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7 Secrets To Find Your Target Audience

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target audience

Every marketer’s mission is to find, and understand, their target audience. Once you find your audience, you’ll come in contact with people who warmly receive your message.

My target audience doesn’t consist of music lovers. You may love music, but you’re probably here to learn about digital marketing and productivity. If you want to learn how to play the guitar, this blog isn’t for you.

We all know the importance of a target audience, but how do you find YOUR target audience? That’s what this blog post is all about!

#1: Identify Your Target Audience

If you don’t know who you’re trying to reach, you’ll struggle to find your target audience. Before you do any research or write any new content, you first need to understand exactly who you are trying to reach.

Instead of thinking of your target audience as a large group of faceless people, think about one person who would be interested in hearing your message. Is this person a guy, a gal, or does it matter? My brand is for guys and gals alike, but other brands like WBENC cater more to women.

When I began to identify my target audience, I asked myself the following questions:

  • What are their goals?
  • What problems do they have?
  • Where do they work?
  • What is their age and occupation?
  • Where do they hang out on- and offline?
  • Who are their friends?
  • What do they do for fun?
  • How do they think and feel?
  • What leg of the journey are they in right now (beginner, intermediate, or advanced)?

Try to answer these questions as specifically as you can, you should create customer personas for each use case, or user type, relevant to your product or service.

At the most basic level, personas allow you to personalize your marketing for different segments of your audience. For example, instead of sending the same lead nurturing emails to everyone in your database, segment according to your buyer personas to tailor your messaging according to what you know about each.

Here are some practical methods for gathering that information:

  • Interview customers either in person or over the phone to discover what they like about your product or service.
  • Look through your contacts database to uncover trends about how certain leads or customers find and consume your content.
  • Take into consideration your sales team’s feedback on the leads they are interacting with most. What types of sales cycles does your sales team work with? What generalizations can they make about the different types of customers you serve best? 

You can also use the forms on your website to capture important persona information. For example, if  your personas vary based on company size, ask each lead for information about company size on your forms. You could also gather information on what forms of social media your leads use by asking a question about social media accounts.

In sum, for each persona you should identify background, demographics, identifiers such as demeanor and communication methods, goals, challenges (and how you meet them), plus real quotes and common objections.

Once you identify your buyer personas, you should try to provide free value that matches the needs and preferences of each. For example, one individual within my audience suggested that I write a blog post about finding your target audience.

This individual certainly isn’t the only person who wants to find and grow a target audience, but he or she likely represents others in my audience who have similar questions. I wrote this blog post for that individual, but by so doing so, I will reach other members of my audience at the same time.

In the beginning, you’ll do an intense amount of investigative work to understand your target audience. But once they start embracing your content, your audience will begin to grow by default.

#2: Grow A Targeted Social Media Audience

Social media is a free tool that helps content creators grow a target audience. Most social networks follow the same path to growth.

  • Find an influencer in your niche
  • Follow that person’s newest followers
  • Watch your own follower counts grow

If you use this tactic, day after day, you could end up with results like this:

target audience

Growing my Twitter account in this way has resulted in 100,000+ people visiting my blog every year from Twitter alone. The additional social media traffic also has a significant impact on my SEO traffic.

However, simply following others doesn’t guarantee people will follow you back. To earn a follow, you must be worthy of that follow. More importantly, you’ll never be worthy of everyone’s follow. Rather, you want to position yourself in such a way that you attract followers who are part of your target audience.

You can do this by posting valuable content to your social networks. Valuable content is defined as content that helps specific people. With this definition, each person has a different view of what value means. Fashion articles don’t provide much value to me, because I’m not very interested in fashion.

On the other hand, a productivity book would grab my attention and provide me with an immense amount of value (as long as it’s a great book). Not everyone will like your content, and that’s okay. Stay focused on your target audience and the rewards will come.

This is how you find your target audience on social media: find people of interest and make it as easy as possible for them to find you, follow you, and consume your content.

Once you start growing your target audience, you’ll want them to perform certain actions. You may want your social media followers to join your email list, for example.

Some people try to push their social media followers through their sales funnel, directly from the networks themselves, but this tactic almost always results in failure.

You shouldn’t promote your products directly on social media, at least not very often. However, social media is a brilliant indirect sales machine.

Promote your call-to-actions daily to increase sign-ups. For my Twitter strategy, I tweet one of my landing pages every hour. I even have a pinned tweet of my landing page that generates powerful social proof for my offer.

target audience

If you want your audience to perform a certain action, put that call-to-action in front of your target audience as much as possible without being annoying. You may be surprised to hear that tweeting your landing page every hour isn’t annoying if you’re generally tweeting about other things every 10 minutes.

But on Facebook, and most other social networks, you shouldn’t promote your landing page at that frequency. The best way to determine the ideal frequency for any social network is to experiment. I experimented with my tweeting frequency 10 different times before I decided on my current plan of action.

As you grow your social media audience, it will take additional time to engage in consistent interaction and to provide even more high-value content. At this stage, you may want to outsource certain tasks to lighten your social media, and overall, workload.

Outsourcing helps keep these various tasks from taking over your work day. You’ll have more time to explore new opportunities and build upon the opportunities you’re currently pursuing.

When outsourcing, just make sure you don’t over reach. The ideal approach is to grow your freelancer army gradually.

#3: Answer Questions On Quora

Quora is perhaps one of the most underrated sources of blog traffic. Not only will you increase your blog traffic, you’ll also find your target audience in a powerful way — through their questions.

Quora is a social networking site that has 160,000 monthly users who ask questions and submit answers. Back in 2015, Quora’s CEO, Adam D’Angelo had this to say about Quora’s traffic.

quora ceo post

Wouldn’t you want a slice of that pie… especially if it helps you find your target audience?

I make it a goal to answer at least three questions on Quora every day. That way, my content gets seen by more people. The case study I mentioned earlier does a good job at depicting how Quora can lead people in your target audience to your blog.

While I currently don’t get enough results worthy of a case study, it’s great to know that a good number of people are viewing my answers.

target audience

I posted most of these answers several weeks ago. Here are the initial spikes I got when the answers were recently published:

target audience

As you can see, answering questions won’t lead to immediate gratification from your stats. But if you continue answering questions, hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people will eventually view your answers on a daily basis.

Plus, they make for great starting points for future blog posts.

Getting this many views on Quora requires that you consistently answer questions from your target audience. I personally prefer to answer as many questions as possible, regardless of popularity.

Most questions on Quora have the potential to spread like wildfire. A good rule of thumb is to answer questions that have under 10 responses and little more than 10 followers. These questions have more potential to spread, and if you answer first, you’re in a position to reap most of the traffic.

On Quora, the first few answers tend get more views and traction than those that follow. But sometimes you can piggyback off a popular question with hundreds of answers and still get a lot of views.

In the beginning, I advise that you answer at least three questions each day and don’t focus on getting more views. Once you get comfortable with answering questions, then get serious about increasing your views.

If you answer a lot of questions related to a particular topic, you can set up notifications. With a preset notification, you’ll receive emails with new questions related to the topic. This way, you are often one of the first people to answer the question.

Answering questions first puts you in a position to get more views and earn more respect from the person who asked the question, and everyone else who reads your answer.

#4: Comment On Blogs In Your Niche

Some people believe that commenting on blogs in your niche to increase traffic is a futile approach. If you’re one of those people, then marketing guru Neil Patel disagrees with you. Commenting on blogs in your niche (and your guest posts) still matters. The reason is simple:

That’s where you find your target audience.

 

Your target audience doesn’t only read your blog. They read other people’s blogs, too. If my visitors read a post on Jeff Bullas’ Blog, and see my comment at the bottom, they are instantly reminded of another blog they can visit.

At the same time, if I get the original blogger’s attention, I am scoring points for my influencer marketing efforts. It’s easy to get an influencer’s attention simply by leaving a comment on his or her blog. For instance, if you leave a comment on this post, I will certainly respond.

When you leave a comment on someone else’s blog, make sure it provides value. To provide value in a comment, you can either add some relevant insights or ask a great follow-up question, which indicates that you took the time to read the entire post.

Your comment will attract attention from incoming visitors and possibly garner a response from the person who wrote the blog post. However, don’t use comments to promote your own content.

Linking to your blog or landing page within the comment itself is a big no-no. But you often get the chance to include a link to your website and/or landing page before you even begin typing your comment.

My advice for commenting on other blogs is to avoid commenting simply for the sake of leaving a comment. When you reach the end of a blog post, leave a comment only if you can add value to the conversation. It only takes 30-45 seconds and, more often than not, will result in more exposure.

#5: Engage In Twitter Chats Related To Your Niche

A great way to find your target audience is by engaging in Twitter chats related to your niche. Twitter chats usually take Twitter by storm and sometimes end up as trending topics… as long as there’s not a football game at the same time.

While Twitter chats are rare finds, you’ll often come across recurring Twitter chats that take place every week or month. Every time these Twitter chats occur, engage with the people who use the dedicated hashtag, and follow them. You’re bound to get many follow backs from people interested in your niche.

Right now, Tweet Reports is the best tool for finding Twitter chats. Simply subscribe to various bloggers and brands within your niche and pay attention to when they’re conducting Twitter chats.

#6: Pay Attention To Where You Spend Your Time

When you begin the journey to find your target audience, always remember that you are also part of the audience you seek. My target audience consists of people conscious of their productivity and eager to get better digital marketing results.

I’m also a part of that audience. I read blog posts related to digital marketing and have bought more productivity books than I can count. I’m not the only person in my target audience reading those blog posts and buying those books. I can reach people in my target audience simply by leaving a trail of where I go and what I do.

That’s why I encourage you leave a comment on blog posts that you read from start to finish. People who read the entire post are more attentive. They often scroll and read comments. If you don’t spend enough time consuming the content within your niche, you are stunting your growth. Expand upon your knowledge so you can provide more valuable content and give your target audience more reasons to pay attention to your brand.

#7: Partner With Influencers In Your Niche

You’ll spend countless hours in the pursuit of identifying and finding your target audience. But there’s one method to turbocharge your results. This method is to partner with influencers in your niche. Here’s how it works:

  • Contact an influencer in your niche with a similar audience size as your own
  • Agree to promote one another’s content or landing page
  • As your email lists grow, new subscribers benefit both sides

You can make this process easier with an affiliate program that rewards people for getting people to subscribe to your email lists. And you can take this method to an entirely new level by hosting a virtual summit. Virtual summits can do wonders for email list growth and income.

In Conclusion

You must be willing to commit countless hours of your time to spread your message in order to reach the right people. The best way to find your target audience is to understand where they hang out online and build a presence there.

That’s why I have a big presence on several social media platforms. It’s the reason why I take the time to answer questions on Quora, and leave comments at the end of every blog post I read.

This series of actions, carried out over a long period of time, will most certainly result in a goldmine of traffic that helps you prosper.

Now Here’s What I Want From You

What are your thoughts on finding a target audience? Did you find any of the insights in this post especially useful?

Have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below. I read them all 🙂

And if you know anyone else who may benefit from this post, please be sure to pass it on.

[Tweet “7 Secrets To Find Your Target Audience.”]

And if you’re new here, join our mailing list! The form is below. You’ll get a ton of free content just like this.

-Marc

*image credit: Pixabay.com

10 Ways To Get More Video Views

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video viewsThe moment you publish your latest video, you’re hoping it gets as many views as possible. But as we all know, hoping isn’t enough. But hope built around action will create possibility and generates the results you want.

The more effort you put into video creation and marketing, the more visibility you’ll get from each video. If you’re not creating video, then you are missing out on an array of benefits. Consider:

  • Mobile video consumption rises 100% every year on YouTube
  • Including a video on your landing page can increase conversions by 80%
  • 90% of users say that a product video helps their decision process
  • 1/3 of all online activity is spent watching video

HubSpot compiled this information and more into a stunning infographic. Bottom line: video is engaging and has become an integral part of our culture.

If you’re not honing in on video views, here’s how to start:

#1: Tweet Your Newest Videos

While I encourage video sharing on all social networks, Twitter is always the platform I think of first. Why? Because it’s the easiest to use and grow on.

Every time you come out with a new video, share it on Twitter and your other social networks. But don’t mess up the sharing process like most people, who either share it once at the time it’s published, or forget about it for several weeks and then share it once more.

It’s actually worse to forget about the video and then tweet about it a few weeks or months after you’ve published it. Even so, if you only tweet about it once when it goes live, you’re missing out on valuable traffic.

The first 24 hours play a big role in how much visibility your videos will get later on. And regardless of your video creation tool, you’ll have more success promoting the YouTube version since YouTube is the largest platform.

Tweet about your newly published video at least four times on the day of its release. After that, you should continue promoting the video at least once every week.

Outside of Twitter, the rules are different. People won’t appreciate multiple posts about your video on Facebook, for example. The same goes for Instagram and virtually every other social network. Twitter seems to be the exception.

Regardless of which social network(s) you use to promote your latest video, you will likely generate some engagement. Furthermore, some of this engagement will evolve into potential conversations. Identify when people begin to engage, and respond to them in order to nurture the conversion.

Having conversations with people in your audience will increase your credibility and audience engagement with your content. Soon enough you’ll find that people are watching your videos whether you tweet about them or not.

You’ll no longer have to ask people to watch your videos: they’ll simply watch them on their own.

Of course, if someone engages with you in a negative way, ignore that person. Don’t try to sway them. If they are simply negative (which is different from saying they have a problem with your product), move along quickly.

You’ll also notice that every social network provides opportunities for promotion in your bio section. On Twitter, I strategically promote my landing page:

twitter bio example

If you take your videos seriously but don’t yet have a landing page, you can simply promote your YouTube channel. As your channel gains views and subscribers, your newer videos will get seen faster, and by more people.

In addition to linking to your YouTube channel in your bio, you can also spotlight your latest video (or your channel) by pinning a tweet of that video. Pinned tweets garner more engagement and clicks than your typical tweet.

While a typical tweet’s lifespan is short, a pinned tweet is immortal (until you unpin it). Pinned tweets always show up on the top of your profile, and that results in a continuous stream of engagement.

Here’s an example of one of my own pinned tweets:

pinned tweet example

More than 400,000 people have seen this tweet, and over 6,000 people have engaged with it. The result has been thousands of new subscribers.

I give priority to my landing page, which is why you won’t see my YouTube channel featured in my pinned tweets. But if your priority is YouTube, pin a tweet promoting your channel or latest video.

Confused about how to pin a tweet? Read this guide from Social Quant.

#2: Publish Videos On Multiple Platforms

YouTube isn’t the only video giant on the web. While it does overshadow Vimeo and Facebook, there’s no reason to ignore these two platforms.

Do I hear an objection such as, “What about my time? Why not just focus on the best platform?”

Arguments against putting your video on Vimeo and Facebook are the same as not putting your Udemy course on SkillShare.

Yet I know of at least one Udemy instructor who recently shared some of his Udemy courses on SkillShare. Remember, this is the same content. No additional work is required.

I’m sure this instructor, John Shea, is very happy with his decision. Here’s his income report from January 2017:

income report

In John’s case, the simple act of moving videos over from Udemy to SkillShare resulted in an extra $2,975.54 in just two months compared to his previous income report.

Imagine being gifted nearly $3,000 just for moving your videos from one platform to another!

John now creates SkillShare courses that are exclusive to SkillShare, but you get the point. Putting your videos on Vimeo and Facebook gives you access to thousands of extra viewers who prefer Vimeo and Facebook videos over YouTube videos.

Vimeo and Facebook are respected platforms unto themselves. And sometimes being overshadowed by YouTube is actually a good thing: if you publish the same video on Vimeo and YouTube, it will rank better (at least at first) on Vimeo than on YouTube.

The reason for this is competition. If I search for “social media marketing” on YouTube, a highly competitive niche, I get this:

youtube search engine

Nearly 3,900,000 videos are competing for my attention. That’s a big crowd.

Now let’s look at the same search for “social media marketing” on Vimeo:

vimeo search engine

I don’t know about you, but I feel much better about competing against 21,900 videos compared to almost three million.

Yes, YouTube is far more popular than Vimeo, but Vimeo is no slouch. According to Alexa, YouTube is one of the top three websites in existence. Vimeo has a place among the top 200 websites. And if you look at the graph, you can see that Vimeo is growing!

alexa vimeo

I can write an entire blog post about why you need to publish your videos on Vimeo. As for Facebook videos, the special advantage is that Facebook prefers posts with videos and ranks them higher in the News Feed.

You’re leaving thousands of video views on the table if you limit yourself to YouTube. I usually outsource the Vimeo work because of the time it takes to upload. But if you’re not able to do that, implement the Walk Away Method.

The Walk Away Method is exactly what it sounds like. You upload your videos to YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook. As the video uploads start to load, you simply walk away.

When I do the video uploading by myself, I always choose one day of the week to upload everything. Once I set everything to upload, I walk away. I may check the upload status once every 30 minutes, but no more. And I only check to be sure everything is still uploading.

#3: Optimize Your Video Description

The video description is perhaps the most under utilized part of video optimization. While YouTube allows users 5,000 characters to write the description, most people rush through them so they can get back to creating and uploading more videos.

But your video description gives people a reason to watch your video. A well thought-out video description that clearly conveys the video’s message will entice more people to continue watching.

You may not need a video description to get people to click on your video (although it helps for rankings), but you do need a description to keep viewers engaged.

You want to give your viewers EVERY possible reason to stick around. And your description will help viewers determine if your video is of high value or not.

Tubular Insights recommends a 200-500 word description for your videos, and these lengthy descriptions played a role in the brand’s own YouTube success.

Within your 200-500 word descriptions, you can also include links to your blog, your YouTube/Vimeo channel subscription links, your landing pages, and social media profiles.

Plus, once you write the description for one of your videos, you can just reuse it for all of your videos. If you feel overwhelmed just thinking about writing 200-500 word descriptions for your videos, hire someone to do it for you!

#4: Create A Professional Thumbnail

Regardless of which video platform you use, your thumbnail is critical. It’s the first thing people will see regarding your video. They’ll see the thumbnail even before they see the title. And if the thumbnail is good, people will also look at the title.

A professional thumbnail will increase the perceived value your video. A professional thumbnail looks good and conveys the video’s message in one picture.

It’s also a best practice to include some text within the thumbnail that lets people know what your video is about. Assume that your potential visitor will not read the title below the thumbnail.

I’ve created many thumbnails but wanted to provide two of them here. Which one looks more interesting? Which one would you click on?

Screen Shot 2017-03-11 at 11.29.44 AM

Screen Shot 2017-03-11 at 11.30.44 AM

You can tell which one required more effort. For the other thumbnail, I just used one of the three suggestions generated by YouTube. Those are get-by thumbnails. They aren’t professional.

So how do you create a professional thumbnail? My preferred tool of choice is Canva. It lets you preset the YouTube video thumbnail and gives you a bunch of other options.

canva thumbnail dimensions

Once you set the thumbnail, you can choose images from Canva’s library, add text, or upload custom images, all within the dashboard.

Canva pictures

I have an interesting approach to getting these pictures of myself. Rather than take an actual picture, I record a video. Within the video, I strike several poses. Then I view it on my computer, pause it at the ideal pose, and take a screenshot.

Then I crop everything out so I’m only left with my thumbnail, upload the picture to Canva, and add a bit of text and special effects.

#5: Create A Captivating Video

Your video’s quality determines how long people stick around, and YouTube takes minutes watched very seriously when ranking your videos. The longer your video, the more minutes there are to watch.

That’s why longer videos usually perform better than shorter videos. They get a boost from the ‘minutes watched’ ranking. And that makes perfect sense. YouTube wants people to stay on the site for as long as possible.

Youtube benefits more when someone watches five percent of an hour long video (three minutes total) than if someone watches 100 percent of a one minute video. So the longer your videos keep people on YouTube, the more you’ll be rewarded for it.

Of course, a long, poorly done video doesn’t add value for anyone. That’s why it’s important to prepare. I usually create an outline for each video I create in advance. Otherwise I make a video on a topic that I can easily discuss, spontaneously (it took several years for me to reach this point).

If you find it difficult to create lengthy videos, you can combine a series of short videos into a playlist. Putting your videos into a playlist makes it easier for you to rank each individual video. If each video in your playlist is 1-2 minutes long, people won’t mind watching dozens of your videos (possibly in one sitting).

This result in more views and minutes watched for each video in the playlist and the playlist itself. Not only do your videos rank better, but so does your playlist.

If you have a new channel and want to gain traction, you can create a playlist containing some of your videos and some of the most popular YouTube videos within the same stream. Since the playlist contains popular videos, it’s easier to rank the playlist.

If you strategically position one of your videos as the first video of the playlist, your video also performs better. While it’s better to create long videos packed with value, you can also create shorter videos and bunch them together in playlists.

In the playlist scenario, rather than share individual video links on Twitter and other social networks, share a link to the playlist. You can even determine which video gets played in the playlist first. Just click on the video within the playlist that you want people to see first. When people click on the link, they are automatically brought to the video you specified.

#6: Create More Videos

The more videos you create, the more views and minutes watched you can get. I know this sounds obvious, but hear me out.

Some of your subscribers will watch your videos the moment they come out. If you come out with a new video every day instead of every week, these core fans will watch you seven times every week instead of just once per week.

The result is an increase in overall views and minutes watched. Putting your YouTube videos on Vimeo and Facebook automatically triples the number of videos you produce (repurposing & re-uploading count as creating new videos).

There are two ways to establish this habit, and both work very well. The first is to create a set number of videos every day (set a minimum, not a maximum number). By setting and accomplishing goals, you will exceed your perceived limits.

The second approach is to go all-out for 2-3 days per week. In the past, I created at least four videos a day. Now I create at least 20 videos on Tuesdays and Saturdays. I also set two more days aside to create 10 videos.

By bunching up my work in this manner, I get more videos made in a shorter period of time. I also get three days to focus on other parts of my business. I advise trying both of these approaches before you commit to one.

Regardless of which approach you commit to, you’ll also need to publish and promote your videos. I advise outsourcing more of your video business as you grow. You won’t want to spend too much time uploading videos and writing descriptions.

Your focus should be on the marketing—scheduling the social media posts, optimizing for keywords, promoting the videos to your email list, and looking for more ways to expand your reach. Of course, some of these tasks can be outsourced, too.

In his book, Decide, Jim Palmer says, “Delegate or die.” It’s true. If you don’t delegate, or as I prefer to call it, outsource, then you’ll get overwhelmed by your work and lose the joy in what you’re doing. Make the choice to hire a freelancer and gradually expand your army.

#7: Advertise Your Videos

Advertising your videos will definitely get you more video views. There’s no reason to talk about how. When anyone thinks about advertising, extra visibility is a given. The challenge is optimizing the ad for costs and ultimate exposure.

If you want to advertise your videos, then you’ll need to keep track of your cost per conversion/view and how much revenue you make from a conversion.

For instance, if you pay $0.50 per view, and in the video, you promote a $47 product, then you’ll need at least one out of every 94 viewers to buy the product you’re showcasing in your video.

There are two ways you can increase your profit. You either lower the cost per view or you increase the conversion rate.

The conversion rate percentage for one out of 94 is 1.06%. And if you double your conversion rate, it will only cost you $23.50 for each sale. Doubling your conversion rate will do FAR MORE than simply doubling the amount of income you make from advertising.

At the same time, if you bring your costs down to $0.25 per view, you’ll need at least one out of 188 viewers to buy your product to break even, or a 0.53% conversion rate.

Don’t choose to do one over the other. Pursue both options so you can maximize your profit.

#8: Make Collaborative Videos

For a collaborative video, you join forces with another YouTuber in your niche. You each do 50% of the video and 50% of the promotion.

The final result is more videos and exposure for both of your channels. In addition to making collaborative videos, you can team up with other YouTubers, or create a channel with a group of people.

For channels like Dude Perfect, everyone has a responsibility. If you love the trick shots these guys make, you’ll also be interested in what happens behind the scenes. Each person on Dude Perfect has certain responsibilities for the brand.

Each person’s effort lets Dude Perfect showcase various trick shots to millions of people. You can collaborate to any degree whether it be in video production, editing, marketing, or any other area.

#9: Team Up With Other YouTubers In Cross-Promotions

If you prefer to stay in-house with video production, there’s still a way to team up with other YouTubers. The way this method works is to find a YouTuber within your niche, then contact that YouTuber and suggest that you cross promote each other’s videos.

If you strike a deal like this with 10 YouTubers, you’ll have lots of content to share with your audience, and 10 people will be ready to promote your video the moment it goes live.

To find YouTubers to cross-promote with, search for your niche in YouTube’s search results. Then scroll through the results and contact the channels that have an audience size similar to your own.

The bigger channels don’t agree to cross promote with smaller channels since the benefits are severely one-sided. Everyone wants to know what’s in it for them, and people with a similar sized audience will see the potential.

You can follow the same approach on Vimeo by finding people and channels that publish videos within your niche.

#10: Leverage Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is more often mentioned in blog post promotion, but it applies to YouTube, too. Here’s how it works:

  • Mention an influencer in your video.
  • Contact that influencer and let him/her know about the mention.
  • Don’t ask them to share your video (some will anyway).

Also, don’t mention the same influencers over and over again unless you want to annoy them. If you want to mention the same influencer many times, don’t let that influencer know about every mention.

To verify your claim (and boost their ego in a sense), influencers will skim through a blog post to find their name. Then they’ll read the portion of the blog post that was dedicated to them.

You can’t skim a video in the same way you can skim a blog post. But you can offer a time stamp. By letting the influencer know where you mentioned them in your video, he or she can more readily find the reference.

Some may decide to watch your video longer to listen to your other insights. Others will share it with their audiences right away.

My biggest tip for mentioning an influencer is to make sure it’s not artificial. Plan to appropriately mention the influencer in advance. If you don’t make that plan in advance, your delivery may be awkward.

For each of your videos, identify at least three influencers who you would like to mention. Follow up by identifying when you would like to mention these influencers. Finally, do the video and contact the influencers.

In Conclusion

Video is such a critical piece of our culture, and if your business isn’t leveraging video, you’re falling behind. Heck, even the businesses that leverage video are falling behind.

Your brand is no longer impressive simply because it produces high quality videos. Quality videos have become an expectation. But it is impressive when you are willing to work harder and smarter than anyone else, and spend more time marketing your videos.

So that’s how your videos reach more people and keep viewers engaged.

Now Here’s What I Want From You

What are your thoughts on hosting a virtual summit? Which insight in this blog post did you find especially useful?

Have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below. I read them all 🙂

And if you know anyone else who might enjoy this post, please be sure to pass it on.

[Tweet “10 Ways To Get More Video Views.”]

Oh, and if you’re new here, don’t forget to join the mailing list to get a ton of free content just like this. The form is below.

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50 Tactics To Grow Your Email List

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Email List Growth

The digital landscape is always changing right in front of us. More opportunities for growing an email list get presented as the days go by. Live streaming was recently introduced to us a little over a year ago.

Based on the number of articles and videos about live streaming since its existence, it seems as if live streaming apps like Periscope have been around for decades.

It is getting harder and harder for us to imagine life without this changing digital landscape.

No matter how often the digital landscape changes, the story will remain the same. Your email list is your most valuable asset. It’s where the money and ultimate engagement reside.

To grow an email list, you either increase the conversion rate or you get more traffic that gets directed to an opportunity to join your list. Those are the two underlying principles behind all 50 of these tactics.

 

#1: Create A Bunch Of Landing Pages

HubSpot came out with an article that helped us learn the importance of creating landing pages in bulk. More landing pages means more free offers that people can choose between…and therefore a bigger email list.

If you have Offer A and Offer B, some people won’t like Offer A, but they’ll love Offer B and vice-versa. Now imagine having 40 offers. Your visitor could be non-responsive to 39 of your offers, but as long as the visitor responds to at least one offer, you got another qualified lead on your email list.

Why 40 landing pages? According to the graph from the HubSpot blog post, it’s very helpful to have that many landing pages to achieve optimal growth for your email list.

 

lead generation

 

#2: Put A Site Wide Pop-Up On Your Blog

Pop-ups…you either love them or you hate them. Regardless of how you feel about pop-ups, they absolutely work for your email list.

The more your pop-up offer matches your blog’s content, the more subscribers you will get. If people aren’t interested in the pop-up offer, they can simply x out of the pop-up and continue reading the blog post.

 

#3: Create Udemy Courses

Udemy is a one of those unexpected places for building an email list since it is more known for course building. You can send email blasts to the students enrolled into your courses. You can segment them based on their progress through your course, when they enrolled, and which courses they are enrolled in.

The key to using Udemy to grow your email list is to promote free coupon codes of your courses into Facebook group pages that are specifically for free Udemy coupons. I got over 20,000 students by leveraging this strategy who I can send emails to.

Sending emails to over 20,000 Udemy students is free, but there are some catches. You can only promote your Udemy courses or learning material that students can access without entering personal info (i.e. an email address).

However, you can send these students to your blog posts and YouTube videos with a CTA at the end. Pop-ups are fine too.

 

#4: Put Your Udemy Courses On SkillShare

If you put your course on Udemy, you might as well put it on SkillShare. You’ll get access to more students who you can email and you’ll also make more revenue.

If you don’t feel like uploading Udemy videos into SkillShare, then hire a trustworthy freelancer. Putting your Udemy courses on SkillShare allows you to get more out of the same work.

 

#5: Use HelloBar To Promote Your Landing Page

HelloBar is a plugin that allows you to put a message at the top of your blog. Within this message, you can tell people about your landing page offer. Then you get to add a button which links to your landing page.

Since HelloBar rose to fame for putting that message at the very top of a blog, the plugin has added the capability of putting your message on the bottom left, bottom right, top left, or top right for your blog.

I choose to display another offer on the bottom right of my blog.

hellobar

If you are interested in HelloBar, I highly recommend joining here. If you sign up with that link, we both get a free month of HelloBar Pro.

 

#6: Leverage Your Blog’s Sidebar

The goal of a blog sidebar is to grab attention while presenting a compelling offer. The sidebar won’t be the highest converting part of your blog, but people will remember your offers.

To get more conversions from your sidebar, fill your sidebar up with awesome pictures that feel like a part of the blog post.

Better yet, have different sidebars for different content categories.

When reading Kim Garst’s blog post about Facebook live streaming, she offers her free eBook 27 Killer Facebook Post Ideas 2.0 on the sidebar.

Facebook live post

For her blog post about tweeting during live events, she offers her free eBook on Twitter hashtags on the sidebar.

kim-garst-twitter-hashtags

These two free offers promoted on the sidebar are relevant to the blog post. The free offers almost feel like a part of the blog post itself.

 

#7: Use UpViral To Create A Landing Page

UpViral is a great tool for creating landing pages in a few minutes. They are basic which can sometimes help out with getting conversions.

upviral landing page

The magic happens when someone subscribes. They immediately get sent over to a Thank You Page that incentivizes visitors to share the landing page URL.

For my Thank You Page, I encourage people to get more leads. Each person who brings in five leads gets exclusive videos.

upviral thank you page

With this set-up, people now have an incentive to drive more leads to my landing page. The final result is that the people who get access to the three exclusive videos add five people to my email list.

UpViral can identify fraudulent sign-ups (probably based on IP addresses) so you don’t have to worry about people gaming the system just to get the exclusive videos or content that you offer.

 

#8: Promote Your Landing Pages On Social Media…A Lot 

You can’t complete any type of list without saying “promote on social media.” Use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and all of the other social networks that you can think of.

However, don’t just stop at promoting your landing page once in a given day. At least 25% of my social media posts send people over to one of my landing pages.

Most of your social media audience will not see your first post about your landing page. The more times you promote your landing page on social media, the more traffic those landing pages will get from your social media efforts.

 

#9: Include A CTA In All Of Your YouTube Videos

It’s easy to promote a landing page on most social networks. Write the right copy, include the link, and then post it.

YouTube is a completely different animal. While the description is a great place to promote your landing page similarly to how you would on other social networks, YouTube requires an in-video call-to-action.

At the end of my recent YouTube videos, I have been adding this CTA.

youtube call to action

It leads people to my free eBook 27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter. In the future, I plan on promoting specific landing pages that are very relevant to the video topic.

People who make it to the end of your video appreciate the value you provided. That’s the exact moment you want to provide those viewers with the CTA.

 

#10: Appear On Other People’s YouTube Channels

Some YouTube channels allow guest contributions similar to guest posts. While these channels are hard to find, it is possible to do a guest video on someone else’s channel where you provide the CTA.

Tim Schmoyer of Video Creators provides this opportunity for people with YouTube tips to share. So far the Video Creators channel is the only channel I have found that allows for this type of collaboration.

 

#11: Create A Podcast With A CTA

If you checked out my May 2016 Performance Report, then you know that podcasting has taken up a large portion of my time lately.

I have learned all about its potential. Podcasting allows you to share your expertise in the form of audio. In a world fueled by content and video creation, audio is one of the lesser utilized methods of getting traffic.

And if you utilize it well, podcasting can bring in a massive amount of traffic. Just ask Pat Flynn 🙂

At the beginning and end of your podcast episodes, you can introduce several CTAs such as leaving a review and subscribing to the podcast.

The critical CTA to mention within all of your podcast episodes is a free offer relevant to that particular episode.

When you mention the free offer, make sure the link is easy for people to remember. This is important because podcasts are all audio unless your listeners are also reading through the show notes.

When Mike Stelzner asks for a review on iTunes, he refers to the link as socialmediaexaminer.com/itunes.

He does not refer to the link as https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/social-media-marketing-podcast/id549899114?mt=2&ls=1

Both lead to the same destination, but the first one is much easier to remember. Please have mercy on the person who must recite the longer link.

While this is an example that relates to podcast reviews, the same general rule also applies to landing pages.

 

#12: Write Guest Posts With The Optimized Author Bio

Writing guest posts on relevant blogs is a great way to get more traffic from people reading your guest posts, and you’ll get a high-value backlink.

Whenever you write a guest post, you’ll usually get a quick bio of yourself. Within 1-2 sentences, you need to let readers know where else they can find you on the web.

Within this quick bio, you can direct people over to your landing page. In my Business2Community bio, I provide the CTA to check out my landing page.

guest post CTA

 

#13: Promote Your Landing Page During Podcast Interviews

The way almost all podcast interviews work is that after all of the questions have been answered, the guest has the ability to tell listeners where they can find him/her on the web.

When you are a guest on a podcast episode, mention your landing page. I have bullet-points in front of me specifically for that question so I know what to say when I have to promote my landing page.

Wondering how to be a guest on more podcasts? Neil Patel shows you how in his article How to Become the Person Everyone Wants to Interview

 

#14: Provide Perks

Give your subscribers certain perks (i.e. discounts and exclusive content) that people outside of your email list won’t get. Then, make it known to your blog visitors that only subscribers get these perks.

You can include these perks as incentives to get more of your visitors to subscribe.

 

#15: Design Matters

The way you present your free offer is just as important as the value of that free offer. If your free offer has a bad design, people won’t want to enter an email address.

One reality of life is that we all judge a book by its cover. If you don’t believe me, let me know which book you’d rather want.

bad ebook cover

good ebook cover

It doesn’t matter that the content for both of them is the same. The second one looks better. The better the design, the better the perceived value of your free offer.

All you have to do at that point is deliver on the value.

 

#16: Live Stream Your Message

Live streaming is the hot thing right now. I think it will stay hot for a very long time (if it ever cools down at all). The attractive lure to live streaming is that you get immediate results.

Promote a landing page with an easy to remember URL, and you’ll instantly get a bunch of subscribers if you have a large enough live audience.

On Periscope, you either need the easy to remember URL or a link to your landing page within your bio. For Blab and FB live however, you can drop a link straight into the chatting section for Blab and the comments section for Facebook.

If you feel too stressed to include those links during your live stream, hire a freelancer who will get the job done.

 

#17: Co-Create An Offer

I have created over 20 courses on Udemy. I created some of those courses alone while I created other courses with some help.

The courses I have co-created with other instructors have combined to bring in over 12,000 new students which I can email at any time. If I didn’t co-create some of my courses, I would have lost out on a lot of extra students.

Co-creation is not something that only exists within Udemy. You can co-create a free offer with someone else and share the subscribers who sign-up for the co-created free offer.

The cool part about this type of co-creation is that both you and the person who helped you create the free offer will be actively promoting the landing page. You’ll be helping each other out.

 

#18: Create A Product With An Affiliate/JV Program

This is an advanced method to grow your email list, but depending on who is a part of your program, you can get tens of thousands of new subscribers overnight.

To get at that level, you need a top-notch product and a lot of connections. But even if you don’t expect to get 10,000 subscribers in one day from your program, you could still get hundreds or thousands of subscribers that you wouldn’t have gotten on your own.

Leverage other people’s marketing for the growth of your brand at any moment you get. Your landing page will reach more people and you’ll be putting in the same amount of work you put in now.

 

#19: Publish A Kindle Book

When promoted correctly, a Kindle book can bring in a massive amount of email subscribers. Within all of your Kindle books, promote a free offer relevant to the book people are reading.

Here’s how Nick Loper promotes his free offer within the first page

kindle offer

Promoting your free offer on the first page is important because anyone can see that offer through Amazon’s free preview option.

If you are wondering how to drive sales to your free Kindle books, Nick Loper had a great podcast episode about that.

 

#20: Put Your Presentations Up On SlideShare

SlideShare is a social network that people either seem to not use at all or use it often.It takes time to create a quality SlideShare presentation while it only takes a few seconds to send out a quality tweet.

However, SlideShare presentations have viral potential if you make yours awesome and promote it to enough people.

Self-published author Steve Scott uses SlideShare to grow his email list.

For his traffic and income report from 2014, Steve included that he got 1,915 new subscribers from SlideShare within those three months. That’s an average of 638 new subscribers per month just from SlideShare.

Steve did hire a freelancer to help out with the presentations to save time, but it will be worth the money if you can get those new subscribers to buy some of your products.

 

#21: Interact With Your Audience

Interacting with your audience allows you to build trust. The people you interact with will be more likely to enter their email address when your free offer comes up.

Even if you only interact with your audience for five minutes each day, you are creating more trust. The trust results in more people promoting your content and subscribing for updates.

The more interactive your brand is, the more your audience will love you. If you want to take this level of interaction to the next level, you can create a podcast in which you answer your audience’s questions.

 

#22: Analyze Your Results

If you create landing pages, get subscribers, but then don’t analyze the results, you can be missing out on a huge opportunity.

Analyzing the results allows you to discover which of your landing pages have the best conversion rates and which ones you are promoting the most.

Let’s say you have two landing pages. Landing Page A has an 80% conversion rate. It’s the king of all landing pages. Landing Page B has a 5% conversion rate which puts it at rock bottom.

You promote them equally and they each get 100 daily visitors.

The mistake lies right there. You are promoting them equally.

If you have a landing page with an 80% conversion rate, you need to promote that landing page far more often than any of your other landing pages.

If one of my landing pages had a 5% conversion rate, I would stop promoting it or completely change that landing page’s design.

 

#23: Offer A Content Upgrade

A content upgrade is exclusive content or video content that is related to the blog post your visitor finished reading. The only way to get access to the content upgrade is to enter an email address.

Content upgrades are valuable because they are specific offers based on the specific content your visitors were reading. While content upgrades create extra work, they get you a lot of subscribers.

I learned this method from Brian Dean. He wrote a very informative article about the subject which you can read here.

 

#24: Sprinkle Relevant CTAs To Landing Pages Throughout Your Blog Posts

When you have a content upgrade available, you want to reference it at the beginning and the end of your blog posts. That way, your visitors are constantly reminded of your content upgrade.

If you don’t utilize content upgrades, then promote a free offer relevant to the content your visitor is reading.

 

#25: Write An Expert Round-Up Article

I got the idea from Codrut Turcanu who has written several expert round-up articles. These articles get a lot of traffic because people love sharing articles that they get featured in.

You ask several experts for their #1 tip in something. You choose the best tips and put them in your expert round-up article. Then you email the experts and let them know when the article gets published.

Ask them to promote it.

This strategy works for getting traffic, and more traffic in most cases equates to more subscribers. To ensure you get more subscribers, include a relevant content upgrade within the expert round-up article.

 

#26: Optimize Your Current Traffic

Let’s say you get 100 daily visitors on your blog and you get five of them to subscribe each day. What if you made a few changes on your blog to get 10 daily subscribers with that same audience.

In a rush to grow and get exposure, some bloggers make the mistake of forgetting to optimize the experience for the audiences they have already built.

 

#27: Advertise Your Landing Page

Facebook ads, AdWords, YouTube ads, and any other type of online ad can be used. Of course, not all online ads are equal, and some of them are downright difficult.

You should only begin to advertise your landing page once it is proven to make money. You should know how much money you make per subscriber so you can identify what a conversion is worth to you.

For instance, if each subscriber is worth an average of $2, and your Facebook ad gets you new conversions at a rate of $3 per subscriber, you need to stop that Facebook ad or make your average subscriber worth more than $3.

 

#28: Use Permission Marketing On Reddit

The Reddit community is fierce if you get on their wrong side, but if you get on their right side, you’ll get a lot of added exposure.

The key to Reddit is leveraging permission marketing. The Reddit community will come at you full force (don’t underestimate the Reddit community) if they think you are self-promoting.

If you ask for permission, you have a chance at going viral.

Eddy Azar wrote an awesome article on SumoMe about harnessing the marketing power of Reddit. He does a better job at explaining it than I could.

 

#29: Capitalize On The 404 Error Redirect

When people enter the wrong URL, they get sent over to the 404 error page. Some 404 error pages don’t bring people back to the blog. Others simply reference the homepage.

Why not reference your free offer.  Your 404 error page can have a message like this:

“Sorry! What you were looking for does not exist, but I don’t want to leave you empty-handed…”

Then you promote your free offer, and BOOM! People who were once lost are now sent over to your landing page.

 

#30: Keep Your Current Subscribers On Your List

If you get 100 subscribers per day but you lose 100 subscribers per day, then you are not growing.

Part of growing your email list is providing an awesome experience for your current subscribers so they are more likely to stick around.

 

#31: Host A Free Giveaway

Giveaways are great for getting subscribers because few people would turn away the opportunity to get something just by entering an email address.

When these people subscribe, you present them with a free offer that everyone gets. Maybe it’s a report or a video series. Regardless of what you choose, everyone gets it.

Only a few people will actually win your giveaway. Using UpViral to reward points to the people who share your giveaway landing page will result in more people participating.

But you want the right people to participate. Don’t be the marketer who offers a $50 Amazon Gift Card. EVERYONE wants that. You’ll get a lot of subscribers, but most of them won’t be qualified.

And you have to pay for having those extra subscribers on your list.

To avoid that heartache, offer a giveaway that only the people in your niche would care about.

Matt McWilliams hosted one of the best free giveaways for getting targeted subscribers. He didn’t offer the Amazon Gift Card. He offered five free books all related to his niche.

book giveaway

People interested in reading those books participated in the giveaway by entering their email addresses and promoting the giveaway on their social networks for extra points.

People not interested in the books didn’t sign-up. Most if not all of the leads he got from that giveaway were targeted leads.

 

#32: Add A Link To Your Landing Page In Your Email Signature

Email is one of the top forms of communication today. Including your landing page link within your email signature can give it more exposure.

The impact of this method is dependent on how many emails you send in a given day. The more emails you send each day, the more subscribers you’ll get from this method.

With that said, avoid getting trapped in your inbox.

 

#33: Promotion Exchanges

The word exchange has a bad rap in the online world. Most of us are introduced to the word “exchange” in the online marketing sense when people either ask for link exchanges (even though Google doesn’t like that) or following a random, non-targeted person just for the follow back.

Promotion exchanges can put your landing page in front of a massive audience if you know how to use them. It is ideal to do a promotion exchange with someone who has a similar audience size as you. There are several promotion exchanges you can use:

Promote each other on your social networks

Send email blasts to your lists promoting the other person’s landing page

Interview each other on your podcasts (if you both have podcasts)

The opportunities are endless, but the second option works for growing your email list. By promoting someone else’s landing page to your email list, your landing page also gets more exposure. The final result is both of your email lists will grow.

Imagine how much bigger your email list would be if you did this with dozens of people.

 

#34: Collect Email Addresses At Events

The old-fashioned methods still work. Go to the event with a notepad, pen, and paper. On the piece of people, provide a section where people enter their email address.

Let people know on that piece of paper and through your conversation about the free offer these people will get upon writing down an email address.

You can segment all of these people on a custom list where you thank them for meeting you at the event.

 

#35: Host A Webinar

Webinars convert very well because they provide free value and are time sensitive. If you have a monthly webinar, your audience will begin to expect webinars.

Some people within that audience will not currently be subscribed, but when you host a webinar they really want to listen to, these people will subscribe.

 

#36: Host A Webinar With A Guest

Hosting a webinar with a guest is better than hosting a webinar on your own because the guest will do some of the promotion.

You’ll get the email addresses of some of your guest’s audience members. Have a monthly webinar with an influential guest, and you’ll be sure to see a big increase in your email list.

 

#37: Utilize Social Proof

Not everyone can leverage social proof equally, but leverage it whenever you can. Here’s an example of social proof in action.

optin-box

Within this opt-in box, Buffer indicates that 42,023 people are on their email list. This social proof indicates Buffer is a popular blog, and popular blogs almost always have valuable content.

Buffer is no exception to the rule. If you haven’t checked out their blog yet, I recommend giving it a look…after you spend some time here though 🙂

 

#38: Write Longer Content

This is one of my longer blog posts. At a little over 4,000 words at this point, this blog post is the second longest blog post I have ever written.

Why spend so much time writing a single blog post? They increase the reader’s time on your blog. If this blog post only contained five tips, you would have been finished reading a few minutes ago.

However, I stuffed this one with methods up to the gills. It’s a power post which is bound to rank higher on search engines. The longer your blog post is, the more search engines love you.

Plus, I wanted to use Brian Dean’s skyscraper technique, so I knew this blog post had to be massive and filled with value.

 

#39: Include The Landing Page Link In Your Social Media Bios

This is an easy change you can make to get more subscribers. Most people link to their blog home pages within their social media bios.

Unless your home page is a beautiful landing page, that URL needs to be changed. Notice how in my Twitter bio, I am promoting a very specific page on my blog.

twitter-bio

More specifically, I am promoting one of my landing pages.

 

#40: Make It Easier For People To Share Your Blog’s Content

[Tweet “50 Tactics To Grow Your Email List”]

See what I did there? I know that not everyone will tweet my blog post with that plugin. However, some people will, and that creates more exposure.

Don’t just stop with the social sharing buttons on the top or bottom of your blog posts. Include chances throughout your blog post for people to share your post.

 

I used the Click To Tweet plugin by CoSchedule to put in that tweet.

 

#41: Pay With A Post

I have not used this method myself, but I hear it’s powerful.

The way pay with a post works is that visitors can only read some of your blog post. The rest of it gets blocked.

The only way people can get access to the rest of the blog post is by sharing that blog post on one of their social media accounts.

That’s how you get the name: Pay With A Post.

The website I recommend based on my research (but not implementation) is Pay With A Tweet. Pay With A Tweet has expanded to include other posting options in addition to tweeting.

 

#42: Build Relationships With Influencers

Building relationships with influencers helps out in the long-term. If you create a product with a joint venture program, you will know several influencers in advance who would be willing to help you out.

You can also host webinars with influencers as guests, and some of them may promote your content a few times each week on their social media accounts.

Having a relationship with an influencer gives you the potential to spread your message to the people within that influencer’s audience.

Some influencers will help you more than others, but any extra visitor you can get should be highly appreciated.

 

#43: Include An Opt-In Box At Your Blog’s Footer

Ever scroll to the bottom of a blog post? Maybe you wanted to go to the next page and see the next batch of blog posts, but you scrolled down too quickly.

Maybe you were looking for the blogger’s contact me page.

Some people make it to the blog’s footer, and within that footer, you can include an opt-in box. The Buffer Blog’s opt-in box which I showed you earlier is at the footer of their blog.

Some of the people who make it to your blog’s footer read a bunch of your blog posts to get there. These people will be more likely to subscribe since they stayed on your blog for a longer period of time.

 

#44: Improve Your Homepage

The homepage is one of the most visited pages on your blog. Most homepages lead to a bunch of blog posts. While this is a great way to get more blog readers in the short-term, it’s a disaster for the long-term.

Your homepage needs to make your blog easy to navigate while promoting a can’t miss CTA.

On Pat Flynn’s homepage, the CTA is to click the “Start Here” button. Scrolling down will reveal more CTAs on his homepage.

Pat Flynn Homepage

Seth Godin took a simplistic approach with his homepage. There are several CTAs, and if you have been reading Seth’s content long enough, you’ll probably click on all of those CTAs.

seth's blog

Both of these homepages include CTAs and easy navigation throughout the blog. Seth’s homepage includes a subscribe option and Pat’s homepage includes a subscribe option towards the bottom.

 

#45: Create Urgency Around Some Of Your Offers

If you have enough landing page, test creating offers that are time sensitive. Webinars are a great example of this.

People know the webinar will be packed with value and that it won’t be up forever. Do that with one of your free offers.

You won’t get consistent growth, but you’ll get a spike of growth from that one landing page. Your other landing pages can bring in the consistent growth.

 

#46: Republish Your Blog Posts Elsewhere

This method is designed to get more exposure for you and your content. Including your landing page link within the byline will help you get more subscribers directly from your republished content.

As your republished blog posts appear on more blogs, people will remember you. Some of them may decide to search for you on Google or social media and come to your blog.

Provide these people with an enticing offer and BOOM, you have more subscribers.

 

#47: Make The Free Offer Better Than Anything Else Out There

I believe this is an underrated tip that can be better understood with a comparison to blog posts.

There are billions of blog posts, and chances are millions of those blog posts are about growing your email list.

In an attempt to make this blog post stand out from the crowd, I went all-in and spend hours of my time on this blog post.

Are you spending hours of your time crafting your free offer? Are you truly going all-in?

There are some blog posts that would dwarf over most of the free offers someone with an email address could get access to.

Create free offers that would dwarf over any blog post imaginable.

Combine that with excellent design, and you’ll have an offer that people won’t be able to resist.

 

#48: Create An Infographic With Your Landing Page Link

Infographics have the potential to go viral. This is old news, but how you set up the infographic determines the success you get out of it.

One strategy you can use with your infographic is to include the link to your landing page at the bottom of the infographic.

Most people just include the link to their blog homepage, but the link to your landing page (or a homepage that functions similarly to a landing page) would be better.

 

#49: Waiting List For Your Upcoming Product

More people than ever are launching their courses to massive success. Depending on the people in your joint venture program combined with your own efforts, it’s possible to make seven figures in a few weeks.

But what happens after the launch? What happens to the people who missed out and didn’t hear anything about the launch?

After the launch, any pages related to the launch become redirect links.

The redirect links lead to a landing page that encourages people to subscribe so they can be notified when the product is available again.

There’s also a free offer included to increase the desire someone would have to provide his/her email address.

 

#50: Make Your Blog Load Faster

If the landing page takes 30 seconds to load, are you sticking around?

Probably not, and a landing page that’s one second slower is bound to get fewer conversions.

Patience is a virtue, but almost none of us have it. In certain scenarios, we want to achieve or get access to something immediately.

To Amazon, site speed time is critical. According to an article from Fast Company, Amazon loses $1.6 billion if the site loads one second slower.

You won’t suffer that type of loss if your landing page is one second slower, but you’ll definitely get fewer conversions.

I wrote a blog post about boosting your blog speed. I promise it isn’t as long as this one. In fact, it may take you less than a minute to read.

 

In Conclusion

Growing your email list is the best thing you can do for your online business. That’s where the money is.

Growing your email list involves creating a bunch of free offers and promoting those free offers to as many people as you possibly can.

You’ll have to do most of the work on your own, but it’s always good to leverage the help of other marketers when you can.

The next time you consider an opportunity or are utilizing a platform, ask yourself this question: How will I use this to grow my email list?

If you can’t think of a way a particular opportunity or platform will help you grow your email list, ignore it or find a way to make it grow your email list.

What are your tips for growing an email list? Did one of these tips resonate with you the most? What are your thoughts on email marketing? Sound off in the comments section below.

7 Reasons Why You Should Not Depend On Social Media For Blog Traffic

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7 Reasons Why You Should Not Depend On Social Media For Blog Traffic

Social media has been established as a powerful way to get more traffic and build an authority on the web. Many people have used social media to become the leaders of their niches and ultimately dominate their industries. Social media brings over 10,000 people to this blog every month.

Although social media is powerful, it is not something that we should rely on for blog traffic. There are several people who get all of their traffic from social media, or worse, one social network in particular.

The risk with relying on social media, or even worse, a single social network to bring in the bulk of your blog’s traffic is that you are putting all of your eggs in one basket. Although the basket may look nice and stable now, the basket can suddenly break, and then all of your eggs are splattered on the floor. Do you want that to happen to you? Chances are you don’t, and just in case that was not convincing enough, here are the seven reasons why you should depend on social media for blog traffic.

 

#1: Social networks change

One of the main reasons why I wrote this blog post was because I recently read an article about Twitter experimenting with an algorithm similar to Facebook. These algorithms enforce a pay to play system where growing a presence is no longer enough.

Facebook posts now only get seen by about 3% of your audience which means to have a big impact on Facebook, you need to have a ginormous audience. There was a time when Facebook did not have these algorithms and everyone was happy. With Facebook’s change, many people say a noticeable decline in Facebook engagement and traffic. Would you be happy if you had a Facebook Page with 300 fans, but only nine of those fans could see the posts on their home feed?

Does Twitter follow this exact path and create a pay to play system? Only time will tell, but Twitter talking about an algorithm suggests how little power we have in the decisions that popular social networks make. If Twitter decides to enforce the same policy as Facebook, then too bad. We will complain, but every social network has the final say in what happens.

 

#2: There are other options available

With the thought of a Twitter algorithm causing dissent amongst many users and a pay to play system being enforced, blogging has become more important than ever. Just because social media is powerful does not mean it is the only option.

With a blog, you still have the power to publish content and share it with the world. Blogging also gives you numerous advantages such as growing an email list and bringing in more sales. These advantages allow you to control the communication that you have with the people who stop by. On the other hand, social media has direct control over all of the interactions you have on it. If a social network decides to suspend your account, all conversations come to an end whether you want them to or not.

 

#3: All social networks get hacked

Many people look at Burger King’s success on the day it got hacked and aspire to be hacked themselves. Some accounts have even faked being hacked just to gain popularity. However, the latest hacks have not gone as well for the hacked accounts.

An example of this was when Uber Facts lost over 10,000 followers on the day it was hacked. Ouch! The worst part about hackings is that in most cases, they are not under your control. Some information leaks out of social networks. Remember Heartbleed?

Changing your password reduces the chances of your account getting hacked. However, anything on the web to get hacked nowadays, but if your social network gets hacked, and you have no other way of communicating with your audience, that spells trouble. Not only are you barred from your audience, but the hacker may use your account to insult your audience or post inappropriate content–all under your name.

 

#4: All social networks have bugs

There are some social networks that encounter strange bugs that make them perform differently. There are some Twitter users who get their accounts compromised every single day for no reason whatsoever. When these accounts get compromised, no tweets can be sent out. That means all of those tweets that got scheduled on HootSuite cannot be sent out because of a flaw out of your control.

No one is hacking into the account, and many of these Twitter users have resorted to 30 character passwords which still does not solve the compromise problem. If a bug affects your ability to post content on your social network, then you are losing blog traffic, interactions, and possibly sales.

 

#5: Not everyone will see your posts

No matter how much hard work you put into growing your social media audience, most of that audience will not see the social media posts that you publish. If every single one of my Twitter followers saw one of my tweets and clicked on the link, I would be getting hundreds of thousands of visitors every day (at that point, move over Huffington Post).

Too bad that is not the case. Unfortunately, no matter which platform you choose, not everyone will see your posts. However, social media happens to be a place where few people click on your posts and engage with you. I get over 10,000 visitors every month from Twitter alone. Assuming there are no repeat visitors (which is not the case), that would mean less than 10% of my followers see at least one of my tweets every month. The typical email list leads to more engagement than the typical social media account.

 

#6: Social media is addictive

Although social media is a great way to bring in more blog traffic, it is also extremely addictive. Some people spend hours on social media every week, and the amount of time people spend on social media takes time away from the big projects. Social media eats up more time than most people realize. Many people are spending three hours every day on social media while others are on social media for a longer amount of time.

When someone finally logs out after spending three hours on social media, that person may remember the blog post that needed to get published or the video that should have been uploaded to YouTube. If you are unproductively using social media for three hours every day, think about how much time you are spending unproductively on social media within a given week, month, or year. It adds up.

 

#7: Social media is not a direct way to make money on the web

When people think of making money online, they want to make money as directly as possible. Many people have tried turning social media into a direct revenue stream, but that’s not how social media works.

The function of social media is to build an awareness for your blog, get more traffic, and then have your blog optimized so it is able to bring in revenue. Since social media is addictive, it is entirely possible that the time you invest in social media does not necessarily result in more revenue.

 

In Conclusion

Just like the millions of other people who use them, I love social media. I am able to interact with my followers, build connections, and get more blog traffic. However, with the popularity of social networks, many people have become dependent on social media traffic for their blogs.

Regardless of how many visitors a social network is bringing in, you need to avoid having all of your eggs in one basket. If that basket gets dropped (whether it’s your fault or not), your blog traffic will suffer.

Utilizing social media while utilizing other avenues of traffic will allow you to become a successful blogger who is not dependent on one thing. Be sure to branch out by getting more traffic with different methods whenever you can.

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

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

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

I decided to do some digging.

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

    In Conclusion

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

Three Components That You Need To Include In Your Free Report

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3 components that you need to include in your free report

Free reports entice people to subscribe to your blog. They are informative, lengthy articles that provide the kind of value that your targeted audience is looking for. The more similar your free report’s topic is to your blog content, the more subscribers you are going to get.

However, many people forget to include certain components in their free reports. Although adding these components to your free report may only take a few minutes at most, they can bring forth powerful results These components have the power to increase blog traffic, boost social proof, and get more sales.

 

#1: Links To Individual Blog Post.

When you see the opportunity in your free report, include a link to a related blog post. Including links to related blog posts allows you to boost your blog traffic and bring more attention to certain blog posts that either need the attention or need to get ranked higher on Google.

If your free report is about productivity, you can include a link to a blog post about time management. If the person enjoys your free report and gets to the link, that person will be more likely to click on the links to read your various blog posts. Then, if you have an irresistible blog, that person will stick around for a while. The more this person sticks around, the happier that person will feel about subscribing to your blog.

Better yet, the more someone sticks around, the most that person will trust in your ability to produce valuable content. This trust is important because it means returning visitors and sales for your future products.

 

#2: Social media icons.

At the end of your free report, show people where they can find you on social media. You want people to connect with you on social media because that’s where conversations take place. You can interact with these people on your social networks and with enough interaction, some of these people may decide to share your blog posts.

Getting people to share your blog posts may lead to more subscribers, and then the process will simply continue as long as you continue to grow your email list.

Including clickable pictures of the icons that lead to your social media profiles is the ideal way to promote your social media accounts. If you have a big following on your social networks, be sure to utilize social proof so more people are enticed to follow you and buy your products.

 

#3: One product.

At the very end of your free report on a separate page from the social media icons, mention a product you made that is similar to your free report. If you have a book about Facebook, create a free report about Facebook so you are able to promote your book at the end. People who enjoyed your free report will be more likely to buy one of your products.

If you only distribute your free report to someone who subscribes to your blog, that person was already willing to enter their email address and get notifications from you straight to their inbox. After getting the free report, reading through it, and enjoying it, some of your readers may buy the product similar to the report. However, you are only going to get the sales for your product if you include a link to the product in your report.

It is important to remember that many of the people who are reading your free report for the first time may not be ready to buy from you right away. That means if you give your readers dozens of options to choose from, they will feel overwhelmed. Only giving your readers one product will boost the likelihood of that product making more sales compared to promoting dozens of different products to start the relationship.

 

In Conclusion

A free report is a great way to gain subscribers, but a free report can be more than that. Free reports have the ability to drive traffic to your blog, boost your sales, and optimize on your social proof. By taking a few minutes to go through your report, you can get better results from that report.

Do you have any additional tips for enhancing a free report?