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The One Fear That Brings Forth Success

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When we think about fear, we think about that monster in between the hero and the castle (let’s throw in a princess trapped inside the castle). We always look at fear as a bad thing. We’ve heard many inspirational quotes such as, “You need to decide that your desire to succeed is greater than your fear in order to become successful.”

In many cases, fear is that monster blocking you from the castle. Fear stops people from making progress. We see fear as the tiny voice that says, “You can’t.”

Fear has driven some people towards success. The one fear that brings forth success is the fear of hitting rock bottom. This is the moment when someone does not care about being #1 right away. Instead, that person cares about not falling all the way behind.

There are a lot of sources of motivation, but fear can be one of them. This blog post was not written to tell you to get yourself into rock bottom so you can be motivated. This blog post was written to make you think about what common weaknesses you can turn into strengths. During my interview with Mike Michalowicz, I was amazed to learn that fear drove him towards his success. It was the fear of living in a retirement home for the rest of his life that motivated him to be successful. It was that fear that resulted in three multimillion dollar businesses, two bestselling books, and one book coming out soon.

What do you think are your weaknesses? How can you turn them into your strengths and fuel for your motivation?

 

20 Ways To Get More Views On YouTube

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YouTube gets over 1 billion unique visitors every month. However, there are many videos on YouTube that don’t have over 100 views. In fact, some YouTube videos have not been viewed at all. In order to gain a powerful presence on YouTube, your videos need to get viewed more often. Here are 20 different ways to get more people viewing your YouTube videos.

  1. Publish videos at a consistent basis. I publish a video every Saturday at 9 am EST.
  2. Tell people about your videos using your other social networks. When I tweeted about my YouTube videos, the number of views I got on my YouTube videos tripled.
  3. Have links to older YouTube videos in your new videos. You may decide to add some links in the middle of the video. However, you should always have links to your older YouTube videos at the end of your older ones just like Brussup.
  4. Tell people to subscribe to your channel at the end of your videos. Once someone subscribes to your channel, that person is more likely to watch any videos you upload in the future.
  5. Have a link of one of your older videos in your new video’s description. Make sure both of the videos are similar to each other before you do this.
  6. Host a giveaway on YouTube. This will get you more subscribers, views, and comments.
  7. Comment on other people’s videos. Doing this gives you backlinks on YouTube. Make the decision to comment on 5 videos every day about your niche.
  8. Promote your YouTube videos on your blog. I have a page on my blog with some of my videos.
  9. Create a prelaunch plan for your video in which you tell people about your video on your social networks before it launches.
  10. Contact popular blogs and give them exclusive access to your video before it launches.
  11. Write blog posts dedicated to your YouTube channel.
  12. Organize your videos on your channel so your visitors can easily access your videos based on their desired topics and subtopics.
  13. Create a YouTube video with a list. People love lists.
  14. See what kinds of videos are getting a lot of views in your niche and create videos about similar topics.
  15. Ask the experts what allowed them to become successful on YouTube. You never know what you will learn.
  16. Use HARO to get free PR. HARO can help out towards getting more views on YouTube and getting more subscribers.
  17. Have a video in your channel that automatically plays when someone visits your channel. Each time someone visits your channel, you automatically get a view.
  18. Have a good thumbnail for your YouTube video. A bad thumbnail makes people less likely to watch a video while a good thumbnail makes people more likely to watch a video.
  19. Create quality videos that are worth sharing. The quality of your video will decide how long your viewers watch your video and if they decide to watch your other videos as well.
  20. Look at the experts in your niche and find patterns. Copy the patterns that work in order to get more views on YouTube.

Remember that everyone starts out with 0 views. By implementing these tactics, you will see a gradual increase in traffic. Implementing these tactics won’t result in you having 100,000 views in 24 hours, but these tactics will help your YouTube videos get more views.

 

10 Ways To Have More Conversations With Your Twitter Followers

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Having conversations with your followers will allow you to build strong connections. These connections can lead to more business opportunities, more subscribers, and even more sales. Having more conversations on Twitter has completely transformed my blog. In fact, more than half of my book sales are because of Twitter. Whether I am having a conversation with one of my followers, or someone found my blog through Twitter and bought one of my books that way, Twitter has been a driving force towards my blog’s traffic and sales. The primary reason Twitter is a main source of traffic and sales is because I interact with my followers.

When people think of starting a conversation, they think of hunting people down, mentioning all of them, and hoping that some of them respond. Although that is a way to get more conversations on Twitter, I rarely utilize this tactic. Instead, people mention me, I see people mentioning me in my feed, and then I reply to the people who mentioned me. Here are 10 ways that you will be able to have more conversations with your Twitter followers.

  1. Know how to find out who mentioned you, retweeted your tweets, or favorited your tweets. This is very easy to figure out. All you have to do is go on Twitter, click Connect at the top left corner, and you will be able to see all of the times your followers have interacted with your tweets.
  2. Schedule tweets consistently and frequently. I noticed a big jump in the number of conversations I was having on Twitter when I decided to tweet every 30 minutes instead of every hour. By scheduling tweets consistently and frequently, more people will see your tweets on their timeline. This will result in more opportunities to get a retweet, favorite, or someone thanking you for tweeting what you tweeted. In addition, trust is built by being seen frequently, so the more times your followers see you, their trust for you will grow.
  3. Ask questions. Whether you ask a question at the end of a tweet or ask a question at the end of a blog post you tweeted, it is important to ask questions that are easy to answer. By asking a question, you are encouraging your followers to interact with you on Twitter.
  4. Host a giveaway. Giveaways never fail towards increasing engagement. Your tweets will get retweeted and favorited more frequently. In addition, more people will mention you. If you want to understand how much potential a giveaway has, then look no further than Esurance’s giveaway.
  5. Retweet and favorite your followers’ tweets. When you retweet your followers’ tweets, they will love you for it. That follower may respond by thanking you for the retweet or favorite.
  6. Continue the conversation. In order to get the best results from a conversation, you need to continue that conversation. A conversation that starts with a thank you and ends with a you’re welcome is not as effective as a conversation that consists of 5 or more tweets. In order to continue the conversation, bring up different topics and ask questions so the person on the other end is eager to respond.
  7. Frequently check to see if other people mentioned you. My recommendation is to check for any new mentions, retweets, or favorites at least 4 times every day. By doing so, you will be able to respond to your followers quickly which will increase the likelihood of long conversations.
  8. Tweet inspirational quotes. Tweeting inspirational quotes is an easy way to get more mentions, retweets, and favorites. I tweet 4 inspirational quotes every day while some accounts only tweet inspirational quotes. You should tweet more about your blog and services than inspirational quotes, but if you can get a few inspirational quotes in every day, that would result in more engagement with your followers.
  9. Check your DMs. There are going to be a lot of spam messages in your DM inbox. However, some of those message may be people asking you questions about a product or thanking you for sending out a certain tweet. When I started to pay attention to my DMs, I was amazed at what I discovered.
  10. Tweet with pictures. Tweeting with pictures gets more engagement than tweeting without pictures. If you tweet a good picture, your followers are very likely to engage in a conversation with you. Some of your followers may also decide to retweet and favorite that tweet as well.

We rely on conversations in order to get access to more opportunities, get in touch with our customers, and learn more tips about our niches. Having conversations with your followers will result in Twitter having a big impact on your business. By implementing these tactics, you will be able to have more conversations with your followers.

How do you like the list? Do you have any additional suggestions? Share your thoughts below.

 

5 Reasons To Start Using LinkedIn

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LinkedIn is a social network ideal for the business and the entrepreneur. LinkedIn is one of the best ways to get free PR and interact with people at the same time. Right when I joined LinkedIn, I simply needed to have 100 connections. Now, I have far more than 100 connections. The connections I have made on LinkedIn have opened me up to more business opportunities that otherwise I would not have been able to take advantage of. Here are 5 reasons for you to start using LinkedIn.

  1. Conversations immediately start through email. This allows you to build a strong connection with your LinkedIn connection. Instead of being limited to a character count, you can send an email of over 140 characters. This allows you to be more detailed in your email. If you are offering advice, you can go in detail about the tips you are providing someone. Emailing a person will make that person more likely to buy your product or visit your blog.
  2. People are looking for experts like you on LinkedIn. I’m not talking about sending in a job application on LinkedIn to a company who could use your expertise. I’m talking about someone with a blog who wants you as a guest blogger. Many of the guest posts I have written are because I connected with someone on LinkedIn, and that person wanted me to write a guest post for their blog. Writing those guest posts gave me free PR and a quality backlink as well.
  3. You can see who viewed your profile. By being able to see who viewed your profile, you know who to connect with as well as what kind of people are viewing your profile. The people who view your profile will usually be in your niche. When someone views my profile, that person is usually into social media and/or blogging.
  4. LinkedIn’s search allows you to find people by region. LinkedIn gives you the power to search for people based on their niche, but you can advance that search by searching for people in your region. Some of the people I connect with are from all over the world while other people I connect with are in New York.
  5. People can endorse you for different skills. This allows you to show off the fact that you are an expert. The more people endorse you for different skills, the more people will realize that you are an expert in those areas. You also get to see who endorsed you so you can thank them.

LinkedIn will allow you to build stronger connections with the people in your niche. By building stronger connections with the right people, you will be given more opportunities to grow your business and get more sales in the process.

 

My Case Study For Time Management

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I recently had the honor of being mentioned in an article on the U.S. News about time management. Geoff Williams, the person who wrote the article, mentioned that I am a case study for time management. In this blog post, I decided it would be a good idea to provide my own case study.

I had to do a lot of digging to find out what resulted in my effective time management. Different to what many people think, homeschooling is not the result of my productivity. Quite contrary, I go to school and run for my track team every weekday and go out for a meet on one day of the weekend.

I notice there are some activities where I effectively manage my time. Many people see this in the form of 2 daily blog posts, 48 daily tweets, multiple books, and other forms as well. These are the activities that I like to do because I enjoy the privilege of being a teenager entrepreneur. There are other activities that I do not like to do as much, and those activities usually get held back. By choosing a business in which I enjoy working, I enjoy spending hours writing blog posts, scheduling tweets, and doing other things to grow my business as well.

Choosing to do what you love is the biggest dose of motivation you can get. After that, all you need to do is optimize that so you are more productive. Almost a year into my blogging career, I realized I was running out of ideas for blog posts. I did not want to have a day where I did not send out any blog posts, but I did not want to write a blog post just for the sake of keeping the consistency. What I decided to do is read books about my niche. This gave me more ideas for blog posts and motivation. Now I never run out of ideas for blog posts because they simply come from the fly or from a blog post or book I read. Some of my blog posts have even been inspired by videos. Roadblocks will question our faith towards who we are and what we (as an individual and/or as a business) stand for. Conquering the roadblocks will make you further love what you do which will result in you put in more work and effort.

After I was writing blog posts and scheduling tweets the way I am today, I began to realize the potential I had (and still have). That’s when I created the vision–something for me to strive for. I defined what I wanted to do instead of thinking about what I wanted to do and changing my mind over and over again. When you invest a lot of time into something, you need to have a defined result(s) that you need to achieve.

I am still putting in some tweaks to my time management plan. Reading The 12 Week Year made me realize that every week is important, and now I have certain time blocks where I work 3 hours straight. Furthermore, I keep score of how effectively I am accomplishing my goals, and as a track athlete, I know how important the score is (my team won one of our championships by 1 point). This has led to a further increase in my productivity and time management.

Doing what you love will dramatically help you to become effective at managing your time wisely. By doing what you love, you are able to push yourself out of your comfort zone without going too far from the comfort zone. This ideal push allows you to stay somewhat comfortable while putting in more work and effort. There are also more ways to get better time management as well such as by following these tips or using sticky notes.

The key to time management is being consistent. As you gradually improve your time management, you will gradually see better results. Then, one day, you will see a dramatic improvement in your results that ends up sticking around.

 

Key Points You Need To Know About Twitter Automation

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Twitter automation gives you the power to send out a tweet without being on Twitter. You can even send out tweets in your sleep to entertain people with different time zones. If it’s midnight in New York, it’s 9 pm in California, and many people in California will still be on Twitter at that time. Twitter automation has allowed me to schedule tweets to be posted on my timeline every 30 minutes. That way, more people are able to see my tweets.

However, many people are not automating their tweets for long periods of time because of some stories about that plan backfiring. This plan mainly backfires when people are not aware of dates and big events that happen. The plan of automation rarely backfires, and if you are sharing blog posts, you shouldn’t worry about the backfiring process.

In order to schedule tweets, use HootSuite. I schedule tweets in bulk so I can take a break on some days to write more blog posts instead. On other days, I am scheduling 5 days of tweets so I always have something to tweet every 30 minutes. In order to find your ideal frequency, you are going to have to experiment. You will be shocked with the number of tweets you can tweet without getting your followers annoyed. I used to tweet every hour, but in this case study, I explained how tweeting every 30 minutes got me more follower appreciation and traffic to my blog.

No matter how many days into the future you schedule your tweets, those automated tweets do not replace connections. Although I am spending a lot of time scheduling my tweets, I am spending an equal amount of time going on Twitter and seeing who mentioned me and how much interaction my tweets are getting.

I strongly believe that scheduling tweets is vital towards getting more exposure and connections with your followers. However, when someone retweets a tweet, favorites a tweet, or mentions you, you need to respond to that person. Automated tweets allow you to focus on the connections because you will not have to worry about sending tweets in the process.