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Is Social Media Overrated?

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On the social media blog of all places, responding with a big yes would be problematic. I’ll take the safe route this time and say that it depends on the individual, but I will also say that for most people, social media is overrated. Social media is a place to build connections and grow an audience. Many people use social media to procrastinate and escape their work. In this scenario, social media is completely overrated. As Abraham Lincoln put it, “You can’t escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

If you are spending more than an hour on your social networks every day, then it is overrated. That is too much time to delegate away from your work. In order to make revenue from social media, you need to have products that people would want to buy in the first place.

The worst part is that most people get addicted to the social networks. Some people are on Facebook for 6 hours every day. That’s absolutely ridiculous, especially when most of that time is you feeling bad about yourself because your friends posted pictures of themselves having a good time. Many people could write five extra blog posts every day if they cut down on the amount of time they spend on social media.

There is a way to use social networks that makes them pivotal to your success. By getting more done in a shorter amount of time and growing your audience, you will be able to tap into social media’s full potential. Some leaders got to where they are because of social media. In this case, if these people do not spend over an hour a day on their social networks, they are not overrated.

Social media has the power to grow your presence and allow you to become very successful. It can also eat away at hours of your precious time every day. With great power needs to come great responsibility. What’s your choice?

 

9 Lessons I Learned From Blogging

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Blogging

Blogging is a way to build an audience, connect with that audience, and get more people to know about you. Although blogging is a powerful tool to grow your presence on the web, blogging will also allow you to learn many life lessons and things about your niche along the way. I have been blogging since 2011, and I started this blog towards the end of 2012. Now with over three years of experience, I have learned many lessons along the way. Here are nine of them.

  1. Look back. I looked back at my entire journey as a blogger right when I finished writing the paragraph above, and when I looked back, it amazed me. Three years ago, I was just another blogger thrown into the mix. I was not the teenager entrepreneur, social media expert, or anything catchy like that. I was writing blog posts at inconsistent, infrequent rates about the Boston Red Sox, and typos were common. Here’s my very first blog I ever created paired with the very first blog post I ever created…ever. Who would have ever thought that three years later, the same blogger would be writing this blog post.
  2. Embrace what you do. I only started to embrace blogging when I created my Yugioh Philosophy Blog. I updated it every day and enjoyed doing the research. Yugioh Philosophy was my first blog that ever brought in hundreds of daily visitors. Since there are not many Yugioh blogs that get updated every day, it’s fair to say that mine was in the Top 10 of the Yugioh Blogs on the web. Now the blog is inactive because I focus more of my time on this one, but I am proud to say that the Yugioh Philosophy Blog still has an Alexa Rank! It currently brings in a little over 100 daily views but is an inactive blog.
  3. Get in even if you are unsure to avoid overthinking something. My first blog was about the Boston Red Sox, and no one (friends, family, you, and me) had any idea that I would end up writing blog posts about social media and blogging. If I over thought what I would create a blog about, then I would have never made it to this step.
  4. The work you put in pans out in the end. Although my Yugioh Philosophy Blog was getting more traffic, it was not necessarily bringing in more revenue. I never sold Yugioh Cards on eBay (a problem that I am in the process of fixing) which means I had to rely on Amazon affiliate links. Just to give you an idea of the revenue I was making, the typical Yugioh Card got sold for $2, and I only made 4% per sale. That means unless a customer bought a lot of Yugioh Cards, I was barely making over $1 each time a customer bought Yugioh Cards. Since then, I have written my own books which now bring in at least $2 per sale, I have created my own training courses, and I have other plans for the future. No matter what the future holds, I know that the work I put in now will pan out in the end.
  5. Learning and doing are two very different things. Some people learn that writing one blog post every day results in more traffic, but when it comes to doing, not everyone wants to put in the work to write one blog post every day. You can know how to get more blog traffic, but if you are not implementing that knowledge, then what is it really worth?
  6. Do what you love. I have successfully escaped 40 hours of work every week to do 80 hours of work every week. I do not mind working the extra 40 hours every week because I am able to make a difference and do what I love. If you liked this one, never join the status quo.
  7. Never stop learning. In order to grow your blog, you need to constantly learn about different techniques to grow your traffic, your email list, and turn your visitors into customers. The more you learn about something, the better you become at it. Another important thing to remember is that all skills are learnable.
  8. Have a good role model. There are two types of role models. The first type is your family. They are the role models that should help you succeed. If your family does not have the right role models in it, then you need to be the role model that inspires change. The second type of role model is the person outside of your family. This is the person that you dream of meeting and inspires you to do your best work. For me, this type of role model would be Seth Godin.
  9. Fight through the adversity. To this day, I continue to receive criticism. Most of the criticism I received at the beginning of my journey has gone away, but no matter how successful an individual becomes, there will always be critics. People have criticized past Presidents, do criticize the President we have now, and will criticize future Presidents. The critics criticize the people who are changing the world because they are envious.

After blogging for three years, these were the big takeaways. What are the lessons you have learned as a blogger, and which lesson on this list did you like the most?

 

The Three Most Common Pitfalls Entrepreneurs Face

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Entrepreneur Unclear Path

There are many entrepreneurs in the world. Some are super successful while most entrepreneurs are trying to find their way. There are many mistakes that entrepreneurs make, but by closely analyzing the journeys of hundreds of entrepreneurs (any entrepreneur ranging from the billionaires to the startups), I have been able to identify the three most common pitfalls that entrepreneurs face in their journey.

  1. The need to be perfect. Do you have an overwhelming need to be perfect and provide a product for everyone? If so, you will actually be creating a product for no one. In order to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to identify who your target audience is and create products and content that appeal to that audience.
  2. The status quo temptation. Once you become a part of the status quo, getting out is very difficult. Rising entrepreneurs face the constant temptation of joining the status quo where it is possible to make quick cash. At the same time, this quick cash is not nearly enough to live the luxurious lifestyles that some of the most famous entrepreneurs live. I’ll tell you one thing about the status quo. It’s not worth it, and I speak from no experience in the status quo and full experience as a successful entrepreneur.
  3. Overthinking. The only reason people become fearful is because they encounter uncertainty. Overthinking any situation allows that uncertainty to trap yourself into the fear you created. Instead of overthinking something, just get started. Many people fear public speaking at first because they overthink the situation. After the public speaking event actually takes place, these public speakers are not nearly as afraid because they are actually starting.

Do any of those pitfalls apply to you? If so, you have something in common with the entrepreneurs who quit, but you also have something in common with the billionaires before they became that wealthy. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you know of any additional pitfalls that you or other entrepreneurs fall into? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

The First Step To Accomplishing Your Biggest Dreams

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Dream Big

Starting is the first step. It’s the one we often ignore, but at the same time, it is the most important step. I could have written a longer blog post on why starting is the first step, but leaving everyone with the simple message of starting is more powerful.

Your thoughts, ideas, and dreams only happen when you take the leap and decide to start. What are you waiting for?

 

16 Ways To Build A Big Social Media Audience From A 16 Year Old

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16 Ways To Build A Social Media Audience

Growing a social media audience and getting the best out of that audience is so easy that a 16 year old can do it (that would be me). In a span of less than 3 years, I have been able to get over 100,000 Twitter followers, over 14,000 Pinterest followers, over 10,000 Vine followers, and I’m working on Instagram and Facebook. My audiences continue to grow as the days go by, but many people wonder how I was able to get to this point. I decided to come up with 16 different methods you can use to build your social media audience (that has nothing to do with my age. That just happened to be the number I pulled out of my head).

  1. Focus most of your time on one social network. If you master one of the social networks and sort of know the other ones, you are going to do very well with the social network that you successfully mastered. I decided to master Twitter because it is a social network of simplicity, and now that I know Twitter Domination by heart, I have been able to continue dominating Twitter while growing my presence on other social networks.
  2. Use the big player social networks. Even if you have no plans on using a Facebook or YouTube account, create them. When you master one of the social networks, you need to learn how to master a second social network. It’s the whole idea of being bilingual is better than only knowing one language while being trilingual is way better than being bilingual. Creating the accounts now and tinkering around with them will allow you to be prepared to master them later.
  3. Post on them all often. It is important to post on all of your social networks at least once every week. That indicates to all of your audiences that you are active, and being active is one of the crucial steps towards allowing your content to spread on those social networks.
  4. Interact with your audience. Interacting with your audience will allow you to build stronger connections with the people in your audience. You want to be well acquainted with as many people in your social media audiences as possible. My recommendation is to look at your notifications three times each day to see if you can interact with any of your followers.
  5. Post motivational quotes. No matter what niche you are in, motivational quotes hands down never fail at increasing engagement. Motivational tweets are more likely to get retweeted and motivational pins are more likely to get repinned.
  6. Post articles on your social networks. Posting articles is a great way to provide informative content that your followers would enjoy.
  7. Post valuable content. Valuable content is the kind of content that your targeted followers would like. You can’t satisfy everyone with your social media strategy (you can’t even do that in life. Shocker!) so it is more important for you to focus on satisfying your targeted audience.
  8. Post pictures. Social media posts with pictures get more engagement than social media posts without pictures. We are a visual generation that needs to see everything in pictures. That’s why movies are more popular than books.
  9. Grow your presence on all of your social networks. On the social network you are trying to master, you need to build a powerful presence. However, you should also be growing a bigger presence on your other social networks. Even if you are only gaining five followers every week on a social network you are not focusing on, that is still growing.
  10. Find patterns. Some rules for one social network will apply to another social network. That means if you become successful at one social network, it becomes easier to be successful at other social networks. Here are some of the universal laws of all social networks that I was able to find.
  11. Be an expert in your niche. People follow the experts, not the people who have no idea what they are talking about. Telling people that you are an expert in your bio is a great start, but you need to prove to people that you are an expert with valuable social media posts and a professional picture.
  12. Be humorous. Whenever you can, mix in some humor with your other social media posts. There are numerous examples of content going viral because it was humorous.
  13. Be creative. If your content is creative, then it will gather attention. Creative content is the type of content that the average person could not think of. There is a difference between valuable content and creative content, but if you mix the two together into one social media post, your content is going to spread faster.
  14. Host a giveaway. Giveaways allow you to easily bring in more followers. Some people will follow you just for the giveaway. The only problem associated with the giveaway is that once the giveaway ends, many people unfollow the host of the giveaway. Esurance is a brilliant example of this. If you want people to continue following you after the giveaway, tell everyone that you will be hosting another giveaway three months later.
  15. Interconnect your social networks together. That does not mean connecting your Twitter and Facebook accounts together so all of your tweets end up on Facebook. Linking those two accounts together is not even a good idea to begin with. I am talking about promoting each of your social networks and their posts on your other social networks. If you have a YouTube video, promote it on Facebook. In your YouTube video’s description, have a link to your Facebook Page. Here’s a more in depth analysis of how this strategy works.
  16. Be patient. Don’t you wish certain things could happen faster? Unfortunately, when it comes to growing a social media audience, fast is not a part of the vocabulary. You are not going to get 100,000 followers in one day. You will most likely reach that milestone years after you create the social media account. However, by sticking with it and learning new techniques along the way, you will be able to dramatically grow your following.

Those are the 16 ways to grow your social media audience. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional methods on growing a social media audience? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Why I Use And Love Blog Post Idea Generators

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I recently learned that blog post idea generators actually exist, and I have not been able to get over them. I have been using various blog post idea generators come up with more blog post ideas. The biggest challenge for a blogger is not the writing. Instead, the biggest challenge is coming up with different things to write about. It may be easy in the beginning, but after you publish hundreds (and eventually thousands) of blog posts, thinking of topics that you have not used before becomes increasingly difficult.

Hubspot's Blog Topic Generator

Blog post idea generators solve that problem. There are many blog post idea generators on the web that have allowed me to come up with several ideas for new blog posts. HubSpot’s blog post idea generator proved to be effective, but it won’t take long to see all of the blog post ideas they generate. They use the same words like misconceptions and tips in those ideas, even if it makes no sense.

There are other blog post idea generators as well, but the Google docs search generator proves to be the most valuable way to come up with more blog post ideas. All of these blog post idea generators eliminate the need or you to ponder about an idea. You are automatically given the idea, and all you have to do is write about it (that’s the easy part for a blogger).

I use blog post idea generators so I can spend less time thinking about blog post ideas and more time writing about them. By having all of these ideas in place, I am also able to write more books. I have plans on writing numerous books of various sizes, and being able to write blog posts faster allows me to get to my books faster.

What are your thoughts on blog post idea generators?