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The 7 Types Of Tweets You Must Send Every Day

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The Best Tweets To Send
Are you tweeting correctly?

Want to attract a large audience to your Twitter handle? If you do, then you aren’t alone. Many people aspire to get thousands of Twitter followers, and with each milestone, the possibilities expand.

I have analyzed many Twitter accounts, and I analyze my own account every day of the week. I don’t want to go as far to say that I live and breathe Twitter—the founders get to say that—but I am highly active on the social network.

During my analysis, I saw which tweets picked up engagement and which ones were left behind. I saw what other people did differently from me that either resulted in an increase or decrease in engagement. I implemented what worked for other people and experimented along the way to grow my Twitter audience.

One important lesson I learned from my entrepreneurial journey is that you must prepare yourself for success. Success won’t just come, no matter what you pursue. To prepare yourself for success on Twitter, you need to know what tweets you will send to your followers.

I know exactly what tweets I publish and when because all of my tweets are in a CSV file that I upload to HootSuite. Eliminating the problem of searching for content makes it easier to interact with your audience and promote yourself. So how do you create successful tweets that give you followers and results? You must utilize all seven of these types of tweets in a given day:

 

#1: Blog Promotion Tweet

Since you are taking the time to grow your audience, you should get some of the people in that audience to see your content. If that audience also happens to be a targeted audience, then the people in your audience will more than likely appreciate your blog’s content.

Many of the tweets I send out promote my blog posts. I have no problem with self-promotion because if you don’t self-promote, then how will people know about you beyond Twitter? Tweets about my blog posts garner hundreds of daily retweets, favorites, and conversations. This translates to hundreds of people visiting my blog from Twitter every day.

However, getting blog traffic from Twitter doesn’t just mean more traffic from Twitter. One of the secrets that makes Twitter so special is that Twitter helps out with SEO. Search engines will rank your content higher if they see you engaging with your audience and getting your audience to engage with your blog posts via Twitter.

Each time my Twitter traffic picks up, my SEO traffic picks up. Each time my Twitter traffic goes down, my SEO traffic goes down. They are both connected.

 

#2: Landing Page Tweet

Your email list is your most important asset. I have stated this truth in many of my blog posts, and if you come across another digital marketing blog that talks about the email list, you’ll probably read something like “The money is in the email list.”

I under utilized my email list for a long time and didn’t care about growing it. The end result was that 150,000 blog visitors and over 100,000 Twitter followers later, my income barely changed. I wondered if I grew my Twitter audience for no reason, but then I learned about the importance of an email list, and equally as important, the landing page.

Now I send out numerous tweets about my landing pages. In fact, I send one tweet about one of my landing pages every hour. Whether it’s 27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter or my Productivity Rubric, you’ll occasionally see some tweets about them if you follow me on Twitter. It’s my way of providing my audience with free value while taking the relationship between me and my audience one step further.

 

#3: Guest Post Tweet

You don’t want to exclusively tweet about your landing page and content from your blog. You also want to blend some of your guest posts into the mix. Why? Guest posts build authority.

Just think of it this way. A blogger can exclusively tweet his own blog posts or occasionally send some tweets of his articles on Inc Magazine. While this is an extreme example, any guest post you have builds credibility. Having a guest post is a way of saying that your content is good enough to appear on other people’s blogs.

I send anywhere from 1-3 tweets containing my guest posts every day. Although my Twitter followers are not on my blog at this time, they still get to see my content at the bottom along with my bio. If you don’t have much experience with writing guest posts, here’s how to start.

 

#4: Funny Tweet

I watch hundreds of people speak every year at live events and on YouTube. The people who keep my attention for the longest amount of time are the informative storytellers who utilize humor.

Humor is one of the unsung heroes of many successful business strategies. Saying something funny makes it easier for us to remember who you are. We’ll come back to your Twitter handle again and again to see if you posted new, funny pictures or articles.

Funny tweets are directly related to your niche and are primarily tweets that your targeted audience would understand. Depending on your targeted audience, you may need to geek out during a funny tweet, but there is no problem with geeking out. In fact, geeking out is actually a good thing since geeking out exposes some of your personality. Geeking out allows your followers to feel a deeper personal connection with you and your message.

My goal before the end of 2015 is to get better at sending funny tweets. While most people should send 1-5 funny tweets per day, you may find yourself sending more or less depending on your niche.

 

#5: Inspirational Tweet

One thing I always got right with Twitter was the inspirational tweet. I send anywhere from 5-10 of these tweets out to my audience every day. I even decided to create a motivational quotes account that sends one motivational tweet every hour.

Inspirational tweets give your followers the motivation to do the work that they were previously scared of. Inspirational tweets challenge people to think outside of limits and explore the possibilities.

If you send these types of tweets every day, some of your followers will primarily visit your Twitter handle to read through some of your inspirational quotes. As the relationship continues to build, your followers will like what you do and decide to visit your blog.

 

#6: Value In A Pic Tweet

Not all of your Twitter followers will want to leave Twitter to visit your blog—no matter how good your blog posts’ headlines are. However, you still want to provide these followers with value so they remember you and continue reading your tweets.

The ideal solution for this problem is the Value In A Pic Tweet. In this type of tweet, you tweet out a picture with text that explains how to do something or states a tip. I use Canva to create my pictures, and the text you use should be 1-2 sentences. The key is to make the text concise so your followers can get quick value and then look through other tweets.

Some people who see your Value In A Pic tweet may suddenly get intrigued and want to take a look at what you do. Putting your website URL and a picture of you or your logo at the bottom of the picture builds brand recognition and boosts the likelihood of those people coming back for more tweets (or visiting your blog). If you want to do a product campaign, you can also include a picture of your product at the bottom to give it more visibility.

 

#7: SEC Tweet

The SEC (Someone Else’s Content) Tweet is the tweet that most people either skip over or use too often. Most of the accounts I analyzed were on one end of the totem pole or on the other end—either 100% self-promotional or 100% promoting other people’s content.

Don’t make the mistake of under utilizing this tweet, but also avoid the mistake of overusing it. To keep a happy medium, anywhere from 20-40% of your tweets should be SEC tweets. The actual percentage depends on the number of valuable blog posts and guest posts you have.

The less content you have on your blog, the closer that number should be to 40%. The more content you have on your blog, the closer that number should be to 20%.

SEC Tweets let your followers know the following:

  • You pay attention to other people in your niche
  • You learn from other people in your niche
  • You aren’t overly self-promotional

You don’t have to send out a massive amount of SEC Tweets every day, but 20-40% of your tweets should be SEC Tweets so you provide your followers with greater variety.

 

In Conclusion

Knowing what types of tweets to send out will allow you to prepare for success on Twitter. Once you know what tweets you will send to your followers, you can spend your time doing other things such as marketing your blog posts and growing your Twitter audience.

Which of these types of tweets do you use most often? Do you achieve a happy balance of all seven? Do you think any other type of tweet should be added? Sound off in the comments section below!

How You Can Get 10,000 Monthly Blog Visitors From Twitter

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Get More Blog Traffic From Twitter
It’s time to turbocharge your Twitter!

If you are not utilizing Twitter for your blog’s growth, you are making a mistake. A BIG ONE.

Twitter is the main reason this blog became popular and I established myself as an influencer in my niche. Sure, I got opportunities that further established my credibility, but let’s go back to how I got those opportunities. I won’t deny that having over 100,000 Twitter followers does open up some doors that were previously closed.

Perhaps the most visible way to see Twitter in my business growth is my blog traffic. I routinely get tens of thousands of monthly visitors from Twitter alone. Some of these visitors have become subscribers and purchased my training courses.

Twitter isn’t responsible for many of my direct sales, but it plays a big role in indirect sales. Take, for instance, someone reads dozens of my tweets and then subscribes to my blog. After reading dozens of posts, that person is more likely to buy one of my products than the average visitor. In other words, Twitter allows me to build long-lasting relationships that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

So how would you get 10,000 monthly blog visitors from Twitter (over 300 every day)? Having a large audience does help, but your large audience is only part of the story. Here is how you can get 10,000 monthly visitors from Twitter:

 

Increase Your Tweeting Frequency

I have written multiple case studies about tweeting frequency, and another one is coming soon (spoiler alert!). Tweeting frequency is a common topic of discussion, and you will hear varying answers from different experts.

Tweet four times every day. Tweet 12 times every day. Tweet 20 times every day. You’ll get different answers on what the “magic number” is. The truth is that there is no standard magic number. The magic number is the number that works for you.

100+ works for me.

Every day, I send over 100 tweets on my main account @MarcGuberti alone. The two accounts I am currently working on as part of a secret case study each send out a tweet once per hour. Since I send over 100 tweets per day, each link needs four clicks, and then I’m set. I am getting 10,000 blog visitors from Twitter every month.

What I will discuss more in the case study is that it is okay to send 100 tweets, but if you send too many (yes, 100 isn’t too many), you risk losing traffic. Believe it or not, there was a point that my blog traffic from Twitter decreased even as I was gaining hundreds of daily followers.

After investigating the issue, I concluded to mix up my tweets by tweeting other people’s content. I still tweet my own blog posts 80-90% of the time, but now I send more tweets of Inc and Entrepreneur articles.

If you decide to send dozens of tweets every day, don’t manually schedule them. That takes up too much time. I use HootSuite Pro’s bulk scheduler to schedule a day’s worth of tweets in six clicks. This one feature alone allows me to save four hours of my time every day.

 

Interact

For a long time, I made one of the biggest Twitter mistakes known to mankind. I focused on broadcasting my own content and didn’t take the time to interact with my audience. I got into a bad habit of not checking the notifications tab.

I scheduled tweets on HootSuite and never went on Twitter. I would then move onto writing more content for my blog and Squidoo (Squidoo was booming when I first joined. HubPages acquired it in 2014).

There were two problems with me not interacting with my followers. The first problem was that I probably missed out on opportunities and building relationships. The second problem is that an account that sends a lot of tweets, follows a lot of people, and unfollows a lot of people but doesn’t bother engaging will look like a bot.

So, for a few months, my account looked like a bot. Within that short time frame, Twitter gave me the ultimate slap—suspension. You read that right. Not a typo. Oh, and it wasn’t any suspension. It was a New Year’s Day suspension (time to throw those Twitter resolutions in the trash).

I would have lost all 10,000 of my Twitter followers because I wasn’t tweeting smartly. I looked like a bot and never bothered interacting with my followers. The only saving grace was that Twitter recognized that for the most part, I was a good user. I got my account back in a matter of minutes.

I tell people to interact with their followers to build relationships and get opportunities, but not everyone listens. They focus on the media part of social media without focusing on the social part. When I mention the word suspension, the outlook changes.

I am not the only account to have been suspended in this manner. I have witnessed accounts with hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers briefly getting suspended and then being reactivated. For the most part, these accounts didn’t interact often, but they tweeted many times throughout the day.

It would be unfair to end off this section with an “interact or get suspended” slogan. This slogan undermines how significant interaction is for knowing your audience and getting opportunities.

Getting suspended was a wake-up call. I won’t deny it. I saw what I built from scratch leave me in a matter of seconds. The wake-up call was the best thing that could ever happen to me.

I suddenly made it a habit to look at the notifications tab and respond to my followers every day, without fail. If no one interacted with me in the notifications tab, I started conversations with other people. Twitter alone led to many of my speaking engagements, guest posts, and connections.

 

Tweet About Yourself More Often

Tweeting about yourself gets just as much discussion as tweeting frequency. One of the most common pieces of advice is to only tweet about yourself 20% of the time and spend the other 80% of your time tweeting other people’s articles.

That’s not how I roll. I tweet my own blog posts more than the Cookie Monster eats cookies (hey Siri, Cookie Monster has cookies and I have friends).

Now that I spend more time interacting with my audience, I know this strategy works well because people thank me for my value. When your followers thank you for the value you provide in your tweets, you know that you are taking the correct approach with your Twitter strategy. For the most part, it doesn’t matter who wrote the articles you tweet about. All that matters is that the people in your audience value and appreciate them.

It is okay to tweet your content more often if enough of your followers show appreciation and a desire to read more of your content.

 

Grow A Targeted Audience

Just because your Twitter audience grows does not mean it’s good for your business. The number of followers you have is just a small part of the Twitter Domination equation.

One metric the equation includes is the number of targeted followers you have. Based on importance, the amount of targeted followers you have by far surpasses the number of followers someone has.

If you could have 100,000 Twitter followers who don’t care about your niche or 10,000 Twitter followers that are passionate about your niche, which group would you rather have. I’d choose the 10,000 Twitter followers any day of the week.

Growing a targeted audience allows you to get the type of engagement you would want to see when people engage with your tweets. To grow your own targeted audience, do the following:

  1. Find influencers in your niche who gain a lot of followers every day (preferably, they also follow a lot of people every day)
  2. Follow their followers who are likely to follow back.

That’s it. Growing a targeted audience doesn’t have to be complex.

 

In Conclusion

Twitter is a P O W E R F U L tool that will continue growing in importance. The best part about growing a Twitter audience is that there is no such thing as being late to the party. If you wanted to create a billion dollar search engine idea, you’re too late. Google now dominates that area and is practically invincible.

Anyone can grow a large Twitter audience, regardless of whether someone joined Twitter seven years ago or seven days ago.

How do you use Twitter to get more blog traffic? What kinds of opportunities do you get from Twitter? How do you hope Twitter will transform your business? Sound off in the comments section below!

5 Lessons I Learned From Overwhelming Myself With Work

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Productivity

Ever feel the workload get too tough? Whether you are productive or unproductive, it doesn’t make a difference for this example—some of the workload becomes too tough. I wanted to finish writing a book before July and then finish a training course before August.

I could have easily accomplished those two goals—if I did a Twitter hibernation, had this blog fend for itself, and said no to socializing. Basically, I could only get it all done if I ate food, worked, and slept. I quickly got overwhelmed and tried to push through for as long as I could.

I made the mistake of setting an impossible goal for myself. It’s one thing to write a book or create a training course. It is something else to create a high-value book along with a high-value training course. I aimed to write the best book I ever wrote and have my training course exceed 10 hours.

I’ll let you know when they come out. That’s right. I didn’t even finish them yet, and I am happy it is that way. I changed my schedule because I saw summer slip away just as quickly as it began—one of the worst feeling for a teen to have getting out of junior year in high school.

I changed my schedule so I could say yes to socializing, not go on a Twitter hiatus, and continue growing this blog. I also got to expand in new horizons that I never thought were possible for a 17 year old. While I became more successful by making the change, I learned five important lessons along the way.

If you get stressed out because you overwork yourself, these five lessons apply to you too.

 

#1: Go On A Journey That You Would Enjoy

Why do something if you know you won’t have any fun. Right now, I am having fun writing this blog post. I have fun when I write books and create training courses. I don’t have fun when I try to do all three of those things at the same time on a tight schedule.

If you do not have fun doing the work that you do, then your lack of enthusiasm will be reflected in the quality of your work. More mistakes get made, errors don’t get detected, and worst of all, you aren’t having any fun.

Some people insist that it is okay to not have fun at the workplace because that’s how you get the paycheck. Remember that if you live like most people, you will spend at least 33% of your life working. That is a huge amount of your life, and it is your choice to be happy or miserable during that span of your life.

I know some people are quick to point out they have 67% of their time to be happy, but it doesn’t work that way. First off, you will spend another third of your life sleeping. Only one-third of your life left—to not think about your work while with your family, to be happy, and not let negative emotions from the workplace make it into the rest of your life.

You can do a lot of work in your lifetime, but you only have one life, so do the work that matters and makes you happy.

 

#2: Don’t Launch Multiple Products So Quickly

Each time you want to launch a successful product, you must have a lengthy prelaunch first. The prelaunch and launch phases of your product should both take up more time than it did for you to actually create the product.

That is why I don’t publish one book every month anymore. I want to have a powerful prelaunch that leads into a powerful launch. If I create multiple products at the same time, it becomes more difficult (and stressful) for me to do the prelaunch and the launch on my own.

That is why I decided to write the book first, then create the training courses, and then do the prelaunch and launch of the products afterwards (I can do the prelaunch and launch at the same time for two products if I don’t have to worry about creating them).

Now, it is possible to use a training course to promote a book. However, if you don’t have experience with creating multiple products, get better at the prelaunch and launch before you promote multiple products in short time intervals between each other.

 

#3: Focus Most Of Your Time On Your Marketing

Some marketers believe we should focus as much as 80% of our time on marketing, and I don’t blame them. My original plan had a strong focus on creating the products in a time effective manner but no focus on marketing. That’s a big no-no in business.

Consider this. If you could focus 100% of your time creating products or 100% of your time promoting yourself, where would your time be better spent? The answer is promoting yourself because when you finally create your own product, you have a large audience. If you spent 100% of your time creating products and finally start promoting yourself, it will take a long time for those products to get enough sales to generate a full-time income.

Now I spend most of my time creating podcast episodes and connecting with key influencers. When I do launch a product, I know it has a greater chance of succeeding than my past products.

 

#4: Make Your Work More Manageable

In order to finish writing my entire book before July, I had to write 3,000 words every day for two weeks. I already wrote 24,000 words for the book. I wanted it to surpass 60,000 words.

Writing 3,000 words every day isn’t a challenge for me. Some of my blog posts are over 3,000 words long. However, hibernating from all of the other parts of my business wasn’t an option. I write anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 words every day, but those words are spread out across blog posts, tweets, emails, and of course, my book.

I also faced complications with my plan because I run 1-2 hours every day (something that will never change unless I intentionally take a day off), read books to learn more about my niche, and need some downtime (Super Smash Bros, anyone).

Deciding to finish the book in July and wait a little longer to start the training course opened up more time for me to promote myself. I optimized my tweeting schedule to get more traffic and better serve my followers. I started my own podcast. Most importantly, I spent more time having fun with my family.

It is necessary to grind to get some tasks done. However, don’t just grind for the sake of grinding.

 

#5: It’s Better To Get One Big Project Done Than Stress About Two That Go Nowhere

In this particular example, my book was actually going somewhere. I wrote over 24,000 words for it before the stress piled up. However, I have assigned myself multiple big projects in the past and never started them.

One day, I remember writing a list of potential eBook titles. The list exceeded 50 potential eBook ideas, and I thought about all of the money the books would bring me (another big mistake). I hide the list from myself and now focus on one big product at a time. While it is great to think about possibilities, overthinking and overworking will put too much stress in your life.

 

In Conclusion

We have to put in work every day, but the amount of work we give ourselves can sometimes create stress. The next time you find yourself stressed out, ask yourself why you are stressed. It may be that the workload has gotten too tough or (even worse) that you are not passionate about your work.

Do you find yourself stressing out when you work? How do you respond when you overwork yourself? What are your thoughts about work? Sound off in the comment section below!

6 Lessons We Can Learn From LEGO

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Business Lessons

Did you know LEGO almost went bankrupt in the early 2000’s? I first learned about the beloved company’s escape from demise a few months ago, and it blew my mind. None of the friends I told knew about it—even many of the hard core LEGO fans.

David C. Robertson’s stunning book Brick by Brick discussed LEGO’s rise to power, but also its near collapse. How does a company go from decades of profits to near bankruptcy? And how does that same company rise back to the top? LEGO’s story is filled with intriguing twists, turns, and lessons that we can learn from. These are some of the lessons you can learn from LEGO:

#1: Be Customer Driven

LEGO was customer driven for most of its existence, that is, until everything went wrong. LEGO knew its targeted audience consisted of children, but innovations were taking those children away from LEGO. Video games were starting to attract a global audience in the 1990’s, and now millions of children play video games. More time for video games, less time for LEGO.

LEGO did a study that confirmed one-third of children were still loyal to the brand. However, LEGO made the mistake of focusing on getting the two-thirds of children to love the brand. The result was a series of dumbed-down LEGO sets that attempted to get everyone else to like LEGO. The hard-core fans disapproved of the change, and many of them stopped buying sets from the brand they once loved. The dumbed-down LEGO sets were massive failures.

A few bad products cost LEGO millions of dollars and the trust of the retail stores. LEGO Star Wars helped out, but once no new Star Wars movies came out, LEGO found itself in a tight situation. Bionicle, the only massively successful LEGO set of its time, was the only thing keeping the company afloat. Some LEGO executives to this day credit Bionicle to the company’s survival.

One reason LEGO made its big turnaround was because LEGO went back to being customer driven. LEGO now focuses on the 33% when it creates most of its products.

#2: Be Willing To Learn From Your Mistakes

As LEGO approached bankruptcy in the early 2000’s, sets were failing left and right. Money was getting drained out of the company. However, the company looked the other way. LEGO only looked at its success with the Star Wars sets but didn’t take the time to learn from mistakes. When one set failed, little to nothing was done to assess the situation. LEGO needed a completely revamped team and leader to make change.

Not only did LEGO have internal problems, but LEGO was not the nice-and-fuzzy company we know today. Now LEGO invites its fans to contribute with their own creations and suggestions. However, LEGO has been historically known as a company that ignored the fans.

When LEGO started to interact with fans to discover what went wrong with the brand, the company had to take the criticism and learn from the mistakes. The company had to deal with the criticisms of adult fans who felt the brand lost its touch. The change faced opposition from many people in LEGO. A policy that ruled the company for decades (just create and don’t pay much attention to customers’ ideas) suddenly got snapped.

The fans allowed LEGO to discover its mistakes, and then the company went to work fixing the mistakes that it created.

#3: Taking The Same Approach Won’t Get A Different Result

As LEGO approached bankruptcy, employees remained happy. Although that may sound like an optimistic approach, it was too optimistic. Employees continued creating Lego sets and testing their imaginations as if the company was still successful.

They tried crazy ideas and drifted away from the basics. The people working for LEGO were in a balloon of happiness, but that balloon had to get popped for the survival of the company. Either someone within the LEGO team would pop the balloon, or the balloon would pop due to LEGO’s demise.

Jørgen Vig Knudstorp was LEGO’s new leader in 2004, the survive or collapse year. When LEGO finally assessed the problem, many people wanted a quick recovery. They wanted to go from a bankrupt company to reclaiming the #1 spot in one year. This was the same approach LEGO always took: How do we go from where we are now to #1? Knudstorp had other plans. Instead of creating a one year plan that took the company from the bottom to the top, he created a one year survival plan.

The survival plan was designed to reassess the company’s products, spending, and profit. The survival plan also redefined the standard for LEGO sets which ultimately brought them back to the golden path.

#4: Don’t Overextend Yourself

In the late 1990’s, LEGO overextended itself in an attempt to catch up with a world dominated by video games. LEGO explored too many different areas at once and worked on too many innovative ideas. The overextension led to most of these ideas, like Project Darwin which was a complete failure.

One idea LEGO came up with was the initially successful MovieMaker set which featured a camera and software that made it possible to create stop motion LEGO animations. The set came with enough mini figures for creating a stop motion LEGO animation. However, LEGO overextended itself with the MovieMaker sets by creating lower priced sets that neither included the camera nor the software. Those sets missed what made the Studio sets special, and as a result, LEGO’s profit from those sets dropped drastically.

It is okay to create new products and come up with innovative ideas. However, if you overextend yourself and try to accomplish too many goals at the same time, you risk not accomplishing any of those goals and falling a few steps back.

#5: Have Strong Communication With Your Team

There are many words necessary to describe the fall of LEGO. Miscommunication is one of them. LEGO expanded its employee base all around the world in hopes of boosting creativity and making a bigger profit. These people created numerous sets, but due to the miscommunication and stubbornness of LEGO headquarters, many of these LEGO sets never saw the light of day.

LEGO also had several miscommunications when it came to digitizing the brick. Miscommunication is one of the reasons it took LEGO so long to grow its presence on the web. When LEGO fixed its communication issues, LEGO sets and ideas could easily reach headquarters and get approval.

As more people from around the world joined the headquarters of LEGO, the stubbornness of HQ slowly diminished. Now LEGO headquarters pays attention to ideas from all around the world—even the ideas from their own customers (The company went to Adam Reed Tucker, a LEGO fan, for the idea and products of the successful LEGO Architecture series).

Strong communication is essential to the success of any team. Work on ways to strengthen the communication between you and your team so there is no confusion. In addition to bad sets, LEGO’s miscommunication prevented the company from creating a strong, sustainable response.

#6: Build Smarter

When LEGO got past the survival stage, it needed a way to reclaim the #1 spot. Doing the same things that allowed LEGO to survive wouldn’t make the cut. Now, LEGO needed to thrive. LEGO looked towards new horizons and relied customer recommendations and their own creative way of thinking to guide them. LEGO eventually created unprecedented LEGO sets that grabbed the imagination of children and gave adult fans a challenging build (remember that they complained about the dumbed-down sets earlier, so they welcomed the challenge).

It’s not just a matter of building. It’s a matter of building smarter. Look into your market and see what your customers want and then build products and write content that they would appreciate.

In Conclusion

LEGO is one of the most beloved companies in the world with a story of rise to near collapse to rise again. We can learn a lot from LEGO’s journey about the company’s history and how we can grow our businesses.

How To Master A Skill Without Paying A Single Penny

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skill mastery

Which new skill have you been trying to learn lately? Whether you want to bake cookies the right way or get more Twitter followers, the web has made it possible for us to learn any skill that we want to learn.

With free information available on YouTube and the countless blogs on the web, we don’t have any excuses. The information is hidden in front of us, but with Google, finding the needle in the haystack isn’t as challenging as it was before.

While it is possible to learn a new skill quicker with the appropriate book or training course, it is possible to learn a new skill for free. I learned everything I know about social media without spending a penny. Now I primarily buy books and training courses about social media to expand upon my knowledge.

When I want to learn a new skill fast, and for the price of zero, I use this process:

 

Step #1: Research

The first step is where Google truly shines, and it also highlights the difference between our current era and life without the internet—a life that is foreign to me (how the heck did people go to the library every day in the winter for their information?).

When I want to learn something new, I will search the appropriate phrase into Google. Right now, I am mastering the art of podcasting free of charge. I will not buy a book or training course until I am already successful with my podcast and ready to expand upon my knowledge.

After I type in the search phrase (in this case, “podcasting tips”), I click on all of the links on the first two pages of Google. Then, I read the articles.

Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, you should also watch five YouTube videos related to the skill that you are trying to master. Several skills require visual learning in addition to reading articles on the web.

 

Step #2: Copy and Paste (Yes You Read That Right)

Who knew that advice we have always shunned can actually help us learn new skills? I have a document on my computer with numerous podcasting tips from the experts. However, I am never going to include the document in one of my books or put it on my blog. I especially wouldn’t claim ownership of the document. That would be plagiarism.

The reason why so many people forget what they learn on the web is because they look at the information once. Although some people unintentionally stumble across the same article twice, most people will only read an article once and only go back when they have forgotten what the article said (but remembered the value).

When I read articles on the web about podcasting, I copy and paste all of the best tips that I didn’t know before into the document. It currently has over 1,000 words and several pictures. Instead of going back to the articles I looked at earlier, I just go back to the document. All of the information is in one place.

I never copy and paste links to actual articles on the web since I don’t want to go back to them. However, I will copy and paste links to YouTube videos and identify the important times of the video down to the seconds.

 

Step #3: Apply

No matter how much knowledge you absorb, you won’t remember it forever (unless you have a perfect memory). You don’t want your knowledge of a particular skill to wither away. The copy and paste technique (yes, I just called it a technique) allows you to remember knowledge. Just look back at the document and you’ll remember.

However, just because you remember knowledge does not mean that knowledge is serving you. If I never started my own podcast show, then the knowledge I obtained about podcasting is meaningless. That knowledge won’t help me reach the next level.

The next step was start my own podcast. Just like anything we start, starting is initially scary, but with practice, we become comfortable. Comfort in your area of expertise allows you to expand upon your knowledge easily produce high value work.

 

Step #4: Write A Blog Post About The Skill

Guess what you’ll be seeing from me in the near future? That’s right, an in-depth blog post all about making a podcast become successful. I will use the document I mentioned earlier for inspiration just as people use articles on the web for inspiration for their blog posts (both approaches lead to the same result).

Obviously, the blog post won’t involve any copying and pasting. Instead, I am going to describe podcasting in my own words based on the information I have obtained and lessons I have learned from analyzing other podcasts.

You can’t say you have mastered a new skill until you can successfully describe the process of mastering that new skill in your own words. Then, at that point, you must consistently practice the skill.

 

Step #5: Shoot A Video About The Skill

The great thing about writing a blog post is that you get to pause and look for information to double-check your facts. If you were having a conversation with someone about your skill, those options don’t exist (they technically do exist, but how awkward would it be to have a long pause or say, “Let me just make sure with a Google search that what I said was right”).

You can put a skill’s mastery into your own words with a blog post, but shooting a comprehensive video about your skill puts you on another level. Now, you can effortlessly talk about your skill. Take a look at the most successful people in any industry and listen to their interviews. Nearly all of them are able to effortlessly talk about mastering a particular skill as if these people started learning the skill since they could walk.

It may take a few videos to effortlessly talk about the skill you are trying to master. Practice will allow you to become better.

 

In Conclusion

The web has eliminated our excuses by providing us with enough information to master any new skill. What skill are you trying to master? Do you think the web has enough information for anyone to master any skill? Sound off in the comments section below.

The 6 Step Strategy To Accomplishing Any Goal

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How To Accomplish Goals

How often do you accomplish your goals? The answer varies from person to person, but each person agrees that they want to accomplish their goals. When asked why they don’t accomplish all of their goals, people often reference distractions from the outside world. However, we all have 24 hours in a day and our fair share of distractions. What allows some people to get their goals accomplished while other people in the same setting have difficulty?

The answer is their approach to goal achievement. The way you approach anything in life determines how efficiently you will perform that activity. A successful approach to goal achievement can be embodied in a six step strategy.

 

Step #1: Identify A Specific Goal

Step #1 may sound like an obvious step, but not everyone identifies a specific goal. Many people have a vague idea of what they want to accomplish, but vague is not specific. Instead of saying you want more blog traffic, ask yourself how many visitors you want to get by the end of the year. Do you want 10,000 blog visitors every month by the end of the year? How about 100,000?

While the specific goal you set for yourself must be realistic, the goals must also require a leap of faith out of the comfort zone. If you think you can possibly accomplish a goal by going all-in, then you most likely chose a realistic goal that will take you out of your comfort zone.

 

Step #2: Make It A Priority

When some people accomplish the first step for one goal, they like to perform the same step several times and create multiple goals. Although it is okay to have multiple goals, each goal takes up time. Think about it this way: 90% of the time, it is easier to accomplish one task in one day than it is to accomplish 20 tasks in one day.

If you have one primary goal that you know is more important than the other goals, then make that goal your priority. You can only have ONE priority, so choose wisely. That ONE priority must get at least 50% of your attention throughout the day.

 

Step #3: Plan Out Your Approach

The next step is to plan out your approach. How are you going to accomplish your priority, and how will you respond to the distractions around you? This summer could have easily been stressful for me because (as always) I wanted to do so much but knew I had a limited amount of time. I wanted to finish writing one book early so I could market it and create an advanced training course unlike anything I have launched before.

The stress quickly evaporated when I created a plan that brought to full clarity what I was trying to accomplish with my two products. I also created a list of all of the things that distracted me from my main priorities (they were not my priorities at the same time. When I finished the book, I moved onto the training course). Once I created the list, I devised several solutions which made it possible for me to achieve my goals in the summer.

Planning out my approach saved me from stress because I removed the fog around me. I discovered how I would accomplish my priorities by the end of the summer. The days of guessing were over.

 

Step #4: Implement That Plan

Step #4 also sounds like an obvious step, but the ease of implementation depends on what your plan is. If your plan is highly detailed, then you have a better idea of what you must do every day. It took me almost an hour to craft my plan for the summer, and the plan barely took up an entire page in my notebook. Regardless, I gained more clarity than ever before which made implementing the plan easier.

 

Step #5: Make Changes Along The Way

Just because you set a course of action for yourself does not mean you can’t digress from that course of action. If you find a better opportunity or think of a better product idea, it is entirely okay to shift your focus or make some room for other things in your plan.

However, I heed one warning. Don’t get attracted to shiny objects. It is easy to look at a new trend and think, “Well, if I get involved in that trend and really work on it, then sure enough I am going to make it big.” The problem with this thinking is that most people don’t make it big by following one trend. Even worse, this thinking results in trend chasers—people who constantly go back and forth between trends without establishing an authority on any niche.

It is important to make changes along the way, but you must also ask yourself how these changes affect you, your plan, and your brand.

 

Step #6: Keep Your Eyes On The Prize As You Do The Work

I always keep my eyes on the main prize. When I wrote my book, I always thought about it reaching the hands/tablets of thousands of people around the world. When I did videos for my training course, I always thought about it becoming a massive success.

Why does keeping your eyes on the main prize help you accomplish your plan? The vision gives you more motivation and allows you to realize what you are chasing after. Each time you implement a part of your plan, you are getting closer to that big prize. Let the joy of obtaining the big prize empower you as you accomplish your goals.

 

In Conclusion

Accomplishing your goals requires a plan and an effective strategy. Once your accomplish your goals with a plan and an effective strategy, replicate the entire process for your future goals so goal achievement becomes a habit.

Which steps of goal achievement have you been implementing? Which steps do you plan on making a part of your goal achievement? Which step do you think is the most important? Please share your thoughts and advice below.