Traffic

5 Methods To Create A Compelling Free Prize

May 18, 2014 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

Free prizes are only effective if they are compelling. The free prize needs to be something that your visitors would want that could have been a paid product. However, many people make the mistake of offering a free prize that is not compelling. A compelling free prize encourages people to subscribe to your blog. A compelling free prize encourages people to buy your paid products later down the road. If you want your free prize to be compelling, follow these 5 methods.

Have an eye-catching design. People do judge a free prize by the cover. You need to come up with an eye-catching design for your free prize so your visitors will have a reason to subscribe. Some people will get your free prize just because it looks cool.
Make it essential for your target audience. The free prize you give away must match your target audience’s interests. If your target audience is people who want to grow their social media presence, a free guide to gaining more followers on any social network would be a compelling free prize.
Get people to mention your free prize. If your free prize gets mentioned on other people’s websites, more people will subscribe to get the free prize. Positive reviews are a big factor towards how many sales your book makes. Getting positive reviews for your free prize will make people want to get their hands on your free prize.
Make it different from the other free prizes out there. The free prizes in cereal boxes used to be a big deal. Now that more companies have a free prize in their cereal boxes, the free prize in the cereal box has gotten old. There are millions of free prizes out there, but if you want your free prize to be compelling, your free prize needs to stand out from the other free prizes.
Make getting the free prize easy. If someone has to fill in their address, phone number, and date of birth to get the free prize, your free prize will not be compelling. Instead of appreciating the free prize for what it is, visitors will only think of how complicated it was to finally gain access to the free prize. Instead of making it hard for your visitors to get the free prize, only ask for their email address (asking for the person’s first name is optional). By making it easier for your visitors to get the free prize, those visitors will be more likely to enter in their information.

Those are the five methods to make your free prize compelling. What are your thoughts about the list? Do you have any suggestions for the list? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How To Successfully Make A Connection With A Journalist On Twitter

May 12, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Journalism

Do you want to be on Forbes, The Huffington Post, or one of those other popular media outlets? The main way to get on big media outlets is by connecting with journalists on Twitter and having a remarkable story. There are some tips to help you out with your remarkable story, but in order to get noticed by the big media outlets, connecting with those journalists on Twitter is just as important as having the remarkable story.

There is a blueprint to use that will get a journalist’s attention. Once you have that journalist’s attention, then you can tell them about your story. Here’s what you need to do to get their attention:

Look for a journalist who is not overwhelmingly popular. The less followers a journalist has, the more likely that journalist is to interact with you. You should contact the journalist with 10,000 followers before you contact the journalist with 1 million followers. Even if the journalist who has 10,000 followers is not from your favorite media outlet, it is important to remember that news spreads. When my dog got in The Associated Press, she also went in newspapers like this one, that one, and a bunch of others as well.
Favorite and retweet the journalist’s articles. Only favorite and retweet articles that you actually like. If you like what the journalist writes, and the story relates to your niche or story, then that is the journalist who is likely to write about you (and the person who you want to have write about you). In addition, you can mention the journalist and tell the journalist that they wrote a good article.
Wait for the journalist to respond. Not all journalists respond, but when they do, you need to strengthen the connection. Once the journalist responds to you, then you have their attention.

After you have the journalist’s attention, you need to build on that attention and build it into a strong connection. Here are the steps you need to take in order to build the attention into a strong connection.

Thank the journalist for responding to your tweet the right way. Instead of saying, “Thank you for responding,” you should say something that tells the journalist that he/she is doing a good job on the web. A good response to start with would be, “I enjoy reading and sharing content like yours on the web.”
Continue the conversation by asking an ego boosting question. All you have to do at the end of the tweet is say, “How did you get started as a professional writer?” or something along those lines. When people talk about themselves, the same parts of the brain are triggered as when people talk about food or sex. If that journalist likes food and/or sex (who doesn’t like one, the other, or both), then that journalist will respond to your tweet. Many journalists do not hesitate to promote themselves when the opportunity comes. Asking the question gives them that opportunity.
Respond to that tweet and continue the conversation. There is no rubric for this step. Your response depends on how the journalist responds. The key to the connection working is that you have a lengthy conversation before you ask the journalist to write about you.
When to ask the question. After you get the conversation with the journalist, continue favoriting and retweeting that person’s tweets. That way, the journalist will not forget about you. If the journalist cannot forget about you, then you have won the hardest part of the battle. All you have to do is continue favoriting and retweeting the journalist’s tweets. After 2-4 weeks have gone by, ask the journalist the question. Say something like, “I do BLANK and was wondering if you would like to learn more.” In order to increase your likelihood of appearing in the newspaper, what you do needs to be related to what the journalist writes about.

You should repeat this process for multiple journalists. One of those journalists will say yes, and then it will only be a matter of time before other newspapers hear about you and write about your story. Once you make it in a newspaper for the first time, it progressively becomes easier to make it in others newspapers out there.

Why You Need To Respond To The People Who Comment On Your Blog

May 11, 2014 by Marc Guberti 12 Comments

blog comment

Why do you want more comments on your blog posts? Most bloggers want more comments on their blog posts to show that people interact on their blogs. Bloggers want conversations to get started on their blogs to indicate that their blog is popular. The most popular blogs also happen to have numerous comments on every blog post. It’s not a coincidence.

What most bloggers forget is that they can build conversations by simply responding to other people’s comments. Responding to someone else’s comment counts as a comment in the grand total. If you respond to 25 comments, people will see that your blog post has received 50 comments. That shows bustling activity and popularity: the two things that people look for in a blog.

Not only is responding to the people who comment on your blog a way to bring up the numbers, but responding to other people’s comments will allow you to further open discussion. By further opening the discussion, you will encourage more people to comment and possibly learn about things in your niche that you did not know about before. As you continue replying to comments and building your presence on the web, some people will write a good comment on your blog just to get your reply. There is a point when a blogger becomes so famous that a reply from that blogger means a lot.

Another benefit to responding to comments is your ability to build stronger connections. The advantage with WordPress (and many others) is that the person who comments must enter their email address. By requiring everyone who comments to enter their email address, you will be able to reply to those comments and send emails to those people. The people who commented on your blog will be very grateful that you took the time to send a personalized message, and that will allow the connection to build. A new connection can end up becoming a customer, subscriber, or better yet, a returning customer.

There are many benefits associated with replying to comments on your blog. Do you reply to the comments on your blog? If you leave a comment below, I will be sure to respond.

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.

17 Ways To Write Attention-Grabbing Headlines

May 10, 2014 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

Attention Grabbing Headline

The most read blog posts are the ones with the best headlines. Your blog post could get more traffic just by making your blog post’s title something that grabs the reader’s attention. Most people who share blog posts on social networks use the headline to determine whether they should share a blog post on their social networks or not. These are the 17 ways to come up with attention-grabbing headlines.

Use a different language in the title. You have to be Spanish to know what consejos means. In one of my popular blog posts, I used this word to grab the reader’s attention. This method drew in the reader’s curiosity, but do not get carried away with this option.
Use action verbs in your title. Grab your reader’s attention right from the start by using action verbs in your headlines. You will probably not be able to do this for all of your blog posts, but when you can use action verbs, they help.
Offer something special. Among my most popular blog posts are 100 Amazing Blogging Tips and 100 Amazing Pinterest Tips. Offering 100 tips stands out from the competition. Your headline needs to tell people what extra, above and beyond information you are giving them.
Use better adjectives. Good is a boring, overused word. “5 Good Tips” is not the kind of headline that grabs attention. “5 Powerful Tips” is something that grabs your attention by emphasizing how valuable those tips are.
Make your headline either really long or really short. A short headline will make the reader curious. In this scenario, readers will wonder why you decided to write a short headline. A long headline will give the reader information about your blog post before they read the first sentence.
Have a strong topic sentence. The topic sentence is to further emphasize your headline and grab attention.
Include the NSA in your headline. This one never fails. With Heartbleed and corruption on the loose, millions of people want to know what is going on with the NSA (the not so secure agency). You may win a Pulitzer Prize while you’re at it.
Write a headline about a breaking news story. Everyone wants to know the news. That’s why there are trending topics on social networks.
Write a headline with the name of a famous person and connect it to your blog post. A blog post called “How To Become As Dedicated As Mariano Rivera” would get more attention than a blog post called “How To Get More Dedication.” When you use this method, everything you say needs to be true (then again, that is always the case).
Use words that have been hardwired to get people’s attention. MONEY, FOOD, and SEX. I’m sure those words popped right out of your screen.
Look at the pros. The people who are making a living off of their blogs are the ones who typically master writing good headlines.
Use bigger words. Effective is a bigger word than good.
Occasionally use words people do not know the meanings of. Don’t go Shakespeare on us, but for 5-10% of your blog posts, you should use words that people do not know the definitions of. In order for this to work, you need to define the word within the first 5 sentences of your blog post.
Be controversial. What are your thoughts about President Obama, The United Kingdom, and a Jesuit Pope? Although you may not talk about those three on your blog, you can be controversial in your niche. Is retweeting better than mentioning? Is stretching better than lifting weights? The possibilities are endless.
Trial and error. As you write more blog posts, you will be able to see which headlines on your blog get the most traffic. Write headlines similar to the ones that get the most traffic.
What headlines catch your attention? 2K To 10K is a book about writing more words every day. That headline caught my attention, and some of my headlines are modeled around that headline. Everyone does this. A classic example is 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. Now there are blog posts about 7 habits of any highly effective person in any field.
Have a 7 in the headline. It works in getting more conversions, so why not headlines?

Those are the 17 ways to write attention-grabbing headlines. By writing attention-grabbing headlines, more people will read and share your content. What are your thoughts on the list, and do you have any additional tips to add? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Why You Need To Be On Twitter

April 30, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

If you are not on Twitter, then you need to get on right away. Twitter has allowed small business owners, authors, entrepreneurs, and others to interact with customers on a large scale. Twitter’s character limitations make the giant social network simpler to understand than other social networks.

One of Twitter’s big features is the ability to create lists. You can use lists on Twitter to read tweets from desired users. You can put all of your customers on one list, and you can put all of your sources on another list. You have the choice to make your individual lists public or private. Many small business owners, entrepreneurs, and others use this feature to connect with customers at a faster rate and learn more about their niche.

In addition, Twitter will allow you to build connections who you do not know yet. I have been privileged with the ability to make thousands of new connections just from Twitter. The people I connect with on Twitter are eager to join in on conversations and share my content.

Twitter has allowed many people to put the “social” back into their businesses. In a world where there are too many automated telephone messages to count, the customer greatly appreciates it when they have a conversation with another person. Instead of listening to, “If you would like to schedule an appointment, press 1,” your customers will be able to read, “Let’s get a date for that appointment!”

Twitter is a powerful way to build your presence on the web. I have written multiple case studies about how Twitter has helped this blog, and I will write more as well. Most of the people who visit this blog came from Twitter. By sticking with Twitter and growing a strong presence on that social network, it will eventually be able to drive hundreds of daily visitors to your blog (then thousands).

There may be some people reading this blog post who have no interest in using Twitter for business. However, anyone can use Twitter to get real-time news. Twitter’s trending topics allow people to stay up to date with what is happening in the world. In addition, you can see what people in the world think and say about important events.

There are several other reasons to use Twitter as well, but know that if you do not have a Twitter account yet, you should get one as soon as possible.