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Marc Guberti

5 Pinterest Mistakes To Avoid (Part 3)

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A very long time ago, I wrote Part 1. A little further back, I wrote Part 2. This is Part 3 which contains 5 more mistakes that you need to avoid on Pinterest. Although Pinterest is not the largest social network out there, it has grown at a rate faster than all of the other social networks. If you want to optimize on Pinterest’s constantly growing platform, avoid these 5 mistakes:

  1. Not taking advantage of a powerful social network. The biggest mistake you can make is ignoring Pinterest. Pinterest has the potential to dramatically increase your blog’s traffic, and the average pin have been proven to get more engagement than the average tweet.
  2. Not paying attention to analytics. Although there are no free Pinterest analytics tools that offer as much information as TwitterCounter, there are plenty of free Pinterest analytics tools out there. I commonly use Tailwind to see my statistics based on my change in follower count and pin count. Other features become accessible through upgrades.
  3. Only pinning the same thing once. When a board has hundreds of repins, your followers are less likely to scroll all the way down to the first pin. I pin my blog posts more than once, and that results in an increase in traffic.
  4. Not liking a lot of pins. When someone sees that you have liked thousands of pins, they will realize that you are a very active user on Pinterest. In addition, you can like pins to organize all of the pins that you want to repin. By using this method, some people unlike the pins after they repin them. This prevents hundreds of repins clogging up your followers’ timelines.
  5. Not having multiple boards with 100+ pins. When multiple boards have over 100 pins, your followers will have more pins to look at. It is better to have 10 boards with 100 pins each than it is to have 100 boards with 10 pins each. Quality beats quantity, but when you can combine them both together, you will get more engagement on Pinterest.

These are 5 mistakes that too many people make on Pinterest. However, there are other mistakes that people make on Pinterest as well. You can go back to Part 1 and Part 2 in order to see 10 additional mistakes that people make on Pinterest.

 

The Problem With Asking For A Shout Out

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As someone gets more followers, more people ask for shout outs. No one was asking me for a shout out when I had 100 followers. Now I get some people asking me for shout outs. There are some people who I give the shout out (usually in the form of a retweet), but I avoid giving too many people shout outs. Plenty of celebrities are asked hundreds of times every day to give someone a shout out.

This does not go well with a lot of people because requests for shout outs will clog up these users’ timelines. In the end, shout outs rarely happen.

Let’s say someone asks for a shout out from a power Twitter user with 100,000 followers. If that person does give you the shout out, your Klout score will see a big jump, and the tweet may get retweeted and favorited a few times. Then, everything goes back to normal after the shout out is long forgotten.

You probably want someone in your niche with 100,000 followers to give you a shout out. We all do, and we all have that one person (or many people) who we want the shout out from. People ask for the shout out because they know the shout out will lead to more engagement for their tweets, even if that burst in engagement is short-lived.

The question should not be, “Can I get a shout out?”

The question should be, “How do I get a following like yours so people are asking me to give them shout outs?”

Instead of constantly relying on someone else who may not give many shout outs, create your own opportunity. Ask the person how he/she became popular on Twitter so you can become popular on Twitter and consistently get the engagement results that you want to see. I follow people in my targeted audience who are likely to follow back. That’s how I (and a lot more people than you would think) grow their following on Twitter.

Instead of asking someone with 100,000 followers for the shout out, do the work that will allow you to become the person with over 100,000 followers. It’s easier for everyone.

 

5 Lessons We Must Learn From The Olympic Games

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olympic fire The Olympic Games happen once every four years, but their splendor never goes away. The best athletes in the world compete for gold, silver, and bronze medals for their countries. There are many excellent performances, but there are some wipeouts as well. The Olympics can teach us a lot about persistence and building a good character. For each of the rings in the official logo, these are 5 lessons that we must learn from the Olympic Games.

  1. If you want something, you can achieve it. Although this only happens with the right mindset, you can achieve something if you want it. The athletes who compete in the Olympic Games knew what they wanted before they competed in the Olympic Games.
  2. It takes a lot of work to become the best. More work yields better results. The athletes competing in the Olympic Games spent an untold amount of hours getting stronger and practicing their techniques. Becoming the best is not an easy task, and you don’t simply end up in the Olympic Games by accident.
  3. There are going to be some bad days. The gold medalists in skiing had to learn how to ski on ice. It is very easy to imagine that these athletes got hurt while practicing their sport. Imagine teaching a child how to ski. That child can eventually learn how to ski, but there might have been some bumps and bruises acquired along the way.
  4. Preparation allows you to be clutch when people are paying attention. Millions of people watch the Olympic Games. However, these people are not watching the athletes when they spend years preparing for the Olympic Games. Many viewers don’t get to see the top runners practice for years. They just see the runners run during the Olympic Games. Preparation allows the runners to run really good times when people watch them during the race.
  5. It feels good to be victorious. When a United States athlete gets a gold medal, millions of people in the United States are cheering for that athlete–whether at the event or while watching the event unfold on the big screen. When a Canadian athlete gets a gold medal, millions of people in Canada are cheering for that athlete. Then, the athlete gets the medal which shows that all of the hard work finally paid off. In the Olympic Games, it feels good to be victorious as a country and for the athlete. You can feel victorious by accomplishing certain goals, helping others, and doing other things that make you feel victorious as well.

Those are the 5 lessons that we must learn from the Olympic Games. Although the Olympic Games take place every four years, these lessons must be rooted into our mindsets during the Olympic Games and beyond.

 

Why The Olympic Games Are Popular

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Sochi resulted in NBC getting a big increase in views, and that big increase in views has also been eating away at Fox’s viewers and other channels’ viewers as well. What makes Sochi, and the Olympics in general, as popular as they are today?

The primary way the Olympics became popular is through word of mouth. People said things like this: “The guy can run fast.” “That girl just broke the record for skiing.” “That athlete just got the gold medal.” We also get to hear incredible stories when the media tells us what certain athletes do outside of their respective sports.

This word of mouth catches on, and people flock over to see the Olympic Games. When they see the Olympic Games, the first thing they notice is that the athletes are the best in the world. This leads to more word of mouth. Centuries ago, word of mouth meant people going from town to town telling people about the Olympic Games. For Sochi, word of mouth resulted in it trending on Twitter. Other people on various social networks told their friends about Sochi as well.

Another reason the Olympics are very popular is because they take place every four years. If the Olympics took place every day, they would become boring. All of the stunts and records you see would become normal. The stunts and records we see as remarkable would not be as remarkable if the Olympic Games took place every day.

Once every four years, many sporting events become more important. I never watch skiing or snowboarding, but I made an exception for Sochi, and I’m glad I did. There were some wipeouts and many excellent performances. We only get to see the wipeouts and performances every four years.

The fact that there is a four year wait builds suspense. When Sochi ends, I’m sure there will be a countdown clock on the web for the next Olympic Games. That cycle will most likely continue. As the date of the Olympic Games gets closer, more people start to look at the countdown on the web. Then, some news about certain athletes and countries trends on social networks. This builds more suspense for the opening ceremony. Then, the opening ceremony does happen, and millions of people become couch potatoes for a few days and watch the Olympics unfold.

 

How To Use Curiosity In Your Business Strategy

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One thing that makes us human is our curiosity. We wonder what is wrapped in those presents we open on our birthdays and other occasions. As a result, many of us open those presents quickly or play a guessing game before opening the present. We want to know what is inside of the mysterious envelope addressed to us. Sometimes, it’s an unexpected gift while other times, it’s the taxes.

Few entrepreneurs are implementing the human nature of curiosity into their business strategies. These entrepreneurs are well ahead of their competitors because they make their audiences curious. Instead of giving everything away, these entrepreneurs tell people what they are creating, but nothing more than that. Simply saying you are creating a training course about social media creates curiosity. Then, giving your members access to one video every week will build the suspense for when the next video will come out.

By building suspense, you will be able to grab your audience’s attention. That’s why the suspense of many TV shows happen at the end of the show. The audience knows when the suspenseful part is going to happen, but they watch the entire show just so they see the suspenseful part.

We are very curious. We wonder when certain authors are going to come out with new books. We wonder what the second video is for the training course. You may be wondering what video I will be publishing YouTube this Saturday. By building curiosity in your audiences that lasts, the suspense will be unbearable. This suspense will make the audience pay attention to everything that you do.

 

Social Media Marketing World Case Study

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The biggest social networking event takes place in San Diego, and it gets hosted by Social Media Examiner. The social networking event, Social Media Marketing World, gets over 2,000 people from all over the world to show up. Tickets go for well over $1,000 each, and for people outside of San Diego, plane tickets and hotel rooms don’t come as a free package.

Social Media Marketing World is certainly an expensive event to go to. The big reason that the Social Media Marketing World event is very successful is because of the quality. The best of the best are speaking at the Social Media Marketing World. Many people speaking at the event are well-known people in the social media niche. Most of the speakers have over 100,000 followers on Twitter (some are in the 200,000’s). To sum it up very quickly, all of the speakers are very influential at what they do. The people speaking at the event also tell their followers about the event. As result, millions of people are able to see tweets about the Social Media Marketing World event.

The Social Media Marketing World event usually sees over 2,000 registrants which adds up to at least $2.2 million (assuming that most of the registrants came from the $200 discount). That’s a lot of money to make from one event.

While the price and convenience are not there, the quality makes the event what it is. This business model is identical to Lamborghini’s business model and the complete opposite of fast food restaurants’ business model. The Social Media Marketing World event will continue to thrive simply because it is the best in the world.