Content Writing and Marketing Services
Want to create YouTube thumbnails that grab people’s attention? If so, this is the right video for you. I’ll reveal how I create attention-grabbing thumbnails that result in more views, engagement, and subscribers.
Thumbnails are important because that’s how people see most YouTube videos before watching them. The better the thumbnail looks, the more people will click on the thumbnail to discover what you offer in your video.
[Tweet “How To Create The Best #YouTube Thumbnails”]
Writing blog posts of at least 700 words helps out with SEO for a variety of reasons.
First, people will spend more time on your blog. And the more time people spend on your blog, they more likely they are to subscribe.
The second benefit is that your post’s text-to-HTML ratio will be solid. If you don’t know much about this ratio, it means you’ll want the amount of text within your blog post to exceed the amount of code running in the background.
Not only are longer blog posts important for Google search rankings, they are also important for your readers. The theory behind a long blog post is that the longer it is, the more value it contains.
I recently wrote a blog post of exactly 6,000 words, and another post with a little over 5,000 words. These two blog posts could be turned into e-books, and there are blog posts on the web that exceed 10,000 words.
To write a ridiculously long blog post, you need to say A LOT within a single post. So how do you get started?
Write Up A Massive Outline
Anytime I want to write a ridiculously long blog post, I write a ridiculously long outline. For my recent blog post 50 Tactics To Grow Your Email List, I listed the 50 tactics I would discuss within the post before I started to write it.
If you want to discuss 50 tactics but start writing as soon as you come up with the first 25, it’s more difficult to come up with the remaining 25 tactics. Struggling through a comprehensive outline without writing a single word will ensure that you have a solid foundation with which to work.
It’s possible, but very unlikely, to write a ridiculously long quality post without a massive outline. If you are able to make it work without an outline, please share your secret!
I’ve found that once you have an outline, the actual content flows much easier.
Mention People Within The Post
This tactic is mentioned in the email list post referenced above. Mentioning other people in your blog posts works wonders for marketing and content creation.
Social recognition is a universal desire and a key factor for motivation in the digital age. People enjoy being publicly acknowledged in others’ work. And oftentimes they will share the blog posts they were mentioned in. If you mention some key influencers within your blog post, reach out and let them know, and don’t be afraid to ask them to share the post if they like it.
Plus, writing about influencers also leads to better and stronger ideas for the post itself. The most important thing to do when writing longer pieces is to both let your mind wander into new ideas while maintaining your focus on the topic and outline.
Integrating influencers within your writing will enhance your content and enable you to lengthen your post without fluff. And when influencers share your content, you earn backlinks, which lead to more exposure and increased traffic for your blog.
One of the best ways to reach out to influencers is to follow Brian Dean’s famed skyscraper technique.
Use Visuals
You want to create a blog post that is optimized for your visitors as well as search engines. Many people are visual learners. A text-heavy post with no images makes the reading experience less effective. While images won’t increase the word count of your blog posts, they’ll keep your readers engaged.
It’s easier to learn something with pictures or video tutorials. The human mind registers an image 60,000 times faster than text, and our eyes are naturally directed downward immediately afterwards. Think about that for a moment.
This is why captions are so powerful. The more pictures you use, the more your visitors will be look towards the next block of text. Engaging images grab our attention and make us more inclined to finish reading the post.
Nearly every ridiculously long blog post I write (with the exception of Social Media DOs and DON’Ts) is packed to the gills with images. Using pictures to break up lines of text helps capture a reader’s attention, and maintain it throughout a longer post.
Focus Only on the Post
When you are writing a ridiculously long blog post, you mustn’t get distracted. If I plan to work on a long post, I block out any other work for that day.
I don’t do anything (video creation, podcasts, begin writing another blog post, etc.) until I have completed that one blog post. While I try to do it all in one sitting, some posts might take two days to complete.
The less friction between you and your ridiculously long blog post, the more fluid the final result. The most I’ve written in a single day was 13,000 words. I wrote all day and did no other work.
The outline will make it easier and faster for you to write a ridiculously long blog post, but it may still take several hours to pull it off.
In Conclusion
Ironically, this blog post about writing ridiculously long blog posts isn’t long at all. But when it’s time for me to write my next ridiculously long blog post, I will utilize the methods I discussed in this post.
These are the same methods I used to write a blog post of 6,000 words and a book, Lead The Stampede, which contains 60,000+ words.
This post is just over 1,000 words. Why? Because if you start fluffing up your posts simply to add to your word count, your efforts will backfire. Only take on longer pieces when you have something useful to say. Otherwise, cut it short.
Ranking #1 for keywords but providing a bad experience for your visitors will hurt your quality score and, ultimately, you’re credibility. Never risk losing your audience for SEO purposes.
Also remember that the moment you lose passion for the topic you are writing about, the quality of the piece will tank. Either recover that passion before continuing, or move on.
What are your thoughts on content length? Have you tried the skyscraper technique? What is the longest blog post you have ever written? Sound off in the comments section below!
I write a Kindle book every month. My ability to write a Kindle book every month does not affect the rest of my business. I am still able to write blog posts, create YouTube videos, and promote my business. Why does it all seem to work out?
That’s what I will answer in this video. You’ll discover how you can write Kindle books on the side and build a Kindle Empire without sacrificing any of the parts of your business.
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No matter what your profession, you want to accomplish more goals. And you want to accomplish your goals twice as fast. If you are still working for an employer, you want to get twice as much done for your startup so you can achieve better results.
Everyone wants to be more productive . But the problem is that most people aren’t very productive. We often find ourselves busy with all of the tasks we must complete in a given day, but being busy doesn’t mean being productive.
What we get done in relation to our ambitions actually determines how productive we truly are. Some days I may work for only an hour and feel very productive. Yet on other days I may work for six hours and feel like I accomplished nothing.
Getting more stuff done requires shifting your mindset and examining all of the work that you do in a given day. These five power tips will guide you.
#1: Focus On A Few Big Tasks
Most of my weekly scorecards are filled up with goals from the top to bottom. On some weeks, I’ll give myself 15 big goals to complete. I keep all of these scorecards in a single folder. This allows me to take a walk down memory lane to see what I was working on that is now complete.
Those memory lane walks are sweet, but they also reveal a lot.
I didn’t know it when I started, but keeping all of these scorecards allowed me to have a file containing the secrets to my productivity. I have scorecards in which I accomplished every goal (very rare) and scorecards in which I accomplished very few.
It turns out I have a higher chance of getting all of my goals accomplished if I give myself fewer things to do! Even when the fewer goals are more challenging than all 15 combined.
It’s actually easier, and more productive, to focus on accomplishing fewer, challenging goals than it is to accomplish numerous, simpler goals.
Numerous goals requires that you to spread your energy across a larger playing field. But the more you spread your energy, the less focus you have to concentrate on each individual goal.
Productivity is not measured by how many checkmarks end up on your scorecard. Rather, it’s measured by the impact on the work you are trying to accomplish.
#2: Outsource The Smaller Tasks
With that said, we must complete numerous tasks for the survival of our businesses. If we focus on fewer things, the rest of the business will fall apart.
For a long time, my focus was on completing the numerous tasks that called for my attention. I was always busy, but I wasn’t always productive.
For example, one task was growing my Twitter audience and providing them with content. But the tasks associated with my Twitter account eventually became busy work and detracted me from accomplishing other, equally important goals
At the same time, my income wasn’t increasing and my blog subscribers weren’t growing. While that , I simply didn’t have any time to address those issues.
Then I learned of the magical “O” word: outsourcing.
Outsourcing is the act of paying money to buy back some of your time. I no longer schedule my tweets myself or try to grow my Twitter audience. My freelancers do that for me. And they help me with my podcast, Pinterest account, picture creation, and spreading the word about what I do.
If I have to devote a lot of my time to accomplish these smaller, yet important, tasks, I can’t imagine my business moving forward. Outsourcing saves me a lot of time by taking tasks off my hands. But it also saves me time in other ways.
For instance, if you want to create an app but don’t know how to code, hire a developer and have that person create the app for you. Not only will you save time on creating the app, but you will also save time on learning to code.
#3: Give Yourself A Deadline
Deadlines create a sense of urgency. Urgency leads to action. Without specific deadlines to meet, procrastination will dominate your life. The problem with a “soon and later” mentality is that neither soon nor later ever happen.
That’s why I create a weekly scorecard filled with deadline specific goals. The scorecard creates that sense of urgency I need to get my work done. The goals are challenging, but not impossible. And each is marked according to priority.
The deadlines boost my focus because of the time constraints. I force myself to focus on higher priority goals and get those done before starting on the less important tasks.
Each deadline should be accompanied by a plan. What must you do each day in order to achieve a specific goal? Is it possible for you to take time off in the middle of working, or is this an all-in type of goal?
The more detailed your plan is, the easier it will be for you to implement it and accomplish your goal.
#4: Add A Deadline Motivator Into The Mix
Deadlines are as potent as you make them. Some deadlines will carry no weight whatsoever, while others will loom over your shoulders. The potency of a deadline motivator determines the potency of the deadline itself.
For most people, the biggest deadline motivator is accountability. Share your objective with a few people whom you can rely on to help you reach it. Now you’re accountable. Don’t tell people who will try to discourage you. Why even talk to them in the first place?
Accountability is a strong and easily accessible deadline motivator.
I am in the midst of working with a big deadline motivator. Towards the end of August, my first season of NCAA cross-country begins. Practices begin at 7:30 a.m., so I want to schedule as much content in advance as possible.
That is why I set these three goals for myself to complete before the end of August:
These tasks are in line with my overall content plan and will get me through 2016. Chances are I can run and grow my business as easily as I did in high school, but I want to be prepared. Thus, my view of the deadline motivator has made the deadline very potent.
I’m still doing a lot of exploration in my niche to discover new opportunities and stay up to date. Nothing will change but I want to have my content finished and ready to go.
What potent deadline motivator can you think of so that your desire to meet the deadline is just as strong? Make it as potent as you can.
#5: Less Talking, More Doing
Most thoughts pertaining to my business rattle through my head. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about them.
I spend most of my business hours putting in the work. The only business activity I engage in when I am not actually carrying out the work is formulating a plan to carry it out more effectively.
The more time you spend working on your business with the right plan in place, the more you will get accomplished. Productivity involves working efficiently, but no matter how efficient you become, you always have to put in the work.
In Conclusion
Goals pile up. And multiple goals require spreading your time and energy across multiple tasks. That’s the story of most entrepreneurs.
The most successful entrepreneurs are experts at prioritizing and knowing when to say no. Not all objectives are created equal, and certain tasks are simply not worth the time.
Outsourcing eliminates unworthy tasks. Saying no to certain tasks allows a stronger concentration of focus on the opportunities that will yield the strongest results.
What are your tips for accomplishing more goals? Did any one of these tips resonate with you the most? What goals do you want to accomplish this year? Sound off in the comments section below.
I did a lot this month. I have always felt this way, but writing about what I did each month allows me to remember everything in detail.
June 2016 Summary
My high school running career ended. Now I’m preparing for my college running career.
I interviewed a bunch of people for my podcast. Jeffrey Shaw was my first guest. I have interviewed successful Kindle authors, freelancers, millionaires, TEDx speakers, and many high-profile people.
I am eager to publish the podcast and share all of those interviews with you, but I want to have enough podcast episodes done before publishing. I have no idea what my college schedule will look like, so I want a three week buffer in case I have less time to interview people.
I’ll publish those interviews by the end of the summer.
I find these interviews inspirational and educational. Preparing for the podcast will take up most of my time, but I did other cool stuff in June too. Here’s the performance report.
Expansion
I’m writing guest posts again, and I won’t stop for a very long time. I’ve read case studies about people writing 30 guest posts in 30 days.
I get pumped by these case studies and they impact how I approach guest blogging. I lost count but I have written at least 10 guest posts this month. Some of them have already been published while others are in the works.
I am also trying to appear on more podcasts. Right now I’m at the stage where I can say yes to most requests, but that won’t last forever.
Thrive Leads
I got Thrive Leads this month and I already see the impact on my blog. It’s a plugin that makes it easier for you to grow your email list.
Thrive Leads allowed me to add a welcome mat to my blog that’s hard to miss.
And that welcome mat works. In a given day, that welcome mat will have anywhere from a 4-9% conversion rate. This welcome mat shows up almost everywhere on my blog which is sweet.
Here’s data from the first 206 unique impressions it got in June.
I was very surprised to see that I was getting a few new subscribers from StumbleUpon.
StumbleUpon is notorious for being a website that gets you a lot of traffic, but for the most part, a high bounce rate.
Some pages have low bounce rates, but those are the exceptions, not the rule.
But I began getting more subscribers by sharing my content on StumbleUpon. Sure, on those days the conversion rate is messy. Most people won’t subscribe. However, I ask you this.
If you could get 10,000 targeted people on your blog and achieve a 1% conversion rate or get 100 targeted people on your blog and achieve a 5% conversion rate, which would you prefer.
One option results in 100 new subscribers and the other results in 5 new subscribers.
The cool part about StumbleUpon traffic is that it won’t interrupt what you are currently doing. If you can get 10 subscribers each day, the subscribers you get from StumbleUpon are a nice bonus.
And who doesn’t want more targeted subscribers?
Guest Contributions Now Accepted
I never thought I’d see the day I would allow guest contributions. I have been adamant of only allowing my content on my blog.
But from an educational and content marketing perspective, I see the point of guest blogging. There will always be people in my niche who know things that I don’t know.
I want that knowledge on my blog so I can learn from my blog too 🙂
If you are interested in contributing to this blog, you can learn more here.
Consultation Sessions
I now offer consultation sessions. In a way, I always have, but I intentionally priced them far out of reach. For a limited time, I am not charging as much for my consultation sessions.
Some day, I may never offer consultation sessions again, but if you want me to grow your business and get actionable insights, my consultation session is the right one for you.
It will be interesting to see how I maintain the consultation sessions and everything else during school.
Twitter Analysis
I am conducting a deeper analysis of my Twitter engagement. The goal behind this deeper analysis is to discover specific areas of digital marketing my audience likes the most.
I also want to consistently get 200,000 impressions per day. Right now, I get over 120,000 impressions each day.
Impressions are not the most important data to look at. But more impressions mean more clicks, and I like big numbers 🙂
I’ll have to follow-up on an earlier post I wrote about analyzing my Twitter account.
Utah
My mom got a speaking engagement in Utah and was kind enough to bring my brother and I for the ride (or should I say flight).
I listened to several audiobooks on the plane ride both ways. We had a lot of fun at Utah, and I got to run up mountains.
The only problem was that as the only runner in the family, I mostly ran alone. I trekked into an area of complete isolation for what must have been a mile.
I don’t take selfies often, but with no one else to take the shot, I had no other choice. I like to call these types of pictures “Pictures Of Proof.”
Books I Read
I read a lot of books this month largely due to flying back and forth from New York to Utah. Here’s the list:
Smarter Faster Better: Charles Duhigg dives deep into productivity. He shatters myths, mentions powerful ways to boost our productivity, and provides provocative stories of his methods in action.
Content Inc: This book changed the way I view content marketing. Focus on providing value and building your audience before you shift towards making revenue.
The Entrepreneur’s Blueprint To Massive Success: This book is a manifesto that should even be read by the best entrepreneurs on the planet. I learned a lot in this book and started applying some of the methods today. For instance, I always drink water upon waking up to boost my energy. That’s one of the many tactics I’m applying from the book.
Be A Sales Superstar: I was originally skeptical because I thought most of the book would be related to cold calling. However, the methods in the book can be carried over to virtually any profession. The most important lesson I learned was to be prepared for any type of response in advance so you can steer the conversation in the right direction.
How To Win At The Sport Of Business: Mark Cuban combines all of his blog posts and experiences into one quick read that will leave you motivated and hungry for success. If you want to get motivated and learn in a way like never before, read this book.
The Virgin Way: If you are not having fun and don’t have a strong team around you, you are doing it wrong. Richard Branson provides several anecdotes about himself, his company, and some of his competitors. The Virgin Way is a combination of knowledge, humor, and storytelling.
I find it easier to read my books as audiobooks. Audible has been a game changer for me, and you get a free book each month just by signing up!
I am taking a stronger interest in this social network. I was at 1700 followers for a while and ignored the social network. Now I am a little over 2,000 Instagram followers and my goal is to have well over 10,000 Instagram followers by the end of the year.
Instagram is starting to excite me a lot. I’ll have more to say about it next month.
Blog Posts I Wrote
If you missed the blog posts I wrote in June and want to read them, I have included them here as a reference. I published a bunch of YouTube videos too which can be found on my channel.
How To Put On Your Marketing Hat: We can’t be creators forever. It’s essential for us to strike the balance between marketing and creation. If you create a bunch of products but don’t market them, you won’t get sales. In this blog post, I discuss how we can achieve that balance.
How To Prepare For Your Podcast Launch: A lot of things are happening with my upcoming podcast. I have interviewed several guests and plan on launching the podcast by the end of the summer. I discuss my experiences with podcasting and how you can prepare for a successful podcast launch.
3 Reasons Your YouTube Channel Isn’t Taking Off: Have a YouTube channel that isn’t getting much traction. This blog post will reveal what’s wrong and how you can fix the problems.
50 Tactics To Grow Your Email List: This is the longest blog post I have written to date. At a little under 6,000 words, you’ll get a bunch of effective tactics you can use to start growing your email list today.
June Review
In my May 2016 Performance Report, I said I would do five things:
More Udemy Courses
Blog Transformation
Guest Interviews
More Landing Pages
Here’s what happened.
#1: More Udemy Courses
I started a course. One of my favorite instructors was taken off the site. It sounds like Udemy had warned this instructor but that combined with the continuing effect of the price change did me in.
I didn’t create any courses this month. Instead, I put my courses on additional platforms like SkillShare. My HootSuite course on SkillShare is now accompanied by six other courses (two are in draft mode).
I would have put all of my courses on SkillShare to make additional revenue, but SkillShare wisely suggested that I release them consistently to not bombard my audience with courses.
#2: Blog Transformation
While I don’t have a homepage like Pat Flynn yet, Thrive Leads was a big plus for my blog.
Allowing guest contributions is a pretty big change in itself. I felt like I did good here.
#3: Guest Interviews
I have interviewed 10 people this month. I don’t have many interviews scheduled in July yet but that will change very soon.
#4: Create More Landing Pages
I managed to create one landing page this month but I wish I did more. I’ll set a specific number for July so I have a more clear target.
July Highlights
With June coming to a rapid close, I am now focused on July. These are some of my goals for the business.
#1: Interview At Least 15 People For My Podcast
Each podcast interview feels more like a conversation. They are enjoyable, but with that said, I want as much of a buffer as possible for college.
Considering I only have two interviews scheduled on my calendar this July, I’ve got a lot of work to do.
Keeping up with dozens of guests at once while getting more guests for the show is a challenge, but I get it done. My inbox has gotten very organized over the past few weeks.
I mark each of my podcast related emails with three flags, and each flag indicates what part of the process that guest is in.
#2: Create At Least 5 New Landing Pages
I want to give my audience more options for the freebie that requires an email address. The more options I provide, the more conversions and segments I get.
Segments are important because you can provided specific content to specific people. You can identify which people are interested in Twitter and don’t care about Facebook and vice-versa.
#3: Publish At Least One New Kindle Book
I want to get back into the Kindle space because of the interview I had with Steve Scott. Chandler Bolt got me back into it a few months ago and now Steve got me back into it.
I learned the power of writing 500+ words for your books each day. Writing 500 words each day is a very manageable target, but the effect this can have on your book creation is huge.
If you write 500 words each day for one of your books, you’ll write over 180,000 words for your books every year. That’s 6-10 Kindle books depending on how long you make them.
Due to many years of typing away, it’s easier for me to crank out 1,000 words in a given day without a Kindle book taking away from the other parts of my business.
If I write 1,000 words per day for my Kindle books, I’d have 30,000 words total. The true challenge is the formatting, editing, cover, description, and the marketing.
#4: Average 1,000 Daily Visitors
In a quest to continue gaining blog traffic, I am in pursuit of an ambitious goal: 1,000 daily visitors.
For the purposes of this goal, I will be including StumbleUpon traffic.
In case one of my blog posts doesn’t go viral on StumbleUpon, the continued analysis of my Twitter account combined with guest blogging and the analysis of my Pinterest account should lead me to victory.
As my email list grows, I’ll get more traffic each time I promote one of my blog posts to the list.
#5: Create A Training Course
I’m not talking about an Udemy course. I’m talking about a course that I offer on my blog. It will be a mega course that is more detailed than any of the other courses that I have created.
Stay tuned…
In Conclusion
Expansion is the focus. I want more people to read my content and join my email list.
I am also getting back in the game of writing Kindle books. In all of my years as a Kindle author, I have never promoted a paid Kindle book to my email list.
I did a free promotion to my email list, but in my eyes that doesn’t count. I’ll offer my Kindle book for $0.99 for a limited time and then bump it up to $2.99.
Thank you for reading my month in review. I hope you enjoyed it.
Struggling with a part of your business? We’ve all been there. I can’t count the number of problems I had with my business. Conquering each of those problems has made me into the entrepreneur I am today.
As I conquered more business problems, I paid more attention to the process.
How are problems solved as quickly as possible so they don’t hinder us too long? I tackle that topic within my latest video.
In less than three minutes, you’ll know all of the steps in the problem solving cycle.
[Tweet “How To Break Down Any #Business Problem.”]