Sales

Social Media Tips To Get More Product Sales

September 2, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Social media has become the giant hub for communication and connections to build with any group of people living in any locations in the world. People from Florida can easily interact with people in the United Kingdom with a tweet, Facebook post, pin, or some other form of a social media post. Despite how much easier it has become to interact with potential customers all over the world, few people are using social media to get more product sales, and most of those people are not promoting their products on their social networks the right way.

Social media is a bad way to get direct sales, but it is a great way to get indirect sales. You need to use social media to promote a platform that brings in more sales, but never the actual sales page. The easiest way to use social media to bring in more sales is by promoting a blog that promotes your products.

In addition to promoting a platform that will bring in more sales, you need to host giveaways of your own products. Many people use $50 Amazon Gift Card giveaways and similar types of giveaways, but in order to get more sales, the prize needs to be one of your products. That way, the people who did not win your product will have heard about it and be more likely to buy the product, especially if it is an inexpensive one.

Social media is one of the best places to grow an audience that you can interact with, know well to a certain extent, and bring in more sales. However, the only way to make money from social media is by realizing that you do not directly make money from social media. Instead, social media indirectly allows you to make money. What were your thoughts on these tips? Do you have any additional tips on using social media to bring in more product sales? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

16 Ways To Build A Big Social Media Audience From A 16 Year Old

August 16, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Growing a social media audience and getting the best out of that audience is so easy that a 16 year old can do it (that would be me). In a span of less than 3 years, I have been able to get over 100,000 Twitter followers, over 14,000 Pinterest followers, over 10,000 Vine followers, and I’m working on Instagram and Facebook. My audiences continue to grow as the days go by, but many people wonder how I was able to get to this point. I decided to come up with 16 different methods you can use to build your social media audience (that has nothing to do with my age. That just happened to be the number I pulled out of my head).

Focus most of your time on one social network. If you master one of the social networks and sort of know the other ones, you are going to do very well with the social network that you successfully mastered. I decided to master Twitter because it is a social network of simplicity, and now that I know Twitter Domination by heart, I have been able to continue dominating Twitter while growing my presence on other social networks.
Use the big player social networks. Even if you have no plans on using a Facebook or YouTube account, create them. When you master one of the social networks, you need to learn how to master a second social network. It’s the whole idea of being bilingual is better than only knowing one language while being trilingual is way better than being bilingual. Creating the accounts now and tinkering around with them will allow you to be prepared to master them later.
Post on them all often. It is important to post on all of your social networks at least once every week. That indicates to all of your audiences that you are active, and being active is one of the crucial steps towards allowing your content to spread on those social networks.
Interact with your audience. Interacting with your audience will allow you to build stronger connections with the people in your audience. You want to be well acquainted with as many people in your social media audiences as possible. My recommendation is to look at your notifications three times each day to see if you can interact with any of your followers.
Post motivational quotes. No matter what niche you are in, motivational quotes hands down never fail at increasing engagement. Motivational tweets are more likely to get retweeted and motivational pins are more likely to get repinned.
Post articles on your social networks. Posting articles is a great way to provide informative content that your followers would enjoy.
Post valuable content. Valuable content is the kind of content that your targeted followers would like. You can’t satisfy everyone with your social media strategy (you can’t even do that in life. Shocker!) so it is more important for you to focus on satisfying your targeted audience.
Post pictures. Social media posts with pictures get more engagement than social media posts without pictures. We are a visual generation that needs to see everything in pictures. That’s why movies are more popular than books.
Grow your presence on all of your social networks. On the social network you are trying to master, you need to build a powerful presence. However, you should also be growing a bigger presence on your other social networks. Even if you are only gaining five followers every week on a social network you are not focusing on, that is still growing.
Find patterns. Some rules for one social network will apply to another social network. That means if you become successful at one social network, it becomes easier to be successful at other social networks. Here are some of the universal laws of all social networks that I was able to find.
Be an expert in your niche. People follow the experts, not the people who have no idea what they are talking about. Telling people that you are an expert in your bio is a great start, but you need to prove to people that you are an expert with valuable social media posts and a professional picture.
Be humorous. Whenever you can, mix in some humor with your other social media posts. There are numerous examples of content going viral because it was humorous.
Be creative. If your content is creative, then it will gather attention. Creative content is the type of content that the average person could not think of. There is a difference between valuable content and creative content, but if you mix the two together into one social media post, your content is going to spread faster.
Host a giveaway. Giveaways allow you to easily bring in more followers. Some people will follow you just for the giveaway. The only problem associated with the giveaway is that once the giveaway ends, many people unfollow the host of the giveaway. Esurance is a brilliant example of this. If you want people to continue following you after the giveaway, tell everyone that you will be hosting another giveaway three months later.
Interconnect your social networks together. That does not mean connecting your Twitter and Facebook accounts together so all of your tweets end up on Facebook. Linking those two accounts together is not even a good idea to begin with. I am talking about promoting each of your social networks and their posts on your other social networks. If you have a YouTube video, promote it on Facebook. In your YouTube video’s description, have a link to your Facebook Page. Here’s a more in depth analysis of how this strategy works.
Be patient. Don’t you wish certain things could happen faster? Unfortunately, when it comes to growing a social media audience, fast is not a part of the vocabulary. You are not going to get 100,000 followers in one day. You will most likely reach that milestone years after you create the social media account. However, by sticking with it and learning new techniques along the way, you will be able to dramatically grow your following.

Those are the 16 ways to grow your social media audience. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional methods on growing a social media audience? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How Creating Less Products Leads To More Sales

August 13, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Quality VS Quantity

There is such a thing as less is more. When some people create less products, each of those products become bestsellers in their markets while the people who are constantly creating new products do not become bestsellers as often. It’s not that the people who produce products quicker are creating bad products. On the contrary, this only happens because the people with fewer products make people very appreciative of the new product releases.

The best video games are the ones that get one or two new versions sold every year. The iPhone continues to dominate the market because one or two new types of iPhones get created every year.

There will still be people who will want to create product after product. Besides, I am one of those people as well. I envision being able to write and publish one book every 4-6 weeks. I have tried putting more content into each of the books I have written, but I am still able to finish them at a quick time. There are few things that a seller would rather not do than not selling the product that he/she already created. Holding off the release date seems like an impossibility.

You may have to hold off the release date in order to bring more attention to your product. Holding off the release date will allow you to get people to know about your product, and you will also be able to contact the big media outlets and get them to promote your product. If you still want to create products at a rapid pace, you can release them together in a series. That way, people are still eager for your products, can’t wait for their launch, you get to create multiple products, and customers get to buy multiple products from you at a time.

If you are new to creating your own products, and you create and publish them at a rapid pace, continue to do so. It will allow you to get better at creating products and build buzz at the same time. As your audience grows, put more time into individual products so you are able to create an experience that makes people do countdowns to figure out when your next product is going to get released.

Less is more with product creation if you are able to do a powerful prelaunch for the times you create a product. What are your thoughts about creating less products every year to generate more sales?

7 Advanced Pinterest Tips

August 7, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

There are millions of people on Pinterest, one of the fastest growing websites on the entire web. Pinterest’s growth has led to some people growing powerful presences and audiences of over 1 million people. These same people do not have nearly as many followers on the other social networks. Some of the people with over 1 million Pinterest followers have less than 1,000 Twitter followers. Does Pinterest randomly pick names in a hat and promote those people? Not quite. These people are using Pinterest differently in a way that gets Pinterest’s attention. Then, Pinterest promotes that person’s board to a large audience. Most of these people implement seven common methods which I am dubbing the 7 Advanced Pinterest Tips.

Have multiple boards with over 100 pins. The more pins you have, the more content your followers are able to browse through. It is important to remember that some people are addicted to Pinterest. What was meant to be a 10 minute visit turns into being trapped on the site for three hours. If you have a board with over 100 pins, chances are some of your followers will go through that entire board.
Focus most of your time on one board. The board that you focus most of your time on should eventually make its way to having thousands of pins. The Pinterest Power users have many boards with over 100 pins, but the boards they focus most of their time on have over 1,000 pins. Some of these boards even have over 10,000 pins.
Pin every day. Pinning every day will allow you to be consistent. Whether you are sending out 5 pins every day or 100 pins every day, you are consistently pinning every day. When you are able to pin every day for months at a time, more people will notice, share your content, and allow you to grow.
Create group boards and be a part of them. Many of the people with over 1 million followers on Pinterest either have their own group boards or are a part of someone else’s group board. Group boards with over 100 contributors ensure that those boards are getting updated whether you are logged into Pinterest or not.
Pin about a wide variety of topics. Pin about great vacation getaways, sports legends, and other things as well. The more variety you have, the more followers you are going to get because you satisfy the desires of multiple audiences.
Focus on one niche. You can create boards on a wide variety of topics, but it is important that 80% of your pins are all based on one niche. That way, your Pinterest followers know exactly what kind of content you provide on Pinterest and which niche you fall in.
Have a story behind all of your pins. If you have a story behind all of your pins, your audience will be eager for you to come out with other pins so they learn about another story behind another pin. If the stories behind your pins are powerful, then more people will spread your content across Pinterest.

These are the seven advanced Pinterest tips that the pros use. Implementing these tips may allow you to become the next person with over 1 million Pinterest followers. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Why Bloggers Give Out Oodles Of Information For Free

August 6, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Free Content

At this point, I have written over 300,000 words for this blog. I know there will be a certain point when this blog reaches 1 million words. Many people wonder why I have given away this much information for free, and better yet, why I actually plan on continuing. Other bloggers have also given away oodles of free information, and people continue to wonder why these bloggers give so much content away from free.

The goal of free valuable content is to build a connection with the person. The more valuable content you provide for free, the better your paid products must be. Customers have a belief that a paid product is better than a free product. When bloggers provide oodles of free content, visitors believe that the paid products contain more valuable content than what they are already getting. This does raise the bar quite high for bloggers, but it also results in more sales.

Bloggers want their visitors to subscribe and receive blog posts through email. Then, this leads to a sale. If you want to boost your sales and get more subscribers, you need to provide more free content and make sure that free content is also valuable. That’s how giving away oodles of free information yourself can grow your business.

Blogging Monetizing Do’s And Don’ts

August 5, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Blog Monetization

There are many ways to make money with a blog. Just like in any other scenario, not all options are created equal. Some methods of making more revenue with a blog are very effective while other methods are not what they appear to be.

Advertising is a big don’t. Many people see advertising as a way to generate extra revenue for a blog, but advertisements distract a visitor from reading your blog content. In addition, if someone is visiting your blog for the first time and clicks an ad, that person may not come back. You lost a potential returning visitor (who could have been a customer) for two extra pennies in your pocket.

That being said, I still see a potential for making money on a blog with advertising. However, I only see advertising useful for the big guys like John Chow and Jeff Bullas. Being one of the big guys means being as low on the Top 100,000 list as possible. If your Alexa Rank is not under 100,000, then you are not ready for ads. If your Alexa Rank is under 100,000, then it is at that point when people know about you and you are popular in your niche. You can slip in some ads on your blog at that point because you are going to make much more than two cents, and those people are going to return anyway.

No matter where you are with a blog, having your own products is a big must. Having multiple products with these three different price structures as well as some free products that provide value will allow you to make more revenue with your blog. This pricing system is used by John Chow who now makes seven figures (yes, the big million) every year from his blog.

It is important to note that creating your own products and being an affiliate are two different things. Being an affiliate marketing means promoting someone else’s product and getting a cut. However, when you get the sale as an affiliate marketer, people don’t come back to you. Let’s say you are an Amazon Associate, and a customer buys something with your referral link. You get a cut, but people are not going to come back to your blog just to buy from your referral link. Instead, they go directly to Amazon. They don’t care about your affiliate link. They only care about Amazon.

So, is affiliate marketing dead? I don’t think so. You can do a mix of affiliate marketing and promoting your own products (although you want to promote your products more often). In addition, you can tell your visitors to buy something with their affiliate link and then you will throw in one of your products for free. This means it is still possible for you to get a returning customer.

Another thing that works well is consultation sessions, if you have the time to do them. When deciding whether you are the right person to consult with, people will look at how valuable your content is and what you charge for a consultation session. The less you charge, the more sales you are going to get, but at the same time, you are going to have to talk to more people for more hours. That may get in the way of your work. The best option is to charge a high (but not overwhelming) price that encourages some people to buy the consultation session.

Two great ways to make money with a blog are creating your own products and having a consultation session. Affiliate marketing can be used sparingly, and affiliate marketing works as a good substitute for the people who do not have their own product…yet. Advertising should not even be attempted until your blog’s Alexa rank goes under 100,000. That means you are getting a huge number of returning visitors even if you slipped in an ad or two on your blog. At the same time, you don’t want to display too many ads no matter how popular your blog is because that popularity can spiral downwards with too many ads.