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How To Become A Successful Part-Time Blogger

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It’s easier to become a successful blogger if you take the full-time route. However, it is also possible to become a successful part-time blogger.

While I see myself as a full-time entrepreneur, I must acknowledge that I am technically part-time since I’m a college student.

When you’re part-time, you don’t has as much time as a full-time blogger to commit towards your blog. That doesn’t necessarily put you at a disadvantage. This lack of time can actually be your greatest asset.

When you don’t have as much time, you get smarter with the time that you have. Mastering efficiency and effectiveness now will result in massive gains when you go from part-time to full-time.

Here are some tactics that will help you become a successful part-time blogger.

Knowledge Acquisition On The Road

The best way to speed your growth is to learn more about blogging and your niche as a whole. However, if you spend too much time acquiring knowledge, you won’t have enough time to write blog posts.

While I find time to read every day, you’ll also find it very effective to listen to podcasts or audiobooks on your daily commutes. Music will provide you with short-lived motivation (if your lucky enough to hear your favorite some on the radio), but listening to a podcast or audiobook will provide you with knowledge that will speed up your success.

To see the impact of this tactic, let’s say your daily commute is 20 minutes one-way. That means you’re on the road for at least 40 minutes every day. That comes to a total of 14,600 minutes (243 hours and 20 minutes) every year.

Finally, let’s say you listen to your audio content at 1.5 speed instead of the regular speed. I wouldn’t recommend making it too fast because you have to absorb the info as you drive, but 1.5 is doable.

That one decision cuts a 30 minute podcast episode down to 20 minutes. A 6 hour audiobook is now just 4 hours, but you’ll learn the same information.

In 14,600 minutes, you can listen to 730 podcast episodes or listen to 60 audiobooks assuming they all average 6 hours per audiobook. If you can listen to audio content at twice the speed without getting distracted, you’ll reap even more gains.

That’s much better than listening to music that only serves a short-term purpose.

Delegation

As a part-time blogger, there are only so many hats you can wear. Marketing, web design, creation, and writing email copy are some of the many hats we can wear as bloggers. It’s easier for full-time bloggers to put on these hats.

Part-time bloggers thrive in a different setting.

Instead of wearing so many hats, they distribute the hats to others. In other words, part-time bloggers delegate many of their tasks. I delegate a wide variety of tasks, and if I didn’t, my blog wouldn’t be where it is today.

All of my freelancers combined work at least 40 hours per week. That number is going to multiply as 2018 continues to take its course. Guess who would have to do all of that work if the freelancers weren’t here to help.

That’s right, me.

And while it’s doable for the summer and breaks, this just isn’t possible during school. Especially since I’m still doing a lot for my content brand already.

Start delegating the time consuming tasks that you don’t want to do. With your newfound time, do something that generates more revenue for your blog. If you can hire a freelancer whose skill and workload helps you generate more revenue than you’re paying that freelancer, that’s a plus.

I have someone else handling my Amazon Book Ads, and I am making a nice profit even after accounting for my monthly fee and ad spend.

But for now, delegate one task whether the primary focus is saving more time or making more money.

Prioritization & Focus

When you delegate various tasks such as social media growth and scheduling your content, you’ll have more time. This is where priority and focus come in.

The way you use your extra time determines that outputs you get within your lifetime.

You need to focus on the priorities that will result in the most traffic, conversions, and sales. Those are your three greatest allies in the blogging world. Getting more traffic means you can convert more people. If you convert more people, you have more people to sell to.

And more sales means more revenue that you can reinvest, use to delegate more tasks, or put it into your nest egg.

80/20 Marketing VS Creation

People are great at creating valuable content. If successful content brands were solely based on creating valuable content, a lot more of us would be very successful.

But content brands don’t just rely on great content. They also rely on even better marketing. Marketing your content makes the difference between your work getting seen and your work not getting seen.

If your blog post doesn’t get seen, it’s not valuable. Even if you wrote thousands of words and did some epic research, your blog post is not valuable unless people see it.

How can a blog post be of value if no one has read it? The definition of value as a whole is dependent on other people reading the content and getting value from it.

With content marketing being so important, we now return to the 80/20 rule. I’ve mentioned this rule a lot through my writing, and chances are you’ve come across it often. Here’s how the 80/20 rule works in this case.

You need to spend 80% of your time marketing your content and only 20% of your time creating the content.

If you spend more time marketing than creating, you’ll eventually get a big boost in traffic. If you prefer to create content, you can develop systems for marketing your content and delegate the marketing to your freelancers. It’s more than possible, but you still need to follow the 80/20 rule.

If you create content for 10 hours each week, you need to assign at least 40 hours per week to your freelancers responsible for marketing your content.

Find Your Full-Time Sprints

Every part-time blogger needs to find certain gaps of time where they have the full-time blogger status. For me, those moments are during holiday breaks and the summer.

During these gaps in time, I’m sprinting hard.

I’ll plan out the sprint a few days in advance. When you have more time to play with, one of two things will happen:

Since you are a part-time blogger who performed under time restrictions, removing the time restriction will result in a decrease in productivity. Now you have more time to use, but you’re taking your time.

With the fire in your belly to permanently reach full-time blogger status, you use your current full-time sprint to accomplish far more than you would have accomplished as a part-time blogger.

Planning out the sprint ahead and utilizing those extra hours each day will make a big difference in the future. The more you care about the planning process, the more successful your full-time sprint will be.

Focus the majority of your time on revenue generating activities because those are the activities that will elevate you to permanent full-time status.

In Conclusion

Regardless of whether you’re just getting started or have been a blogger for a while, you can become a full-time blogger.

If you are not a full-time blogger yet, you’re not correctly investing your time towards blogging.

The moment you change your approach, you will change your results. Part-time bloggers may have less time, but you can create systems and utilize your time more effectively.

It’s not about how many hours we each have in a given day, but rather, how we’re using each hour.

What are your thoughts about becoming a successful part-time blogger? Do you have any tips for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

10 Tactics To Think Of Epic Content Ideas

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When you first start creating content, it’s easy to think of epic content ideas. The world is your oyster, and anything you can think of hasn’t been covered.

As you create more content, the ideas become more limited. Over 1,500 blog posts later, I have to make sure I don’t get too repetitive. I don’t see myself writing a “5 Ways To Get More Twitter Followers” type of article for a very long time, if ever again.

It’s easy to think of epic content ideas. It’s difficult to think of new ideas that you haven’t covered and that your audience wants. I can think of a blog post listing 100 blogging tips, but I already did that.

You can take a topic you’ve discussed before and discuss it in a new piece of content. If you chooses this route, you need to do so with a different flavor than before.

Regardless of your approach, these are 10 tactics you can use to think of epic content ideas.

#1: Read Blog Post Headlines

Blog post headlines allow you to discover what a blog post will discuss before reading it. You knew what you were getting from this blog post the moment you read the headline.

For some blog posts, it’s worth reading the entire thing to grab some key points. Hopefully, this is that type of blog post for you.

However, some blog post headlines serve better as idea igniters. If you run out of ideas, you can read blog post headlines in your niche to spark your mind.

I’ll read as many headlines as I need so I can come up with an epic content idea. However, to save time from this activity in the future, I often jot down 10-15 content ideas so I don’t have to perform this same activity every day.

#2: Read Email Subject Lines

This is a similar practice as reading blog post headlines. The main difference is that you read email subject lines continuously without igniting your mind. How many of us go through our inboxes and think, “Wow, there are so many potential content ideas lurking here”?

When I’m in the inbox, I want to respond to important emails and then get out. However, the inbox magic always seems to keep us in our inboxes a little longer than we anticipated.

Instead of completely wasting this time, have a mind that is open to new content ideas. Sometimes, blog post headlines make their way into your inboxes.

I’m subscribed to Medium, and they send amazing emails based on articles I’ve read in the past. One of the articles I received in my inbox was called 16 Things Your Successful Friends Have Given Up by Tim Denning.

Not only did I read the article, but I now have a content idea for the future. I can expand on this concept and write an article like “10 Things Your Unsuccessful Friends Haven’t Given Up” or “5 Things That Hold People Back From Success.”

Similarly to a blog post headline, an email subject line can give you several content ideas if you reword the subject line.

I wrote this blog post towards the end of 2017, so I had an email in my inbox with the subject line “The number one end-of-year practice that transforms my year.” I now have a few options:

“3 End-of-Year Practices That Work At Anytime Of The Year”

“The #1 Beginning-of-Year Practice That Can Transform Your Year”

“The Only Thing You Need To Accomplish Your Resolutions”

It took me a little less than a minute to write all of those ideas. I can follow-up with them at any time I desire, and I got them from my inbox.

You might find more success in your inbox because many marketers value their email subject lines more than they value their content headlines. The email subject line, similarly to a content headline, makes the difference between massive engagement and zero engagement.

#3: Listen To Podcasts

Unashamed plug to the Breakthrough Success Podcast 🙂

All joking aside, listening to podcasts (or audiobooks, but in this case, podcasts for your breakthrough), will provide you with a fountain of content ideas.

Audio content provides you with several unique opportunities for content consumption that videos and the written word can’t safely provide:

Walking in the grocery store

Walking your dog

Running (note: I briefly tried this, but it ruined my flow so I stopped)

Driving

When you want to rest and don’t want to look at a book or a computer screen

I write notes for each episode I listen to. As I write more notes, more content ideas flow out of me.

The amount of content ideas you’ll get from each episode depends on the type of podcast you listen to. The better the podcast, the more content ideas you’ll get out of the experience.

#4: Watch Videos

This tactic has a similar vibe as listening to podcast episodes. Many see YouTube as an on-demand platform to escape the hustle and bustle of work. Others use YouTube to learn new skills and implement what they learn.

You can watch your way to more knowledge by watching the right YouTube videos. I prefer to watch videos from a training course as I’m less tempted to drift off when watching a training course. All YouTube has to do is suggest one tempting video that’s off-track, and then I can fall into the wormhole of wasted time.

I recommend enrolling into several courses on Udemy. Several of them are free and won’t distract you from learning unlike YouTube (unless you only watch educational YouTube videos without room for entertainment).

#5: Write Down Ideas

One way to think of epic content ideas is…wait for it…write down ideas.

While this may seem like one of those no-brainer and not necessary to mention type of tactics, this one is important.

Just because you think of an epic content idea doesn’t mean you’ll remember it. With tens of thousands of thoughts going through our heads each day, even the greatest of ideas can get lost in the storm.

Writing down your ideas will prevent you from forgetting them. And when you look at those ideas, two things will happen. #1 is another no-brainer but #2 is where the magic happens.

You’ll remember the idea

Your mind will start to ignite more ideas based on the idea you just remembered

All you have to do is change, remove, or add 1-2 words to a content headline to come up with an entirely new idea.

#6: Consume Your Past Content

Similarly to how looking at past ideas will ignite new ideas, consuming your past content will help you come up with new content ideas.

To finish 2017 strong, I decided to listen to every episode I published on the Breakthrough Success Podcast (a little over 60 at the time). I listened to my podcast with iTunes until my podcast made it on Spotify. Then I got hyped and listened to many of the remaining episodes on Spotify.

Among the many tidbits I got from the episodes, one was that “all successful bloggers are full-time bloggers.”

With that one quote, I can think of several ideas:

How To Become A Full-Time Blogger

How To Work Like A Full-Time Blogger

How To Become A Successful Part-Time Blogger

What You Need To Do As A Part-Time Blogger

Note that I’m using headlines that include part-time and full-time. Including two important words within various headlines will give you more options as you think of epic content ideas.

#7: Read Books

Reading books has a similar theme as some of the previously mentioned tactics. Successful content creators often use books to gather new insights and present their findings in their content.

The best way to see planned out research in action is by…reading books. When you read a book, you’ll often see the author mention another book and a valuable insight from that book. This is planned out research, and while it’s presented in other forms of content, books seem to take this amount of research to the next level.

If you prefer audiobooks, then you’ll still get a lot of value from the experience. The important thing is that you read through as many high-value, niche-related books as possible. You’ll learn a lot and come across many content ideas.

#8: Watch Training Courses

This tactic is worth saying, but I won’t go deep into it. The idea is very similar to other tactics discussed. I recommend you use Udemy and SkillShare to find free courses to get the gist. While I prefer Udemy, others prefer SkillShare.

#9: Hire A Freelancer To Gather Ideas

Here’s where things get different. Most of these tactics have focused on you consuming content and headlines to come up with the ideas.

If you find yourself pressed for time, you can hire a team of freelancers to gather ideas for you. They can even do the outlines so you know where to take the content next. That way, you can spend less time thinking about epic content ideas and more time writing epic content.

Better yet, you can spend more time marketing your brand. Many people are great at creating content, but few of these same people are great marketers. Marketing your content allows your brand to get found and aids you on the way to becoming a full-time content creator.

You can hire freelancers to conduct a variety of tasks beyond idea generation. Just because something’s hard or time consuming doesn’t always mean you specifically have to do it.

#10: Create A Survey

Hiring a freelancer to gather ideas is one way to remove this task from your workload. While hiring a freelancer for this task serves its benefits, you can also ask your audience for ideas.

The best way to ask your audience for ideas is through a survey. If enough people in your audience take the survey, you can then make conclusions about what type of content they want more of.

While you’ll get some ideas right out of the gate, this feedback will let you know where to direct your idea igniting mind. If your audience wants Facebook advice, you know that you need to focus on thinking of Facebook ideas instead of thinking of Pinterest ideas.

You can create a survey through Survey Monkey or Google Forms.

In Conclusion

Thinking of epic content ideas is no small feat. The extra time you take to think of an incredible content idea will result in better content. That better content will attract more people to your brand and ensure your existing audience wants more of your content.

What were your thoughts on these tactics for generating more content ideas? Do you have any tactics for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Profit From Your Free Content

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Have you ever wondered why people spend so much time creating and publishing free content? There are people like Neil Patel who manage to write 4,294 free blog posts. With each of those blog posts averaging 1,000 words (modest estimate for Neil), that’s over 4 million words of content.

That’s like reading through several copies of Tim Ferriss books.

And that doesn’t even include editing your content like a pro.

I myself have written over 2,000 blog posts, created hundreds of YouTube videos, and close to 100 episodes on the Breakthrough Success Podcast.

Why bother? Why not invest that time towards generating revenue?

Creating free content is a long-term game that will result in more revenue than most of the other strategies. Even with a coaching business, you are limited by the number of hours that you can take on clients in a given day.

In this free piece of content, you’ll learn how you can profit from the free content you create for your audience.

 

Send People To Your Email List

Free content does a magnificent job at sending people to your email list. At the end of all of my blog posts, I invite visitors to subscribe to receive a free offer.

Lately, I’ve included opt-in boxes in the middle of my content. With this strategy, I effectively turn all of my blog posts into landing pages. Small differences in site wide conversion (i.e. from 3% site wide conversion to 4% site wide conversion) will make a big difference in how much your email list grows in the weeks and months that follow.

I don’t only promote my opt-ins in my blog posts. On my blog’s sidebar, I give readers the option to click on my free offer and get it in exchange for joining my email list.

On my podcast, I mention a link at the beginning of the show where readers can go to buy one of my products or get a free offer.

With all of your content, you must be laser-focused on turning as many of your visitors into subscribers as possible. Boosting email subscribers is essential to profiting from your free content.

 

Optimize Your Autoresponder

The autoresponder contains all of the emails your new subscribers receive when they join your email list. Autoresponders can cover a few days or a few months depending on how deep you want to go.

This is different from the welcome email which would thank the person for subscribing and provide that person with the promised free offer.

Most email marketing solutions including ones like ConvertKit and iContact allow you to create an autoresponder for new subscribers.

Successful autoresponders strengthen the relationship between you and your new subscriber before making a pitch.

A common but effective tactic is to include a picture of yourself in the first email and describe the context. I use a picture of myself in a mountain trail where I sort of got lost but enjoyed all of the sights of that run.

Knowing more about you will make your new subscribers more interested in the products you’ll offer later on.

I prefer to write this email, offer three free pieces of content related to my product, and then send 3 emails about the product. If a new subscriber buys the product through your autoresponder, you can ascend them to a higher priced product.

If a new subscriber doesn’t buy the product, you can continue sending them free value and occasionally offer them other products.

 

Leverage Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of my top sources of income. You can find proven products in your niche and promote them knowing you’ll make the commission you deserve.

I tend to promote an affiliate product to my email list at least once per month. Daily emails gives me plenty of opportunities to promote affiliate products and share my free content.

You can also make money on your blog directly through affiliate marketing. You can promote an affiliate offer similarly to how you would promote a landing page.

To take things to the next level, anytime you mention a tool you use, make sure you use your affiliate link.

When I mention ViralTag, I use my affiliate link (just like I’m doing right now). This is a tool that I frequently recommend anyway. Adding an affiliate link into the mix allows me to make commissions based on the products and services I would have recommended anyway.

Ideally, you get visitors onto your email list and leverage affiliate marketing to your email list, but you can also leverage your free content to drive affiliate sales. The same principles apply to promoting your own product.

 

In Conclusion

Creating free content allows you to drive visibility to your brand. That visibility should result in more subscribers and sales. I use the word should because the way you optimize your website determine what results you’ll get.

As you optimize your site or quickly affirm to yourself that your site is optimized, remember this…

You are never finished with optimizing your site. To this day, I’m looking for ways to increase my conversion rates. Even when I hit my conversion rate goal, I’ll set a new goal for myself and boost conversions even more.

Plus, there are so many parts of the journey that you can optimize. You can optimize the landing page, the autoresponder messages to ensure more clicks, the sales page, and more.

Creating free content is the first step. Optimizing your website is the next step, but it should be taken immediately when you take your content brand seriously.

What are your thoughts on creating free content? Do you have any tips for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Automate Your Content Brand

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The more you can automate, the more you can focus on your priorities. Automation can make any area in life easier ranging from money distribution to making sure every task in your business gets done.

For successful content creators who find themselves overwhelmed with all of the work, automation is often the next step. Many people wish to automate some or all of their work, but regardless of how much you want to automate right now, it will create the potential for dramatic improvement.

I say dramatic improvement because your improvement is based on how you use your newfound time.

Here are some ways that you can automate your content brand.

 

#1: Post In A Cycle 

One of the most tedious tasks for most content brands is coming up with the social media content. Instead of curating new ideas every day, search for the evergreen ideas that you can continue posting in a continuous cycle.

I have hundreds of tweets that I put in a queue. These tweets automatically get sent out, and the cycle infinitely continues. I can add more tweets to this cycle when I come out with new content, but I don’t have to search for additional content for a long time.

I originally kept a CSV file containing all of these tweets with their links. After modifying the dates using Command F, I could then upload the CSV file into HootSuite’s bulk uploader and schedule over 100 tweets in just six clicks.

Since then, I started to use ViralTag which puts all of my tweets into a queue. You can set yourself up on ViralTag, never log in again, and your social media posts will continue to get posted in a continuous cycle.

I only log into ViralTag when I want to add new content or temporarily pause the cycle (i.e. I don’t tweet on Christmas Day).

 

#2: Delegate Your Tasks

The key to automating any business is to delegate your tasks to others. You can’t automate everything. You can’t send an auto response to every email and expect to build healthy relationships.

To determine which tasks you need to delegate, write down a list of the tasks you do. After you write that list, write a second list of all of the tasks you enjoy doing.

Any task on the first list that doesn’t appear on the second list needs to get delegated.

I tend to make at least one new hire per month. That allows me to assess my needs and grow at a gradual pace. Some day, I plan on hiring 5-10 people every month, and that number will expand in proportion to my business’ growth and needs.

 

#3: Provide Your Freelancers With Rubrics

When you hire a new freelancer, that freelancer will not fully know what to do. This isn’t a knock on freelancers. Imagine you getting hired but receiving vague instructions. I wouldn’t know what to do either.

And just because a freelancer has been working for you for several months doesn’t mean they fully know your expectations.

To make your expectations and instructions perfectly clear, you need to provide your freelancers with a rubric.

Leave no stones unturned. Make it as clear as possible. For my podcast editor and show notes writer, I provided this rubric for writing the show notes:

In the past, this freelancer would provide me with the show notes, and I would customize them to my standard. My clearly laying out my standard, both of us boosted our productivity.

Feeling inspired, I created a rubric for my Twitter Growth Expert. He was already doing a great job for me, but I felt like we were missing something. I’m improving at communicating with my freelancers, but during those times, I was downright terrible with the communication (it took me a few days just to respond to the simplest requests).

The rubric allowed us to get more clear on my expectations and his work ethic. The end result was more productivity for both of us and more rapid Twitter growth.

These rubrics are more productive for both of us because there’s no question about what needs to get done. My freelancers don’t have to guess anymore, and I don’t have to correct their work anymore. I create a rubric for every freelancer I hire. The rubric that takes me an hour to create will save me several hours every week.

 

#4: Automating The Inbox

You shouldn’t automate everything that goes in your inbox, but you can get really close. If you frequently find yourself trying to schedule things through email, you’re better off creating an online scheduler using a tool like Acuity.

That way, instead of the back-and-forth “I can do 3 pm this Wednesday. Does that work for you?” you provide your availability and the other person chooses a time and date from your availability that also works for them.

You can take this a step further by hiring a freelancer to respond to most of your emails. Only advance to this step if…

Your inbox is swamped

You have a continuous stream of incoming emails that you need to respond to

If you choose to hire someone, give that person a rubric showing them how to respond to common types of emails. These types of emails depend on what you get in your inbox.

An inbox detox can also solve the problem. In an inbox detox, you unsubscribe to one newsletter every day (except for mine) and then get fewer emails in your inbox.

 

In Conclusion

Automating your business will open up more time. The way you use that time determine the results you’ll get. While this statement is obvious, it carries more weight since automating your business is an investment.

You invest your money to get your time back. To make the automation worthwhile, you need to make more money from your extra time than you spend to gain that extra time.

What are your thoughts on automating your business? Do you have any automation tips for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Hit Your Blog Traffic Goals

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hit traffic goal

It’s very common for bloggers, video creators, and podcasters alike to set site traffic goals. Some people aim for 100,000 monthly blog visitors while others aim for 1 million podcast downloads.

But most of these site traffic goals involve a significant long-term time investment. Some people get frustrated with slow progress and give up on these goals all together.

And yet it’s possible to achieve our site traffic goals faster than we realize. It’s possible to surpass 100,000 monthly blog visitors in under a year. But if it’s possible for some people, why aren’t we all doing it?

There are only two reasons for this phenomena:

It’s a lot of work, and only a few are willing to put in that much effort.

We don’t know how.

You’ll learn the how part soon enough. At that point, it’s up to you to put in the work. Let’s go deeper so you discover how to hit your site traffic goals.

 

#1: Optimize Your Content For Social Shares

From here on, I’ll refer to the people with hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors, millions of downloads, and millions of views as colossal content influencers. That will make it easier for me to write this blog post.

Colossal content influencers tend to share a few things in common. A glaring commonality is that they all get hundreds or even thousands of shares for all of their new content. These individuals have large email lists of devoted fans, but that’s not the entire story.

These same people optimize their blog posts for social shares. It’s common practice to include social sharing buttons at the top or bottom of every blog post. This is a default option you can get from WordPress and similar options.

But this is a limitation.

You need to give your visitors as many opportunities as possible to share your content. You can include blocks of text throughout your content that invites people to share your content. You can even have the social media buttons on the side as someone consumes your content.

For YouTube videos, you can include a Click To Tweet link in the description.

 

#2: The Ultimate Hack For Getting People To Share Your Content

For every blog post I write, I set a goal to include at least five outbound links. Outbound links lead to other people’s content. For videos and podcast episodes, you can mention at least five articles and people in each new release.

A few days before the blog post goes live, I’ll then contact everyone I mentioned. In this email, I do three things:

  • Let them know I mentioned them in the upcoming blog post
  • Tell them when the blog post goes live
  • Ask them if they can share it

If people say yes, I’ll follow-up with the link on the day the blog post gets published. I’ll also provide a prewritten tweet to make it easier for these people to share my content.

Since I publish a new blog post every day, that means I have to mention people a grand total of 1825 people every year asking them to share my content. Since these people are in the blog post, many of them will share it. Some of these people will even consume your content and become devoted fans.

They’ll point back to your content frequently and show people where you mentioned them. They’ll spread the word on social media and to their audiences.

Some of these people can drive 10 visitors to your content. Others can drive 100, especially if some of these people decide to share your content more than once.

If you mention 10 people per blog post, you’ll then contact 3650 people every year asking them to share your content. The more people you mention in your content, the better these numbers serve you.

I reach my goal of mentioning at least five people in each of my blog posts by writing the blog post first and mentioning others later. Once I have a view of the entire blog post, I can then determine what kinds of content and people I can include within my content.

For videos and podcasts, I plan out who I will mention before I start recording. For interviews, it’s more off the cuff, but I have a general idea of who to mention if a specific topic comes up (i.e. I know who to mention when the conversation turns towards webinars).

 

#3: Add More Depth To Your Content

depth

My blog posts are rarely under 1,000 words. Most of my podcast episodes are 30 minutes or longer. Why so much?

The answer is depth. I’m providing my audience with more value for each piece of content I publish. People don’t want to filter through a bunch of blog posts, episodes, and videos when all of the information is in a single piece of content.

We want lengthy guides instead of fragmented advice. This is why long form content outperforms short form content.

When I started writing 2018’s blog posts in late November, I set my benchmark at 1,000 words. Now I am gradually increasing that benchmark. Every week, I’ll add an extra 100-200 words to the benchmark until I can consistently write 2,000+ word blog posts in an hour or less.

Long form content also requires a different content consumption mindset. Your visitors need to stick with you for the long haul to finish reading the 2,000+ word blog post or listening to the 30 minute podcast episode. If you get people to invest that kind of time into your brand, you can expect them to enthusiastically come back as long as the value is good.

 

#4: Grow Your Email List

Your email list is where the magic happens. This is where you turn visitors into subscribers, and eventually, into devoted fans. Everything you do for your content brand should always be done with the intention of growing your email list. If you decide to send tweets promoting your content, ask yourself, “How is this action helping me grow my email list?”

As you grow your email list and inform them of your new publications, you’ll attract more returning visitors who will share your content with their friends.

 

#5: Stay Optimistic

i'm possible

It’s easy to get discouraged when we fall below our expectations. As you continue to create and promote content, remember that you have a long journey ahead of you. Growing a content brand takes time.

The people who seem to hit massive site traffic goals in under a year had to squeeze at least three years of work into that one year.

So I encourage you to stay optimistic. If you believe in yourself, learn each day, and have a bias towards action, you’ll achieve your site traffic goals.

 

In Conclusion

Most of these tactics focused on social shares. Adding more depth to your content creates a more valuable experience and helps your search engine ranking, but social shares generate the buzz and help you move much closer to your site traffic goals.

To maintain long-term traffic regardless of how much the rules change, get as many of your visitors as possible to subscribe to your blog.

The journey is a long one, but well worth it for those who put in the effort. It’s not about if you’re willing to put in the effort. It’s about actually putting in the effort.

What are your thoughts on these tactics for achieving your site traffic goals? Do you have any tactics for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

11 Ways To Write Absolutely Irresistible Drip Campaign Emails

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email marketing stats

This is a guest contribution from Lori Wade

Did you know that companies that excel at drips generate 80% more sales at 33% lower costs? That’s the power of irresistible drip campaign emails. These statistics were published in 2016 by MarTech website – and now the numbers are probably even more impressive. As you see, drip email matter a lot – and affect marketing campaigns greatly. But, of course, you need to know how to write them properly in order to achieve such result.

So if you want to make your drip campaign emails more effective and impressive, here’s are 11 tips that will help you do so.

 

#1: Find Out What Your Goal Is

Sure, you probably know what you plan on accomplishing with the help of a drip campaign – but is your goal as detailed and specific as it could be? If not, take some time to make it into one, adding more details, numbers, and deadlines. Your goal needs to be measurable if you want to achieve it.

 

#2: Keep The Fundamentals In Mind

The subject line is extremely important for all kinds of emails – and drip ones are no exception. Here are some questions you need to ask yourself before writing the subject line for your new campaign:

  • Does the message hold value to the readers?
  • Do the readers understand clearly what it promised to them?
  • Does the message look impressive and trustworthy?
  • Does the message inspire the readers to open and read an email right now?

Answering these questions will help you craft a truly compelling subject line.

 

#3: The Timing & Frequency Matter

checking notifications on smartphone

Any drip campaign can be customized – and you can make the most out of it. The timing and the frequency are able to play a huge part in your campaign’s success. And while they can differ, depending on the niche and the type of campaign, there still are some general rules that can apply to your campaign.

According to them, Tuesday is the best day for starting an email campaign, while 10 and 11 AM are the best time for that. But, of course, you can still experiment to find out the best day and time for your company specifically.

The frequency is another tricky part here. If you email your clients too often, this could annoy them. However, if you don’t email often enough, they might lose interest in your company’s goods or services.

Probably, the safest approach to emails is to mail them once a week – or to stick to minimum six days between them (which often turns out to be pretty much the same in practice).

 

#4: Make The Message Compelling

Once you figured out the basics, it’s time to move to the main part – writing the email itself. In order to do this in the best way possible, ask yourself the following questions:

– What differs your content from the others’ one?

– Why should the recipients read your message?

– How is this message going to make their lives better?

Answering them will help you set a tone for the message before you move on to the writing process.

 

#5: Identify Yourself

1st impression

If you want your email to look trustworthy and personal, you’ll need to identify yourself properly. Either do that in the «From» field, stating the name of your company (or your own one) or start the message with introducing yourself.

 

#6: Place The Most Important Information First

Even if the readers open your email, this still doesn’t mean they’ll continue reading it. People are mindful of their time and picky about the content these days – and that’s the reason why you should move right to the point after introduction.

Not only make your email informative – make sure that you place the most useful information first. This way the readers will see the point right away and will be able to decide whether they want to continue reading this letter or not basing on the information they see.

 

#7: Don’t Make Every Email Urgent

Sure, urgency can play a role in email marketing: people will most likely open an email when they see its urgent. However, the more often you use that trick, the fewer times it will work. Instead of catching the readers’ attention with such tricks, try to make every email interesting and valuable for them. And emphasize the urgency only when it’s really necessary.

 

#8: Keep The Spam Checking Software In Mind.

spam mail

While we know that using some words in emails can trigger spam filters, not all of us actually understand which words could be used and which couldn’t. Email services can help you with this: if you’re using one of the reputable ones, you are always able to use their spam checking software or to install the appropriate add-on.

 

#9: Keep It Short

Even if you do feel like you need to provide some additional data besides the main one (for example, add the details of an upcoming sale, explain the terms and conditions of the lottery, offer some argumentative topics for essays, etc.), you should be careful and mindful about that. Sometimes it’s better to include a link to additional information than put it in your email, making it look even bigger and therefore more time-consuming to read.

#10 Consider Adding A P.S.

Adding a P.S. to your email might not seem like a good idea these days – after all, they’ve been used in written emails and might look too old-fashioned. But it’s actually a good thing to include in your writing.

Why so? Besides it makes your email look more personal (and sometimes a bit nostalgic), it also ensures that your readers will remember a certain information. You see, our mind tends to remember the first and the last lines of writing, be it an email or a book. Adding a «P. S.» to the last line could drive the attention towards it, even more, ensuring your readers won’t forget something you want to remind them.

 

#11: Measure The Results

measuring results

Sure, this might seem like a pretty obvious tip, but it’s not the most obvious measuring I’m talking about. It matters a lot as well, but what I’m saying is that you also should consider measuring the total traffic the drip campaign drives to a certain page – and look at the conversions as well.

Of course, achieving the desired result with the help of drip campaigns isn’t easy. Years ago people found every email interesting – but these days are long gone. Now, when people are overwhelmed with content, you have to work insanely hard to make each of your emails count.

The good news is that once you build that reputation and earn the initial trust of your clients, it will become much easier. If you prove to them that your emails are useful and interesting, they’ll start reading it – even not the best of them. So good luck with making your emails the ones people would want to read!

 

lori wadeLori Wade is a content writer who is interested in a wide range of spheres from education and online marketing to entrepreneurship. She is also an aspiring tutor striving to bring education to another level like we all do. If you are interested in writing, you can find her on Twitter or Google+ or find her on other social media. Read and take over Lori’s useful insights!