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Why Personal Responsibility Is Powerful

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Personal Responsibility

Someone can tell you what to do and give you all of the methods. That’s what bloggers like myself do. Bloggers give their readers different methods that they can implement. However, there is a level of responsibility that is required by any individual in order to see the desirable results come in. In order to become successful, you need to be good at being responsible.

Learning different methods to get more followers on Twitter is great. It’s what happens after that person learns about getting more Twitter followers that determines the level of responsibility that individual has. Learning how to get more book sales, how to get more repins on Pinterest, and how to get more blog traffic is great. The level of your personal responsibility determines whether you are likely to implement the tactics to see the desirable results or not.

It is possible to lead a horse to water, but it is not possible to make the horse drink the water. This is where personal responsibility comes into play. After seeing how other people become successful, it is up to you to implement those tactics so you can become successful. No one is going to do this for you. You have to take sole responsibility for your goals and vision.

If you want your dreams to come true, then you need to take responsibility for your own success. You are the person who decides whether you will become successful or not. The amount of work you put in and what you do when you are putting in the work determines how likely you are to become successful. Personal responsibility gives you the mindset that allows you to get this work accomplished and achieve your dreams.

Like most of the mindset components that are important for success, personal responsibility is something that we all want to ignore. It’s easier to come up with an excuse and not do anything. It’s also easier to give up on dreams and work at a survival job because, “there’s no other option.” That’s a classic excuse. There are many components that make up success, but personal responsibility is the steering wheel. No matter how fully equipped your car is, it doesn’t go anywhere without the steering wheel.

What are your thoughts on personal responsibility?

Mortality As A Motivational Tool

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End Of The Road

Everyone is looking for a source of motivation. Some people look for motivation in the music they listen, the books they read, and the inspirational quotes they get from the Forbes list. However, few people are able to keep the motivation they get from the songs and quotes they read and listen to on the internet. In order to gain and keep motivation, you need to think of a bigger picture that will almost force you to accomplish your dreams. It’s very easy to think of, but for most people, it will also be very scary. This kind of motivation is your own mortality.

Although not everyone agrees about where you go once time is up, it is agreed upon that we are by no means immortal. Many people want to think that they will live forever and only pursue dreams at an old age when they seem almost impossible to reach. Although there are success stories such as the one of 65-year-old Colonel Sanders founding KFC, most people give up on their dreams and do not get their goals accomplished at this age. Unfortunately, this occurrence is too common in every age group. Fewer people are pursuing their own dreams because they lack the motivation to do so.

I get my sources of motivation just like anyone else. I have an inspirational quotes app on my iPhone, watch some of Tony Robbins’ videos, and read success stories about people in my niche who make six figures every year. Then came a new way for me to gain motivation–thinking about my own mortality. In my opinion, one of the few problems (depending on how you look at it) technology will not be able to fix is our mortality. Technology has made us live longer and can make us live even longer, but immortality is out of the question.

If someone came up to me and told me about the motivational “secret weapon”, I would be very objective when I heard that the “secret weapon” was thinking about mortality. It’s scary and makes us realize that we don’t live forever. However, the person who used his own mortality as a source of motivation was the leader of a generation, Steve Jobs. I could go on about how he got kicked out of Apple and then ended up saving the day while doing other cool things along the way, but it is more important to realize what motivated him throughout his life. Some of the years he lived were very tough. He was adopted, dropped out of college because his family couldn’t afford it, and right when Apple started to become successful, Steve Jobs got fired. The difficulties he faced and his perseverance alone are incredible. Even when he became successful and regained his position as Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs continued to be innovative. The motivation behind his desire to do so much in his life was his own mortality.

His belief in using mortality as a motivational tool towards success was reflected upon in one of his most famous inspirational quotes, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

We all have an effect on the people around us, and some of us have an effect on people on a global scale. Steve Jobs had an effect on people in California, New York, Europe, and everywhere else in the world. When most people think of Steve Jobs, they think of the visionary that transformed Apple. There are also people throughout history who are remembered for bad reputations and villainous acts. People will remember you for how you lived your life and what you did while you were here.

You may have a bucket list of all of the goals you want to accomplish. You may have the list of 100 places you want to visit before you die. You may want to make $1 million every month so you will be able to live a life without financial worries. You may want to become a bestselling author because it is something you strive for. You may want to run the mile in under four minutes for the glory of doing so. You may want to become successful at a faster rate and start moving instead of staying where you currently are.

We all want to accomplish many things in our lifetimes. However, we only have so much time to accomplish all of the things that we need to accomplish. There are more valuable things we can be doing with our times than watching 32 hours of TV every week. Time gets lost this way; time that you can never get back. Having efficient time management is one part of the puzzle, but a strong motivation the other part of the puzzle.

That motivation, the other piece of the puzzle, is thinking of your own mortality.

It’s something very scary. It’s something that few people ever want to think about. There are so many things uncertain about what happens when mortality creeps in. We have no clear idea of what happens after this stage and are forever left guessing until the time comes. However, there are events in your life that you can control. You may not be living the ideal life right now, but you can change that. Whether you are a stay at home mom trying to bring in more revenue, someone who works at three different jobs, or someone who gets fired too often, there is always enough time to change your life and fulfill your dreams. Colonel Sanders started KFC at 65 years old and got to live to be 90. He did not let the life he lived earlier prevent him from pursuing and eventually fulfilling his dream. Now we remember Colonel Sanders as someone who stayed true to his dream and never gave up on it, not someone who gave up on his life and stopped trying.

The leader of an entire generation used his mortality as a motivational tool to be very productive and accomplish his dream in a predicament where most people would have given up. Although avoiding the thought of mortality at all costs is the easier option, it may be the motivation you need to realize your time is so valuable and you only have so much of it in your lifetime.

 

8 Ways To Get More Revines On Vine

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vine logo

Vine is a social network on the rise with over 40 million users. Vine will continue growing, but in order to take advantage of Vine’s growth, your content needs to spread. Some people have gone viral on Vine while others struggle to get one person to revine their Vine. Getting more revines is super important towards you going viral on Vine and gaining hundreds of followers every day. In order to get more revines on Vine, follow these 8 tips:

  1. Get more followers on Vine. In order to get more revines, people need to know about you. By building your following, you will build an audience of people who will be more likely to revine your videos. I wrote an entire blog post that goes more into detail about how you can get more followers on Vine.
  2. Post content that people would want to revine. Your followers are not going to revine a six second video of a torn up couch. Ask yourself if your friends would revine what you are putting up. If they wouldn’t revine what you posted on Vine, then few people will.
  3. Revine other people’s videos. In order to get more revines for your videos, you need to revine other people’s videos. Some of these people will revine you back while other people will revine you so they get a revine back.
  4. Have a giveaway. If you give away a $25 Amazon Gift Card to one person who revines your video, then most of your followers will come by and revine your video. Who here doesn’t want a $25 Amazon Gift Card?
  5. Use your other social networks to promote your videos on Vine. If you already established a strong presence on one of your social networks, don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Use your strong following on one of your social networks to get some awareness for another social network.
  6. Get some of your friends on Vine. If you are in each other’s videos, then if one friend goes viral, then you all go viral. In addition, you will be able to revine each other and then get more revines from your followers.
  7. Vine every day. If you post one video to Vine every day, your revine rate will go up. Better yet, try posting two videos on Vine every day. It only takes six seconds to create a video (unless you are doing stunts and need retakes).
  8. Don’t give in. You may not a substantial difference in the amount of revines you get within a few days or weeks. However, you will eventually see a big difference in the number of revines you get. By not giving in, you will be able to see the big change happen.

Those are 8 ways to get more revines on Vine. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional methods you use to get more revines? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

How To Go And Stay Viral With Circular Viralocity

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Going viral is the dream that many entrepreneurs, authors, and others have. It is an experience that allows you to get in touch with hundreds of thousands of people, possibly make a lot of money, and spread the word about your brand. Virality allows you to go from another person on the web to an international sensation. Then, you get to become a case study for others, and everyone will be asking you how you went viral.

You will get a lot more attention for going viral. However, there are some people who go viral only for a short amount of time. These people do go viral and bring their YouTube videos up to 100,000 views or make five times as much month on the day it went viral. However, after a few months go by, the next big thing is already here. At this time, someone else went viral, and the people who went viral a few months ago become long forgotten. One viral tweet was the one when the teacher would cancel the exam if the tweet got retweeted 15,000 times. There are other tweets that also went viral so no one wouldh have to take the final. However, those viral posts and others before them are now long forgotten.

Is viral marketing a one hit wonder? Does viral marketing result in a dramatic increase in sales, but then sales go back to normal once virality is lost? Some people are able to keep their virality long after they start going viral. There are many strategies to prolong the amount of time a YouTube video or a Facebook posts stays viral. However, these strategies do not keep virality forever. Keeping virality seemed hopeless, at least it seemed hopeless until Brendon Burchard came up with his theory, Circular Viralocity.

According to Burchard, Circular Viralocity is, “A crazy simple and effective strategy for posting and reposing specific archetypes of content on specific platforms at specific times with specific links and specific directives.” The only problem with the theory is that you could only learn about implementing this theory by buying a $1,997 training course or going to his $10,000 event in California (he gave some tickets away for free to people who signed up to his membership sites and training courses, but getting the ticket to fly to California still costs a lot for the people who do not live nearby). I did not feel like paying $1,997 or going to the event.

My solution was trying to discover the methods on my own that Burchard uses to implement Circular Viralocity. Since implementing the tactic, Burchard was able to get hundreds of thousands of extra likes on his Facebook Page. In addition, his newest YouTube videos have been viewed over 100,000 times each while most of his videos before that rarely went over 50,000 views. The results were obviously there, and the only thing stopping me from implementing Circular Viralocity was identifying how it worked.

The first place I decided to investigate was Brendon Burchard’s Facebook Page. Prior to watching his video about Circular Viralocity, my Facebook Page had under 100 likes, and I wanted to build my presence on Facebook. Most of his Facebook posts are motivational and get thousands of likes. Those are the kinds of results that we would all like to have.

While looking through his Facebook posts, I noticed a pattern. He would say something very motivational and then offer complementary content at the end of the post. That complementary content turned out to either be one of Burchard’s YouTube videos (one of the videos that got over 100,000 views), a link to one of his blog posts, or a link to Burchard’s free email opt-in box that promotes his membership site, High Performance Academy. This part of Circular Viralocity is the easy-to-understand part that most people implement. They use their social networks to get more YouTube views and blog traffic.

Most of Burchard’s blog posts start off with one of his YouTube videos. By clicking on and watching the YouTube video, that counts as another view on YouTube. There is text directly below the video that allows visitors to read what gets said in the video, or the text contains a powerful story. Burchard’s blog is a Tumblr blog which means visitors can reblog (Tumblr’s version of a retweet) or like his content. In addition, it is hard to ignore the follow button at the right corner. Right next to the follow button are links to Burchard’s Facebook Page and Twitter account.

Now let’s say you clicked on the link to one of Burchard’s YouTube videos. At the very beginning of the video’s description, Burchard promotes his Facebook Page, blog, podcast, and free book. This part of Circular Viralocity quickly became obvious, and the name gave it away. When you implement Circular Viralocity, if one social network or product goes viral, then they all go viral.

Here is the condensed summary:

  1. Burchard’s Facebook Page promotes his YouTube videos, podcast, email opt-in box for High Performance Academy, and blog.
  2. Burchard’s blog promotes his Facebook Page, Twitter account, YouTube videos, podcast, and email optin box for High Performance Academy.
  3. Burchard’s YouTube video descriptions promote his Facebook Page, podcast, blog, and email optin box for High Performance Academy.

That means if you see Brendan Burchard once, chances are you will see him a lot for the next 30 minutes. After you connect all of your social networks together, the next thing you need to do is post the archetypes of content that your targeted audience likes. For Burchard, that means motivational videos, and his YouTube videos that brought in over 100,000 views were motivational. In addition, most of Burchard’s posts are motivational quotes with a few paragraphs explaining that quote. This is the recurring archetype that Burchard uses to get over 10,000 Facebook likes every day.

The next part of Circular Viralocity is posting your content at the right time. Posting on Facebook at 6 am and posting on Pinterest at 6 am are two very different things. In order to find the ideal time for you to post new content, you need to figure out when your audience is on Facebook the most. Track your results and repost content so you can determine when most of your audience is on Facebook, Pinterest, and other social networks as well.

The specific links are the ones that relate to the message of your post but then lead the reader to your other content (i.e. A video or blog post). You need to make sure that the content you are introducing them to is free so you keep their attention for a longer period of time. If you wrote an inspirational post about conquering fear, the YouTube video you link to should be about conquering fear. Connect the themes of your content together with what you post on your social networks.

The last part of Circular Viralocity is giving your readers specific directives. Write posts that give the readers the right actions to do. Saying anything like, “Click this” is not the right type of action. For an inspirational post about conquering fear, a good action would be something like, “Shove fear into the very back of your mind by envisioning yourself as the most successful person in your niche.” That’s a good action to perform, and when you add the complementary video or blog post at the end of your Facebook post, more people will be inclined to click on the link.

And that’s how you master circular viralocity. After you connect your social networks, blog, and YouTube channel together, you need to focus on certain themes and have those themes reappear throughout your social media posts, blog posts, and videos.

What are your thoughts on Circular Viralocity?

 

Don’t Change At The Cost Of Losing What Makes You Unique

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uniqueStand Out

When my blog surpassed the 100,000 annual visitors milestone, I wanted to make drastic changes so I could turn 100,000 annual visitors into 100,000 monthly visitors. There is no limit to how much a blog can grow, and even the people who are getting 100,000 daily visitors are still looking for ways to get more traffic. The more of traffic we have, the better.

However, one of the drastic changes I was going to make was only publishing 1 blog post every day. This part of the strategy was that I would be able to write a 1,000 word blog post, and by having longer blog posts, I would rank higher on Google’s search engine. Therefore, I would be able to get more traffic from SEO than ever before.

The problem was that writing these blog posts took a lot of time, and I also felt uncomfortable thinking about the blog post I would have to eventually send out telling everyone that I would not be able to publish two blog posts every day. Being able to publish two blog posts every day is something that few people are able to do. It is one of the characteristics that makes this blog unique, and when I realized that, I wasn’t going to take it away by only publishing 1 blog post every day.

My blog posts are simple and to the point. That’s how I like writing them and that is how I will continue to write them. There will be some longer blog posts slipped in every once in a while, but for the most part, everything is going to remain the same. Once you become remarkable in a certain area by performing a certain activity that few people do (or no one at all), it is important to continue performing that certain activity. That’s the decision I made when I decided that I would continue publishing two blog posts every day.

What are your thoughts on becoming remarkable and remaining remarkable without changing what allowed you to become remarkable in the first place? Do you have any stories of your own? Please share your thoughts below.

 

Does The Length Of A Blog Post Matter For Search Engines

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blog post length

A while ago, I wrote a blog post about whether the length of a blog post mattered or not. When I wrote that blog post, I looked at it from the perspective of how long it takes to relay the message. While there are some long blog posts out there, some blog posts can relay the same message in a few sentences. Seth Godin’s Polishing Junk post is a perfect example of how you can relay the same message in a few sentences.

However, the length of a blog post does have an impact on the search engines. Most of the top blog posts on search engines are over 1,000 words long. You are not getting as much traffic as you could be getting if you stopped at 500 words. You’re not even getting as much traffic as you could be getting if you stopped at 900 words. Although there is no golden number, the data suggests that you should write 1,000 words or more for all of your blog posts.

According to serpIQ, the Top 10 blog posts that appeared on search engines for certain keywords (serpIQ tested over 20,000 keywords) had over 2,000 words. Coincidentally, some of the most successful blogs have posts that are over 2,000 words. One of the first blog posts that appears when you search “blogging tips” is Buffer’s 16 Top Tips From Blogging Experts From Beginners. The blog post was over 2,000 words long, and most of Buffer’s blog posts tend to be that long. Although the Buffer App helps out with this, the site has an Alexa Rank under 2,000. In addition, that blog post was shared over  4,000 times on different social networks (over 2,000 times on Twitter alone).

You may be wondering at this point how you can add more meat to your blog posts. Chances are you want to write 1,000 word blog posts so your traffic numbers go up.

Writing longer blog posts has another advantage. If you write longer blog posts, your visitors will stay on your blog for a longer period of time. According to Alexa, the average visitor stays on Quick Sprout for 3 minutes and 29 seconds, and the average visitor stays on Buffer for 4 minutes and 6 seconds. These two blogs have numerous blog posts that are all 2,000 or more words long. It takes more than two minutes for most people to read a blog post with 2,000 or more words. As more people stay on your blog, your sidebar will get more attention. If you have an effective sidebar with the right widgets, people will stay on your blog longer. When people stay on your blog longer, they will also be more likely to subscribe to your blog and buy one of your products.

One of the easiest ways to add more meat to your blog posts is by submitting queries on HARO related to your blog posts. Instead of writing down 10 tips, have 10 different people each explain 1 tip in great detail. Then, add all of those people’s explanations in your blog post. It saves you time because most of the content is already provided for you, and you are able to publish a blog post with 1,000 or more words.

As you write more content, it will be easier for you to write 1,000 words in your blog posts. I got comfortable with writing two blog posts every day which made it easier for me to write one 1,000 word blog post every day. The best way to get better at anything, especially writing, is with practice.

Another option you have to write longer blog posts is by doing your own research. For this blog post, I did research to identify how writing longer blog posts has an impact on the search engines. Adding research allowed me to go more in depth with statistics instead of me just saying, “Longer blog posts do better in search engines.” Doing the research allows you to further clarify why what you are saying is true and why your visitors need to implement these tactics now.

Although you may want to write blog posts that are 1,000 words each, avoid rambling at all costs. It is possible to write a 1,000 word blog post in just 500 words, and it is possible to write a blog post shorter than 500 words that gets the same point across. When you write long blog posts that are over 1,000 words, those blog posts need to contain quality, non-repetitive content. A big mistake many people make to get over 1,000 words in a blog post (or over 2,000) is writing the same sentence with different words over and over again until the blog post exceeds 1,000 words. Writing repetitive sentences does not help you in the search engines. Although writing longer blog posts does help, the rules of quality content still apply. Once you get someone to visit your blog and read your blog post, you want someone to stick around long enough to read the entire blog post. That means your blog post, from start to finish, needs to be really good.

Many bloggers are quick to get discouraged by looking at their current blog posts. To go from writing 250 words every day for your blog to writing 1,000 words every day for your blog is a big transition to make. However, there is a very easy way for any blogger to write 1,000 word blog posts. One of the biggest lies in blogging is that once you publish a blog post, no more new content can be added to that blog post. In reality, all you need to do to add more content to one of your blog posts is to go to your blog’s dashboard, go to the blog post, click edit, add more content, and then update the blog post. Just because the blog post you recently published has only 500 words does not mean you can’t bring that blog post up to 1,000 words by the end of the day. Not only is this an easy way to have more blog posts that are over 1,000 words long, but this will also give you the confidence you need to write more 1,000 word blog posts in the future.

Writing 1,000 word blog posts every day is a challenging task worth accomplishing. As you get better at writing more quality content faster, you may want to bump it up to 2,000 words per blog post. Writing an extra 500 words for your blog posts every day and adding 100 extra words to your existing blog posts every day can be the difference between getting 100 daily visitors from search engines versus getting thousands of daily visitors from search engines in the long-term.

What are your thoughts on writing longer blog posts to rank higher on the search engines?