Blogging

4 Ways To Make Money With Your Content

February 15, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

monetized content — Making money isn’t hard if you know how.

Writing is a lot of fun. You get to convey your thoughts on paper or in an online document. Then you share those thoughts with the world.

There are plenty of things to write about, but for some writers, writing becomes a passion. They want to write for the rest of their lives.

It is possible to write for the rest of your life, but why not also make money from it. Ditch that 9-to-5 job and do what you love instead.

Making money with your content is a process. Not only do you have to write the content, but you have to publish that content on the right places and promote that content.

In all challenging journeys, it is always beneficial to give yourself a basic roadmap. The basic roadmap just gives you an idea of where you have to go. Then it gets modified later based on your progress.

When creating your roadmap, consider these four methods of making money from your writing.

#1: Write Books

It’s far easier than ever to publish your own book. Before the internet, you had to pursue a publisher and make a deal. Now all you have to do is self-publish your own books (I self-publish my books with KDP and CreateSpace).

The only thing about writing books is that in the beginning, you won’t get many sales. That’s true about any product, but I had to let you know.

Unless you already have a large email list, chances are you won’t get many sales in the beginning. But in some ways, that’s good.

Not receiving many sales will motivate you to make more sales. You may decide to write multiple books (great idea) and see that one book start to take off.

The other books will eventually get consistent sales.

If you want to pursue the life of a self-published author, you’ll need to publish as many books as you can for lower prices (think $2.99 for the Kindle book). That’s the advantage self-published authors have over the authors who got a deal from a publisher.

#2: Write Blog Posts And Monetize Your Blog

If you are looking for the best way to improve your writing, then look no further than blogging. If you write blog posts every day, you will become very comfortable with writing content.

I wrote about 1,000 blog posts across all of my blogs before I wrote my first book. The more content you write, the more comfortable you become with writing.

So that’s all great. Blogging improves your writing. Now, show me the money!

The fact of the matter is that the content alone won’t make you money. You need to have your blog optimized for monetization. There are a wide variety of ways to make money with a blog:

Create products and promote those products. This is my go-to for making money with a blog. I promote my products each time people subscribe through my landing pages and promote direct product links at other locations on my blog. If you don’t have a product, you can offer consultation sessions as you create that product.

Affiliate links. Only promote affiliate products on your blog that are relevant to your audience’s interests. I wouldn’t promote an Amazon affiliate link to a LEGO product here because that wouldn’t go well with my audience.

Advertisements. These are overrated and I don’t like them. You should be getting over 10,000 visitors per month before you even consider ads. However, you can make more money by giving your products the same space that the ads would have received.

Those are the three main ways to make money with a blog. But there is one thing a blog gives you that can’t be overlooked.

Credibility.

Having your own blog filled with rich content will establish you as an expert within your niche. And if you’ve been writing enough blog posts, it will become effortless for you to write that rich content.

#3: Become A Ghostwriter

If you want to make money with your content without having any type of platform, then ghostwriting is a great option.

All you do is set up an account on UpWork and let people know you are a ghostwriter. Then, apply to people’s jobs where they ask for a ghostwriter.

The only challenge with UpWork in the beginning (and ghostwriting in general) is building credibility.

There are ghostwriters who (even if you are better than them) have more credibility than you. They’ve been hired more often and have more five star reviews.

In the beginning, you may have to charge a lower price for your services than you want just to attract clients. You can then scale up as you get more jobs and reviews.

However, that beginning will be tough. My best advice is to apply to as many ghostwriting jobs as possible (as long as you can do them) so you get enough credibility to raise your price per hour.

#4: Contribute Your Content To Other Websites

We have all heard of guest blogging. You can put your content in front of a larger audience. However, some websites that ask you for your content will pay you to write for them.

Some of these websites will pay you as much as $100 per article.

While this isn’t a way for you to make a living, you can definitely make thousands of dollars from your writing. Just make sure you can write content that these websites want.

I haven’t explored this opportunity much because most of these types of blogs are outside of my niche. For the curious writer, here is a list of these types of blogs and how much you make for each piece of your content.

I prefer to get paid by putting some of my content on places like HubPages and Zujava. I don’t write for them as often as I once did, but I’ll occasionally publish a new article on one of the two.

In Conclusion

All writers deserve the opportunity to make money from their content. After putting in all of that work, we should see some type of reward that creates positive reinforcement.

The best way to make money with your writing is to build a platform (your social media audience, your blog audience, and your email list).

The platform gives you an audience that you can always communicate with and occasionally promote products to.

Regardless of which opportunity you choose to make money with writing, there will always be more involved than simply writing the content.

Which of these methods of making money as a writer do you like the most? Are you writing to make money or just for fun? Sound off in the comments section below.

7 Tactics To Boost Your Blog Traffic With Social Media

February 5, 2016 by Marc Guberti 12 Comments

Getting blog traffic with social media works. Some bloggers rely on social media for all of their traffic. For the past three years, almost half of my blog traffic has come from social media.

Twitter has been leading the charge and led over 110,000 visitors to my blog in 2015.

Twitter Traffic 2015

Social media is a powerhouse for blog traffic, but only if you know how to use it. Many bloggers go to social media to get more traffic. They’ve seen the case studies and listened to all of the recommendations.

And the fact that over a billion people use social media helps out with the decision making.

After that, the path gets foggy. Sending a tweet with your blog post’s link is the easy part. Getting sustainable traffic from social media is the challenge.

That challenge has its rewards. You’ll get social media traffic but you will also gain credibility which is important for standing out as an expert.

The key to getting sustainable blog traffic from social media is to put consistent effort in the right areas. What are those right areas? That’s what this blog post is all about.

#1: Post Your Blog Content Often

Hear about the 80/20 rule for social media. I’m not talking about the epic Pareto’s Principle (80% results come from 20% of the work).

I am talking about another 80/20 that plagues many social media users. The way this 80/20 works is that you promote other people’s content 80% of the time and you promote other people’s content 20% of the time.

LIE!

That’s not how it works at all. At least, if you want to get sustainable blog traffic. It’s great to share other people’s content, but you need to focus more of your time on sharing your content.

The truth about people looking for content is that the value of the content matters the most. It doesn’t matter if you only tweet your content. As long all of your content is empowering and/or entertaining, then your social media audience will always want more of it.

I post my blog content 95% of the time. I will occasionally share other people’s content and promote landing pages (other than my own) using my affiliate links.

But most of the time, I am sharing my own content. That’s how I am able to consistently get hundreds of daily visitors from my social media platforms.

#2: Outsource Some Of The Work

I know what some people are going to say. If you give the work you are already doing to someone else, then you won’t gain any additional blog traffic.

But you gain time. Lots of it.

The time you gain can be repurposed towards more profitable activities or activities that result in more blog traffic.

Suddenly, you’ll have more time to master AdWords, Facebook Advertising, and any other method of traffic generation that you choose to master.

Then, you might decide outsourcing is your secret weapon.

You can then learn enough about certain social networks and hire freelancers to grow your audiences on other platforms.

You have the expertise and know what to do. Then you hire freelancers and let them know what needs to get done.

Outsourcing creates more time, and if you use your time wisely, then you will increase your blog traffic and make a bigger profit in the long-term.

#3: Turn Cross-Promotion Into Your Friend

This is the secret ingredient for successful social media marketing. It’s the potent ingredient in the back of the refrigerator. It’s the ingredient buried deep within the cookbook.

Maybe I should stop now and keep it a secret. No, I won’t do that. You deserve to know for making it this far.

Cross-promotion is when you use one of your social media platforms to promote your other social media platforms.

It looks so innocent, but it’s impact is the secret part.

You can see cross-promotion in action with YouTubers. When they upload a new video, the savvy YouTuber will promote the video on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and a few other social networks.

The YouTube video then at some point (in the description and/or at the end of the video) promotes the Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and other social media accounts that the YouTuber has.

The result is an infinite loop in which users continuously consume content from the same person across multiple social media platforms.

And the content is so good that these users follow the same person on all of his/her social networks.

Anytime these users are on social media, regardless of which social network they are on, they can encounter content posted by that person.

Think of the chances you see one of my social media posts if you only follow me on Twitter versus if you follow me on Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.

The odds increase as you follow me on another social network. Cross-promotion makes sure people who follow you on one social network eventually follow you on all of your social networks.

And if you promote your blog posts on each of those social networks, then you can expect to get a lot of traffic in return.

#4: Make It Easy For People To Share Your Content

The easier it is for people to do something, the more likely they are to do it. At the bottom of many blog posts are a bunch of social sharing options.

Click the button and a social media post shows up.

If you want to increase the chances of people sharing your content, you need to make it easier for people to access those buttons.

Buttons at the top and bottom of your blog posts are no longer enough. Blog posts are getting longer which means it takes longer for people to see those buttons.

More and more bloggers are shifting to drag-down social media sharing buttons that allow visitors to share your content across a variety of social networks regardless of what part of your blog post they are reading.

You can also make it easier for people to share your content by using plugins like this one:
[Tweet “7 Tactics To Boost Your #Blog Traffic With #SocialMedia.”]

This plugin is very useful for getting more people to share my content. The social media traffic you get isn’t just from your audience.

The social media traffic you get is a combination of your efforts and your audience’s efforts to promote your content. If your content is good, your audience will want to promote it.

If you make it easy for your audience to promote your content, then more people within your audience will promote your content.

#5: Use Better Pictures

Pictures are critical. Any social media post on any social network with a picture has been proven to get more engagement than the same social media post without a picture.

Pictures are so important that for certain social networks, you can’t post an update unless you include a picture (Pinterest, Instagram, and others).

You need to use pictures that grab attention and make it clear to your visitors what your blog post is about. That’s why all of my pictures include the title of the blog post.

Just look at the picture I used for this very blog post.

The title of the blog post is shown within the picture. The text lets Pinterest and Instagram users know exactly what content they will read before they read the Pinterest/Instagram post’s description.

If you can’t create compelling pictures or it takes too much of your time, hire someone to get the job done for you.

And it’s okay to hire someone. Every minute you spend creating pictures is another minute that you can’t promote your blog.

That may have sounded harsh, but it’s the way you need to think of your time. Your time is valuable.

#6: Get Creative

Social media is constantly evolving which means some methods rarely discussed will work for you. Sometimes, you have to be a pioneer and experiment on your own.

Kim Garst was one of the first social media experts (if not the first) to take Periscope seriously. She was a pioneer and now Periscope brings her six figures.

New social networks will come out in the future. The first batch of winners will primarily consist of the pioneers.

#7: Analyze Your Results

As you continue getting blog traffic from your social media efforts, you have to then analyze the results.

Which of your blog posts get the most traffic? Does a certain blog post perform better on Facebook than on LinkedIn?

The analysis is important. You get to learn what works within your strategy. Knowing what works allows you to make better decisions.

When I discovered my Twitter audience (unsurprisingly) enjoys Twitter related blog posts, I wrote more Twitter related blog posts. This decision resulted in more Twitter related blog posts that I could tweet.

That resulted in more traffic.

Making decisions like that based on your analysis allow you to better serve your audience, and in effect, get more traffic.

In Conclusion

Social media is the best place to get more blog traffic. You can leverage it as the foundation that results in more SEO traffic and more landing page traffic (which grows your email list).

Social media provided me with most of the building blocks that I used to create my blogging empire. Consistently put in the work day by day and you are bound to see results.

What are your thoughts on getting more blog traffic from social media? Which of these tips was your favorite? Do you have any other tips for getting more blog traffic from social media? Sound off in the comments section below.

7 Tips To Make Your Blog Strategy Less Overwhelming

February 1, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Blogging can get overwhelming. There’s a lot of writing, marketing, learning, and a bunch of other things as well.

Even the most passionate bloggers can sometimes feel overwhelmed by their work level.

When we get overwhelmed, our minds freeze. We have so much to do, but we don’t know where to start. The result is nothing getting done.

That’s what happens when you overwhelm yourself.

To get your work done, you cannot get overwhelmed by your workload. That means you must make your blog strategy less overwhelming.

Just because you make your blog strategy less overwhelming does not mean you are decreasing your productivity. You are just increasing the odds that you get everything done.

To make your blog strategy less overwhelming, follow these seven tips.

#1: Acquire More Knowledge

There are two reasons a blog strategy becomes overwhelming. The first reason is a time crunch and the second reason is a lack of direction.

Acquiring more knowledge accounts for both of those reasons.

If you learn more about your niche, then you will write blog posts in a shorter amount of time. If you learn more about blogging, then you have more direction with your strategy.

If your niche is blogging, then you get to feed two birds with one scone, but if your niche is not blogging, then no worries.

#2: Create A Plan

football play

As you acquire more knowledge about blogging, you need to create a plan. What types of results do you want to see and how will you go about achieving those results?

That’s a plan in a nutshell.

Creating a plan gives you a sense of direction in your blog strategy. You know where you need to direct your time to get your desired results.

#3: Implement Now

If you learn without doing anything that you learn, you will quickly find yourself overwhelmed. Each time you learn something but don’t implement, you are adding something to your to-do list.

Learn without implementing for a few weeks, and that to-do list can get quite large.

When you come across new knowledge, you have to apply it in one way or the other. If you realize doubling your tweeting frequency results in more blog traffic, then implementing means doubling your tweeting frequency.

See what happens. If it works, great! If it doesn’t work, then at least you know (for me, it works).

Applying the knowledge can also mean writing a blog post about what you learned. When you write about the same topic you are trying to master, then don’t be surprised if you retain more of the knowledge.

The way I learn more about my niche is obtaining the knowledge and then writing about it in my words. Effectively communicating what you learned is proof that you understand the concepts.

#4: Outsource Some Of The Work

Time is always ticking and tocking. Those ticks and tocks can result in an overwhelming sense of urgency. If we had more time, we would not be as overwhelmed as we are now.

Luckily, there is an easy way to regain time in your day. In fact, it is the one tactic that you must leverage if you want to become a successful entrepreneur.

That one tactic is outsourcing.

If you outsource 80% of the work in your day, you will have a lot more time to work on the important parts of your blog strategy.

Your blog strategy will also be less overwhelming because you will have a team around you.

In other words, it’s not all on you anymore. You have people to help you.

UpWork is the best place to find freelancers who will help you with various tasks that take up your time.

I have freelancers on UpWork who schedule my tweets, create pictures, and manage my social networks among other things.

All of that time I gain now goes towards my blog and Udemy.

#5: Streamline The Writing Process

You want the writing process to go by as quickly as possible while ensuring you provide the value.

If you can cut your time spent writing a blog post by half, then you will have a lot more time available. Bloggers spend much of their time writing the content, so streamlining the writing process is the best way to open up more time.

I recently wrote a blog post that goes into detail about getting blog post ideas and then rapidly turning blog post ideas into blog posts. If you are looking to streamline your writing process, then you’ll want to read that blog post.

#6: Take Breaks

Sometimes when you feel overwhelmed by the workload, it is simply necessary to take a break.

It isn’t always a matter of giving yourself less work or working smarter. It is just a matter of abandoning your work and taking a break.

Just a 15-30 minute break. Nothing substantial.

That break will allow you to remove yourself from your work and go back to fulfilling the work-life balance. Then, once you are ready, resume your work.

You will feel less overwhelmed about the work since it won’t consume you as much as it did before you took your break.

I take breaks by watching videos, reading books, listening to audiobooks, or writing in one of my journals. There are plenty of ways to take a break that can also be useful for your blog strategy, but make sure you take a break that you enjoy.

#7: Have A Mentor

When you feel confident that blogging is for you, and you have an idea of what you are doing, having a mentor can bring you to the finish line.

I’m not simply talking about role models whose blogs you visit on a regular basis.

I am talking about the people who you can directly contact and then get insights from them specifically geared towards your question.

Maybe you find your mentor through one-on-one coaching. Maybe you find a mentor who is willing to respond to every email or tweet you send.

Try to find a free mentor or an inexpensive mentor to get started. Here’s the best way I know of to find a quality mentor for the lowest price.

Find a high value Udemy course related to the topic you are trying to learn. Buy it when Udemy runs a discount (you’ll save a lot from their discounts). Then go through the lectures (videos).

This is the key part. As you go through the lectures, ask questions in the discussion section of the course. Here’s what the discussion section of a course looks like:

Discussion Board Udemy Course

Instructors tend to respond to these discussions because responding boosts their Udemy search engine rank.

It’s also common courtesy to the students who enrolled.

Now you have a mentor who will sort of work one-on-one with you for a fraction of the cost of most one-on-one coaching programs.

When people ask me questions on social media or through email, I respond as often as I can. When students ask me questions in one of my courses, I always respond.

An active Udemy instructor who teaches a course related to your niche may be the best place to go to find a mentor to make your blog strategy less overwhelming.

In Conclusion

Your blog strategy provides you with direction for the time you allocate towards blogging. However, that strategy can sometimes get overwhelming.

When your blog strategy gets overwhelming, working through isn’t the solution. You need to change your approach. When you feel overwhelmed, sometimes taking no action is better than taking action.

But if you choose to take action, you must take action in a smart manner. In an overwhelmed state, you must make small strides of progress as you head towards goal achievement.

Which of these tips was your favorite? Do you have any other tips for making the blog strategy less overwhelming? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Rapidly Write Epic Blog Posts

January 29, 2016 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

Bloggers love writing valuable content. It’s something that we crave.

But then we run into a wall. Ideas don’t flow as smoothly. During this time, it is common for a blogger to question his or her writing capabilities.

Even with over 1,000 blog posts under my belt, when I run into that wall, I sometimes question my ability to think of more content.

Have I written everything about my niche that I can possibly write about? How do I avoid writing repeat blog posts?

Those two questions swirl in my mind as I try to think of new blog post ideas after a slump. I go by the advice I mention in my past blog posts and in other people’s blog posts.

I recently found myself in the middle of a slump. I had written a bunch of blog posts but the ideas weren’t flowing as easily.

I knew I had to get out of the slump so I could write content rapidly again. That was especially true because I am now looking at self-publishing my own books again.

I wrote this blog post for myself and for every other blogger who goes into that slump. It can get difficult to think of more blog post ideas, and it’s frustrating when the ideas (let alone the content) don’t flow properly.

Rapidly writing epic blog posts consists of four steps. The importance of each of these steps is that you must do them one at a time.

#1: Brain Dump

The brain dump is the process of writing down as many ideas as you can think of. The brain dump is a struggle when you begin the process, but once you begin, it increasingly becomes easier.

For most of my brain dumps, I go through other people’s blog posts and use their content for inspiration. However, for this particular slump, that strategy was not working.

I needed another source of content. I didn’t have enough time to listen to an audiobook or read a book. I needed the blog post ideas now because I knew that not having those ideas would haunt me throughout the day.

So I went to YouTube.

Many bloggers find themselves reading other people’s content for inspiration. I don’t think as many bloggers go on YouTube for that same inspiration.

This was the first time I went on YouTube and watched a few videos with the sole purpose of thinking of more blog post ideas.

I almost got a month’s worth of blog post ideas from watching other people’s YouTube videos.

I got ideas based on the videos’ titles and what the people said within their videos.

IMPORTANT: I only wrote down the ideas as I thought of them. I did not do a detailed outline for any of them until I was done with my brain dump. If I needed to remember important details for the outline, I included a link to the video next to the blog post idea.

#2: Outline Your Blog Post Ideas

Now that you have your ideas, there is just one step before you actually write the content. That step is to outline your blog post ideas in advance.

Outlining your blog posts in advance makes it easier for you to write the content. That’s just how they work.

Instead of thinking about what you are supposed to write about next, you are thinking of ways to improve your content while you write it.

Deep, huh?

And the best part about outlines is that they don’t have to be so detailed. The outlines for all of my blog posts consist of the following:

Blog post title

All of the methods I discuss

That’s it. I almost never account for mentioning examples. I think of any of the examples I include in my blog posts as I write them.

Don’t go crazy with a blog post outline. Let your mind do most of the work as you type your blog posts.

Regardless of how long it takes for you to construct your outline, you will save yourself time in the writing process.

And you definitely won’t be staring at the white blank screen. You’ll be staring at the white screen with text flying across the page.

#3: Just Write

Your outlines are now done. At this point, you simply write the content. Your outline is the guide and now it is up to your mind to wander.

The more experience you have with writing in this style, the easier it will be for you to provide valuable content. I am able to write this content right now without stopping because that’s how quickly my mind can operate.

I didn’t mean to sound boastful there, but it’s a testament that the more practice you have with writing content, the easier it will be for you to speed-type and speed-think.

An important thing to know about writing content is that you can provide valuable content even if you type rapidly. Typing rapidly just means you have a lot to say about your topic and is a testament of your expertise.

Less thinking more writing.

But remember, you are just writing. You are not looking back at your past blog posts or going on the web for anything.

If you need to add a picture to your blog post, do that after you write it. Take a look at this picture:

I didn’t stop writing, go on the internet, and get that picture. I continued writing and then leaved a space in that particular section that read “[PIC OF WRITING]”

PIC being short for picture (I want to get back to writing my content as quickly as possible) and ALL CAPS so it’s nearly impossible for me to miss.

I will even put it on it’s own line just to make sure I can’t miss it even if I am skimming through my blog post.

Any distractions that can get in the way of the writing flow must be eliminated. When I am writing my blog posts, I will Force Quit Safari and Mail.

That way, I can’t be distracted by a new message in my inbox or something I want to see on the web.

I was almost distracted from writing this very blog post because I wanted to check something on the web (I forgot to Force Quit Safari).

Then I Force Quit Safari and was able to continue writing this blog post without stopping.

It can be annoying to remove those types of distractions, but you’ll get used to it with practice.

#4: Proofread Your Blog Post

Once you are done writing all of your blog posts for the day, you must then proofread them. That way, you make sure there are no careless mistakes and you include all of the pictures where you need them.

However, you are not writing a blog post, proofreading a blog post, and then writing the next blog post.

You only proofread your blog posts when you are done writing for the day. That way, you don’t have to switch from one frame of working to the other frame of working.

Keep switching too often and you won’t be able to write blog posts as rapidly as you desire.

If you find proofreading to be a pain, you can always hire someone from UpWork to do that for you. If you hire a proofreader, that says nothing bad about your writing.

Hiring a proofreader allows a different set of eyes to look at your content, and that decision will open up more time for you to write more content.

In Conclusion

The writing slump is a pain. We wonder what we will write about next. It especially becomes difficult because bloggers don’t want to write repeat content.

You get through the slump with an intense brain dump. The brain dump is the most important part of the process because the more intense your brain dump is, the more ideas you will have to play with.

I would rather have 20 solid blog post ideas at my disposal than three solid blog post ideas at my disposal.

Having more ideas gives me the power to write more content without stopping.

What are your thoughts about this strategy for thinking of more blog post ideas? Do you have any tips for coming across more blog post ideas? Sound off in the comments section below.

3 Things You Must Know About Your Visitors

January 27, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Getting more traffic has been engrained into every blogger’s mind. We want more people to see our content. We want to double our blog traffic only to then want to double it yet again.

This idea of constantly wanting to double your blog traffic is the Ambitious Blogger’s Mindset. However, if bloggers only focus on getting more traffic, then they are missing the entire point.

If your traffic keeps on doubling month after month and you eventually get hundreds of thousands of visitors per month, then your blog is in phenomenal shape.

However, if you focus more on the number of visitors than who is actually visiting your blog, then you are missing a grand opportunity.

Getting a lot of visitors but not knowing who your visitors are is just like having the key to a Lamborghini and driving it into a brick wall.

To best serve your visitors with your content and products, you must know who these visitors are. Knowing a handful isn’t enough.

You need to know certain things about every ideal visitor who goes on your blog. These are the three most important things to know:

#1: Their Interests

What do your visitors want to learn more about? The answer to that question must impact the types of blog posts you write. People who go on this blog want to learn more about digital marketing.

However, I want to get as specific as possible. What digital marketing advice do they want the most? Do they want more about Twitter or more about Facebook?

There are several ways to discover what your visitors are interested in. You can give them a quick survey with 1-3 questions where you simply ask them what they want to learn more about.

If you don’t want to go through the hassle of creating a survey (it’s really easy on Survey Monkey), you can go ahead and create a Twitter poll.

Twitter polls are great ways to engage with your audience and get their opinions about virtually anything.

Twitter-Poll-Getting-Engagement

Creating the right polls will allow you to learn more about what your audience wants. You’ll also get a lot of responses in a short period of time. While writing this blog post, I decided to create a Twitter poll just to test it out.

In less than five minutes, I had a few dozen votes.

But not only do you want to know what your audience is interested in. You also want to know what they want from you.

And also what they think when they hear your name.

There are few better ways to discover what your audience thinks about you than by conducting a Google search of yourself.

Google Search Marc Guberti

I see “Marc Guberti Udemy” and “Marc Guberti Twitter” as the two main Google searches. That means people primarily know me for what I do on Udemy and for what I do on Twitter.

Since Udemy showed up on top of Twitter, I decided to conduct a search in Udemy’s search engine to see what showed up for my name. I was SHOCKED to say the least:

Udemy Search Marc Guberti

“Instagram Marc Guberti” was one of the top search terms. Not Twitter, Pinterest, or any other social network. The top search term (other than just my name, which by the way is spelled with an “i”) included the word Instagram.

And the Twitter poll suggests something completely different. We live in a funny world.

I then tried typing “Instagram M” to see what would come up. Sure enough, “Instagram Marc Guberti” was one of the top three search terms.

I have written a few blog posts about Instagram. Never have I created a training course about Instagram. If I had a training course about Instagram, I would appear as the top course for one of the most searched terms with “Instagram” in it.

Here’s my interpretation: People want to watch a course created by me about Instagram so badly that they will search for it using Udemy’s search engine even when they don’t see an Instagram course in my profile.

So creating an Instagram course is now a top priority. If I did not conduct this search, I would have never known that so many people wanted me to create a course about Instagram.

Until I create that course, courses created by other people will rank high for the search term “Instagram Marc Guberti.” The irony is blaring, but the solution is obvious.

#2: Their Desires

Once you know about your visitors’ interests, then it is easy to pinpoint their desires. A business owner would be interested in Instagram because that business owner wants to use Instagram for his/her business.

Finding specific interests is the hard part. Once you discover what your audience is interested in, finding their desires is much easier. You simply ask why your visitors would be interested in a specific topic.

The business owners interested in social media want to use it to generate social proof, grow their audiences, and get a strong ROI.

It doesn’t take long to connect the dots once you know what your audience is interested in. Once you connect the dots, you create products and write blog posts that match your audience’s desires.

#3: Where They Go

Even your most dedicated visitors will not be on your blog 24/7. They have other commitments in their lives.

I wish I could read Seth’s Blog forever, but when I have to write my own blog posts (or my dog barks a few times at the door indicating she has to do her thing), I have to stop reading his blog posts.

We can’t account for the times when our visitors leave our blogs to do things like write their own blog posts or walk their dogs. However, we can see which blogs they visit.

While I spend a good amount of time reading Seth’s Blog, I also spend time going through Jeff Bullas’ Blog, the Kim Garst Boom Social Blog, and a few others.

That’s the type of data you need to know about your visitors. Which blogs do they visit before and after yours? Alexa lets you see this type of information, but for a monthly fee (but you’ll get a lot of other valuable info too).

The free way to see where people go before and after visiting your blog is by seeing what your followers share with their audiences.

They may be sharing your blog posts, but what other blogs are they promoting? You can either figure this out on your own by going through all of the people’s accounts that mentioned you, or you can outsource the work to someone else.

When a task involves a good portion of my time, I go with outsourcing. Every. single. time.

In Conclusion

Getting blog traffic is good, but who is actually visiting your blog? Once you know more about your visitors, you will know how to better serve them and get them to come back for more of your content.

Getting traffic is at the forefront of many bloggers’ minds. This goal, combined with knowing who your visitors are, will result in returning visitors who come back for your blog posts again and again.

What piece of information do you believe is the most important thing to know about your visitors? Do you believe we must know other information about the people within our audience? Sound off in the comments section below!

How To Write Better Blog Posts

January 25, 2016 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

One of the questions on top of every successful blogger or rising blogger’s mind is, “How do I write better content?”

The truth about blogging is that blogging is an art. There is a certain way to structure the blog posts and write what needs to be written.

You don’t want to write a blog post for the sake of writing it. You want it to be compelling and attention-grabbing. It’s easy to write a blog post. It is more challenging to write a memorable one.

A large percentage of writing more blog posts is simply practice. If you want to walk down memory lane with this blog, you will discover that my oldest blog posts are skeletons compared to the blog posts I write now.

I wasn’t the best of writers when I started. I just got better and better at my craft. In fact, I continue to get better. It is possible that 10 years from now this exact blog post looks like a skeleton compared to what I write in the future.

So how exactly do we write better blog posts that our readers will love? Here are some tips:

#1: Craft An Appealing Title

The title of your blog post lets your readers know what will be discussed in the blog post. Be too vague and readers will get confused. Their time is too precious, so most readers will choose to ignore those blog posts.

You want to craft a title that gets the main point across (what the blog post is actually about) and use pull-words in the process.

The next time you are reading other people’s blog, pay closer attention to the titles of the blog posts. Which titles grabbed your attention the most? Which words did those titles use? What were the blog posts about?

Asking yourself these questions now will help you to craft better titles for your own blog posts later.

#2: Have A Strong Introduction

Once people start reading your blog post, they are committing some of their valuable time to reading the blog post.

But since their time is valuable and these people are busy, you need to compel them right away. You do that with a strong introduction.

A strong introduction creates a more vivid picture of what the blog post will discuss. At the same time, it is engaging because it speaks to the people reading it.

When you write a blog post title, you need to consider what type of person would read the blog post from start to finish. If I write a blog post called “3 Ways To Get More Twitter Followers,” I know a few things about the readers of that blog post:

They have their own Twitter accounts
They want more followers
They want a big audience
They may want to use Twitter to grow the audience

Now that I know these four characteristics make up the people who read that particular blog post, I can speak to them.

In the introduction, I would touch upon their desire to grow a large Twitter audience, how I did it after a lot of hard work, and how they can get the same results. Then I would discuss the methods.

You aren’t writing blog posts for every person in your audience. Even if your audience is targeted. You are specifically writing for that reader who will read your blog post from start to finish.

I know that if I write the blog post “3 Ways To Get More Twitter Followers” and published it tomorrow that not everyone in my audience will read it.

Some will look at that title and think, “This isn’t what I need right now. I want to read something else.”

If someone does not have a Twitter account, then that person won’t care much for that blog post.

So even when you have a targeted audience, you are still not writing each of your blog posts for everyone. When you write a blog post, you have to get hyper targeted.

You have to look at your targeted audience and ask yourself these questions:

Which level of expertise do they have (are you writing for a beginner or someone more advanced)
For the purposes of this blog post, what area(s) within my niche should these people have a strong interest in?

My niche is digital marketing. This blog post is aimed at people who have blogs and have been writing blog posts for a while.

People who don’t fit that criteria may skip or skim through this blog post. People with the criteria may read most or all of this blog post.

#3: Spend More Time Writing Blog Posts

The more time you spend improving your writing, the better your writing will become. I make it a point to either craft an outline or write a blog post every day.

The reason is that performing the same action every day allows you to get better. That action also becomes an effortless habit.

Writing a blog post like this used to take up a large portion of my time. I struggled to think about the next sentence and how the blog post would advance.

Now I type away and barely think about what I am typing. The thoughts and idea come more natural to me than they did a few years ago.

Find some time every day to improve upon your craft. Once you commit that much time to blogging, then it is only a matter of time before you become an excellent blogger.

#4: Make Your Blog Posts Easy For Readers To Consume

Every time a reader reads through your blog post, they are consuming content. At the same time, these consumers have small attention spans (nothing personal. It applies to everyone. The average person’s attention span is smaller than that of a goldfish).

If it is difficult for your readers to consume your content, then they won’t stick around.

Making your content compelling makes the consumption process easier. However, there is another element in play. It is the same critical element that got you to reach this point of the blog post.

The truth about my blog posts is that to some degree I think of each of them as a Thanksgiving dinner.

Lots of content (food) for people to consume. I’m talking about the Thanksgiving dinner with eight or more guests.

For the sake of this particular Thanksgiving dinner, let’s say you had to eat all of the food. You could eat it within any time allocation.

Would you rather have all of that food put on one plate and eat all of the food in one bite, or would you rather eat the food more gradually and have it split amongst 30 plates.

Once you split up the food, it no longer looks intimidating. In the same way, once you split up the content within your blog post, it no longer looks hard to read.

I could have organized all of this content into one big paragraph. The only problem is that no one would stick around.

Instead, you need to break your blog post into numerous paragraphs. I’m not talking about the 4-5 liners. Those are too long nowadays.

I am talking about 1-2 line paragraphs must like this one.

This strategy just makes it easier for anyone to read your blog posts, even the skimmer. Skimmers will read small portions of each paragraph and absorb the best stuff.

If you make your paragraphs short like this, then any reader, even the skimmer, will absorb more from the blog post than if you made the blog post one massive paragraph.

#5: Learn More About Your Niche

No matter how much you know about your niche, you can always learn more about it. I often find myself reading books and blog posts about my niche and watch YouTube videos about my niche when I’m not reading about it.

Learning more about your niche gives you more expertise that you can provide to your readers. You get to diversify your blog posts while staying within your niche.

In my opinion, the best way to learn more about your niche is to read other blogs within your niche. Not only do you get to learn more about your niche, but you also get exposed to new writing styles.

Other blogs I read have influenced the way I write and structure my blog posts. Expose yourself to different styles of writing, and then you will choose the style that appeals to you the most.

Then add your own flair to it.

In Conclusion

The most successful bloggers aren’t the ones who focus on getting traffic. The most successful bloggers are the ones who focus on writing valuable content.

Once they master valuable content creation and then go after the traffic, visitors will come and stick around.

You can’t focus on getting traffic in the beginning because no matter how much traffic a bad blog post gets, the traffic will not stick around.

You don’t have to be the best writer among us before you focus on getting traffic. However, you need to have enough confidence in your style of writing that you can firmly declare that every blog post you write is going to be epic.

Which of these tips was your favorite? Do you have any other methods for writing better blog posts? Do you think bloggers should first focus on traffic or writing epic content? Sound off in the comments section below.