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Marc Guberti

The Big Problem I Have Been Noticing With The Search Terms That Lead People To This Blog

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Problem

Here’s one of those search terms: “How to get 100,000 followers on Twitter within a week.”

That won’t happen. Just because celebrities gain over 10,000 followers (let’s not forget to mention that some of those followers are fake) and over 100,000 followers every week does not mean it is easy to get the same results. It takes multiple years to reach 100,000 Twitter followers, and it takes even longer to be able to gain 100,000 followers on Twitter every week. Most people never even make it to the second part let alone breaking the 100,000 milestone.

The big problem is that the search terms that have been leading people to this blog indicate no patience. You need to be very patient to go from 0 followers to 100,000 followers. If it took a week to get to 100,000, then breaking the milestone would not be impressive. If everyone is able to reach the same milestone, that milestone loses significance. That is one of the reasons why 100,000 is hard to reach, and it takes much longer than 1 week to pull it off.

If you are willing in to put in a consistent and ample amount of work every day for multiple months and years, then you will be more likely to surpass the 100,000 milestone. If you think you can get there in one week and gain tens of thousands of followers in that time frame, then it’s not going to work out very well.

There is no shortcut to success or 100,000 real followers. Patience will allow you to get there and see the results you have always dreamed of come to pass.

 

Five Things You Need To Keep Track Of

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Keeping track of statistics and data will allow you to identify what happened on the good days as well as what happened on the bad ones. You can track your results month by month and identify which months were your best and which ones were your worst. These statistics allow you to take action based on past results so you are able to optimize your future results. In a world with more statistics and data than ever, few people know which of those statistics and data are the most important. Here are the five statistics and pieces of data that you need to keep track of.

  1. Your earnings. You will be able to identify the growth of your revenue. Some months will be good while others will be bad. There will be rises and drops in your earnings. In order to figure out why and how those changes take place, you need to record your earnings. In addition, you need to record which sources of income made what amount of money. While this allows you to identify and solve problems, it also allows you to look back at what you have accomplished and envision yourself making a stronger income as well.
  2. Follower growth. The growth of your social networks has a big impact on your blog’s traffic, your sales, and your credibility. When you see a big growth in your followers, you need to identify what you did on that day to see the big change. Then, continue doing what you did on that day to see that “big change” become common.
  3. Your blog traffic. With these statistics, you can keep track of views, visitors, clickouts, referrers, and more. You can identify which social networks are bringing in an abundant amount of traffic as well as the social networks that are not creating the same results. You can use these statistics to identify the best strategy for your blog and your social networks.
  4. One competitor. I know what some people are thinking about this one. It is more important to differentiate oneself than it is to focus on the competition. The truth is that no matter how much you differentiate yourself, competitors will do everything in their power to catch up to the new change. Ford’s Model T was innovative, but now there are numerous car companies. Those car companies caught up to Ford just like competitors catch up to each other in their respective niches. By looking at the statistics from one of your competitors, you will be able to identify that competitor’s good days and bad days. If you look deep enough into the statistics and what that person did for the day, patterns–patterns that you can use to your advantage–will emerge.
  5. Returning customers. One of the pieces of data most people forget to record is the returning customers. If your customers returned once, then they tend to return multiple times. By having the names and contact info of your returning customers, you will be able to contact them. Three great ways to contact a returning customer are to tell them about a big discount just for them, thank them for being returning customers, or ask them to leave a testimonial/review and that you would be honored if they did so.

By keeping track of these statistics and pieces of data, you will be able to identify where you need to improve and where your strengths are. This analysis will allow you to identify where you are lacking and where you have everything under control. This knowledge will allow you to take a different, better course of action that you may have never taken if you did not have this knowledge. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional statistic or piece of data that you track? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

10 Steps To Your First 1,000 Twitter Followers

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1000+ Twitter Followers

If you grow a big audience on Twitter, that audience has the potential to dramatically transform your business and get more people to know about you. Many people see growing an audience on Twitter as a challenging process. Some of the people who went through the challenging process now have thousands of followers while others are almost there. Regardless of whether you just started using Twitter or have hundreds of followers, you need to reach 1,000 Twitter followers as soon as possible. Here are the 10 steps that will allow you to get there:

  1. Follow people who are likely to follow back. When you follow people who are likely to follow back, be sure to follow the people who are interested in what you talk about. Take a look at their bios and some of the people they follow to determine whether these people would be interested in what you tweet about or not. Some of the people you follow will feel obligated to follow you back because they do not want to get unfollowed.
  2. Tweet often. Tweeting often is a great way to get noticed. The more you tweet, the more chances you have of getting a retweet. Retweets will allow your content to spread on Twitter and attract more followers.
  3. Tweet valuable content. Tweet the type of content that people would want to retweet. Motivational quotes, incredible articles, and videos are some of the things that people would want to retweet.
  4. Tweet with pictures. They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. Tweeting with a picture will add more value to your tweet and boost your engagement. Tweets with pictures get 10% more engagement than tweets without pictures.
  5. Get people on your other social networks to follow you on Twitter. Your Facebook friends, people in your Google Plus circles, and Pinterest followers are some of the audiences who would follow you on Twitter. When you are trying to build an audience on your other social networks, you need to tell the audience you already have about your new account for a social network.
  6. Have conversations with others. Conversations allow you to build connections with your followers. You can also have conversations with people who are interested in what you do and can become a potential follower. It is easy to turn potential followers into followers. They just need to know about you, and having conversations with these people is a great way for them to learn about you. Here are some tips for starting a conversation on Twitter.
  7. Retweet other people’s tweets. If you are not retweeting a tweet once every week, then you are using Twitter wrong (if you’re going through my tweets…then you know what to do). When you retweet someone else’s tweet, that person will be grateful. If you retweet enough of someone’s tweets, that person will show their appreciation by following you. In addition, some people will follow you because they want their tweets to get retweeted as well.
  8. Pin your most popular tweet. Pinning your most popular tweet only allows that tweet to become more popular. When potential followers see your popular tweet, the tweet will automatically grab their attention, and then those people will follow you. A popular tweet indicates someone is popular on Twitter, and people tend to follow the accounts that are popular.
  9. Promote your Twitter account on your blog. Have a giant follow button on your blog that allows people to follow you on Twitter. Better yet, make sure people can follow you on Twitter without leaving your blog. This allows the connection to build.
  10. Get interviewed and interview others. The people who you interview or get interviewed by will tell their audience about you. Some of the people from those audiences will decide to follow you on Twitter. Here are some useful tips to finding people you can interview, getting them to accept the interview, and get people to interview you.

By implementing these steps, you will gain more Twitter followers every day. As you continue to gain more Twitter followers, you will eventually reach 1,000 followers. Surpassing the thousand mark is a big milestone that shows other people that you have the potential to thrive on Twitter. Having 1,000 Twitter followers puts you in the Top 5% of all of Twitter (based on the number of followers you have). That is a big accomplishment, and it is an accomplishment you will be able to realize by putting in the work. What are your thoughts on these steps? Do you have any additional steps you use to get more Twitter followers? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

The Five Best Ways To Make Money With A Blog

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Money From A Blog

There are plenty of ways to make money with a blog, but most of the methods people tell you about are overrated. Putting up ads on a blog is an overrated way to make money. When someone clicks on an ad, you lose a visitor (potential customer, potential subscriber, and potential follower) and get two cents. There are better ways to make money from your blog that encourage your visitors to frequently come back to your blog. Here are the five best ways to make money with a blog:

  1. Sell your books. If you have not written a book yet, you can write and self-publish that book on Amazon for free. Some self-published authors have been able to make six figures with their books.
  2. Create a training course. Providing a training course will allow your visitors to realize that you are a top-notch expert in your niche. Some of those visitors will decide to buy your training course. If you publish your training course with Udemy (the easier and free option), you’ll get 50% of the sale, but if you publish your training course with Optimize Press (a lot harder, involves some coding, and costs money), then you will be make 100% of the commission. Regardless of which one you use to publish your training course, having a training course and promoting it on your blog is better than putting an ad there.
  3. Offer one on one consultation sessions. You can conduct these one on one consultation sessions by using Skype. This means you can have one on one consultations with people in New York, California, Japan, and other parts of the world right from the comfort of your home.
  4. Host a one hour webinar with a small fee. As you become more popular and your credibility grows, you will be able to get numerous people to attend a $20 webinar. Imagine what would happen if 100 people listened to the webinar. You would make $2,000 just from one webinar. Now imagine what would happen if thousands of people showed up. That’s over $20,000 just from one hour of your time. Pretty neat.
  5. Become an Amazon Affiliate. Amazon has millions of products available which means no matter what your blog is about, there’s a relevant product on Amazon that you can promote. When someone buys the product with your link, you get a commission. Even if someone clicks on your link, buys a product, but does not buy the product you were promoting, you still get a commission.

Those are the five best ways to make money with a blog. There is no reason that you need to have advertisements to make money with a blog. Those take up too much time and result in you losing visitors who could have become subscribers, followers, or customers. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional methods you use to make money with a blog? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

Case Study: How Keeping Score Increases Productivity

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A very long time ago, I wrote about keeping score, and I wrote about the results of my first score card. I have been using the score card for months, and I do not plan on stopping. Score cards enhanced my time management and productivity, and score cards continue to amaze me today. Before I created a score card, I thought it would have been impossible for me to write 25 blog posts in one week. Not only did I do that, but I also finished reading an entire book and created the blueprint for my upcoming membership site, Total Social Media Domination. The following week, I was able to accomplish 12 different goals which all required a good amount of work. Some of the things I did that week were:

  1. Write 20 blog posts
  2. Finish reading Blue Ocean Strategy from start to finish
  3. Write 5,000 words for an upcoming book, Unlock Your Potential

There were 9 other goals similar to those three, and I got them all done in one short week. What once looked impossible has now become a routine of accomplishment.

The main reason the score card works is because you have to write down what you plan to accomplish for the week. If you think about the things you have to accomplish, it is easy to forget about some things and reduce expectations for other things. If I thought of write 20-25 blog posts every week, I may think at some point in the week that writing that many blog posts is too challenging. Thinking about it could have resulted in me lowering the bar to 16-18 blog posts for the week. Writing everything down forces you to be accountable, and making yourself accountable gives you no one else to blame but yourself for anything that goes wrong on your score card.

It is the desire to get a perfect score that motivates me as I continue creating score cards and getting tasks accomplished. You may not get a perfect score when you create your score card. In fact, I almost never get a perfect score. It’s not because I am not productive. Instead, it is because I raise the bar very high. I could easily get a perfect score on every score card if I only assigned myself 10 blog posts every week, but then I would not be able to publish two blog posts in one day.

If you want to get better time management and increase your productivity, you need to use a score card. Write down the goals you want to accomplish and use tallies to indicate how close you are to accomplishing a goal. Then, draw a big checkmark next to any goal that you accomplish. It’s that easy, but it is going to make a big difference in your time management and productivity.

 

You Can’t Do It All By Yourself

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I am not the person to use pessimistic headlines to get people’s attention, but I knew that I needed to make an exception in order to make my point.

For a very long time, I believed that I would be able to do everything all by myself. I believed that I would be able to publish books without anyone’s help, create training courses without anyone’s help, and optimize my social media presence without buying any tools. The problem was that I was giving myself too many things and not enough time to do those things (this comes from someone who writes 20 blog posts and 5,000 words for his books on a typical day of high school).

I thought I could quickly send out queries and respond to everyone on HARO. I was wrong. In my defense, I was able to quickly send out the queries, but responding to everyone was the difficult part. Then, I got sidetracked from all of the work I put in for HARO and the book I was writing because nothing seemed to be working.

I also thought I could create my own book cover and learn how. However, spending $25 to get a Kindle eBook cover and a CreateSpace book cover is much easier than learning how to create the covers and create the images.

Do you want to know why big companies are successful? It’s because they are big. WalMart is run by the CEO, but there are millions of people who allow the WalMart stores around the world to function properly. The people who founded big companies realized that they couldn’t do everything by themselves. C. Douglas McMillon can’t be in every WalMart store at the same time.

It is okay to ask for help. It is okay to hire virtual assistants to help you with the things you cannot do or simply don’t have the time for. If you have to read this blog post multiple times before you are convinced that you can’t do it all by yourself, then go for it. You don’t want to learn this lesson after you lost time because you thought you could do everything by yourself.

Get a marketing team. Get a support team. Hire assistants. If you don’t have the money to hire assistants yet, look around for assistants anyway and hire them when the money comes in. Whatever you do, don’t do it alone.