Marc's Blog

How To Go And Stay Viral With Circular Viralocity

June 7, 2014 by Marc Guberti 14 Comments

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:

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

June 7, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

unique Stand 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

June 6, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

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?

5 Things Your Blog Sidebar Needs To Have

June 6, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

blog sidebar

The sidebar is one of the most important parts of a blog. While people are reading your blog posts, something from your blog’s sidebar may catch the visitor’s eye. That’s exactly what needs to happen in order to get the best effect from the sidebar. However, not everything on your blog’s sidebar is going to get the right kind of attention. In order to get the right kind of attention from your blog’s sidebar, these are the five things that need to be on that sidebar.

Social media buttons. Using social media buttons allows people to know that you are on social networks. However, you want people to stay on your blog for as long as possible. If someone has to open a new tab, then that person is not likely to stay on your blog for long. People must be able to follow you on your social networks without leaving your blog. If you can do this, then you will also be likely to get more subscribers.
A picture of 1-3 of your products. Less is more. If you showcase all of your products on your sidebar, people are not going to pay attention. You have overwhelmed them. The best option is to only display 1-3 of your products. One of the products you display should also be priced at over $100 (ideally a training course or membership site). The logic being this is that products on the sidebar tend to get low conversion rates. When I displayed all of my books at the blog’s sidebar, the conversion rate averaged out to be just 2%. If you want to boost your conversion rate for all of your products, create pages on your blog for those products and videos as well.
The subscription box. There is nothing on your sidebar that is more important than the subscription box. The subscription box must appear on the top of your sidebar so people who visit your blog get to see it right when they enter the URL. Do not trust people to search for and eventually find the subscription box at the bottom of your blog. No one has enough time to do that. By making your subscription box more visible, more people will subscribe to your blog.
The search box. There will be some people who visit your blog who want to read specific blog posts. The search box will allow your visitors to find specific blog posts based on title and topic. Your search box should appear below your subscription box, and a picture (of you or your product) should separate them.
A picture of you. Including a picture of yourself on your sidebar builds authority. When people think of your name, they don’t think about your name’s spelling. Instead, they think of what you look like. Including your picture will allow more visitors to remember you.

Those are the 5 things that need to be on your sidebar. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional widgets that you use on your sidebar? Please share your thoughts and other widgets you use below.

7 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Blogging

June 5, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

In any niche, you will learn things that you wish you knew earlier. Although you can implement new methods in your niche right now, it can take several months or even a year for you to learn first hand which methods work and which ones don’t. As a new blogger, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. SEO seemed impossible, I was stuck at 1,667 followers, and I had no idea how to grow my traffic. Throughout my journey, I learned several things about blogging that I wish I knew about earlier. Out of all of those things, these were the seven that I wish I knew before I even started blogging.

The power of categories. Categories allow you to organize your content so readers can find what they are looking for faster. Categories also allow you to organize your content for your convenience. If you want to write a book about one of the topics you write blog posts about, you can go back to your categories and use your blog posts as inspiration. I found out about categories late in the game and had written over 800 uncategorized blog posts. I ended up categorizing all of those blog posts within 1 week, but categorizing that many blog posts in a short amount of time was not an enjoyable activity.
The way you use your social networks is important. Many articles emphasize the importance of having social networks. However, it is also important to utilize those social networks properly. You do not get found simply by joining Twitter. If that were the case, everyone would have 1 million followers. You get found by implementing your social networks properly. Luckily for you, I created the Twitter category and have other categories dedicated to social networks as well. It was more than a year late because I did not know about the power of categories, but it’s better late than never.
Quantity is just as important as quality. When I started to write two blog posts every day, I got more traffic. In addition, as this blog got older, blog posts accumulated over time. The blog with 800 blog posts has more visibility in the search engines than the blog with just 1 blog post. However, I am not telling you to write 800 blog posts in 1 day because it is very unlikely for anyone to write 800 quality blog posts in 1 day. Although it is a starting point, blogging once a week is not enough. You should be publishing 1 blog post every day.
Patience is a virtue. When I realized my blog was not going to be the overnight sensation I thought it would be, I was not happy. I would spend multiple hours every day on my blog and only get 5 visitors for the week. Even though there were other things I could have done as a teenager, I decided to stick with blogging. I knew that most bloggers got their success by being patient, but at the time, the thought of being patient simply frustrated me. Understand that the process of becoming a successful blogger takes time, but if you put in the time, you will become very successful.
Focus on one blog. Before I took blogging seriously, my topics were scattered all over the place. I had separate blogs for my dog, the Boston Red Sox, baseball news, Legos, Yugioh Cards, and others as well. As a result, my numbers got scattered. Some of these blogs got 10 visitors every week while others got 50 visitors every week. I believe that if these numbers were combined together into one blog, that blog would be very popular. That’s exactly what I did when I created this blog. I decided to abandon the other blogs so I could focus on this one. If you want to create multiple blogs, have people write guest posts on all of your blogs except one.
SEO is overrated. I spent countless hours learning about SEO expecting to get thousands of extra monthly visitors just 30 days after implementing the SEO tactics. While SEO is not a dud, it is more important to utilize your social networks. How you use your social networks also happens to have a big impact on SEO.
Email lists are super important. For multiple years, I thought that the most important thing to do was get more traffic. However, once you get that traffic, you need to keep those visitors on your site. In addition, you need to get first time visitor to visit your blog numerous times in the future. If you have a big email list, that means more people are getting notified about your new blog posts through email, and it seems as if everyone is checking their email these days.

Those are the seven things I wish I knew before I started blogging. What are your thoughts on the list? Is there anything else that you wish you knew before you started blogging? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

And if you are considering starting your first blog now, then you’ll find this guide to be very helpful.

Why Social Media Is Not Overrated

June 5, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

In an earlier blog post, I mentioned that 100 subscribers will get you much further than 100 followers. I also went into detail about why social media buttons on a blog are overrated. Does that mean social media is overrated? Not at all. I’ve written too many blog posts about social media, and the last thing I want to hear is that it’s overrated 🙂

Social Media is the most powerful tool out there to allow more people to know about your presence on the web. Most of my blog’s traffic comes from social networks (Twitter in particular), and most of my blog’s success is because of my social networks. As my social media traffic rose, my search engine traffic rose as well. It’s not a coincidence.

Here’s the point where some people will wonder why they can’t make their social media buttons as big as they want on their blogs. If you are optimizing your social networks properly, chances are that most of the people who are visiting your blog are already following you on one of your social networks. Instead of telling people about your other social networks, you can create a page that displays all of your social networks. When someone is on your home page, you need them to subscribe to your blog.

The entire point of social media is to allow you to get more traffic. When you get that traffic, you need to design your blog in a way that gives you an extra connection with your visitor. Buttons that allow people to follow you without leaving your blog or opening up a new tab is a great start. Having a big subscription box that pushes everything else to the bottom of your sidebar is another great way to get subscribers.

Once someone visits your blog from a social networks, what happens next? That is what will allow you to see the best impact on your blog’s numbers because of social media.