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A Cool Headline Tool To Write Better Blog Post Headlines

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Headline Tool

I recently had the privilege of doing some digging within my own niche. Sometimes, we think we know absolutely everything in our niche inside-out. However, it is amazing how much valuable information related to our niches is on the web. When Social Media Examiner posted the Top 10 Social Media Blogs, I was all over all of them and learned a lot from the research.

There is no way I could write one blog post about all of the things I learned. I must have been on all of those blogs for hours. One of the things I did learn about is a cool tool that allows people to create powerful headlines. The headlines of your blog posts are the attention grabbers which means the better a headline is, the more clicks and readers it gets.

This cool tool is the Aminstitute Headline Analyzer, and it measures how emotionally grabbing your headlines are. The more emotionally grabbing a headline is, the more attention it gets. Some emotionally grabbing headlines encourage people to perform actions such as subscribing to your blog or buying one of your products.

This tool also gives you a percentage, and the higher that percentage is, the more emotionally grabbing your blog post is. I decided to test it out and was quickly amazed by the results.

Going in, the headlines for one of my blog posts was “5 Things About Blogging That Most People Forget.” I thought the headline looked good, but when I ran it into the Aminstitue Headline Analyzer, I got a 12.50%. Initially confused about the low score, I realized this was a negative title. The words “Most People Forget” are not exactly the positive words that people want to hear.

This motivated me to plug in different words to create a better headline. It would have been the same blog post either way, but the only thing different would be the headline. After tinkering with the tool, I finally came up with, “5 Blogging Tips You Absolutely Positively Need To Know Immediately.” This title creates a call to action and emphasizes how important those blogging tips are. This headline scored an 80% on the Aminstitute Headline Analyzer.

Would you rather read a blog post called 5 Thing About Blogging That Most People Forget or a blog post called 5 Blogging Tips You Absolutely Positively Need To Know Immediately? I know which one I would pick.

How did you like this blog post? Are you going to use the Aminstitute Headline Analyzer? Have you used it already? Be sure to share your thoughts below.

3 Easy Ways To Wake Up Very Motivated Every Day

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Wake Up Earlier

Zig Ziglar was onto something when he said that motivation and bathing don’t last which is why they need to be practiced daily. Just because you are motivated today does not mean you are going to be motivated tomorrow. We have all had the sequence when we feel incredibly happy on one day and then horrified on the other day, or the opposite. That is because many people do not see the reason to practice motivation every day. As a result, this motivation does not last.

In an earlier blog post, I mentioned how the first hour you wake up controls the rest of your day. This means on a typical day if you motivate yourself early in the day, you will remain motivated for the rest of that day. Then, you have to repeat the process again tomorrow. Instead of going through day by day trying to motivate yourself, you need to set up a plan for yourself so you start the day right and stay motivated every day. Here are the three ways to get motivated early so you stay motivated for the rest of the day.

  1. Realize that you are a miracle. There are some days when the journey gets rough, and these are the points when we look for a miracle. We look for quadruple the sales in 1 month or a way to get hundreds of thousands of followers in a short amount of time. What discourages people from putting in the work is that many of these miracles take a long period of time to pull off. Few people realize that getting born is a miracle. The way microscopic parts of the body work is that there are millions of possibilities, but you were the possibility that was brought forth to the world. Your birth was a miracle, and that means you are hear for a reason. To make a difference.
  2. Write down 1-3 motivational quote and read it/them when you wake up. Few people think of writing motivational quotes down, and when people write motivational quotes down, they write too many. In this case, less is better because you will have a stronger appreciation of the motivational quotes you have in front of you. I use angel cards to determine what motivational quotes I get. One of them says “Think Global.” I got this card when I had a little under 30,000 Twitter followers and a mediocre strategy to gain a targeted following. The second card is a motivational quote that I read daily that says, “Keep charing ahead, and don’t take no for an answer. Expect miraculous solutions to appear.” It may be easy to imagine how reading that type of motivational quote can charge someone up every day.
  3. Just get out of bed. We all know that sleeping too little is bad for our health and causes symptoms like depression and anxiety. Plot twist: sleeping too much causes the same symptoms. Depending on what time I get to bed, I sleep between 6.5 to 8 hours. I never sleep for more than 8.5 hours at anytime simply because the human body does not need as much sleep as advertised. The people at Buffer have a lot of data on the amount of sleep we really need. Most of the time, I only sleep for 7.5 hours on a given day. The next question you may be wondering is how I always get out of bed at that time. I’ll say that I do not have an internal alarm clock, and I use a devious trick with the alarm clock that wakes me up every day. For some, the trick may be too devious to even attempt, but it is definitely worth it, and it will get you out of bed for sure

Motivation does not last daily which is why it is important to constantly practice these three motivational tips so you have an empowering day. What were your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional advice on having a motivating day? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

5 Reasons Why I Decided To Use iContact Instead Of WordPress To Send Emails

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iContact

I recently made the switch from WordPress’ free emailing service to iContact. I knew that if I wanted to reach tens of thousands of subscribers, something needed to change. Now I am wondering why I did not make the switch before. iContact has proven to be a more powerful option than WordPress’ free emailing service, and here’s why:

  1. iContact allows me to customize the emails I send out. Instead of being linked to an RSS Feed and sending out an email each time I come out with a new blog post, iContact gives me the power to craft my own emails and include links to blog posts. This allows me to send one email every week containing links to all of the blog posts that I published that week.
  2. iContact allows you to create autoresponders. Autoresponders are a series of emails that everyone gets when they subscribe to your blog. You can space out how long it takes for people to receive an email from the autoresponder and use it to promote one of your products in a way that people would want to buy it. WordPress’ emailing service did not provide this option.
  3. iContact allows me to interact with my subscribers in a better way. No matter which service you use, there is a certain degree of automation. iContact allows you to schedule messages while WordPress would just send a message each time you came out with a new blog post. However, iContact allows me to craft my own message which allows me to interact with my subscribers in a better way. I get to ask subscribers how their day was, what they want to do differently, and anything else I want to ask them all in one email.
  4. I have more control over the confirmation and welcome messages. Not only do I get to write anything I want for these two messages, but I also get to change the way these messages look. I decide what the backgrounds for these messages look like, the size of the font, and everything else as well.
  5. More plugin capabilities. There are more WordPress plugin capabilities associated with iContact that WordPress’ free emailing service. Switching over to iContact has allowed me to do numerous things with my blog such as include a subscription form at the end of every blog post. This was previously not possible with WordPress’ emailing service, and now this form at the bottom at every blog post has been responsible for a majority of my subscribers.

There are some costs associated with making it as a full-time blogger. Buying access to an emailing service is one of the best investments any blogger can make to grow their email list. What are your thoughts on iContact and using paid email service options to get access to more features? Please share your thoughts below.

How To Save Your Valuable Content From Getting Deserted

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Save Valuable Content From Getting Deserted

As you write more blog posts, your older blog posts will get pushed farther below your blog’s main page until they get kicked off the first page. The typical blog post that gets kicked off the first page gets a significant decrease in viewership. However, there are blog posts that were written several years ago that are still getting thousands of daily visitors leaving most bloggers stumped. The question everyone wants to ask is how this happens and how the results can be replicated.

The most important thing for you to know about these types of blog posts is that they dominate the search engines. If you search a term like “Top 100 Inspirational Quotes,” chances are you will still see the Forbes article written in May 2013. Social media is a great way to get initial traffic, but to get consistent, long-term traffic on a daily basis without having to post a tweet on the same blog post every day, incredible SEO is the way to go.

I have been using social media to save my articles that get old but still provide value. However, my most popular articles are the ones that I don’t have to tweet about every day. They bring in traffic through the search engines. I put in the work at one point, and now these articles bring in passive traffic.

What are your thoughts on making sure your blog does not get deserted by using SEO? What advice do you have for people who are trying to pull it off? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

What Would Happen If Every Social Network Decided To Hide The Number Of Followers We Have?

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Social Media

For a very short period of time, Twitter hid the number of followers every account has. Whether this was a bug or Twitter trying out a new feature, it is interesting to think what would happen if every social network decided to hide the number of followers we have.

This is an intriguing topic that has many good sides and bad sides. The most obvious benefit is that the law of big numbers no longer applies. If social networks decided to hide audience sizes, no one will know if you have 10 followers or 10 million followers. With LinkedIn, people with over 500 connections are shown as having “500+ connections.” As far as we know, that “500+” could mean 501 connections or 2,000 connections.

The fake follower industry has turned into a multi-million dollar underground business that even attracts the most famous Twitter users. If Twitter hides this number, there is no longer a legitimate reason to buy fake followers. Fake followers do not result in more engagement, and no one is going to see the big number. The people in the fake follower industry would be devastated if this change ever took place.

However, removing the number of followers we have creates a problem. Now there will be more experts calling themselves experts. Many people have the natural tendency to go to the experts who have the most followers. Many people go to the expert with 10,000 real followers for advice before they go to the expert with 1,000 real followers. Removing the number eliminates the distinction between the experts with big audiences and the experts with smaller audiences. The people who have built their audiences from the ground up will now have a big piece of that hard work hidden from view. I don’t want the fact that I have over 100,000 Twitter followers to be hidden.

In this type of world, the main way to determine how influential someone is on social media is through engagement. In this type of world, the person who gets 10 retweets is more influential than the person who only gets one retweet. Engagement is a good way to determine influence, but just like follower numbers, engagement is also something that can get rigged. Just by typing “buy retweets” into Google, I saw an option to buy 1,000 retweets for just $8. Removing the follower count invites people to rig the system by buying their way to higher engagement numbers. Although it’s not quality engagement that results in long-term interactions and connections, the law of big numbers comes back into play. If you can’t tell how big people’s audiences are and which retweets are real or fake, the person with 1,000 fake retweets looks more influential than the person with 100 real retweets. You can buy practically any kind of engagement for any social network. If the option does not exist for a particular social network now, it will exist in the very near future.

The final act Twitter and other social networks could take would be to hide all of the numbers, but in my opinion, that would cause too much chaos. Hiding the number of followers we have is chaotic enough, but hiding the size of our audiences will force every marketer, entrepreneur, and expert to ask themselves whether they are really doing a good job or not. This type of self reflection is what allows the fakers to realize they are doing something wrong and the people with targeted audiences to realize that what they are doing is right.

Is it a good move to hide audience sizes? Just as all of the people who bought fake followers deserve this fate, the people who have built their audiences from the ground up do not deserve to have their audience size hidden. Then again, does the size of an audience matter at all, or is it all about engagement, which could also get rigged? There are so many different perspectives and thought patterns that can emerge from this topic of discussion

What is your opinion?

Expectations Will Happen If You Think About Them Long Enough

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Mindset

Any expectation, good or bad, will happen if you think about it long enough, have a strong belief that it will happen (in order words, you aren’t just saying something will happen for the sake of it happening), and you put in the work. If you have a strong belief in your ability to make a strong income, and you put in the work to make it happen, that expectation will come to pass.

With this power in our hands, many people choose to use it poorly. Many people put their expectations low or expect themselves to be worse off than they are already. Those kinds of negative expectations also come to pass if you think of them for a long period of time.

Live your life with optimistic thoughts and put in the work that will allow you to turn an optimistic thought into a reality. No goal is too big. What will you do? It’s your choice.