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Tips and Tricks

How To Self-Educate Yourself For 4 Hours Per Day

March 12, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

writing podcast show notes

One of the best ways to give yourself an edge is to self-educate yourself. That’s how you make your fortune.

Self-educating yourself for at least two hours each day will allow you to become the leader of your niche within five years.

But we’re about massive results, so instead of two hours each day, we should aim for four hours.

Double the amount of hours and you’ll double your results. That’s the law of proportions. While four hours each day to self-education seems like a big challenge, it’s very possible. This blog post will show you how.

 

Establish An Educational Wake Up Ritual

Upon waking up, I read the same eight books every day. It used to be five, but since I had no problem going through five, I upped my total to eight.

I’ll read a small portion of each book. As I read books focused on self development and success, I feed my mind right to start the day. This wake up ritual takes about 30 minutes.

Three and a half hours to go.

 

Listen To Audiobooks During All Commutes

I commute back and forth from school for 40 minutes each day. Instead of listening to music during this time, I’ll listen to an audiobook.

We have many opportunities like the daily commute that can be used productively. We can listen to audiobooks during this time or even dictate new content.

Listening to audiobooks is as easy as joining Audible and downloading two free audiobooks every month for a monthly fee. Audiobooks are also significantly discounted for members.

 

Learn During Content Creation

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I don’t worry about hitting four hours of self-education each day. On those days, it’s guaranteed. I can interview as many as five people on each of those days depending on how many people book interviews on those days.

With interviews averaging 45 minutes lately, that’s a total of 3 hours and 45 minutes of interviews. During this time, I get to ask my questions and get answers. I’m the client and my guest is the consultant.

I’ve got questions I would ask that I know my audience would also want to ask if they had the chance.

If you don’t have a podcast, starting one should be your #1 priority. You get to create new content for your audience and learn from experts at the same time.

I’ve interviewed as many as 21 people in one week (I was also hosting a summit during this stretch). All of that time is content creation and self-education wrapped into one.

Making Breakthrough Success a weekday podcast instead of a weekly podcast has made a big difference for my knowledge. I may make it a daily podcast if I still see a drop in downloads over the weekends (I only made it a weekday podcast because I assumed people would use the weekends to catch up what they missed).

If you don’t have a podcast, you can still learn as you create content. The simple act of creating content forces you to dig deep into your brain and recall things you already knew. This creates muscle memory.

For some of your pieces of content, you may also need to conduct research. This research will force you to consume more content in your niche. As you consume more content, your knowledge will expand.

 

Get An Accountability Partner

You’ll almost always do better on an exam if you have a study partner. Even if you got paired up with a study partner who didn’t know much, you would teach that person, and that act would sharpen your knowledge.

In a similar way, you need an accountability partner to expand your knowledge. You can listen to audiobooks with your friends. If that doesn’t work, you can have a weekly meeting with a friend where you discuss the book that both of you were supposed to read.

I advise having 1-3 solid accountability partners to expand your knowledge. That way, you can give them your attention. If you have 10 accountability partners, then it’s harder to keep track and acknowledge all of them.

 

Hire A Coach

If you’re not good at something you want to master, you have two choices. You can either toil away and become a master after many years…OR you could hire a coach who can speed you along the journey.

The only coaches worth hiring are the ones who are at the level of success you aspire to achieve. Then you can listen to their advice and know that it will help you get to where you want to be.

You can also consider your coach as an accountability partner. The difference is that a coach gives you knowledge instead of discussing a book the two of you were supposed to read.

If you have the financial means to do so, then there’s no reason to stop at one coach. You can hire multiple coaches who will help you get better at multiple skills that you need to master.

Hire the right coach, and your calls with that coach will give you more knowledge than anything else discussed in this blog post. While content can boost your knowledge, it isn’t specifically geared towards you.

Coaches can specifically gear their advice towards you. They know who you are, what worked, what hasn’t worked, and that helps them give you better advice.

“I see on your website that you can be using this plugin to double your conversion rates. You should also include a pop-up that matches your site’s blue background.”

You can’t get that direct level of advice from a piece of content. Only a coach can do that.

 

In Conclusion

If you want to become more successful, spend more time self-educating yourself. If you can level yourself up from 0 minutes to 30 minutes every day, that’s a big stride.

Work your way to an hour a day and keep going on your way to four hours per day. You can self-educate yourself during commutes and similar settings where you can’t take actions to grow your brand anyway.

Self-educating will also give you the knowledge to grow your brand faster with a smaller time investment. Time is the only thing we can’t get back.

What were your thoughts on these self-education tactics? Do you have any tactics you want to share? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Tips and Tricks

How To Focus On Revenue Generating Activities

March 5, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

The amount of time and effort you put towards revenue generating activities determines how much revenue you make.

It’s common knowledge now that not all tasks are created equal. Some lead to a small payoff if any at all while others result in a big ROI.

For instance, mastering Facebook ads is a better use of your time than scheduling social media posts. Both may be necessary for your success, but one has a significantly higher payoff than the other.

So how do we focus on revenue generating activities? That’s what we’ll cover in this post.

 

Identify Revenue Generating Activities

The first step to focusing on revenue generating activities is to clearly identify them. I know this sounds obvious, but it can get complicated.

Some will argue that all of their actions are revenue generating since they help you in some way whether it be direct or indirect. You can argue that when you schedule your social media posts, you’re scheduling posts that lead people to your landing page.

Traffic to the landing page means more money, right?

That’s a big yes if your landing page is optimized and you bring people into a sequence that promotes a product. But you can make much more money in the long-term by mastering Facebook ads.

Now the question is if you sacrifice scheduling social media posts to pursue the FB ads. The answer to that is no, but before I explain…

I know you may not face the choice between scheduling social media posts or mastering FB ads. However, you may face a similar situation with different choices. Do you continue to create content or market what you have? Do you write the book or promote your training course? Do you spend less time interacting with your social media audience or less time getting interviewed on other podcasts?

That brings me to my next point.

 

Automate, Delegate, Or Eliminate

All of these activities I mentioned help to move the needle forward. You can’t make money with a content brand unless you create content. However, if you keep creating but never take the time to market, your content brand won’t get any visibility.

Some tasks move the the needle further than others in a shorter period of time. These are the tasks you need to focus on.

Going back to FB ads VS social media post scheduling, FB ads is the clear winner. What happens to scheduling social media posts then? The answer is that you automate, delegate or eliminate that task.

I wouldn’t recommend eliminating vital tasks like scheduling your social media posts. However, you can very easily automate this process.

I use a service called ViralTag to create an evergreen posting schedule for all of my tweets. I send over 100 tweets every day that are in a continuous cycle with hundreds of other tweets. If I had to manually schedule all of those tweets, it would take me several hours every day.

Since I have automated my tweets, it doesn’t take a single second. All of the tweets go out automatically, and I add more tweets to the cycle every quarter.

If you can set it and forget it while achieving desirable results, do it.

With that said, you can’t automate everything. You can’t automate the creation of Instagram pictures. That’s why one person on my team is responsible for creating pictures based on the inspirational quotes I provide him with. This same person is also responsible for growing my Instagram and Twitter audiences.

I give that level of trust to people who have earned it. Other people on my team are responsible for keeping the Breakthrough Success Podcast going whether that be by editing episodes or writing show notes. Everyone on my team tackles important areas that my brand needs to survive.

With these tasks not taking up space on my to-do list, I can pursue bigger projects that generate more income.

 

Generate More Revenue Than You Spend Automating & Delegating

Automating and delegating are not free. You either have to pay a monthly fee to use a tool or a salary to add a new person to your team. If you spend more than you make, you’ll find yourself spiral towards debt and eventually deep into it.

That’s not where you or anyone wants to go. To avoid that fate, you need to stay on top of your finances and see how everything is paying off.

Since I’ve monetized Twitter and know that social network very well, I know that my team member’s actions generate more revenue for my business. This is based on the big blog traffic boost and landing page sign-ups which lead to product sales.

My podcast is different, and I didn’t know this until recently. I have two incredible people on my team who make Breakthrough Success possible. I decided to not use sponsored ads in my episodes so I could provide a better experience for my listeners.

That means my podcast isn’t monetized. While I have had no problem paying off my expenses with affiliate commissions, I realized how big my expenses have gotten. I spend over $1,000/mo maintaining Breakthrough Success.

If I end my show, I save all of that money which I can put into other parts of my business. However, I’m not doing that. I’ve connected with so many awesome people because of my podcast, and it’s a big passion of mine.

But I still need to recoup the $1,000/mo.

That’s why I started my own Patreon Page to help cover expenses. For as little as $1/mo, you can help keep Breakthrough Success going. If you are interested, you can become a patron here.

I’m building the Patreon Page to over $1,000/mo so the Patreon Page pays off the podcasting expenses. Someday, I see the page exceeding $1,000/mo in which I’ll get to do more exciting things with the show in the future.

I only noticed this problem when I looked deep into my finances. I have a spreadsheet that keeps track of all of my income and expenses. I have no intentions to stop my podcast or cut down on production. However, I couldn’t let this situation be completely ignored.

And the end result was Patreon.

If you aren’t at least breaking even by automating or delegating, you need to figure out why. Then, either eliminate that task to save money or make a greater effort to break even and eventually make a profit.

 

In Conclusion

What you focus on expands. By focusing on revenue generating activities, you’ll put yourself in a position to accumulate more revenue that you can invest back into your business.

Continue to automate, delegate, or eliminate everything in your business that prevents you from moving the needle as far and quickly as possible.

Don’t forget to remember why you want to generate revenue. Maybe you want to achieve financial freedom, support your family, or surprise someone with a special gift.

Keeping your why in mind will drive you as you pursue the activities that generate the most revenue.

How do you make the time for revenue generating activities? Do you have any tactics for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Tips and Tricks

Why I Wake Up Before 5 am

February 20, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

If most people are up a little after 5 am, you wonder why they went to bed so late. The moon is out and it still takes several hours for the sun to rise.

A little more than a month ago, I decided to embrace this concept and see what would happen. Would I crash later in the day? Would I get anything accomplished or just struggle to come up with ideas? Would I boost my productivity?

I now know the answers to all of those questions. I recommend everyone give this a try at least once to see how it affects them, but I’ll share what I learned.

Long Bookend

When I’m with my family and friends, I want to be as attentive to them as possible. However, I also have to get a massive amount of work done each day. If I feel like the day is too easy, I’ll add more work to it to make it more difficult.

Yes, I do take some days off each month, but when I’m working, I’m laser focused.

The best time to work is during the bookends of the day. That means before everyone’s awake or after everyone else has called it a day. Some people can stay productive during both bookends in the same day. I’ve tried, and it doesn’t work.

Instead of being productive during both bookends, I add a lot of time to the initial bookend so I can get to bed early.

I had no problem with making the shift because I was getting up at 5:30 am beforehand. However, I didn’t do any work during this time. I ate food and got ready for a run.

For some people, it’s a bigger shift than others, but you can wake up 15-30 minutes earlier each day to ease into it.

No Weight

After my first year of college, I noticed two things:

  1. More time than high school
  2. After getting home, I didn’t feel like doing much work. The later it got, the more I wanted to kick back and relax.

#1 doesn’t matter for this example but #2 is important. No matter how much you love your work, there are some days when you just feel fried. For me, that was happening too often since I had just finished my last classes of the day.

At that point, my willpower is lower and it’s a greater fight to keep working. I initially got around this issue by scheduling all of my podcast interviews at this time. I scheduled interviews for Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I have the most free time on those days and didn’t see myself doing as much work when I got home.

When you tell someone you’ll meet with them at a specific time, you’re accountable. It forces me to interview guests for the show and do what I love. After the interviews, I would just kick back and relax.

That doesn’t happen anymore. When I wrap up my interviews, there are only two possible destinations:

  • The kitchen—before 7 pm
  • My bed—7 pm or later

If I eat anything, I’ll read for an hour so I have time to digest and stay away from the blue light of my devices. I set my alarm on my iPhone several hours in advance.

Now here’s the important thing to get from all of that. I’m no longer fighting to be productive. After interviews and classes, I’m not fighting to get that extra minute. That’s when my day is over. Instead of kicking back and relaxing, I’m snoozing until 5 am or earlier. Someday I want to wake up at 2 am and see how that works.

When I wake up as early as I do, there’s no fight to be productive. I’m just productive. The day hasn’t started yet. My willpower is refreshed and ready to roll.

My productivity craters in the evening, so I skip the evening and go right to the very early morning. Cock-a-doodle-doo.

I Don’t Need To Strengthen My Willpower

I’m not here to boast that my willpower is perfect. During my first year of college, I had to summon up quite the willpower to get my work done after a string of classes.

I think too many people are fixated on strengthening their willpower. They want to fight for that extra minute even though their body tells them, “Go to bed.”

I may look like someone with a lot of willpower because of all of the work I produce. The love for my work is there, but I don’t rely on my willpower to get me through the day.

Willpower is inconsistent and based on uncontrollable events. If you get a bad break in the middle of the day, you may let that bad break ruin the rest of your day. Anyone can have a strong willpower when everything goes their way.

It’s more difficult to maintain the willpower when bad things happen.

While all of this is true, it leads to the incorrect conclusion that we need to strengthen our willpowers to boost our productivity. The conclusion is understanding the ebbs and flows of willpower.

When you wake up, your willpower is at its peak. Nothing crazy has happened yet, and you may feel great as you think about what you’ll be doing. If I’m working and everyone else is asleep, I can’t hear about anything bad happening, and nothing bad will happen to me.

Anytime I’m writing a blog post at 5:15 am, my bliss is at its peak. I expand that peak by waking up earlier. I know there is a chance of something going wrong and sinking my willpower by the end of the day.

I hope for the best, but the worst can happen. I’d rather try to recover and then go to sleep than try to recover, fight for some extra minutes (or hours), and then go to sleep.

In Conclusion

Every day, I’m up well before the sun shines. I’m pursuing the work I love at the start of the day. This sets a positive tone for the rest of the day where I can actively pursue my work.

As the day gets later and my willpower is waning, I don’t need to worry as much as I did before. That just means I can sleep earlier and then wake up earlier.

I’m continuing to refine my process, but I’ll be waking up this early for a long time. What are your thoughts on waking up super early in the day? Do you have any tactics for getting into a deeper sleep or waking up at this time of day? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

 

Filed Under: Tips and Tricks

How To Strengthen Your Rise And Grind Work Ethic

February 17, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Image Source: http://tayloright.com/

No matter how effective your work ethic is, there’s always room to build upon what you already have. I recently realized this in my life when I made a decision to wake up at 4 am every day.

Waking up this early gives me more uninterrupted time in my day to do my work. And at the end of the day, it doesn’t take me long to fall asleep. Right after I’m done interviewing people on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I call it a day.

Normally, I get more sleep and still feel tired at this stage. While I love the interviews, I don’t feel like doing much after a string of them. I’ve conducted interviews for over three hours in one sitting before.

Even after a long day of school, I can fall asleep and wake up earlier. It’s better for me to wake up earlier and super productive than for me to slog my way through the end of the day trying to get work done.

Plus, it feels great going to school knowing that I’ve done so much already. This blog post isn’t about waking up at 4 am. Everyone has different schedules. Regardless of our schedules, we can rise and grind more than we currently are. This blog post will help you strengthen your work ethic.

 

Apply More Pressure To Yourself

Getting up at 4 am is easier than it sounds. If you get to bed past 10 am, then yes, it’s going to be very difficult to get out of bed at 4 am. However, I’m usually out a little after 8 pm. I don’t stay up as late compared to most people, but I’m up and grinding well before any roster in my timezone wakes up.

Just sleep a few hours earlier and you can wake up a few hours earlier. So, waking up at 4 am isn’t me applying pressure to myself.

Applying pressure to yourself is giving yourself closer deadlines and intentionally reducing your resources to see what you can do with what you have.

For a long time (time is relative, even for a 20 year old), I heard the advice of pay yourself and invest, and I did neither of those things. Then I started to take that advice seriously. At one month, I set the goal of taking 20% out of my business and put it towards my savings or investments.

Since I get big goals for my savings and investing, that 20% mushroomed closer to 80%. As an investor, you need to invest early to reap the long-term gains, so to hit my goal for the month, I knew I needed to invest early. That explains the bigger increase than I anticipated going into the month.

I could still pay my team, but now things were closer. I didn’t have a month’s worth of payments readily available in my PayPal account for my team. I could have technically moved money over from savings and been fine, but I made it a point to not do that.

And that’s how I found myself facing pressure.

I knew that my current methods weren’t working as effectively as they could. I got more creative and pursued amazing opportunities I would have never thought of if I was still comfortable.

If I didn’t pay myself first in a much bigger way than anticipated, I wouldn’t have had this additional but very strong reason to make more money.

The more reasons you give yourself to accomplish a goal, the more likely you are to accomplish that goal. And this was a big reason. Sometimes you don’t need many reasons. You just need a few that fire you up big time.

Have you ever noticed in the superhero movies that towards the end, the hero is faced with a pressing series of reasons for why they need to take action. In every Iron Man movie, Tony is faced with several reasons for taking action:

  • The villain wants to kill him
  • The villain wants to kill his girlfriend
  • The villain wants to destroy or dramatically change all of society
  • People are counting on him, and there’s no one else who can get the job done
  • Even when Tony has his cast of Avengers, he’s still an essential part, and without him, the Avengers lose (the same can be said about all of them)

Even with Stark Enterprises and all of his business responsibilities looming over him, Stark decides to save the planet a few times. I don’t care what reasons he has for growing Stark Enterprises. When the bad guy raves havoc, there’s no way to beat that list of reasons.

The pressure mounts, the hero takes action, and then we head towards the end of the movie. Then at that point, you have an idea of what will happen (hero wins!) but just want to see how it plays out.

 

Both Bookends Work

The extra early rise I have each day gives me uninterrupted time to grind. Originally, I wanted to entitle this section “Use Both Bookends,” but since I can’t see myself doing that right now, I didn’t use that title.

If working late into the night is your thing, then go for it. One caveat I have for that approach is that your willpower must carry the weight of the rest of the day on its shoulders.

When I wake up at 4 am, my willpower hasn’t carried any weight. It’s in it’s prime. In the past, I did the last night thing. On the day before a vacation, I sometimes work past 2 am because I know I can sleep on the way to the destination.

I’ve been productive during those rare moments, but I prefer my 4 am routine. You may prefer something different, and there’s absolutely no problem with that. Whatever helps you achieve your grind is the approach you use.

Just make sure you establish a routine. I wake up at 4 am, and the first thing I do every day, without fail, is read different parts of the same five books for two minutes each. Those five books give me the right mindset to rise and grind.

The second thing I do every day is make myself some food. Pear and toast are all I need to start working. When the day gets brighter, I’ll go out on one of my runs. While I enjoy beating the sun as an entrepreneur, I prefer running in the morning sunlight.

 

Do More Thinking

We are so busy that we often have little time to think. I’m not talking about the in-the-moment pigeon holed thinking we all experience when we perform a certain task. As I write this blog post, I only think of ways to make it better. I’m not thinking about what I need to do for my business to move it to the next level.

If I do that, you’ll see it in my writing and my content will be subpar.

However, I do carve out 10-15 minutes of each day to do nothing but think. I take a satellite view of everything I’m doing. I examine what’s working and what’s not working. When I pressure myself as mentioned earlier, it forces me to look for new but very specific opportunities.

When I crunched the numbers, I realized that podcasting accounts for most of my expenses. I was surprised when I learned that. However, I believe sponsored ads take away from the listeners’ experience which is why you’ll never hear ads during the show.

So how does my podcast help pay off for the big boost in expenses? The answer is Patreon.

I originally thought I didn’t need it, but seeing that my podcast costs so much money to maintain each month, I created a Patreon Page where anyone can contribute as little as $1 per month to support the Breakthrough Success Podcast.

That’s something you don’t think about doing if you don’t take 10-15 minutes to think of ways you can move your business forward. In my case, it also helps that I keep track of my income and expenses in a Numbers document.

Thinking in this way will help you get more clear on your priorities. If you don’t know your priorities, write a list of your revenue generating activities. Those are your priorities.

When you discover your priorities, you’ll also discover new opportunities similar to how I got started on Patreon in an effort to pay off my podcast expenses without ruining the experience with sponsored ads.

 

In Conclusion

We all need to rise and grind more. Our work ethics are never final products. Lately, I’ve been waking up at 3:50 am so I can finish reading my five books by 4 am. That way, I prep my food slightly earlier and easily start working by 4:30 am.

I know these times sound crazy to many people. I recommend you give it a try to see if it works for you. Sleep earlier, wake up earlier. I’ve also embraced life as a night owl before staying up as late as 2 am to do videos.

Videos are the one thing I normally do that I don’t see myself doing at 4:30 am. However, I can easily see myself doing videos from 11 pm to 2 am. There’s nothing else to do, and later in the day, I’d rather talk and let the words rush out than write and think about each sentence.

What are your thoughts on my approach to rising and grinding? Do you have any additional approaches or strategies for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Tips and Tricks

How To Get Your Audience Involved In Your Content Brand

February 13, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Most content brands follow a very simple structure. The content creator creates content and the audience consumes it. Sure, there are other things that go into it. You have to promote content, create a content calendar, and do things like that.

But at its core, most content brands exist as content providers for people to consume.

Advanced content brands flip that concept on its head. Yes, they still produce content, and yes, their audiences engage with their content.

But these advanced content brands do something different. They break the 4th wall. They get their audiences involved in their brands.

You’ve already seen this happen again and again. But you need to notice it happening around you for it to have an impact on your brand. Here’s what I’ve noticed from advanced content brands.

Invite Your Audience To Fill Out Surveys

I’m not talking about those five minute surveys that you make 10 cents on. Several years ago, I was filling out those types of surveys. It’s an easy way to make money, but 10 cents isn’t much to celebrate about.

I’m talking about the surveys that give them a voice in your future decisions. In these short surveys (you only need 3-5 questions), ask your audience what type of content they want to see more often.

These surveys allow you to determine what your audience wants. By providing more of what your audience wants, they’ll engage with more of your content. As your audience engages with more of your content, more people will come across your brand.

The best part about surveys is that your audience will appreciate being heard. They’ll appreciate giving you a suggestion and seeing you took action based on that suggestion just a few years later.

You’ll also get plenty of epic content ideas which are vital for all content brands.

Invite Contributors To Your Content Brand

As you promote your content brand and it gets older, you’ll hear more stories about people who have been engaged with your brand for several years. These are your core fans who love what you produce and want to help.

They are the ones who will fill out your surveys, but some want to help on a bigger level.

One of the best ways to activate your audience is to give them permission to contribute to your success. This is why I opened the doors to guest blogging on my site. As I write a blog post every day, I technically don’t need the help, but I’ll happily take it.

The great things about contribution relationships is that they’re usually win-win. Contributors help me by providing more content and promotion power, and I help them by putting them in front of my audience.

You can find contributors on other popular content brands (i.e. these brands’ blogs, channels, podcasts, etc.) and ask them if they want to contribute some content for you. As you get more of these people to say yes and publish more of their content, your audience will catch on.

Soon you’ll get plenty of submissions each day as more people become more involved in your content brand.

Reply To Comments

I don’t know how Neil Patel does it. He responds to every single comment. On time.

I respond to virtually all of the comments I get, but sometimes it takes me a month to get back to people.

It’s something I am working on, and I know it will get more difficult as my content brand grows even more.

But it’s important.

Replying to your comments makes your audience realize that you pay attention to them. It’s one thing to continuously produce content. Taking the time to reply to someone who consumed your content and left a comment is a whole new level.

And let’s remember that few people leave comments. If you enjoy this blog post, are you going to leave a comment? I get hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, but I don’t have hundreds of thousands of comments to show for it.

In this blog’s history, only 0.7% of visitors have left a comment. That percentage also includes my replies, so the actual number is much smaller.

Am I just a terrible marketer then? Not quite. These are results you can see on almost any blog, even the really good ones.

To leave a comment, you have to read the blog post, have takeaways, and want to spend the 10-15 seconds it takes to leave a comment. In our fast world, people don’t have that kind of time. In that same period of time, you should find another great piece of content to read and get started on it.

I mention this because a comment indicates this person cared about your content. Even for a controversial topic, this person cared enough about your content and its message to share his/her thoughts.

These are comments you need to respond to. Let your audience know that you care, and they’ll care about you even more.

Create Polls

You can use polls to gather people’s opinions to form conclusions that theoretically apply to the whole.

Polls get your audience more involved in your content and lets you know how your audience thinks. Before I even started this blog, I did a Poll of the Day on one of my other blogs. I may bring that back in the future.

Polls get your audience involved in what you’re doing. Even if it’s a silly question that has no value for your brand (i.e. chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream), you condition your audience to engage with your content on a deeper level.

Answering a poll takes less than five seconds, and those are seconds most people are willing to give you. Part of it is to share their opinion, and part of it is to see what everyone else said.

For instance, aren’t you now a little curious about whether I prefer chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream? Wouldn’t you want to know what my entire audience thinks?

It’s not something you would passionately Google. It’s more of those “Why not…as long as the data is in front of me and easy to interpret” scenarios.

But what if I asked my audience whether they prefer writing blog posts or creating podcast episodes. That’s something more interesting and related to my niche.

And it gets my audience more involved in my content brand.

In Conclusion

As content creators, we need to show more appreciation to our audiences. That doesn’t just mean creating content that they love. It also means taking the time to acknowledge individuals who acknowledge us on a deeper level.

The future winners will be the ones who can connect with more people in their audiences on a 1-to-1 level.

What are your thoughts on these tactics for getting your audience more engaged? Do you have any tactics you’d like to share? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

Filed Under: content, Targeted Audience, Tips and Tricks

How To Get Out Of Writer’s Block

February 8, 2018 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Writer’s block is the last place any content creator can be. This affliction results in the blank screen that stays blank for a very long time. When writer’s block strikes, we need to put it out as quickly as possible.

This article will show you how to get out of writer’s block so your creative mind can continue to flow and provide ideas with ease.

#1: Ask Your Audience For Topics

Asking your audience is one of the best ways to get out of writer’s block. Not only will you receive many ideas, but these are ideas your audience wants more of. By providing more of what your audience wants, you’ll attract new visitors and have a more loyal audience.

In our effort to amplify our voices, we must remember that our audiences appreciate when their voices are heard. Listen to them by asking them for topic ideas. You might just stumble across a content idea that ignites your blog traffic.

#2: Consume More Content

I consume as much content as possible, especially when I’m running out of ideas. I read anywhere from 10 to 30 books every month (lately it’s been closer to 10). I read paperbacks and Kindle eBooks. I listen to audiobooks and podcast episodes.

I also publish five episodes on the Breakthrough Success Podcast every week. This isn’t just a shameless plug. Understand that for me to continue publishing episodes at this rate, I must, on average, interview at least five people every week. That’s over 250 people I interview every year, and since I usually interview more than 5 people every week, that number is closer to 300.

If I choose to turn Breakthrough Success into a daily podcast or run some more virtual summits this year, I’ll interview over 400 people every year.

I consume a lot of ideas just by interviewing people. Combine that with all of the time I spend reading and listening to content, and you can understand how much content I’m willing to consume to get better at my craft.

#3: Hack Your Mind When In The Writing Flow

Writer’s block doesn’t just happen when you can’t think of a new idea. Writer’s block sometimes happens when you’re in the middle of an idea.

You briefly leave your computer, return to the idea, and then you find yourself stuck. A blog post that once flowed so easily now feels stuck in a traffic jam.

How do you continue writing midway through a blog post when the ideas aren’t flowing out as well.

The answer is to hack your mind when you are in the writing flow. The best approach is to finish a piece of content from start to finish. This isn’t always possible, especially for a book, but there is another solution.

Before you stop typing and give yourself a break, type part of a sentence. Not the whole sentence. Just part of one.

When you return to that piece of content, your mind will quickly retrace its steps and you’ll remember where you left off. You’ll finish typing the second half of that sentence and then continue as if there was no interruption.

#4: Stop Writing & Stop Talking

It’s very common for most content creators to stop writing for a moment. Writer’s block is in the way.

It’s much less common to be without any words to say. In fact, it’s so rare for anyone to be speechless or out of words that it’s a big deal when it happens.

Writer’s block is different. It’s one of those universally understood idea among most bloggers. But if you struggle to find words to say when hanging out with your friends and when it’s your turn to talk…that’s more shocking.

If you find yourself struggling to write a blog post, speak it. Let the words naturally flow and don’t think for a second about what you’re saying. This is off-the-cuff and can be edited later. All you have is a basic outline to steer you through the content creation process.

You can either keep the content in video form or transcribe the audio so you have a completed blog post. Just because it’s called writer’s block doesn’t mean the only solution is to write your way out of it.

#5: Write About Something Else

The very first book I planned to self-publish as a Kindle book was horrible. I knew 3,000 words in that this book was going to be an utter bust. Not only that, but I knew it would be painful for me to write.

I gave up on that book, and I’m proud of it.

If you find yourself in a project heading towards the dead end, don’t continue. Get out of that project so you can pursue something else with more promise. When you choose something promising, that’s when you don’t give up.

On some days, it will feel difficult to continue. I have many feelings like that with my own brand.

But the first book I was writing…horrible. I would need a lot of time to think what I was trying to get at in the book.

For blog posts, if you feel like you’re about to hit a dead end, you have two choices. The first choice is to scrap it like I did with my first book draft (and others). Each blog post you write makes you a better blogger, even if you don’t publish the blog post.

The second option is to write a new blog post. After you write that new blog post, return to the previous blog post that proved to be difficult. If you still find it difficult to write that one blog post after multiple attempts, scrap it. Until you scrap it, you’ll keep thinking about it and continue struggling to think of ways to finish it.

Even if you finish that type of blog post, it won’t be your best work. The best content you’ll ever produce is the content you enjoy creating.

In Conclusion

Writer’s block gets all of us at certain points. My favorite way for conquering writer’s block is to speak my way out of it. Even if I don’t transcribe videos and turn them into blog posts, I’ll speak about the topic.

As I speak about the topic, ideas will quickly flow out like a rushing stream. With these ideas in place, it will be easier for me to finish writing the blog post.

What were your thoughts on these tactics? Do you have any tactics for getting out of writer’s block? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Blogging, Tips and Tricks Tagged With: blog, blogging, writer's block

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I am a business freelance writer who writes for individuals, small businesses, and corporations. My content will help drive engagement and sales to your business. I have produced content for several companies, including…

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