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How To Successfully Make A Connection With A Journalist On Twitter

May 12, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Journalism

Do you want to be on Forbes, The Huffington Post, or one of those other popular media outlets? The main way to get on big media outlets is by connecting with journalists on Twitter and having a remarkable story. There are some tips to help you out with your remarkable story, but in order to get noticed by the big media outlets, connecting with those journalists on Twitter is just as important as having the remarkable story.

There is a blueprint to use that will get a journalist’s attention. Once you have that journalist’s attention, then you can tell them about your story. Here’s what you need to do to get their attention:

Look for a journalist who is not overwhelmingly popular. The less followers a journalist has, the more likely that journalist is to interact with you. You should contact the journalist with 10,000 followers before you contact the journalist with 1 million followers. Even if the journalist who has 10,000 followers is not from your favorite media outlet, it is important to remember that news spreads. When my dog got in The Associated Press, she also went in newspapers like this one, that one, and a bunch of others as well.
Favorite and retweet the journalist’s articles. Only favorite and retweet articles that you actually like. If you like what the journalist writes, and the story relates to your niche or story, then that is the journalist who is likely to write about you (and the person who you want to have write about you). In addition, you can mention the journalist and tell the journalist that they wrote a good article.
Wait for the journalist to respond. Not all journalists respond, but when they do, you need to strengthen the connection. Once the journalist responds to you, then you have their attention.

After you have the journalist’s attention, you need to build on that attention and build it into a strong connection. Here are the steps you need to take in order to build the attention into a strong connection.

Thank the journalist for responding to your tweet the right way. Instead of saying, “Thank you for responding,” you should say something that tells the journalist that he/she is doing a good job on the web. A good response to start with would be, “I enjoy reading and sharing content like yours on the web.”
Continue the conversation by asking an ego boosting question. All you have to do at the end of the tweet is say, “How did you get started as a professional writer?” or something along those lines. When people talk about themselves, the same parts of the brain are triggered as when people talk about food or sex. If that journalist likes food and/or sex (who doesn’t like one, the other, or both), then that journalist will respond to your tweet. Many journalists do not hesitate to promote themselves when the opportunity comes. Asking the question gives them that opportunity.
Respond to that tweet and continue the conversation. There is no rubric for this step. Your response depends on how the journalist responds. The key to the connection working is that you have a lengthy conversation before you ask the journalist to write about you.
When to ask the question. After you get the conversation with the journalist, continue favoriting and retweeting that person’s tweets. That way, the journalist will not forget about you. If the journalist cannot forget about you, then you have won the hardest part of the battle. All you have to do is continue favoriting and retweeting the journalist’s tweets. After 2-4 weeks have gone by, ask the journalist the question. Say something like, “I do BLANK and was wondering if you would like to learn more.” In order to increase your likelihood of appearing in the newspaper, what you do needs to be related to what the journalist writes about.

You should repeat this process for multiple journalists. One of those journalists will say yes, and then it will only be a matter of time before other newspapers hear about you and write about your story. Once you make it in a newspaper for the first time, it progressively becomes easier to make it in others newspapers out there.

5 Ways To Build A Strong Reputation In Your Niche

May 12, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Business Reputation

The people who stand out in their niches are the ones with strong reputations. When we decide between two products, we look at the reputations of those products and the people who made them. The bestselling author gets more sales than the author who just started because the bestselling author has a stronger reputation. In order to build your reputation in your niche and stand out from the crowd, these are 5 things that you need to do.

Get on social networks, but that also means YouTube! Get on social networks has been shoved down our throats. We need the Twitter, the Facebook, the Google+, the Pinterest, and all of the other social networks as well. However, many people forget about YouTube. YouTube gives you a chance to shine because there is no skimming in a video. In a blog post, you can skim through the content. You can decide which content is important and which content can be skipped over. In a video, skimming is no longer an option which makes the viewer listen to and absorb more of your information. There are also some easy ways to look more professional on YouTube such as a buttoned shirt, better background, better lighting, and a bonus, having a white board behind you.
Appear on multiple places on the web. Whether you are a guest blogger or get interviewed, you need to appear on as many websites as possible. Tell people on your blog that you are available for interviews. Including that on your blog alone will encourage more people to interview you. Being a guest blogger will allow your content to reach a new audience that is similar to the audience that you already have. Being a guest blogger will emphasize that your content is good enough to be featured on other people’s blogs.
Write a paperback book and publish it to the world. Writing a paperback book means you were able to put enough ideas and concepts about your niche together to create a lengthy book. A lengthy book will tell your customers that you know a lot about your niche. As a result, your reputation in your niche will grow.
Be consistent and frequent. Posting on your social networks several times every day, publishing 1 YouTube video every week, and publishing 1 blog post every day will all build your reputation. Consistency and frequency put together will show people that you are putting in a lot of work and effort in your niche. People will have a greater appreciation for all of the things that you do. The more times people see you, the more likely they are to trust your products and services.
Boost your number of followers the right way. It’s easy to catch someone who bought fake followers. However, people will respect what you do if most of your followers are real. The people with strong reputations in their niches are the ones with thousands of real followers, and some of these people have over 100,000 real followers. By boosting your numbers the right way, you will be able to grow your audience of people who respect and admire you for what you do.

Those are the 5 ways to build your reputation in your niche. Although none of these methods can be applied successfully overnight, implementing these methods will have a long-term big impact on your reputation. What are your thoughts on the list? What advice do you have about building a reputation in your niche? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

10 Ways To Find Cool People To Follow On Twitter

May 11, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

In a social network with hundreds of millions of active users, some people find it very challenging to find the right people to follow in the big crowd. Many new users often get lost in Twitter’s search option as they look for people in their niche to follow. However, there are ways to find cool people to follow in the crowd of over 200 million active users. Here are 10 of those ways:

Search your niche’s keywords in Twitter’s search box. If you search for your niche’s keywords, you will be able to find the people who frequently tweet about your niche. After searching the keywords, Twitter will show you a list of people’s tweets about that niche with the top three accounts. On the top left corner is an option where you can display all of the accounts that tweet about your niche. By using this option, you will be able to see the best of the best in your niche. Those are the people who you should follow.
Use Twitter’s “Who To Follow” section. After following a few people in your niche, Twitter’s “Who To Follow” section will be filled with people who tweet about things related to your niche. By following the people on that list, Twitter will continue adding people to that list who tweet about things related to your niche.
Go outside of the niche. Outside of your niche is yourself. Who are the people that you admire? These people do not have to be in your niche. I have my favorite athletes, authors, and singers. Although these people do not necessarily tweet about things related to my niche, I follow these people on Twitter anyway because I like them.
Follow media outlets. The Huffington Post, Mashable, Tech Crunch and ABC News are four great media outlets worth following. There are several other media outlets that are worth following as well. Following these media outlets will allow you to keep up with the news and possibly learn about people who tweet about things related to your niche.
Follow the followers of someone in your niche with over 100,000 followers. Most of the social media experts will tell you to do this when you want to build a targeted following. However, implementing this strategy will also allow you to follow cool people. The people who you are following are people who are interested in your niche. You can have conversations with these people about your niche.
Follow guest bloggers who write blog posts about your niche. At either the beginning or end of every guest post is the name of the author. In many cases, clicking the author’s name will lead to a bio page where you will be able to see a link to that person’s Twitter account. After you get the link, follow that guest blogger. Then, tell him/her that you enjoyed reading their blog post. That’s how the conversation starts (and builds).
Look for social media icons on a blogger’s blog. All of my icons are located on the right sidebar of my blog. Many bloggers add their social media icons to their blogs so they can get more followers. If you like a blogger’s blog posts, you should click on the Twitter icon and follow that blogger. Then, start a conversation.
Follow motivational accounts. No matter what profession you are in, we can all use motivation. Out of all of the motivational accounts out there, in my opinion, @Sports_Greats sends out the most motivational tweets. The account has over 1 million to show for it.
Follow people who have a conversation with you. If someone has a conversation with you on any social network, chances are that the first conversation will not be the last one. In order to stay in touch with the person you are having a conversation with, you should follow that person. In addition, that person will be very likely to follow you back.
Look through tweets about trending topics. For certain trending topics, there are several tweets that will make you laugh. If someone’s tweet made you laugh, you should follow that person for more comedy. In fact, you should also follow your favorite comedian.

Although Twitter is a big place, it is not hard to find people worth following. There are over 200 million active users on Twitter, but somewhere in those 200 million active users are the active users who you need to follow as soon as possible. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you find people to follow through any other method? Please share your thoughts and tips below.

Why You Need To Respond To The People Who Comment On Your Blog

May 11, 2014 by Marc Guberti 12 Comments

blog comment

Why do you want more comments on your blog posts? Most bloggers want more comments on their blog posts to show that people interact on their blogs. Bloggers want conversations to get started on their blogs to indicate that their blog is popular. The most popular blogs also happen to have numerous comments on every blog post. It’s not a coincidence.

What most bloggers forget is that they can build conversations by simply responding to other people’s comments. Responding to someone else’s comment counts as a comment in the grand total. If you respond to 25 comments, people will see that your blog post has received 50 comments. That shows bustling activity and popularity: the two things that people look for in a blog.

Not only is responding to the people who comment on your blog a way to bring up the numbers, but responding to other people’s comments will allow you to further open discussion. By further opening the discussion, you will encourage more people to comment and possibly learn about things in your niche that you did not know about before. As you continue replying to comments and building your presence on the web, some people will write a good comment on your blog just to get your reply. There is a point when a blogger becomes so famous that a reply from that blogger means a lot.

Another benefit to responding to comments is your ability to build stronger connections. The advantage with WordPress (and many others) is that the person who comments must enter their email address. By requiring everyone who comments to enter their email address, you will be able to reply to those comments and send emails to those people. The people who commented on your blog will be very grateful that you took the time to send a personalized message, and that will allow the connection to build. A new connection can end up becoming a customer, subscriber, or better yet, a returning customer.

There are many benefits associated with replying to comments on your blog. Do you reply to the comments on your blog? If you leave a comment below, I will be sure to respond.

Why Knowing Your Target Audience Is Super Important

May 10, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Many people make the mistake as defining their target audience as anyone who is on Planet Earth or in outer space. By making their audience too big, these people are not able to zone in on their targeted audience–the people who care about and appreciate what these people do. Your targeted audience consists of the people who will buy your products, read your blog posts, and eventually become returning customers.

By knowing your target audience, you will be able to tap into the audience that cares the most about what you provide. People who care a lot about home and gardening products will not care as much about a blog about hotel marketing. Knowing your targeted audience allows you to create lists of people to interact with, build connections with, and turn into customers.

Since a targeted audience cares about what you do, they are more likely to tell their friends about you. As your blog and products spread through word of mouth, you will get more visitors and sales. Knowing your target audience is the starting point towards creating a strategy. Creating a strategy and then implementing that strategy is the starting point towards success.

Knowing your targeted audience will allow you to interact with the right people and make the right connections. The most successful social media power users are the ones who have built strong presences on various social networks with targeted followers. If you have not identified your targeted audience, then you need to do that right now. If you have already identified your targeted audience, then you are one step closer towards becoming very successful.

17 Ways To Write Attention-Grabbing Headlines

May 10, 2014 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

Attention Grabbing Headline

The most read blog posts are the ones with the best headlines. Your blog post could get more traffic just by making your blog post’s title something that grabs the reader’s attention. Most people who share blog posts on social networks use the headline to determine whether they should share a blog post on their social networks or not. These are the 17 ways to come up with attention-grabbing headlines.

Use a different language in the title. You have to be Spanish to know what consejos means. In one of my popular blog posts, I used this word to grab the reader’s attention. This method drew in the reader’s curiosity, but do not get carried away with this option.
Use action verbs in your title. Grab your reader’s attention right from the start by using action verbs in your headlines. You will probably not be able to do this for all of your blog posts, but when you can use action verbs, they help.
Offer something special. Among my most popular blog posts are 100 Amazing Blogging Tips and 100 Amazing Pinterest Tips. Offering 100 tips stands out from the competition. Your headline needs to tell people what extra, above and beyond information you are giving them.
Use better adjectives. Good is a boring, overused word. “5 Good Tips” is not the kind of headline that grabs attention. “5 Powerful Tips” is something that grabs your attention by emphasizing how valuable those tips are.
Make your headline either really long or really short. A short headline will make the reader curious. In this scenario, readers will wonder why you decided to write a short headline. A long headline will give the reader information about your blog post before they read the first sentence.
Have a strong topic sentence. The topic sentence is to further emphasize your headline and grab attention.
Include the NSA in your headline. This one never fails. With Heartbleed and corruption on the loose, millions of people want to know what is going on with the NSA (the not so secure agency). You may win a Pulitzer Prize while you’re at it.
Write a headline about a breaking news story. Everyone wants to know the news. That’s why there are trending topics on social networks.
Write a headline with the name of a famous person and connect it to your blog post. A blog post called “How To Become As Dedicated As Mariano Rivera” would get more attention than a blog post called “How To Get More Dedication.” When you use this method, everything you say needs to be true (then again, that is always the case).
Use words that have been hardwired to get people’s attention. MONEY, FOOD, and SEX. I’m sure those words popped right out of your screen.
Look at the pros. The people who are making a living off of their blogs are the ones who typically master writing good headlines.
Use bigger words. Effective is a bigger word than good.
Occasionally use words people do not know the meanings of. Don’t go Shakespeare on us, but for 5-10% of your blog posts, you should use words that people do not know the definitions of. In order for this to work, you need to define the word within the first 5 sentences of your blog post.
Be controversial. What are your thoughts about President Obama, The United Kingdom, and a Jesuit Pope? Although you may not talk about those three on your blog, you can be controversial in your niche. Is retweeting better than mentioning? Is stretching better than lifting weights? The possibilities are endless.
Trial and error. As you write more blog posts, you will be able to see which headlines on your blog get the most traffic. Write headlines similar to the ones that get the most traffic.
What headlines catch your attention? 2K To 10K is a book about writing more words every day. That headline caught my attention, and some of my headlines are modeled around that headline. Everyone does this. A classic example is 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. Now there are blog posts about 7 habits of any highly effective person in any field.
Have a 7 in the headline. It works in getting more conversions, so why not headlines?

Those are the 17 ways to write attention-grabbing headlines. By writing attention-grabbing headlines, more people will read and share your content. What are your thoughts on the list, and do you have any additional tips to add? Please share your thoughts and advice below.