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How To Surge Your Blog Traffic

March 29, 2017 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Every blogger wants more blog traffic. It doesn’t matter how much traffic you currently enjoy. What does matter is that you want more of it.

A surge in my blog traffic has made the difference between being relatively unknown to having a successful content brand. Here’s the surge that I’m talking about:

I achieved this by changing the kind of effort I was putting into my blog. Anyone can get these results, and even better, with the right kind of effort.

If you want to surge your blog traffic, here’s what you need to do:

Publish More Content, More Often

The consistency and frequency of your content publishing schedule plays a big role in your blog’s success. To grow my own blog, I wrote as many as two blog posts per day. While these blog posts were much shorter than the ones I currently write, I still published two every day.

I then changed my strategy to write one long-form blog post per week. Apparently, Google likes long-form content, but ironically, that’s when my traffic started to dip. So I increased my frequency to two blog posts, and one podcast episode, each week.

And I’m beginning to see traffic gains now that I’m posting content more consistently and frequently. Eventually, with the help of guest posts, I plan on publishing one blog post per day on this blog.

Getting into the groove requires the formation of daily habits. Daily habits make it much easier for you to get into the flow. My daily habit is to write at least 1,500 words per day. This daily habit earns me a total of 10,500 words each week. That’s anywhere from 2-3 blog posts per week.

Some days I write more than 1,500 words, but I never write less than 1,500 words in a given day. This habit allows me to stay consistent with my blog while writing additional content for my Kindle books.

Another thing that works for me is to set a time and day each week to publish my blog posts. This way, I end up writing the posts well in advance so there’s no last-second cramming.

The less time you have to write a blog post within your deadline, the less value it will provide to readers.

Writing all of this content will help you rank better on search engines and give your readers a better experience. However, you can 1-up your efforts by optimizing your content for success.

On the SEO side, the Yoast plugin is the most valuable plugin in your arsenal. This plugin makes it easy to optimize your blog posts for search engines.

But you also need to optimize your blog posts with internal and external links. Internal links are links to your own blog posts. External links are links to blog posts and articles from outside sources.

Internal links help your SEO efforts by doing the following:

Decreasing your bounce rate
Increasing the average time a reader spends on your site

Both of those outcomes are great for SEO.

External links (to high authority sites) let search engines know that, because you’re linking out to authority sites, you must be an authority site, too.

That’s why I add at least three internal links and at least three external links to each of my posts. Setting small goals like these makes them easier to meet, or even surpass.

Assess Your Marketing Strategy

It’s great practice to assess your marketing strategy once every 1-3 months. By looking at your overall strategy, you’ll see what’s working and what missed the mark.

Look at which blog posts earned you the most visibility. These blog posts have high demand, and your audience will want to read more posts like them. The general rule of thumb is to write content of interest to your audience.

Writing more blog posts based on your high-performing posts will result in even more demand for your content. Assessing your marketing strategy allows you to discover what your audience wants and plan more ways to give it to them.

This also applies to writing books and creating training courses. You want to create a product on a proven topic that is in high demand among your audience. That’s why my first training course was about Twitter.

When I created that course, my audience’s demand for Twitter knowledge was higher than their demand for any other knowledge that I was providing.

The best place to analyze your marketing strategy is the WordPress stats dashboard. While Google Analytics offers more, it can become overwhelming. So I prefer to stick with WordPress stats, which clearly communicate everything I need to know.

One important feature I recently utilized is one that let me discover when most people are visiting your blog. I noticed that most people visit my blog on Wednesdays at 10 am.

Based on this information, I began publishing my podcast episodes on Wednesdays at 9 am. The episodes have just enough time to sit on my blog until 10 am when it’s populated with the bulk of my readers.

The week before, the same insights told me that Tuesday at 10 am is the best time to publish new blog posts based on my traffic stats. That’s why I always publish fresh content on Tuesdays at 10 am, in addition to my Saturday blog posts.

Always apply the 80/20 rule to your marketing assessment in order to leverage influencer marketing. These two methodologies can completely transform your brand’s presence.

How to Leverage Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has never been as easy as it is now. Not only does the web connect people from all over the world, but the influencers in the digital marketing niche are generally nice people.

I like to mention at least three influencers in my blog posts. The more influencers you mention, the better it is for your influencer marketing efforts. Here’s the idea:

Promote several influencers in your blog posts
Contact each one
Some will share your blog post

In some cases, getting a single influencer to share your content can yield great results. But more often, several influencers join forces to dramatically expand your reach. There are several great case studies about influencer marketing.

You may feel excited about the idea, but not sure how to implement it. What’s the best way to contact an influencer?

Anytime you approach an influencer, NEVER explicitly ask him or her to share your content. The more influential someone is, the more emails they’re receive of this nature. I can see a share request coming a mile away, and they’re annoying.

Share requests can make you feel like your audience is the only thing this blogger cares about, so it doesn’t feel like the blogger is genuine. On the other hand, if you don’t ask for a share, the outreach email feels more genuine.

When you don’t ask for a share and show your appreciation, you usually get the share! At the end of my podcast interviews, I never ask for a share; I simply say that I’ll provide the link.

And I honestly don’t care if guests share it or not. The knowledge I get from each podcast episode is far more valuable than a social share. Show your appreciation, not your desire to get more reach.

Here’s an email I recently received:

Hey Marc,

My Name is Daniel from The Experiment (www.iaexperiment.com).

I know you’re a fan of creating and growing an amazing blog and website. At least that’s the impression I got from this post:How To Build A Successful Blog From Scratch.

When I published this combination case study and guide about generating a consistent stream of traffic from Quora, I thought you’d appreciate it.

You can pop on over to check it out here:

http://www.iaexperiment.com/blog/quora-traffic

Stay Awesome,

Daniel

This is exactly how you should communicate with influencers.

I know this was influencer marketing in action, but emails like these feel so genuine. Here’s why:

He introduced himself in the first line
He’d done some research on me to illustrate that he actually reads my blog
He wrote content and thought I would appreciate it
Then he provides a link to his post

You can tell from the email that he knew a little about me. In influencer marketing, some people just discover someone with a big number of social media followers and act as if they were a big fan all along.

This was respectful and enjoyable to read as compared to some of the other influencer emails.

My best tip for influencers is to talk to them as if they are people, friends, not as if they are influencers. Influencers are people too, but we forget that far too often.

Get More Subscribers With Your Blog Posts

Out of all of your marketing assets, your email list is the most valuable. The email list is the main reason why many bloggers can make a full-time income by writing content.

It’s no wonder that getting more subscribers is critical. Time and time again, people continue talking about why the email list is your most valuable asset and how their biggest mistake was not starting an email list sooner.

Once people realize that their email list is their most valuable asset, they want to grow that email list as much as possible. There are plenty of methods to choose from. In fact, I compiled a list of 50 tactics that you can use to grow your email list.

My favorite approach is to promote my landing pages to my social media audience and optimize my blog to increase my site-wide conversion rate. I promote my landing page on Twitter at least once every hour and have a pinned tweet which also promotes my landing page.

That pinned tweet has stayed there for a while which allowed it to generate some strong social proof over the years.

On my blog, I provide a variety of options for people to sign up:

Welcome mat
Sidebar picture
Pop-up on the side (HelloBar)
Opt-in form at the bottom of every blog post
Occasional promotion within a blog post

To me, this is a great start, but by no means a finishing point. Buffer released an extensive list on different places to promote your free offer, and there’s no reason to halt your expansion efforts.

Increasing the number of opportunities people have to subscribe (without being spammy) will result in a higher site-wide conversion rate.

ThriveLeads and Optimize Press give me a variety of ways to promote my free offers. These are my two preferred tools for lead generation. Both of these tools respectively feel like 100-tools-in-one type of deals.

Follow The 80/20 Rule

With the 80/20 Rule, you focus most of your time on your top priority, such as your branding efforts. The rest of your time goes towards a secondary priority. In a successful blogging strategy, the two main ingredients for success are content creation and content marketing.

Most people spend 80% of their time creating content (or more) and 20% of their time marketing the content (or less). While it takes time to create your content, marketing is how you get your content seen by more people.

You’ll soon discover that it’s better to spend 80% of your time marketing your content. This idea is repeated by people like Neil Patel, who said that in the beginning he’d individually contact 400-500 unique people about every new post he wrote.

Brand marketing is an integral part of blog growth.

You need marketing to achieve the traffic surge you’re looking for. Finding a few hours to commit to your marketing each week seems like a daunting challenge, but there are some ways to make it work.

You can start by boosting your productivity. The smarter you work, the more time you will have to market your business. You can also outsource some of the marketing to someone else. Why do it all yourself when someone else can help you?

I personally prefer a mix of outsourced marketing and doing some of it on my own. That way, I don’t get overwhelmed by the workload but I’m still in the game. I use Upwork to find freelancers, and outsourcing has worked wonders for my business.

I truly believe that without outsourcing, I couldn’t do most of the things that I’m currently doing.

In Conclusion

Any blog can experience a traffic surge. That traffic surge and its impact on your brand are both dependent on how much effort you exert towards content creation and content marketing. Out of the two, more of your attention should go towards content marketing.

Make the connections now that will expand your reach in the future. Don’t be fearful of sending hundreds of emails to people you don’t know. It’s all part of content marketing.

The easiest way to make any type of change is to approach it gradually. For content creation, Jeff Goins recommends writing at least 500 words per day. While I write at least 1,500 words per day, the 500 word per day goal is much easier to attain for a blogger who wants to become more consistent.

The easiest way to get started is by getting your feet wet. You can’t get the traffic surge without even starting. And you must always start what you finish.

Now Here’s What I Want From You

What tips do you have for acquiring a surge of blog traffic? What’s working for your blog? What isn’t working?

Have a question for me? Leave a comment now. I read them all 🙂

And if you know anyone who may appreciate these tips, please be sure to pass this on.

[Tweet “How To Surge Your #Blog Traffic.”]

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

7 Secrets To Find Your Target Audience

March 25, 2017 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

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

March 14, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

The 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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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!

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?

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.

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

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.”]

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image credit: Pixabay

How To Expand Your Freelancer Army

January 17, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

freelance teamwork

One of the best decisions you can possibly make for your business is to outsource some of the work to freelancers. The more work you outsource to freelancers, the more time you have to commit towards other opportunities.

Some people turn away from outsourcing because of the costs associated with making the switch. Others want to outsource as much of their work as possible but find themselves limited by their budgets. Regardless of your current status, you need to expand your freelancer army. The more tasks you delegate, the better.

Here’s how you expand your army of freelancers:

Everyone Gets A Legit Part

Before you even think about hiring another freelancer, you must ensure that you have legit tasks available. A legit task is a required task but also a time-sucker that you don’t enjoy. Scheduling social media posts, creating pictures, and editing podcast episodes were some of those tasks I needed to outsource.

While I outsourced those tasks the moment I got the chance, I have never thought of hiring a ghostwriter, outsourcing training course creation, or outsourcing the email broadcasts. I enjoy those tasks. If you don’t enjoy any of the tasks in your business and are desperate to outsource everything, then you are in the wrong business.

When I want to hire another person to make my life easier, I assess everything that I do in a given week. What are the tasks that I enjoy? What are the tasks I want to get off my back? Which of those particular tasks take up most of my time?

These are the questions I ask myself before I post a job and eventually look through the job applicant’s cover letters. With clarity on my requirements, I can rest assured that my life will be made easier.

If you don’t have this clarity, you risk hiring a freelancer for the wrong reason or hiring someone who won’t meet your expectations. The result is an intense level of stress that will suffocate your “extra time” you got from hiring the freelancer.

Gradually Grow The Freelancer Army

If you go right out the gate and hire a dozen freelancers, you’ll get overwhelmed. Gradually growing the freelancer army means growing it at a consistent pace that makes sense for your brand. If you hire too many freelancers at once, you’ll have a difficult time communicating with everyone and getting on the same page.

Outsourcing different tasks will save you time, but hiring too many freelancers creates a new problem. Now you have to manage them and ensure that your freelancers are as effective as possible. Outsourcing management to a manager will make your life much easier as your freelancer army grows, but when you start out, you are the manager.

Once you feel comfortable with every freelancer you’ve hired, you can then expand and look for other options. The more comfortable you become with your freelancers, the quicker you can look for someone to fill your next job.

Don’t Rely On One Freelancer

A common mistake people make is to assign a super VA. This “super VA” can apparently accomplish any task you give him/her. Most people who find themselves in the super VA position will take on any task you give them to please you and make more money.

Relying on one freelancer to get everything done in your business is like relying on one musician to play all of the instruments at the concert. It won’t end up well.

Instead of relying on one freelancer, you must hire more freelancers who specialize in certain areas. I hired my first freelancer to help grow my Pinterest account. I didn’t hire that freelancer to edit my blog posts. I needed a different freelancer for that job.

People can do anything, but not everything. Don’t act like your freelancers can do everything because they can’t. Putting that unnecessary workload on an individual freelancer will create more stress for both of you (subpar work combined with your recent hire desperately trying to please you in so many ways).

Reinvest Your Time Wisely

Here’s how you actually get to grow your freelancer army. Every other tip at this point has been laying the groundwork for this one moment.

If you hire someone to schedule your social media posts, you need to know and remember two things:

Cost per hour

Number of hours this person will work for you each month

Let’s say I hire a social media manager who gets paid $10/hr. This social media manager works for two hours per day.

I pay this social media manager $600 every month.

To continue working with this social media manager, I MUST make at least $600/mo to balance out my expenses. If I make $595/mo with my extra time, then I’m losing money and my current path doesn’t make sense.

At this crossroad, you have three options:

Fire the freelancer

Look for a less expensive option

Reinvest your time more wisely

When you hire a freelancer to save yourself time, you must be prepared to make more additional money than you’re spending on that freelancer.

Look At Costs And Results

Not all freelancers are created equal. Some do the job to near perfection while others miss a few things. Every month, I make it a point to assess all of my freelancers.

I identify what work is getting done and how much it costs me.

If I’m happy with the work and am getting a good ROI from reinvesting my time wisely, I keep that freelancer. If a freelancer strains my budget or doesn’t get the job done, I have a decision to make.

If the expensive freelancer does a phenomenal job, keep that freelancer if your business still aligns with that person’s work. Never give up good freelancers because those are the ones you don’t have to worry about. If you feel like your freelancer would catch you during a trust fall, keep that freelancer on your team.

In Conclusion

Growing your freelancer army is a numbers game. If the decision makes financial sense and you make more money with your extra time than you spend to save that same amount of time, then you made the right decision.

Each month, monitor your freelancers’ progress to determine whether you’re still making the right decisions or if the landscape has changed.

What are your thoughts on building a freelancer army? Have any tasks you’d like to outsource? Have any tips on acquiring more freelancers? Sound off in the comments section below.

7 Ways To Get More Instagram Followers

October 7, 2016 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Photo: (cc) Pixabay

How hot is Instagram for businesses? Well, the social network boasts over 300 million daily active users and engagement is through the roof compared to other social networks. So what’s the trick to increasing your Instagram followers?

I recently posted a picture to my 2,000 Instagram followers that was liked over 40 times. That high level engagement is normal on Instagram. If any of my tweets was retweeted or favorited that many times, I’d be overjoyed.

That’s why brands are scrambling to master Instagram as quickly as possible. They want large, targeted, and active audiences who will fall in love with their pictures and products.

I recently started taking the social network more seriously and was happy to discover that many Instagram growth methods are similar to those used for growth on Twitter. If you know how to get more Twitter followers, then you have an edge when it comes to Instagram.

But there are also some differences that I will discuss within this post. Here are seven ways you can get more Instagram followers:

#1: Follow The Right People

You could technically follow many Follow4Follow accounts to increase your following. However, those followers are more interested in adding you to their own list of follows than your content.

You don’t want an audience of real, yet non-targeted and non-interested followers. Rather, you should be looking to build an audience of targeted individuals who have a strong interest in your brand. Here’s how you find those people:

Find a person in your niche with a big audience.
Go to that person’s most recent post.
Follow the people who liked that photo.
Repeat the process with more influencers’ accounts.

While Instagram requires a few additional steps compared to the Twitter approach, you’ll be following people who are:

Interested in your niche.
Active.
Engaging with content related to your niche.

Making a careful selection of who to follow will help you build a relevant audience that engages with your content. Try to be sure that the people you follow will be likely to follow you back.

Not only is it possible to find targeted and engaged users who are likely to follow you back, it’s also easy.

#2: Like The Right Pictures

Google the phrase “how to get more Instagram followers” and you’ll come across the tip I previously mentioned: follow users who like content related to your niche. More people are clicking on particular images to see who has liked them, then following those users.

This is a method people use to gain liked-minded followers. Liking hundreds of pictures related to your niche will put you in front of thousands of potential targeted followers.

Like photos posted by influencers in real time. The sooner you like the picture, the more exposure you’ll get. If you know an influencer posts pictures at a certain time each day, be sure you’re logged into Instagram at the same time so you can be one of the first people to like his or her post.

#3: Post Consistently

Engaging with other people’s pictures and following their active users will put your account in front of more people. But unless your account makes an impression on visitors, you won’t get many followers.

Posting consistently makes your account more impressive. Consistent posting makes it clear to potential followers that you are an active user. Until recently, there was no free way to schedule your Instagram posts. Now you can get the job done with HootSuite, but keep in mind that you must be logged in to the Instagram app in order to post it.

HootSuite doesn’t actually schedule the Instagram post. Rather, it notifies you to post to Instagram according to your schedule. So if you schedule a post for 6 pm, but don’t log into Instagram for the entire day, your picture won’t get posted.

Posting consistently on Instagram requires a bit more work, but it is also more rewarding. Far more people engage with Instagram posts than with Twitter and Facebook posts.

I have two predictions: the first is that the scheduling problem won’t last very long. My second prediction is that Instagram will keep growing, and you’ll want to post consistently now (and let other people complain about the technological restraints).

#4: Optimize Your Bio

Let people know what you do professionally, and who you are personally. List some of your personal interests and professional accomplishments. People who have never heard of you before should immediately get a sense of who you are just by reading your bio.

And no bio is complete without a link to your blog or website. This link will help you increase your traffic from Instagram, and that traffic can equate to subscribers and sales. So should you link to your post or landing page?

If you post your blog post pictures on Instagram and want people to read your content, simply include “Read this post by clicking the link in my bio” at the end of the post description.

If you prefer to include your blog’s link within your Instagram post descriptions, link to your landing page in the bio. Social media is a means to an end.

Successful Instagram users aren’t getting more followers just for the sake of having a pretty number and bragging rights. The purpose of Instagram varies for each person. Some people view Instagram as a way of building an audience and getting more blog traffic, while others want to funnel as much of their Instagram traffic to their landing pages as possible.

If you are using Instagram to grow your email list, then why link to your blog? Link to one of your landing pages to expedite the process.

Of course, if you view Instagram only as a means to an end and don’t bother interacting with your audience, your Instagram experience won’t be a smooth one. No matter which social network you use, interaction is a must.

#5: Include Hashtags

Use Hashtags to get your content found on Instagram. They’re the SEO for Instagram. Choose the right hashtags and your pictures will get in front of all of the people searching for that hashtag.

I like to use at least three hashtags in a given Instagram post. Before I choose hashtags, I’ll put the hashtag into Instagram’s search engine to see how they rank.

When choosing my Instagram hashtags, I’ll mix in the most popular hashtags with hashtags that aren’t as popular. Often less popular hashtags still get a lot of visibility.

Getting a lot of engagement for those hashtags boosts social proof and helps out with the more popular hashtags.

#6: Comment On Other People’s Pictures

Here’s a fun activity. Find a successful Instagram picture related to your niche. Then see how many people liked the picture and how many people commented. I decided to do this with one of my pictures:

41 likes
2 comments

Foundr Magazine is crushing it on Instagram. I decided to look at the stats of one of their Zig Ziglar pictures:

5,021 likes
34 comments

Why does this fun and insightful game help you obtain more Instagram followers? Instagram pictures don’t get nearly as many comments as likes, which makes the comments section an easier place to stand out.

Post a meaningful comment, and you’ll get more followers from that person’s audience.

Foundr Magazine currently has over 800,000 Instagram followers but the case study post only received five comments. So if you add comment #6, you are automatically exposed to thousands of people. You won’t get in front of Foundr Magazine’s entire audience, but a few thousand people seeing your comment isn’t so bad 🙂

#7: Post Awesome Pictures

Not all pictures are created equal. In the end, there are only three types of pictures that I post on my Instagram account.

The first type is something personal. I like it when people can connect with me on a more personal level. I’ve had numerous conversations with my audience about running, dogs, and the Red Sox. I love those types of conversations.

Not only does my audience get to know me better, but I get to know them better, too.

The second type of picture is a motivational quote. I like to inspire my audience so much that I created an inspirational quotes board that currently has over 4,000 pins. I am that serious about inspiring others (to be fair, I’ve got almost 600 contributors helping me with that board).

The third type of picture I post is a picture of one of my blog posts in order to drive more traffic to my blog.

Understand what types of pictures you want to craft and make them epic. For personal pictures, I like candid shots take in the moment. I hire a freelancer for my blog pictures because choosing those images is not my strong suit. For motivational quotes, I edit images using Canva (although I may begin outsourcing those as well).

In Conclusion

Instagram is a social network seething with new opportunities. You’ll tap into a powerful, highly engaged audience that can take your brand to the next level and beyond.

Foundr Magazine is doing very well, and the owner attributes much of the magazine’s success to Instagram. If you take action, you may attribute much of your business’ success to Instagram as well.

What are your thoughts about using Instagram for your business? Have any tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

5 Ways To Get More Blog Traffic From Instagram

September 30, 2016 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Ever get random blog traffic? It’s a mixed feeling of excitement and the question, “What can I do to get more traffic from that source?” I was recently surprised by Instagram traffic to my blog.

I followed targeted people on Instagram to grow my account, and I noticed that Instagram brought 10 people over to my blog that same day. Ten visitors a day adds up to 3,650 new visitors each year. I’m not doing cartwheels over an additional 10 visitors, but neither am I discounting the potential power of Instagram to increase my blog traffic.

In fact, I am doing cartwheels precisely because those visitors came from Instagram. At the time, my last Instagram post was two months old, and the one prior to that was almost a year old. I attracted 10 people to my blog via an inactive Instagram account. Imagine if it was an active account.

That’s why I was doing cartwheels.

Now I’m dreaming of the day my monthly Instagram traffic surpasses my monthly Twitter traffic. One-thousand daily visitors from social media alone has a nice ring to it. Today my blog is consistently getting more traffic from Instagram, and that traffic is growing.

Want to get blog traffic from Instagram? Follow these five tips:

#1: Link To Your Blog In Your Bio

This is how I got my initial 10 visitors. I followed people, they followed me back, and some of those people decided to check out my blog. I was also experimenting with a second method (but more on that in a second).

Linking to your blog in your bio is perhaps the easiest way to increase traffic. It takes a few seconds and requires little to no effort. All you do is edit your bio and add a link to your blog.

It’s that easy!

#2: Grow A Targeted And Active Audience

There are many ways to grow an audience on Instagram. Many sites out there offer myriad ways to grow your Instagram fans, particularly those encouraging you to buy followers.

That method doesn’t interest me. In fact, buying followers will not give you an authentic picture of your account activity and most will be bot accounts. At one point, I used a point exchange site to build up my Twitter audience during its infancy stage (I stopped when my account had 1667 followers), but I did nothing like that for my Instagram account.

I am more interested in methods that will actually result in an audience of people who are interested in my pictures and ready to engage with my posts. And you should be too.

Build a targeted and active audience by hanging out where the targeted and active people hang out. How? First, find an influencer in your niche with a big audience. Next, visit the influencer’s account and look at his or her latest post and who has engaged with, or liked it. Finally, follow all of those people.

It’s that easy. People liked the picture because they were interested in that topic (your niche). These people are likely active and engaged on the platform, so this simple follow strategy will help you build your own audience.

#3: Post Pictures Of Your Latest Blog Post

The day I received 10 visitors from Instagram to my blog I did not include an image from my latest blog post. But if I had, I would have easily doubled my visitors. Posting pictures of your latest blog posts on Instagram is a creative way to use the platform to increase your blog traffic.

Most of my blog post images are 300×300 pixels, but I can quickly and easily resize them to 400×400 pixels so that they are optimized for Instagram.

#4: Post Pictures Made To Spread

If I share a motivational quote on Instagram, it doesn’t usually result in a direct increase in my blog traffic. If anything, I’ll receive an indirect increase in traffic because some curious people will click on my blog link.

These types of posts are designed more for spreading power than traffic power. The stronger your image’s spreading power, the more people that image reaches. Motivational quotes happen to perform very well on virtually every social network. These pictures normally get a lot of engagement and attract followers.

This means my blog post images are seen by a larger audience. Motivational quote pictures motivate others and increase my following, which brings more attention to the blog post images that drive my traffic.

#5: Make Those Pictures Awesome

Each picture you put on your Instagram profile needs at least 10 minutes of care and attention (with the exception of random pics taken in the moment). I hire a freelancer to choose and edit my blog post pictures, and it looks like I’ll be hiring another freelancer for the motivational quote pictures as well.

If you want to create the pictures yourself, use Canva. It’s a free tool that makes image editing a breeze.

In Conclusion

While ten visitors in one day doesn’t look like much, Instagram is attractive because of its potential to bring in serious traffic and revenue.

Instagram users are active and engaged, so if you aren’t already using the platform, start now. You don’t need many followers to get dozens of likes for each picture you post.

The potential Instagram has to transform your business is huge. However, the only way Instagram will transform your business is if you take action.

What are your thoughts about using Instagram for business? Which of these tips resonated with you the most? Have any Instagram tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.