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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.

Episode 9: Mastering The Launch With Tom Morkes

September 28, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Today Marc is joined by Tom Morkes, the CEO of Insurgent Publishing. Tom started exclusively providing free content for his audience and used that relationship to successfully launch his products and the products of others. Tom has helped launch products such as Hustle by Neil Patel and Patrick Vlaskovits, The 7 Day Startup by Dan Norris, and a whole lot more.

Marc and Tom sit down to hear Tom’s journey, driven by the idea that he wanted to do creative work and not be dependent on anyone. Traveling freely with a full-time income from digital products struck a cord with Tom.

Starting with a simple eBook, Tom made sure he created something of value, and through referral, grew his business exponentially. We are lucky to have Tom share some of his best insights and motivations with us. Listen in to figure out how to crush it with your next launch.

Key Links from the Show:

www.tommorkes.com – Personal Site – Free courses

http://insurgentpublishing.com/about/ – Tom’s company

Learn:

– To weigh the upsides vs. the downsides of a venture

– to develop a skill set to make your company peerless

– Tom’s advice from breaking through

– 3 tips for product creation and launches

– Why recruiting affiliates is so important

– To always validate/beta test a product

7 Twitter Analytics Insights That Will Grow Your Business

September 23, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Photo credit: techcrunch.com

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.

Episode 8: Becoming A 10% Entrepreneur With Patrick McGinnis

September 21, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

On today’s episode, Marc is joined by Patrick McGinnis, venture capitalist and private equity investor. He is the author of “The 10% Entrepreneur” which is based on his ability to generate an income from a typical job and his entrepreneurial business at the same time.

Patrick joins Marc to discuss how he’s built a diverse portfolio of investments outside of his day job, and takes the time really go in deep about how and why he got there. Listen in to hear why the 2008 financial crisis was a bit of wake up call for Patrick, and in doing so, how he found pathways to more interesting and fun ventures. We’re fortunate to learn from Patrick’s experience, from his first steps all the way to his current investments. Find out why the “elevator pitch” is so important, and how to market a product that doesn’t even exist yet.

We even hear a story of a journey across South America that lead Patrick to his favorite inspirational quote. Tune in to find out how you too can be a 10% Entrepreneur.

Learn:

– The Elevator Pitch

– How to market a product that doesn’t exist

– Patrick’s 3 tips for budding entrepreneurs

– Why building a team is so important

– To use your 10% to do many different things

– Recommendations for creating a great pitch

– Patrick’s advice for breaking through

Key Links from the Show:

www.patrickmcginnis.com – Patrick’s Personal Site

https://twitter.com/pjmcginnis – Patrick’s Twitter

https://www.facebook.com/The10PercentEntrepreneur/ – Patrick’s Facebook

Episode 7: How To Make Thousands Of Dollars Per Month By Freelancing With Gina Horkey

September 14, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Today, we are joined today by Gina Horkey, a freelancer who has broken away from the constraints of a typical day job to work for herself very successfully. Gina joins Marc to talk about the journey from a career in personal finance to going solo, all while raising her two kids at the same time.

Gina and Marc discuss all manner of topics relating to her journey. Listen in to find out how Gina started out her freelance writing at 5 cents per word and has scaled it up to 50 cents per word, and thousands a month in revenue. We discover Gina’s determination to succeed, and her motivation to provide for her family.

In this episode, Gina discussed how to find and pitch to clients and how she hires and pays her own employees, Gina shares such valuable information for entrepreneurs and freelancers alike, who are trying to find their own breakthrough. Tune in to get the low down on all things freelance.

Key Links from the Show:

www.horkeyhandbook.com – Gina’s Website and Blog

http://www.listgoal.com/ – Useful web tool for email subscribers

http://twitter.com/horkeyhandbook -Gina’s Twitter

Learn:

– Hire help before you are ready

– How to use your niche to your advantage

– Spend 90% of your time finding clients

– Gina’s advice for entrepreneurs

– Gina’s 3 tips for freelancers

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.