Marc's Blog

How To ACTUALLY Make Money On Social Media

October 2, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

The answer is that there are plenty of ways to make money on social media. You can promote sponsored posts and tweet affiliate links. However, those aren’t long-term methods to make money on social media.

So how do you make a good profit from your social media efforts? The answer is to view social media as an indirect way of generating a massive amount of sales.

This is the three step formula to using social media to indirectly boost your sales:

#1: Promote Your Landing Page To Grow Your Email List

Grow your email list on social media consists of two basic steps:

Build the relationship
Create the call to action

Most people only focus on building the relationship. The reason some people don’t see themselves growing their email lists is because they don’t create the call to action.

Every day, I promote my landing page several times per day. I promote one of my landing pages on Facebook every day. On Twitter, I tweet about my landing page every hour. Each social media post that promotes your landing page is a call to action.

If you don’t have a landing page yet, they are easy to create with Optimize Press. Optimize Press is the best WordPress plugin known to man because it lets you create landing pages, membership sites, and just about everything else.

#2: Use Your Email List To Strengthen The Relationship

Now you have people on your email list. What happens next? Relationship building.

While social media is great for building relationships, nothing beats email. Conversations get longer and more meaningful. People are used to seeing your content often and get to know you better.

As you continue growing and communicating with your email list, you will start to become an authority within your niche.

To make a full-time income as an entrepreneur, you need a massive email list. That way, you have your own audience. As you continue to grow your audience, you will continue gaining momentum. A constantly growing audience allows each of your product launches to be more successful than the last.

Speaking of products…

#3: Promote Products To Your Email List

The popular saying on the web is that “The Money Is In The List.” However, if you don’t promote any products to your subscribers, then you won’t make any money.

While you provide your subscribers with free value, you must send the occasional promotional email. Every 6-12 weeks, let your subscribers know about the product you recently launched. If you don’t create products, you can promote someone else’s product through an affiliate link.

Bonus Tip: Feed The Beast

Each time I accomplish a major goal, I always ask myself, “What’s Next?” I celebrate the goal for a day and then look at new horizons. When you make the revenue from your email list, you should set your eyes on new horizons as well.

One thing you should consider doing with your extra revenue is to invest it into online advertising (newspaper ads are just about dead). Social media advertising makes it possible to turbocharge your landing page’s exposure which results in more people on your email list.

If you know how to make a profit following a certain blueprint, it only makes sense to feed the beast. If you can spend $1 to make $5, why not spend $1,000 to make $5,000?

Once you master the three step formula, I recommend you take a look at social media advertising. Social media advertising is a way for you to scale up your results and success.

In Conclusion

To make a full-time income on social media, you can’t think of it as direct income. You can’t use social media to directly promote affiliate links and sales pages. People aren’t going on social media thinking about buying things.

They go on social media to socialize with friends and catch up with the latest news. Some social media users are on the search for valuable information, but when on social media, they don’t have their wallets out.

But they do have an email address ready to go. If you create a landing page with an irresistible offer, people will enter their email addresses and join your list. Then, you can build the relationship with a series of emails.

While people aren’t looking to buy stuff on social media, they are more open to buying products that show up in the inbox. Chances are at some point, an email you opened inspired you to buy something. You may have recently bought something you saw in your inbox a few weeks ago.

The reason emails lead to sales is because the way we communicate builds a sense of trust. If we authentically show up in someone’s inbox long enough those people will trust us. They will believe in the value our products provide. Then they will buy those products and tell their friends about them.

How do you use social media to generate revenue? Do you have experience with social media advertising? Sound off in the comments section below!

Five Social Networks That People Give Up On Too Quickly

September 30, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Facebook and Twitter dominate most conversations about social media. People are looking for ways to get more Twitter followers, more comments on Facebook posts, and turning all of that into a profit.

It’s great that we focus on these social networks. However, as we tunnel vision our focus on 1-2 social networks, we forget about the other social networks that surround us.

The key to my success on social media was focusing on Twitter. However, that wasn’t enough. Focusing on Twitter and thriving on the platform only gave me a strong base, not a skyscraper. I got the skyscraper by addressing other social networks that are often forgotten about.

The reason certain social networks get neglected from a business standpoint is because we want quick results. How do you spend $1 today so you make $2 tomorrow? How do we add some extra zeroes to those numbers? That’s how entrepreneurs think.

While it’s good to focus on the profit, not all profits come in the short-term. The profits people dream of come in the long-term. Growing your audience on multiple social networks (and outsourcing the work) is a great way to grow in the long-term.

The long-term growth on any social network can lead to better results. However, five social networks often find themselves pushed to the side. Either we ignore them or don’t focus enough time on them. Here’s the complete list:

#1: Pinterest

Pinterest boasts over 70 million users and over 50 billion pins. These users are very active, and some of these users spend hours of their time on the site every day. Pinterest makes it possible to organize your social media posts (pins) into different categories (boards). That makes it easier for your followers to find specific content they are looking for.

Other than effective organization, Pinterest has another factor that separates it from most social networks. 80% of pins are repins. That means it’s easier to go viral. One of the pins I sent to my 500 followers ended up getting over 1,000 repins. The pin reached beyond my audience. Just to give you a comparison of Pinterest’s viral power, only 1% of tweets are retweets.

I eventually grew my audience to 22,000 followers. Then I neglected my Pinterest account. It took too much time. The solution to the problem was outsourcing the work to someone from UpWork. Pinterest is a powerful but also time consuming social network. Consider delegating pins and your account’s growth to someone else.

#2: SlideShare

SlideShare has been praised by many marketers and some of the world’s most successful blogs, including Mashable.

So what’s all of the hype about? SlideShare is a social network that lets you upload KeyNote and PowerPoint presentations. The best part about SlideShare is that you don’t need a large audience for your presentation to go viral. Some viral SlideShare presentations were created by people with a few dozen followers. You don’t even need millions of followers on your other social networks.

Perhaps the most powerful use of SlideShare is growing your email list. My friend Steve Scott wrote a blog post discussing SlideShare’s dramatic impact on his email list.

The reason most people don’t invest their time into SlideShare is because it takes a long time to create a presentation. Let alone creating multiple presentations every week. The best way to utilize SlideShare is by outsourcing the work to someone else. Steve Scott outsources his SlideShare presentations to an assistant. It’s a time efficient way to take advantage of a big opportunity.

#3: Periscope

Periscope is the new social network in town. New social networks create two groups of people—the highly skeptical people and the people in search of the next opportunity. I joined Periscope early and ended up getting over 2,000 followers in my first week.

Mastering any social network takes time, but the reason people shy away from Periscope are a bit different:

It’s new
People are afraid of messing up live (no redoing a broadcast)
Real-time engagement looks scary the first time

For some people, using Periscope challenges them to conquer the fear of live recording. And conquering that fear can be quite profitable. Periscope expert Kim Garst has made thousands of dollars promoting her products on Periscope. One of her Periscope broadcasts resulted in an extra 180 subscribers overnight.

And she got those results with a little over 10,000 Periscope followers. It’s not incredibly difficult or time consuming to reach 10,000 Periscope followers. You can even get significant results with your first 1,000 Periscope followers.

The social network presents new opportunities for business owners. However, since it’s still new, most people make the mistake of pushing it to the side. Don’t be one of those people.

#4: YouTube

Shocked to find one of the largest social networks on this list? YouTube has proven itself as a worthy social network again and again. We hear the stories about the people who make six figure incomes from their videos.

As awesome as those stories are, there is a disappointing reality. Most of the people who use YouTube aren’t taking it seriously. Maybe they upload a decent video every month (or worse, every other month). I know some people succeed by uploading one YouTube video every other month, but those people are the exceptions, not the rule.

For some marketers, YouTube is the sleeping giant. Wake up the giant by being active and growing your channel, and that giant will bring in the results.

#5: Instagram

Instagram is more than a social network for teens. It’s emerging as one of the top players. With just as many users as Twitter, Instagram needs to be taken seriously.

For a long time, it has been challenging for marketers to take Instagram seriously. Anyone like me with an active blog typically spends more time on the desktop than on mobile devices. While Instagram is mobile savvy, you can’t exactly call it desktop savvy.

Then the tools caught up. HootSuite now makes it possible for us to schedule Instagram pictures from our desktops. This makes it possible to do the following:

Schedule pictures you create on your desktop (i.e. pictures created with Canva that are optimized for Instagram’s dimension size)
Outsource the work (assign it to someone on your organization’s HootSuite team)

These two possibilities have changed the Instagram landscape. It’s now possible to schedule Instagram photos in a free and easy manner. Scheduling Instagram photos is now as easy as scheduling tweets.

Instagram is continuing to grow. Don’t miss the boat.

In Conclusion

Billions of people are on the web. Many of these people have social media accounts. With all of the social networks on the web, some fall under the cracks. Businesses forget to utilize certain social networks that can turbocharge their growth.

The best way to utilize a social network is by mastering it and then outsourcing the work. That way, you get to spend your time doing other things for your business.

Which social networks are you underutilizing? Have any tips for us so we don’t underutilize these social networks as much? Sound off in the comments section below!

Five Ways To Get Your Joy Back

September 28, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Entrepreneurship has its ups and downs. On some days, you will feel invincible. On other days, you will struggle. It’s the nature of the game. Just ask any entrepreneur.

Successful entrepreneurs have two things in common. The first thing they all have in common is persistence. It has been a well-known fact that entrepreneurs need to have persistence. You’ve heard stories about Dr. Seuss getting denied by dozens of publishers, Steve Jobs getting kicked out of Apple, and Mark Cuban hunting for any job he could find before he became a full-time entrepreneur.

The other thing successful entrepreneurs have in common doesn’t get as much attention. Some people refer to this second thing as following your passion. To be more specific, it’s joy. Entrepreneurs enjoy what they do.

Successful entrepreneurs enjoy their work so much that they couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Asked whether they want to do their work today or hang out with Taylor Swift, all entrepreneurs choose their work (okay fine, that one was a big stretch. I’m shutting down my computer if I had the option).

At some point, the road to success will challenge our foundation. Our enjoyment will be put to the test. For some entrepreneurs in the thick of the road, work that was enjoyable for several weeks may suddenly appear as dull and boring.

The work doesn’t suddenly look dull and boring. The problem is a lack of joy that once existed. Each time you reclaim your joy, you’ll love your work again. Throughout my journey, I discovered that I perform at my best over a long period of time when my joy does not elude me.

With joy, there’s no reason to feel bad about yourself and focus on the shortcomings. Regardless of whether you feel joyful now or disappointed with where you are, you need a bullet-proof system that ensures joy.

Here’s what I have been able to come up with:

#1: Write Down All Of The Things You Accomplished In The Past Five Years

One of the biggest reasons people lose their joy is because they look into the ideal future too much. We focus more on the next milestone than the recently surpassed milestone.

For a long time, that was me. When I got my first 100,000 Twitter followers, I was ecstatic. When I surpassed 110,000 Twitter followers, I focused on surpassing 200,000 Twitter followers some day.

It’s good to set big goals for yourself. However, we rarely stop and take some time to acknowledge what we have already accomplished. We rarely take the time to stop and smell the roses. Maybe we should listen to the Travelocity gnome more often!

The first time I did this activity, I realized how much I had accomplished in the past five years. Writing all of the accomplishments between my 12th birthday and a few months after my 17th birthday allowed me to realize what I had accomplished.

I stopped and smelled the roses. And it was enjoyable. Every day, I look at this list of accomplishments, and it reminds me to enjoy my work. On this list, I did not write any of my shortcomings. I only focused on my accomplishments.

#2: Listen To A Favorite Song

There are certain songs, that no matter how many times I listen to them, I still enjoy them. And they make me happy. I’ve listened to some of these songs at the end of rough days. After listening to those songs, I always go to bed happy.

You need to create a list of songs that you would play to get you through a rough patch. The problem with rough patches is that when they are unattended, those patches turn into ditches. When you feel your joy slowly slipping away, play some of your favorite songs.

And don’t rely on the radio to play your favorite song. I look for the YouTube videos of my favorite songs and listen to them that way. Listening to your favorite songs will also help you during workouts. Speaking of workouts…

#3: Workout Every Day

Before I talk about working out, I want to clear one major point of concern. You don’t have to work as hard as LeBron James to get your joy back. Both a simple 5-10 minutes of stretching and shooting a basketball for a few hours will boost your joy. If you want to become a basketball player though, opt for the latter.

I make it a point to run for an hour on most days. If I don’t run, I am shooting the basketball around and chasing my rebounds with the occasional hot streak. When I return from a workout, I feel happier and more energized. Numerous scientific studies confirm that working out releases chemicals within our bodies that make us happier.

When we lose the joy of working, the last thing you should do at that moment is continue working. Many people decide to trudge through the work just to get it done. This is the worst way to approach your work. The work that matters is more than a task on your to-do list.

In my experience, the best way to release stress is by working out. When I run, I’ll take my iPhone with me so I can listen to my favorite songs.

#4: Break Loose From The Workload

Working out is a temporary fix to breaking loose from the workload. Breaking loose from the workload requires you taking a vacation from your work (minimum of one week). Entrepreneurs don’t become successful because they work 24/7.

And yet most people believe working 24/7 is an integral part of the process. You’ll hear entrepreneurs joke that they were working 25/8 or that we give up the 40 hour/week job so we can work 80 hours every week.

While it’s true entrepreneurs need to put in a lot of work, too much work can hurt. If you put in too much work, your productivity will diminish over time. If you work too long, you become less productive.

Even the super humans need breaks. Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo!, is one of the most productive people on the planet. When she worked for Google, she worked for close to 130 hours every week. That’s not a typo. It comes to a little over 18 and a half hours per day. She’s a super human.

But even Marissa Mayer believes in occasionally breaking loose from the workload. Every four months, she will take a one week vacation and get away from the workload. You should do the same. Just take a week off. Start outsourcing some of the work so your business can function without you.

You need to break loose every once in a while. You deserve it.

#5: Eat Salmon (Or Any Meal Proven To Increase Happiness)

The food we eat impacts our happiness. For the carnivores reading this blog post, do you feel happier eating a giant piece of steak or a bowl of peas? Unless you are a vegetarian, you’d probably opt for the steak.

According to science, eating some foods make us feel happier than eating other foods. There are several articles that talk about this topic and list different foods that make us happier. After reading a bunch of these articles, I discovered to my delight that one meal found its way on virtually every list.

SALMON!

I am the only person in my family who likes salmon. All of the salmon that enters my house is guaranteed to end up on my plate. Thinking about it now makes me salivate the taste and the (in my opinion) fresh smell.

I know if I said this at an event, some people would stand up, say salmon tastes disgusting, and complain about the smell.

Luckily, salmon isn’t the only food that boosts happiness. Fruits, vegetables, and green tea are some of the other options. Being more conscious of what ends up on your plate will allow you to live a happier, healthier life.

In Conclusion

Entrepreneurship is a challenging road filled with twists and turns. Some twists and turns will lead to dead ends and detours. However, at the end of the road is a massive treasure chest waiting for you. Going on the right path requires constant joy in what you do. When you find yourself going off-track, pause and reflect. Bring the joy back. Then continue on the right path.

Which of these tips did you like the most? Have any additional tips for boosting and preserving joy? Sound off in the comments section now!

How To Get Better Results From Less Work

September 25, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Do you have a philosophy that goes along the lines of the more work you put in, the better your results will be? It’s a conventional way to view work that is reinforced by wages.

If you make $10 per hour, and you work for 10 extra hours every week, you make an extra $100 every week. That’s an extra $5,200 every year just by working 10 additional hours every week.

An extra $5,200 isn’t something to laugh at. But what if you were making $20 every hour. You would make the same amount of money by putting in half of the work.

Entrepreneurs don’t get paid a wage. In the beginning, most entrepreneurs get paid well below minimum wage. Some of these people make less than $1 per hour. Some of those same people eventually became millionaires.

Entrepreneurship is a journey and true test of patience. However, it’s different from the workplace. You don’t make more money by putting in more hours. You don’t make the extra $5,200 every year by working an extra 10 hours per week. As an entrepreneur, you may actually lose money (and your sanity) by working those extra 10 hours every week.

How then does an entrepreneur make that extra $5,200? How do entrepreneurs like Bill Gates make astronomical incomes (Gates makes over $25 every second)? The answer isn’t in the working hours. The answer is in the working efficiency.

It is possible to live the Tim Ferris lifestyle and only work four hours every week while making a few million dollars every year. It is also possible to work 80 hours every week and end up with no extra money on the table. Two different extremes with very different lifestyles.

The goals most people share are to work less and earn more. We want that balance with our lives so we can spend more time with family and friends. It’s a matter of saving time and getting better results. Here’s how you find time and get better results:

Examine Every Opportunity

Don’t be a yes-man/woman. Saying no more often than you say yes keeps your time and resources more open to the people and opportunities you say yes to. I don’t say yes to every joint venture proposal. But when I do say yes, I can spend more time on my end of the joint venture.

I am not crushing it on every social network because I know that would take too much time. I’d have to acquire a certain amount of knowledge and put in a lot of work for each of those social networks.

If you want to see successful no-men/women in action, then look no further than Shark Tank. Maybe you’ve seen some of the episodes. If you have never seen an episode, watch one of them to understand.

Most of the deals on Shark Tank get turned down. Even when one of the sharks agrees on a deal, there are several sharks who shoot it down first.

They rarely say yes, and that’s what makes them successful. Just because you get an opportunity does not mean it will have a big impact on your success.

In the beginning, take almost any opportunity you can get. However, as more opportunities—and in particular, the time-consuming ones—come your way, you must make choices.

Outsource The Maintenance Work

Ever wonder if everything you do is important? For most people, the answer is no (sorry to disappoint). Some of the work we do on a daily basis is maintenance work. Maintenance work is the (possibly tedious) work that any other person can do for you.

The list is big. These are some of my maintenance activities:

Follow people on Twitter
Unfollow people on Twitter
Send pins
Create pictures for my blog posts

If I stop growing my Twitter audience, it spells disaster for my social media strategy. Something I considered so important was actually maintenance work. So I got that work off my back by outsourcing it to someone else.

Now someone else follows and unfollows people for my Twitter accounts. I also have people who send pins on my account and create pictures for my blog posts. No wonder the pictures for my blog posts have been better lately 🙂

Create Time Efficient Processes For What You Do

One thing I will never outsource to anyone is the content that goes on my blog. However, I am always looking for ways to write the typical 2,000 word blog post in 20 minutes instead of 30 minutes.

In other words, I am always looking for ways to write the same amount of content quicker.

Now I have a time efficient process that lets me write blog posts quicker. Here’s a basic summary:

Write a bunch of blog post titles (I’ll usually write 20-50 at a time depending on how I feel)
Outline those blog posts
Identify which five blog posts I will write first
Repeat

This process allows me to save more time when writing content. Typing faster also allows me to save more time.

To create time efficient processes, you must specifically focus on the work that doesn’t fall under the maintenance category. Then search on the web and think of ideas on your own that can help you save time. Create your time efficient processes so you can allocate your time to other tasks.

Some methods you come across for creating time efficient processes may involve an investment. You may have to upgrade one of your social media tools to get access to certain time saving features.

The only reason I went from HootSuite to HootSuite Pro was so I could get access to the bulk scheduler. The bulk scheduler allows me to schedule over 100 tweets in six clicks. If I manually scheduled that many tweets, it would take me over four hours every day.

Spend More Time Marketing Than Creating

Walk into a library or bookstore, and it won’t take long for you to find a New York Times bestseller. Libraries and bookstores like to put the most successful books and new releases where we can see them.

So what makes a book a New York Times bestseller? The answer isn’t the content. The answer is the marketing. If Freakonomics got zero sales, it wouldn’t have been a New York Times bestseller (even though it is a fascinating book). It ended up getting over four million sales, all because of marketing.

It’s great to create numerous products, but you must spend time marketing them so they thrive. If you create a product but keep it a secret, you won’t get many sales (if any at all). It could be the most valuable product in your niche, but if you don’t market it, people won’t know to buy it.

Spending more time marketing than creating will allow you to get better results from your overall strategy. The best part is that as you accumulate more revenue, you can put that revenue into other areas of your business such as advertising and outsourcing.

In Conclusion

The amount of time you spend working is irrelevant with getting results. The way you utilize your time ultimately determines the results that you get. Understanding this fact will inspire you to utilize your time more effectively and focus on efficiency over hours worked.

What are your thoughts about working less? Do you think working less can lead to a bigger profit? Do you find yourself working too much? Have any insights for us? Sound off in the comments section now!

3 Simple Tactics To Keep Your Social Media Followers

September 23, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

When people think about a large social media audience, they think about getting more followers or likes. They will type in phrases like the classic “How To Get More Twitter Followers” and hope to find the secret ingredients to Twitter success.

In the beginning, you must learn how to grow your audience. That way, you can start seeing results. However, there will be a point when your audience is growing at a consistent rate.

What happens then? How does the audience get bigger? Do you search “How To Get More Twitter Followers” so you can discover how to gain 501 Twitter followers every day instead of 500 Twitter followers every day?

The next significant way to grow your audience is to keep the individuals within your current audience. If you gain 500 Twitter followers in one day, but you also get unfollowed by 500 people on the same day, then your Twitter audience didn’t grow at all. If you had 10,000 Twitter followers yesterday, then you’ll have the same number by the end of the day.

On social media, the art of growing your audience consists of two factor:

Getting more followers/likes per day
Getting less unfollows/unlikes per day

Since most people cover the first factor in great detail, I’ll choose to talk about the second factor in greater detail. When it comes to keeping the people in your audience, these three tips come in handy:

#1: Be Active

Being active on social media is critical for building trust, getting more followers, and keeping your followers. Some of my friends who forgot to tweet for a day ended up getting unfollowed by 20 extra people on that day. Harsh, but nevertheless, the reality of a social media audience.

More than a billion people use social media. While it highlights social media’s rapid success as a whole, it also indicates we have options. There are countless social media experts. If the average social media expert stops blogging, then no big deal. There are millions of other social media experts to choose from.

Being active on your social networks lets you gradually build a name for yourself. The people in your audience will begin seeing your social media posts more often. These people will engage with your posts and share your content.

If you put in so much time to building your social media platform, then you must utilize that platform. At one point, I didn’t send anymore pins for my Pinterest account with over 22,000 Pinterest followers (I now hired someone for that).

I got less blog traffic at that time than when I had 500 Pinterest followers and sent a few pins per day. In other words, I got more traffic from 500 Pinterest followers than I got from 22,000 Pinterest followers, and it was my fault.

The moment you find yourself stretching your boundaries, stop. Before expanding into new horizons, discover methods that allow you to save a significant amount of time or outsource some of your social media activities to someone else.

#2: Post Valuable Content

No matter how active you are on social media, you must always post valuable content. Bloggers praise valuable content to their audiences as often as parents praise veggies to their children.

Out of curiosity, I wondered what would happen if someone posted on social media so often but didn’t provide much value. Would someone, say, with over one million tweets have a large audience.

It turns out posting lots of bad content doesn’t help grow a large audience. Three Twitter accounts with over 1 million tweets each prove the assertion very well. Take a look:

@Aviongoo: 1.68 million tweets later, the account has a little over 300 Twitter followers.
@Market_JP: 1.56 million tweets later, the account has under 400 Twitter followers.
@ATNews: 1.19 million tweets later, the account has a little over 200 Twitter followers.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to discover these accounts are posting low value content. Just because you are sending more social media posts than your competitors does not mean you are doing any better.

The value you provide with your social media posts determines the overall impact of your platform…and the number of people who decide to stick around.

#3: Engage With Your Audience

Each time someone tweets one of my blog posts, I make it a point to thank the person or favorite the tweet. Doing this lets the person know I care and appreciate the support.

Your audience helps you become more successful. While building relationships helps you reach new audiences, the people who share/read your content and/or buy your products help make you successful.

When you engage with your audience, you are engaging with the same people who help you become more successful. It’s the least we can do to support our audiences.

There are people in your audience who have been following your journey for a while. These people would feel honored if they got a response from you. Other people in your audience are looking for answers to some of their problems. Answer those questions, and the people in your audience will be grateful.

Engaging with your audience will effectively humanize your social media efforts. The entire point of automating social media posts is to open up more time to engage with your audience. When the term “social media” was coined, it included the word “social” for a reason.

The most meaningful relationships I have had with individuals within my audience started from conversations on social media. You never know where one conversation can take you and your brand.

In Conclusion

Many people focus on growing their social media audiences. Although an admirable approach, it becomes easy to forget the importance of keeping the audience you have already built. If you gain 100 Twitter followers on the day you lose 100 Twitter followers, then your audience size will remain the same.

Once you master growing your social media audience rapidly and keeping most of the people within your audience, you will find it much easier to grow a large social media audience.

What are your thoughts about growing a social media audience VS keeping the one you have? Which of the two do you think is more important? Do you have any other methods for keeping social media followers? Sound off in the comments section below.

7 Things I Would Do If I Could Start All Over Again

September 21, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Did you ever look at your life and ask what you would have done differently? I find myself in this scenario once every quarter, and usually during an extreme. Business either did really bad or really good right before the change (fortunately, the more recent scenarios were caused by the latter).

So I recently found myself in this scenario yet again. This time, I was in Cape May. The last time I was in Cape May, I decided to take my email list seriously, so I knew I was in for a serious self-reflection.

Looking back, I came across seven things I wish I did for my business when I started. I wrote this blog post so you could see my mistakes. That way, you don’t make the same ones.

#1: Focus On My Email List

I discovered the importance of an email list just a year ago. No matter how much bloggers like myself make up for it, we’ll still refer to under utilizing our email lists as the biggest mistake we ever made.

I am one of the legions of people who says I wish I focused on my email list earlier. An email list provides you with the most powerful way to build a strong relationship with the people in your audience.

#2: Avoiding The Classic Social Media Trap

There is a common social media trap that plagues most users. It’s the reason why most social media marketers don’t have hundreds of thousands of followers. Here’s how the trap works with Periscope:

“Periscope is totally dominating the social media space. People are saying great things about it. I better get on board. Even though I don’t have large audiences on my other social networks, I believe Periscope will be different. The other social networks are subpar compared to Periscope. Now I’m putting most of my time into Periscope.”

The quick summary is this: Most people focus on mastering all of the social networks so much that they end up mastering none of the social networks.

It’s similar to saying a product created for everyone is really a product for no one.

Sure enough, I found myself in this classic social media trap. I had a Facebook Page, a Twitter account, a Pinterest account in the works, a Google+ account, a YouTube account, and an account for almost every other social network you could think of.

I even had a MySpace account years after its dominance started to fade.

Then I made a life changing decision (literally) that made me take this whole digital marketing thing seriously.

What if I only took Twitter seriously?

And here I am today. With over 250,000 Twitter followers, it’s fair to say I made the right choice. However, I learned one important lesson about social media success.

If you succeed on one social network, it is so much easier to be successful on the rest of them.

Soon enough, I had a Pinterest account with over 25,000 followers. My YouTube channel has over 2,500 subscribers.

For a long time, Pinterest was my second best social network. That is, until my Facebook Page recently started booming. My Facebook Page’s audience size may soon surpass my Twitter audience size.

I get over 400 Twitter followers every day. On Facebook, I get over 600 likes every day.

What happened? Did I get a shout out from Taylor Swift? Did I finally land that 60 Minutes interview? Did I buy fake likes (if you were thinking that, lie to me if we meet)?

Once I mastered Twitter, it got easier for me to master the other social networks. One of those social networks was Facebook. The way my Facebook Page took off inspired the next thing on the list.

#3: Start Facebook Advertising ASAP

I almost regret not utilizing Facebook advertising as much as not growing my email list. I started using Facebook advertising as my vacation came to a close (I promise I was almost never on my computer during the vacation).

I started off at $3 per day. I set up an ad to get likes for my Facebook Page. With a little under 400 likes, my Facebook Page needed the social proof before I started paying for promoted posts.

It turns out I was a natural pro with Facebook advertising (with the help of several training courses, a few books, and hundreds of blog posts). Okay, fine. I did extensive research before I launched my first Facebook ad. I targeted countries that allowed me to get likes for the least amount of money. My friend Jerry Banfield compiled a lengthy list of ideal countries for low CPL (cost per like).

After seeing over 100 likes come in and more than $1 left to spend, I knew I needed to put in more money. In less than a day, I went from paying $3 per day to $7 per day.

At the end of my first day, I got over 415 likes for my page. At least, that’s what the report said. When I looked at the total number of likes for my Facebook Page, the numbers told a different story.

I actually gained over 500 likes that day. On the next day, I gained over 600 likes for just $7 (based on insights data instead of the advertising report. Insights data in my experience is more reliable). That comes down to a minuscule 1.2 cents per like.

At that rate, I just have to spend $1,200 on Facebook advertising to get my first 100,000 likes (real people interested in my niche). Now, I am aiming to get over 100,000 likes by the end of 2015.

More importantly, I am aiming to have over 1 million social media followers before I get my high school diploma. That would be awesome.

#4: Write Fewer Blog Posts Each Week

At my peak, I wrote 21 blog posts every week. I wrote two blog posts for this blog every day and wrote one blog post per day for my Yugioh Philosophy Blog (now inactive). Naivety at its finest.

While writing 21 blog posts in a given week normally gives you the hard-worker badge, it is an overrated badge. I’d rather put in half of the work and get twice the results.

Now, I only write three blog posts per week. Although they got much longer than my past blog posts, the decision gives me extra time. Instead of thinking about 21 blog post ideas (and then outlining and writing them) every week, I only have to think of three.

Writing blog posts allows you to build up your blog. However, if you only spend time building your blog, people won’t come. You have to get out there by writing guest posts, getting on interviews, and growing your social media audience. Writing blog posts is just one small slice of the pie.

#5: Create Training Courses Right From The Start

If I focused on creating training courses and growing my email list in the beginning, I would have made a bigger profit sooner. That’s not what happened, so alas, no crying over spilt milk. I just hope that you don’t make the same mistake.

#6: Build Relationships With The Right People

Have you noticed most successful people have a network of other highly successful people? Two main reasons why that’s the case:

You act like the people you constantly surround yourself with. Choose your friends carefully.
Joint ventures. You both help each other become more successful.

When you build relationships with people in your niche, the relationship gives you both access to a new audience. If you and another expert agree to go on a joint venture, then your products and services would get put in front of each other’s audiences. This is how highly successful influencers are able to become more influential and successful.

#7: Give Up Video Games Much Earlier

For the title, the only reason I didn’t choose to say “never play” video games is because I don’t know what impact they had in my life. Maybe I wouldn’t be an entrepreneur. I’m not saying video games made me an entrepreneur, but maybe they steered me in a different direction.

Somehow, I remembered that when I was six years old, I was great at the piano. I took multiple lessons per week. At that time I could play some songs on the piano without looking at the keys. These songs weren’t like Beethoven’s masterpieces, but they were much more than Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Then I gave it all away for video games. The piano sat in the basement accumulating dust. Writing those two sentences makes me feel a fountain of regret. Luckily, I recently gave up video games forever and decided to revive the piano. Talk about a reawakening.

I get that some of my readers never played video games because video games weren’t in their generation. The way to interpret me giving up video games is to think of giving up a bad habit or addiction.

When video games started taking over, most of my elementary school schedule looked like this:

Go to school
Do as much of my homework in class as possible (under my desk, without the teacher knowing. It was either sneaky or brave. Your call).
Getting home
Rushing any remaining homework (15 minutes of time spent on remaining homework, tops)
Play video games until I was told to stop

While I managed to ace my classes, I’m not proud of the schedule above. Better to figure out now than 10 years later.

So for a time, video games for me could have been classified as an addiction. Now I’m done with them.

If you want to get rid of a bad addiction, here’s how I did it:

I went on vacation without bringing any video games with me. For two weeks, I couldn’t play video games whether I wanted to or not. There were many exciting things to do during vacation, so I didn’t mind.
I went home and unplugged everything. I didn’t bother playing video games for “one final time” because I knew it wouldn’t be one final time.
I listened to the right music while I unplugged everything. When trying to break a bad habit or addiction, few songs are better than Bad Blood. I am in a complicated fandom where I like both Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, but Bad Blood proved to be very helpful for eliminating video games from my life.

Giving up video games opened the door to more time that I now use to read books and play the piano. In just two weeks, I made a dramatic change in my life.

In Conclusion

We can’t cry over spilt milk. However, it’s a shame when the milk is constantly spilt, and nothing is done about it. When I reflect upon all that I have done, I look at my achievements and the spilt milk.

Addressing our mistakes when we catch ourselves decreases our chances of making the same mistakes again. Once we catch ourselves, we know what to be on the lookout for.

What are your thoughts about what I wish I knew? Did any stand out for you? What are some things you wish you knew earlier in life? Sound off in the comments section below.