Social Media

3 Social Media Tips That Apply To Every Social Network

November 17, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

There are more social networks on the web than we realize. There are the big names such as Twitter and Facebook, but there are smaller communities as well. With so many different social networks on the web, it becomes difficult to find articles for those social networks and know how to grow a big audience.

Each social network has its unique set of features. Twitter only permits posts under 140 characters, Facebook has no limit, and on Pinterest and Instagram, you cannot send out a post unless it has a picture. No matter how different one social network is from the other, there are three social media tips that apply to growing a big audience on any social network.

#1: Interact

Some people ignore interacting with their audience while other people interact with numerous people on a daily basis. This is one of the few things where there actually seems to be no in between. You need to interact with all of the people who share your tweets to their followers and ask you questions.

In addition to interacting with your audience, it is important to interact with people who are the following:

Not in your audience
People who would be very likely to join your audience

If you interact with these people, you will grow your audience. Better yet, your audience will consist of like-minded people. Having an audience of like-minded people will result in your articles getting more attention from your audience.

#2: A number is just a number

It is better to have 1,000 targeted followers than it is to have 100,000 fake followers and no real ones. This is a true fact on any social network. Some people may believe that having the 100,000 fake followers boosts credibility because of the big number. However, these people do get caught, and being caught has the power to destroy all of those people’s authorities on those social networks.

No matter how low the prices drop for fake followers (some sites offer 1,000 fake followers for $8 nowadays), never give in and buy the followers. Even if it eventually costs just $4 for 1,000 fake followers, it is not worth it. Those are fake people who will never engage with your posts or buy anything from you.

In addition, buying fake followers will make your real followers feel uncomfortable. No one goes from 1,000 real followers to 50,000 real followers overnight unless they are a celebrity. If you make that overnight transition, chances are a bunch of your real followers will unfollow you.

Some fake follower sellers have threatened big blogs on the web that expose how the fake follower industry works. One fake follower seller threatened the Daily Dot by saying if the popular blog did not remove a certain article about fake followers, the seller would get tens of thousands of fake followers to follow the Daily Dot’s Twitter account.

In other words, this seller was threatening the Daily Dot with a free “service” normally worth $800. That sounds fishy, as buying fake followers should. Here is the Daily Dot’s article about what happened.

#3: Post consistently

You need to post at a consistent rate so people see you often. For a majority of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, that means sending out dozens of posts every day. I send out about 100 tweets every day, and that does not include when I am thanking someone for sharing one of my blog posts or anything like that.

The more often you post, the more your followers are going to see you. There are some disputes based on the ideal number of times to post. That varies from social network to social network, but based on what is up on the web, you should be posting at least one update on every social network every day with the exclusion of YouTube which should be once every 1-2 weeks.

In Conclusion

Social networks are different in many ways, but they all share some similarities. Each time you successfully grow a large social media audience, it becomes easier to grow an audience on your other social media accounts.

Are there any other social media tips you would like to share?

Why Interacting With Your Audience Is Worth The Time

November 14, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

I have responded to hundreds of comments on this blog and thousands of people’s tweets on Twitter. I have a policy to respond to every comment and every person who shares one of my articles. If you combine the amount of time I have spent interacting with my audience, it adds up to a few days. Even though I may only have to type a response under 140 characters on Twitter, I had done so thousands of times throughout the course of my journey.

After spending that much time interacting with everyone, I can say that it was definitely worth it. I continue responding to your comments and tweets to this day, and I still find joy in the interaction.

The main reason why all of this interaction is worth it is because I get to know my readers. Some of these interactions have resulted in new customers and subscribers.

One of my main businesses is my Kindle business in which I self-published as many valuable books as I can so I can get a high volume of sales. One of the problems I have seen is that customers believe they must have a Kindle device in order to download a Kindle book. Amazon allows people to install the Kindle app on smartphones and has the Cloud Reader for the people who prefer to read on their computers.

This knowledge and the interaction I get is important because I get some tweets that say things like this:

“@MarcGuberti I was just looking at your Twitter book on Amazon but do not have a Kindle. Is there another way for me to buy the book?”

I have actually gotten a few of these tweets. If I did not bother responding to these people, I would have lost customers. Luckily, I ended up responding to these customers telling them about Cloud Reader and the Kindle app for smartphones. A few minutes after telling someone on Twitter about Cloud Reader and the Kindle app, I would see another sale for my book.

Some of the people who I have been interacting with for a long time have also left reviews for my books. Getting reviews for a book is very important to becoming successful on Amazon, and I know a few people who I have met on social media that would definitely leave a review for any other book I publish.

In addition, there are many people who visit this blog, leave a comment, and then come back. I see those comments, and I respond to every single one of them. Getting returning visitors is helpful because the more times a visitor returns to your blog, the more likely that visitor is going to stick around for a long time.

If you are not interacting with your audience right now, you need to set aside some time each day to interact with your audience. Your audience makes or breaks your success which is why you need to engage with that audience. Engaging with the people in your audience will result in those people remembering who you are.

How do you interact with your audience?

How The Huffington Post Thrived On Twitter And How Much Traffic They Get From It

November 12, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

I recently went from tweeting every 20 minutes to every 15 minutes. I thought tweeting once every five minutes would be absurd and annoy followers. However, the Huffington Post tweets every five minutes, and since the account boasts millions of followers and gains over 3,000 followers every day, tweeting every five minutes does not look like the problem.

I was fascinated that the Huffington Post has its big audience, tweets every five minutes, and gets dozens of favorites and retweets for each tweet. I looked at the account and concluded that Twitter must be a big part of the Huffington Post’s success.

I decided to do some digging.

Just like many big websites, the Huffington Post hides its traffic numbers. However, after I did my Twitter experiment with tweeting once every 15 minutes, I concluded I knew how to calculate the amount of traffic the Huffington Post gets from Twitter. I decided to use my own statistics as a guide and use that rate to calculate the Huffington Post’s traffic.

Tweeting once every 15 minutes with 126,000 Twitter followers at the time resulted in around 450 daily visitors. The Huffington Post tweets once every five minutes which is three times my rate. That means if the Huffington Post had 126,000 Twitter real, targeted followers, it would be getting 1,350 visitors from Twitter alone.

That is a big difference, but the bigger difference is the amount of followers the Huffington Post has. In September, when I first set off to tweeting once every 15 minutes, the Huffington Post had about 4,540,000 followers (let’s assume for the sake of the calculation that all of those followers are real). That’s 36 times more followers than me. That theoretically means the Huffington Post is getting visitors referred from Twitter 36 times more than I me if I tweeted once every five minutes.

Based on the statistics provided in this blog post, the Huffington Post gets close to 48,600 daily from Twitter alone. The Huffington Post probably gets an extra 5,000 to 10,000 daily visitors from Twitter because they tweet the news.

Here are the major ways that the Huffington Post gets tens of thousands of daily visitors from Twitter alone:

They have a big audience.
They tweet very frequently (once every five minutes).
They tweet new content throughout the day (over 100 new articles are added to the Huffington Post every day because it has numerous contributors).
They tweet about the news (many stories that make the news end up becoming trending topics. Creating and tweeting new content about news stories allows the Huffington Post to get more exposure during trending topics).
They tweet about celebrities (there are millions of people who care about everything the Kardashians do. Let’s not forget about all of the other big ones out there).
They use headlines that make us want to learn more. Take a look at this tweet. The headline automatically grabs your attention, and the tweet’s engagement prove that it got a lot of attention.

In Conclusion

That’s how the Huffington Post thrives on Twitter. They tweet very frequently, constantly post new content that people like to read, and continue to grow their audience. More people learn about the Huffington Post as friends retweet the Huffington Post’s tweets and share the online magazine with their friends. That is how they get tens of thousands of visitors from Twitter every day.What are your thoughts on the Huffington Post? What are your thoughts on their Twitter strategy? Please share your thoughts below.

Why I Started Blogging

November 7, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

After writing over 1,000 blog posts, I finally set aside some time to recall how this journey began. There are millions of people embarked on their own journeys, but few people take the time to go back to the roots. Few people ask questions like, “Why did I start?” or “Why did I create my own team?”

Starting blogging was one of the best experiences I have ever had. Blogging has allowed me to write about what I want to write about and reach out to countless people. The big perk of blogging that initially attracted me was the ability to do what you love at home while making a profit. I never had plans at any point in my life of what job or career I would pursue. The only thing I knew is that it was going to be a lot of fun, and blogging has definitely fulfilled that goal.

It is very important to do something that you enjoy because this will make you put in as much of your time and effort as possible. Working at a job you do not enjoy will result in you avoiding the extra mile and not seeking to improve in your work.

That is why I pursued blogging. I enjoyed it, and it brought in some extra money. Over the years, I have been able to create a blogging empire that results in more revenue and more enjoyment than a summer job. I can’t even imagine being an employee for someone else.

Surprisingly, I never thought of my blog posts as more essays to write or anything like that. Blogging gives me flexibility. I was able to talk about the Red Sox, Yugioh Cards, and Legos, and people came. All of those blogs ended up getting a few thousand visitors. This particular blog has been the gem of them all, but I got to this stage years after I started blogging.

Blogging is one of the best journeys anyone can take. Blogging gives you the power to put your content in front of the world and build an influence. I am a proud blogger, and I do not see myself stopping anytime soon. In fact, I will most likely never stop.

What was the hook that got you into blogging?

5 Reasons To Use Bitly

November 5, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

There are countless tools on the web, but Bitly is one of the best tools on the web for marketers. Chances are you may have heard of Bitly before or have seen the Bitly links in action. Someone you know may even use Bitly. It is a tool that many marketers cannot go without, and if you do not have a Bitly account, here are five reasons why you need to have one.

Bitly shortens your links. The main reason why most people run out of characters on Twitter is because they tweet the entire link. Bitly is the solution to this problem.
Bitly takes a link of any length and turn it into a 20-23 characters link that gives you more characters to play around with on Twitter.
Bitly saves those links. Unlike similar services such as TinyUrl, Bitly saves the links so you can constantly reuse them. If you recycle your social media posts, this is a great feature that will allow you to quickly relocate older articles.
Bitly gives you superior statistics on those links. This third reason is what truly separates Bitly from the other link shortening services. Bitly gives you incredible statistics on your links. You get to see how many clicks you got hour by hour for a whole day as well as how many clicks you got within the hour. You can check how many clicks your Bitly links got for as far as 30 days.
You can categorize your links so they are easier to find. Bitly allows you to put multiple links into one bundle. Creating numerous bundles will allow to categorize your links so you can find them with ease. You can categorize blog posts that you recycle in one bundle and the articles that you want to read in another bundle. There are countless ways to categorize your content on Bitly.
You get to see how popular a link is. Some links are very popular which indicates you should be tweeting them out. Chances are if you tweet a popular link, more followers than usual will click on the link and retweet it to everyone.

Those are the five reasons why you should be using Bitly. What are your thoughts on the list? For the Bitly users out there, do you have any additional reasons why you use Bitly? Please share your thoughts below.

4 Simple Methods To Track Social Media ROI

October 24, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Social media has the potential to bring forth a big return on investment. Some people have made a strong income from social media. While some accounts such as the Uber Facts account has found a way to tweet the right ads, most of the highly profitable Twitter users bring in money by leading their followers to blogs and landing pages optimized to get more subscribers and sales. For the average account, the second option is the better of the two to choose from.

In order to know which social networks you need to be utilizing, you also need to identify the ROI for each of your social networks. Before you start tracking social media ROI, you must know what you are looking for in the first place. Are you looking for more subscribers, visitors, sales, or something else? Identifying what you are looking for will ultimately allow you to know whether you efforts are paying off or not.

After you identify what you want from social media, here are four simple methods to track social media ROI so you know what you are getting for all of that hard work.

#1: Use Bitly to track clicks.

Bitly allows you to see how many clicks any one of your links gets. This is important because you get to see which of your articles is receiving the most clicks and who the referrers are.

Knowing who your referrers are will allow you to identify where you need to focus the majority of your efforts. Out of all of the places where I put my Bitly links, Twitter brings in the most traffic. That is why I spend more time on Twitter than on any other social network. I recognize that the time I invest in Twitter is going to pay off.

#2: See what kind of interaction you get.

Interaction is huge on social media. The people who you interact with may end up subscribing to your blog and buying your products. In fact, some of the people I have interacted with ended up buying my books and leaving reviews for them as well. The better the interaction is, and the more times followers start the conversation with you, the more likely your efforts are going to pay off.

The larger your audience is, the longer it will take for you to interact with the people who mentioned you and shared your content. On some days, it takes me 30 minutes to go through my feed and have conversations with my followers. All of this interaction is worth it because my audience controls my success on social media.

I couldn’t be successful on Twitter unless everyone who is following me decided to click the follow button. My content would not spread as far if it weren’t for all of the people sharing my content and telling their friends about it. Having conversations with the individuals allows me to know them better. Instead of treating your followers like a number, treat them like people. Be social. That’s what social media is all about.

#3: Share coupons exclusively on social media.

Sharing a coupon exclusively on social media has its benefits. The main benefit is that people will follow you on your social networks just to stay updated about the coupons. There may be some people who are reluctant towards getting followers with this method because the theory is that the followers care about the coupons, not the content.

In reality, if someone is following you on your social networks for the coupons, that person enjoys the products you create. If people are following you for this reason, you already have a strong influence over them. This strong influence is important because it will boost the amount of conversations you have with your followers.

Be sure to let your blog visitors know that your coupons are available on social media. That way, if a visitor enjoyed your blog post, that visitor may decide to follow you on your social networks to get notified about any coupons.

Another benefit to sharing coupons exclusively on social media is that the results are easier to track. If you use a custom coupon for your social networks, and you can track how many sales a coupon gets, you will be able to identify whether you are getting a good return on investment or not. The more you experiment, the more likely you are to getting a good ROI from this method.

#4: Give yourself the stepping stones.

Your desire to improve your social media ROI is a goal. The main problem with most goals is that they often look impossible to reach. It’s like crossing one side of a large body of water to the other without a bridge of any kind.

Giving yourself the stepping stones will allow you to create that bridge for yourself. One of the most important tips for goal creation is to have a sense of direction. Your social media ROI strategy is not going to work unless you have that sense of direction and a general idea of where you are heading.

This sense of direction allows you to truly identify whether you are doing a good job or not. The key to the stepping stones strategy’s success is you being honest to yourself when you ask if you did anything to move forward on social media.

In Conclusion

We spend a lot of time on social media. In fact, the average user spends over three hours on social media every day. Unfortunately, a majority of that time is not bringing in a good return on investment. Your time is valuable, and you need to get the best out of your social networks.

Interacting with your followers and giving them a good experience when they see your social media presence will help out towards getting a better ROI. Most of the ROI generated from social media comes from long-term connections and conversations.

The time you put into growing your social media audience now will be very rewarding as your journey continues. Did one of these tips resonate with you the most? Do you have another tip for boosting social media ROI?