Marc's Blog

How To Win As The Host Of A Giveaway

July 2, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Giveaways come in all shapes and sizes. They come as the form of Mac Book Pros and Amazon Gift Cards. While there are a fair share of great giveaways and giveaways that go wrong, everyone who hosts a giveaway wants to win. They want more engagement and long-term sales for their products. Luckily, there is a way to win as the host of a giveaway.

Allow everyone to win by doing something for you.

That’s all it takes. Mike Michalowicz, the master of hosting giveaways, did this for his book The Pumpkin Plan. For the book’s launch, anyone who submitted a video revealing their inner critic and posted it on YouTube got the book for free. Two runners-up would get a free 1 hour consultation session while 1 grand winner would get to have dinner with Mike and his inner circle of helpers. There were some requirements for this giveaway, but the big one was that at the very end of the video, everyone had to put visible and legible text “The Pumpkin Plan July 5, 2012” and have it displayed for at least three seconds.

It is easy to imagine that this marketing stunt cost a lot of money. It is easy to imagine that 100 people submitted videos for The Pumpkin Plan. If anyone who got his book for free left a review, those reviews probably were 4-5 star reviews each. That makes a book look a lot better on Amazon, and it also lowers the sales rank of a book (which means Amazon does a better job at promoting it and more people get to see the book). Even more, Mike’s method of choosing a winner had a 4 part process in which 75% of the process involved how many times the video got shared and viewed on social networks. This allowed Mike to create a sales army, and even though he had to pay for the sales army (buying and sending over books costs money), those videos are still up on YouTube which means his book The Pumpkin Plan is still being promoted by an array of people.

The next time you host your own giveaway, ask yourself how you can make sure that everyone wins a free prize.

5 Types Of Tweets You Would Want To Pin To The Top Of Your Feed

July 2, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Twitter’s new design came with a very powerful change: the ability to pin a tweet to the top of your profile. That means if you send out an important tweet, and you want everyone to see it, that can happen without people scrolling down to find the tweet. This tweet always appears on the top and instantly grabs attention as a pinned tweet. Pinned tweets get more engagement than the average tweet because while the average tweet has a certain life to it (a few hours), the pinned tweet never loses that life because it is always on the top of your Twitter feed.

However, there is no reason for pinning a tweet just for the sake of pinning a tweet. Some tweets deserve the spot while others don’t deserve it at all. You don’t want a conversation you had with someone to be your pinned tweet, but there are certain types of tweets that you want. Here are five of them.

Your most popular tweet. If one of your tweets gets five times as many retweets as your typical tweet, then it is a very popular tweet. The popularity of that tweet will fade within a few hours as more tweets get posted on your profile and fewer people see the retweeted forms of your tweet. Pinning this kind of tweet will prevent the popularity of that tweet from fading.
A tweet with your giveaway. It’s great to offer an Amazon Card giveaway. It’s bad if only one person retweets the tweet and you have to give the Amazon Card to that one person. Since you are giving something away, you want more engagement on Twitter. In order to boost the amount of engagement you get from a giveaway, pin the tweet about the giveaway so everyone who goes to your profile learns about the giveaway.
A tweet with your product. If you want to boost sales for one of your products, send out a tweet about that product and then pin it to the top of your feed. Everyone who sees your feed will then see your product. When you pin a product tweet, make sure the product is a low-priced product that people would buy. The less expensive your product is, the more likely one of your followers is to buy it.
A tweet of your most popular blog post. Your most popular blog post is bound to get more attention if you pin it to the top of your feed. You may end up turning that blog post so popular that it generates 10% of your blog’s traffic because of the search engines.
A tweet of a news story. When there is a news story that is getting attention, pinning a tweet to the top of your profile will allow you to keep your followers updated without them having to scroll down to find the update. Doing this will encourage your followers to come back and visit your profile in the event that your pinned tweet changes based on how the news story develops.

Pinning tweets is a new advantage that we need to take advantage of so we can choose the tweets that get seen by the most people. What are your thoughts on pinning tweets? Do you have any additional tips on pinning tweets to get the best results? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

7 Things That Social Media Can Do For You

July 1, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

We all enjoy using our social networks. Some people use those social networks to talk with their friends, others use their social networks to keep in touch with famous peoples’ updates, and others use social networks to promote their blogs. Regardless of how you use social media, it is a powerful tool that can be used to build awareness for you and your brand. Here are 7 of the things that social media can do for you:

Boost your credibility. There are a lot of benefits to boosting your credibility. Growing your presence on your social networks is a great way to grow your credibility. The average person would rather go to the consultation session with the person who has 10,000 followers than the consultation session with the person who has 1,000 followers.
Gives you more opportunities. As you interact with more people, you will interact with more people who have opportunities. Some of the people you interact with may be organizing business summits that you can take a part in as a public speaker. As you grow your audience, you will eventually encounter people who will offer you opportunities.
More sales. Having a big audience on social media means more potential customers. Having your blog optimized is not enough to get more sales. People need to be visiting your blog in order for the optimized look to have any effect, and growing your presence on your social networks is a great way to build that audience who will want to buy your products.
Word of mouth marketing increases. The only way for word of mouth marketing to work is by people knowing about you. If you have a big audience on your social networks, more word of mouth takes place. Then, your audience grows because some of the people who heard about you will decide to follow you too.
You get to interact with customers anytime. In brick and mortar stores, the customer buys a product, leaves, and the people in the store can’t interact with that customer until he/she comes back. Social media is different. You can interact with your customers at anytime to ask how they like your product, if they would like to leave a review, and if you can help them utilize your product along the way. Social media allows you to have efficient customer service, and having a big audience of customers who are asking questions will further establish that you are great at customer service (potential customers will love this).
Boost your blog’s traffic. If you are looking for a way to get more traffic, then look no further than building your social media audience. Although it is necessary for long-term success, SEO is overrated. It is your social networks that will generate a bulk of your audience, and as your social media traffic grows, your search engine traffic will also grow.
Bragging rights. Don’t take bragging rights the wrong way. Most people think of the bad version of bragging rights that goes along these lines, “I have 100,000 followers on Pinterest. I’m super cool, and you’re not.” That is a bad way to brag about a big accomplishment. The ideal way to use bragging rights is just to mention them. Just saying that you have 100,000 Pinterest followers will get some gasps from the audience. Bragging rights can be powerful, if used responsibly.

Social media is the most powerful tool on the web to build an audience and your presence on the web. As you grow your presence, you will gain all seven things on this list. What are your thoughts about the list? Does social media do something for you that was not mentioned on this list? Please share your thoughts below.

5 Ways To Think Of More Blog Posts To Write

July 1, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Writing Blog Posts

There are some days as bloggers when we feel powerful and have the ability to constantly think of ideas and write about them. There are other times when writing a blog post feels impossible not because of the writing aspect, but because we don’t know what we want to write about. There are plenty of topics to choose from, but as we write more blog posts, we avoid writing a blog post that sounds identical to a blog post that already got published on the blog. Although thinking of content to write about has its challenges, it is important to get through that challenge by all means necessary so we are able to write more content and publish blog posts at a consistent rate. Here are the 5 ways to do that.

Create knock-offs of your older blog posts. If you wrote a blog post that contains 100 tips, you can go more into detail about 10 of those tips on one of your blog posts and repeat that 9 more times.
Go back to your first few blog posts. Chances are those first few blog posts are really bad, and you have no idea why they are on your blog. There will be plenty of ideas in those older blog posts that you wished you portrayed more clearly or were able to include links to your other blog posts. Now you have the opportunity to expand on the topics you wish you went more into depth about. You can write blog posts related to one of your first blog posts. Although that first blog post may still be decent (or really bad), you have the ability to write another blog post and redeem yourself at the same time.
Watch videos and read blog posts related to your niche. Some of the concepts in videos and blog posts that you listen to and read can turn into your future blog posts. You may be amazed by what someone wrote or said, and you will combine your knowledge with their knowledge to write a blog post.
Take a break from the computer. When you are on the computer, there is a constant desire to be able to write and work (or procrastinate instead). Taking a break from the computer eliminates that element and gives you more time to think of topics to write about.
Read books. Blog posts are good, but if you read the right book, it is going to be more beneficial. The right books have a plethora of topics that you can write about for your future blog posts. In addition, reading more books will make you a better writer.

By easily being able to find ideas for your blog posts, you will be able to write at a faster rate, have more blog posts scheduled into the future, and increase the likelihood that your blog posts are quality content. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Why It’s Good To Unselfishly Give Away Valuable Information

June 30, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Giving Valuable Information Away

There are some blogs with over 1 million words of quality content. There are also some people who have uploaded thousands of minutes of videos on YouTube. Free information has become more accessible than ever, but some people wonder if offering valuable information for free is a good thing. Some people believe that they should provide decent information for free and then provide the valuable information in their paid products.

However, it is more important than ever for us to give our readers valuable information for free. There are numerous blogs that already give quality information for free. These blogs have set the standards for their niche. If bloggers are not able to deliver as much valuable information for free as the top blogs do, then those bloggers will not be able to keep up.

The most visited blog posts in your niche are the ones that provide the most value. Most of the blog posts on Google’s first page have well over 1,000 words of content. These blog posts also have good pictures that further support the main point of that blog post. The reason the most valuable blog posts get visited the most is because people are looking for value, not for something that anyone could have written. It sounds so simple, but it was worth mentioning.

When it comes to your paid products, people see your paid products as products that are slightly better than your free content. If your free content is really bad, then your potential customers will only think that your paid product is slightly better. In this case, slightly better is not good enough to get the sale. Even if your product goes well beyond expectations and is much better than the free content you provide, your potential customers will only believe that your products are only slightly better than your free content.

If your free content provides value to the reader, then that reader will be more likely to buy your product. In this case, your slightly better product translates to the potential customer as something that is an incredible necessity. Some people can’t even imagine you writing better content than you are already writing, but your products tell people that there is better content of yours available–at a price. In this case, unselfishly giving away a lot of valuable information leads to more sales for the products that you already have.

Some of the valuable information you have can be given out for free, but only if people give you their email addresses. By offering a free prize that people will love, you will get more blog subscribers. Even if it takes you an entire hour to come up with your free prize, hundreds and eventually thousands of people will thank you for offering that free prize. The people who receive your free prize will be more likely to buy your products and eventually become returning customers.

In addition to getting more sales, there is another benefit of unselfishly giving people valuable content for free. Offering valuable content for free will allow you to establish a presence on the web and get more traffic. Creating a blog where you give people valuable content allows you to give yourself a home on the web. Giving yourself a home on the web is one of the most important way to build long-lasting connections with potential customers who may end up buying one of your products (and come back for more).

Getting more traffic will allow you to become more popular, and as you optimize your blog, you will also be able to turn more of that traffic into sales. You can’t make more money unless people know about you, and offering valuable content for free is a great way to get more people to know about you. Some free content is so valuable that it has gone viral. It seems as if any free eBook Seth Godin writes goes viral. That’s because they are filled with free, valuable content that everyone in the marketing niche wants.

You may be thinking of ways to shorten your blog posts so you are not giving everything away. You may decide to only mention five tips instead of ten tips not because you only know five tips, but because you don’t want everyone else to know about the other five. Chances are someone already wrote a blog post similar to yours, and your tip that you think is a secret is really on someone’s blog post. People either think of ideas and strategies similar to yours or what you think is a secret about your niche is something that is well-known throughout your niche.

And now the big question comes up. Do you give everything away on your blog? Do you tell someone everything that you know about your niche? The answer is to tell people 80% of what you know about your niche. You can tell someone that much information about your niche for free and still make a lot of sales. The reason is that although the content on a blog is very focused, the content in a book or a training course is super focused. There are multiple topics that I write about on this blog. I touch upon social media, blogging, productivity, business, marketing, motivation, and a few other things as well. However, books and training courses are super focused on one of those topics and give you a strategy and order to implement everything.

If you are on the right pace towards becoming successful in your niche, then you are learning new things about your niche every day you can. That way, the definition of giving away everything changes every day. Everything becomes more as the days go by. You will have more valuable information to share with everyone, and that will only make the products you sell look a lot better.

The last big issue people have is that potential customers may look at your blog posts instead of buying your products. That’s exactly what you want the customer to do…and think that they are doing. As the potential customer visits your blog more often and sees your products on the sidebar, that customer will be gradually tempted each time they visit your blog to buy your products. I have said this numerous times, but it’s worth mentioning yet again that trust is built by being seen frequently. Your trust your best friend more than an acquaintance simply because you have seen one person more than the other. As potential customers stay on your blog for a longer period of time, they will finally decide that although your blog is incredible, the product must be more incredible. In order for you to make a lot of sales even though you are giving away valuable information for free, your product needs to be organized and represent an idea in a powerful way. That is how you will be able to nail the sale even when people can go on your blog to learn more about their niche.

In conclusion, unselfishly giving away valuable information for free is critical towards success. Chances are before you became successful in your niche, you read several articles on the web that contained valuable information. In fact, you still probably do that, and if you are not successful in your niche yet, reading articles with valuable information about your niche is a good starting point. Most people believe that a paid product is better than something for free. You get more features on a membership site if you give the owner of that membership site more money every month. HootSuite is a great, free tool, but when you use the paid version, you get more features. Paid products are associated as upgraded versions of what is already free. By providing free, valuable content for your readers, those readers will associate your paid products as enhancements of something that is already good.

8 Ways To Make More Money As A Consultant

June 30, 2014 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

Consultation Session

I have been exploring more ways to make money through my expertise. There are plenty to choose from such as creating training courses, writing books, and other options as well. However, I recently tapped into another source of income that has many benefits: consulting others. You get to charge an hourly rate, and as you get more people, you will become more successful. However, many people who say they are consultants struggle to make a respectable revenue from their job. While some consultants make thousands of dollars every month, others are struggling to get 1 person to consult with every month. In order to make more money as a consultant, follow these 8 tips.

Charge more for your consultations. This one seems like a no-brainer, but it is this kind of attitude towards this method that prevents people from getting better results. Think about it this way. Consultant A charges $50 per 1 hour consultation and gets 6 people every month for an hour each. Consultant B charges $100 per hour and gets 3 people every month for an hour each. Consultant A got more clients than Consultant B, but Consultant B was able to make the same amount of money as Consultant A by only spending three hours talking to clients instead of six. You have three extra hours to do things that will boost your credibility.
Boost your credibility. There are many consultants that clients can choose. They are only going to choose the consultants who are the most credible or charge the lowest price. If you want to turn consulting into a full-time income or at least five figures every year while living a comfortable lifestyle where you are in control of most of your schedule, do not rely on lower prices. Lowering your prices will result in too many clients and divide your time into too many segments amongst each client (which results in less quality).
Ask for the money up front. Many consultants make the mistake of asking for the money at the end of the consultation. That’s when some clients decide to call it quits and act as if they never heard of you before. This results in many consultants chasing their clients around for the money those consultants deserve. It’s like the teacher in elementary school chasing students around for homework. That doesn’t happen in as many middle schools or high schools, and it almost never happens in college. What encourages students to hand in their homework (even when late) is avoiding the F. However, your client does not have that reason to give you the money. That’s why you need to ask for the money up front instead of having battles with some of your clients so you can make your money. If you have good credibility, clients will be more willing to pay up front before the consultation.
Only be a consultant for specific aspects of your niche that you are good at. If you know how to come up with an Instagram strategy, but you don’t know how to come up a GooglePlus strategy, then both do not belong. Only be a consultant for the specific aspects of your niche that you can do a good job at. This will encourage more returning clients.
Make the consultation process smoother. If you get the money up front, it will be easier for you to create reports for your clients. The fear of sending a report that normally costs $100 won’t bother you anymore because you already got the money. In addition, you want to know about the person before you do the consultation. If you spend 10 minutes in the consultation catching up with the person and that person’s goals, then that person will feel as if he/she is wasting money at your consultations. What you need to do is provide a questionnaire for all of your paying clients that consists of 5-10 questions. This process will make you more prepared for the consultation and allow your clients to get their money’s worth. This process will entice people to pay you up front the first time and then become returning customers later on.
Offer a discount for returning clients. You can tell your clients that if they do two of your consultations then they get the third one 50% off. If you price your consultation sessions correctly, you will be still be able to make more revenue with the 50% discount. In addition, some of your clients will have a 4th and 5th consultation with you just to take advantage of the 50% deal again (and to learn, of course). This discount will look attractive to potential clients, and you will be able to develop strong connections with the people you consult with three or more times.
Give your clients an enticing but unexpected free prize. When a client is consulting with you, you have their undivided attention. Clients are not going to be surfing the web, reading through emails, or checking what time The Big Bang Theory is on tonight. They are only going to be paying attention to what you are saying to them. Since you have their attention (and an extra $100 or so), you can spend some of that money on your client. Tell your client that you are really proud of him/her for sticking with the consultation and showing up, and for that you will ship over a free copy of one of your books at no additional cost and you just need their address. You must be sure to promise that the address will never get shared. No one would like for their address to get posted online, especially Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg. Most clients will give you their address on those conditions and be happy to get the free product. Sending a free copy of your book gives you a distinct advantage because you are able to sign the book and leave a personal note. That personal note can further congratulate the person for showing up to your consultation and ask that person to leave an honest review for your book on Amazon. Now you client is more likely to become a returning client and your book gets another review with one transaction. The best part is that you will still have a good amount of money left over if you price your consultation sessions right.
Tell your clients in advance that you will record the consultation. For all forms of consultation, you have the option to record an audio version of the consultation. All you need to do is have a smartphone and record an audio when the consultation starts. If you have a computer, the audio still works, but you also have the option of recording your computer’s screen. No matter how you record the consultation, this will mean your client won’t have to waste time taking notes and instead will be able to focus more of their attention on you (which in most cases results in a returning client, or at least a client who is going to leave a good testimonial).

Getting clients to go to your consultation sessions is important. However, you also want to make as much money as possible with your consultation sessions. Those are 8 ways that you can make more money as a consultant and reach 5 figures every year from consulting. If you are not there already, it is possible for you to get there by following these tactics in less than a year. A big part of your success as a consultant depends on your credibility. You may not want to have consultation sessions right now (I didn’t for a while), but it is still important for anything that you do to boost your credibility and become an expert in your niche.

What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips on making more money as a consultant? Please share your thoughts and advice below.