Marc's Blog

How To Find Out Who Bought Fake Followers

January 15, 2014 by Marc Guberti 34 Comments

There are a bunch of people on Twitter who have thousands of fake followers. Some of them have a few thousand followers, others have tens of thousands of followers, and there are the select few who have hundreds of thousands of followers. However, not all of those people have a lot of real followers.

In order to identify who has real followers and who bought fake followers, you can use TwitterAudit. TwitterAudit is a Twitter tool that allows you to see the percentage of real and fake followers someone has. If the percentage of fake followers is alarmingly high, that person most likely bought some fake followers. If the percentage of fake followers is low, that person probably did not buy fake followers.

Influential users on Twitter happen to have thousands of followers. Some people cheat the system by buying fake followers and making themselves look really good. TwitterAudit will allow you to see who has the real followers and who doesn’t.

TwitterAudit isn’t just a tool for our pleasure (if you are curious about who’s buying followers and who’s earning them). TwitterAudit can reveal new things about brands and influencers that can help your Twitter strategy.

#1: Real Influence VS Fake Influence

One account with over 100,000 Twitter followers tweeted one of my tweets. The tweet was retweeted and liked dozens of time. Naturally, I should see a noticeable increase in traffic.

The main word there is “naturally.” These followers weren’t real. This knowledge allowed me understand why the tweet didn’t result in additional traction to my blog. It wasn’t because my blog post was bad. The account neither had real followers nor real engagement.

#2: Who To Follow

I want to follow successful people in my niche. That way, I get to expand my knowledge in the right areas. Seeing someone with fake followers makes me question their success. You only need fake followers if you want to make yourself look more successful than you really are.

#3: Audience Growth

Follow for follow only works to a certain degree. If you follow fake accounts, they probably won’t follow you back. Even if they follow you back (fake accounts are trying harder to look like real ones), those are followers who you don’t want.

Don’t even think about those Follow 4 Follow accounts. You’ll get an extra follower, but that follower won’t care about what you tweet. These followers just want to make themselves look good by having a lot of real (but non-targeted) followers.

Here’s where TwitterAudit fits into the equation. Find influencers and brands in your niche with real, engaged followers. These followers are targeted followers since they are following brands in your niche and engaging with their tweets.

You follow these accounts and then they’ll follow you back.

I always use TwitterAudit to test the validity of an account before I start following that account’s followers. Any account in the 80% real followers threshold is fine with me.

In Conclusion

TwitterAudit isn’t just a cool tool you can use to catch the fakers and figure out who hasn’t been bluffing. You can integrate TwitterAudit in your strategy by determining who are the real influencers and where your targeted audience resides.

TwitterAudit won’t take much time in your Twitter strategy. It may just take 5-10 minutes of your time each month. However, if you are serious about growing on Twitter, these 5-10 minutes can easily save you from months of heartache.

What are your thoughts about TwitterAudit? Sound off in the comments section below.

6 Ways To Think Of More Blog Posts To Write

January 15, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

Every writer experiences writer’s block, and when it comes, writing blog posts can prove to be a challenge. Thinking about different things to write about also becomes more challenging. Here are 6 ways to think of more blog posts to write so when writer’s block comes, you can get out of it faster.

Read books about your niche. You’ll be able to learn more about your niche and think of more things to write about at the same time!
Watch videos about your niche. One sentence in the video can turn into your next blog post.
Take a break from writing. We all need them, but don’t go overboard with the break either.
Write the things you think of on sticky notes. This will ensure that when you come up with a good blog post, you will remember that idea.
Look at your older blog posts. By looking at your older blog posts, you can identify some of the topics that you vaguely talked about or learned more about. Those can turn into your new blog posts.
Create a series of blog posts. If you have a really good idea, write a Part 1, Part 2, and continue the series for as long as you like.

5 Ways To Spice Up Your Business Plan (Part 2)

January 14, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

What if you had a business plan that would give you the optimal impact, and you would be able to accomplish that business plan quickly? There is a way to do that, and in this blog post, I am going to share with you 5 ways to spice up your business plan so you can do that.

You need to identify your interests and commitments. The interests are the things that you’re okay with doing, but when the going gets tough, the interests get dropped. The commitments are the things that you stick with even when the going gets tough. By identifying the interests and commitments, you will be able to identify your priorities (the commitments).
Take strategic breaks. During some of your breaks, you can read books, watch videos, and read blog posts about your niche. This will allow you to learn more about your niche which will have an impact on your knowledge and how you write about your niche.
Give yourself bigger goals with deadlines. By giving yourself big goals with deadlines, you will establish when that goal needs to be finished. This will create the sense of urgency that will allow you to accomplish those goals.
Identify what has worked and optimize it. If Twitter contributed to 50% of your blog’s traffic, optimize your Twitter account so it can have an even greater impact on your blog.
Keep it small and simple. When I say keep a business plan small and simple, that means you should have 3-5 goals that you focus on. Those goals should be big goals that require a lot of work to accomplish. Don’t give yourself 10 goals that require a lot of work to accomplish. Give yourself 3-5 goals that will result in the greatest impact once they get accomplished.

If you enjoyed reading this blog post, here’s Part 1.

How To Write An Effective Twitter Bio

January 14, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

tweeting

Twitter is known for its simplicity, and one of the reasons Twitter is simple is because everyone gets a 160 character limit for their bio. Although a 160 character bio can be finished in a matter of minutes (or a minute), the art of perfecting the bio is not as easy as it sounds. These are some of the ways that you can perfect your Twitter bio.

The first thing you have to do is tell your followers your credentials. When people decide whether or not to follow you, they want to know your expertise. Are you an expert at business or fitness? If you’re an expert on fitness, the business guru isn’t going to follow you unless the business guru is into fitness. If there are people looking to get in shape, they will follow you to get more tips and advice.

The next thing you have to do in your bio is say something meaningful, clever, or funny. Humor is a powerful tool in getting more followers. Who doesn’t want to hear a good joke? If you tweet humorous tweets, make your bio humorous. You can also be clever be doing something no one thought of, or you can say something meaningful such as a powerful message. When people look at your bio will already have an idea of what your tweets are about before they look through your timeline.

Another thing to do with your bio is to avoid using big sentences. If you use big sentences, that will take up a lot of characters. If you put in that big sentence, and you want to say something else in your bio as well, you might reach the 160 character limit. If you want to talk about your hobbies or accomplishments, make a list of them with commas. Using those commas will save characters and time. Make your sentences shorter so that you can give your followers more information about who you are.

What many people overlook when they finish their bio is proofreading it. Some of the things on your bio might be different from what they are now. I used to talk about sports, and now I talk about my business. When I started talking about business, I took a look at my bio and realized it needed to be changed. Your bio could be good now, but you should always see if you can add additional information or if some information is outdated.

That’s how you write a Twitter bio that will give people a reason to follow you. Your bio has the power to tell people why they should follow you in 160 characters or less.

6 Ways To Lower Your Blog’s Bounce Rate

January 13, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

If you want people to stay on your blog for a longer period of time, you need to work on reducing your blog’s bounce rate. Bounce rate is how likely someone is to leave your blog after viewing only one part of your blog (home page, a blog post, etc) without viewing anything else. When those visits occur, your blog’s bounce rate will go up which is not good.

Bounce rate is a big factor towards the number of views I get on my blog. Right now, my bounce rate is close to 50% which is close to the Huffington Post’s bounce rate. I normally get twice as many views as I get visitors just because most of my visitors decide to stick around after reading one of my blog posts.

When someone sticks around, they get to learn more about you. That person gets to read more of your blog posts, and if that person like your writing, that person will become curious. That person decides to look at your bio, find your social networks, and take a look at your products.

Bounce rate is critical towards getting to know the people who visit your blog. Once you get someone on your blog, you need to keep that person on your blog for as long as possible. Having a low bounce rate will make sure people stay on your blog longer. Here are 6 ways to lower your blog’s bounce rate.

Include links to your older blog posts in your newer blog posts. When you do this, make sure the older blog posts are related to the newer blog posts. A link to an older blog post about Twitter would not work well here, but a link to an older blog post about SEO would work well here. Bounce rate and SEO have something in common, and if you can connect the two together, have a link of the older blog post in your newer blog post. All you need to do is get people to click on the link to your older blog post in order to reduce your blog’s bounce rate.
Have a big Contact Me button at the sidebar of your blog. If one of your visitors has a question, they will see that button and click on it. Not only does this allow you to interact with more of your visitors, but when the visitor clicks on your Contact Me button, that reduces your blog’s bounce rate.
Use the Top Blog Posts Widget. The Top Blog Posts Widget will allow you to show your visitors your most popular blog post. When people think of popular blog posts, they think of the best blog posts on your blog. When they click on one of your top blog posts, they will stay on your blog for a longer period of time.
Write two blog posts that complement each other. Then, schedule those blog posts weeks apart. For my blog post, 6 Advanced Twitter Tips, one of the tips was embedding tweets on your blog. I wrote both of these blog posts at the same time, but I scheduled them over week apart. That gave my blog post about embedding tweets enough time to go to Page 2 of my blog when my 6 Advanced Twitter Tips blog post got published.
Break big blog posts into parts. I wrote a blog post about 5 Mistakes People Make On Pinterest. Then, I wrote a Part 2 for that blog post. People who visited the Part 2 decided to visit Part 1 of my blog post as well. Include links to all of your parts so your visitors can easily access them.
Write content that people love. In order to keep someone on your blog, you need to write content that entices people to stay on your blog. When you write quality content, and your visitors see the link to another blog post, they will click on the link and read blog post after blog post.

Keeping visitors on your blog longer is essential towards getting them to know more about you. In order to increase the amount of time a visitor spends on your blog, you need to pay close attention to your blog’s bounce rate. The next time you create a blog post, create a blog post that is designed to reduce bounce rate by utilizing these 6 tactics.

The Biggest Mistake Bloggers Make

January 13, 2014 by Marc Guberti 19 Comments

The biggest mistake that I have seen many bloggers make is relying on the search engines for traffic. On some of the days my blog got 200 daily views, 10% of that traffic was from search engines. If I relied on the search engines, there would be some days when I only got 20 views instead of 200 views.

The first time my blog got over 400 views, less than 10% of that traffic came from search engines. That big 400 would have been under 40 if I relied on the search engines. The SEO tactics are out there, and although they won’t lead to dramatic success in the short-term, they will help out in the long-term.

Right now, you’re probably wondering how I got the other 360 or so views on my blog when I got 400 views in one day. I did not use any traffic exchange sites to pull this off. Instead, I used social media. Social media contributed to about 200 visitors on that day. Those 200 visitors looked at my other blog posts because I pay special attention to reducing my blog’s bounce rate.

That’s how I got over 400 views and over 200 visitors in one day mainly with social media. Twitter and Pinterest were the driving forces of that day’s success, and the successes of many other days as well. On that day, over 150 people came to my blog from Twitter and over 50 people came to my blog from Pinterest.

While the search engines are a great way of getting traffic, there are going to be some good days with the search engines, but there are also going to be some bad days. In order to get more traffic to your blog, you need to utilize your social networks instead of focusing on the search engines. The search engines are a great way to get traffic, but social networks are more reliable, and for me, they have had better results.

How did you come across this blog? Did you click on the link in my tweet, click on my pin, or use the search engines to find me? You may have used the search engine to find me, but if I had to take a guess, I would guess that you found this blog post on a social network.