Marc's Blog

22 Experts Recommend Their Favorite Blogging Tools

August 17, 2016 by Marc Guberti 13 Comments

expert blogging tools

Wondering what blogging tools the experts like to use? I recently contacted 22 experts and got their takes on what the best blogging tools on the web are.

What I like about these tools is that there is a perfect blend of well-known blogging tools and blogging tools that you will learn about for the first time.

I know I definitely learned a lot by hearing about these experts’ favorite tools, and I am sure you will too.

Andrew Choco is the VP of Marketing at a digital agency, Directive Consulting. Directive Consulting is a Google, Bing, Moz and Unbounce partner.

#1: Answer the Public: This tool allows you to search a keyword and then gives you the questions that people are searching involving that specific keyword. This is great for thinking of topics and prompts to blog about.

#2: Grammarly: This is a popular tool, but one that is really helpful for making sure your blog post has perfect grammar and sentence structure. It’s like spell check but on overdrive.

#3: Small SEO Tools: Plagiarism Checker: This is a great tool for making sure your content isn’t crossing the line into plagiarism, even if it is by accident. It’s always best to be safe than sorry, and this is a great way to ensure our content is original!

Eric Brantner is the founder of SleepZoo.com. He runs several blogs in a variety of niches. Some of them have been featured in USA Today, Time, MSN, TechCrunch, Fortune, and other top publications

#1: CoSchedule: This is by far my top tool. I use it to plan out content, assign to writers, edit, and share via social media–all in one place. It has streamlined our content marketing dramatically, cutting out hours of work and allowing us to tremendously increase content production and sharing across all our sites.

#2: Yoast: You have great content, but you need to make sure you’ve optimized for keywords to get found in Google. Yoast provides a detailed checklist to help you do just that.

#3: MailMunch: Before using MailMunch, my mailing lists were pitiful. Hardly
anyone signed up. Now, I created pop-up forms with MailMunch and my lists
have grown exponentially.

Using this platform, you can plan out content, assign content to writers, edit, and share via social media–all in one place. It has streamlined our content marketing dramatically, cutting out hours of work and allowing us to tremendously increase content production and sharing across all our sites.

Peter Kim is a marketing strategist who specializes in social media management, SEO, and blogging.

#1: Buzz Sumo: Buzz Sumo is great for discovering popular content to see
what you’re up against as you’re about to start your next blog post and
it’s also great for discovering influencers for content marketing.

#2: SEMRush: This tool just about does it all from keyword research to
competitor research. The new SEO Keyword Magic tool they’ve built has made
it even easier to put together a winning blog post.

#3: SEO Yoast Plugin: This is the best tool to make your posts SEO friendly
especially if you’re putting together evergreen content that’ll continually
bring organic traffic to your website.

Mike Kawula is the CEO of Social Media startup Social Quant, a top ranked Twitter tool by HubSpot that helps you find the most relevant followers on Twitter that will interact with your business.

#1: Warfare Plugin: Warfare is an amazing social shares tool that really helps drive traffic. It has a ton of features, one is counting how many Tweets you get, which many have removed. Warfare also allows you to customize what graphics will be shared and the text, which is super helpful.

#2: Post Planner: Post Planner has a ton of great features, but one of my favorite is their requeue share feature. When you write a good piece of evergreen content, you should make sure that it is continually shared on all Social networks occasionally. Remember people on Twitter for instance are moving fast and can miss your content and if you’re increasing Twitter followers daily, then you’ll want them to see your previous content. Post Planner makes this easy and highly affordable.

#3: Social Quant My last tool I’d recommend is Social Quant. Social Quant helps you get more Twitter followers, but relevant Twitter followers who will engage with your content. Remember it doesn’t matter how often you share your content if you don’t have a following, thus Social Quant makes it easy for you.

Always remember with Content Marketing the Marketing part, and these 3 tools will help with that!

Rob Boirun is the CEO of Reviewster Network, a network that specializes in tech, software, and app reviews.

#1: EagleStats: For those that are worried about using Google Analytics on their blogs there is another free service out there that offers just as good stats if not better for bloggers. Look at EagleStats. I really use it for the real-time geo-location stats it offers.

#2: WP Distraction Free Editor plugin: For WordPress bloggers I recommend getting the WP Distraction Free Editor plugin. This is basically feng-shui for your editor. Makes working on your posts a aen-like experience if that is even possible.de

#3: Buzzsumo: This is a great inspirational tool if you need blogging ideas or if you get stuck on a topic you are writing about. This gives you up to date topic ideas that people are actively looking for. So if people are looking for it, may as well write about it.

Nicholas Tenhue is currently UX and Product Strategy lead at Genospace. He is also an alumnus of Microsoft Ventures, Founder and former President of EIT Digital Alumni. He also holds a dual MS in ICT Innovation from UCL and KTH.

#1: LSI Keyword Generator: Using latent semantic indexing keywords is great for getting high-quality SEO content out there. You just typing your main keyword and LSI Keyword Generated gives you a set of related terms to weave into your article. Magic.

#2: Title Capitalizer: We all want to get that title case lettering right for that engaging title we spend so long thinking up. Simply copy and paste your title and let Title Capitalizer takes care of the capitalization rules for you.

#3: Pixabay: It’s hard to find genuine and eye catching stock imagery for blog posts on the web. Pixabay is a free community curated photo site where all photography is free for commercial use.

Sanjay Nasta is the CEO of Microassist, Inc., a learning and application development and delivery company focused on digital accessibility for all. He is a frequent contributor to the Learning Dispatch and E-Learning Council.com.

#1: Twitter Lists: I use Twitter Lists to find great information to share with my audience. For example, when writing about Digital Accessibility I peruse what the thought leaders are talking about on my Twitter list.

#2: iAWriter: To write my blog posts I use a iAWriter. It is a simple markdown editor that makes sure I’m not distracted. It keeps the formatting simple, and exports clean HTML.
#3: Canva: For quick graphics for blogs I use Guy Kawasaki’s favorite tool Canva. The results are good enough that every now and then my graphic designer complements me…Shhh…don’t tell her the secret.

Angela Zade is a content marketing executive with over two decades in traditional and digital marketing. Today, she works as a Digital Marketing Analyst with seoWorks

#1: Grammarly: I like to think I am a grammar genius, but even I miss a typo or two. Grammarly highlights any and all grammar mistakes automatically no matter where you are typing online. It’s spared me from humiliating missteps on countless occasions.

#2: Fotolia: I’m a firm believer that visual images take a plain article much further when you add compelling and relatable images. Fotolia is a paid, stock photography site so the blogger (i..e. me) never has to worry about being slapped with a copyright suit for using a photo without permission. Plus, I almost always find an image I am happy with and it’s shopping cart is extremely user-friendly. The only downside is that the images are rarely compressed for web publishing, so the blogger has to compress those prior to uploading into an article.

#3: Textbroker: Let’s face it, as an SEO’er….sometimes you have more clients than you can blog for at once. Either that, or you have a client that’s just not glamorous enough to inspire you to crank out a quality piece. Say, writing about garage doors, for example. Textbroker is a reasonable writing service that you can submit ideas to, and pay someone else a cheap price to write it for you. Granted, if you select authors with a quality rating less than 4 stars, you can bank on having to copyedit the text yourself. Nonetheless, it can save a blogger quite a few hours of labor when managing multiple SEO clients.

Brett Farmiloe is the Founder and Managing Partner of Markitors, a data driven digital marketing agency for small businesses.

#1: Google Autocomplete: At a loss for what to write about? Google Autocomplete will automatically suggest blog post titles with moderate search volumes to keep you creating content that will drive organic traffic.

#2: Canva – Readers make a decision to read a post within a second of landing on the page. Creating a compelling image using Canva compels a visitor to stay a little longer.

#3: Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin: Real-time suggestions on how to improve the readability of a post helps a blog become more digestible for internet reading.

Tamas Torok is an Inbound Marketer at Momentum, a content promotion platform.

#1: IFTTT: This tool simply connects the APIs of different applications and services. These connections are called recipes. You can partly automate your workflow and save tons of time and energy every single day. I connected my Twitter account to Buffer so once I tweet something, it will be automatically added back to my Buffer schedule.

#2: contentmarketer.io: This tool makes sending outreach emails much easier. You can schedule and send personalized outreach emails via your Google account. Followups can be also automatized, so I don’t have to track my progress in a messy excel sheet. It also provides different email templates tailored to your outreach
campaign.

#3: Canva: If you’re not a designer, but still want to create awesome visuals for your
blog post, then Canva is a handy tool for that. Without using Photoshop you
can create pretty nice visual explanations and images for your posts by
using its drag and drop editor.

Bonus: Momentum.ai: This is a content promotion platform, helping me to decide what content and when to share on Facebook to maximise its engagement and drive more traffic to my blog. It’s even more useful when I want to spend my limited content promotion budget smarter since it predicts which post has the highest potential to get more engagement. I don’t have to take a deep dive in Google Analytics to choose what post to share.

Marcus Miller is the head of SEO & Digital Marketing at the UK Agency Bowler Hat. He has worked in the SEO industry since 1999 and currently has a monthly column on Search Engine Land. He was also featured in the top 50 digital marketing influencers and brands this year.

#1: Your Customers: a little unconventional maybe but your customers and prospects should always be your best blogging tool. Your idea generation should be based on clearly helping your customers relieve their pains and achieve their goals. I am going to suggest something radical here but how about talking to your customers and getting their input – turn this or the questions you are commonly asked into content and you are on the right track.

#2: Google: the best tools are often the ones overlooked by the masses. Google provides a range of advanced search operators to allow you to really dig into a topic. Find a gap in a given subject? There is a great blog post. Find a difficult question without a good answer? There is a good blog post. I am an SEO at heart and I have always pushed the concept that difficult answers make for easy links – build out that content no one else has or can and it will fly.

#3: answerthepublic.com: I love this tool. Pop in a keyword. Get a list of common questions. Want to tap into what your customers, prospects or marketplace is thinking then drop your main keyword in the box. Simple, common sense content that you can use to really add value and help your audience and at the end of the day – that is exactly what your blog should aim to do.
Ryan Scollon is an SEO Consultant & Blogger at a company called Bowler Hat, located in Birmingham, UK. He writes blog posts for both the company blog and his personal blog focused on marketing and his own experiences.

#1: Canva: It is a great tool for people like myself who struggle to make high-quality imagery for posts. With a range of templates and icons, you can design pretty much anything you want ready to upload to your blog post. The best bit…It’s free!

#2: Yoast SEO: This is a great tool to make simple SEO tweaks such as page titles and meta descriptions. It is fairly easy to use and can really make a difference to your blog post rankings if you know how to use it properly.

#3: Portent Title Maker – As I sometimes struggle to come up with a catchy title, I rely on the title maker tool by Portent. Simply stick the subject in the box and click away until you find the right one for you.

Caitlin Bolnick is on the Founding Team at VentureApp which connects high-growth businesses to top vendors, saving them significant time and money in the process.

#1: All In One SEO: this is an amazing free plugin for WordPress that helps to optimize your blog for SEO. It allows you to submit your sitemap to Google and Bing, can automatically notify search engines about changes to your blog, and allows you to manage your SEO keywords, title tags, etc. per post. If you are a beginner in SEO, you can simply install it and have it run, but if you are an expert you can customize everything directly through it.
#2: Max Buttons: This is an excellent tool if you are looking to create ready-to-go buttons for strong CTA’s. This might seem simple, but when it comes to prompting user’s actions on a post, a strong button can help drive the point home. The tool is free and you can completely customize the look of the button to match your brand. They also have a Pro version which has pre-made packs and allows for social sharing and use of icons for only $19.00
#3: List Builder by Sumo Me: Sumo Me has quite a few excellent tools for growing and optimizing your blog, but the one specifically that we’ve been using and love is their list builder. It’s super simple, but it is a pop-up that you can completely customize for use on your blog to capture readers’ email addresses. It’s one of the only pop-up plugins that is mobile optimized and it automatically integrates with a ton of email providers, so that you can immediately begin messaging people who provide their contact information. We’re currently using their free version, but they also have a pro version that removes the Sumo Me branding and allows for A/B testing and more.

Dave Hermansen is a 13+ year ecommerce veteran. He has been featured in national media several times as an e-commerce expert.

#1: BuzzSumo: Many people are familiar with BuzzSumo which shows you what the most shared articles/videos are for any given seed word or phrase. We use BuzzSumo to find those hot articles but aren’t really concerned with the social buzz. Once we know that an article has been shared a lot, we want to also see if it has been linked to a lot. That’s where the next tool comes in – Link Thief.

#2: Link Thief: Our own proprietary tool, Link Thief, is normally used to discover and organize the best backlinks to the top 20 pages for a targeted keyword phrase. It can also be used for finding all of the backlinks to a specific page. Once we have discovered a hot article with BuzzSumo, we will feed that URL into Link Thief to see the number of backlinks it has received. If it has received a lot, we write our own similar article. If the hot article was Tips to Keep your Dog From Barking, ours may be Tips for Making Sure your Dog Stays in your Yard. Then, we contact the places that linked to the hot article, letting them know about our article and that their audience may like it.

#3: Hootsuite: There is no better tool out there for discovering content ideas and for automating social sharing than Hootsuite. Find the RSS feeds for a few dozen blogs that constantly write about your general niche (you can most easily find RSS feeds by viewing the source code of a page and then doing a CONTROL +F and searching for RSS or feed). Add an RSS feed reader stream to Hootsuite and those blogs’ RSS feeds. You’ll never miss the latest posts from the blogs you want to follow. Share some of them with Hootsuite’s auto scheduler and save the best ones as ideas for your own blog articles (and, of course, use Link Thief to see which ones have received backlinks).

Danielle Hutchins is a public relations specialist for FreightCenter. She shapes public perception of FreightCenter and increases awareness of its services and goals. She create and share engaging content that positions FreightCenter as a thought leader in the transportation logistics industry.

#1: Asana: This a project management tool that our marketing, development and enterprise teams use. While I write a majority of our posts, I usually require resources from other employees. For example, I might need a quote from our software support specialist on technology integration, or a unique image designed by our creative director. Asana allows me to organize the blogging process by assigning tasks and due dates to everyone involved from initial brainstorming to final approval.

#2: Hemmingway Editor: This tool checks writing for readability. All you
have do is copy and paste your text into the editor and it highlights
sentences that are hard to read, that have a simpler alternative or that
use passive voice. You can even edit and format your text in the tool.

#3: Google Docs: My blog posts usually make it through several pairs of
hands before it’s ready to be published. Google Docs makes it easier to
share edits and track changes along the way. And, it’s so much easier to
share a Google Doc link than to attach a Word document every time. Asana
even integrates with Google drive so I can easily upload my docs right from
the Asana task.

Brandon Harig serves as the dominant branding and marketing arm for The CP Lawyer. He has worked in PR and agency operations aimed at helping businesses engage consumers online for over 7 years.

#1: Google Alerts: This tool is shaped around key terms you determine that are relevant to your personal brand or organization. Users can receive a daily summary of topics published for inspiration or sourcing. Google Alerts can be a great way to kick the slump caused by writer’s block while also posing as an opportunity to find new authorities and perspective.

#2: Non-Obvious, Clean Visuals: You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars each month to have high-quality images capture a reader’s attention. PicJumbo and StockSnap are two exceptional resources for strong offerings that can make your blog look professional and dynamic without a budget. Services like iStock and ShutterStock also have a weekly image available -just be sure to check their use

Smartphone Voice to Text Features – are you a better speaker than a writer? Remove the block between your thoughts and fingertips by using your smartphones voice to text feature to dictate a blog post. While you may have to email it to yourself to clean up auto correct or grammar, it’s a great way to get ideas down and build upon conversational ideas you can’t seem to capture while typing

Asaf Darash is CEO and Founder of Regpack, an online registration system used by more than 4,000 organization worldwide including the NFL, Goodwill and Stanford.

#1: Buffer: This tool has been great to help automate blog publicizing on social media and just generally reducing the time I spend on setting up posts to go out. It has also allowed me to continue promoting the post, not just in the short term but months out to keep it circulating.

#2: Yoast is a wonderful plugin for WordPress, where my blog is hosted. It ensures I have a focus keyword to target, and that the title and meta description are exactly how I want them.

#3: Google Docs is the best and FREE tool to collaborate on post drafting. I can have my staff review it for grammar, go in and add comments, etc and it’s all saved in the cloud so I can access it anywhere!

Alex is the Creative Director for Brolik, a Philadelphia-based digital agency. He believes bold, beautiful design should go hand-in-hand with human psychology and good usability principles to make sites that are both awe-inspiring and easy to use.

#1: Google Trends: It’s important when writing a blog to know what people care about. Using Google Trends you can get a good idea of popular search terms as well as the vocabulary that people are using around the subject. The result is a pertinent topic infused with search engine optimized keywords.

#2: FoxType: Users have short attention spans. They want to get to the point as quickly as possible. FoxType is a useful tool for quickly editing and simplifying copy. Their concise tool is particularly useful as a good reminder of when to keep it simple, stupid.

#3: Stock Up: Breaking up large blocks of copy with high quality images is a great way to make a blog more engaging. Stock Up aggregates over 13,000 photos from 27 different stock photo websites all for free!

Alex Barsha is the CEO of Third Temple which specializes in digital marketing and web development.

#1: Google Keyword Planner: This tool is perfect for optimizing the content of your blog. Upon your entering your current keywords, it will suggest other terms you might use. It will even show you how often those terms are searched.

#2: Trello: If you produce a large amount of content, Trello is could help you tremendously. Trello is basically an optimizer for your workflow. It helps you visualize who is doing what and prioritize projects.

#3: Medium: This tool is perfect for those who wish to publish their content with little else to distract from it. Both the user interface and the reader interface are clean and without distraction.

Max Robinson is the co-founder of Aims Media Glasgow, a digital marketing and web design agency based in the United Kingdom.

#1: Dragon Dictation: I’ll use this tool in the car when I’m driving to work and just spouting blog ideas. So when I get into the office I can take a look at the notes and try to create something!

#2: Easy Clock: I’m constantly dealing with other bloggers who are located in different countries than I am, and trying to find a time when we are both available for a Skype call can be tricky. So I use the Easy Clock plugin for Chrome to try and match up our schedules.

#3: PayPal: It’s important to get paid! I use PayPal as I’ve never had any problems with the platform and find it really easy to use. I tend to pay for services like graphic design and translation using PayPal as most other bloggers use it too. Max Robinson, Aims Media Glasgow http://www.aimsmedia.co.uk

Anatasia is the Content Manager for SEMrush, a tool that helps you crush it on Google. She is a frequent contributor to major digital marketing publications.

#1: Faqfox: You can use this tool to get ideas for guest posts. Just type in your targeted keyword and the URL of the website on which you’d like your content published. FAQ Fox will then generate a list of articles from the website that include your keywords, plus it will estimate the amount of interest in this topic or show you some “white spots.”

#2: IFTTT: With this tool, you can easily automate quite a bit of your content workflow. One smart idea is to use it for content curation by creating recipes like “if a particular keyword appears in your feed, then save this post to Evernote.”

#3: Headline Analyzer from CoSchedule: Coming up with a compelling headline
can be a real headache. This tool provides you with detailed and insightful
analysis of your headlines and suggests optimization tips such as to use
certain keywords, content lengths or sentiments.

Three-time entrepreneur Simon Slade is CEO and co-founder of SaleHoo, an online wholesale directory of over 8,000 prescreened suppliers.

#1: Coschedule Headline Analyzer: One of my favorite tools for blogging is the Coschedule Headline Analyzer. It helps me identify which titles will perform the best and gives me a preview how those titles will look in both mobile and web inboxes.

#2: Infogr.am: Another one I love is Infogr.am, which helps me create a chart or infographic using my own data. This makes it easy to diversify my content with engaging visuals.

#3: Hemingway: This blogging tool ensures that my writing is clean, simple, and easily digestible. It breaks down run-on sentences and suggests simpler alternatives for overly complicated words.

In Conclusion

Choosing the right blogging tools impacts your writing, traffic, visitor experience, and everything else associated with blogging. The tools you choose can make or break you. Some can propel you months or even years ahead.

Not all of these tools are the right ones for you. Focus on the blogging tools that fit your needs and focus on mastering those tools instead of trying to become mediocre at all of them.

Which of these blogging tools was your favorite? Would you like to recommend a blogging tool? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Put Training Course Creation Into Your Schedule

August 12, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

course creation

Ever think about creating a training course? Training courses are high in demand right now, and some training courses have made as much as seven figures within a few days.

But the recurring excuse is a lack of time. Some people believe it will take too much time to get over the learning curve. Others believe it will take too much time to crate a high quality course. Both of those can easily be accomplished.

You don’t have to commit an entire month to creating a single training course. I have managed to complete some of my training courses in a few hours instead of a few days, weeks, or months.

The purpose of this blog post is to let you know how possible it is for you to create a training course, and better yet, how you can easily get started.

Estimate The Workload

When I create a new training course, I always estimate the amount of work I must put in. For most of my Udemy courses, I only needed 1-3 days to go from course idea to getting published in the Udemy marketplace. Most of my Udemy courses are two hours long.

For my upcoming Total Social Media Domination membership site, I knew I would have to put in more time. My goal is to make TSMD one of the best social media how-to membership sites on the web.

I calculated that I would need to devote at least two hours each day for three days to finish creating all of the videos. To some people, committing two hours to the same activity in a given day seems like a lot.

Considering that this level of commitment is only required for three days to create a superb course doesn’t make it seem as time consuming. In three days, you have a high quality training course that you can charge hundreds of dollars for.

In this case, it is better to overestimate your workload than underestimate it. If you underestimate the workload, you’ll miss the deadline, feel overwhelmed, and give up.

If you overestimate the workload, you’ll have plenty of time to spare and might even finish the training course comfortably.

What Must You Get Done Today?

I have experimented with many workflows for creating a training course. It’s best to write a list of all of the topics you must discuss for your training course each day.

During the planning process of TSMD, I identified all of the topics I must completely discuss each day that I did videos. I knew on what day I would completely cover Twitter and on what day I would completely cover Facebook.

In three days, I had to cover 10 key topics, and each topic consisted of several videos.

I did plan out and think about how I would get everything done within three days. However, I didn’t plan deep ahead with the creation process because those types of plans are dependent on you staying true to the course each day.

I always focused on completing the video lessons I had to get done for the day. I set my goals for the day very high and then spread out the other video lessons more comfortably. On the following day, I change my plans to make that an intense day and repeat that process until I complete the course.

For TSMD, I had to put in two hours of work for three days which added up to under 10 hours total.

The Power Question

“When will you create the video lessons?”

When I was a kid and my dad asked me when, I’d say, “Soon.” Then he’d promptly say, “Give me a time.” Depending on the conversation, he’d say, “Give me a time and day of the week.”

This type of questioning annoyed me at first but forced me to get set on when I would take a particular course of action.

Being clear on when you will take action makes it easier to carve out time in your schedule. I was very specific with TSMD. I decided that evenings would work best for me.

I’d get everything else out of the way so I had more time in the evening. Podcast interviews were done, blog posts were written, and emails were responded to.

During those evenings, it was just me and TSMD.

Habit Development

If you do something each day for 66 straight days, you turn it into a habit. Every day, I do something for one of my training courses.

I’m creating video lessons, making changes to the membership dashboard, planning out the marketing, or something else. But I’m doing something for one or more of my training courses every day.

Turn training course creation and marketing into a habit by doing a little bit each day. It’s better to do a little bit each day than squeeze everything into one day. Doing a little bit each day makes the process more comfortable and allows you to deliver higher value training courses.

I was fine with squeezing TSMD into three days because even when the video lessons were created, I still had a lot more to do. To this day, I continue creating video lessons for TSMD and doing a little bit each day. TSMD won’t be one of those publish and forget about it training courses. I’ll be updating it every month.

In Conclusion

I created dozens of training courses before graduating high school. Training course creation isn’t a privilege exclusive to a small group of people. Anyone can get started and create the training course of their dreams.

Plus, training courses are highly profitable. I make more money from my training courses than any other product or service that I offer. And I’m not alone.

Joseph Michael started creating courses part-time during any extra time he could find. A few years later and Joseph has made over $1 million from his courses.

Joseph was kind enough to provide my readers (you guys and gals) with his course creation bundle. This bundle allowed him to go from training course idea to over $1 million in profit.

Joseph started out as your typical “Average Joe.” If Joseph and I can create profitable training courses, then you can too.

The course creation bundle will help make training course creation a breeze, but it’s only available for a limited time.

My recommendation is to get it even if you don’t want to create a training course. That way, when you decide to create a training course, you have the resource.

Have you created a training course before? If not, what’s holding you back? Sound off n the comments section below

How To Leverage Pareto’s 80/20 Principle For Your Business

August 9, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Pareto’s 80/20 Principle is the one rule you need to master in order to be productive every day of your life. Discover why this rule is so important and how you can use it to increase business sales.

Pareto’s Principle has had a significant impact on my journey as an entrepreneur. It allows me to address my priorities and gives me a reason to pursue those instead of the shiny objects that get in the way of most people’s success.

If you enjoy the video, please don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

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How To Leverage Social Media Automation To Take More Vacations

August 5, 2016 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

social media automation

Social media is the best way to build an audience without paying a penny. Social media automation helps to save a large portion of your time. Most people spend approximately two hours on social media every day.

Combine social media automation with everything else you do in your work and life, and there isn’t much time left for you to explore new opportunities.

For a while, I focused on social media to build my audience. It worked, but it took up most of my time. While I did grow my social media audience and write blog posts, that was just about all I could handle and nothing much beyond that happened with my business.

Now I create monthly training courses, play the piano, and still dedicate time to grow my social media audience. Only now I get to take true vacations rather than working vacations. How? I simply automated my social media efforts.

Scheduling my own tweets and growing my social media audience are things of the past. Tweets still show up on my account, and my audience still grows, but I have outsourced those tasks to other people I can trust.

There is a point at which outsourcing becomes necessary. It’s the only way to explore more opportunities and increase revenues. Plus the incentive of taking real vacations more often helps too. Let’s be honest about that.

Without any further adieu, here’s the pathway to social media automation:

List All Of The Things You Currently Do For Your Social Media Accounts

What tasks do you currently handle for your social accounts? Are you engaging with your audience, looking for content to share, scheduling posts, conducting content research, growing your audience, or anything else?

Chances are you perform at least one or more of those tasks. Right now, quantity matters less than the work you’re putting in to accomplish these tasks over time, and the time you spend on your social media initiatives on a daily basis.

As you see results from your efforts, the more time you’ll spend on maintaining and increasing those results. An effective social media strategy helps you maximize your time, but you will still spend time on those tasks, regardless of your strategy.

I used to schedule over 700 tweets each week before I hired someone to do that for me. It took me about 30-45 minutes each week to schedule that many tweets through repeated CSV file uploads and looking through the tweets to make sure everything appeared the way it should. Certain tasks like those ate away at my time.

Even though these tasks are necessary for promoting yourself on social media, they eat into precious time. And you can easily outsource these tasks to other people for a relatively low price.

It should take you 15-30 minutes to create the list of your social media tasks and an approximation of how much time you spend on each. You may get the main tasks down in 2-5 minutes, but if you dig deeper and consider every part of your social media strategy, you will likely discover more tasks that you can outsource.

List All Of The Tasks That You Can Add To Your Social Media Workload

We naturally want to be present on multiple social networks in order to get the most out of each. While it is tempting to spread out your efforts, a better approach is to master one social network at a time.

With that said, it is possible to expand your social network presence with the help of outsourcing. Make a list of all the networks that need attention and note which of your current networks are top performers. It may not be necessary to be active on every network; it depends on your goals and audience.

Before I started to outsource my social media, I wouldn’t have thought of using Instagram. Now I get the most out of that network because my freelancers take care of the images and posts for me.

I didn’t have the time to do all of that work. But rather than turn that excuse into a barrier, I found a way around the barrier. It’s just like walking around a maze instead of going through it. The only way out is through.

social media automation

Writing a list of your social media tasks will help you realize exactly how much you are doing and how much time you are spending on each task. The list is not meant to add to your workload. Rather, it should help you prioritize the tasks you can outsource in the future.

What About ROI?

Outsourcing is a great way to save time. But it costs money. Some people spend thousands of dollars per month on outsourcing, and I don’t blame them. The more money you spend on outsourcing, the more time you save.

Unfortunately, money does not grow in trees. And the main thing on every entrepreneur’s mind is how to make a profit.

“If I spend all of this money on outsourcing, how am I going to make any money?”

If you ask and answer this question often enough, you will be surprised at the insights you uncover. Sure, automating your social media workload is no guarantee that you’ll increase your profits.

I could schedule tweets myself and save money. And I am not necessarily adding to my profits each time I pay someone to schedule tweets for me. Just as I don’t make a profit when I pay someone else to edit my videos.

However, the time I save (here’s the key part) can be repurposed into efforts that lead to bigger profits. Never before have I had so much time available. And never before have I made as much revenue as I am making now!

If you know how to use your time correctly, you also know how you can increase your profits by social media automation.

In Conclusion

As social media continues to evolve, more opportunities pop up. But along with those opportunities comes a heavier workload.

We must learn how to use social networks and build our audiences. And we must also pursue new opportunities while maintaining our current workloads. But if you put too much work on your shoulders, everything will come crashing down.

Your workload may be weighing you down; it’s only when you take some of that weight off your shoulders that you begin to realize how much weight was actually there.

It’s like exchanging your worn out running shoes for a new pair. You never knew how badly you needed a new pair until you put them on your feet.

Social media automation makes you conscious of the difference between that old pair of running shows and the new pair.

Likewise, we may not realize how much work we put on ourselves until we see things from a different perspective and take automation and outsourcing more seriously.

What are your thoughts on social media automation and outsourcing? Do you focus more on increasing revenues or finding more time in the day to complete all of your tasks? Sound off in the comments section below.

July 2016 Monthly Performance Report

July 31, 2016 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Each month feels like another month of rapid progress. July is no exception. In fact, it’s crazy to think July has already ended.

July 2016 Summary

I interviewed more people for my podcast. I plan on launching it in August. I promise you’ll love the episodes.

My family went up to Boston twice to watch the Red Sox play ball. We saw the team win two games and lose two games.

My brother and I hosted our Teenager Entrepreneur bootcamp which is always a blast. For those of you who don’t know, my brother and I empower teens with the knowledge they need to build successful businesses based on their passions.

That’s the Teenager Entrepreneur bootcamp in a nutshell.

I won the People’s Choice Rule Breaker Award back in 2014, and now I’m ready to win another Rule Breaker Award in 2016. I am a rule breaker because I started my business in middle school.

If you want me to win the award, please vote for me here.

Here’s what else happened this month:

Content Creation Calendar

I have read several books this month (more on that later) and structuring a content creation calendar got mentioned in several of those books. So I decided to structure my own content creation calendar.

It’s one of the better decisions I have made regarding my content. If I have all of my content creation calendars in front of me, and you wanted to know what I’ll do on December 13, 2016, I could tell you.

I considered taking a picture of one of my content creation calendars but it’s got several of my future content ideas on it. I would rather write out the content first. If I remember, I’ll include the August 2016 Content Creation Calendar within that Performance Report.

The Content Creation Calendar made it possible for me to identify themes I need to focus on and how I can manage to produce a new piece of content every day. I was great at that in the past. But that became more difficult as I wrote longer blog posts.

My Battle With Amazon

email marketing

About 1-2 weeks ago, I sent an email to my list detailing my struggle with Amazon. The struggle many Kindle authors face is that Amazon doesn’t allow you to sell your Kindle books for free. $0.99 is the minimum price you must charge for your Kindle book.

So why are some Kindle books free?

The answer is that there’s a workaround. If you publish your book on Smashwords for free and get the premium status in Smashwords, Amazon is more likely to listen. Publishing your book on Smashwords isn’t good enough without the premium status.

I plan on getting the premium status on Smashwords soon. I haven’t gotten to it due to a lack of time. Then I am sure Amazon will change the price.

The interesting thing about this Kindle book is that it actually made four sales. The only time I promoted it to my audience, I told them to not buy the book because the entire book is me copying and pasting one of my blog posts.

But four sales got my attention. While I didn’t want this particular Kindle book to make sales (it’s one of my blog posts and I only make $0.35 per sale), I see potential.

The next time I turn one of my blog posts into a book, I’ll add additional content so I feel better charging $0.99 for that Kindle book. It’s just unnecessarily hard to make a Kindle book free on Amazon. For now, having one Permafree Kindle book is fine with me.

Problems With Udemy

One of my goals from the June 2016 Monthly Performance Report was to create more Udemy courses. The entire thinking was that since Udemy is changing and fewer people want to create courses, now is the perfect time to jump in.

Since then my opinion has changed. I’m not as focused as I once was to create more training courses. Udemy’s pricing policy and rule to hide certain courses with an insufficient average rating from their search engine didn’t go well with me.

For instance, my free course Guest Blogging Your Way To Ultimate Visibility and Traffic was removed from Udemy’s search engine.

Udemy said that if a course averages below 4.10 stars in its recent reviews, it gets yanked from the search engine. The last 10 reviewers averaged 3.85 stars which means I was .25 stars away from not having any problems.

udemy rating system

Combine that with the fact that the course’s all-time star average is exactly 4.10 stars, I’m not pleased. Udemy is continuing to change, and most of the changes aren’t looking good so far.

All of the income I make from Udemy is now passive. I haven’t updated a course there for a while. But I’m not giving up on training course creation. Enter TSMD.

Total Social Media Domination — TSMD

TSMD is one of the most ambitious projects I am currently pursuing. TSMD will be a membership site that consistently gets updated with new videos on how to dominate social media.

I don’t know all of the details yet, but I know I’ll include a FB group for members to chat and ask me their questions.

The plan is to commit at least three hours of my time to building TSMD every single day until its completion. That way, I can finish the whole membership site before the end of summer. Adding monthly updates will be much easier in comparison.

For those of you interested, I plan on having an affiliate program for the membership site with a recurring commission for each member you refer.

Unlock Your Potential

Speaking of projects, I’m also working on a new book. The book will be called Unlock Your Potential. Right now the manuscript is over 10,000 words long. I aim to get the manuscript to 30,000 to 60,000 words by the end of August.

This book will be a manifesto. I’ll reveal what has driven me so far and how you can achieve significant results in your life. This isn’t just going to be any personal development book. It’s going to be one of the best if not the best personal development book out there.

I’m pursuing a publisher for this book so my book can reach the hands of more readers. I dream of being able to find this book in Barnes & Noble.

I’m Intensifying My YouTube Efforts

marc guberti youtube

I can’t show a picture of my content creation calendar, but I can give you an idea of the work involved. Every week, I am uploading a minimum of four new videos to YouTube.

#1: Videos For Teenage Entrepreneur Series on Mondays — These videos are specifically aimed towards providing teens with the knowledge they need to crush it in business and life.

#2: Misc videos on Tuesdays — Anything from social media marketing to productivity, but I keep these videos within my niche.

#3: Podcast videos on Wednesday — I will redistribute all of my MP3 files into YouTube videos with my podcast’s channel art. Why not?

#4: Q&A videos on Saturdays — I am answering one question every week. Have a question for me? I’ll answer it in a video and promote you at the same time!

My goal is to eventually publish one new YouTube video every day. The focus in August is to get comfortable with publishing four videos every week. I want to feel comfortable taking that type of action so it’s an easy transition during college.

Books I Read

I read a lot of books this month largely due to traveling back and forth from New York to Boston…twice.

1. The 10X Rule

2. Podcastnomics

3. Will The Real You Please Stand Up

4. The Content Code

5. Content Rules

6. Podcast Launch

As you can see, I am reading books in three specific areas. Content marketing, podcasting, and personal development.

After my interview with Aaron Walker, I learned that reading personal development books won’t just help you become a better person. Personal development books help you become successful in all areas of your life…including your business.

If you could only read one of these books, I’d recommend The 10X Rule hands down. It’s a personal development book that is all about achieving success. These rules apply regardless of what niche you are in.

One cool stat from The 10X Rule is that most workers read one book every year while most CEOs read 60 books every year. That stat reveals how important it is to read books.

One of my goals is to listen to at least five audiobooks each month. This goal has been easy for me in the summer due to traveling. In school, that goal will get more challenging, but I am determined to pull it off.

Blog Posts I Wrote

If you missed the blog posts I wrote in July and want to read them, I have included them here as a reference. I published a bunch of YouTube videos too which can be found on my channel.

5 Ways To Use SnapChat For Business: The new social network is growing as the days go by. Now is the perfect time to start using the revolutionary social network for your business. In this blog post, I’ll reveal how I use SnapChat for my business and how you can do the same.

3 Ways To Fit Something Into Your Budget: When businesses find themselves at their maximum budget, these are the methods they can use to find more room within their budgets.

10 Tactics To Get High Quality Backlinks: Backlinks are very important for SEO. In this article, you’ll learn some of the best tactics you can use to build a quality backlink empire.

How To Write A Ridiculously Long Blog Post: Some of my blog posts are over 5,000 words which is great for SEO. You’ll learn the mindset I approach these blog psots with so I can go from an idea to 5,000+ words.

5 Power Tips To Get More Done: Want to accomplish more in your lifetime? This blog post reveals how you can do just that.

Looking Back At June

I already went in-depth about Udemy, so I won’t mention that here.

I still haven’t created a new landing page yet. TSMD will force me to create several landing pages so I’m happy about that. I won’t consider creating another landing page until I complete TSMD.

I technically published a new Kindle book although making it permafree will be the next goal. What interests me is that the book has already resulted in two new subscribers. Making the book free would put it in front of more people, and as a result, grow my email list.

I am still not averaging 1,000 daily visitors for my blog yet, but I did make significant progress. I finally have a solid plan of attack for producing content. By the end of August, I’ll be in the groove of publishing one new piece of content for this blog every day.

Part of that plan is having contributors, so if you would like to contribute a blog post to my blog, you can go here for the details. I have two people working for me to get more contributors.

I honestly thought I would have interviewed more people for my podcast. I only interviewed five people this month but I largely attribute that to travel and the Teenager Entrepreneur bootcamp.

I had an absolute blast during those five interviews and am sure you’ll enjoy them too.

August Goals

I normally called this section the “Highlights” section, but “Goals” seems more appropriate. These are some of my goals for August:

#1: Launch The Podcast

For the past two months, I’ve told my audience about all of the awesome people who I have interviewed. The podcast is finally going to see the light of day. On my content calendar, I have already designated August 24th as the day the first podcast episode goes live.

There’s still much to do but the heavy lifting is over with. The most challenging part was committing to having guests and then interviewing the first few guests. It’s been a breeze since then.

#2: Complete TSMD

I will work on this membership site for at least three hours every day until its completion. I am excited about this membership site and all that I will offer on it.

I’m so excited about it that I am even working on merchandise. I am finalizing some of the shirts on Zazzle now.

social media shirts zazzle

Below the social media logo are the words “Total Social Media Domination” and “@MarcGuberti.”

All of those shirts will be available to the public soon enough, and you better believe I’m wearing those shirts during my future YouTube videos.

#3: Get 1,000 Daily Visitors For My Blog

This will remain one of my goals until I accomplish it. July was the planning phase and August is the month in which I execute that plan. I am more focused on the podcast and TSMD, but any extra time I have will get allocated towards this goal.

#4: Increase My Affiliate Marketing Revenue

I have made several changes to my blog with affiliate marketing in mind. A while ago, I added a resources page to my blog with some of the online tools that I recommend.

All of the links are affiliate links, and I have no problem with making money promoting a tool that I would have recommend anyway.

I have gone through all of my blog posts and included affiliate links at any reference of HootSuite, Optimize Press, ManageFlitter, or any of the other tools that I use.

The moment I publish my podcast, I’m pursuing Audible’s podcasting affiliate program. That will be a lot of fun since I read all of my books on Audible and can therefore promote it very well.

I’ll never promote a product as an affiliate unless I like the product and am proud to stand behind it.

In Conclusion

In all of the years I’ve been a blogger, I have always explored new opportunities and achieved the best results during the summer. Summer is coming to an end.

But I’m not walking out quietly. In a span of the next 30 days, I’ll launch a membership site and a podcast. I’ll be increasing the number of emails I send each month which means I’ll be switching over to ConvertKit very soon (there’s no limit in monthly emails).

Thank you for reading my month in review. I hope you enjoyed it.

And please don’t forget to vote for me to receive the Rule Breaker Award.