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5 Ways To Optimize Your Blog For Social Sharing

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One of the two key components to a blog’s success is how many people get to see your content, and if you get numerous people to share your blog posts, more people will see your content. Social sharing is massively important because billions of people are on social media. In addition, whether the people who share your blog post have 100 followers or thousands of followers, they all have audiences.

Since all of these people have audiences, more people will be exposed to your content. Then, with more people seeing your content, it is possible for even more people to share your blog posts on their social networks. As a result, the cycle continues, and numerous people are sharing your blog posts.

In order to get there, you need the traffic, but you also need to prepare your blog for success. Implementing these five methods will make it easier for people to share your content so it reaches more people.

 

#1: Include social media icons at the bottom of your blog posts

There are millions of blogs with social sharing buttons at the bottom of every blog post. One of the reasons why these social sharing buttons are at the bottom of every blog post is because it gives the reader enough time to read through the entire blog post. If the reader enjoys reading your blog post and is then presented with the ability to share your content, that reader will be more likely to do so.

There are some bloggers who place their social sharing buttons at the top of every blog post instead of at the bottom. This is a strategy that will make readers remember that they can share your article at any point. However, some people may forget by the time they read the entire blog post, and then no social sharing buttons will be available.

My recommendation is to place the social media icons at the bottom of your blog posts, but putting them on the top or bottom both have their own set of advantages and disadvantages.

 

#2: Use Click To Tweet in your blog posts

I experimented with one of my blog posts by making all of the tips 140 characters or less which made each tip short enough to be tweeted. Ever since I published that blog post, numerous people have been tweeting that particular blog post using the custom tweets that I create with Click To Tweet.

The advantage of Click To Tweet is that you get to create a custom tweet with the proper heading and URL. That means your readers do not have to go through the trouble of thinking what to say when they promote your content.

Just to give you an idea, here is an example of Click To Tweet in action for this article. The tweet is prewritten, and you can include a shortened URL in the tweet as well. There are more people who use Bitly and other link shortening service to reduce the amount of characters in a tweet to get more characters. Some people do not like tweeting the long links of other people’s articles, but by using Click To Tweet and already having the shortened URL in the tweet, more people will send it out.

 

#3: Make sure people can pin your images just by clicking on them

Pinterest is a big player on social media, and in order to spread on Pinterest, you must have pictures in all of your blog posts. Having pictures is not optional for spreading on Pinterest because every Pinterest pin requires a picture. The importance of Pinterest is one of the reasons why I spend more time nowadays creating my own pictures.

One great method to get more people to share your pictures, and therefore your blog, on Pinterest is by allowing people to pin a picture just by clicking on it. There are millions of websites that now make it possible to pin an article just by clicking on the picture. If you go back to the picture in this blog post, you will notice a “Pin It” button that appears faintly enough to be seen but not be too distracting.

You may be wondering whether Pinterest is really worth it, especially if you do not have a large audience on Pinterest yet. Including this feature gives other people the ability to share your content to their audiences on Pinterest. That means you may only have 100 followers, but one of the people who pins your blog post may have 10,000 followers. That is a lot of extra exposure just for adding a “Pin It” button on all of your pictures.

I use the Pin It Button For Images WordPress plugin to get the “Pin It” button to appear. Pinterest is gradually making it easier for anyone to pin something just by clicking on the picture, but this is a powerful feature that you want to make sure you have on your blog now.

 

#4: Share your blog posts on your own social networks

The main benefit seen with sharing your blog posts on your social networks is that you will get more traffic. Whether that means 1 new visitor, 10 new visitors, or something higher, sharing your blog posts on your own social networks results in more traffic.

Sharing your blog posts on social media is also a great way to spread on the social networks you share them on. If someone retweets your blog post, more people are seeing it. Some of the people who retweet your tweets may have over 10,000 followers. That is extra exposure that may result in more retweets and visitors as well.

It is great to get other people to promote your content on social media, but you also want to build a big presence for yourself on social media. Building a bigger presence for yourself on social media will allow you to boost your credibility, build strong connections, and achieve the main goal referenced in this blog post: get more people to share your content on social media.

 

#5: Decrease your blog’s bounce rate so people stick around

Just because you get a lot of people to view your blog posts does not guarantee that people share them. In order to boost the chances of someone sharing one of your blog posts, you need these people to stay on your blog for a long period of time. Someone staying on your blog for a long period of time indicates that the person enjoys reading through your content. The people who enjoy your content are the ones who will become returning visitors and let their followers know about your content dozens of times.

I have been thanking people again and again for sharing for sharing my blog posts. Some of the people who share my blog posts are new people that I interacted with for the first time while other people have been sharing my blog posts for several months. The reason someone would continue sharing blog posts from the same blog is because they find that blog interesting. Reducing your blog’s bounce rate will make people stay on your blog for a longer period of time, which may lead to more social shares in the long-term.

 

In Conclusion

The more your content spreads, the more people will be able to see it. As more people see your content, more of them will share it. Spreading on social media works like a chain reaction. If enough people are sharing your content, more people will see and share it.

Some of the people who read and share your blog posts may not be introduced to your blog by one of your social media posts. Instead, someone else who promotes your blog can introduce it to the people in their audience. The more people you get to promote your content, the greater of an impact this strategy has to attracting more audiences to your blog.

Then, with all of the traffic coming in, your blog’s success then comes down to what people do when they visit your blog. Are they subscribing, buying products, and promoting your blog to more people? If your visitors are performing those actions, then you are going to have a very good blogging career.

Do you have a 6th tip for optimizing a blog for optimized sharing?

6 Pinterest Mistakes You Do Not Want To Make If You Want A Big Audience

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Pinterest is a unique social network in its design and usability. Many brands such as Nordstrom Rack have accumulated millions of followers that, as a combined force, make pins from these brands go viral. There are marketers who are utilizing Pinterest as well, and I can testify that Pinterest is a great way to promote your content.

Although I do not use Pinterest as often as Twitter, I have been able to accumulate over 15,000 followers. Pinterest users love to share other people’s content because the social network turns sharing other people’s pins into a reward. Many Pinterest users want to have boards with numerous pins. The Pinterest board with 100 pins looks way better than the Pinterest board with only 1 pin. Having more pins on their boards allows users to create a more enticing account for potential followers.

Pinning valuable content will allow your pins to spread farther on Pinterest, but there are mistakes that may prevent you from growing the big audience needed to go viral and build an authority on Pinterest. If you want to have a big audience on Pinterest, these are the six mistakes that you must avoid.

 

#1: Surfing on Pinterest

The double-edged sword fact about Pinterest is that it is highly addictive. The advantage of the double-edged sword is that if you have a large audience, some of those people will scroll through your entire boards and repin everything in sight. This means more exposure for you, and in some cases, more traffic for your blog as well. The disadvantage is that Pinterest can eat away a giant chunk of your time. The Pinterest memes on the web that say things like, “I’ll be on Pinterest for a few minutes hours” are popular for a reason.

Pinterest has millions of users that could benefit from your content which means with great power comes great responsibility. If you strive to grow a big audience on Pinterest, you must spend a bulk of your time on Pinterest sending pins instead of looking through other people’s pins.

 

#2: Pinning numerous pins in a row

Pinning frequency is an interesting topic of discussion. When you are a newbie, it is important to fill your boards with pins. However, once you have enough boards filled with pins and an audience, you need to pin smarter. If you send out more than three pins in one minute, you are pinning too much at one time.

Pinterest users who surf see their updates on a timeline, similar to Twitter, Facebook, and most of the other social networks as well. The only difference is that Pinterest users see their timeline in the form of large pictures that take up more space on the screen than a tweet.

I recently went on Pinterest to see how pins appear on my feed. Here is what I saw

  1. Two pictures and their descriptions
  2. Half of an infographic
  3. Half of two pictures and no text

I was startled to realize that I only saw five pins on my feed, and I couldn’t even see everything that three of those five pins contained. On Twitter, I typically see five tweets from start to finish. Many Pinterest users like Pinterest because of the variety it has. If you send out 10 pins in 1 minute, there is no variety. It’s all you, and that results in some people clicking the unfollow button.

While pinning constantly in a short period of time is initially a great way to get more pins on your board, it will annoy your audience. A good fix to the problem is to create a secret board and add 100 pins or more to that board before publishing it. That way, you don’t have to annoy your followers with 100 pins in a few minutes.

 

#3: Not taking the time to craft an effective bio

Your bio is one of the most important components on any social network or blog. It is the make or break point of your authority. People will not know anything about you until they read your bio. Sure, having pins available related to your niche does help, but since Pinterest is all about variety, you may have some boards related to your niche and some boards that have nothing to do about your niche.

An effective bio allows people to know who you are, and this clarity makes people feel more confident when they click the follow button. In your bio, it is important for you to list your expertise, accomplishments, and hobbies. I let people know that I am a digital marketing expert, but I also let people know I am a runner.

Letting people know about my expertise, accomplishments, and hobbies allows me to be compatible with more people. The more people you are similar to, whether the similarities are small or huge, the more people are going to follow you. We like to follow and listen to people who are similar to us.

 

#4: Not verifying your blog on Pinterest

Including your blog’s link in your Pinterest bio and verifying it on Pinterest is one of the easiest ways to get a backlink for your blog. In addition to providing a backlink, verifying your blog also gives you the checkmark that allows you to stand out from the crowd. The checkmark combined with a large audience will let people know that you are a big deal. You are verified which means you must be important.

Just as we like to follow and listen to the people who we are similar to, we also like to follow and listen to important people. Even if you have iPhones, iPads, and Macs galore, wouldn’t it be nice to meet Bill Gates. He is important, wealthy, and smart–and those are the types of people who many people enjoy listening about.

Although the checkmark may not give you Bill Gates status, it lets people know you are important. It lets people know you are worth following. It lets people know you are a valuable person in your niche.

 

#5: Having too many boards with not enough pins

The value of a Pinterest board is not just in the value of the pins. It is also in the quantity. The typical Pinterest user will not browse through a Pinterest board with five valuable pins as much as a Pinterest board with 500 valuable pins.

The more pins your boards have, the more someone will scroll through your board. Some of these people will repin as many pins on one of your boards as possible. Some individuals have repinned hundreds of pins from one of my boards.

Your boards need to have more pins, but it is also important to avoid annoying your followers. That is why I mentioned that pinning numerous pins in a row is a mistake before mentioning this mistake. You don’t want to send out 500 pins in 30 minutes at the cost of losing a good chunk of your followers.

 

#6: Not Having A Variety Of Boards

Pinterest is all about the variety. If someone searches for food on Pinterest (by the way, food pictures on Pinterest happen to be very popular), that person will see fruits, vegetables, meat, recipes, and more. When other people search for vacation destinations, they will find pictures on the beach, mountains, cities, and other places as well.

The great thing about Pinterest is that you can still let people know your expertise while pinning content related to both food and vacation destinations. Pinning content related to these two topics will result in your pins and boards related to those two topics appearing on Pinterest’s search engine.

When you are pinning about a variety of topics, you can easily let people know your expertise by putting all of the boards related to your expertise on top of your other boards. However, pinning about all of these topics will allow you to reach out to more people and grow your audience.

Some people may be skeptical because not all of these followers are necessarily targeted followers. Someone who only followed me because of my Pinterest board with cool bookshelves may not be as interested in my digital marketing articles. Growing your audience through this method has three major benefits:

  1. You get better social proof
  2. They are real followers
  3. Most important of them all: You need a big audience to rapidly spread on Pinterest, and growing this type of audience will give you the leverage you need to reach out to more people. Some of the people you reach out to through this method may end up being targeted users.

Having a variety of boards will ensure that you get more followers, but you also need to make sure these boards are heavily populated with pins. My recommendation is to make sure that a majority of the boards on your account has under 20 pins. None should have under ten.

 

In Conclusion

Pinterest is a powerful social network that is highly addictive. Pinterest has the power to grab attention. As long as you are the one pinning content that grabs attention and not surfing, you will have the much needed time to implement the other methods and grow your audience.

Like any other social network or any blog on the web, it takes time to grow a Pinterest audience. It may take you a year to reach 5,000 followers, but each time you reach a certain milestone, it will be easier to achieve the same milestone quicker. If it took you 100 days to get your first 1,000 followers, it may only take you 90 days to get your next 1,000 followers. The reason it gets quicker each time is because you are learning new things about growing your audience and implementing them along the way.

Which tip was your favorite? Do you have any additional tips for the people who strive to grow a big audience on Pinterest?

7 Social Media Excuses You Need To Expel From Your Thinking So You Can Thrive

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There are many people who have grown large audiences on social media. Some of these people have thousands of people in their audience while others are up there in the millions. However, there are few people who get to see these accounts develop to those stages.

Teen celebrities, fashion stars, and digital marketing experts are three of the many types of people who have dominated social media. They all started out with zero followers, and at one point, the only people who knew about them were family members. You don’t just get born with fame. It takes countless hours of work in order to build that fame and have a large audience.

Despite many people being successful on social media, there are many people who are constantly giving themselves excuses that limit their capabilities. Anyone on the web has the power to become successful and build a powerful presence based on their expertise. This statement is by no means an exaggeration, but if you want to truly be successful on social media, these are the seven excuses that you must expel immediately.

#1: I’m not popular enough

The current popularity any individual has is not final. If no one knows about you, it is still possible to build a large audience. One of the most important things to remember is that everyone started from the ground up.

You may not be what you define as a popular person, but you can become popular. Reading articles like this one show me you have a desire to be successful on social media. Having this desire makes you one step closer to becoming popular on social media.

#2: “Why would a random person want to follow me?”

Some people who create social media accounts tend to think, “Why would a random person want to follow me?” The problem with asking this question is that “random person” is too vague. Vagueness is the main reason why most people get confused about what they need to do on social media.

In order to identify who would want to follow you, you have to replace the word “random” with “targeted.” One small change changes the question to, “Why would a targeted person want to follow me?” That one small change makes a big difference. At this stage, you want to identify who your target audience is. Here’s the quick summary:

  1. Identify what you are going to tweet about most of the time (at least 90% of the time)
  2. Identify which people are interested in that type of content (look at a popular account that tweet content in the same niche. That account’s followers would be interested in your type of content).

Once you identify your target audience, follow some of the people in your target audience whose numbers suggest that they would follow you back. As you gain more followers, your confidence will grow, and then you will eventually be asking yourself, “Why wouldn’t someone want to follow me?” Just don’t be a show off.

#3: Who is really going to like what I say?

More people than you would think.

Your targeted audience is the group of people who would like what you have to say. Since there are over 1 billion people using social media, it is almost guaranteed that there are millions of targeted people on the same social network as you. You just need to make the connection happen so that person knows about you and can see your posts.

Social media gives you the power to put your own voice on the web, and you need to be proud of that voice. If you want help with crafting powerful posts, look at what the leaders of your niche are going. The two best ways to learn on social media are by example and experimentation.

#4: I don’t have the time

This excuse is one of my biggest pet peeves. Not having enough time is another way of saying one of two things:

  1. You have more important things to do.
  2. This is just absolutely never going to happen.

The people with the big audiences have the same amount of time in a day as you. Everyone has 24 hours in one day, and we all spend a good portion of that time sleeping, eating, and drinking water.

What happens after the necessary activities to keep life going are what make or break success. I find it preposterous that many people complain about not having enough time, and yet the average American watches 32 hours of TV every week. You have more time than you realize. Carving out time from unproductive activities will allow you to find the time you need to grow your social media audience and learn more about building a powerful presence on the web.

#5: I’m not getting results fast enough

Starting your journey towards growing a large social media audience is the equivalent of signing a contract that says, “I understand that there is no such thing as overnight success.” It takes multiple years before a large audience develops. It took me multiple years to come up with an effective Twitter strategy that I currently use to gain hundreds of Twitter followers every day.

No matter which social network you choose, it will not take a few days to go from no audience to 1 million followers. If it were that quick and easy, then there would be no point. There would be nothing special about having a large audience. It does take a while before you grow your large audience. However, it feels extremely good once you have the big audience and realize you built it from the ground up.

#6: “There are too many things I have to learn about social media”

No matter what you pursue in life, there will be a necessary learning curve to cross. Social media is no exception. The reason why there is no overnight success is because it takes time to learn how to be successful, and it takes time to implement the same process at a consistent rate until you get the audience that you want.

Many people jump into social media head-on and try to learn everything about every social network. This approach is what results in people saying that there are too many things to learn about social media. Instead of trying to learn everything about every social network, only focus on one social network. Then, when you master one social network, move onto the next social network. It is better to learn about a bunch of social networks in a few years and have big audiences on all of the social networks that you master than it is for you to attempt to learn about every social network right now and not have a big audience on any of them.

#7: It’s too late to jump on the social media bandwagon

Just because social media has been around for a little over a decade does not mean it is too late to jump on the social media bandwagon. Social media makes it possible for anyone to thrive, regardless of when they join.

It is never too late to be successful on social media. There are rising stars on social media that started off with no followers just a few months ago. Now, some of these people have big audiences.

If you can interact with your followers and provide them with value, you can be successful on social media, regardless of when you create an account.

In Conclusion

There are over 1 billion people on social media, and it is possible for anyone to become successful on any social network. We often use excuses to get out of putting in the work or because we think a goal is impossible.

Success on social media is attainable for any individual, and there is no overnight success in any niche. However, once you have that large audience, you will be proud of all of the work that you put in to make that big audience possible. Eliminating the excuses is a great way to start on the path towards social media stardom.

Which of these excuses resonated with you the most? Are there any other excuses that you believe hold others back?

5 Reasons Why Guest Blogging Needs To Be A Part Of Your Strategy

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5 Reasons Why Guest Blogging Needs To Be A Part Of Your Strategy

Since the beginning of 2014, there has been an ongoing debate about whether guest blogging is still a good way to increase blog traffic. On January 28, 2014, Google said that any attempts to get spammy backlinks by writing guest posts would no longer work. Since this statement, some guest bloggers have stopped writing guest posts because headlines such as “Guest Blogging Is Dead” have appeared more often around the web.

On the contrary, guest blogging is alive and well. There are still people who are utilizing it properly and writing for popular blogs. The guest blogs that allow people to write guest posts are still sending out numerous posts every day. If you are not writing guest posts, you definitely should, and here are five reasons why you should do so.

 

#1: You get backlinks

One of the important takeaways from Google’s statement is that spammy backlinks that you get by writing guest posts would no longer work. When Google says spammy, that’s referring to you writing on a guest blog completely out of your niche. Spammy backlinks refers to something such as you having a social media blog and guest blogging on a fashion blog. The two topics are completely different.

The quality backlinks from guest posts, the ones on guest blogs related to your niche, are still valuable. The person with the social media blog would want to write on guest blogs about social media such as Business2Community and Social Media Today. When you write your bio for your accounts on these guest blogs, be sure to include a backlink to your main blog.

 

#2: You get your content in front of a large audience

When I was struggling to get 100 daily visitors, I often wrote guest posts on Business2Community. Writing these guest posts allowed more people to know about me because I was writing to a larger audience. Business2Community is a blog that gets thousands of daily visitors. Business2Community boasts an Alexa rank under 3,000 and a bounce rate under 40%.

Every guest post I put up on Business2Community got shared over 100 times. Getting shared this many times allowed more people to see my content. Some of these people scrolled down to my bio and visited my blog.

 

#3: You can get more blog traffic

The people who like your guest post may decide to go to your bio and read your blog. This is the common association between guest blogging and getting more traffic for your own blog. However, there are more ways to get traffic from your blog posts.

One method of getting more traffic for your guest posts is by including links to the content on your main blog throughout the content of your guest post. For some guest blogs, including a link here and there to your blog posts won’t be any trouble, but you should check the rules of writing guest posts before implementing this strategy.

Whether you can implement the first method or not, you are getting another backlink for your blog. Backlinks are still very valuable for SEO, and most of the successful blogs that get thousands of daily visitors are getting that traffic from SEO. These blogs also happen to have thousands of backlinks, and that is not a coincidence.

 

#4: You can get more subscribers

There are many guest blogs that allow users to write a bio, and the first three lines of that bio appear at the bottom of every guest post. If the guest blog you are writing on permits you to do this, you should tell your readers about a free prize. That free prize, whether a video or a guidebook, should be related to the guest post you just wrote.

With this in mind, your guest posts should be geared towards the free prize that you already offer. When you write these guest posts, be sure to get them to at least 1,000 words. Writing longer blog posts makes someone read your content longer, and the longer someone reads your content (as long as your content is valuable), the more content that person wants from you.

Your guidebook or video that you tell them about in the three lines that appear at the bottom of every guest post will be the content that they want. When someone clicks on the link, send that person to a landing page. Entering an email address will give that person the ability to read more of your content, and you will have another person on your list.

 

#5: You will become a better writer

In order to be the blogger who people come back to again and again, you need to produce valuable content. Writing more guest posts will allow you to get more practice in. The great thing about writing is that there is always room for improvement. You can be a phenomenal writer, but it is even possible for the best writers in your niche to get better.

By getting more practice with your guest posts, it will be easier for you to write valuable content on your blog as well as any books that you may write in the future. Writing is a powerful skill for dominating the web, and many people utilize it. Whether writing takes the form of a blog post or an email, it is a big factor towards success on the web.

 

In Conclusion

Guest blogging is alive and well. In addition, now is the perfect time to utilize guest blogging. There are numerous guest blogs in your niche that are waiting for contributors like you to submit content. You should strive to write one guest post each week so you can become a better writer and get your content in front of multiple audiences.

Some of these audiences will consist of hundreds of people while other audiences will consist of thousands of people. However, getting quality backlinks for your blog will help your blog posts rank better on SEO and get more traffic. Guest blogging is the perfect win-win because you get your content in front of people, you get the quality backlink, and the person who owns the guest blog gets more content.

Are you a guest blogger, and if not, do you plan on becoming one?

8 Word Of Mouth Marketing Tips To Get More People To Talk About You

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Word of mouth marketing is one of the most powerful ways to spread your ideas, products, and overall message. The more people there are talking about you, the more you will spread. Spreading farther allows you to get more subscribers and customers. Friends tell their friends about you, and those friends tell their friends about you, and the cycle continues.

Before people can talk about you and spread your message, they need to know who you are. In order to spread farther, you need to optimize these 8 word of mouth marketing tips.

#1: Utilize social media

Social media is a powerful place to connect with more people. There are millions of people on various social networks, and with this big of a selection, there will be thousands or even millions of people who will be a part of your target audience. The people in your target audience will be the ones who talk about you the most.

In order to boost the chances of these people talking about you, you need to do two things on social media. The first thing you need to do is share valuable content. Sharing valuable content will make others see you as a credible expert in your niche. The second thing you need to do is interact with your followers. Interacting with your followers will allow you to build strong relationships with those followers. Those strong relationships may result in people spreading your ideas, products, and overall message through word of mouth.

#2: Post valuable content on your blog

Although it is great to share valuable content on your social networks, it would be ideal to post valuable content on your blog and share that content often. Sharing your content with your audience allows that audience to paint a better picture of who you are. If you are constantly promoting other people’s content without promoting your own, your audience will not know much about you.

The content on your blog is your unique voice on the web that people talk about. When people talk about the Huffington Post article you tweeted out, most of these people will only reference the Huffington post article, not the tweeter. If you tweet your blog posts, and your blog posts spark up a conversation with a group of people, you will get referenced. Then, some of the people listening will ask who you are. The person who talked about your blog post tells them who you are, and word of mouth marketing continues to spread your message far.

The more someone visits your blog, the more inclined that person will be to tell their friends about you. The best way to keep someone on your blog for a long period of time is by writing valuable content. It may take more time to write valuable content than the content that anyone could create, but the extra time you invest in making your content valuable is well worth it. In fact, if you keep someone on your blog long enough, that person may become a subscriber and/or customer.

#3: Over deliver

We like to talk about the people who put in 110% in their expertise because we want to give that person kudos. We like to talk about the people who influence our decisions and how we act. We like talking about these people because we want others to get influenced as well, and it allows us to show off our intelligence.

Over delivering is something that few people do. Over delivering means going the extra mile that others have deemed as unnecessary. Some of the people who talk about your niche will talk about you with their friends. Just as bosses like to reward the good employees with raises, we like to reward the over deliverers by spreading the word about them.

#4: Have a compelling story

Your compelling story is another factor that determines how conversations about you develop. There will be people who have not heard of you before. When a friend asks who you are, the person who was talking to you needs to be armed with the appropriate knowledge to answer that question.

Your compelling story is what the people talking about you need to know in order to advance the conversation. A compelling story allows people to know

  1. Who you are
  2. What you have been through
  3. What your mission is
  4. A simple, general idea on how you plan on accomplishing that mission
  5. Your credible accomplishments.

While including this knowledge in your compelling story, it is important to write a compelling story that people would want to read. A compelling story is not the opportunity to go on a boring rant about how awesome you are. A compelling story conveys those five main points in a way that makes people want to read from the beginning of the compelling story to the end.

The compelling stories all have those five main points, but there are slight differences for how a compelling story is written based on the niche you are in. If you want to create a compelling story, I recommend looking at the stories that other individuals and businesses have on their websites. While reading the stories, ask yourself whether they were compelling or not. If a particular story was compelling, ask yourself why you thought that story was compelling. Then, use that knowledge to add elements to your story so you can make it compelling.

#5: Turn yourself into someone worth talking about

This phrase simply means to accomplish goals and do things that people would want to talk about. You want to be remarkable in your niche and stand out of the crowd. We like talking about well-known people who have a lot of credibility.

Even if you have many credible accomplishments, you should always strive to boost your credibility. There is no limit to how much you can boost your credibility. The more things you do, the more things people can mention when they tell their friends about you.

#6: Reward your returning customers

Your returning customers are the ones who may end up buying your products for years to come. In order to strengthen those relationships and turn customers into the customers who will buy your products for many years to come, you need to reward the returning customers.

You should offer returning customers an exclusive deal, or better yet, an exclusive product. The more you reward your returning customers, the more likely those customers will be to buy your products over a long period of time.

#7: Create a referral program

A referral program is a great way to get more people to spread the word about you regardless of how strong your connection with that person is. These people will promote your products and services so they can get a small cut for each sale they make. You will make an overall profit, and there will be one other person promoting you.

Creating a generous referral program (as long as you are still making a profit) may entice people with big email lists to promote your product. This will result in more people knowing who you are, and then word of mouth marketing will continue to allow more people to know who you are.

#8: Be nice

When people talk about you, it is ideal for those people to be saying good things about you, your expertise, and what you stand for. Having influence is not enough. You need to have a good influence on the people you impact.

There are nice people and mean people all over the world. Many of us enjoy talking and hearing about nice people, and they are the ones who remember in a positive way. Many people remember Chesley Sullenberger III for saving all of the passengers on a U.S. Airways airplane by crash landing into the Hudson River. Derek Jeter is another person who we will remember very well.

These people have a good influence and are embedded in our memory because they were nice people who we admire because of the actions they took to make a goal happen. When we talk about these people, we enjoy talking about them. We talk about how Chesley had to land the plane so effectively that it did not hit land. We talk about how Jeter got 3,000 hits and was the icon of his era. We talk about the nice people, and those are the people who easily have a strong influence on others.

You can utilize the other seven methods to get people to talk about you, but being nice is what will result in people saying good things about you.

In Conclusion 

Word of mouth marketing is a powerful way to spread. In high school, rumors fly around at a crazy rate, and if one person discovers the rumor, everyone knows about it the following day. That’s word of mouth marketing at its best.

The more accomplishments you have, the better people will be able to talk about you. Therefore, any type of mediocrity that you have must come to an end for you to be influential in your niche.

Which tip was your favorite? Do you have any additional methods for effective word of mouth marketing?

10 Social Media Tips For Entrepreneurs

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Social media is one of the most powerful avenues for traffic and connections. The only problem with social media is that it is also a giant maze. Not everyone knows where they need to go, how to get the connections, how to grow an audience, and what they want to be known for.

Each time another person becomes successful or well-known because of social media, entrepreneurs are seeing the importance of social media more and more. The truth is that every entrepreneur only needs two things to become successful on social media:

  1. Guidance
  2. Dedication (the will to implement and make it happen)

Although all of the dedication comes from you, I will provide you with the guidance you need to have a smoother journey on social media. Here are the 10 social media tips that you can utilize to be more successful.

#1: Identify Who Your Target Audience Is And Focus On Them

One of the most important things you need to do before anything else is identify who your target audience is. There are many people who make identifying a target audience much harder than it needs to be. I am going to break it down into two questions:

  1. What do you post about often (what is your niche and expertise)?
  2. Who would find those posts valuable?

Answering these two questions will allow you to find your target audience. The main benefit of identifying your target audience is that you now know which types of people are going to retweet, favorite, and engage with most of your tweets. Having an engaged audience is critical towards success on any social network.

Just because you have 100,000 followers does not mean you are going to be successful. The person with 50,000 targeted followers is doing better than the person with 100,000 non-targeted followers that rarely engage.

#2: Engage With Your Audience

Engagement is a two way street. You want to build an audience that engages with your content, but you also want to engage with your audience. Engaging with your audience allows you to see more than just a number.

Regardless of how many followers you have, it is important to individually know the followers who interact with you. I know a few people who comment on numerous blog posts (if you are one of them, you know who you are). I respond to all of these comments on my blog and respond to all of the people who share my content on my social networks.

Does this take up time? It definitely takes up about 30 minutes every day, but this interaction allows me to know my audience. Knowing your audience allows you to realize what type of content they like. In addition, some of the people I interact with have subscribed to this blog and bought some of my products.

Interaction allows you to get a friendship going, and friendship in itself is a two way street. That’s why, “I owe you” is a common phrase. If one of your friends does something good for you, chances are you will do something good for that friend in return. Being friendly to your audience and engaging with them may entice them to do something in return such as subscribe to your blog or tell their friends about you.

#3: Post As Consistently And Frequently As Possible

Many people think that posting often is a bad thing because it will annoy followers. I decided to give it a try and found the complete opposite. Posting more consistently and frequently has allowed me to engage with my followers more than ever before, and it has also resulted in my blog getting a big spike in traffic that never seemed to go away.

For the tweeting in particular, I send out one new tweet every 15 minutes. Some people may think I would be annoying my followers at this frequency, but that is not the case. The truth about social networks is that many people are simply using social networks to check their activity for a short period of time.

The average Twitter is never on the social network for more than 20 minutes at a time. That means most of the people who go on Twitter only see one of my tweets unless they log in again or scroll through my timeline. It is okay to post often, and it is also recommended.

#4: Use A Universal Avatar On All Of Your Social Networks

If you think of a business, you think of their logo. When you think of Apple, you see the white apple that someone took a bite out of. When you think of Twitter, you see the blue bird. Similarly to how people think of the logo associated with the business, the people in your niche who think of you will think of your avatar.

Using a universal avatar for all of your social networks will make it easier for people to remember who you are. The easier it is for someone to remember you, the more often that person will visit your blog and see what you are posting on your social networks.

#5: Do not be afraid to promote yourself often

There are many social media users who go by the fear that promoting yourself too often will make their followers become unfollowers. This is a concept that many experts use to tell marketers to avoid over-promoting their products on social media. If you are using social media for that reason, it’s not going to work out well.

However, it is okay to promote yourself. In fact, it is okay to promote yourself often, but only if you promote yourself the right way. The right way to promote yourself is by promoting your blog posts on your social networks. It is entirely okay to tell people about the same blog post twice as long as the two social media posts are spaced out for a long period of time.

On Twitter, I go by a 4-7 day cycle depending on how my spreadsheets are organized, and I send out over 100 tweets every day. Someone would have to scroll down for a very long time to find any social media posts that repeat themselves.

As long as your blog posts are valuable to your followers, they will not mind that you promote them often. On the contrary, some of your followers will be eager to read the other blog posts that you share on your social networks.

#6: Focus On One Social Network

There are many social networks to choose from, and that’s the problem. Many people create accounts on numerous social networks and have small audiences on all of them. It is better to have a large audience on one social network than it is to have a bunch of small audiences on a bunch of social networks.

When I started my social media journey, I decided to focus most of my time and energy on Twitter. It paid off nicely, and Twitter now brings in a bulk of this blog’s traffic.

However, it is important to have multiple social networks with big presences. The best way to approach this is by taking another social network seriously after you master one social network. After I mastered Twitter, I went over to Pinterest. Now that I have over 15,000 Pinterest followers, I am now finding time to focus on YouTube.

The main takeaway: you need to eventually be on multiple social networks, but in order to have large audiences on all of them, take it one step at a time.

#7: Identify Where You Want To Be Month By Month

Many people do better on social media by giving themselves goals. The reason why goals are very effective is because they create a sense of direction. You need to have some kind of an idea of where you are heading.

What are some of the things you aspire to do on social media? Maybe you aspire to get 100,000 engaged followers, or you aspire to get more blog traffic.

The aspiration is a starting point towards social media success. After you give yourself the aspiration, you need to identify the steps you are going to take to get there. It is important to take give yourself steps that are neither too easy nor too difficult to achieve.

Gaining 100 followers every week is a great start. It’s not far out there, but it’s not incredibly easy either. If you are at that point already, raise the bar to 150 followers every week and keep on raising the bar as you accomplish the goal. Then, once you identify the aspiration and give yourself the steps you will need to get there, all you have to do at that point is implement.

#8: Be on social media every day

Just like everything else, social media requires practice. The more you show up and do the right things, the more likely you are to have the big audience. “Do the right things” is in bold because most people are already on social media every day. However, not all of that time is being used effectively.

Some people who use social media are using it to procrastinate. There are many videos and social media accounts to choose from. In essence, social media can either be your best friend or your worst enemy.

When I say be on social media every day, I mean you are utilizing it as an entrepreneur who interacts with the audience, not someone who procrastinates. Definitely use social media, but use it wisely.

#9: Do not let social media consume too much of your time

Social media is a great tool to grow your business and get more traffic. However, you need to have a good business and valuable content so all of the work you put in on social media was worth it. Just because you have 100,000 followers does not mean you are going to make a full-time income.

Having that many followers does significantly help out in the process, but you need more than a big audience. You still need to find a good chunk of time in your day to create products and work on big projects for your business. That way, when you grow your social media audience, you can lead them to places that can bring in more revenue.

You should constantly be trying to perform the same activities on social media is a shorter amount of time. If you can do something in 15 minutes instead of 30 minutes, then make that change. I use HootSuite Pro and am able to schedule hundreds of tweets per day in just five minutes instead of a few hours every day if I had to manually schedule tweets.

#10: Be patient

This last tip is a tip that commonly appears in numerous articles, and it appears in this one as well. Being patient is the most important tip on the entire list. Sure I went into more detail in the other tips about growing an audience and boosting numbers, but none of those changes happen overnight.

It took me 993 days to reach 100,000 Twitter followers, and most of that big change happened in the last year of that span. For more than half of that time, I was lost and had no idea what to do. I was struggling to grow my audience and was stuck at 1,667 followers for many months. Then, methods started to work, I modified them along the way, and now I have a large, engaged Twitter audience.

There is no such thing as an overnight success. All of the leaders in your niche got to where they are after years of work. By not giving in and learning new techniques along the way, you may become a big player on social media.

In Conclusion 

Social media is a powerful way to get more traffic and build an engaged audience. There are many entrepreneurs in various niches who have utilized social media and seen their traffic, subscribers, and sales jump up. Patience is the key to success on any social network, and the more time you put into the learning process, the better you will become.

Do you have any social media tips for entrepreneurs? Which of these tips was your favorite?