Connections

How To Build A Targeted Audience On Twitter

May 23, 2014 by Marc Guberti 8 Comments

Twitter can dramatically transform your business, but only if you have the right audience. Some people have over 100,000 targeted followers, and that is a good audience to have. On the contrary, other people have 100,000 fake followers, and that’s a bad audience to have. There are also people who have 100,000 followers that are not fake but not targeted either. In order to see Twitter have the biggest effect on your business, you need to grow a targeted following.

Although many people know that the answer is to grow a targeted following, few people know how to make it happen. Growing a targeted following is not challenging at all. In fact, it is a very easy process. It is an easy process that has allowed me to gain over 600 targeted followers every day.

The only two tools you need are ManageFlitter and Tweepi. I use ManageFlitter to unfollow people who are not following me back so my ratio does not go out of control. I use Tweepi to follow targeted followers who are likely to follow me back.

In order to get the best results from Tweepi, you need to be following someone else’s followers. In addition, the person you do this for must be someone in your niche with over 100,000 followers and is also following over 100,000 people. If you want to get an idea of how many followers you will gain from following this person’s followers, look at their statistics on TwitterCounter. If you continue following this person’s followers several months straight, you will gain a similar number of followers every day.

For a long time, I followed the followers of a highly regarded social media expert. This expert has over 200,000 followers on Twitter and follows over 150,000 people. I decided to follow that person’s followers, and the amount of followers I gained every day almost matched this person’s daily gains. If this person gained 150 followers on one day, I would gain 140-160 followers on the same day.

However, I wanted to dramatically grow my social media presence. I didn’t just want to be another social media expert with tens of thousands of followers. I wanted to be a social media expert with over 100,000 followers (based on calculations I’ll be there next month). I decided to follow someone else’s followers. I chose to follow Sean Gardner’s followers. Sean has been the #1 Social Media Power User on the Forbes Top 50 list for multiple years. He also happens to gain anywhere from 400 to 1,200 followers every day. By digging around, I learned that he uses the paid version of JustUnfollow to find targeted users and follow them.

Instead of paying and getting targeted followers the hard way, I decided to follow all of the people that Sean followed. The result has been phenomenal. Now I am gaining 600 followers every day. My goal is to keep on following his followers without taking a day off from doing this for 3 straight months. Right when I saw my daily follower growth about to pass 700, something would come up, I would not be able to use Tweepi for multiple days, and then I would have to start from scratch (back down to gaining 200 followers every day, and then it shoots up to 500 the day after).

That’s the secret to build a targeted following. This is all it takes. All you need to do now is implement it.

How To Successfully Make A Connection With A Journalist On Twitter

May 12, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Journalism

Do you want to be on Forbes, The Huffington Post, or one of those other popular media outlets? The main way to get on big media outlets is by connecting with journalists on Twitter and having a remarkable story. There are some tips to help you out with your remarkable story, but in order to get noticed by the big media outlets, connecting with those journalists on Twitter is just as important as having the remarkable story.

There is a blueprint to use that will get a journalist’s attention. Once you have that journalist’s attention, then you can tell them about your story. Here’s what you need to do to get their attention:

Look for a journalist who is not overwhelmingly popular. The less followers a journalist has, the more likely that journalist is to interact with you. You should contact the journalist with 10,000 followers before you contact the journalist with 1 million followers. Even if the journalist who has 10,000 followers is not from your favorite media outlet, it is important to remember that news spreads. When my dog got in The Associated Press, she also went in newspapers like this one, that one, and a bunch of others as well.
Favorite and retweet the journalist’s articles. Only favorite and retweet articles that you actually like. If you like what the journalist writes, and the story relates to your niche or story, then that is the journalist who is likely to write about you (and the person who you want to have write about you). In addition, you can mention the journalist and tell the journalist that they wrote a good article.
Wait for the journalist to respond. Not all journalists respond, but when they do, you need to strengthen the connection. Once the journalist responds to you, then you have their attention.

After you have the journalist’s attention, you need to build on that attention and build it into a strong connection. Here are the steps you need to take in order to build the attention into a strong connection.

Thank the journalist for responding to your tweet the right way. Instead of saying, “Thank you for responding,” you should say something that tells the journalist that he/she is doing a good job on the web. A good response to start with would be, “I enjoy reading and sharing content like yours on the web.”
Continue the conversation by asking an ego boosting question. All you have to do at the end of the tweet is say, “How did you get started as a professional writer?” or something along those lines. When people talk about themselves, the same parts of the brain are triggered as when people talk about food or sex. If that journalist likes food and/or sex (who doesn’t like one, the other, or both), then that journalist will respond to your tweet. Many journalists do not hesitate to promote themselves when the opportunity comes. Asking the question gives them that opportunity.
Respond to that tweet and continue the conversation. There is no rubric for this step. Your response depends on how the journalist responds. The key to the connection working is that you have a lengthy conversation before you ask the journalist to write about you.
When to ask the question. After you get the conversation with the journalist, continue favoriting and retweeting that person’s tweets. That way, the journalist will not forget about you. If the journalist cannot forget about you, then you have won the hardest part of the battle. All you have to do is continue favoriting and retweeting the journalist’s tweets. After 2-4 weeks have gone by, ask the journalist the question. Say something like, “I do BLANK and was wondering if you would like to learn more.” In order to increase your likelihood of appearing in the newspaper, what you do needs to be related to what the journalist writes about.

You should repeat this process for multiple journalists. One of those journalists will say yes, and then it will only be a matter of time before other newspapers hear about you and write about your story. Once you make it in a newspaper for the first time, it progressively becomes easier to make it in others newspapers out there.

Why You Need To Respond To The People Who Comment On Your Blog

May 11, 2014 by Marc Guberti 12 Comments

blog comment

Why do you want more comments on your blog posts? Most bloggers want more comments on their blog posts to show that people interact on their blogs. Bloggers want conversations to get started on their blogs to indicate that their blog is popular. The most popular blogs also happen to have numerous comments on every blog post. It’s not a coincidence.

What most bloggers forget is that they can build conversations by simply responding to other people’s comments. Responding to someone else’s comment counts as a comment in the grand total. If you respond to 25 comments, people will see that your blog post has received 50 comments. That shows bustling activity and popularity: the two things that people look for in a blog.

Not only is responding to the people who comment on your blog a way to bring up the numbers, but responding to other people’s comments will allow you to further open discussion. By further opening the discussion, you will encourage more people to comment and possibly learn about things in your niche that you did not know about before. As you continue replying to comments and building your presence on the web, some people will write a good comment on your blog just to get your reply. There is a point when a blogger becomes so famous that a reply from that blogger means a lot.

Another benefit to responding to comments is your ability to build stronger connections. The advantage with WordPress (and many others) is that the person who comments must enter their email address. By requiring everyone who comments to enter their email address, you will be able to reply to those comments and send emails to those people. The people who commented on your blog will be very grateful that you took the time to send a personalized message, and that will allow the connection to build. A new connection can end up becoming a customer, subscriber, or better yet, a returning customer.

There are many benefits associated with replying to comments on your blog. Do you reply to the comments on your blog? If you leave a comment below, I will be sure to respond.

5 Ways To Get More People To Contact You

May 8, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

The strongest connections are the ones that take place one email at a time. There is no limit to the number of characters someone can use in an email. In addition, people in the conversation can go in-depth since their followers will not see the conversation. Five emails can have the same amount of content as 50 tweets. Followers who get 50 straight tweets about a conversation they are not in would get annoyed very quickly. Annoying your followers with these long conversations may result in some of those people clicking the dreaded unfollow button. Taking the conversation off social media and to the email solves that problem.

In addition, emailing blocks all of the distractions. When on social networks, some people are having 10 short conversations at the same time. Being able to email people will allow you to have one powerful conversation with someone and provide more information than you would be able to in a 140 character tweet. The person who you are having the conversation with will view your blog posts more often. Most of the people who are actively commenting on my blog are also the people who contacted me via email and had a lengthy conversation with me about social media, business, blogging, or my story. Some people may want to contact you about a speaking opportunity or another opportunity as well.

Basically, the more people get to contact you, the more connections you get to build. Allowing people to contact you is one of the most important ways to become successful. Everyone–whether the newbie or the people on Shark Tank, provide their visitors with a way to contact them. In order to get more people to contact you, implement these 5 tactics.

Create accounts for multiple social networks. Although my main social network is Twitter, I use a variety of other social networks as well. I have a strong presence on Pinterest, occasionally use GooglePlus, and I have my own Facebook Page. Most people come to my blog from Twitter, but some people find me on Pinterest. The Little Pickle Press found me on Pinterest, and as a result, I ended up getting featured on their site.
Have a Contact Me Page on your blog. Visitors should be able to contact you without scrolling up or down on your blog. By having a Contact Me Page that appears on the header of your blog, more people will know how to contact you.
Forms are overrated. Before leaving my email address on the Contact Me Page, I had a form. The problem with having a form is that the form can be buggy. Although I was getting 100 daily visitors at the time, no one contacted me on my blog. I later learned that the reason people were not contacting me like before was because the form I used on my blog was buggy. All of the people who tried to contact me at that time got a message saying, “Are you sure you want to do this?” with no way of saying yes or no. Since then, I simply have my email address right there on the Contact Me Page. Leaving your email address on your Contact Me Page cancels the risk of a buggy form.
Give the visitor at most three email addresses to choose from. A common mistake I see is that people create 10 email addresses and lump them all together on one Contact Me Page. Instead of creating a lot of email addresses, give your visitors subjects to choose to relay their message. If you need to have more email addresses on your Contact Me Page, you should have a Media Inquiries email address and one more of your choice as well. My recommendation though is to only have 1 email address available. Less is more.
Turn yourself into someone who people would want to contact. Seth Godin is someone who people would want to contact. Mariano Rivera is someone who people would want to contact as well. In order to get more people to contact you, you need to boost your credibility. The person with a Klout score of 70 gets contacted more often than the person with a Klout score of 50. The person with 100,000 real followers gets contacted more often than the person with 10,000 real followers. The bestselling author gets contacted more often than the author that published his first book a few days ago. By turning yourself into someone who people would want to contact, you will be able to have more conversations that go from social media or your blog to back and forth emails.

In order to grow your presence as an entrepreneur, business, or writer, you need to build strong connections. Whether someone from NBC contacts you or a potential customer, you will be more likely to build a strong connection when you are sending emails back and forth to each other. Those strong connections can lead to business opportunities, but any of those connections can lead to a customer. When people contact you, be sure to respond as quickly as possible no matter who is contacting you.

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.

9 Ways To Get More Sales

April 30, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Increasing Sales

No matter what product you are selling, what niche you are in, or what your business is all about, you need sales in order to make a strong income from your business. However, many people are struggling to make sales let alone a single sale. There are books up on the Kindle have not been sold once. The main reason this happens is because the person who made the product does not know what to do in order to get more sales. I am going to provide the solution and share with you 9 of the methods I implement to increase my book sales. Whether you are selling books or toys, these methods apply to you.

How frequently you create something new. The most successful self-published authors tend to be the ones who publish 1 eBook every month or publish 1 highly detailed eBook every year. The rate in which you create new products and the quality you can produce in that amount of time will determine how many potential sales your product could get.
Market your product before it launches. If you want one of your products to get more sales, tell people about the product before it launches. I have mentioned my upcoming book Lead The Stampede in several of my blog posts. Each time I publish a blog post that references the book, people ask me when it will come out. To answer the question, Lead The Stampede will come out in Summer 2014.
Write a blog post about your product that sells. In order to get more sales, you need to write a persuasive blog post. Instead of simply writing a description of your product with the big “Buy Now” button, give people a reason to buy the product. Here is an example of a persuasive blog post that resulted in one self-published author getting thousands of downloads for his book in less than a week.
Build your credibility. An author who has written several bestselling books is going to get more sales for his/her next book than the author who started writing books a few months ago. In order to build your credibility, you need to get a strong following on a social network and have a popular blog. There are other ways to pull it off as well.
Have multiple products available. Having multiple products gives you the possibility of returning customers. Once a returning visitor buys three of your products, chances are that visitor will buy a lot of the products that you create.
Create a product that people would want to buy. Create products that people would want to buy. People only buy something for the quality. False! Fast food restaurants are not successful because of their quality. They are successful because of price and convenience. The three options you have are quality, price, and convenience (although all three in the same business always fails). I combine quality and price which means I produce quality products and sell them at much lower prices than the competition.
Spread the word about your product using social networks. Find people who would be interested in your products and introduce yourself to those people. Spreading the word on social networks will allow you to get more sales and interact with those customers so you can ensure they come back for your next product.
Get testimonials. The most successful products are the ones with good testimonials. Would you rather buy the product without testimonials, or would you want to buy the product with hundreds of positive testimonials? Most people would go with the product with hundreds of positive testimonials. When customers buy into the product, they are also buying into the testimonials about those products.
Become a public speaker. By being a public speaker, you will be able to talk about your niche and inform people about your product at the same time. People are more likely to buy an author’s book after listening to that author talk about something in your niche for 20 minutes or so. The author’s signature also entices more people to buy the book.

There are numerous ways to get sales, but these are the 9 methods that I have used and seen good results. What are your thoughts about the list? Do you have any additional tips that you use to get more sales?