Marc's Blog

10 Ways You Can Use Twitter Advanced Search For Your Social Media Strategy

June 29, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

When I first came across Twitter Advanced Search, I was absolutely blown away. The advanced search makes it easy to find targeted individuals to interact with and/or market your products to. I learned about Twitter Advanced Search a few months after it was made available to the public, and ever since I learned about it, I used it often in my Twitter strategy. The advanced search allows you to filter out specific tweets and accounts based on what you type within the advanced search, but it can look confusing to a beginner. In this article, I will dispel the confusion and share with you 10 different ways you can use Twitter Advanced Search for your strategy.

#1: Search For Certain Keywords

The Twitter Advanced Search allows you to search for tweets containing specific keywords. You have the choice to decide whether a tweet must include multiple keywords (in the advanced search, that option is “All of these words”) or if a tweet contains one of the keywords that you specify (in the advanced search, that option is “Any of these words”).

Since I am a digital marketing expert, I will occasionally search for tweets about digital marketing to strengthen my knowledge. When I search for these tweets, I use Twitter Advanced Search to find all tweets with one or more of the following keywords: Social media, digital marketing, and blogging. Retail stores can search for keywords based on what they sell and then interact with people who sent relevant tweets. With hundreds of millions of tweets getting sent every day, it won’t be difficult to find a series of tweets with the keyword(s) you are looking for.

#2: Search For Specific Languages

One of the concepts few people recognize is how many timezones and languages fill up our planet. When you are used to hearing the same language in your neighborhood, your community, and in your every day life, it can be difficult to acknowledge that people talk and speak in other languages. On social media, it is easier to understand this concept, but there is an important connection between someone’s language and our brands.

Want to know why language matters for our brands? Here is an example. I am a blogger who writes blog posts in English. If you are with me at this point, then you are most likely read and speak English like it is second nature. However, there are some people who don’t understand English. If you don’t search for the specific language that you use to communicate with your audience, then you risk coming across someone who speaks in a different language and won’t understand yours. If one of my visitors has neither spoken nor read English in his/her lifetime, then I know it is practically impossible for a relationship to build. How can a visitor appreciate my content if that visitor does not understand the language I am using? Searching for a specific language prevents you from running into this problem. If you are an international brand with locations in different countries, then this won’t apply to you, but for most of us, the language a person understands impacts whether that person could possibly appreciate what we do or not.

#3: Search For Tweets Mentioning Certain People

Twitter Advanced Search allows you to see a bunch of tweets that mention other people. I use this feature to find people who interact with other social media thought leaders. Why is this important? Well, think of why a Twitter user would meaningfully engage with a social media thought leader’s tweet. Twitter Advanced Search follows up with tweets from people who all share a passion for social media and engage with other tweets about social media. These people are, by definition, people who interact with other social media thought leaders.

As a digital marketing expert, I want these types of followers. If these people see my tweets, then they will engage with my tweets all the same because I am passionate about digital marketing and send numerous tweets about my niche.

Brands can use this feature to see what other users say about their competitors. If certain users express frustration that your brand could fix, you can offer your services as a solution. Successful products and companies solve other people’s problems. You can build a successful brand solely around solving other people’s problems that the other brands couldn’t or wouldn’t solve.

[Tweet “Use The #Twitter Advanced Search To Discover Your Targeted Audience. http://bit.ly/1FL7IiK”]

#4: Search For Specific Tweets Posted By Specific People

The feature of getting a list of tweets from a specific group of people allows you to create a temporary Twitter list filled with your favorite (or least favorite) tweeters. When I am in the mood for a good laugh, I will use Twitter Advanced Search to search for the tweets posted by humorous accounts. I use this feature more often to learn more about digital marketing. I will type social media thought leaders’ usernames and then see a variety of tweets all about digital marketing, social media, and other tweets along those lines. If you find yourself using Twitter Advanced Search solely for this feature, it would be more advisable to create Twitter lists instead.

#5: Search For People By Location

Since my business is on the web, I don’t always use this feature. Retail stores and restaurants would benefit more from this feature because they could locate Twitter users close enough to stop by (and hopefully make a purchase). The advanced search also accounts for keywords, so if a restaurant was using Twitter Advanced Search to find ideal customers, that restaurant would search for a nearby location and then keywords like “food, hamburger (if the restaurant offers hamburgers), restaurant (maybe competing restaurants will show up. Your restaurant can say, “Come give us a try” but in a meaningful, non-sales-y way). For bloggers and web based businesses, you can search for people by location when you host an event or envision yourself hosting an event in a particular part of the world in the future.

#6: Search For Recent Tweets

Twitter Advanced Search shows an array of tweets written from the first days of Twitter to today. You should only opt to see the most recent tweets. If you own a restaurant and are looking for more customers, and you see a tweet written a few years ago in which a nearby individual wanted to know of a good restaurant, then that person’s past needs may no longer be relevant. So many things can happen in a few years. Maybe the person found a restaurant. Maybe the person lived somewhere else during that tweet and moved nearby after the tweet. Maybe that person is already a customer (you don’t want to tweet to a loyal customer asking them to give your restaurant a try).

I always search for tweets within one week, but depending on your brand, you may find it better to search for tweets posted in the past three months. Try it out and see what works for you.

#7: Search For Positive Tweets

When I look for people to follow on Twitter, I look for people who actively engage with other social media thought leaders. However, not all of these tweets are positive, and I don’t want to follow someone who I know is very likely to not appreciate what I do. When I do these searches, I make sure these are positive tweets. Some people like to express how much they enjoyed an article, and those are the only types of tweets I see when I check in the Positive option in Twitter Advanced Search. If people positively react to the leaders within your niche, and you provide value in your niche, then these people will positively react to your tweets, but only if these people see your tweets. I get these people to see my tweets by following them, and many of these people are highly likely to follow back based on their follow ratios and because I tweet digital marketing advice.

#8: Search For Negative Tweets

You can search for negative tweets about your competitors and look for common patterns. These common patterns will detect where your competitors fall short, and your brand can become the solution that leads to you helping others while making a profit. Successful brands try their best to help others, but some customers fall through the cracks. Searching for negative tweets allows you to find the customers who have fallen through the cracks. With this knowledge, you can fill up those cracks so more customers can find the advice or product they are looking for.

#9: Search For Questions

Some people will have a question about your niche, but not everyone who has a question gets an answer (FYI: if you want your question answered, the first step is to ask the question in the first place). Some people will ask their questions on Twitter, but not all of those questions will get answered. You can be the person who answers other people’s questions about your products and similar products within your niche. Some people may ask about your customer service or someone else’s customer service. When you provide your meaningful answer, the person who asked the question will be grateful for your reply, and that’s one of the ways to build a relationship between you and a potential customer.

#10: Search For Retweets To See What Is Popular

When you search for retweets, you will get an idea of what is popular within a certain niche. If you look for patterns, you will discover what patterns you can use to make your tweets more desirable so more of your followers retweet them. If you only tweet desirable tweets, then people will come back to your profile often to read your tweets. When someone reaches this stage of the relationship building process, it will be difficult for that person to forget about you.

In Conclusion

Twitter Advanced Search is one of the most sophisticated search engines on the entire web. It effectively filters the billions of tweets on the web and allows you to find the exact tweets you are looking for based on keywords, people who get mentioned, people sending the tweets, language, emotion, and other essential filtering methods.

Do you use Twitter Advanced Search? Has it become a vital part of your business? If you did not use Twitter Advanced Search before reading this blog post, do you plan on using it now? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How To Start A Successful Pinterest Board

June 26, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Are you leveraging Pinterest for your brand’s growth? Pinterest is increasingly growing in significance and user base, and some brands rely on Pinterest for their overall social media strategy. While the results for each of these brands differ, some brands have gone viral on Pinterest and tapped into new audiences. Many brands go on Pinterest with an aspiration to achieve the same success.

Becoming successful on Pinterest requires a plethora of successful boards. It takes time to create successful boards that generate massive audiences, so instead of focusing on creating multiple successful boards, focus right now on creating one successful board. If you can create just one successful board, then you know what it takes to create multiple successful boards that generate massive audiences.

All you have to do at this point is know how to create a successful board and then create it. Content factors into the value of a board, but there are other factors that impact the experience the people in your audience have when they visit your board.

#1: Keep Your Board Fresh With New Content

When people visit your board, they want fresh content. If the last thing you pinned on your board was from a year ago, then that board won’t be attractive enough to keep someone’s attention for a long period of time. All successful boards do an excellent job at keeping people’s attention over a long period of time over a series of encounters. That means a first-time visitor who enjoyed your board then must still enjoy it a week later (because the content is fresh, relevant, and valuable).

How do you keep a board fresh with new content? One way is to schedule your pins in advance with ViralWoot. You can schedule up to 100 pins per month free of charge, but then ViralWoot has rates that apply if you wish to schedule over 100 pins per month. At this rate, you could schedule three pins per month free of charge. Three pins per day is sufficient for making one of your boards successful, but that same number is insufficient if you want to make multiple boards become successful.

Remember that you want multiple/all boards on your profile to become successful which also requires more work on your part. If you want to have 10 successful Pinterest boards, then you would have to schedule 30 pins per day for all of those boards (or send some of them directly from Pinterest, but if you publish too many pins at one time, you will annoy your followers). That adds up to 900 pins per month which takes a significant amount of time and requires a paid ViralWoot account.

When I came to this realization, I quickly got overwhelmed. I send over 100 tweets per day, write 5,000 words on a bad week, do videos for upcoming training courses, write books, and go to school. Scheduling hundreds of pins per month would be nearly impossible for me to do on my own. I couldn’t possibly do it all by myself.

Then came the contributors.

I knew I couldn’t do it all by myself and didn’t want to pay people to put pins on my boards. The logical solution was to invite people to contribute to my boards. I recently started to implement this strategy, and now some of my Pinterest boards have hundreds of contributors which completely systematizes my Pinterest strategy. New pins get added to some of my boards every day without my involvement. For some of my boards, I simply moderate everything that gets pinned to make sure none of the content is inappropriate or irrelevant (so far, that has never happened. My contributors are the best). At one point, I gained over 1,000 Pinterest followers without pinning anything new on my account. All of the contributors helped update my boards and keep the content fresh.

Why would contributors be so eager to pin on my boards without getting paid? The answer is the exposure. I have over 10,000 followers on all of my boards, and when someone accepts my invitation to become a contributor, that person gets over 10,000 followers to interact with overnight. I give people to power to share their thoughts and ideas on a larger platform. Many of the people I invite take me up on the offer and pin valuable content on my boards. I aspire to have several boards on my account with over 1,000 contributors, so if you want in, let me know.

#2: Optimize Your Pins

When you allow contributors to pin on your boards, you must recognize that not all of the pins that appear on the group boards will be created by you. While this is a great way to systematize Pinterest, you must occasionally publish your own pins. When you do publish your own pins, your pins must optimized to do well on the platform.

The first thing that comes to mind in a pin is the picture. It does not take much time to discover that not all pictures on the web are created equal. While some of the pictures look nice, others are duds, but just because a picture looks nice does not mean it is properly optimized for Pinterest.

The first thing to note is the height of the picture. If the picture you choose is a square, then it will show up on Pinterest as a square. If the picture is 800 pixels by 800 pixels, then it will get reduced to 600 pixels to 600 pixels when it goes on Pinterest. The problem is that although the picture may look nice, it isn’t tall enough. Pictures optimized to do well on Pinterest must be tall enough to take up the entire screen and have little to no background. This explains why pins of lengthy infographics perform much better than the average pin.

The pixel dimensions are just a nice, random fact if you get pictures from Google Images (you can’t change the pixel dimensions unless you use some type of photo editor), but if you create your own pictures, then you have the power to choose the dimensions of that image. Creating a picture may sound difficult at first glance, but creating your own pictures is surprisingly easy with Canva. Canva lets you choose from their pictures, text, and backgrounds to create a picture that you would be proud of. You can also upload pictures from the web that you have permission to use or your own pictures to Canva. The best part from a Pinterest standpoint is that you can customize the size of the image so it is optimized for Pinterest. An optimized picture has a width of 600 pixels and a height of thousands of pixels. Remember that the taller your image is, the more you must add to the image so the background does not take up too much space. You also have the power to specific the color of your background and the colors of various parts of the image. Make these colors bright colors because bright colors perform better on Pinterest than dull colors.

After the picture is another part of the pin that not as many pinners consider when optimizing their pins. The other part of a pin is the pin’s description. Here is how you would optimize a pin’s description:

200-300 characters is the sweet spot with 250 characters being the ultimate sweet spot. Don’t focus on the 250. If your pin is 233 characters or something along those lines, then your description is fine. Remember, people on Pinterest want details.
Include 1-2 hashtags. Hashtags help you get found on Pinterest because they generate traffic from Pinterest’s search engine. They also lead to more engagement, but if you overuse hashtags in your descriptions, your followers will have a tough time reading your pins’ descriptions. If a description is tough to read, your followers will get confused, and confused followers never stick around.

#3: Make Your Profile More Attractive

If people really enjoy one of your boards, they will wonder who created the board, but they won’t be wondering for very long. It is easy to discover who created a group board.

With that said, the way you present yourself affects how people think of your board and brand. That’s why colleges are increasingly asking for students’ social media accounts in the college application process. That’s why there are job interviews. That’s why event organizers ask a potential public speaker some questions before hiring the public speaker to speak at the event. That’s why the first impression is so important.

On Pinterest, your first impression is your profile. You need to have a good picture of yourself that looks professional. In your bio, list your top credentials and hobbies with nothing but commas (no conjunctions, period at the end of the sentence, or anything like that. Your bio should be a sentence fragment with no subject or verb). The hobbies are just as important as the credentials because people get to know you on a more personal level (this connection helps strengthen the relationship between you and your followers). Making your profile attractive gives you a good first impression which will entice your followers to become returning visitors who frequently like and repin your pins.

In Conclusion

Pinterest continues to grow as the days go by which makes now the perfect time to take it seriously. The key to thriving on Pinterest is to know how to create a successful Pinterest board and then make one of your boards become successful. You would do this by having contributors, optimizing your pins to perform well, and bolstering your profile.

Do you think more people should take Pinterest seriously? Which tip about creating a successful Pinterest board did you like the most? Do you have any additional tips for creating a successful Pinterest board? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

4 Ways That Anyone Can Use Social Media To Drive Leads

June 24, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Social media is the most effective tool to make connections, grow an audience, and give a greater meaning to what you do. Experts have used social media over the years to completely transform their businesses and spread their messages. Despite so many people using social media to level up their businesses, other people find themselves stuck. They don’t know how to leverage social media as a lead generation tool.

If you fit into the category, then the first step towards generating leads is to know how to generate leads. If you want to know how to generate leads, then you are at the right place. This article will discuss four of the methods that you can use to generate more social media leads right now.

#1: Create And Promote A Landing Page

One of the most effective ways to generate leads is to have your own landing page. Upon creating your own landing page (I use Optimize Press for mine), you will quickly discover that creating a landing page does not guarantee more leads. The only way to get more leads from a landing page is to get people to see the landing page. I get people to see my landing pages by promoting them across my social networks.

Most of the subscribers I get from my blog come directly from landing page traffic that I get from my social networks. Before I created a landing page, I only had 300 subscribers. 150,000 visitors only led to 300 subscribers. In short, my blog was poorly optimized for getting subscribers. Then, I created multiple landing pages and started to promote them across my social networks. The result was a massive increase in subscribers. I quickly went from only having 300 subscribers to gaining well over 300 subscribers every month.

After you create your landing page, the next step is to promote that landing page. As mentioned before, promoting the landing page on Twitter alone led to a massive increase in subscribers. However, the way I promoted the landing page is another story. Twitter is the type of social network that people go on for a short period of time to see what’s new, and since so many people tweet on Twitter, it is easy for the timeline to get filled up. As a result, most of your followers will miss your tweets and not engage with them.

One way to solve the problem is by pinning a social media post to the top of your feed. That way, that post promoting your landing page will automatically show up on the top, even if you post something new. Facebook and Twitter have this option enabled on their platforms. Here is an example of a pinned tweet:

The tweet was sent before 2015, and yet it still appears before the tweet I sent a few minutes ago. This tweet has significantly more engagement that most of my other tweets because of the added exposure of being a pinned tweet. Most tweets and Facebook posts have short half-lives (when that half-life is over, the tweet or Facebook post basically gets little to no impressions for the rest of its existence), but when you pin a tweet or Facebook post to the top of your feed, that tweet or Facebook post has an infinite half-life which means people will always see it.

The tweet also has more engagement than most of my tweets. While most of my tweets get a few thousand impressions, this tweet has over 20,000 impressions. That means over 20,000 people saw that one tweet. Of course, the engagement isn’t where I want it (only 3% of those people engaged and only 1% clicked on the link), but those are the percentages that many tweets on Twitter generate.

How could I possibly get 300 subscribers every month on Twitter when the pinned tweet only has 275 clicks? The answer is that I constantly tweet about my landing pages. I send one tweet every hour about one of my landing pages. This is how I get numerous people to visit my landing page every day, and this is how I get my subscribers from Twitter. While the pinned tweet gets the most engagement for my landing page, the other tweets I send on a daily basis are just as important.

#2: Interact With Your Individual Followers

Have you ever heard of the saying, “Ask and you shall receive”? It seems as if the more we ask for, the more we get (don’t abuse this power). When I interact with my followers, I will occasionally ask if the follower got a chance to download my free eBook 27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter. I may also ask about the Productivity Rubric or another free eBook I offer called 27 Simple Ways To Get More Blog Subscribers (I like the number 27).

I started implementing this tactic in March 2015 and saw great results from it. Some people said they received the book and went on to say how much they enjoyed it. I asked these people what they liked about the book the most and if the conversation allowed, I asked if a particular follower had the chance to grab another one of my free eBooks. I would become a part of dozens of these types of interactions every day, and the numbers show for it. I got over 110% more subscribers in March than I got in January.

How many interactions does it take? Well, take a look at how many interactions I had in January compared to the number of interactions I had in March:

Here are the statistics from January:

Now you will see the significant increase in interactions in March:

The trend is an increase in interactions that gained momentum as I asked more people whether they got a chance to download my free eBook or not. When people said they never heard about it and expressed interest in the eBook, I included the link to the landing page in the next tweet I sent to those people. Many of them ended up subscribing.

Interacting with your followers is not just important for generating leads, but interacting with your followers is also important for your overall success as a brand. Your audience buys your products, reads your blog posts, and spreads the word about you. Taking the minute or two to interact with several people in your audience will strengthen the relationship between you and the people in your audience. This relationship is important for your success.

#3: Promote Your Landing Pages On Social Media Group Pages and Forums

Social media group pages and forums about your niche are great places to promote your landing pages because both of these platforms consist of numerous people in your targeted audience. Not only do you get to promote your landing pages to your targeted audience, but the platform is already built for you. If you become a member of a Facebook group page with over 10,000 members, then that’s over 10,000 people who can potentially become leads. If you post on a forum with 100,000 members, then that’s 100,000 potential leads.

Social media group pages and forums work well because members constantly come back to interact with other members. Just as an audience keeps your brand alive, the members of a social media group page or forum keep that social media group page or forum alive by building a community on the platform. This means many people will see what you post in the social media group page or forum, and that can lead to massive traffic.

Before you take the plunge and post a link to your landing page, see how the community interacts and responds to certain posts. You want to make sure describing your landing page and then posting a link to that landing page would go well amongst the people in the community, but you also want to make sure you are not violating any rules. Some social media group pages and forums will suspend users who over-promote themselves or promote themselves in any possible manner. The rules and consequences vary by social media group pages and forums.

#4: Use Reddit

Reddit is a hit-or-miss tool in which promoting yourself can work wonders, but you don’t want to over-promote yourself. A typically Reddit post can get anywhere from no engagement to thousands of upvotes. One of the posts I put on Reddit resulted in no leads. Another post I put on Reddit got me over 500 leads in just 24 hours. The leads I gained that day did not carry over far. Within a week, I was back at my normal lead generation rate. You can think of Reddit as the spike in traffic that doesn’t last very long but allows more people to know about you. I wouldn’t rely on Reddit for lead generation, but it is an underrated tool that can either lead to zero results or wonders.

In Conclusion

If you want to generate more leads, then you must create a landing page and promote that landing page as often as you can on your social networks. Tell one follower about the landing page. Then tell another follower. Post a link to your landing page multiple times per day on your social networks.

Which of these tips was your favorite? Do you have any stories with using social media to generate leads? What tips would you recommend? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

What Makes Spreadable Content

June 22, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Getting More Blog Post Traffic

Spreadable content is the type of content that people are eager to share. To some people, sharing spreadable content is a calling unable to be ignored. We enjoy sharing content that we like because we get to empower our audiences and get some of the praise for taking the time to share the content.

We will all continue sharing spreadable content, but what if your content was spreadable? What if people visited your blog, read one of your blog posts, and felt an obligation to share that blog post. Not just a maybe; an obligation. You want people to feel that sense of obligation to share your content each time they read any of your blog posts. If you can generate that sense of obligation amongst a large group of people, then you have spreadable content. People will share it across their social networks, and as more people come in contact with your content for the first time, they will share it with their followers, and the cycle will continue. A few thousand people who enjoy your posts may eventually lead to hundreds of thousands of people actively engaging with your content.

Cool success story, but you may be wondering how you can create spreadable content of your own. How do you get your visitors to feel that sense of obligation to share your blog posts? That’s what the rest of this blog post will cover.

Write Valuable Content

The only type of content that spreads is valuable content. You can promote your content all you want, but if the content is not written well, people won’t share it. Valuable content empowers, entertains, and/or inspires your readers.

If you write how-to blog posts, don’t be shy to write a lengthy, high-value blog post. Your free blog posts give your readers a general idea of the amount of value in your paid products. Not only does providing free value entice people to buy your products, but when you write valuable content, people stick around. If you want a reader to share your content, then that reader must be reading a particular blog post for a long period of time.

Optimize Your Blog For Social Shares

If people read your blog post and appreciate the value they got from it, then they may want to share that blog post. However, these people live busy lives in which going on a social network, copying the link, pasting the link (and probably shortening it first), and writing the social media post takes too much time. Although this activity takes under 10 minutes, it is an activity that people don’t want to do.

The route around the problem is to optimize your blog for social shares. At the bottom of all of my blog posts are social share buttons for multiple social networks. When readers click on those buttons, they will get a prewritten tweet, Facebook post, pin, and more that could get published in a matter of seconds. I also make it easy for people to tweet custom-made tweets in the middle of my blog posts. Writing valuable content helps in creating spreadable content, but spreadable content must have a method of being spread. Optimizing your blog for social shares is that method.

Write Engaging Content

The content that gets the reader’s attention is the content that engages the reader. To make your content more engaging, turn your content into a conversation. Ask questions at different point in blog posts and use personal, relevant anecdotes so you and the reader can relate to one another. The relationship that builds from engaging content may lead to a reader sharing your blog post, and if enough people read the engaging blog post, that blog post will spread rapidly.

Writing engaging content isn’t just a method of creating spreadable content. Writing engaging content also allows you to build long-term relationships with your audience. This type of relationship is the relationship that grows a solid fan base for your blog and leads to product sales. Having an audience filled with loyal, returning visitors will be very helpful for your blog’s exposure.

Email The Top Bloggers About Your Blog Post

When you write a spectacular blog post that stands out, send a quick email to the top bloggers in your niche about your blog posts. Some bloggers will refer to this method as the “Skyscraper Method,” and it is a great way to get extra exposure for that blog post. If you get dozens of top bloggers to promote your blog post to their audiences, your one blog post alone could see thousands of visitors and dozens of backlinks within a few days. Although this seems too good to be true, it has happened.

When you email a top blogger, it is important to email them a blog post that stands out. Blog posts either stand out by providing an extraordinary amount of value, discussing something rarely discussed (new trend), or going into great detail about something (typically, big numbers help here. Think along the lines of “200 tips/tools or some massive number). The best part is that if you choose the top bloggers in your niche, you’ll get people from their audiences to read your content. These people are a part of your targeted audience since they read similar content on other people’s blogs.

Your Story

Remember when it didn’t matter whether you had a good reputation or not? I don’t, and I don’t think there has ever been a time where the importance of a good reputation has been undermined. Your reputation is important for getting loyal readers who will actively share and engage with your content. However, your reputation is also a part of your story. As bestselling author Seth Godin says, “Everything that you do becomes a part of your story.” How you tweet, write, talk to others, and live life all become a part of your story and how people see your brand—what you stand for.

The people with magnificent stories are the ones who have loyal audiences eager to share their content. Seth Godin doesn’t even have to write 100 words for his next blog post, and thousands of people will share it.

Not only do magnificent stories lead to loyal audiences, but they also spread like wildfire. If you have a spreadable story on the loose (that positively impacts your reputation and other people), then your content will spread as well.

In Conclusion

Spreadable content comes down to two things: the content itself and behind-the-scenes actions that must occur. Although the behind-the-scenes actions are not plentiful, they are all important, and they can lead to massive exposure for your content. Regardless of how much effort you put into creating spreadable content, patience is a must.

Do you think taking all of this time to create spreadable content is worth it? Which of these tips did you like the most? Do you have any additional tips for creating spreadable content? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Does Temporarily Offering Paid Books and Training Courses For Free Really Generate A Profit?

June 19, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Free Giveaways For Business

To offer a product for free or not to offer a product for free. With all of the articles on the web, people experimenting with free offers, and skeptics, it seems as if this debate could continue until the end of time. I heard both sides of the argument ever since I created my first product, and I continue hearing both sides of the argument to this day.

The argument against temporarily offering paid books and training courses free of charge is that you don’t make money for any of those sales. 2,000 people could get your free book or training course that you normally charge for, but you won’t make as much money compared to if one person bought the paid book or training course.

The supporting argument for temporarily offering paid books and training courses free of charge is that you generate social proof and make your product look more enticing when the free offer expires. Many Udemy instructors offer their courses for free in the beginning to get thousands of students because having thousands of students looks better than only having five students, even if they initially don’t make as much money that way. Some of the people who get your book or training course free of charge may decide to leave reviews that positively impact the way your product looks in the marketplace.

I heard both sides of the argument for so long that I didn’t fully know which side to believe. There are articles on the web from both sides of the argument that present valid case studies and earning reports. Putting my first product on the web meant putting a price tag on it, but as I created more products, I needed to discover whether I would make some of them temporarily free or not even think about doing so. The only way to know whether something works or not is by giving it a try, so for some of my products, I decided to temporarily remove the price tag for one of my products.

Removing the price tag would remove the uncertainty in a matter of days, but making one of my products temporarily free for the first time scared me. People told me not to do it, but the feeling of uncertainty was too overwhelming. I just had to give it a try so I could finally decide once and for all of it even works.

What initially started as a “Let’s try it just for the sake of trying it” plan has now become essential. Offering my product for free allowed it to get more customers than ever before. Making the product free meant no profit, but I didn’t lose anything either. Offering an online product free of charge eliminates the need of shipping and production costs.

When you temporarily offer a product free of charge, you aren’t looking to make money from this promotion. That sounds obvious, but many people forget that for the particular promotion, revenue isn’t the primary objective. The primary objective in your promotional efforts for a temporarily free product is to generate social proof. You want people to leave reviews for your product so that when the price tags return and your product is no longer free, it will look better in the marketplace. The Udemy course with 2,000 students and over 10 reviews looks better than the Udemy course with 10 students and no reviews. Social proof was always important, but now it is more important than ever before.

The idea of getting social proof by temporarily making a product free of charge makes free promotions seem like investments. If you invest money in the stock market, you hope to make a profit in return. Temporarily offering a product for free works in a slightly different manner. For online products, you don’t invest money to make a product free of charge because the act of providing someone with the product does not cost you a penny. You neither lose nor gain a profit by temporarily making a product free of charge.

What you invest in this case is your time. It takes time to promote a product. Some people see finishing a product as completing the entire battle, but that is only half of the battle. Marketing a product to get numerous sales in the marketplace is just as challenging as actually creating the product. Just because you offer a sweet deal and temporarily make one of your products free does not mean people will flock over to your free product. People have to know about the free product first. Once people know about your offer and get your free product, a relationship starts to build.

The relationship you build between you and the customer is essential towards getting good reviews. At the end of my Udemy lectures, I make it a point to encourage interaction. I encourage interaction so people’s questions can get answered and so I can know my audience better. Knowing my audience better allows me to build stronger relationships which lead to reviews, and I get a better idea of what type of products my targeted audiences wants. Knowing what products your targeted audience wants and then creating those products is a great way to generate more sales.

In Conclusion

When I temporarily offered my product free of charge, I didn’t make any money for that product for the entire free promotion. For all of my products, once the free promotion ended, I always got a significant increase in sales. Now, when one of my products does not generate as many sales as it did in the past, I sometimes make the product free to get more buzz which helps the product succeed as a whole.

You must avoid making your products free too often because people will then avoid buying your products and simply wait for the free promotions. The phrase “too often” depends on the niche you are in and how many free promotions your competitors do.

If you are eager to temporarily offer your product free of charge, here are some outlets that will help you spread the word about your free product:

Facebook Groups specialized for free product promotion (many of these exist; join multiple groups)
Your email list
Your social networks (constantly tweet, post, and pin about your temporarily free product)

Utilizing these three outlets allowed me to successfully promote my product while it was free. All of the promotion led to thousands of new customers and dozens of reviews in less than a month. What are your thoughts about free product promotions? Did you promote one of your paid products and temporarily make it free? What are your tips for promoting a temporarily free product? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

9 Ways To Strengthen The Bond Between You And Your Readers

June 17, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Better Blogging Experience For Visitors

A blog is more than just a bunch of blog posts put together. A blog provides you with a method to build a bond between yourself and the people who visit your blog…your readers. Building these bonds with numerous readers results in returning visitors who may share your blog posts on their social networks and tell others about you.

Many bloggers who go viral end up going viral because of their own work and the help from others. Going at it alone won’t help your chances of standing out, going viral, and making a full-time income on the web. The readers you know well are the ones who will help make your content go viral. Building the bond between you and your readers requires the usage of multiple platforms and interaction methods. Here are nine of the ways you can strengthen the bond between you and your readers.

#1: Start Conversations On Their Social Media Posts

Some of the people you know well on Twitter (when I say well, I am referring to a reader who may be in a different continent but you have interacted before in a meaningful way) may tweet links to valuable articles on the web. Since the average Twitter user has a little under 500 followers, most Twitter users, and social media users in general, are not a part of many conversations. These people often use social media as a broadcasting platform without taking the time to respond to or start conversations.

What I have noticed is that if you start a conversation with these people in a meaningful way, they will most likely respond to you. Just repeat the process and have numerous conversations with the same people, and that bond between you and those followers will grow. Some of them may decide to interact on your social media posts and share your content. This strategy is not exclusive to Twitter because social networks were primarily created to make socializing much easier. Use social media as a broadcasting tool, but also use it for its main purpose.

#2: Thank Your Followers For Sharing Your Content

Each time someone shares one of my blog posts on a social network, I make it a point to thank that person for sharing my blog post. This is something that few people do, and it is a great way to stand out and build the bond between you and the person who shared your content. Thanking your followers works because your followers will realize that you care when they share your content and that you are deeply appreciative of them sharing your content.

Regardless of whether someone has 10 followers or 10,000 followers, I thank the person all the same. With billions of articles on the web to choose from, someone choosing to share your article on their social platform is a big honor. When I see someone sharing my content, I understand that plenty of options exist, but the person choose my content. When this thought enters my mind, even if it’s midnight and I want to go to bed, I ask myself how I could possibly sit back and not thank someone for sharing my blog post. These people will most likely reply, a conversation will ensue, and the bond will be strengthened.

#3: Reply To Their Comments

On this blog, I make it a point to reply to every comment I get. Of course, if a comment appropriately ends up in the spam folder, I won’t respond, but for the comments that relate to my blog post, I’ll respond to them. This requires more time on my part because I can’t click “Approve Comment” and go on my way. I have to take the time to formulate a response. While most of these responses take less than a minute to write, others can take 5-10 minutes.

Replying to your readers’ comments will encourage them to ask questions and interact with you more. Once they interact with you often, they will trust you more, and almost to the level of a very reliable friend.

Not only does replying to comments allow you to build the bond between you and your readers, but replying to comments also allows new bonds to begin. Some of your new readers will scroll down to the comments section and see that you reply to every comment. These readers may leave a comment to test whether you respond or not, or they may comment with a question and come back waiting for the answer.

#4: Email Your Readers

When a reader comments on your blog, once piece of information you get is the reader’s email address. An email address is very valuable because conversations that take place through email are the most meaningful conversations you can have other than the oldie but goodie face-to-face conversation.

The conversations you have with your readers are only meaningful if you email your reader in the proper manner. The best way to have the first conversation through email is to send an email with a brief introduction of yourself and thanking the person for going on your blog. You want the first interaction to be short, sweet, and to the point because people don’t have much time on their hands. We are constantly going from one thing to the next, and a five sentence email is much quicker to read than a five paragraph email.

Sending a short, sweet, and to the point email is a great way to start the conversation, but when you have someone’s email address, you also have a huge responsibility. That simple responsibility is to avoid being irresponsible with what you have. Some marketers in an attempt to grow their email lists may look at past blog comments and copy and paste the email addresses into the list. You never want to put an email address onto a list that your reader never subscribed to because that will effectively hurt the relationship between you and the reader. Some of your readers may appreciate getting the emails, but it is always good to ask the reader first before you use their email address in any way. My recommendation is to guide and hint your readers to the process (“get this free product by entering your email address on the landing page” instead of “can I put your email address on my email list so you get more emails from me”).

#5: Make Them A Part Of Your Next Blog Post Or Product Decision

Giving your readers influence in your own decisions is a powerful strategy to build the bond and get more exposure at the same time. When you make your readers a part of a big decision, and you reach a conclusion based on data from a poll or survey, you will have to entice the majority of your readers when you create your next product or write your next blog post.

Enticing the majority is important because that majority will feel as if it had a direct impact on your product or blog post. These people that form the majority of your readers will be more likely to buy your product, so you have more sales right then and there. They will also promote your product or blog post that you published to their friends because they influenced the decision. If they didn’t vote, maybe a different product or blog post would have been published instead. Get your readers involved in what you do.

#6: Shout Out Some Of Your Readers

Shouting out readers is a great way to build the bond between you and individual readers. I don’t always shout out readers, but I will retweet some of their tweets that I believe my followers could get value from. In other words, my shout outs look nothing like this:

“Shout out to my boy @username for being awesome. #ff”

My shout outs are random, and I rarely do them. Many people ask me for shout outs, but I’ll only shout out the people I believe match my audience’s interests. Just don’t get into the habit of doing too many shout outs because then people will beg you for them, and there is a big problem with asking for shout outs.

#7: Continue Showing Up

You can have a strong bond between you and your readers, but the moment you stop showing up, that bond gets weaker. If you are like most people, you look at your inbox every day expecting an email from the same person every day, and you enjoy reading this person’s emails. Then, imagine if that person suddenly stopped sending emails for an entire week. An entire month. An entire YEAR!

Most people would forget who that person was within a year. Since so many options exist on the web, it will be easy for people to find a substitute. Once the bond between you and your readers gets disconnected, your readers will look for another blogger to bond with.

Not only is it important to continue showing up in your readers’ inboxes, but it is also important to continue showing up on their social networks. I send over 100 tweets every day which makes me hard to miss. By showing up often on social media, your followers will share your content which exposes your content to more people who may be seeing it for the first time. Once you commit to a niche, never stop showing up, but when you show up, provide value. It is possible to run and take shortcuts. It is also possible to run and complete the entire workout from start to finish. There is a distinct difference between showing up and providing value each time you show up.

#8: Assess The Current Bond

Regardless of whether you get dozens of daily visitors or thousands of daily visitors to your blog, there is a bond building between you and your readers. One way to strengthen the bond is to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the bond. Where are you lacking? Can those areas be improved in an efficient manner? Where are your strengths? How can you easily but effectively make those strengths stronger?

How is it possible to improve at anything if you don’t know where you currently are?

#9: Play Nice

If you wanted to make some friends at the playground, then you had to play nice. Many people gravitate towards the nice people, and that makes sense. Would you rather live with an angry person or a nice person every day?

When you build the bond between you and your readers, some of these readers will pay more attention to the way you interact with others. As you continue growing your audience, you will face criticism. Criticism is an inevitable part of life, and how you react to criticism will impact the bond between you and your readers. If you respond to criticism in a controlled manner, then your readers will respect you all the more for it. However, if you lose control when responding to critics, then the bond between you and your readers gets hurt.

Your reputation is the most important part of the bond that develops between you and your readers.

In Conclusion

Building the bond between you and your readers is essential for success as a blogger. Strong bonds entice readers to come back to your blog, promote your content, and buy your products along the way. With a bad reputation, the entire bond will fall apart, so you must preserve your good reputation and always look for ways to strengthen it.

What are your thoughts on building a bond between you and your readers? Do you have any additional tips for building that bond? Which of these methods was your favorite? Please share your thoughts and advice below.