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10 Easy-Peasy Methods To Write High Value Blog Posts

July 24, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Write Quality Blog Posts

Content has always been king, and it will continue dictating which bloggers become successful. The bloggers who write the best content are the ones who we remember, and we return to these bloggers’ blogs numerous times. Every new blogger wants to know how to become a successful blogger, and the answer almost always points back to the fact that content is king.

We know that content is king, but how to we go about writing better content? How do we go about writing the type of content that leads to returning visitors? In this blog post, I will discuss 10 methods you can use to make your content king.

#1: Read Other People’s Content

The best way to become a better writer is to surround yourself with the best. The people you surround yourself with typically determine what type of person you become. Go on Amazon, look for books in your niche, and buy some of them. Read thousands of blog posts on the web from your favorite bloggers.

By surrounding yourself with high value writing, you will gradually pick up on what makes the writing so valuable. Each of the writers may follow a common writing style that makes their writing eloquent. Not only will you gradually pick up on what works for other writers, but you will also learn more about your niche. Taking the time to read books every day has allowed me to learn so much about my niche that I didn’t know back when I started. The only way to move forward is by obtaining new knowledge and implementing the right knowledge in what you do.

#2: Write Longer Blog Posts

When I wrote two blog posts per day for this blog, it was a big commitment. I was getting better at blogging, but I know a lot more now than I knew then. What I often did was write concise blog posts that rarely exceeded 500 words. Although some blogging styles encourage blog posts under 500 words, I became a better writer by increasing the length of my blog posts. Now, I always strive to surpass 1,000 words for every blog post, and some of my blog posts exceed 5,000 words. Writing longer blog posts forced me to spend more time writing content, and as I spent more time writing content, my writing improved.

When I wrote longer blog posts, I also went more in-depth on certain tips that I would normally skim over. I provided my personal experiences and other people’s case studies that added an entirely new meaning to my content.

#3: Provide A Story

Do you like a good story? Then again, who doesn’t? Some of the best stories have been passed on from generation to generation, and some stories that were told thousands of years ago still get told to this day (although the very old stories are mostly told in history classes). You don’t have to turn your blog post into a novel, but you can provide a story of a personal experience that applies to the blog post’s topic, or you can provide the case study of someone else’s story that applies to the blog post’s topic.

Providing stories within your blog posts has the potential to increase the value of those blog posts by providing your visitors with inspiration or a relatable experience. One time, I wrote a concise blog post about how urgency at TJ Maxx increased my productivity. I was in a desperate need for an updated wardrobe, but I got to the store only an hour before closing time. I somehow found and got what I was looking for within that timeframe. Maybe you haven’t had the same stress at TJ Maxx, but my story is a relatable experience for many people. Whether you were at a Target as it was about to close or had to prepare an email blast with 15 minutes to spare, you know what it feels like to suddenly get a productivity spike as the deadline rapidly approaches.

#4: Include Easter Egg Jokes

I sometimes reference kryptonite in my blog posts. Each time I mention kryptonite, I usually turn it into an Easter Egg Joke. Easter Egg Jokes are jokes that are hidden within the content, so not everyone will know that a joke is in the works. Disney movies are filled with Easter Egg jokes that children wouldn’t understand so adults could still enjoy watching the same Disney movies they watched as children.

Although it isn’t always easy to include an Easter Egg Joke within your blog posts, including them will strengthen the relationship between you and the visitors who get the joke. The relationship between you and the visitors who don’t see the Easter Egg Joke won’t be changed because of one Easter Egg Joke.

#5: Write Every Day

Practice makes close to perfect, and the best way to do better at anything is to practice it every day. Right now, I want you to think about the greatest skill you have. Then, I want you to think about how much time you spent practicing on your greatest skill compared to the amount of time you spent practicing on your least skillful area. You should quickly realize that you spent a lot of time practicing on your greatest skill but virtually no time practicing on your least skillful area.

If you want to emerge as a power blogger who writes high value content, then you must practice writing every day to reach that point. No matter what day of the week it is, and no matter how much homework I have during the school year, I am always writing niche-related content every single day. On some days, when I don’t find as much time to write, I typically write 2,000 words. When I have an entire day to write, I can write over 10,000 words in a given day. By spending so much time writing content every day, it has now become easy for me to write high value content. If I really wanted to, I could write high value content with my eyes closed. By writing millions of words on my computer, I have memorized the location of every key on my computer. I wrote that entire sentence with my eyes closed.

#6: Do Additional Research Before Clicking Publish

After you write a blog post, do some additional research about your blog post’s topic and look for insightful information on the web. When you do additional research, you are looking for statistics and facts that you can use to attract more interest in your content. When I talk about the power of Pinterest, I almost always mention that 80% of pins are repins to show how easy it is to go viral on that social network. Providing this statistics strengthens my claim that Pinterest is a powerful social network. Imagine how different the blog post would be if the statistic doesn’t get mentioned. I would just be stating my opinion without supporting it.

#7: Be More Descriptive

When you describe events, methods, or anything else, be as descriptive as possible. Being descriptive allows you to write in great detail, and this great detail can make a visitor feel as if he/she were with you at an event or have a stronger connection with a personal story or case study. Your writing will improve as you become more descriptive because being descriptive requires you to spend more time thinking about what happened and creating sentences in such an eloquent manner that the visitor feels a strong connection with what you write about.

#8: Write A Strong Intro

The introduction is an important part of your blog. It decides whether a visitor continues reading or leaves your blog before reading another word. Your first sentence must captivate your visitor with a question, a cool statistic, a strong statement, or a small insight that leads into the larger insights in the blog post. The best way to write a strong intro is to read other blog posts in your niche and take note of which introductions grabbed your attention. My introductions are based on a combination of different elements in dozens of other bloggers’ introductions combined with my own style.

#9: Write A Strong Closing

A strong closing entices people to engage with your content with a series of questions while quickly summing up the entire blog post. Mastering the closing not only leads to more engagement, but people who like your closing will remember how great the blog post was, and these visitors may decide to look at more of your content. The stronger your closing, the longer someone will stay on your blog.

#10: Proofread

It would be such a same if you wrote an excellent blog post but didn’t take the time to proofread it. Spell check only does part of the job. Spell check wouldn’t alert me about “same” because it is spelled correctly. The sentence should read “It would be such a shame if you wrote an excellent blog post but didn’t take the time to proofread it”

The only way to catch those types of mistakes that hurt the value of your writing, regardless of how valuable your insights are, is by proofreading your content. Not only can proofreading expose the mistakes that a spell check can’t account for, but you will also find sentences that can be structured better and think of a new tidbit that can increase the value of your blog post. Never underestimate the power of proofreading. It is the one thing that most bloggers forget to do.

In Conclusion

Content is king, and making your content king will allow your blog to dominate your niche and attract a large audience. You can get blog traffic by promoting your content, but if your content does not provide value, you won’t get the returning visitors who eventually choose to buy your products. Successful blogging isn’t about getting traffic. It’s about getting traffic that sticks. You want returning visitors who appreciate what you do instead of one-time visitors who don’t appreciate the value that you provide.

Making your content more valuable for your targeted audience will entice those people to stick around, engage with your content, and tell their friends about what you do.

What do you think makes up valuable content? Which of your blog posts are you the most proud of? Which blog post on the web is your favorite (if it’s not one of mine, I won’t get offended)? What tips do you have for writing more valuable content? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

The Secret Blueprint To Building Your Own Twitter Empire From Scratch

July 22, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

As part of my Twitter Domination course, I decided to run the ultimate case study—creating a new account and going from no followers to over 10,000 followers in a few months. While I am in the middle of the journey and have gained over one thousand followers for my new account, I re-learned the entire Twitter journey. I had the egg avatar, Twitter came up with a list of suggestions for my first tweet, and the number 2,000 took on a whole new meaning.

I also decided to pay more attention to a Twitter account that I almost left behind. The account I almost left behind is @Tips4Tweeting, and after some difficulty, I finally got it passed the 2,000 Twitter follower barrier. Combined with my knowledge as a Twitter expert with over 225,000 followers across all of my accounts and me remembering what it feels like to start from scratch, I came up with a blueprint you need to build your own Twitter empire from scratch:

Back To Basics

When I created my new Twitter account for the first time, I had to do something about the egg avatar, the blue header, and the fact that I had no followers and no tweets. The first thing I did was polish up the account so it would look nice. I created a picture of the avatar on Canva and used one of Canva’s Twitter header images. Then, I sent some tweets related to the account’s mission (I can’t tell you what the account is since the experiment isn’t over. I made a promise to the people in my Twitter Domination course that they were the only ones who could know what the account is and I wouldn’t promote it to my audience).

If you want to save a lot of time with your social media strategy, I highly recommend HootSuite Pro. HootSuite Pro is a great tool for Twitter users and other social media users because it connects all of the social networks nicely. One of the key differences between HootSuite Pro and the free version is the bulk scheduler which allows me to schedule tweets in bulk. I can schedule four days of tweets in just five minutes, and since I don’t have to spend so much time writing new tweets, I can go straight to promoting the account.

Follow, Follow, Follow

The first thing I did with my new account was follow as many targeted people as possible, and since the account was new, the ratio didn’t matter. At one point, I was following over 1,000 people and had less than 200 followers. Of course, the ratio matters at some point, so as I approached the 2,000 marker, I unfollowed people who were not following back. I knew I wasn’t building an account that would get 100,000 followers by only following 10 people. Just as with my main account, I knew I would have to follow people to easily achieve my goal.

Have Conversations

One thing Twitter doesn’t like is when an account goes on a following/unfollowing spree. Twitter does not like these sprees because it makes the account look like a fake, and accounts Twitter views as fake are in risk of suspension. In order to make sure Twitter didn’t think my account was a fake, I used the account to start various conversations with other accounts.

However, simply having conversations to get out of the loophole won’t do you any good. All of the conversations I started with my new account were relevant. It was the equivalent of me using my main account and commenting on another digital marketing expert’s content in 140 characters or less. Even if the person doesn’t respond to you, you had a conversation, and having conversations with influential people in your niche will lead to more exposure. You won’t get a life changing number of followers by tweeting to influencers, but it will be a start.

Getting The Ratio Closer To 1-To-1 The Right Way

Although the ratio doesn’t matter when you first create your account and follow other people, it will matter for your account’s long-term success. You want to have a ratio as close to 1-to-1 as possible, and preferably, with you having a slight edge (i.e. following 4,500 people and having 5,000 followers). When you go on your following spree, your ratio will go out of whack.

The way you make your ratio normal again is by unfollowing the people who didn’t follow you back. However, you don’t immediately unfollow someone a few days later because that raises red flags, and Twitter may suspend your account. I use Tweepi to unfollow people, and the tool allows me to unfollow anyone who has not followed me back within seven days. The best part about Tweepi is that Twitter recently contacted them and asked them to make some small changes to keep accounts on the nice list. Tweepi’s changes are designed to protect your account from getting suspended.

Jumping The Hurdle

The biggest hurdle that stops people dead in their tracks is that you can’t follow more than 2,000 people unless you have a 1-to-1 ratio. This hurdle prevents me from using some of the tactics I use to my @MarcGuberti account successful on my newer accounts. I believe it the hurdle serves its benefits because without the hurdle, it would be possible for someone to follow 1 million people but only have 100 followers. At that point, having a big Twitter audience would mean nothing, and how can one person possibly read through all of the tweets that come from millions of people? Without enforcing this hurdle early on, Twitter would have become a spam land.

The main focus for us is to jump that hurdle because once that hurdle is jumped, you can follow more than 2,000 people. Twitter then uses a follower to following ratio to limit how many people you can follow, but this ratio is much more lenient than the 2,000 rule.

After Jumping The Hurdle

Once you jump the hurdle, you must follow more people than you were before while paying attention to your ratio. You don’t want your ratio to spiral out of control anymore, but it is okay to follow 100-200 more people than you have followers (i.e. having 2,500 followers and following 2,700 people). You will eventually discover that thousands of people who you are following are not following you back. Gradually unfollowing these users will bring down your ratio.

As your account starts to grow larger, begin to follow hundreds of people per day. I typically follow 950 people with my main account every day, but since the account has a strong ratio, I don’t have to worry about getting out of hand. Once you are at the point where you can follow hundreds of people per day without worrying about your ratio getting away from you, then you are in good shape to dominate Twitter.

In Conclusion

The reason Twitter looks difficult to many users is because of the 2,000 rule. This limitation was put in place to fight spam and make Twitter a valuable resource for everyone. The limitation also makes succeeding on Twitter all the more rewarding. Ultimately, people will only continue following you if you continue to tweet valuable content, but you need people to know about your account. You spread the awareness by following targeted individuals and unfollowing the people who don’t follow you back as you approach the hurdle. Once you jump the hurdle, it becomes much easier to build an empire on Twitter.

Which tips resonated with you the most? How large is your Twitter audience? Do you have any additional tips for building a Twitter empire? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

7 Tasks That You Must Fulfill Before You Get Another Like Or Follower

July 20, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Who wouldn’t want more likes and followers? The primary goal of using social media from a business standpoint is to grow a large, targeted audience of people who will engage with our content. However, this primary goal is insufficient for generating a full-time income. Having a large, targeted social media audience will help you towards achieving a full-time income, but when talking about an income, other elements come into play.

Not only do other elements beyond social media come into play, but the way you use social media and present yourself also affect how successful your brand becomes. It is great to get likes and followers, but what are they worth? What type of impact do they have on your brand? We must ask ourselves what happens after we accumulate the likes and followers. We must ask ourselves how we can use our time on social media more productively. We must ask ourselves what tasks we must fulfill before we get another like or follower. These are the big seven.

#1: Know Your Niche

The most important thing to do before you get another like or follower is to know what your niche is. This is a basic step, and many people with decent sized audiences know what niche they are in. If you already know your niche, you should skim through this section and head over to the second method. However, if you do not know what your niche is, it is time to discover which niche is the best one for you. The best niche you can choose for yourself is a combination of these factors:

Passion for potential niche
Knowledge about potential niche
Willingness to constantly learn more about potential niche

You should choose a niche that fits into all three of these factors. Those are the ideal niches that present the easiest choice for pure domination. Remember that in your lifetime, you can do anything. You can be anything from a motivational speaker to an expert on gadgets if that’s your style. Once you identify your niche, you must build your social media audience around that niche.

#2: Know Your Customers

Once you know what your niche is, it is easier to know who your customers are. Your customers are the people who buy your products and make your entire journey possible from a monetary point of view. Not only do your customers make the continuation of your brand possible, but knowing their specific needs will allow you to create better products that better serve your customers. Knowing your customers all comes down to knowing your targeted audience, and knowing your targeted audience all comes down to two simple questions:

“What is my brand’s purpose? What type of people would be interested in my brand’s purpose?”

The more specific you are when you identify your brand’s purpose, the easier it will be for you to know who your customers are. If your brand’s purpose is too vague, then you won’t grow a strong customer base. If you own a restaurant, then your purpose shouldn’t be just to feed people. In that case, your targeted audience would be anyone who eats, which initially sounds good because everyone eats food, but with many options, people won’t notice you. Instead of presenting yourself as the ideal choice for everyone, you must get specific. Is your restaurant an all-vegan restaurant? Does the Wi-Fi Free experience allow real-life conversations to develop? You may not own a restaurant, but you need to ask yourself those types of questions for your brand, regardless of what your niche is.

#3: Create A Better Posting Plan

The way you post your content affects how your audience sees you as an individual and how often your audience sees your content. Publishing posts daily is completely different from publishing one post per month. You must post content on your social networks several times per day, but if you publish 10 posts in five minutes, then you are bound to annoy your audience. The workaround is to create a better posting plan which consists of the following:

Scheduling posts. If you are looking for a way to schedule posts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a Google+ page among other options, then look no farther than HootSuite. The HootSuite Pro feature makes it easier to schedule content in bulk. I can literally schedule over 100 tweets in just six clicks.
Posting content made to spread. Each social networks has a different set of rules based on users’ experiences that determines what spreadable content is. However, almost all of the viral content posted on social media contain pictures. You can use the free, easy-to-use tool called Canva to create stunning pictures. I use Canva for hundreds of pictures that appear on this blog.
Knowing when to post. Facebook Insights allow you to discover when the highest percentage of your audiences is on Facebook while Tweriod is the equivalent for Twitter. Schedule your posts to get published at the times you know when the highest percentage of your audience is on that social network so your posts get the optimal level of engagement.

#4: Look Over Your Social Media Profile

Looking at your social media profile and making sure you are proud of what you see is a way to gain verification that you are on the right path. Not only do you gain verification about your path (or if not, you’ll have an idea of what needs to be changed), but in a rapidly moving world, many things are bound to change in the next six months for your brand. Maybe you won an award that you could mention in your social media bio. Maybe you acquired another hobby worth mentioning, and mentioning your hobbies on social media is not so bad. Maybe you changed your brand’s logo or want a cooler background picture. Maybe your bio needs to be re-polished. By checking your social media profile once per month and making changes where they need to be made, you will always reflect up-to-date information within your social media profile. You don’t want to change your brand’s picture, bio, or background just for the sake of doing it because that affects your brand’s recognition. If Apple constantly changed its logo, it would be more difficult for customers to remember the brand. Only make a change when a change is necessary.

#5: Get Your Email List Straightened Out

If you are going to do one thing before you get another like or follower, you must straighten out your email list and choose which paid service you will use. I use iContact to build and manage my email list, but MailChimp, Aweber, and Constant Contact are three other worthy options among the pool of efficient emailing services. You must choose a service that allows you to send custom emails to your subscribers (in other words, not just the RSS Reader type of emails) and enables autoresponders. Autoresponders allow you to build the relationship between you and your subscribers which will increase the chances of someone buying one of your products. If you want to go the extra mile and get more subscribers from your social media efforts, create a landing page (I use Optimize Press for mine. Here is an example of a landing page) that collects email addresses. Then, promote that landing page to your social media audience every day. If you wish to promote your landing page to your social media audience every day, then you must schedule numerous posts per day so you don’t appear to be over promoting your landing page.

#6: Have At Least One Method To Generate Revenue

Social media won’t generate much direct revenue for your brand, but social media is great at generating traffic that can lead to more revenue. You can lead the people within your social media audience to your landing page, your blog, and in rare cases, your product sales page. You want your social media audience to generate a high ROI, and in order to get that ROI, you must lead people to places where you can potentially make revenue for every transaction that takes place.

#7: Procrastinate Less Often On Social Media

Social media is the least expensive method I have come across to generate a massive audience, but it can also take away a large portion of our time. Never before has their been a double-edged sword like this for business owners. If you procrastinate less often on social media, you will have more time to create products, write blog posts, and grow your audience.

The first step to reducing procrastination on social media is to identify what causes you to procrastinate in the first place. Knowing the problem is the first step towards finding a solution. The second step is to do something about it. I found myself reading through the trending topics often. The solution for me was to only read the first five posts about a trending topic so I know what happened. I also spend less time looking at the trending topics because I do more of my social media activities on HootSuite nowadays, and HootSuite does not have a trending topics section for me to get distracted by.

In Conclusion

Every business wants a larger audience, but what are you going to do with your audience? How will you become successful once you get the large audience? What most people do not realize is that a big audience does not guarantee success. You need to have a big audience of people who appreciate what you do and are willing to pay their money for your expertise and/or product. You must also use your time more effectively and specialize in what you do so you get the right results in the right areas.

What are your thoughts on these seven tasks? Which task do you think is the most necessary? Do you have an 8th task that you believe everyone must do before getting their next like or follower? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

8 Ways To Drive More Traffic To Your Facebook Page

July 17, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

With over 1.44 billion monthly active users and over 900 million daily active users, it is fair to say that Facebook is the supreme social network in terms of user base. Facebook’s ever growing popularity and significance make it a crucial social network for your business to get on and optimize effectively. Facebook has made rules over the years that now make it more difficult for business pages to get their content in front of their audiences, but once you get a massive audience to see your Facebook content, they’ll come back to your Facebook Page numerous times. Remember that most of the 900 million people who log into Facebook every day also spend over an hour on the social media behemoth per day. Facebook is still important, and it’s importance grows as the days go by. If you don’t optimize Facebook for your business, then now is the time to start. If you already have a Facebook Page or want to get one, that Facebook Page needs more traffic. Here are eight ways to drive the traffic to your Facebook Page:

#1: Promote Your Facebook Page On Your Other Social Networks

One of the most basic ways to promote your Facebook Page is by promoting it to the audience that you have already built. I use my social networks to promote each other, and depending on my needs in the moment, I may spend extra time promoting one of my social networks. When I decided to get back on YouTube, I went off to Twitter for the channel promotion. I have gained thousands of subscribers for my YouTube channel ever since the promotion started. This cool story about my YouTube channel is a cool story that you can replicate for your Facebook Page so it gets thousands of likes. You don’t want to be over-promotional on social media, but it is okay to promote yourself and your other social media accounts often.

#2: Promote Your Facebook Page On Your Blog

There are WordPress plugins that allow you to display your Facebook Page and some of its posts directly on your blog. If your blog visitors like your content, then they will be enticed to like your Facebook Page. However, your blog visitors will only like your Facebook Page if you include a call-to-action. You can include a call-to-action through your blog’s sidebar. If you do not have a fancy widget or plugin that displays your Facebook Page and the like button, you can always take an image of the Facebook logo that says “Like Us On Facebook” or something of that nature and link it to your Facebook Page. That way, when someone clicks the “Like Us On Facebook” picture on your blog’s sidebar, they will get sent to your Facebook Page.

#3: Tell Your Email List About It

Now that you know to promote your Facebook Page to your current audience, why stop short at the email list? If you send meaningful email blasts to your subscribers, then your email list will be your best source for traffic, sales, and social media growth. When you get started with your first Facebook Page or start to take an older Facebook Page more seriously, you can let the people on your email list know about the change. The people on your email list are usually your biggest supporters, and in addition to the likes and engagement your Facebook Page generates from the email blast, you may also get emails from the people on your list who enjoy what you are doing with your Facebook Page or just enjoy your brand as a whole. These types of emails are very motivating, and they never get old. Even the most successful, inspirational individuals like it when they get more motivation to do something.

#4: Participate In Facebook Groups

Have you heard of the saying “go where your audience is”? When you search for keywords that revolve around your niche, you will come across active Facebook Groups that may have thousands of people within your niche. The people who are a part of the Facebook Group would probably click the like button on your Facebook Page, but only if they see your Facebook Page.

The best way to get people in a Facebook Group to see and like your page is if you join the group through your Facebook Page instead of joining it through your personal account. Joining Facebook Groups with your Page allows every comment or post you put in the Group to promote your Facebook Page. When other group members hover their mouses onto your name, they will see your Facebook Page and the like button instead of the personal account and the “Add friend” option.

When you do participate in Facebook Groups, you must participate by the Group Rules. 99% of the time, that means you are not promoting your Facebook Page in post or comment. You can post and comment using your Facebook Page, but the moment you post something along the lines of “Please like my Facebook Page,” you will lose respect within that group and most likely get kicked out. Look at how other people in the Group interact with each other before jumping in. By looking at how other people interact, you will learn how to interact in a way that the other group members will notice and appreciate.

#5: Do Shout Out Exchanges With Other Facebook Pages

One of the most underrated ways to get more Facebook Page likes is to do shout out exchanges with other Facebook Pages. SEO expert Neil Patel used this one strategy to accumulate thousands of likes for one of his Facebook Pages. Once your Facebook Page hits a certain number of likes (Neil waited until his page surpassed 3,000 likes), you should contact owners of Facebook Pages that are similar to your Facebook Page and ask for a shout out exchange. If you are a digital marketing expert with a Facebook Page about digital marketing, you would use this strategy to target other digital marketers who have successful Facebook Pages.

The people you contact should have close to the same number of likes as you do. If you contact someone with a small number of likes compared to the amount of likes you have, then you won’t get the good end of the deal. If you contact someone with 10 times as many likes as you, then that person probably won’t agree to do the shout out exchange since that person wouldn’t get the good end of the deal. If you have 3,000 likes, you should be contacting people who have 2,500-5,000 Facebook Page likes. That way, more people will say yes to your shout out request. You can both agree to delete the shout out post eight hours after you both send the shout out posts so your Facebook Pages don’t appear over-promotional. Most Facebook Page owners say no to these types of requests, but if you get 10 people with 3,000 likes to say yes, then your Facebook Page will be put in front of 30,000 additional people who may then choose to like your page.

You also get the benefit of helping someone else in your niche to grow and thrive on Facebook. With this strategy, you and the Facebook Page owner who agrees to the shout out exchange will bring each other up to the next level.

#6: Post Multiple Times Per Day

You can generate traffic from your blog and other social networks, but you should also generate traffic from Facebook itself. Exchanging shout outs with other Facebook Pages similar to yours is one way to get traffic from Facebook, but one of the main ways to get more traffic from Facebook is by posting on your Facebook Page multiple times per day.

Not only is it important to post on your Facebook Page multiple times per day to get more traffic, but posting on your Facebook Page multiple times per day allows you to build a stronger relationship between you and the audience that you have already built. There is no point in having a successful Facebook Page with over 100,000 likes if you won’t interact with your audience by sending out posts.

#7: Look At Your Page Insights

Knowing when to post content is just as important as posting content. With a Facebook Page, you get Facebook Page Insights provided to you free of charge. These Insights let you know when a large percentage of your audience is on Facebook, and this information will let you know which times of the day are the sweet spots for posting your content. You may discover, for instance, that more people in your audience are on Facebook every Tuesday at 6 pm than any other time on Tuesday. You should primarily send Facebook posts at optimal times when you know your audience would see those posts so that those posts can spread farther and attract more engagement.

#8: Use Facebook Advertising

Facebook advertising is one of the most powerful forms of promotion on Facebook, and some people rely on Facebook ads to get hundreds of thousands of likes. Some marketers have perfected the system and get thousands of likes for under $100. If you spent $10 per day to promote a Facebook ad, and you optimized your ad to perform well, then your Facebook Page could potentially get thousands of likes every month all for just $300 per month. It takes time and practice to reach that point, but once you reach the point of getting thousands of likes for a few hundred dollars, then you will have a large audience to interact with. If you have landing pages to get more subscribers, and you promote your landing pages to your Facebook audience (preferably promote the landing page with an ad), then your email list would get super-sized. The result of a super-sized email list is that the next time you do some type of product promotion, you will generate more revenue, and some of that extra revenue can go into the Facebook ads. It is all a matter of starting that cycle to a point where you can always count on it for your business.

In Conclusion

With Facebook approaching 1 billion daily active users, Facebook Pages are constantly growing in importance. If you spend time every day growing your Facebook audience, your Facebook audience could potentially transform your brand. You can jumpstart your Facebook growth by spending some money on Facebook advertisements, but none of the growth matters if you are not posting new content on your Facebook Page and taking the time to interact with your audience.

Do you use Facebook for your brand? Do you think Facebook’s new rules restrict Business Pages to the point where the results are not worth the time and money? Do you have an additional tip for generating more traffic to your Facebook Page? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

The Ultimate Guide To Creating An Effective Blog Strategy

July 15, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Blog Strategy Guide

Success consists of various routes. Some people become successful by investing in stocks, singing very well, playing a sport very well, writing very well, or doing something very well that leads to a profit and meaningful, positive recognition. Success on the web also consists of various routes. Some people build their businesses around Twitter while others build their businesses around Facebook.

Although success on the web consists of various routes, 99% of all of the successes on the web have this in common—they all have successful blogs. Blogs are no longer online diaries. They allow you to build relationships with a targeted audience like never before. Blogs are now like business cards—you need them. Many people know that blogs are essential, and numerous people who visit my blog have blogs of their own.

However, having a blog does not guarantee that the blog will become successful or contribute towards your brand’s growth. Having a blog just means you have something that can potentially have a huge impact on your brand. Turning that potential into a reality is the challenge that all bloggers face at the beginning of their journeys. The most successful people who make their revenue on the web turned that potential into reality.

In order to get the same results from your blog, you must have an effective strategy in place. This effective strategy must account for various areas that all contribute towards blog growth, but in particular, it must account for traffic, SEO, social media, and subscribers.

Traffic

Without traffic, your blog won’t have an impact on your brand. You must come up with different methods of boosting your blog’s traffic and then implement those methods to see which methods bring forth the best results. You can use SEO, social media, and an email list to get more traffic, and I believe these three traffic-boosting methods are the most effective methods available. However, when you are first starting out, you need to generate some short-term traffic. Here are some tips that will help you generate the short-term traffic:

Engage in forums based on the community guidelines. Don’t be over-promotional.
Comment on viral pins. Your comment will almost always show up on the top since most pins (even the viral ones) get fewer than three comments.
Encourage your friends and family to share your blog on their social networks. Social media shares will get you more blog traffic from the social networks and Google because social shares are critical factors in Google’s ranking system.
Write guest posts and ask other bloggers within your niche to mention one of your top blog posts in the future.
Write a lot of content. Longer blog posts rank better on Google, and updating your blog consistently also helps.

SEO

Once you start generating some short-term traffic, you should start learning more about SEO. My advice with SEO is to approach it with caution. There are thousands of SEO-related articles, and it is easy to get confused with the entire process of optimizing your blog for Google. It took me several years to master SEO, but part of the delay was that I spent most of my time on other things such as writing content and polishing up my writing skills. The first few blog posts I wrote were decent at best, but my writing has improved since then. Not only did I have to improve my writing, but I also had to learn how to optimize a blog to get more subscribers and to provide a noteworthy experience for first-time visitors. I read a few SEO articles every month, and now I am able to read them with greater intensity since my blog is optimized to perform well. To save you from reading countless SEO articles, I compiled a list of methods you can use to boost your blog’s SEO.

Write longer blog posts. According to SEO expert Neil Patel, most of the blog posts on the first page of Google’s search results are 2,000 words or longer.
Write blog posts at a consistent rate, preferably multiple blog posts per week. Google appreciates it when you update your blog consistently. No matter how good your blog is, if your blog does not get updated consistently and often, Google won’t put your blog on the first page. Google prefers to show blogs that get updated with fresh content. When was the last time you went to the first page of a Google search result and came across a blog post that was published two years ago on a now dormant blog?
Use smaller pictures. Resizing a big picture into a small picture does not work here. You must choose pictures for your blog posts that are small from the start. I use Canva to create the pictures that I use for my blog posts. It is a free tool with a lot of versatility. Using small pictures makes your blog posts load faster, and speed time is another big factor of Google’s ranking system.
Link back to your older blog posts. When I find it relevant, I will use a new blog post to promote an older blog post (just like this. NOTE: it’s an SEO blog post). Promoting your older blog posts will give those blog posts more traffic. A highly populated old blog post indicates evergreen content, and the search engines will promote it more often. The main function of this strategy is to decrease your blog’s bounce rate, and a low bounce rate lets search engines know that people stay on your blog for a long period of time. The search engine logic is that since people stay on your blog for a long period of time, it must be interesting. Therefore, the search engines promote your content with more intensity.
Write blog posts with keywords. Although you want to avoid keyword stuffing (using the same keyword in every sentence just for the sake of SEO), you should use keywords in your blog posts often, and especially at the very beginning of your content.

It is better to apply a few methods to boost your SEO than it is to read hundreds of articles but not implement anything. Implement most or all of these tactics before you read numerous articles about SEO.

Social Media

The best way to strengthen your SEO in the beginning is to grow your social media audience and have that audience engage with your blog content. Getting more social shares from your social media audience will lead to an increased search engine ranking, and since you are growing a social media audience, you will get more traffic from your own social media accounts. When I started to get hundreds of daily visitors from Twitter, my SEO traffic increased to the same level, and the ratio of my Twitter traffic to SEO traffic is very close to 1:1.

Not only does social media provide you with more traffic and a better SEO rank, but you also get to interact with more people. Social media has allowed me to interact with thousands of people interested in my niche who now visit my blog and buy my products. Here are some tips to help you get started on social media:

Focus on one social network in the beginning. Many people like to use them all and master them all in one go, but social media mastery does not work that way. Social media mastery works in the same way as trying to master multiple languages. You would not learn multiple languages at the same time because that would be confusing, and you would most likely end up being mediocre at a few languages but fluent in none of them. If you focus all of your time on one language, then it will be easier for you to become fluent in that language. In the same way, if you focus on learning one social network, then it will become easier for you to master that one social network. Moreover, once you master a social network, it will become easier for you to master a second social network, and each time you master another social network, it becomes easier for you to master the next social network that you attempt to master.
Post consistently. The only way your followers will remember who you are is if they see you often. You can use a scheduling tool like HootSuite to schedule social media posts throughout the day.
Interact with your audience. Interaction allows relationships to build, and some of the people you interact with will take you and your content more seriously after the interaction takes place. It will definitely be easier for these people to remember you and your brand.
Grow a targeted audience. An audience consists of people. A targeted audience consists of people interested in your niche. There is a big difference between building an audience and building a targeted audience. When you interact with other people, look for the people who engage with the leaders in your niche. The people who engage with the leaders in your niche are targeted individuals who are interested in your niche. You want these types of followers to form your social media audience.
Follow other people. The biggest mistake I made in the beginning of my Twitter journey was assuming I could get 100,000 followers and only follow a few dozen people. Although those numbers are possible, my account grew at a slow pace and got stuck at around 1,667 followers for an extended period of time. In short, this mindset did not work well for my social media audience. When I started following other people, and in particular, highly targeted individuals likely to follow back, my audience grew dramatically.

Subscribers

As the saying goes, “The money is in the list.” This powerful saying has encouraged thousands of bloggers to take their email lists more seriously. It is this saying that eventually led to my landing pages and optimizing my blog to grow my email list. You want to convert as many of your blog visitors as possible into subscribers because subscribers will buy your products and become returning visitors.

However, subscribers only engage with what you do if you interact with them often. You must send out at least one email blast every week to the people on your list so they constantly see your name in their inboxes. Although you don’t want to excessively send out email blasts, you must also send the email blast even if you lose subscribers. The reality about most email marketing efforts is that you will lose some subscribers every time you send an email blast, but if you never send an email blast, then you don’t get to tap into the goldmine that is your email list. Here are some tips to help you grow your email list:

Get landing pages on your blog. Landing pages are optimized to collect email addresses. They typically offer a free prize that can only be received when someone enters his/her email address into a form. I use Optimize Press for my landing pages. The lowest price for Optimize Press is $97, but it is the best investment you can make as a WordPress.org blogger.
Have a pop-up. Pop-ups work surprisingly well at getting more email subscribers. I was a bit skeptical to use a pop-up, but after I used Pop-Up Domination, my email list grew dramatically. Some technical problems prevented me from using the Pop-Up Domination plugin, and I saw a decline in the average number of subscribers I gained per day. If you buy a pop-up plugin, or any plugin for that matter, make sure that plugin comes with excellent support.
Continue to get more traffic. At this point, this guide may sound like a yo-yo, and it should. The beauty of all four of these essential components of an effective blog strategy is that they all complement each other. More traffic leads to subscribers, and more subscribers leads to more traffic. Just get the cycle started, increase the power of that cycle, and then the cycle will continue itself as long as you continue writing blog posts and sending email blasts.
Include a subscription form at the bottom of every blog post. I include a subscription form below my blog posts so that they people who enjoyed my blog post have easy access to a free resource that I offer in exchange for an email address. People who read through an entire blog post and appreciate the value will be more likely to subscribe, but no one will subscribe without a call-to-action. Including a subscription box or link to a landing page at the bottom of every blog post provides that consistent call-to-action.
Use a paid emailing service. If you are not using a service like iContact, Aweber, or MailChimp, then you are not getting the best from your email marketing efforts. Many tools like Optimize Press work best with a paid emailing service, and these emailing services provide their users with functionality that free services don’t provide. Most of the paid emailing services provide their users with the ability to create autoresponders, segments, and send your own custom messages just to name a few of the available options.

In Conclusion

Creating an effective blog strategy requires you to focus on traffic, SEO, social media, and your email list. All four of these areas of blog growth complement each other well, and if you get a large enough audience through one of these methods (especially the email list), you can easily create a cycle in which people find you on social media, visit your blog, share it on social media (the social media visit and social share help SEO), and then these people may subscribe to your blog after reading one of your blog posts. Finally, these subscribers may decide to visit your blog and visit one of your social media accounts that you have on your blog’s sidebar. Then, the cycle continues. Continuing this cycle allows you to master blogging.

Which part of the effective blog strategy do you think is the most important? Do you have any tips to boost any of the four areas of the effective blog strategy? Do you think there is another essential factor to an effective blog strategy? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How To Interact With Your Social Media Audience

July 13, 2015 by Marc Guberti 8 Comments

Social media includes the word “social,” and this well-known fact eludes many brands when they go about their social media strategies. Many brands and individuals use social media as a way to broadcast their message without responding and getting to know their audience—the very people brands are meant to serve. Many of the brands and individuals who don’t interact with other people don’t interact because interaction rarely leads to short-term results.

Although interaction does not lead to short-term results, it does lead to long-term results. Some of the people I engaged with on Twitter continue engaging with me and my content to this day. Thousands of people have tweeted about my blog posts, and I interacted with many of those people. In fact, I still interact with some of them, and I have interacted with some of these people in the past 24 hours. Several of these people became my customers. The long-term result of meaningful interaction is a strengthened relationship in which a person likes you and trusts in what you do. Interacting with the people in your audience will allow you to amplify your message because more people will share it on their social networks. Most successful people don’t become successful on their own. They get help from other people. Interacting with your audience will allow you to find people who will help you become successful, meet new people who you can build relationships with, and give you and your audience a better experience on social media.

Now that you know the importance of interaction in a successful social media strategy, here are some of the methods you can use to interact with your social media audience.

#1: Thank Them

Each time one of my followers shares one of my blog posts, I thank that follower for sharing the article. Few people get thanked for sharing content on social media, and based on their response, my followers appreciate when I thank them.

Thanking someone is an act of courtesy, but in this case, also an act of humility. I acknowledge that all of the individuals who visit this blog allow it to become successful. I can create the blog and write the content, but if no one visits my blog, then my message won’t spread. My audience makes it possible for my message to spread, and for that, I am deeply grateful. Realizing how important your audience is for your brand’s growth and current progress will allow you to develop a deeper appreciation for the people in your audience. Acquiring this deep appreciation for your audience will give you a good reason to thank someone in your audience each time that person does something as simple as sharing one of your articles.

#2: Be Kind

Regardless of whether you interact with your audience with your personal account or your brand’s account, your responses form a part of your reputation. If you always respond kindly on social media, then that will positively impact the reputation of you and your brand. However, the moment your responses become disrespectful and insulting, the reputation of you and your brand gets damaged. Building a reputation takes a long period of time, but that same reputation can be destroyed and taken down in a matter of minutes. Consistently showing kindness 100% of the time will allow your reputation of kindness to stay strong, and if your audience sees you as a kind individual, they will pay more attention to your brand.

Not only is kindness important from a reputation standpoint, but kindness also encourages more conversations to take place. We like to interact with the people who are kind to us because they appreciate what we do. Moreover, it is easier to interact with a kind person and have a meaningful conversation than it is to interact with a rude individual and expect a meaningful conversation to build. Kindness allows you to strengthen your reputation, and if you have a strong enough reputation, the people in your audience will gravitate towards you and your message.

#3: Ask Questions

Once you start interacting with someone on social media, you want that interact with that person for as long as possible. One of the most basic ways to continue an interaction on social media is by asking a relevant question that you know the person in your audience could easily answer. You don’t want to quiz your followers too often (i.e. asking when Twitter was created), but you should ask them opinion based questions (i.e. asking whether a follower uses Twitter more often than Facebook or vice-versa). Asking opinion based questions allows you to hear the opinions from the people within your audience, and some of these opinions can become inspiration for your next product or blog post.

Once you get a response for your question, there are several ways to take the conversation further. You can ask another question, but in most conversations, excessively asking questions leads to an annoying encounter. You want the conversation to be a blend of your questions and insights. When in doubt of how to respond to someone’s social media post, think of an actual conversation in real-life. The person interacting with you on social media is someone behind a computer screen who knows the difference between an enjoyable conversation and a socially awkward encounter. How would you respond to that person in real-life to keep the conversation going? What is the best way to respond (on social media, you actually have time to think before you respond)? After asking yourself those two questions, type your response and send it. Then, wait for the other person to respond.

#4: Seek Relevant, Meaningful Conversations

When you first start out on social media, the conversations don’t readily come into your notifications tab. As you get more followers, your notifications tab will be filled with people interacting with you and trying to start a conversation. Regardless of whether you are a beginner or massively successful on social media, seeking relevant, meaningful conversations is a great way to interact with more people and grow your audience in the process.

With over two billion tweets getting sent every week along with billions of other posts from different social networks, relevant, meaningful conversations occur all of the time. The only problem is trying to discover these conversations so you can interact with the people having the conversation. Using a social network’s search engine and looking for keywords within your niche is an easy way to find conversations that take place. If you use Twitter, then you can use the Twitter Advanced Search to find conversations taking place in your niche. In my opinion, the Twitter Advanced Search is the best social media search engine on the web.

Once you find a relevant, meaningful conversation that you want to be a part of, become a part of that conversation. Leave your response. When you leave your first response, you don’t introduce yourself. You simply jump right into the conversation. Once you jump into the conversation, wait for the other people in the conversation to respond, and formulate your next responses based on the other people’s responses. Don’t stick around if you see a conversation going out of control.

#5: Provide Insights In The Conversation

You won’t always get the opportunity to provide your insights in a conversation, but when you get the opportunity, include your insights. When you add value to the conversation, the people you interact with will be grateful for that additional value. Some people will be so grateful for the initial value that they will look for more value that you provide. These people will go to your blog and take a look at your product sales pages and possibly buy your products. One central belief many people share is that a product must be better than free value (i.e. blog posts and YouTube videos). If you over deliver in free value, then your product offers will be more attractive because the people in your audience will believe that the value in your products must be legendary. At that point, all you must do is live up to that promise.

In Conclusion

Interacting with your audience allows you to know the people within your audience. Too many people exclusively use social media to share content without interacting. These people want more traffic for their blog posts and social media posts that spread farther. Taking 5-10 minutes every day to interact with your audience allows you to build the long-term relationships that are necessary for consistently rising blog traffic and social media posts that spread farther. If you want to grow your social media audience, then it only makes sense to engage with the audience that you have already built.

Do you interact with your followers? Do you believe interacting with your audience is worth the time? What tips do you have for getting more interactions and continuing conversations? Please share your thoughts and advice below.