Marc's Blog

How To Find Your Blogging Niche

January 7, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

How To Find Your Blogging Niche

If you have not created a blog yet, this blog post is especially for you. If you have a blog, and have not identified your blogging niche yet, you must identify that niche before you write another blog post. Every successful blogger knows what their blogging niche is, and by learning what your blogging niche is, you will know what you need to write about so you can become a successful blogger. Knowing your blogging niche is important for the following reasons:

#1: You get to know who your target audience is.

Just because someone visits your blog does not mean that person is a part of your target audience. Your target audience consists of people who were interested in your niche before visiting your blog. That means when these people visit your blog, they already have a strong interest in what you are providing.

Knowing your target audience also allows you to know who you need to interact with on social media. Not every social media user is created equal. If you are a digital marketing expert, you do not want to build a following around karaoke. You want to build your audience around people who want to learn more about digital marketing.

#2: You get to specialize your writing.

Believe it or not, it is easier to specialize your writing than it is to constantly write about anything. Although that statement may be difficult to believe in, writing about anything brings forth an infinite amount of choices. Being given that many options makes it difficult to make one decision. It is easier to make a decision you have faith in if there are only 10 options on the menu than if there are 1,000 options on the menu.

You can write about an experience, a motivational quote, a music song, an animal, your trip to the zoo, a long rant that you read from a blogger named Marc Guberti, or anything else. When you choose to write content for a specific niche, you will always have a general idea for what your next blog post should discuss.

#3: You know what to build your presence around.

In order to build your presence, you need to build that presence around one niche. When we think of Steve Jobs, we almost always think about Apple and nothing else. Some people also think of Pixar, but ultimately, when we think of Steve Jobs, we also think of Apple. You want to make sure people can easily associate you with a niche when they think of you.

Now that you know what to build your presence around, there are fewer obstacles holding you back. The main obstacle in the beginning is before you choose what you want to build your presence around, you tinker around with numerous niches. I wrote blog posts about the Red Sox, Yugioh Cards, and Legos before I started this blog. All of that time taught me about blogging, but now that I have chosen digital marketing as my niche, I waste less time.

#4: You know which niche is going to be your money maker.

In order to make money on the web, you need to create products and offer services such as eBooks, training courses, and consultation sessions. Once you identify your blogging niche, you are also identifying the niche you use to create products and offer services. When your blogging niche and your products match up, some of the people who visit your blog end up becoming customers.

By focusing your efforts on one niche, you will focus more of your time strengthening a few areas of your money making strategy instead of spending a little time implementing different methods to bring in a small income (i.e. taking surveys, clicking ads, tweeting ads to a small audience, etc).

How To Identify It

Identifying your blogging niche will allow you to save valuable time and grow the right audience. When I refer to a blogging niche, I am referring to a niche that you can stick with for many years to come. Ask yourself these three questions so you can identify the right blogging niche for you:

What topics do I enjoy writing about? The only way you are going to make it as a blogger is by enjoying what you do. That way, when the journey gets challenging, you embrace the challenge when most people would give up. Besides, you are doing what you love to do. Create a list of all of the topics that you enjoy.
Which of these topics do I know a lot about? Now that you have the list of all of the topics that you enjoy, identify the ones that you know about the most. If you make it big as a blogger, it is entirely possible that you will be writing about this topic for many years (or even decades) to come.
Which of these topics do I enjoy learning more about? You must strive to constantly learn about the niche you choose so you are able to write more blog posts. If I stopped learning about digital marketing last year, I would not have been able to share the thousands of methods that I have learned within a year to grow your presence on the web.

You need to choose a niche that applies to all three of those questions. The niche must be something you enjoy writing about, are an expert in, and enjoy learning about. There is no in-between answer. Do not choose to write about a topic just because it is popular or your best friend likes that topic. If you can find a topic that satisfies all three of those needs, then you have successfully identified your blogging niche. With your blogging niche identified, you can now put content in front of the world that is related to your blogging niche instead of any blog post idea that comes up at the spur of the moment.

What is your blogging niche?

10 SEO Mistakes That Will Hurt Your Blog’s Search Ranking

January 5, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

10 SEO Mistakes That Will Hurt Your Blog’s Search Ranking

Millions of blog posts are being written every day for various blogs across the web. One of the obvious facts that new bloggers learn quickly is that not all blogs and blog posts get equal attention. On a particular blog, some blog posts get more attention than others. There are some blog posts on this blog that always get more traffic than others. There are also some blogs that get more traffic than other ones. Out of all of the blogs I have, this one is by far the most successful.

The amount of traffic your blog gets is dependent on social media and SEO. Social media covers the sharing aspect and growing an audience on the networks you use. However, SEO is a much deeper concept that a select few understand. To everyone else, it looks like the extensive math problem that takes up the entire chalkboard.

Understanding SEO is important because it is a big avenue for traffic. Some people get thousands of daily visitors from SEO which means it is valuable. Although SEO is not exactly the do or die stage of a blog, it is important, and here are 11 mistakes you need to avoid so your blog can have better SEO.

#1: Not submitting your blog’s sitemap to Google.

One of the reasons why blog posts do not get SEO traffic is because they are not even indexed by Google. A sitemap presents all of the contents of your blog in a way that makes it easier for Google to read them. Submitting your blog’s sitemap to Google will allow them to properly index your blog posts. Indexing your blog posts on Google makes it possible for anyone to find any one of your blog posts with a particular search phrase.

There are many options for creating your own sitemap, but out of all of the options, the Google XML Sitemaps WP plugin is the easiest to use. This plugin makes it easy to create an XML sitemap to submit to Google so all of your blog posts can be properly indexed. Once you get your sitemap, head over to Google Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap.

#2: Not knowing the difference between http and https

Actually, there is no difference, and that’s the problem. Search engines see http://www.example.com and https://www.example.com as two different websites with identical content. This is duplicate content that search engines associate with plagiarism. As a result, your SEO ranking will go down for both the http and https versions of your website.

In order for you to identify whether your blog has this problem or not, simply enter http:// before your blog’s URL. Then, do the same thing but with https:// in the front. When you do this, check your URL for spelling because you do not want a misspelled URL to give you the wrong webpage.

Your SEO is doing just fine if one of the two options worked. If both options work, then your blog’s SEO is getting hurt. For a WordPress blog, you can change your blog’s URL by going into settings–>general. Then, you can change your blog’s URL to your preference so people can either use http or https to access your blog. Visitors should not be able to use both http and https to access your blog.

#3: Not having meta tags for your blog posts

Search engines have a big responsibility in organizing billions of blog posts based on popularity, keywords, and value. Although search engines have this big responsibility, they struggle to understand a majority of blog posts. The reason why some valuable blog posts are not getting any search engine traffic is because they do not have meta tags.

I got introduced to meta tags more than a year and a half after I created this blog. I had to go through every blog post I ever wrote and add meta tags to them all. It was painstaking work that took several months of my time, but it was all worth it. My search engine traffic jumped up significantly after making the change. Any of my blog posts that were already doing good traffic from the search engines got a big jump in traffic.

I use the Add Meta Tags WP Plugin to add meta tags to all of my blog posts. I include keywords in these meta tags so search engines can pick up on them and promote my content. Meta tags, especially the meta tags with the right keywords, make it easier for the search engines to understand what your content is.

#4: Not understanding how Google sees your blog

Google sees your blog completely differently from you. It does not see the colors and pictures that may be on your blog posts. In order to make it easier for Google to see the way your blog looks, use the data highlighter in Google’s webmaster tools. Once you verify your blog, the data highlighter will allow you to let Google know how your blog looks (pictures, text, author name, etc). Using the data highlighter only takes 10-15 minutes, and it can have a big impact on your search engine traffic.

#5: Not improving your blog’s bounce rate

Your blog’s bounce rate allows search engines to identify how interesting your blog is. If your bounce rate is 100%, that means people are visiting your blog and then leaving without reading another article. A high bounce rate is bad for SEO and results in fewer conversions.

In order to see where your bounce rate is at, verify your blog with Alexa and then see their stats. Your blog’s bounce rate should be under 70%. A bounce rate under 70% means that at least 30% of your visitors are reading multiple articles on your blog. The lower you can get that bounce rate, the better your SEO and conversions will be.

You can lower your bounce rate through a variety of ways. Here are some of them:

Include links to your older blog posts in your new ones
Use Hello Bar to promote one of your articles, or better yet, a landing page
Show related articles at the bottom of every blog post
Show popular articles on your sidebar
Redirect people to another page on your blog after they subscribe. This page should contain links to the best content on your blog.
Show summaries of blog posts so people have to click (lowering bounce rate) to read the entire blog post

Most people do not see a sudden drop in their bounce rates. It takes a few weeks before seeing a significant drop in your bounce rate, and when I say significant drop, that usually means a 5-10% drop. Getting your bounce rate under 60% means you are moving in the right direction.

#6: Stuffing keywords

For a long time, keywords were the focal point of SEO. If your blog post had a lot of keywords, it would be on Page 1. If I decided to write the word “SEO” 100 times in all of my blog posts about SEO, those articles would have been #1 on Google. However, many people abused this rule, and Google sent their panda after those people. Many blogs suffered under the wrath of the panda, even the blogs that were getting millions of daily visitors.

If you try to stuff your blog post with keywords, then the search engines will make it more difficult for people to find your content. The worst part about keyword stuffing is that there are many offenders, but few people know that they are breaking the rule. My rule of thumb is to never use the same keyword twice in the same sentence. Synonyms are also very useful. If your keyword is “giraffe,” you can refer to the giraffe as an animal in one of your sentences instead of referring to it as a giraffe in every sentence of your blog post. Using synonyms to replace keywords will boost your blog’s SEO.

#7: Having too much anchor text

Anchor text is any clickable text in your blog post that leads to any webpage. In this sentence, “10 Easy Ways To Enhance Your Blog’s SEO” is anchor text. It is a clickable link that leads to another webpage. Anchor text is great for SEO and bounce rate, but having too much anchor text in one blog post can also be harmful.

The search engines won’t like it if you have dozens of anchor text links in the same blog post. However, there are worse consequences of having too much anchor text. The success of a blog all depends on how many visitors it gets and what those visitors do when they get on your blog.

If you have dozens of anchor text links in your blog post, it will be more difficult to read. I make my blog posts as easy to read as possible by writing short paragraphs and only having some anchor text. Imagine how different the reading experience of this blog post would be if every other sentence was anchor text. For the average person, it would be too much to bear, especially when there are other blogs on the web without that much anchor text.

#8: Letting spam comments infect your blog

Most of the comments you will get for your blog will be from spammers who are promoting their links without even bothering to read your content. New bloggers who want to boost their social proof often make the mistake of approving these comments. These bloggers reason that, based on the numbers, it is better to have 1,000 spammy comments than 10 real comments.

Having 1,000 comments indicates a popular blog, but the search engines know better. Not only are the links from most spammy comments bad (i.e. Get 5000 Twitter Followers For Just $3), but when engaged readers think of commenting on your blog, they get to see all of the spammy ones first. Would you want to comment on a forum group where all of the members were saying things like, “This is the magic pill that will make you lose 100 pounds in 10 days,” or, “Get a six-pack in six weeks”? You will lose the type of interaction that matters–the one between you and someone in your targeted audience.

#9: Not taking social media seriously

Social media is anything but a fad. It has completely transformed businesses and allowed blogs to suddenly become popular. The main reason this blog is popular is because of my Twitter presence. My SEO traffic has really been kicking in lately, but that is because I also get traffic from Twitter. Every day, I am getting hundreds of daily visitors from both Twitter and the search engines.

In addition to boosting your SEO traffic, social media allows you to interact with your targeted audience. I have made many wonderful connections on Twitter. Some of these people share my blog posts and buy my products. Social media is one of the most valuable traffic generating assets known to mankind.

#10: Not taking backlinks seriously

Backlinks are one of the most intriguing parts of SEO. When people think of backlinks, they think of the old and worn out practice of buying backlinks in bulk. Google caught on, and now the mighty search engine measures backlinks by quality instead of quantity.

When Google caught up to backlinks and declared quality over quantity, many people assumed that backlinks were simply dead. For a very long time, I assumed backlinks were dead just like many people who read contradicting advice on the web.

If you still believe backlinks are dead, take a look at the Alexa ranks for the most popular blogs on the web. Then, scroll down to see how many backlinks they have. Most of the popular blogs that are getting thousands of daily visitors also have thousands of backlinks. If you want to get more backlinks for your blog, implement these tips.

In Conclusion

SEO is a powerful way to get more traffic from your blog. Many of the mistakes people make are based on misconceptions and contradictory advice. I have tested various methods to boost SEO, and these are the good ones. However, SEO chances rapidly, and the methods to boost SEO are always subject to change.

You want to implement the methods that work now before Google changes the rules again with another panda attack. Implementing the methods now will allow you to get more visitors and allow more people to remember you. That way, if Google levels the SEO rules again, you’ll still get a lot of traffic from the people who remember you.

7 Reasons Why You Need To Schedule More Blog Posts

January 2, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

7 Reasons Why You Need To Schedule More Blog Posts

To some, the idea of scheduling blog posts may sound unnecessary, but in reality, scheduling your blog posts in advance is a utopia. Is that a bit of a stretch? Maybe, but scheduling those blog posts in advance does come in handy. Here are seven reasons why you should start scheduling more blog posts.

#1: You get more comfortable as a writer

The key to producing valuable content is to be comfortable as a writer. If I had to rush this blog post and have it done by the end of the day, it would be tough to read. Being forced to write a 1,000 word blog post (which could sometimes turn into a 2,000 worder) with a time limit removes the comfort of writing.

However, I always have a month’s worth of blog posts scheduled in advance so I can comfortably write my blog posts. I can go in depth and provide more examples.

#2: You get to write longer blog posts

When you schedule numerous blog posts in advance, you are giving yourself extra time to add more meat to your blog posts. The reason why longer blog posts are better is because your readers stick around for a longer period of time. I could have listed these seven tips in just 50 words, but then my readers wouldn’t stay on my blog for a long period of time.

In addition to making your readers stay on your blog for a longer period of time, longer blog posts allow you to bring the main points home. I could have just mentioned that you have to get more comfortable as a writer and then went into this method. However, going more in depth allows more people to understand that something is important.

You must go into detail about why something is important instead of just stating that it is important. Being able to write longer blog posts allows you to develop a stronger why for your readers.

#3: You have the option to focus on more important goals when necessary

If you have months of scheduled blog post, you can take a month off of blogging and consistently publish new blog posts at the same time. In essence, your blog will temporary be systematized. Now you have the option to temporary focus all of your attention on more important goals.

When I have three month’s worth of blog posts scheduled, there is no reason for me to write blog posts at the same pace. Rules and concepts occasionally change in my niche which means if I continued at my pace and had 6-12 month’s worth of scheduled blog posts, some of them would be outdated by the time they got published.

Instead of writing more blog posts, I put more content into my books. Instead of writing 2,000 words for one of my book and a blog post each day, I am writing 4,000 words for one of my books and nothing for my blog for an entire month. That’s an extra 60,000 words for the book. The best part is that I continue to publish content on my blog at the same rate as I was before without writing a single blog post in an entire month.

#4: You have more control over your schedule

One of the biggest things I feared as a new blogger was getting home from an event at midnight and having to write the blog post at midnight so I could publish it at 9 am Eastern–the same time that I always publish blog posts on this blog. Luckily, that has never happened, and that’s only because I write blog posts in advance.

Scheduling blog posts gives me the ability to take a day off. I never have to write a blog post or send an email on major holidays because they are all scheduled. I get to spend time with my family instead, which is more important to me. Scheduling blog posts in advance makes sure that you never sacrifice family time so you can write the blog post that you need to publish tomorrow.

#5: You can do more research

Providing research in a blog post makes that blog post more interesting. If your research is related to your blog post, your readers will enjoy learning about the useful facts. For example, there are over 1 billion Facebook users. This is an interesting fact that I stick into many of my blog posts about Facebook.

Doing more research will also allow you to learn new things about your niche. The prime purpose for some of the research I conduct is to obtain new knowledge about my niche that serves as inspiration for my future blog posts. Knowledge is power, especially when it is on your side.

#6: Your content will grow in value

Since you are writing more comfortably, and you are able to write longer blog posts, your content will grow in value. When I first started this blog, I understood the advantage of having scheduled blog posts. As a result, I went on a complete working frenzy to schedule as many blog posts as possible.

When I rushed my blog posts, I was not doing a good job. Some were filled with basic typos that a spell check would have caught, and there were a few that confused me when I looked at them a few months later. I started to get comfortable with writing when I had numerous blog posts scheduled in advance. Then, I wrote better blog posts that, since being published, have been shared thousands of times across the web.

#7: You will be more a committed blogger

The more of your time and work you put into a project, the more committed you become. The typical college athlete is more committed to a sport than the typical athlete in elementary school.

The same concept applies for blogging. If you have numerous blog posts scheduled, you have more commitment because you know at this point that you have written thousands of words for your blog. I am committed to blogging because its fun, but another factor is that over 400,000 words are on this blog. It would be very difficult to simply walk away from all of that hard work.

Scheduling blog posts in advance will allow you to see the work you have accomplished. Seeing this work may make you think of your future in blogging, and that thinking process may boost your commitment.

In Conclusion

Scheduling blog posts in advance presents bloggers with many benefits. The main benefit of scheduling blog posts is that you become a better writer in a variety of areas. You may learn how to write more content in a shorter amount of time, write higher value content, and become a more committed blogger. I attribute the value of my blog’s content to the fact that I was able to schedule blog posts in advance, and therefore I could write comfortably knowing that I have months of blog posts scheduled in advance.

How many blog posts do you schedule in advance?

6 Tips To Make Your Pins Spread Farther

December 31, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Pinterest is a rapidly growing social network, and many businesses and entrepreneurs are utilizing it to grow their presences on the web. Some businesses send out pins that are routinely seen by millions of people. Others are approaching that stage and are using Pinterest to bring in more blog traffic than ever before.

The key to getting more blog traffic from Pinterest is to make your pins spread as far as possible. You want your pins to appear on numerous boards and to appear close to the top on Pinterest’s search engine for your keywords. If you want your pins to reach out to more people, follow these six tips.

#1: Optimize your pictures.

Before you pin something on Pinterest, you need to make sure this is the type of picture that would get repinned often. The pictures that get repinned more often are the taller pictures. Having multiple colors in one picture, a 50% color saturation, less than 10% background, no faces, and smooth textures all boost your chances of getting more repins on Pinterest.

There are free online editors that make it easy to utilize color saturation, and if you are in the search for a tall picture, you can create one with PowerPoint or KeyNote by changing the dimensions of the presentation. Optimizing your pictures is important regardless of the size of your audience. Even if you only have a few hundred followers, you can still get thousands of repins. When I only had 500 followers, one of my pins got liked and repinned over 1,000 times.

The people who repinned that particular pin allowed their audiences to see the pin. As more audiences of different sizes got to see the pin, I experienced a skyrocket in repins even though I did not have a large audience at the time. Do not wait for the moment when you have a large audience to optimize your pictures. Optimize them now.

#2: Use hashtags

Ever since hashtags became very successful on Twitter, numerous social networks have adopted them. Pinterest is one of the social networks that utilizes hashtags, and just as they are significant on Twitter, hashtags are also significant on Pinterest. Hashtags boost the SEO of your pins on Pinterest’s search engine.

When someone clicks on the link to a hashtag, they are brought over to a page containing recent and popular pins containing that hashtag. If you use this hashtag in many of your pins, the people who click on the hashtag will be brought to a page that displays numerous pins, and most of them would be yours. Giving your followers another chance to see your pins will allow you to get more repins.

#3: Pin often

The more times you pin, the more people get to see your content. This method may sound like common sense, but it is a method that few people implement. Most of the time people spend on Pinterest is spent by surfing the site and not pinning any new content. Surfing Pinterest used to eat up a lot of my time which is why, with 10,000 followers, I temporary abandoned my account. No new pins came in for a while, and my traffic from Pinterest at the time was nonexistent.

Even with 10,000 followers at the time, there were some people with 500 followers getting more traffic from Pinterest than I was. Looking back, all I can wonder was what was I possibly thinking. Now I send out three pins every day, and those three pins get repins, likes, and lead people to my blog.

Some of the experts recommend pinning 10 times every day. One day, I decided to give it a try, and I got a dramatic increase in repins, likes, and blog traffic from Pinterest.

It is important to note that pinning often does not mean sending out 50 pins in five minutes and then not sending anything else out for the rest of the day. Sending pins at this frequency will annoy the followers who see them, and the people who log in 30 minutes later will not see any of your pins for the entire day.

You need to schedule your pins in advance so they can get sent out throughout the day. On a typical day, I pin at 2 pm, 4 pm, and 8 pm. I spread my pins throughout the day because I am not annoying my followers, and I am accounting for different time zones throughout the day. I schedule my pins with ViralWoot which is a free service. The free version only allows users to schedule 100 pins every month, but upgrades are available.

#4: Interact with your audience

Interacting with your audience will allow you to develop stronger connections. These people may promote your content on a normal basis. Some of the people who I interacted with on Pinterest continue to share my content, and it all started with me saying, “Thank you for sharing my content,” or something similar.

The more you interact with someone, the more that person will trust and remember you. Some of the people you interact with may decide to tell their friends about you. Some of those friends may decide to follow you on Pinterest and tell their friends about you. In this case, word of mouth marketing allows more people to know about you, and it all started with a conversation you had with one of your followers.

#5: Repin other people’s pins

Although most of the pins on your boards should be yours, it doesn’t hurt to repin someone else’s pin. When you repin someone else’s pin, you are adding content to your boards for your followers to see. In addition, the person you repinned may decide to repin and/or like one of your pins in return.

As you repin more of other people’s pins, these people may decide to promote you to their followers. If these people are not following you, some of them may decide to follow you after getting the notification that you repinned one of their pins.

You can also repin the pins your followers send. Doing this will make the follower happy to be following you, and that follower will be more likely to repin one of your pins. That follower may remember you when having a conversation with a friend. Then, your messages reaches out to another person.

#6: Promote your pins on your other social networks

There is nothing wrong with promoting a pin or board on another social network. Facebook makes it easy to promote what you share on Pinterest, and you can get some of your friends to like and repin your content. Out of all of the social networks, you have the biggest advantage on Pinterest when other people, even a few friends, repin your pins.

It is important to remember that people are highly addicted to Pinterest. That means someone who has 100 followers could potentially get 10 repins if they pin a nice looking image. On other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, getting those same statistics is close to impossible. That means even if your friends only have 50 followers on Pinterest, they could potentially get anywhere from 2-5 repins. If you get 10 of your friends to repin one of your pins, your pin can get an extra 20-50 repins from your friends’ audiences. Then, those repinners have audiences of their own. That’s how one of my pins was liked and repinned over 1,000 times even when I only had 500 followers.

The only way you get those initial repins that start the chain reaction is by promoting your pins on your other social networks and growing your audience along the way.

In Conclusion

In order to be successful on Pinterest, you need to get numerous people to see your pins and share them with their audiences. Implementing these six tips will make that type of interaction happen more often. With any success, getting your pins in front of thousands of people takes patience, but after you reach that point of being seen by thousands of people, that patience will be worth it.

Do you have a 7th tip for giving your pins more exposure?

The 5 Types Of Tweeters You Should Follow On Twitter

December 29, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

There are over 200 million active Twitter users which means there are plenty of people to choose from. Just because someone has a good follow back ratio does not mean you should follow that person. There are many people with good follow back ratios which means you want to choose the best ones possible.

In addition, the fact that someone may not be following you back is not always the right reason to unfollow that individual. There are some Twitter users who follow almost no one, but some of these users are getting thousands of new followers every week.

That means not all Twitter user is created equal. Some are better than others for your tastes, and here are the five types of tweeters that you in particular should follow.

#1: The leaders of your niche

No matter what niche you are in, there are certain individuals who stand out from the crowd. These are the leaders of your niche, the ones who many people aspire to become. Maybe you aspire to be just like some of these leaders.

In most cases, the leaders of a particular niche know more about that niche than anyone else. That means if you follow them, you are going to learn a lot of information about your niche.

Even though I have grown an authority on the web, I am still following the leaders of my niche and learning from them. I am writing blog posts that go more in depth on certain topics because it helps SEO. I am writing numerous books because that is a great way for self-published authors to bring in a full-time income.

No matter how much you know about your niche, there will always be someone who knows something about your niche that you do not know. Following the leaders of your niche will allow you to get closer to knowing everything about your niche.

#2: People who are interested in your niche

Anyone who is interested in your niche is a like-minded person who you can potentially build a strong connection with. When you follow these people, and they have good follow back ratios, they will be very likely to follow you back.

The great thing about the people who are interested in your niche is that if you tweet your blog posts (and those blog posts are related to your niche), those blog posts will get more engagement than usual. Some of the people who are interested in your niche may even decide to share some of your blog posts. Those are the right followers to have.

#3: Motivational people

We all have days in our lives when we nothing seems go to as planned. Whether the technology for something did not work or you experienced a problem in your life, those are the days when we need words of encouragement so we can continue to move forward.

That is why it is important to follow motivational people. Make it a point to follow the best motivational speakers on the planet or the Twitter accounts that tweet motivational quotes. Looking through these accounts’ tweets will allow you to regain motivation and continue your day with a more positive attitude.

#4: Humorous tweeters

There is always a good time for a laugh. Laughing makes us feel good, and laughing for a long period of time is the equivalent of a short core workout. Not only does laughing strengthen your core, but on days we are feeling sad, a good joke has the power to brighten us up.

After putting in hours of work, reading through humorous tweets allows me to take a break where I simply kick back and laugh. I only follow a few humorous tweeters and rarely see their tweets. The logic behind this decision is that when I am visiting one of these accounts, I scroll as far down in those accounts feeds as possible. I may read hundreds of tweets and find them all humorous.

#5: News outlets

Our world is moving incredibly fast, and there are many things happening in society. News outlets allow you to know what is going on in the world. Some of these news outlets cover political events while others discuss animals.

There are a variety of options for news outlets, and a great thing about them is that there are many subsets. The Huffington Post is a massive online magazine with sports, animals, teen, New York, and other content categories that turned into Twitter accounts.

When I decide whether I want to follow a news outlet, I always look at their most recent tweets. I do not follow the news outlets that only tweet the bad news. I can’t stand it when news outlets constantly tweet about bad news because they make money when you read the article with advertisements, and I like to stay as far away from bad news as possible. I do not want the bad things going on to pollute my decisions, so when I follow a news outlet, I make sure most of the tweets are positive before following. I only follow 1-3 accounts that tweet good and bad news.

In Conclusion

There are many people on Twitter, but that does not mean you should follow all of them. You do not have to follow someone just because that person is following you, and you do not have to follow someone just to get the follow back. The best way to follow people is by being selective. That way, you will be able to get your desired information.

If your feed ever becomes crowded, but you know who you want to see on your feed, you can put the accounts you want to see on your feed into a Twitter list. A Twitter list can either be public or private, and it’s feed only contains tweets from the people you put on the list. If you are following 10,000 people, but you only want to see the tweets from 100 accounts, you can put all 100 accounts on the list to only see those accounts’ tweets. You don’t have to unfollow the other 9,900 accounts to see the 100 accounts that you want to see.

Who are the type of people that you follow on Twitter?

Why The 10,000 Hour Rule Is Legit And How To Make It Happen

December 26, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Why The 10,000 Hour Rule Is Legit And How To Make It Happen

Patience is a virtue for a reason, but unfortunately, patience is also rare to come across. There are many people who are frustrated with where they are and wondering why they are not at where they want to be. They want the vision to be accomplished now, not later.

There were times when I was this person, and I believe it is fair to say that we have all had this kind of experience at some point in our lives. It is the feeling of impatience and a desire to move up. It is the feeling where we realize that putting in an immense amount of work does not result in an overnight change. Instead, these changes are gradual, and I would argue that it takes 10,000 hours to go from unsuccessful to successful in any area.

Where and when I first heard of this rule, I don’t quite remember. There are many people who reference the 10,000 hour rule. If I had to take a guess, I would say that Buffer was probably the blog where I first learned about the 10,000 hour rule.

When I first heard of the rule, I was skeptical. How can we possibly know that it takes 10,000 hours to become successful in any field? Why can’t it just take 5,000 hours instead? Why is it an exact number?

This is where patience becomes important. The people who think, “Why not 5,000 hours?” may eventually come to think, “Why not 1,000 hours?” Many people have a desperate desire to get the journey over with that forget to enjoy every second of the journey.

In this journey, it is entirely possible for you to invest 10,000 hours of time into one area, and it is in this area where you will become the established expert of your niche. If you ask numerous professional athletes whether they practiced for 10,000 hours or not, I am sure that most of those athletes would say they have practiced for over 10,000 hours within their lifetimes.

Many of the successful bloggers have been at it for several years. Some of these people have been blogging for multiple years while others have been blogging for more than a decade. Within that time period, it is easy to assume that these people worked in those areas for 10,000 hours within their lifetimes.

Benefits To Putting In The 10,000 Hours

There are many benefits to putting in 10,000 hours of your time into one area. Although some of these benefits are obvious, others are not as obvious.

Including these benefits in an article about the legitimacy of the 10,000 hour rule serves as motivation for everyone who aspires to become a leader of their niche, do something really well, and be known for something remarkable by putting in the time.

The most obvious benefit is that you achieve your goal. If your goal was to be a blogger with a full-time income, putting in the 10,000 hours will most likely result in you becoming the blogger with the full-time income.

Another benefit that exists that some people know about is the ability to raise the bar higher. You can aspire to make double the income you are making within a certain amount of time. Then, you can dream bigger for your next 10,000 hours.

One of the benefits depends on what you pursue, but it is a benefit that few people know about. Each time you implement the 10,000 hour rule and become successful in an area, it is easier to become successful in another area in a shorter amount of time.

Neil Patel is a successful blogger who has multiple blogs that get hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors. It took his blog Quick Sprout 4 years and 9 months to get 100,000 monthly visitors. For his next blog, KISSMetrics, it took 1 year and 10 months to achieve the same goal. After KISSMetrics was Crazy Egg which reached the same milestone in 1 year and 6 months. The reason why Neil was able to get each blog passed the milestone faster than the previous one was because be knew more about blog traffic each time he started a new blog.

It is easy to imagine that Neil learned a lot about SEO, blogging, social media when he created Quick Sprout. Quick Sprout took the longest to grow because Neil had to start from square one. By the time he created KISSMetrics, Neil already know a lot about blogging.

After KISSMetrics’ success, he learned more information about blogging. This resulted in Crazy Egg quickly reaching 100,000 visitors per month. It got easier for Neil each time just as it will get easier for you to achieve the same goal once you accomplish it the first time.

In Conclusion

The 10,000 hour rule is one of the most powerful rules ever invented. This rule emphasizes the need to be patient and put in the time and effort to accomplish your biggest goals. Goals do not get accomplished just by thinking about them.

In the end, it is how you utilize these 10,000 hours that will determine how quickly you become successful as well as how you become successful. Showing up is not good enough. You need to be effective when you show up to get better results. The more you work on your goals, the quicker they will be accomplished.

According to the 10,000 hour rule, working for one hour every day on becoming a key player in your industry will result in this status becoming a reality in 27 years. Putting in four hours every day will result in the same goal getting accomplished in seven years.

Putting in 8 hours of work every day (which is possible if you are not in the 9-to-5 status quo) will result in you getting this goal accomplished in a little under three and a half years. These numbers indicate that the more work you put in (as long as it is productive work), the earlier you will be a key player in your industry.

What is your opinion on the 10,000 hour rule?