Marc's Blog

Content Writing and Marketing Services

How A Day Of No Work Changed Everything

by Leave a Comment

Instead of working, I did a lot of research. Instead of writing more blog posts, I learned how to make my blog posts better. Instead of being on Twitter for a very long time, I decided to change my tactics. Changing my tactics resulted in me going from 150-200 daily followers to over 500 daily followers. That change was not gradual. The change happened in a day. I learned how to develop a steady income instead of an inconsistent income. I now have my sights on bigger goals such as landing on the Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Influencers List.

We all have 24 hours in a day, and the amount of time we spend working is not important. What is important is how we are spending that time. There are people who work for 12 hours every day and get minimum wage. There are other people who get to take 4 week vacations and come back to a thriving business.

One person can be more productive in 3 hours than other people are in 12 hours. Maybe those 12 hours are being spent doing the wrong things while every second of the 3 hours is properly utilized.

A day of less work and more research will allow you to know whether you are utilizing all of your hours of work properly or not. You can make small modifications that allow you to grow your presence on social networks. A small change resulted in my number of daily followers doubling.

Small changes can lead to a big difference. By doing some research, you will be able to discover those small changes that can lead to better results.

 

Why Tweeting At The Moment Is Just As Important As Scheduling Tweets

by 3 Comments

The ability to schedule tweets has resulted in many people neglecting the importance of tweeting at the moment. The first time we learned about tweeting at the moment was when Oreo decided to send out a tweet during the black out. Ever since that tweet, we have all taken tweeting at the moment more seriously.

However, people only take tweeting at the moment more seriously when special events such as the World Series and the Olympics are live. This kind of tweeting at the moment does generate more engagement. However, tweeting at the moment–whether there is a special event going on or not–will result in more engagement with your followers.

Everything started to change when I decided to tweet with pictures. I sent out tweets about Dr. Seuss, making decisions, and Apple. Before I sent out those tweets, I was getting 1 or 2 retweets and favorites per tweet. Those tweets ended up generating more retweets and favorites than my average tweets. I sent out those tweets at the moment instead of scheduling them.

In addition, I ask questions at the moment. My tweet asking people what their favorite book is generated more responses than my average tweet. Tweeting at the moment allowed me to engage with more of my followers than before.

Scheduling tweets allows you to tweet consistently. However, engaging with your followers is also important. By tweeting at the moment, you will interact with more of your followers, and that will lead to more retweets and favorites.

Scheduling tweets is not enough. We have to be human on social media and interact with the followers who read what we say.

 

5 Ways To Make Your Blog Load Faster And Why You Should Care

by Leave a Comment

One of the least appreciated ways to get more traffic is making your blog load faster. The faster your blog loads, the better it ranks on search engines. Most people think that if it takes a few seconds to load a blog, then that blog is fast. However, patience is becoming a virtue that few people have. There are many cartoons of people of what happen to people when they wait for a 5 second ad on YouTube.

Making your blog load faster will result in more people staying on your blog. In order to get them to stay on your blog longer, all you have to do is focus on your blog’s bounce rate. Making your blog load faster will help out with your blog’s SEO. Now that you know why it is important to have your blog load faster, follow these 5 tips:

  1. Have less blog posts on each page. I used to have 15 blog posts on every page of my blog. However, having 15 blog posts on every page made the blog go slower. Now, there are only 12 blog posts on every page of this blog. Reducing the number of blog posts on every page resulted in this blog loading faster.
  2. Deactivate the plugins that you are not using. It takes more time to load a blog with numerous plugins. You may not be using certain plugins on your blog, but those plugins still slow up your blog. Deactivating plugins that you are not using can easily make your blog load 1 second faster. 1 second may not seem like a lot, but in the cartoons, a 5 second YouTube ad seems to take forever. The P3 Plugin will show you which plugins are slowing down your blog the most.
  3. Don’t go crazy with the pictures. Pictures also slow down a blog. It is important to have at least one picture for every blog post, but only use a picture if it is necessary. Don’t have numerous pictures that are not relevant or are not needed because they will slow your blog down.
  4. Look at your widgets. Less widgets results in a faster blog, but having no widgets is not good either. When you add widgets to your blog, make sure these widgets are absolutely necessary. If you are uncertain of whether or not a widget is important, it probably is not important.
  5. Make your pictures smaller. Big pictures slow down a blog, and it does not take a lot of pictures to slow down a blog. The best approach is to make your pictures smaller so they don’t slow down your blog as much. None of my pictures are higher than 300 pixels or longer than 500 pixels.

Those are the 5 ways to make your blog load faster. Implementing these tactics will allow you to boost your blog’s SEO. These tactics take less than 5 minutes to implement, but implementing these tactics can make a big difference for your blog.

 

5 WordPress Plugins That You Need To Have

by 8 Comments

WordPress powers millions of blogs on the web. However, not all of those blogs are taking advantage of the plugins that WordPress offers. There are countless plugins available, but not all plugins are created equal. I have used numerous WordPress plugins, and these are the 5 plugins that have helped me out a lot.

  1. Acurax Social Media Widget: This plugin allows you to create buttons that lead people to your social networks. There are many themes to choose from and many choices for which social networks you would like to promote. I promote my Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, GooglePlus, YouTube, and LinkedIn accounts with the Acurax Social Media Widget.
  2. P3 Plugin: This plugin (Plugin Performance Profiler), allows you to see which plugins are slowing your blog down. When I first used this plugin, I was amazed to discover that I was not using many of the plugins that were slowing my blog down. By deactivating the plugins that I was not using (and that were slowing down my blog), I was able to dramatically increase the speed time for my blog.
  3. Pinterest Pin It Button For Images: Bloggers can no longer ignore Pinterest. There are many people who are eager to share blog posts on Pinterest. In order to make it easier for people to share your blog posts on Pinterest, use this plugin. When someone moves the mouse on the image, they will be able to see a “Pin It” button. Clicking this button will allow the person to pin the picture. This is an easier way to get more people to share your blog posts.
  4. Social Metrics. Do you want to know how many times your blog posts are getting shared on various social networks. With the Social Metrics plugin, you can do just that. This plugin organizes all of your blog posts and shows you how many times your blog posts are being shared on different social networks. With this plugin, you also have the option to share your own blog posts straight from the WP Admin page!
  5. Widget context. This plugin allows you to choose which widgets appear on what pages on your blog. Not all widgets are suitable for all areas of your blog. Widget context allows you to choose where the widgets can appear.

I am commonly using these WordPress plugins. They have brought good results to my blog, and if you are looking for ways to make your blog better, these WordPress plugins are the best ones for you.

 

An Overlooked Way To Get More Traffic

by Leave a Comment

There are plenty of ways to get more blog traffic. I recently read Yaro Starak’s free report about building an income with a blog. The free report taught me some things about blogging that I did not know…including an overlooked way to get more traffic.

Here’s what many people overlook: In order to get more traffic, you need to get more daily visitors on your blog. This seems like a statement you would find on the UberObvious Twitter feed. However, this is actually an effective way to get more traffic.

The more daily visitors you get, the more likely there will be someone who visits your blog and has a big following. If your blog is getting 100 daily visitors, you are more likely to encounter someone who has 100,000 followers than the person who is getting 10 daily visitors to their blog. Getting 1,000 daily visitors boosts your chances, and getting 5,000 daily visitors boosts your chances even more.

Getting more daily visitors will allow more people to know about you–and tell others about you. Getting more daily visitors leads to more visitors from other sources.

This is what many experts call The Snowball Effect. When you get more visitors, you will eventually reach someone who decides your content is worth promoting to 100,000 people. Then, some of those 100,000 people visit your blog, and your readership grows.

 

Why You Need To Have Bonuses

by 2 Comments

Imagine your customer got everything he paid for. It is an accomplishment to give your customer everything that he paid for. However, giving your customer more than what they paid for leads to more connections and better results. Imagine getting a training course with 20 videos, and then the trainer decided to surprise you with 5 bonus videos.

We want what we pay for, but when we get something extra, we remember that extra gift. Mike Michalowicz has a great marketing strategy for his books. Instead of waiting for people to buy his books, he distributes them to right people who are likely to give him a review. For his book, The Pumpkin Plan, Mike decided to contact people who review business books on Amazon. He asked these people if they were interested in getting the book for free in return for an honest review.

Mike Michalowicz decided to ship out his books with personalized letters and a copy of another one of his books, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. While customers were only expecting to get a copy of The Pumpkin Plan, they ended up getting a personalized letter and a copy of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur to go along with it.

Offering his books for free and giving his customers a bonus resulted in Mike’s books getting hundreds of reviews on Amazon, and most of them are 4 and 5 star reviews. Giving away his Pumpkin Plan book for free was a starting point, but the added bonuses resulted in customers who read and reviewed his book right away.

The “Buy 2 Get 1 Free” sales always attract more customers. That’s because the 1 free thing is a bonus. People flock over to stores with big deals in order to get the bonus. By having bonuses for your business, whether the bonus is an extra hour of services for free, 5 extra videos, or a free report, you will have more customers eager to buy your future products.