuances

The more tightly focused your submissions to social media sites are, the more likely they are to go viral, whether they are links you share by other people or yours. Here's the logic.

People follow other people with similar interests. They're on sites like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Delicious and Digg actively looking for new content. Put those two things together and you have a whirlwind of clicks happening. The only question is, will it be your link that gets clicked or passed over?

Having 5000 connections on Twitter or Facebook is useless if you are connected to people who don't want your broadcasts, and you're just as useless to them if you don't want theirs. If my interest is in improving my existing business and you're trying to get me to sell your network marketing products, it doesn't matter how many times you ask me. If I'm not interested, your continued broadcasts will be ignored, or worse yet, blocked completely.

It's about the perfect balance of quality AND quantity.

And if I'm not paying attention to you, I can't and won't spread your message. If you are in network marketing, why not go after people who love the network marketing concept but can't seem to find the right company? That's a perfect match, and can dramatically cut down your search for the right partners and prospects.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #3 - Simplify Sharing

It amazes me how many people miss this one.
You've got great content. You've got a massive, niched network.

Why feed them content that's hard to share? Does that report have to be in PDF format? If so, does it have to be behind an opt-ín wall if you're spreading it among people who have Already opted in? Anyone connected to your business through its Facebook page, or your Twitter stream is also part of your opt-ín list. Yes, it would be best if they were on your email newsletter list, but what faster way to get them there than to show them you don't need to hold them prisoner there?

If your whitepaper is of such high value that you don't want it to spread, well, that's something different. But if you're sharing it so other people will spread it, make it easy for others to share.

Put a few sharing links on your page.
Make it easy for them to Retweet.
The easier it is for them to share, the more likely they are to do it.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #4 - Consistency

And now we come to the area I fail at the most. It's one of the things I know I need to do, but I haven't quite gotten the hang of how to brainstorm, create and distribute quality content consistently, and still give the best possible service and support to my customers and clients. I always err on serving people who have bought from me, figuring that next blog post can wait until tomorrow.

Then at some point, I noticed a decline in return traffic - people weren't coming back because they'd already heard everything I had to say. The solution? I got help for my content creation process. The ideas are still mine, but I was able to barter help for research, transcribing, and editing. I am also able to get audio and video polished much less expensively than I thought, though I don't always use this option due to time constraints.

The other thing that helped a lot was getting over my perfectionism complex. Release your content as soon as you can. I can't tell you how much money I've left on the table from my old fear of the typo and grammar police. Not to mention the fact that I felt like I was leaving my audience hanging.

You subscribe to something because you want to get regular updates. If your favorite daily news show started coming on once a week, you'd probably switch channels. If you're inconsistent without explanation, your audience numbers will drop and your network will fade.

Explosive Social Media Tactic #5 - Think Engagement

Measuring your results by page view alone is a thing of the past. When the web was mostly text and images, it made some sense that how many pages a visitor viewed at your site was a true measure of engagement.

Nowadays this isn't the case. You want to look instead at how long people are at your site. The exception, of course, is when customers are coming to your site to buy, and the order processing system takes them off your page. But if people aren't leaving your site because they're ready to buy or subscribe, you truly must look at why they aren't paying more attention to your content, and what changes you can make to get them to stay.

This is critically important in understanding which content will go viral naturally. What posts are people staying on your site to comment on? When do they take a few extra seconds to retweet? Are they watching your videos all the way through?