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7 Twitter Analytics Insights That Will Grow Your Business

September 23, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Imagine a way to get valuable insights about your growth, your audience, and the world at large. That’s Twitter Analytics in a nutshell.

For a while, I only used Twitter Analytics to track my statistics. I tracked my tweets and optimized them based on engagement rates. And while I continue to use Twitter Analytics for that specific purpose, now I use it for other purposes too.

Twitter Analytics can help you grow your business with valuable insights, even if you don’t have a big Twitter audience. Here are seven cool ways to use Twitter Analytics:

#1: Learn How Many People See Your Tweets

I look at impressions to identify how many people see my tweets on any given day — over 100,000 people! Not all impressions equate to clicks (I get a few hundred daily visitors from those impressions), but the statistic is nevertheless underrated.

The thousands of people who repeatedly see my tweets will begin to remember me and what I offer. While these people may not click on most of my tweets, they will click on some of them, and be brought over to my blog.

Why do most people not click? The answer is that not all of my tweets are relevant for everyone in my audience. I provide insights on social media marketing, which means I most often discuss various social networks.

So the majority of people who are only interested in Twitter won’t likely engage with my Facebook blog posts. And the people only interested in Facebook won’t care much about my Twitter blog posts. But they will remember me. And as I become more familiar, I build trust, and often a new subscriber.

#2: Discover Your Month-By-Month Trends

You can track your statistics month-by-month. The cool part about this history is that you can see which months you were dominating, and which months weren’t so good.

If you look deep enough into the analytics, you can also discover why you had a good or bad month. Twitter Analytics arms you with engagement rates, number of tweets sent, number of clicks, and a lot of other awesome information that can help you find a pattern.

These patterns identify the strengths and weaknesses of your current plan. Enhance the strengths and address the weaknesses so each month is stronger than the last.

#3: Identify Your Most Popular Tweets

This feature is really useful because you learn what is resonating with your audience. Twitter Analytics helped me realize that my audience wants more Twitter articles.

I recently looked at my most popular tweets and noticed an interest in the hashtags #blogging and #socialmedia. I am in the process of changing my tweeting pattern to ensure that I am sharing more articles about these topics.

Identify which of your tweets perform the best. Then give your audience more of that type of content. It’s that simple.

#4: Your Audience’s Top Interests

Your tweet engagement can tell what is interesting to your audience, but the Audience Insight feature of Twitter analytics lets you identify important insights.

According to this metric, my audience is most interested in technology, business, entrepreneurship and marketing. So I know I am providing my audience with what they want, and that the occasional article about technology is the icing on the cake.

#5: Your Audience’s Demographics

Twitter Analytics provides you with a lot of useful information. However, the more you delve into your audience demographics, the more valuable Twitter Analytics becomes.

For instance, I recently discovered that I have more male followers than female followers.

In the business I’m in, I shouldn’t have to target a specific gender; it’s not like I am selling a product or service that is exclusive to a particular gender. I like it when people of any gender visits my blog, but my demographic information tells me that it makes more sense to target women.

How did I reach that conclusion? Here’s where additional demographics come into play. Enter Alexa:

According to Alexa, more women visit my blog than men. Maybe it’s my charm, but I digress. If the ratio was reversed and 59% of my Twitter followers were female, that would mean more traffic. The closer I get that 50/50 ratio, the more traffic I will get from Twitter.

All of these stats are very useful. The income of each person in your audience will help you determine what type of product your audience wants (high-end or low-end).

Knowing where your audience lives helps you if you have a local business or are deciding which locations to target for public speaking.

Before you leave that Audience Demographics page, look at languages your audience speaks. What may look like funky math on Twitter’s end (108%) actually accounts for people who can speak multiple languages.

I’ve got some bilingual followers. That’s useful if I need to pass an exam in another language.

It’s more useful to me from a business standpoint. The first thing these analytics do is verify that I am doing a good job at targeting English speakers. Since I speak English, I want people who speak and understand English.

If all of my followers spoke and understood Chinese, rather than English, I wouldn’t be able to communicate with them. I might as well have bought fake followers (or start learning Chinese).

I have interacted with many people on Twitter. Some were Spanish speakers who tweeted in broken English or their first language.

When they communicate with me in broken English, I respond in English. When they reach out to me in Spanish, I respond in Spanish (a combined effort of five years of Spanish in school and Google translate). Language barriers exist, but you can use them to your advantage.

Translating one of your products into Spanish will help you reach an entirely new audience that you could never reach before. It’s the reason why bestselling books get translated into dozens of languages.

It’s also the reason why Kim Garst came out with a Spanish version of Periscope Profits.

As a Spanish student myself, I’m thinking of visiting the sales page often to refresh my skills. Everything is in Spanish—product benefits, testimonials, the refund policy, and just about everything else you can think of.

Kim Garst understands that she has an audience of people who speak Spanish. What can you do to tap into that additional audience?

#6: Consumer Behaviors

What are your Twitter followers interested in purchasing? Twitter Analytics has the answer.

Consumer Behaviors are broken into three sections:

Aftermarket Auto Buyers Type
Consumer Buying Styles
Consumer Goods Purchased

Most of us will be focused on the Consumer Buying Styles. But it doesn’t help me much to know that my audience prefers cheese, salty snacks, milk, fresh produce, and chocolate candy. I’m allergic to most of that stuff anyway.

I am more interested in the Consumer Buying Styles. The top two product styles for my audience are Premium Brands and Ethnic Explorers. Here’s what each of those product styles indicates:

Premium Brands—people shop for high-end products in the grocery store.
Ethnic Explorers—people have a wide range of international foods on their shopping lists.

What can I conclude about this data? My audience is interested in a variety of high-priced products. Many people associate high quality with high value, and that’s what my audience is after.

That means I can charge a higher price for a product, increase its perceived value, and get more sales. All I have to do is be sure my product is worth the price tag.

Before I conclude this part, I want to give a shout out to the 8% of my audience interested in dairy-free produce. I am allergic to dairy, as well as a host of other things (someday I will publish the complete list).

#7: Twitter Persona Groups

Regardless of your audience size, Twitter Persona Groups is the GO-TO feature of Twitter Analytics. Twitter has collected data that specifically applies to…

Parents
Millennials
Small businesses
People making less than $100K in income
Generation X
Baby boomers
Senior citizens
College graduates
Professionals
Adults 18-54
Business decision-makers

You can increase your targeting by filtering your search based on demographics, lifestyle, consumer behavior, and mobile footprint.

If you don’t know much about millennials, Twitter Analytics is your go-to place for learning more about them. Comedy and music understandably (from my perspective as a millennial) top the list. If you target millennials, ask yourself how you can incorporate music and comedy into your business.

In Conclusion

My 300,000 Twitter followers help me get the most out of Twitter Analytics, but you don’t need many followers to get started. Twitter Analytics provides useful data that you can tap into regardless of the size of your Twitter audience.

You can get information about your audience, or specific groups of people who use Twitter. The information is so vast that it may take you a few hours to consume it all.

By combining that information with your own knowledge and creative ideas, you can identify changes that will move your business forward.

What are your thoughts about Twitter Analytics? Do you use them for your business? Sound off in the comments section below.

10 Social Media Trends To Pay Attention To

September 9, 2016 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Social media is always evolving and with each new social media trend comes new opportunities to learn and grow your business.

One of the few things that will remain constant in social media’s ever changing landscape is our desire to master new trends.

Social media has changed a lot. And with each new trend comes more opportunities to learn and grow your business. For example, when I created my Twitter account in 2011, Pinterest wasn’t as big a player.

Live streaming and SnapChat didn’t even exist.

Just to give you an idea of how much social media has changed, here’s a powerful video from Matt Banner that shows just that.

Social media will continue to change rapidly and, as it does, it’s better to get ahead of the game. These are current trends to watch:

#1: SnapChat’s Rise To Power

SnapChat is HOT right now. In 10 seconds or less, you can put a snap on your story. Within that snap, you can provide advice, entertain, or literally anything else that your audience will enjoy.

The cool part is that it only takes 10 seconds or less to record a snap.

But even cooler than that is the platform’s unique capabilities. Now you can take a picture of someone’s SnapChat ID and automatically follow that person.

SnapChat’s communication capabilities mesh texting, video chats and phone calls into one. And people can choose which form of communication they prefer at any given time.

For example, if you are in a public place and prefer to use the text feature, you can still see the person you’re texting via video. During a phone call, you can text links to websites in real-time without losing the connection or sending an email.

SnapChat is probably the most advanced social network right now and it’s giving all of the other social networks a run for their money. There’s really no other social network like SnapChat.

#2: Interaction On A Whole New Level

Interaction means more than responding to or sharing other people’s posts. That form of interaction will remain a constant, but other forms of interaction, such as those available on SnapChat, are gradually gaining popularity.

Similarly, the interacting capabilities of live streaming apps, for example, are increasingly leading us towards real-time, face-to-face interaction.

Maybe some day there will be a social network that turns us all into Martian Manhunters that can read each others’ minds. Indeed, big players in tech are developing emotional recognition technology. And we’ve also got Oculus on the loose.

#3: Live Streaming’s Continued Dominance

Live streaming is making interaction more fun and immediate. I especially like Blab, which allows the guest and audience to post in the chat section.

This way, people can add links directly within the chat section so everyone can click on it, rather than try to remember it.

Don’t expect live streaming to go away anytime soon. It may be tricky to get the hang of in the beginning, but you’ll get better with practice.

#4: Podcasting As The Underdog

With SnapChat, live streaming apps, and other social networks dominating the news, it’s easy to forget about podcasting.

The podcast is the cool kid who never gets invited to parties. Every year, podcasts are gaining in importance and attracting larger audiences.

Podcasting is simply audio. So people often choose YouTube because YouTube it is more popular and visual. But podcasting allows you to tap into the iTunes Podcasts and Stitcher audiences (among others) that you won’t reach with other forms of content.

Better yet, if you prefer YouTube over podcasting, why not convert your videos into MP3 files. It’s a very easy way to repurpose your content. Speaking of repurposing…

#5: Repurposed Pictures

In the past few years, virtually every social network want to be that place where you share your pictures.

And including an image in your tweet or Facebook post generates higher engagement. And Pinterest and Instagram actually require all of your posts to include an image.

More of these types of social networks will come into existence. As a result, content and images will continue getting repurposed. We’ve already seen this happening with blog posts. Tell me if any of these tips sound familiar:

Republish your blog post on LinkedIn Publisher.
Republish your blog post on Medium.
Try to republish your blog post on a guest blog.
Better yet, get your blog republished on a big media outlet like The Huffington Post.
Turn your blog into a video.
Make your blog into a book.
Turn your blog into a podcast.

Images are increasingly getting repurposed. How many times are images shared from Imgur? How many Instagram photos are being shared on Pinterest? Popular images are shared across multiple networks, often without attribution. And as more images become repurposed, there is a greater need for photo optimization tools.

Image-obsessed users are always chasing after the perfect shot and design elements.

#6: The Immortality Of Blog Posts

The only places you hear about blogs dying are on other people’s blogs. I find that funny.

Blogs will never die because they offer users a unique voice and home on the web, and everyone needs that presence on the crowded internet.

Think blogging is dead? Take a look at how many blog posts have been published today. I’ll wait.

#7: More Blog Posts About The New Social Networks

I feel this one is inevitable. There are enough blog posts about Facebook and Twitter to keep you, your children, your grandchildren, and your great grandchildren satisfied for the rest of your lives.

Surprisingly, there still aren’t as many blog posts about SnapChat and live streaming. I actually wrote a blog post about SnapChat recently. And people want more of that information.

People aren’t asking me for Twitter tutorials because many of those already exist (I have also done a lot of them).

SnapChat and live streaming apps will soon be as saturated in terms of content and products as Facebook and Twitter.

And because there are more content producers today, especially user-generated content creators, saturation will happen much faster on new platforms than it did for Facebook and Twitter.

#8: More Outsourcing

With new social networks coming out every year, it’s easier and easier to fall behind the trends. That’s why I have outsourced 95% of my Twitter work.

I continue to interact with my audience and make sure everything is running smoothly, but other than that, I do little else. I outsource the work needed to keep that platform active and content rich.

Naturally, you cannot outsource your own live streams, videos or personal interaction with your audience. But literally everything else offers the possibility of outsourcing.

And without outsourcing, it’s difficult to focus on new social networks and opportunities beyond social media.

Expect outsourcing of social media activities to grow.

#9: Increased Need For Diversification

Each social network competes for our time as well our attention.

YouTube wants to keep us on the platform for as long as possible because the more videos we view, the more money YouTube makes on video ads.

Facebook wants to keep us on their site for hours so they can make a big profit from their advertising network. Same thing with Twitter and other social networks.

“Most of the others.”

That phrase has evolved into hundreds if not thousands of different social networks competing for our time and attention. When we put them all under the social media umbrella, that’s a lot of time and attention commanded by social media alone.

People’s opinions will change. Some people are migrating away from Facebook. Others are migrating away from Twitter. Others won’t even give SnapChat a chance.

No matter what your audience’s preferences are, you always want to be present in their feed.

Increased diversification also increases the amount of times our content and pictures get seen and repurposed, as well as the need for outsourcing to keep up with it all.

Managing that many social networks on my own (in addition to everything else) is too stressful for me to even consider.

#10: Constant Changes In Response To Social Media Trends

Every time a new social network with revolutionary capabilities rolls out, the big players try to copy that social network before it becomes too big.

Remember Meerkat? That live streaming app was hot until Twitter slammed the door shut.

The feud between Meerkat and Twitter got ugly. Twitter cut off Meerkat’s ability to access its social graphs in the eve of Periscope’s launch.

Then Periscope became the big live streaming app. But soon after, Facebook launched Facebook live. YouTube also offers live streaming capabilities.

A while ago, Vine was the revolutionary social network everyone was talking about. The six second infinite loop got all of the hype imaginable.

Then Instagram came out with its 15 second infinite loop videos.

Facebook is currently working on a SnapChat-like app. Expect other social networks to follow.

I don’t like the trend of the big social media players trying to copy the new and emerging social networks. The only reason Facebook didn’t bother copying Instagram is because Facebook ended up buying Instagram.

But it is what it is. In the end, we get more and better choices, but still, copying a social network like SnapChat makes no sense to me. It makes more sense to keep innovating and offering users something new.

In Conclusion

Social media will continue to evolve. And as we continue on our quests to master social media, we will have to take action based on emerging trends.

Those who tap into those trends and take action early will enjoy the most success from new social networks.

What are your thoughts on social media trends? How do you keep up and decide where to spend your energy? See any social media trends on the horizon? Sound off in the comments section below.

August 2016 Monthly Performance Report

August 30, 2016 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

The end of summer is a love-hate relationship. I don’t like the end of summer because that means I have less time for my business. I also love looking back at what I accomplished, and getting started on a new cross country team definitely left me excited each day.

Here’s a quick recap of August…

The Podcast

I am happy to announce that…nope. Not yet. I was really pushing to get the podcast out on August 24th. With the exception of some last-minute changes that were needed, the first five episodes I intended on publishing were edited, and I even had the show notes.

Before I get some boos from the crowd (I can’t hear you but I’m sure some people are wondering what happened), the tentative podcast launch date has been moved from August 24th to August 31st.

The reasoning behind this decision was to avoid a massive amount of stress. I underestimated the work I would have to do to include intros and outros within each episode.

Doing all of that in two days while getting acquainted with my new cross country team would have been too stressful. I was at a crossroads of the work-life balance, and the work in a short period of time didn’t seem worthy of the stress.

The moment I feel like my life is getting encroached on by my workload, I’ll do much less work until I find a solution (it usually takes me 1-2 days to find a solution).

So that’s why the podcast is getting launched on August 31st. I’ll be sending a message out to my email list all about it.

On that launch date, I’ll be publishing my interviews with Jeffrey Shaw, Nick Loper, Brian Lang, Neil Patel, and Jeet Banerjee.

In the beginning, I’ll have most of the show notes on another platform to start and slowly move them over to this blog. That entire transition will take two weeks and then I’ll be publishing show notes on this blog on the day a new podcast episode comes up.

I’m Outsourcing More Of My Business

Outsourcing is going into turbo drive. There will be a day when all I do for my business is create content, create videos, communicate with my audience and others, and interview people for my podcast.

Everything else is in the process of getting outsourced. I am in the process of hiring a video editor and have already hired someone to edit podcast episodes and write up the show notes.

Outsourcing more parts off my business will ensure I don’t have to lift the small stuff so I can focus on what I enjoy doing while pursuing new opportunities.

With more time, it will be easier for me to take YouTube and Instagram more seriously. Speaking of YouTube…

The 10K Subscribers Goal

My goal for my YouTube channel is to surpass 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year. Right now, I have over 2,700. I am working towards the goal in a few ways:

I’m uploading more YouTube videos. The goal is to eventually upload one new video per day which is a rate few experts in the industry keep up with.

I’m learning more about YouTube. I am conducting research similarly to how I conducted research for Twitter. In fact, I’ll come out with a YouTube series of me conducting my research in real-time. That way, you can learn with me.

I’m utilizing my social networks, blog, and email lists to spread the word.

The response has been strong so far, but I know a few changes will make it even stronger.

I’m On Patreon

The 10K subscriber challenge is requiring me to heavily invest my time towards creating free content for everyone. While this time could be directed towards training course videos, I’m putting them on YouTube instead.

I do the same with my blog posts and my podcast interviews which will be coming out shortly. I recently heard about Patreon as a way to get help from your online community.

Basically, patrons pay creators monthly or per creation to continue supporting the content and video creators. I ask my patrons to contribute with a flat monthly payment because I create too much to charge per creation.

This is something completely optional because my content and videos will always be free. But the extra money would make it easier for me to pay my freelancers and related expenses.

You can contribute anywhere from $1 per month to $37 per month and get rewarded accordingly. Based on your monthly payment, you can get any reward from a Twitter shout out to a free coupon to one of my Udemy courses of your choice.

If you are interested in learning more and possibly contributing, go check out my Patreon Page.

TSMD

In last month’s Performance Report, I mentioned TSMD otherwise known as Total Social Media Domination. This is the membership site I am currently working on. Right now, I have completed all of the videos (I think 30 in all) and will be sending them to the editor that I choose to hire.

All of the outsourcing I do will make it easier for me to constantly crank out new content and videos I offer for free in addition to the monthly updates within TSMD. Right now, I’m thinking TSMD will get an update of 10 additional info-packed videos per month, but it can be more based on how the social media landscape changes.

I’ll have much more to say about it next month.

Unlock Your Potential

While the book manuscript isn’t at the 30,000 to 60,000 words that I proposed, I managed to surpass 20,000 words this month. I am slowly and steadily moving towards a completed manuscript.

Next month’s goal for the book is surrounded with a lot of factors. In August, I was on vacation for two weeks which impacted my ability to reach my original goal. For September, I’m returning to my school schedule. My goal for the book is to exceed 40,000 words.

It will be challenging, but it’s possible.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is becoming a very enjoyable activity for me. I learn about new people’s backstories, get inspiration from them, and promote their products.

I have learned fascinating things about affiliate marketing this month by promoting and watching others do the same.

Just go give you some background, most affiliates receive some awesome swipe copy that has been optimized for success. I don’t use those anymore. Why?

Everyone is using those swipe copies. If you are subscribed to enough newsletters, you’ll get the same message word-for-word from several people.

I learn about the person I’m promoting before making a final decision, and then I write custom messages. While I use the swipe copy as a guide, I’m not using the swipe copy word-for-word.

If you do affiliate marketing this way, you’ll develop a stronger sense of loyalty towards the person you are promoting. That stronger sense of loyalty will make it easier for you to be a successful affiliate.

Content Creation Calendars

In a word, they are AWESOME!

For those of you who don’t know, a content creation calendar is a calendar in which you write down blog post or video ideas and the days that they get published. I can look on my Content Creation Calendar right now and see if I have anything planned for December 3rd.

I have Content Creation Calendars already done for each remaining month in 2016. It makes it easier for me to focus on themes for each week or month based on new launches I initiate or am a part of.

Books I Read

I’ll be honest and state right off the bat that I didn’t do much reading this month. I did take some time to listen to Smart Passive Income and EOFire episodes, but not as many as I should have.

I have no promises about how many books I read in September. That depends on my college schedule and if I see any opportunities to crack open an audiobook.

Blog Posts I Wrote

How To Gain Confidence In Front Of The Video Camera: Wondering how people get comfortable on the camera? This is the right video for you.

How To Automate Your Social Media So You Can Take More Vacations: While I was on vacation, all of my social media was systematized to the point where I didn’t have to do anything. I’ll reveal how I got to that level in this blog post.

How To Leverage Pareto’s 80/20 Principle For Your Business: If you don’t know this, your business is in trouble. That’s not a joke. I summed it up in a three minute video.

How To Put Training Course Creation Into Your Schedule: Think creating a training course is hard? Think again! In this blog post, I’ll reveal how anyone can find the time to create a training course. I’m an 18-year-old for crying out loud.

22 Experts Recommend Their Favorite Blogging Tools: I guarantee you’ll learn about a new blogging tool in this manifesto. While the blog post was time consuming, it was well worth it.

5 Ways To Make Training Course Creation A Breeze: I reveal the power moves I use to make training course creation as easy as 1,2,3.

5 Reasons To Start A Podcast NOW: In light of my approaching podcast, I had to write a blog post with this title. You’ll learn why podcasting is the best opportunity to explore right now.

Looking Back At July

Last month, I spent a part of my Performance Report ranting against Udemy. This time, I’m going to talk about Udemy in a much different light.

The recently made the decision to allow instructors to price their courses between $20 and $200. This is a huge change from the $20 to $50 limitation.

I changed some of my course prices to $200 and kept others at $20. This change has encouraged me to create Udemy courses again.

But now I will proceed with caution.

If I feel like I can create a massive high-ticket course and create my own website for it, I will. If I can’t create a 10+ hour course right away, I’ll put it on Udemy.

I’m still not at 1,000 daily visitors for my blog yet. My blog has performed better this month than it has performed in five months. That’s a good sign, and combined with all of the other ventures I am pursuing, I can see an even bigger increase in the upcoming month.

September Goals

With August in the books, it’s time to turn a new leaf. These are my goals for September…

#1: Get 1,000 Daily Visitors For My Blog

While my blog is still not back at it’s best traffic levels, I am making significant progress. There was a small stretch of time in which I was getting 1,000 daily visitors.

I want to make that small stretch last a lifetime. I am pulling out all stops to make this happen. The podcast is just one of the many things I mentioned. Here are the other two:

Facebook Ads. I will start using Facebook ads to collect more leads. That way, I’ll get more blog traffic each time I send an email out to my subscribers.

Multiplied Twitter Growth. @MarcGuberti isn’t the only account in town. While it’s definitely my priority account, I have another account that is picking up more steam. That account is @Tips4Tweeting which my freelancer is doing a great job with. Eventually, that account too will have 100,000+ followers. Two accounts each with hundreds of thousands of followers will result in more blog traffic from Twitter.

#2: Launch TSMD

I have all of the videos done. It’s just a matter of getting them to my editor. Why don’t I edit them myself. The answer is that it doesn’t appeal to me anymore and continuing to provide free content and do well in school would be next to impossible if I also took the time to do all of that editing.

#3: Complete The ConvertKit Swap

Towards the end of August, I made great progress with swapping over to ConvertKit. I sent my first email blast. The goal is to completely switch over to ConvertKit because it has more features and the price difference is barely noticeable.

For those of you keeping score, ConvertKit is slightly more expensive but well worth it.

If my email blasts look slightly different, now you know why.

#4: Leverage Udemy Better

Now that I’m interested in Udemy again, I’m back to creating the occasional Udemy course. What I forgot to do for most of August was utilize my Udemy email list.

I have over 26,000 students on Udemy that I can email at any point when I come out with a new video, blog post, or podcast episode. I plan on sending an email out to my regular list and my Udemy list upon my podcast launch.

With that in effect, I reach over 30,000 people. I am very hopeful in my podcast ending up in the New & Noteworthy section of iTunes.

In Conclusion

August represents the last month of summer. Then, my time becomes more scarce due to school.

I have never sacrificed business or academics to gain an advantage in the other. I don’t intend on suddenly changing course.

My response to school coming up in the future is to outsource as much of my business as possible. Video editing, podcast editing, and show notes are just some of the many things I have outsourced.

I plan on outsourcing many more parts of my business as well. Outsourcing opens up more time and makes it easier for me to continue providing you with my content.

Thank you for reading my month in review.

If you haven’t already, I would greatly appreciate a vote to receive the Rule Breakers Award. Voting ends on August 31st at 2:59 pm Central Time.

How To Leverage Pareto’s 80/20 Principle For Your Business

August 9, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Pareto’s 80/20 Principle is the one rule you need to master in order to be productive every day of your life. Discover why this rule is so important and how you can use it to increase business sales.

Pareto’s Principle has had a significant impact on my journey as an entrepreneur. It allows me to address my priorities and gives me a reason to pursue those instead of the shiny objects that get in the way of most people’s success.

If you enjoy the video, please don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

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How To Leverage Social Media Automation To Take More Vacations

August 5, 2016 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

social media automation

Social media is the best way to build an audience without paying a penny. Social media automation helps to save a large portion of your time. Most people spend approximately two hours on social media every day.

Combine social media automation with everything else you do in your work and life, and there isn’t much time left for you to explore new opportunities.

For a while, I focused on social media to build my audience. It worked, but it took up most of my time. While I did grow my social media audience and write blog posts, that was just about all I could handle and nothing much beyond that happened with my business.

Now I create monthly training courses, play the piano, and still dedicate time to grow my social media audience. Only now I get to take true vacations rather than working vacations. How? I simply automated my social media efforts.

Scheduling my own tweets and growing my social media audience are things of the past. Tweets still show up on my account, and my audience still grows, but I have outsourced those tasks to other people I can trust.

There is a point at which outsourcing becomes necessary. It’s the only way to explore more opportunities and increase revenues. Plus the incentive of taking real vacations more often helps too. Let’s be honest about that.

Without any further adieu, here’s the pathway to social media automation:

List All Of The Things You Currently Do For Your Social Media Accounts

What tasks do you currently handle for your social accounts? Are you engaging with your audience, looking for content to share, scheduling posts, conducting content research, growing your audience, or anything else?

Chances are you perform at least one or more of those tasks. Right now, quantity matters less than the work you’re putting in to accomplish these tasks over time, and the time you spend on your social media initiatives on a daily basis.

As you see results from your efforts, the more time you’ll spend on maintaining and increasing those results. An effective social media strategy helps you maximize your time, but you will still spend time on those tasks, regardless of your strategy.

I used to schedule over 700 tweets each week before I hired someone to do that for me. It took me about 30-45 minutes each week to schedule that many tweets through repeated CSV file uploads and looking through the tweets to make sure everything appeared the way it should. Certain tasks like those ate away at my time.

Even though these tasks are necessary for promoting yourself on social media, they eat into precious time. And you can easily outsource these tasks to other people for a relatively low price.

It should take you 15-30 minutes to create the list of your social media tasks and an approximation of how much time you spend on each. You may get the main tasks down in 2-5 minutes, but if you dig deeper and consider every part of your social media strategy, you will likely discover more tasks that you can outsource.

List All Of The Tasks That You Can Add To Your Social Media Workload

We naturally want to be present on multiple social networks in order to get the most out of each. While it is tempting to spread out your efforts, a better approach is to master one social network at a time.

With that said, it is possible to expand your social network presence with the help of outsourcing. Make a list of all the networks that need attention and note which of your current networks are top performers. It may not be necessary to be active on every network; it depends on your goals and audience.

Before I started to outsource my social media, I wouldn’t have thought of using Instagram. Now I get the most out of that network because my freelancers take care of the images and posts for me.

I didn’t have the time to do all of that work. But rather than turn that excuse into a barrier, I found a way around the barrier. It’s just like walking around a maze instead of going through it. The only way out is through.

social media automation

Writing a list of your social media tasks will help you realize exactly how much you are doing and how much time you are spending on each task. The list is not meant to add to your workload. Rather, it should help you prioritize the tasks you can outsource in the future.

What About ROI?

Outsourcing is a great way to save time. But it costs money. Some people spend thousands of dollars per month on outsourcing, and I don’t blame them. The more money you spend on outsourcing, the more time you save.

Unfortunately, money does not grow in trees. And the main thing on every entrepreneur’s mind is how to make a profit.

“If I spend all of this money on outsourcing, how am I going to make any money?”

If you ask and answer this question often enough, you will be surprised at the insights you uncover. Sure, automating your social media workload is no guarantee that you’ll increase your profits.

I could schedule tweets myself and save money. And I am not necessarily adding to my profits each time I pay someone to schedule tweets for me. Just as I don’t make a profit when I pay someone else to edit my videos.

However, the time I save (here’s the key part) can be repurposed into efforts that lead to bigger profits. Never before have I had so much time available. And never before have I made as much revenue as I am making now!

If you know how to use your time correctly, you also know how you can increase your profits by social media automation.

In Conclusion

As social media continues to evolve, more opportunities pop up. But along with those opportunities comes a heavier workload.

We must learn how to use social networks and build our audiences. And we must also pursue new opportunities while maintaining our current workloads. But if you put too much work on your shoulders, everything will come crashing down.

Your workload may be weighing you down; it’s only when you take some of that weight off your shoulders that you begin to realize how much weight was actually there.

It’s like exchanging your worn out running shoes for a new pair. You never knew how badly you needed a new pair until you put them on your feet.

Social media automation makes you conscious of the difference between that old pair of running shows and the new pair.

Likewise, we may not realize how much work we put on ourselves until we see things from a different perspective and take automation and outsourcing more seriously.

What are your thoughts on social media automation and outsourcing? Do you focus more on increasing revenues or finding more time in the day to complete all of your tasks? Sound off in the comments section below.

Fighting Through

September 11, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Some business owners are challenged with small budgets, a massive workload, and a small amount of resources. Most business owners don’t face a challenge that some families face every day.

It is a challenge that makes the challenges of business look meaningless. Business owners want to figure out how they can get a good return on investment. On this day, thousands of families were wondering how they would survive without their loved ones. Lives were unfairly cut short.

We like to center our thoughts around our challenges and think they are bigger than the world. Those challenges don’t mean anything compared to the challenges that others face.

The families who lost loved ones had no choice. Persevering was the only option. In time, things got better for many families, but there was always a noticeable void.

It’s hard to fight through. But some things are worth it. Pray for the victims and the people affected by what happened today.