Marc Guberti

The One Thing Most Bloggers Forget To Do

May 5, 2014 by Marc Guberti 10 Comments

Blogging mistake

Authors do this several times for their books. However, many people skip this part of writing blog posts. What could it possibly be? I could say that I will reveal the answer in 9 minutes and have callers guess the answer similar to the Lite FM Radio Station. However, I am going to simply reveal the answer right now in bold letters.

Most bloggers forget to proofread their blog posts.

There are many bloggers who make the mistake of misspelling words. I recently read an article on a very credible blog only to discover towards the end of the blog post that tweets was spelled as “tweeets.” That is a mistake that could have been avoided with a spell check, but since the blogger did not use spell check, readers will notice that mistake. However, there are some mistakes that the spell check does not catch such as run on sentences and words that have been misplaced in the blog post.

A blog is a free book for your readers to read. If the free product does not deliver the way it should, people will be less likely to buy your products. The logic behind this is that if the free product does not deliver, the paid product probably won’t deliver either.

Proofreading a blog post will probably take up 5 minutes of your time, and really lengthy blog posts can take gasp 10 minutes of your time. However, by proofreading your blog posts, you will be able to provide your readers with better blog posts, and you will see the rewards of your hard work as you see your sales go up.

Proofreading your blog posts will allow you to see the mistakes. If you wrote 99 flawless blog posts, but one of your blog posts is flawed, then the proofreading was worth it. What are your thoughts on proofreading blog posts? Please share your thoughts below.

How To Come Up With An Effective SWOT Analysis

May 4, 2014 by Marc Guberti 12 Comments

If you want to persuade someone to do something, then you need to master the SWOT analysis. The acronym stands for Strenghs, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Using the SWOT analysis can persuade people to do almost anything for your business…if you word the SWOT analysis correctly and send it to the people who would care.

The SWOT analysis is designed to do the following:

Identify what is working. These are the strengths. In your SWOT analysis, you need to start off with the strengths to make everyone feel good about the business. By starting off with the strengths, the weaknesses will be easier for everyone to swallow.
Identify what is not working. These are the weaknesses that need to be fixed. The reason many businesses (and countries for that matter) fall apart is because they do not pay attention to the weaknesses. In order to move forward as a business and an entrepreneur, you need to identify what is not working so you can fix the problems.
Give everyone a big picture of the potential that can be unlocked by moving forward. After hearing the weaknesses, some people will get discouraged. This part of the SWOT analysis is to give people a new level of hope and show them how to make the strengths stronger. This new level of hope can be used to increase productivity among your employees and business colleagues to get better results.
What would happen if we got too comfortable and did not try to unlock our potential. Now that you have given everyone a new level of hope, you need to close your SWOT analysis with the threats. Ending off with the threats will make your employees and business colleagues believe that moving forward in the direction of your vision is the best and right way to go.

What are your thoughts on the SWOT analysis? Please share your thoughts below.

Why You Need To Be On Pinterest

May 4, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

This blog post is not about whether you should consider Pinterest or why you might want to be on Pinterest. This blog post is about why you need to be on Pinterest. Pinterest is a social network that has grown faster than any other website on the web. What used to be an unknown website in 2010 is now getting over 60 million U.S. visitors every month. That’s less than 40 million U.S. visitors away from Twitter’s monthly totals.

Pinterest is a social network where you can categorize your interests and business. In fact, Pinterest is the best social network for growing a following even though you post about a variety of things. Pinterest gives its users options in a way that surpasses the other social networks on the web.

In addition, getting viral on Pinterest is much easier than getting viral on other social networks. Less than 2% of all tweets on Twitter are retweets. Mathematically speaking, that means for every 100 tweets you send out, you will only get 2 retweets. Other social network share similar statistics. However, none of them compare to Pinterest where 80% of the pins on Pinterest are repins. Mathematically speaking yet again, for every 5 pins you send out, 4 of those pins are going to get repinned. That is a big difference.

There are many entrepreneurs who want to use Pinterest to increase their sales. Pinterest is a powerful social network/e-commerce site where the average customer spends more money than on any other social network. The average cost per order for both Facebook and Twitter are under $100 while Pinterest dwarfs both of them at an average of $169 per order. People on Pinterest like to spend money on things that they like, and if your product is something your followers desire, you will be more likely to boost your sales.

Pinterest has the potential to completely change your business plan. A few months after I created my Pinterest account, more than 10% of my blog’s traffic came from Pinterest. Pinterest has boosted my sales and has allowed me to connect with more people. Now Pinterest is a serious part of my business plan. If you do not have a Pinterest account yet, then I highly recommend getting one in order to get ahead of the competition.

The Best Emailing Tip Out There

May 3, 2014 by Marc Guberti 5 Comments

Email marketing

There are many emailing tips out there. There are ways to write an attractive email that grabs a client’s attention, get someone to say yes, or build a strong connection. However, the life of sending out emails, and life in general, will result in some people disagreeing with what you think. It may have taken a few days to craft the email and even longer to build the conversation. After spending all of that time and effort building the connection, there is nothing worse at that moment than for the person to cut the connection and say they do not like what you provide.

I encountered something like that. I will not go into any of the details, but I will say that it took me several weeks to build the connection. In the end, I got a “no.” I did not anticipate getting rejected since I spent a lot of time building the connection, and I was not sending this person any sales pitches (I almost never send those). The first thing I thought of when I read the email was to respond by telling that person that he/she made a terrible mistake and I do not want this connection to continue in any way, shape, or form. I was not happy that the person cut the connection. In fact, I was angry.

Luckily, I was not able to send that email because it was time for me to eat. When I know my food is ready, I put my business on pause, rush to the kitchen, and eat. By rushing to the kitchen, I was unable to send the email. After eating and working on a full stomach, I looked back at the email I was able to send. I realized that I acted rashly when I was writing the email. Although it took me some time to build that connection, that person would have not been happy to read the email I was thinking of sending. It would have tainted that person’s image of me which is something I certainly did not want to do.

In the end, I revised the email (as in deleting everything I wrote before and writing an entirely new email) and sent it to the person with a more positive outlook on the situation. The person who reads the email feels grateful that I was not angry (luckily I came to my senses), and I feel grateful that I did not have to go as low as to send out the original email. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Believe it or not, you are going to face rejection in the form of emails. There are going to be people who email you and say no to what you proposed. The easier decision is to respond as soon as you get the email and saying how horrible that person is. The harder (but better) decision is to take a break from the keyboard, ignore the email, and then respond to that email with a new mindset.

It is better to wait a little bit to respond to an email than it is to respond to your email while you are angry.

5 Ways To Get Your Goals Accomplished Faster

May 3, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

Goals

The big reason many goals remain unaccomplished is because people do not know how to accomplish them fast enough. Most people go into their goals with no set plan. With this “blindfold mentality,” people do not know how to accomplish their goals. The only reason people remember and still try to accomplish these goals is because they were written on a piece of paper somewhere or just happen to be recalled every once in a while. However, what if there was a way to get your goals accomplished faster? In fact, there’s five ways.

Wake up earlier. Waking up early removes all of the distractions that take place later in the day. The earlier you wake up, less things get in the way of you accomplishing your goals. Waking up early also has several health benefits.
Give yourself the staircase. You cannot get from one floor (where you are now) to the next floor (where the goal is accomplished) without creating the staircase to get you there. If you want to write 7 blog posts every week, you would do 1 blog post every day and add steps to your staircase until you accomplish the goal.
Write your goals on a score card. I wrote a blog post about how my first score card dramatically increased my productivity. Since then, I have been using score cards every week to track my productivity and my ability to accomplish goals within a certain amount of time.
Improve your time management skills. Watching TV is easier than writing. Watching TV does not involve any action on your part, but writing requires thinking and the ability to turn thoughts into sentences. However, writing will help your business more than watching TV will. Many people do not know how to effectively manage their time which is why many hours get gobbled up for unnecessary reasons. These are some tips that will help out with improving your time management.
Never lower the bar. Lowering the bar once results in a temptation to lower the bar even further. Cutting back from 4,000 words every day to 2,000 words every day and remaining that way for several weeks could eventually result in the ability to surpass 1,000 words every day. Lowering the bar lowers hopes, expectations, and dreams.

Those are the five ways to get more done faster. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips that you would like to add? Please share your thoughts and tips below.

Why New Changes Are Not As Annoying As They Sound

May 2, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Twitter has been making profiles of their users look just like Facebook. On the first day I saw several Twitter profiles with the Facebook look, I was outraged. I could not believe Twitter was going to make this move and turn into Facebook.

However, I was quick to remember another change that took place that people complained about (myself included). Everyone–from classmates to business people to relatives–complained about the iPhone’s new design. In fact, many people complained about the design on Twitter (the complaining even earned the iPhone a spot on Twitter’s trending list). I was complaining just like everyone else when the new design came out, but now I could not imagine an iPhone without the new design. The ability to swipe the entire screen to get to the passcode instead of swiping that tiny arrow at the bottom of the screen all the way to the right saves a lot of time.

In addition, I was not a big fan of Alexa’s new design. I despised the new design because it became harder to type in a URL. Instead of having the option of typing the URL at the center of the screen, that option would be provided at the top right hand corner. It does seem like a complaint on a small change, but customers notice the small changes. Sure enough, after a few weeks of using the new design that I did not like at all, I enjoyed the new design. In fact, I now like the new design better than the old design.

I know I am not the only one who thinks this way about new changes. The reason new changes gradually get accepted is because as the complaining reaches a high point, it becomes obvious that the new design is here to stay. When hundreds of thousands of people complained about the iPhone’s new design, Apple did not go back the old way. Now, the people who complained about the new design love that same design.

New changes can seem annoying. New changes such as putting in more work, adjusting your schedule, or trying a different strategy can seem annoying in the beginning. However, once you stick with the new change and decide not to look or turn back, you will gradually become comfortable with the change.