Marc's Blog

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.

Are You Throwing Away Your Blog Traffic?

June 4, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

There are many bloggers who dream of getting hundreds of visitors on their blog every day. These people believe that getting these extra visitors will translate to more sales, more shares, and more subscribers. However, there are some people with hundreds of visitors who are not satisfied with their results. Even though these people took the time to grow their presence on the web, they are only getting 5 extra sales.

I noticed this problem for my books. I used to show all of my books on my blog’s sidebar, and when I did this, the links generated over 200 clicks every month. Alas, I only made two sales from those clicks. Having those pictures on my blog also made it slower (and hurt SEO). The people who clicked on the links left my blog, and I lost a visitor who could have possibly subscribed to my blog.

If people leave your blog to click on a link to one of your products or a link to one of your social networks, that traffic is being thrown away. Even if someone follows you on a social network, who knows when that person will see one of your social media posts. I do my best to make sure all of my followers see one of my tweets. However, if someone does not log in for an entire day, then there’s nothing I can do about it. The better option is to have people subscribe to your blog. It is better to have 1,000 subscribers than it is to have 1,000 followers. Subscribers get emailed every time a new blog post gets published, and who doesn’t check their email? Followers may not see all of your posts.

If you are getting someone to subscribe to your blog, you are not throwing away your traffic. If anything else occurs, traffic is being thrown away.

The big question you may have right now is how it is possible to still gain followers even though it is bad to have links that lead to your social media accounts. The solution is to have a button on your blog that will allow someone to follow you without leaving your blog. The button for my Twitter account allows anyone reading my blog to follow me without going on Twitter. All a reader has to do is click the button and that’s it. Not only do you make it easier for people to follow you on Twitter, but you also allow them to stay on your blog. Even if you have to make your social media buttons smaller to get the desired effect, it is more important to keep someone on your blog (and possibly get that person to subscribe) than it is to get another follower. 100 followers are not going to be the difference between your book becoming a bestseller, but 100 people on your email list (in some cases, big fans) who can get notified the moment your book comes out will be very likely to buy that book.

Getting someone to stay on your blog for an extra minute can be the difference between someone who subscribes to your blog and someone who walks away. Over the long-term, it can be the difference between getting a lot of sales and getting no sales at all.

11 Ways To Boost Your Klout Score

June 4, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Your Klout Score allows other people to know how influential you are on social networks. Since raising a Klout Score seems impossible, it is very easy to appreciate the people who have high Klout Scores. In addition, the people with higher Klout scores get more opportunities. The people who have a Klout Score of 80 get more public speaking opportunities than the people who have a Klout Score of 60. If they both wrote social media books, chances are the customer will buy the book from the person with the Klout Score of 80. Some jobs use Klout Score as a deciding factor of whether someone gets hired or not. Basically, your Klout Score is super important, and if you want to raise that Klout Score (highly recommended for anyone), here are 11 tips.

Connect more social networks to your Klout account. The more social networks you connect to Klout, the higher your score goes up. Your influence is not an average of your social networks. It is an accumulation of your social networks.
Interact with your followers. If you do not have a lot of conversations with your followers, don’t wait for someone to start the conversation. You need to start the conversations you have with your followers. That way, more of these people will interact with you and possibly favorite/retweet your tweets.
Post content that people would want to share. The amount of times your content gets shared has a big impact on how high your Klout score goes. Instead of posting random content that few people would want to share, only post the type of content that you know your targeted followers would share.
Post content more frequently. If you send out a tweet at 3 pm, and your followers go on Twitter at 3:05 pm, then you’re out of luck. By posting content more frequently, more of your followers will be able to see your tweets. This will also boost your chances of getting a retweet.
Post more pictures. Pictures have been proven to increase interaction on social networks. Some of the pictures you post may get shared five times more than your posts without pictures.
Use Twitter’s new design to pin one of your tweets to the top of your profile page. Have you ever had the tweet that got retweeted 20 times, but as you tweet more often, the tweet that once got 20 retweets was then forgotten? Twitter’s new design allows you to pin one of your tweets at the top of your profile. Even if you sent out a tweet a few years ago that got over 20 retweets, you can bring that tweet back to the top of your profile to keep it current.
Interact with your friends on Facebook. Not only will your friends like to talk with you on Facebook, but that also boosts your Klout Score. Friends will also be very likely to like your pictures.
Be omnipresent on all social networks. Remember that Klout calculates your score as an accumulation of your social networks. The more active you are on them, the more impact each of your social networks has on your Klout Score.
Share other people’s content. When you share someone else’s content, your followers will realize that the content you shared is really good (since it’s not your own and you were willing to share it).
Retweet, favorite, like, and share other people’s posts. These people will either return the favor or interact with you.
Look at your Klout Score statistics. Your Klout Score statistics will allow you to see when your score went up and when it went down. By looking at these statistics and remembering how you got the big increase or decrease, you will be able to identify what you need to do to boost your Klout Score and what you need to avoid so your Klout Score does not decrease.

Those are the 11 ways to boost your Klout Score. Although it may take a while before your Klout Score goes up by 20 or so, implementing these tactics will eventually allow you to get there. I used these tactics to become one of the Top 10% of all social media influencers. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice below and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

3 Overlooked Blogging Tips

June 3, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

overlooked

I have learned about and implemented a fair share of blogging tips. I wrote a blog post with 100 blogging tips. There are several blog posts on the web that also have their fair share of blogging tips. However, there are three particular tips that get overlooked. While implementing these tips has allowed several bloggers to get over 100,000 visitors every month, most people forget about, under appreciate, or don’t even know about these tips. These three tips get overlooked often, and now you have the opportunity to give them your undivided attention.

Write in a conversational tone. If you want to write better blog posts that get shared more often, you need to write in a conversational tone. You need to include “I” and “You” in your blog posts. The conversational tone will make the visitor feel good because you remembered that the visitor is also a human. In addition, but using “I” more often, your visitor will realize that a human wrote the blog post instead of a robot. Look at a blog post on this blog (like this one) that uses “I” and “You” often. Then imagine what would be different if those words were removed from that blog post.
Write more blog posts. While quality content is important, it is just as important to provide an abundance of content (another way of saying quantity). Writing more blog posts allows your blog to appear for more keywords. If you write a blog post about blogging tips and a blog post about social media tips, those are two different keywords that you blog can appear for. The more keywords your blog appears for, the more traffic your blog will get from search engines.
Use categories to organize your blog’s content. Out of all of these tips, this was the tip that I overlooked the most. You may be on this blog just for blogging tips and have no interest in the social media tips on this blog (for now). If you only wanted to read blog posts on blogging tips, you can go to the Blogging Tips Category and then read all of the blog posts that I put in that category. Categories allow you to specialize your content and give readers more of the information that they are looking for. By giving your visitor what he/she is looking for straight from the get-go, that visitor will stick around which reduces your blog’s bounce rate and moves your blog up on the search engines.

Those are the three blogging tips that often get overlooked. If you have been overlooking these blogging tips for a while, you need to implement them as soon as possible. Implementing these tips will definitely result in a very noticeable increase in traffic. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional suggestions? Please share your thoughts and tips below.