Targeted Audience

Why Knowing Your Target Audience Is Super Important

May 10, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Many people make the mistake as defining their target audience as anyone who is on Planet Earth or in outer space. By making their audience too big, these people are not able to zone in on their targeted audience–the people who care about and appreciate what these people do. Your targeted audience consists of the people who will buy your products, read your blog posts, and eventually become returning customers.

By knowing your target audience, you will be able to tap into the audience that cares the most about what you provide. People who care a lot about home and gardening products will not care as much about a blog about hotel marketing. Knowing your targeted audience allows you to create lists of people to interact with, build connections with, and turn into customers.

Since a targeted audience cares about what you do, they are more likely to tell their friends about you. As your blog and products spread through word of mouth, you will get more visitors and sales. Knowing your target audience is the starting point towards creating a strategy. Creating a strategy and then implementing that strategy is the starting point towards success.

Knowing your targeted audience will allow you to interact with the right people and make the right connections. The most successful social media power users are the ones who have built strong presences on various social networks with targeted followers. If you have not identified your targeted audience, then you need to do that right now. If you have already identified your targeted audience, then you are one step closer towards becoming very successful.

The Day I Forgot To Schedule Tweets

April 24, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

I will never forget the day that I forgot to schedule tweets. It started out as a typical day. Before going to school, I always check my statistics. I look at how many Twitter followers I gain, how many eBook sales I make, and my blog’s statistics as well. I happened to notice on one day that my blog only got 50 views at 7:30 am.

Since my blog tends to have more than 100 views at this time, I looked through my statistics to see if I could identify the problem. The problem was that I was not getting nearly as many visitors from Twitter as I normally got. I decided to look at my tweets thinking that I somehow forgot the link to my blog posts in those tweets or something along those lines. However, I quickly realized that I had not scheduled any tweets for the day. For the first time in several months (or maybe even a year), I had no scheduled tweets on HootSuite.

Here come the lessons. The first thing I took advantage of was HootSuite Pro. As a member, I knew the ropes well enough to schedule 24 tweets in 1 minute. Although I could not schedule any tweets in the morning, I had all of my tweets lined up from the afternoon and on.

This experience allowed me to deeply understand how important Twitter, and social media in general, is for my strategy. On that day, my blog got over 350 views because Twitter was able to kick in and save the day. However, I was able to get an idea of what traffic would look like without my social networks. Search engine traffic also contributed towards my blog’s increase in traffic, but the reason I get a lot of traffic from search engines is because of my social networks in the first place.

The big lesson is to never forget about your social networks. Although there may be some days when you do not feel like scheduling tweets or putting that pin up on Pinterest, continuing to use social networks will ultimately grow your presence in a big and powerful way. I was putting in the same amount of hours on Twitter back when I had 2,000 followers (also because I needed more time to learn and utilize cool tools) as I do now (now I gain more than 2,000 followers every 4 days).

Never forget your social networks. They have the power to put you on the map and get people to talk about you.

How To Jump Start Your Blog

April 22, 2014 by Marc Guberti 9 Comments

Jumpstarting Blog Statistics

Whether your blog is about gardening or food, you can easily jump start that blog. As you continue writing blog posts, your blog will eventually see a dramatic rise in traffic. That’s what plenty of the experts say, but there is a shortcut. Although this shortcut requires more work on your part, it will allow your blog to become successful at a much faster rate. In order to jump start your blog, you need to build a targeted following on your social networks.

The numbers game no longer works. Tools like TwitterAudit are being used every day to find out who has the real followers and who has extra cash in their pockets to buy fake followers. Building a targeted following is the only option we have left to be successful on social media. The blogs that we all know about were created by a blogger who now has a big presence on a social network.

Having a targeted following on a social network guarantees that your followers like the content that you post. In addition, these followers are eager to click on your links and read your blog posts. The reason this blog experienced exponential growth over a span of several months is because I got targeted followers at a much faster rate. Although the exponential growth has sizzled down, I will expect to see more exponential growth in the summer. That’s what happened last year, and this year should be a repeat.

The moment it becomes much easier (and free) to schedule pins, my traffic will be able to exponentially increase. The reason is that I have over 10,000 targeted followers on Pinterest. In addition, I gain hundred of targeted followers on Twitter every day.

Ever since I started to focus on gaining targeted followers, I have seen a noticeable increase in my blog traffic. In August 2013, I got 587 views. Less than 6 months later, to start off 2014, my blog got 11,709 views for the month. That is what exponential traffic looks like, and in order to get that exponential traffic, you need to grow a targeted following on your social networks.

Social media has played a big role in this blog’s success, and social media will continue playing a big part in this blog’s success. My prediction is that once my blog starts to gain traffic exponentially again (last year, this started in the fall), my blog could reach 100,000 monthly views by the end of 2014. If you want to give your blog a big jump start, do not focus on the search engines. Focus on growing a targeted following on your social networks. In fact, building a strong presence on a social network improves your SEO.

10 Ways To Double Your Pinterest Followers

March 29, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

Some people are gaining hundreds of Pinterest followers every day while other people struggle to gain 5 followers every day on Pinterest. Although this is not a proven statistic, it is possible that 10% of the people on Pinterest have 90% of the followers (or some cool statistic like that). The difference is that the top pinners have implemented several tactics to double their following. In fact, there are 10 different ways to double your Pinterest following. Here they are:

Be active on Pinterest every day. Being active on Pinterest means sending out at least 15 pins every day, commenting on at least 3 pins every day, and liking/repinning other people’s pins. By being active on Pinterest, more people will see you on their timelines. This will result in an increase in repins, and as you gain repins, you will also gain followers.
Verify your blog. People with the big checkmark are verified, and as you build your following, that checkmark will have a greater significance and bring in more followers. Having the checkmark on your Pinterest account shows your authenticity, and people love authenticity.
Have a strong bio. This is not your English class. You can use sentence fragments and run-ons in order to tell more people about your hobbies and credentials. The more you say in your bio, the better.
Follow targeted people. Even if the ratio gets out of hand, you will end up gaining more followers by following other people. When you follow other people, be sure to follow the people with less than 1,000 followers. The people with less than 1,000 followers are the ones who are most likely to follow you back. In addition, follow the people who are following boards with content similar to yours so you can build a targeted following. Following targeted people alone will contribute to a noticeable change in the amount of people you follow, but it will also result in a noticeable change in the number of repins you get.
Have a profile picture. Adding a profile picture is simple to do. However, having a profile picture of you will make people trust you enough to click the follow button. People prefer to follow someone who they can see than someone hidden by Pinterest’s default picture or a picture of beautiful scenery that you found on Google.
Connect other social networks with Pinterest and vice-versa. Get the followers you have already gained to follow you on Pinterest. This is an easy way to boost your following on one social network from your fan base on another social network.
Have a wide variety of boards. Pinterest is not the place to focus on one niche. On Pinterest, create boards for all of your hobbies and niches you are in. I have several boards on my Pinterest account that have nothing to do with business, blogging, or social media. The result is that I am able to attract a larger audience.
Have a lot of pins. The more pins an account has, the better. Would you rather follow the person on Twitter who sent out 100 tweets or the person who sent out 10,000 tweets. Sending out 10,000 tweets identifies that person as an influential expert, and (in some cases), has a lot of good things and interesting articles to share. As the number of pins go up, more people will be inclined to follow you. Big numbers rule yet again.
Turn your blog into something powerful. If you provide your visitors quality content, they are very likely to follow you on your social networks. If your blog was getting 10,000 daily visitors, imagine how many daily Pinterest followers that would be.
Stick with it. In order to see a big increase in followers, you need to stick with it. Giving up on Pinterest too early will prevent you from seeing the true potential of a powerful social network.

Those are 10 ways to double your Pinterest following. If you have any thoughts about this blog post or additional tips, please share them below.

Creating The Free Prize For Subscribers

March 29, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

One of the best ways to get more subscribers is by offering them a free prize. The free prize that I offer my subscribers is the Pinterest Mastery Video Tutorial. Social Media Examiner offers a free video about Facebook, and many other bloggers either offer a free video or a free report.

This free prize will serve as an incentive towards getting someone to subscribe to your blog. The thought of getting something makes people more likely to enter in their details. If you knew you could win a giveaway by subscribing to someone’s blog, would you subscribe to that blog? The free prize allows everyone to be a winner…that is everyone who decides to subscribe to your blog.

The free prize will do a good job at getting people to subscribe to your blog just like a Christmas present attracts attention. Once you get the visitor’s attention, and that visitor becomes the subscriber, they are opening the present you gave them. If the present you gave them (the free prize) is bad, the people who receive the free prize may decide to unsubscribe to your blog. If the present is a good one, the people who receive it are more likely to stick around.

When you create the free prize, you need to create a product that you could charge for. An empty box of cookies is technically a free prize, but it is not necessarily the free prize that consumers want. 30 second videos with bad content and lighting are not the things that people want. 30 minute videos with quality content and lighting are the things that people want. The 5 page report does not keep as many subscribers as the 50 page report. The more time and effort you put into creating the free prize, the more likely your subscribers will stick around and engage with your content.

The free prize is a simple, easy to implement concept with numerous benefits. Before I distributed the Pinterest Mastery Video Tutorial to my subscribers, I was stuck at 10 subscribers. Immediately when I introduced the free prize, I was getting subscribers every day. In addition, some of those subscribers leave comments on my blog posts to this day. Introduce the free prize to your visitors and see what the free prize can do for you.

If you have any thoughts about the free prize or any additional tips, please share them below.

How To Keep The Momentum Going On Your Blog

March 24, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Everyone is focused on getting more traffic to their blogs. However, few people focus on keeping the momentum going. This results in a big spike, and then traffic continues as if the big spike had never happened. In order to keep the traffic that you gain, you need to keep the momentum going on your blog.

There is no better way to keep the momentum going than by getting more subscribers. By getting people to subscribe to your blog, they will be constantly notified every time you come out with a new blog post. As these people read several blog posts on your blog, some of them will decide to buy your products. In addition, they will visit your blog frequently. Having a subscription box that is easy to see is one of the many ways to get more subscribers on your blog.

Getting people to subscribe to your blog is not enough. Once a subscriber visits your blog for a second time, or when you get a first time visitor, you want those people to stay on your blog for as long as possible. In order to get more people to stay on your blog, you need to reduce your blog’s bounce rate. Reducing your blog’s bounce rate will increase the amount of time a visitors stays on your blog.

In addition, you need to make it easy for people to share your blog posts on their social networks. I have social sharing buttons at the end of all of my blog posts. This allows people to easily share my content across multiple platforms. Do not forget to add pictures to your blog posts so people can share your blog posts on Pinterest.

By keeping the momentum on your blog, you will be able to keep most of the traffic that you gain when you see a spike in traffic. It is possible to have 50 daily visitors and suddenly encounter a spike where you get 200 visitors for the day. By implementing these tactics and having your blog battle-ready, you will be able to keep most of the people from the spike in traffic. Instead of falling back to 50 daily visitors, you may be able to get 75-100 daily visitors after the spike is over.