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70 Amazing Twitter Tips

June 9, 2014 by Marc Guberti 52 Comments

Twitter is a powerful social network that has transformed this blog and others as well. However, when it comes to using Twitter, many people get confused. They do not know how to create quality tweets with only 140 characters, build a strong following, or interact with the followers that they have. In this blog post, I will provide numerous tips that cover all three of these aspects on Twitter and others as well.

Retweet other people’s tweets. If you share other people’s tweets, then others will be more likely to retweet other people’s tweets. If you have not retweeted anyone else’s tweet in one week, then you are using Twitter wrong.
Grow a targeted following. A targeted following is the best kind of following to have. These kinds of followers are the ones who are interested in your tweets before they even start to read them.
Ask questions. Asking questions will encourage people to respond with their answers. This will allow you to engage more with your followers.
Answer questions to join a conversation. If you want to engage with new people, then look for the people who are asking the question. By answering these people’s questions with a tweet, you may get some new followers, but the conversation will more than likely continue.
Tweet every 30 minutes. Tweeting every 30 minutes allowed me to build a strong presence on Twitter. No, it’s not annoying to tweet this many times every day.
Better yet, tweet every 20 minutes. The more you tweet, the more times people are going to see you. Tweeting every 20 minutes allows almost all of your followers who logged in on that day to see one of your tweets. I didn’t annoy more people by tweeting this much. In fact, I gained more people and saw more engagement for my tweets.
Schedule tweets. The only way you are going to tweet every 20-30 minutes is if you schedule tweets in advance.
Get HootSuite Pro. It will make your life much easier and save you a lot of time. I am able to schedule 36 tweets in just 6 clicks.
Tweet about your blog 80% of the time. If you want to drive more traffic to your blog from Twitter, you need to tweet about your blog at least 80% of the time. Only tweeting about your blog 20% of the time is a mistake. Your followers won’t care if your blog posts are filled with quality content.
Tweet pictures. Pictures have been proven to increase retweets, favorites, and conversations you have with your followers. Basically, it’s something that you must do.
Tweet at the moment. Don’t schedule a question! If you get answers right away, you can extend those conversations by replying as soon as possible.
Get the Twitter mobile app. The Twitter mobile app allows you to tweet at the moment no matter where you are. If you’re in the parking lot waiting for someone to get to the car, you can send out a tweet with the mobile app and respond to people in real time.
Use Twitter’s search engine to find targeted people. It’s cool, reliable, and easy to find targeted people with Twitter’s search engine.
Follow journalists. If you follow these journalists and build a strong presence for yourself on the web, then these journalists will be more likely to write about you in a popular magazine.
Follow the right people. Follow targeted people who are likely to follow back, people that you like, people you want to (and can) build connections with, tweet awesome stuff, and/or the leaders of your niche. Don’t follow the people who are not going to provide more value for your Twitter experience.
Tell everyone about what you do in your niche in your bio. You bio is a place for you to tell people what you are an expert at.
Also tell people about all of your accomplishments. The accomplishments are proof that you are an expert. The social media expert who got on the Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Users list looks much better than the social media expert with 500 followers.
Get more words in your bio by using commas and incomplete sentences. Your English teacher is not going to come and haunt you if you use sentence fragments and do not have a verb in your bio. Simply list everything you do as well as your accomplishments by separating everything with commas.
Use TwitterCounter to keep track of statistics. The best way to grow on Twitter is to know when you did well and when you did bad. TwitterCounter allows you to see how many followers you gain for up to 6 months (free version). It’s a nice tool to utilize.
Use Tweriod to see when your followers are on Twitter. Using Tweriod will allow you to identify the times when most of your followers on Twitter. Now you know when to send out your most important tweet.
Include RT or r/t at the end of some of your tweets. Including RT or r/t at the end of some of your tweets does lead to more retweets. However, if you overuse RT or r/t, its effect will ware off, and you will not get as many retweets if you include RT or r/t at the end of your tweets.
Thank the people who share your blog posts. Thanking people for sharing your blog posts is an unexpected act of courtesy that can result in this person sharing more of your blog posts and being grateful that you thanked them.
Favorite tweets on occasion. Talking with someone is better than clicking the little star.
Use more verbs and fewer nouns. You will get more retweets this way.
Use hashtags. Using hashtags also has a good effect on getting more retweets. However, any tweet with more than two hashtags does not get retweeted as much.
Make your tweets 70-100 characters long. This is just another way to get more retweets. 70-100 characters seems to be the sweet spot.
Do not connect your Facebook account with your Twitter account. It’s annoying for your friends and followers on Facebook. It’s not worth it.
Use your Twitter account to promote your other social networks. If Twitter is your biggest social network, it may take a small push to turn your other social networks into something extraordinary as well.
Promote your Twitter account on your other social networks. Getting multiple small pushes to leverage your Twitter account can lead to something incredible.
Pin a tweet to the top of your profile. Make it the tweet that you want everyone to see. Choose wisely.
Focus on one specific niche. People follow specific people. If you scatter around from niche to niche, people will not know why they are following you.
Tweet motivational quotes. No matter what your niche is, motivational quotes always increase engagement.
Get in touch with the leaders in your niche. Leaders chat with other leaders. Show people that you are a leader by talking with the leaders. In addition, you will be able to learn new things by talking with the leaders of your niche.
Tweet a tip of the day. This allows you to provide your followers with easy to access knowledge about your niche.
Use Twitter to make a difference. Vivienne Harr has done that quite nicely with her Make A Stand Lemon Aid. She’s also six years younger than me.
Take advantage of trending topics. If you say something clever, you will get more retweets for that tweet than your typical tweets. Trending topics are popular which means when you get discovered, it will have a big impact on your engagement.
Follow others instead of trying to be a rock star. Don’t be the guy or gal who wants to have 100,000 followers and only follow 10 people. It doesn’t work that way, and even if you got that to happen, you are not using Twitter to its fullest potential (building connections).
Use Bitly to shorten links. *Almost* any method you can use to save characters is a good method. Bitly links also come with detailed statistics.
Hire someone to create your background. I hired someone to design my book cover and saw unprecedented success in my book sales. Hiring someone to create an awesome Twitter background for as little as $5 on Fiverr can make you look more professional.
Follow back the people who follow you. This is all about building the connections that you have gained through Twitter.
Do not use automated DMs. That is, unless, you like getting unfollowed.
Properly use DMs to contact some of your followers. Personalized messages to a few followers strengthens the connections you have with those followers. In addition, you can have long conversations by sending DMs back and forth to one of your followers.
Turn your Twitter followers into fans. Tweet incredible content and build your credibility. Become someone who your followers would be proud to show off to their friends.
Become a guest blogger. Guest blogging is an easy way to get more exposure and followers on your Twitter account. In addition, becoming a guest blogger builds on your preeminence.
Get people to interview you. You credibility gets boosted and you get more followers at the same time.
Interview other people. For most people, this tip is easier than Tip #45. The people you interview will be very likely to follow you on Twitter and tell their followers about you.
Give yourself goals to aim for. Instead of striving to gain more followers, strive to gain 10 followers every day. Then go up to 20 followers every day and keep on building.
Proofread your tweets before you send them out. It sounds like something completely unnecessary, but it is important. You would be shocked with how many typos are on Twitter.
Look at the Twitter strategy you already have in place. Identify its strengths and areas of improvement.
Don’t argue with anyone on Twitter. It’s wrong and makes you look bad.
Regularly check your profile and keep it up to date. The information you wrote on your bio three months ago could be outdated. You could also be doing something more remarkable than anything on your bio and may want to add that in your bio.
Only list one person for Follow Friday. Follow Friday is overrated, but if you participate in it, only list one person for every Follow Friday. No one likes to see a list of 10 usernames with no motives to follow those people.
Review your Twitter apps to make sure there are no problems. That’s how you get hacked. I got hacked once because I did not review my apps carefully. Learn from my heartache.
Use ManageFlitter. It’s a great tool that allows you to identify the people who are not following you, the people who are following you, and other cool features as well.
Use Tweepi. Tweepi helps you grow a targeted following by displaying a list of someone’s followers based on last tweet, follow back ratio (the most important), number of followers, and more!
Look at your Bitly links and continue tweeting the links that get clicked on the most. If people liked it the first time, they’ll like it again. If you see a decline in clicks for one of your Bitly links, then that link needs to take a break.
Have perseverance. Remember that Rome was not built in 1 day. Neither was anyone’s Twitter presence.
Don’t ask to be followed. Instead of asking people to click the follow button and build a connection made from pity, build your presence on Twitter.
Don’t ask for a shout out. Just don’t. Ever.
Don’t send out boring tweets. If you send out boring tweets such as status updates of you walking your dog or something else, it will bore the reader.
You should tweet about one thing 80% of the time. Stay focused on one niche. You can go out of your niche sometimes, but use this 80% rule to make sure most of your tweets are the ones that your followers want to read.
Don’t think about lost followers and connections. Instead of looking at what you lost, look at what you have gained.
Know why people follow you and would want to read your tweets. Knowing is the first step towards seeing better results.
Check your notifications three times every day. By checking your notifications three times every day, you will be able to reply to more of your followers faster. If you check your notifications more than three times every day, then that’s even better.
Use a real location in your bio. There’s no harm in adding your location, and it can result in strong connections with people who either live near by or used to live where you live now.
Raise your Klout Score. People look at your Klout score to determine how influential you are on the web…and Twitter!
Have a good bio picture. The bio picture is one of the most important factors when someone decides whether someone will follow you or not.
Use Twitter every day. If you want to become successful on Twitter, you need to be dedicated.
Look at what the leaders of your niche tweet. Then see if you can tweet something similar.
Tweet slideshares and infographics. Those happen to work very well on Twitter.

Those are 70 Twitter tips. Chances are you will choose some of these tips from the list and implement them one at the time. In order to get the best out of this article, I highly recommend that you revisit this article once a week so you can see how many of these tips you are implementing. By implementing all of these tips consistently for a long period of time, you will eventually be able to gain thousands of followers on Twitter every week.

8 Ways To Get More Revines On Vine

June 8, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

vine logo

Vine is a social network on the rise with over 40 million users. Vine will continue growing, but in order to take advantage of Vine’s growth, your content needs to spread. Some people have gone viral on Vine while others struggle to get one person to revine their Vine. Getting more revines is super important towards you going viral on Vine and gaining hundreds of followers every day. In order to get more revines on Vine, follow these 8 tips:

Get more followers on Vine. In order to get more revines, people need to know about you. By building your following, you will build an audience of people who will be more likely to revine your videos. I wrote an entire blog post that goes more into detail about how you can get more followers on Vine.
Post content that people would want to revine. Your followers are not going to revine a six second video of a torn up couch. Ask yourself if your friends would revine what you are putting up. If they wouldn’t revine what you posted on Vine, then few people will.
Revine other people’s videos. In order to get more revines for your videos, you need to revine other people’s videos. Some of these people will revine you back while other people will revine you so they get a revine back.
Have a giveaway. If you give away a $25 Amazon Gift Card to one person who revines your video, then most of your followers will come by and revine your video. Who here doesn’t want a $25 Amazon Gift Card?
Use your other social networks to promote your videos on Vine. If you already established a strong presence on one of your social networks, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Use your strong following on one of your social networks to get some awareness for another social network.
Get some of your friends on Vine. If you are in each other’s videos, then if one friend goes viral, then you all go viral. In addition, you will be able to revine each other and then get more revines from your followers.
Vine every day. If you post one video to Vine every day, your revine rate will go up. Better yet, try posting two videos on Vine every day. It only takes six seconds to create a video (unless you are doing stunts and need retakes).
Don’t give in. You may not a substantial difference in the amount of revines you get within a few days or weeks. However, you will eventually see a big difference in the number of revines you get. By not giving in, you will be able to see the big change happen.

Those are 8 ways to get more revines on Vine. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional methods you use to get more revines? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How To Go And Stay Viral With Circular Viralocity

June 7, 2014 by Marc Guberti 14 Comments

Going viral is the dream that many entrepreneurs, authors, and others have. It is an experience that allows you to get in touch with hundreds of thousands of people, possibly make a lot of money, and spread the word about your brand. Virality allows you to go from another person on the web to an international sensation. Then, you get to become a case study for others, and everyone will be asking you how you went viral.

You will get a lot more attention for going viral. However, there are some people who go viral only for a short amount of time. These people do go viral and bring their YouTube videos up to 100,000 views or make five times as much month on the day it went viral. However, after a few months go by, the next big thing is already here. At this time, someone else went viral, and the people who went viral a few months ago become long forgotten. One viral tweet was the one when the teacher would cancel the exam if the tweet got retweeted 15,000 times. There are other tweets that also went viral so no one wouldh have to take the final. However, those viral posts and others before them are now long forgotten.

Is viral marketing a one hit wonder? Does viral marketing result in a dramatic increase in sales, but then sales go back to normal once virality is lost? Some people are able to keep their virality long after they start going viral. There are many strategies to prolong the amount of time a YouTube video or a Facebook posts stays viral. However, these strategies do not keep virality forever. Keeping virality seemed hopeless, at least it seemed hopeless until Brendon Burchard came up with his theory, Circular Viralocity.

According to Burchard, Circular Viralocity is, “A crazy simple and effective strategy for posting and reposing specific archetypes of content on specific platforms at specific times with specific links and specific directives.” The only problem with the theory is that you could only learn about implementing this theory by buying a $1,997 training course or going to his $10,000 event in California (he gave some tickets away for free to people who signed up to his membership sites and training courses, but getting the ticket to fly to California still costs a lot for the people who do not live nearby). I did not feel like paying $1,997 or going to the event.

My solution was trying to discover the methods on my own that Burchard uses to implement Circular Viralocity. Since implementing the tactic, Burchard was able to get hundreds of thousands of extra likes on his Facebook Page. In addition, his newest YouTube videos have been viewed over 100,000 times each while most of his videos before that rarely went over 50,000 views. The results were obviously there, and the only thing stopping me from implementing Circular Viralocity was identifying how it worked.

The first place I decided to investigate was Brendon Burchard’s Facebook Page. Prior to watching his video about Circular Viralocity, my Facebook Page had under 100 likes, and I wanted to build my presence on Facebook. Most of his Facebook posts are motivational and get thousands of likes. Those are the kinds of results that we would all like to have.

While looking through his Facebook posts, I noticed a pattern. He would say something very motivational and then offer complementary content at the end of the post. That complementary content turned out to either be one of Burchard’s YouTube videos (one of the videos that got over 100,000 views), a link to one of his blog posts, or a link to Burchard’s free email opt-in box that promotes his membership site, High Performance Academy. This part of Circular Viralocity is the easy-to-understand part that most people implement. They use their social networks to get more YouTube views and blog traffic.

Most of Burchard’s blog posts start off with one of his YouTube videos. By clicking on and watching the YouTube video, that counts as another view on YouTube. There is text directly below the video that allows visitors to read what gets said in the video, or the text contains a powerful story. Burchard’s blog is a Tumblr blog which means visitors can reblog (Tumblr’s version of a retweet) or like his content. In addition, it is hard to ignore the follow button at the right corner. Right next to the follow button are links to Burchard’s Facebook Page and Twitter account.

Now let’s say you clicked on the link to one of Burchard’s YouTube videos. At the very beginning of the video’s description, Burchard promotes his Facebook Page, blog, podcast, and free book. This part of Circular Viralocity quickly became obvious, and the name gave it away. When you implement Circular Viralocity, if one social network or product goes viral, then they all go viral.

Here is the condensed summary:

Burchard’s Facebook Page promotes his YouTube videos, podcast, email opt-in box for High Performance Academy, and blog.
Burchard’s blog promotes his Facebook Page, Twitter account, YouTube videos, podcast, and email optin box for High Performance Academy.
Burchard’s YouTube video descriptions promote his Facebook Page, podcast, blog, and email optin box for High Performance Academy.

That means if you see Brendan Burchard once, chances are you will see him a lot for the next 30 minutes. After you connect all of your social networks together, the next thing you need to do is post the archetypes of content that your targeted audience likes. For Burchard, that means motivational videos, and his YouTube videos that brought in over 100,000 views were motivational. In addition, most of Burchard’s posts are motivational quotes with a few paragraphs explaining that quote. This is the recurring archetype that Burchard uses to get over 10,000 Facebook likes every day.

The next part of Circular Viralocity is posting your content at the right time. Posting on Facebook at 6 am and posting on Pinterest at 6 am are two very different things. In order to find the ideal time for you to post new content, you need to figure out when your audience is on Facebook the most. Track your results and repost content so you can determine when most of your audience is on Facebook, Pinterest, and other social networks as well.

The specific links are the ones that relate to the message of your post but then lead the reader to your other content (i.e. A video or blog post). You need to make sure that the content you are introducing them to is free so you keep their attention for a longer period of time. If you wrote an inspirational post about conquering fear, the YouTube video you link to should be about conquering fear. Connect the themes of your content together with what you post on your social networks.

The last part of Circular Viralocity is giving your readers specific directives. Write posts that give the readers the right actions to do. Saying anything like, “Click this” is not the right type of action. For an inspirational post about conquering fear, a good action would be something like, “Shove fear into the very back of your mind by envisioning yourself as the most successful person in your niche.” That’s a good action to perform, and when you add the complementary video or blog post at the end of your Facebook post, more people will be inclined to click on the link.

And that’s how you master circular viralocity. After you connect your social networks, blog, and YouTube channel together, you need to focus on certain themes and have those themes reappear throughout your social media posts, blog posts, and videos.

What are your thoughts on Circular Viralocity?

Does The Length Of A Blog Post Matter For Search Engines

June 6, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

blog post length

A while ago, I wrote a blog post about whether the length of a blog post mattered or not. When I wrote that blog post, I looked at it from the perspective of how long it takes to relay the message. While there are some long blog posts out there, some blog posts can relay the same message in a few sentences. Seth Godin’s Polishing Junk post is a perfect example of how you can relay the same message in a few sentences.

However, the length of a blog post does have an impact on the search engines. Most of the top blog posts on search engines are over 1,000 words long. You are not getting as much traffic as you could be getting if you stopped at 500 words. You’re not even getting as much traffic as you could be getting if you stopped at 900 words. Although there is no golden number, the data suggests that you should write 1,000 words or more for all of your blog posts.

According to serpIQ, the Top 10 blog posts that appeared on search engines for certain keywords (serpIQ tested over 20,000 keywords) had over 2,000 words. Coincidentally, some of the most successful blogs have posts that are over 2,000 words. One of the first blog posts that appears when you search “blogging tips” is Buffer’s 16 Top Tips From Blogging Experts From Beginners. The blog post was over 2,000 words long, and most of Buffer’s blog posts tend to be that long. Although the Buffer App helps out with this, the site has an Alexa Rank under 2,000. In addition, that blog post was shared over 4,000 times on different social networks (over 2,000 times on Twitter alone).

You may be wondering at this point how you can add more meat to your blog posts. Chances are you want to write 1,000 word blog posts so your traffic numbers go up.

Writing longer blog posts has another advantage. If you write longer blog posts, your visitors will stay on your blog for a longer period of time. According to Alexa, the average visitor stays on Quick Sprout for 3 minutes and 29 seconds, and the average visitor stays on Buffer for 4 minutes and 6 seconds. These two blogs have numerous blog posts that are all 2,000 or more words long. It takes more than two minutes for most people to read a blog post with 2,000 or more words. As more people stay on your blog, your sidebar will get more attention. If you have an effective sidebar with the right widgets, people will stay on your blog longer. When people stay on your blog longer, they will also be more likely to subscribe to your blog and buy one of your products.

One of the easiest ways to add more meat to your blog posts is by submitting queries on HARO related to your blog posts. Instead of writing down 10 tips, have 10 different people each explain 1 tip in great detail. Then, add all of those people’s explanations in your blog post. It saves you time because most of the content is already provided for you, and you are able to publish a blog post with 1,000 or more words.

As you write more content, it will be easier for you to write 1,000 words in your blog posts. I got comfortable with writing two blog posts every day which made it easier for me to write one 1,000 word blog post every day. The best way to get better at anything, especially writing, is with practice.

Another option you have to write longer blog posts is by doing your own research. For this blog post, I did research to identify how writing longer blog posts has an impact on the search engines. Adding research allowed me to go more in depth with statistics instead of me just saying, “Longer blog posts do better in search engines.” Doing the research allows you to further clarify why what you are saying is true and why your visitors need to implement these tactics now.

Although you may want to write blog posts that are 1,000 words each, avoid rambling at all costs. It is possible to write a 1,000 word blog post in just 500 words, and it is possible to write a blog post shorter than 500 words that gets the same point across. When you write long blog posts that are over 1,000 words, those blog posts need to contain quality, non-repetitive content. A big mistake many people make to get over 1,000 words in a blog post (or over 2,000) is writing the same sentence with different words over and over again until the blog post exceeds 1,000 words. Writing repetitive sentences does not help you in the search engines. Although writing longer blog posts does help, the rules of quality content still apply. Once you get someone to visit your blog and read your blog post, you want someone to stick around long enough to read the entire blog post. That means your blog post, from start to finish, needs to be really good.

Many bloggers are quick to get discouraged by looking at their current blog posts. To go from writing 250 words every day for your blog to writing 1,000 words every day for your blog is a big transition to make. However, there is a very easy way for any blogger to write 1,000 word blog posts. One of the biggest lies in blogging is that once you publish a blog post, no more new content can be added to that blog post. In reality, all you need to do to add more content to one of your blog posts is to go to your blog’s dashboard, go to the blog post, click edit, add more content, and then update the blog post. Just because the blog post you recently published has only 500 words does not mean you can’t bring that blog post up to 1,000 words by the end of the day. Not only is this an easy way to have more blog posts that are over 1,000 words long, but this will also give you the confidence you need to write more 1,000 word blog posts in the future.

Writing 1,000 word blog posts every day is a challenging task worth accomplishing. As you get better at writing more quality content faster, you may want to bump it up to 2,000 words per blog post. Writing an extra 500 words for your blog posts every day and adding 100 extra words to your existing blog posts every day can be the difference between getting 100 daily visitors from search engines versus getting thousands of daily visitors from search engines in the long-term.

What are your thoughts on writing longer blog posts to rank higher on the search engines?

7 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Blogging

June 5, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

In any niche, you will learn things that you wish you knew earlier. Although you can implement new methods in your niche right now, it can take several months or even a year for you to learn first hand which methods work and which ones don’t. As a new blogger, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. SEO seemed impossible, I was stuck at 1,667 followers, and I had no idea how to grow my traffic. Throughout my journey, I learned several things about blogging that I wish I knew about earlier. Out of all of those things, these were the seven that I wish I knew before I even started blogging.

The power of categories. Categories allow you to organize your content so readers can find what they are looking for faster. Categories also allow you to organize your content for your convenience. If you want to write a book about one of the topics you write blog posts about, you can go back to your categories and use your blog posts as inspiration. I found out about categories late in the game and had written over 800 uncategorized blog posts. I ended up categorizing all of those blog posts within 1 week, but categorizing that many blog posts in a short amount of time was not an enjoyable activity.
The way you use your social networks is important. Many articles emphasize the importance of having social networks. However, it is also important to utilize those social networks properly. You do not get found simply by joining Twitter. If that were the case, everyone would have 1 million followers. You get found by implementing your social networks properly. Luckily for you, I created the Twitter category and have other categories dedicated to social networks as well. It was more than a year late because I did not know about the power of categories, but it’s better late than never.
Quantity is just as important as quality. When I started to write two blog posts every day, I got more traffic. In addition, as this blog got older, blog posts accumulated over time. The blog with 800 blog posts has more visibility in the search engines than the blog with just 1 blog post. However, I am not telling you to write 800 blog posts in 1 day because it is very unlikely for anyone to write 800 quality blog posts in 1 day. Although it is a starting point, blogging once a week is not enough. You should be publishing 1 blog post every day.
Patience is a virtue. When I realized my blog was not going to be the overnight sensation I thought it would be, I was not happy. I would spend multiple hours every day on my blog and only get 5 visitors for the week. Even though there were other things I could have done as a teenager, I decided to stick with blogging. I knew that most bloggers got their success by being patient, but at the time, the thought of being patient simply frustrated me. Understand that the process of becoming a successful blogger takes time, but if you put in the time, you will become very successful.
Focus on one blog. Before I took blogging seriously, my topics were scattered all over the place. I had separate blogs for my dog, the Boston Red Sox, baseball news, Legos, Yugioh Cards, and others as well. As a result, my numbers got scattered. Some of these blogs got 10 visitors every week while others got 50 visitors every week. I believe that if these numbers were combined together into one blog, that blog would be very popular. That’s exactly what I did when I created this blog. I decided to abandon the other blogs so I could focus on this one. If you want to create multiple blogs, have people write guest posts on all of your blogs except one.
SEO is overrated. I spent countless hours learning about SEO expecting to get thousands of extra monthly visitors just 30 days after implementing the SEO tactics. While SEO is not a dud, it is more important to utilize your social networks. How you use your social networks also happens to have a big impact on SEO.
Email lists are super important. For multiple years, I thought that the most important thing to do was get more traffic. However, once you get that traffic, you need to keep those visitors on your site. In addition, you need to get first time visitor to visit your blog numerous times in the future. If you have a big email list, that means more people are getting notified about your new blog posts through email, and it seems as if everyone is checking their email these days.

Those are the seven things I wish I knew before I started blogging. What are your thoughts on the list? Is there anything else that you wish you knew before you started blogging? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

And if you are considering starting your first blog now, then you’ll find this guide to be very helpful.

Are You Throwing Away Your Blog Traffic?

June 4, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

There are many bloggers who dream of getting hundreds of visitors on their blog every day. These people believe that getting these extra visitors will translate to more sales, more shares, and more subscribers. However, there are some people with hundreds of visitors who are not satisfied with their results. Even though these people took the time to grow their presence on the web, they are only getting 5 extra sales.

I noticed this problem for my books. I used to show all of my books on my blog’s sidebar, and when I did this, the links generated over 200 clicks every month. Alas, I only made two sales from those clicks. Having those pictures on my blog also made it slower (and hurt SEO). The people who clicked on the links left my blog, and I lost a visitor who could have possibly subscribed to my blog.

If people leave your blog to click on a link to one of your products or a link to one of your social networks, that traffic is being thrown away. Even if someone follows you on a social network, who knows when that person will see one of your social media posts. I do my best to make sure all of my followers see one of my tweets. However, if someone does not log in for an entire day, then there’s nothing I can do about it. The better option is to have people subscribe to your blog. It is better to have 1,000 subscribers than it is to have 1,000 followers. Subscribers get emailed every time a new blog post gets published, and who doesn’t check their email? Followers may not see all of your posts.

If you are getting someone to subscribe to your blog, you are not throwing away your traffic. If anything else occurs, traffic is being thrown away.

The big question you may have right now is how it is possible to still gain followers even though it is bad to have links that lead to your social media accounts. The solution is to have a button on your blog that will allow someone to follow you without leaving your blog. The button for my Twitter account allows anyone reading my blog to follow me without going on Twitter. All a reader has to do is click the button and that’s it. Not only do you make it easier for people to follow you on Twitter, but you also allow them to stay on your blog. Even if you have to make your social media buttons smaller to get the desired effect, it is more important to keep someone on your blog (and possibly get that person to subscribe) than it is to get another follower. 100 followers are not going to be the difference between your book becoming a bestseller, but 100 people on your email list (in some cases, big fans) who can get notified the moment your book comes out will be very likely to buy that book.

Getting someone to stay on your blog for an extra minute can be the difference between someone who subscribes to your blog and someone who walks away. Over the long-term, it can be the difference between getting a lot of sales and getting no sales at all.