Marc's Blog

5 Awesome Ways To Use Instagram For Business

September 22, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Many people see Instagram is a social network with an emphasize on the social and selfies. However, if you utilize Instagram properly, it can be more than that. It is important to remember that there are over 200 million monthly active users on Instagram and that posts with pictures have been proven to get more engagement than posts without pictures. Many brands take full advantage of Instagram while others wonder how they can do the same. In order to use Instagram for your business, follow these five tips:

Take pictures of coupon codes. Only posting pictures of coupon codes on Instagram will give people another reason to follow your business. Better yet, posting coupon codes weekly or monthly will give people a reason to go back to your account and see what has recently been added.
Post a tip of the day with a relevant picture. If you provide a tip for your followers with a picture that correlates with the tip, you will create the type of posts that your audience will like and share with their friends.
Host a giveaway that encourages interaction. Whole Foods knows how to use Instagram very effectively. One of their pictures was of a girl riding a bike with groceries in the bike’s basket. Whole Foods invited its audience to post a picture of themselves riding a bike with groceries with #BikeToShop in the post. The prize was a $250 gift card.
Let your audience know more about business life. You can use Instagram to show people what goes on behind the scenes. Perhaps if McDonald’s did this, we would realize once and for all what really gets used to make those McNuggets.
Let your audience know more about your personal life. Many people forget to do this, but it is very important to include your personal life. This allows people in your audience to know about you and have a stronger connection with you. If a billionaire decided to post on Instagram a picture of a sports team, you would be able to relate better with that billionaire.

Those are the five ways to use Instagram for business. What were your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips on using Instagram for business? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

6 Powerful Two-Sentence Tips To Grow Your Pinterest Audience

September 21, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

There are over 70 million people on Pinterest, and the number keeps on growing as the days go by. Pinterest continues to grow, and the bigger you are able to make your audience at this stage of the game, the more popular you will be when Pinterest exceeds the big milestones such as 100 million, 200 million, or even 500 million users. Pinterest has been growing at a rapid rate, and it shows no signs of slowing down. That is why now is exactly the right time to grow your audience on Pinterest. That is why I am going to provide you with six ways for you to do that:

Pin every day. The more times you pin, the more chances you have of getting more repins and spreading farther on Pinterest.
Follow other people. Chances are some of these people will follow you back.
Create a variety of boards. This allows you to have multiple target audiences who get attracted to specific content that you pin.
Use Pinterest messaging. Pinterest messaging is a great feature to take advantage of to spread and interact with your followers, and I went more into detail on how to do that in this article.
Repin other people’s pins. Not only does this give you more variety, but some people will decide to follow you back for repinning their pins.
Use ViralWoot. ViralWoot, the Twiends for Pinterest, is a great way to build your Pinterest audience.

Those are the six ways to grow a big audience on Pinterest. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have a seventh tip? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

The 3 Ideal Activities To Do On Your Downtime To Recharge

September 20, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

No matter what niche you are in, you will (need to) have downtime. Taking breaks is important because it allows you to think with a clean slate the next time you go back to your work. There are few people who can work for countless hours straight, and those people are the exceptions, not the rule. For most of us (that means you, me, and countless others), we need some downtime. However, there are many people who spend their downtime doing the wrong things. Those wrong things include watching TV, surfing the web, and doing other unproductive activities that eat up more time than we realize and make it harder for us to get back to our work each time. However, there are some positive ways to spend your downtime. Here are the big three:

Spend time with your family. Without a good family, all of the wealth you could possibly accumulate would not be worth it. Family comes first, and I would not be where I am today if this was not a core belief for my own family. Your family consists of the people who you will know for the rest of your life, so treat them well.
Exercise. I cannot emphasize enough how much running has indirectly helped my business. Running taught me that it is possible to thrive after putting in a lot of hard work. Exercising over a long period of time has given many people the discipline needed for success.
Read a book. Not only do you get to learn more, but in some cases, you will be able to read a thrilling story. There are some books that we read that we simply never want to stop reading. Unbroken, Tipping Point, and Purple Cow are three books that you won’t want to put down until you finish reading them.

Those are the three best things to do during your downtime. There are plenty of other things you could do during your downtime, but most of those things involve procrastinating, losing time, and getting stuck doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional things you do during your downtime that you enjoy and find valuable? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

We Are All Witnesses And Talkers

September 19, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Word Of Mouth

One of the things I do when I go to Cape May is run up and down the boardwalk. The beauty of this boardwalk is that on one side is the beach, and on the other side are fancy looking hotels and big houses. Basically, there are plenty of things to look at throughout the journey.

While running, I happened to overhear a conversation two teenage girls were having about SnapChat. SnapChat is a growing social network that allows people to create content that self destructs within a certain amount of time. While no content can survive for over 24 hours on SnapChat, there are many snaps that self-destruct in under five seconds. There are many graphs and charts that show SnapChat has grown remarkably, and most of it is because of word of mouth.

To think two teenage girls were talking about SnapChat as if they had been talking about it for a while indicates that those are not the only two teens out there who talk about SnapChat often. SnapChat is the type of social network where you and the other person must both have SnapChat accounts in order to share and see the other person’s snaps. It’s not like Twitter or any other social network where you can see someone’s content whether you are logged in or not.

Just like the FAX machine, your friends must have SnapChat accounts in order for it to be of any value. This set up gave SnapChat the framework it needed to spread through word of mouth.

Since I was on vacation, I was out for practically the entire day. After a nice shower, my family and I walked through the town, and I happened to overhear another conversation. This conversation was more based on a few people telling a friend how certain social networks work. Sure enough, SnapChat consumed most of the conversation.

In both of these scenarios, I was a witness to the word of mouth that resulted in SnapChat becoming contagious and sticky. You may have been a witness to the word of mouth that spread SnapChat, but you were definitely the witness to word of mouth for something else.

In addition, I am sure that you tell your friends about businesses, ideas, brands, blogs, and other things as well. That is also an example of word of mouth marketing in which you are the talker. We are all talkers just as much as we are witnesses. If you want to know some good places to visit in Cape May, I would be quick to give you a whole bunch of places you could visit such as The Washington Inn, which is the best restaurant I have ever been to. When I go to The Washington Inn, I eat very little throughout the day just so I could have two entries. That’s how good they are.

Just like that, I decided to talk about The Washington Inn. That’s word of mouth, and the restaurant deserves it. As I talk about how I have been eating at The Washington Inn for many years, I am being the talker, and you are being the witness.

This is how ideas spread. There are enough talkers who reach out to enough witnesses. Enough talkers can mean 100 Joe Schmo’s or 10 highly influential people. There is no exact number, and you won’t know how close your idea is to being big until it spreads far enough to the point where it becomes one of the big things. The early adopters of SnapChat needed their friends to create accounts in order for SnapChat to be useful. Then, it kept on spreading from there.

The Mighty Four C’s Of Digital Marketing

September 18, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Digital marketing is something that few people understand, but it is also something critical towards success. When people think of digital marketing, they think of all of the different P’s that apply to other aspects of business. However, digital marketing is a different kind of marketing that has 4 C’s instead of P’s. Here are the 4 C’s of digital marketing:

Creating: You need to constantly be creating products. If you create a book, create another one. Then create another product. Keep on creating so you have more products to market.
Curating: In addition to creating new products and content, you need to organize those products and content. Curating your content and products will make it easier for your visitors and customers to find what they are looking for. Some people who visit a social media blog like this one couldn’t care less about growing an audience on Facebook, but they do care about growing an audience on Pinterest. Curating allows people to find the specific information that they are looking for faster.
Connecting: You need to have strong connections in order to move forward. Nardo’s Natural’s success as a brand was made possible by Barbara Corcoran who invested in the brand in an episode on Shark Tank. Successful entrepreneurs like Barbara have numerous connections, and she got the brothers who founded Nardo’s Natural on Good Morning America through one of her connections. Without connecting with Barbara, Nardo’s Natural probably would have not made it to Good Morning America let alone become a successful brand.
Culture: The people who visit your blog, follow you on your social networks, and buy your products need to feel a sense of unity with each other. You need to either directly or indirectly create a culture revolving around your product, blog, or service. This culture will allow people who know you to unify together so they can promote you, talk about your products, and buy your future products.

Those are the 4 C’s of digital marketing. What are your thoughts on the list and which of the 4 C’s resonates with you the most? Please share your thoughts below.

10 Simple Ways To Get More Vine Followers

September 17, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Vine Logo

Vine is a social network on the rise that caters to our seven second attention spans. That means someone who watches your Vine will be able to pay attention to it from start to finish. However, the only way more people will pay attention to your Vines is if you are able to grow your audience. Here are 10 ways to grow your audience by getting more followers on Vine.

Make your avatar look professional. People always judge others on their first impression, and we all judge a book by its cover. You need to have a professional avatar of yourself. It is important to note that on Vine, professional does not always mean a buttoned down shirt and tie. In this case, professional means a non-blurry picture of yourself. Be sure to smile in the picture so people can see based on your avatar that you are a jovial person.
Have a good bio. When people go over to learn about who you are, your bio needs to be something that allows people to know who you are while being enticing at the same time. In this bio, it is important to make it crystal clear about what you create Vines about.
Post one Vine every day. The more active you are on Vine, the more people will be enticed to follow you and the farther your Vines can potentially spread. Being active is very important towards your success on Vine.
Post the types of Vines that people would want to watch. Just because something is only six seconds long does not necessarily mean it is something we want to watch. If your Vine looks unengaging and not interesting, people will skip over the Vine without following you.
Follow other users. There are many people who will follow you back if you follow them. Vine has come out with new features in the activity tab that make it easier for someone to see who recently followed them.
Like and revine other people’s Vines. Some people will follow you just because you liked and/or revined one of their vines. This concept is similar to following other users for the follow back.
Offer a giveaway. You can give away one of your products to someone who revines your Vine. That will allow your video to spread and get more visibility. Some people will follow you just for the giveaway, but as the giveaway progresses, some of these people may continue following you because of the videos you post on Vine.
Interact with your audience. That means respond to comments and tell your audience about your other social networks. It seems as if more famous Viners than ever are telling their audiences what their SnapChats are so interactions can turn into private 1-on-1 based interactions.
Be the type of person others would want to follow. Be a humorous optimist instead of a dull pessimist. Your happiness and love for Vining are big factors to growing a big audience.
Do not give in. I do not know how close these figures are, but regardless of what they actually are, the message is quite clear. 97% of Viners end up watching videos from the 3%–the Viners who stuck with it, remained consistent, and now have large audiences. If you stick with it long enough, you may end up becoming one of the people in the 3%.

No matter how much knowledge you have about getting more Vine followers, implementation and sticking with the journey combined with the knowledge is the only combination of components that will allow you to be successful on Vine. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have an 11th method to get more Vine followers? Please share your thoughts and advice below.