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8 Ways To Drive More Traffic To Your Facebook Page

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Facebook Page Traffic

With over 1.44 billion monthly active users and over 900 million daily active users, it is fair to say that Facebook is the supreme social network in terms of user base. Facebook’s ever growing popularity and significance make it a crucial social network for your business to get on and optimize effectively. Facebook has made rules over the years that now make it more difficult for business pages to get their content in front of their audiences, but once you get a massive audience to see your Facebook content, they’ll come back to your Facebook Page numerous times. Remember that most of the 900 million people who log into Facebook every day also spend over an hour on the social media behemoth per day. Facebook is still important, and it’s importance grows as the days go by. If you don’t optimize Facebook for your business, then now is the time to start. If you already have a Facebook Page or want to get one, that Facebook Page needs more traffic. Here are eight ways to drive the traffic to your Facebook Page:

 

#1: Promote Your Facebook Page On Your Other Social Networks 

One of the most basic ways to promote your Facebook Page is by promoting it to the audience that you have already built. I use my social networks to promote each other, and depending on my needs in the moment, I may spend extra time promoting one of my social networks. When I decided to get back on YouTube, I went off to Twitter for the channel promotion. I have gained thousands of subscribers for my YouTube channel ever since the promotion started. This cool story about my YouTube channel is a cool story that you can replicate for your Facebook Page so it gets thousands of likes. You don’t want to be over-promotional on social media, but it is okay to promote yourself and your other social media accounts often.

 

#2: Promote Your Facebook Page On Your Blog

There are WordPress plugins that allow you to display your Facebook Page and some of its posts directly on your blog. If your blog visitors like your content, then they will be enticed to like your Facebook Page. However, your blog visitors will only like your Facebook Page if you include a call-to-action. You can include a call-to-action through your blog’s sidebar. If you do not have a fancy widget or plugin that displays your Facebook Page and the like button, you can always take an image of the Facebook logo that says “Like Us On Facebook” or something of that nature and link it to your Facebook Page. That way, when someone clicks the “Like Us On Facebook” picture on your blog’s sidebar, they will get sent to your Facebook Page.

 

#3: Tell Your Email List About It

Now that you know to promote your Facebook Page to your current audience, why stop short at the email list? If you send meaningful email blasts to your subscribers, then your email list will be your best source for traffic, sales, and social media growth. When you get started with your first Facebook Page or start to take an older Facebook Page more seriously, you can let the people on your email list know about the change. The people on your email list are usually your biggest supporters, and in addition to the likes and engagement your Facebook Page generates from the email blast, you may also get emails from the people on your list who enjoy what you are doing with your Facebook Page or just enjoy your brand as a whole. These types of emails are very motivating, and they never get old. Even the most successful, inspirational individuals like it when they get more motivation to do something.

 

#4: Participate In Facebook Groups

Have you heard of the saying “go where your audience is”? When you search for keywords that revolve around your niche, you will come across active Facebook Groups that may have thousands of people within your niche. The people who are a part of the Facebook Group would probably click the like button on your Facebook Page, but only if they see your Facebook Page.

The best way to get people in a Facebook Group to see and like your page is if you join the group through your Facebook Page instead of joining it through your personal account. Joining Facebook Groups with your Page allows every comment or post you put in the Group to promote your Facebook Page. When other group members hover their mouses onto your name, they will see your Facebook Page and the like button instead of the personal account and the “Add friend” option.

When you do participate in Facebook Groups, you must participate by the Group Rules. 99% of the time, that means you are not promoting your Facebook Page in post or comment. You can post and comment using your Facebook Page, but the moment you post something along the lines of “Please like my Facebook Page,” you will lose respect within that group and most likely get kicked out. Look at how other people in the Group interact with each other before jumping in. By looking at how other people interact, you will learn how to interact in a way that the other group members will notice and appreciate.

 

#5: Do Shout Out Exchanges With Other Facebook Pages

One of the most underrated ways to get more Facebook Page likes is to do shout out exchanges with other Facebook Pages. SEO expert Neil Patel used this one strategy to accumulate thousands of likes for one of his Facebook Pages. Once your Facebook Page hits a certain number of likes (Neil waited until his page surpassed 3,000 likes), you should contact owners of Facebook Pages that are similar to your Facebook Page and ask for a shout out exchange. If you are a digital marketing expert with a Facebook Page about digital marketing, you would use this strategy to target other digital marketers who have successful Facebook Pages.

The people you contact should have close to the same number of likes as you do. If you contact someone with a small number of likes compared to the amount of likes you have, then you won’t get the good end of the deal. If you contact someone with 10 times as many likes as you, then that person probably won’t agree to do the shout out exchange since that person wouldn’t get the good end of the deal. If you have 3,000 likes, you should be contacting people who have 2,500-5,000 Facebook Page likes. That way, more people will say yes to your shout out request. You can both agree to delete the shout out post eight hours after you both send the shout out posts so your Facebook Pages don’t appear over-promotional. Most Facebook Page owners say no to these types of requests, but if you get 10 people with 3,000 likes to say yes, then your Facebook Page will be put in front of 30,000 additional people who may then choose to like your page.

You also get the benefit of helping someone else in your niche to grow and thrive on Facebook. With this strategy, you and the Facebook Page owner who agrees to the shout out exchange will bring each other up to the next level.

 

#6: Post Multiple Times Per Day

You can generate traffic from your blog and other social networks, but you should also generate traffic from Facebook itself. Exchanging shout outs with other Facebook Pages similar to yours is one way to get traffic from Facebook, but one of the main ways to get more traffic from Facebook is by posting on your Facebook Page multiple times per day.

Not only is it important to post on your Facebook Page multiple times per day to get more traffic, but posting on your Facebook Page multiple times per day allows you to build a stronger relationship between you and the audience that you have already built. There is no point in having a successful Facebook Page with over 100,000 likes if you won’t interact with your audience by sending out posts.

 

#7: Look At Your Page Insights

Knowing when to post content is just as important as posting content. With a Facebook Page, you get Facebook Page Insights provided to you free of charge. These Insights let you know when a large percentage of your audience is on Facebook, and this information will let you know which times of the day are the sweet spots for posting your content. You may discover, for instance, that more people in your audience are on Facebook every Tuesday at 6 pm than any other time on Tuesday. You should primarily send Facebook posts at optimal times when you know your audience would see those posts so that those posts can spread farther and attract more engagement.

 

#8: Use Facebook Advertising

Facebook advertising is one of the most powerful forms of promotion on Facebook, and some people rely on Facebook ads to get hundreds of thousands of likes. Some marketers have perfected the system and get thousands of likes for under $100. If you spent $10 per day to promote a Facebook ad, and you optimized your ad to perform well, then your Facebook Page could potentially get thousands of likes every month all for just $300 per month. It takes time and practice to reach that point, but once you reach the point of getting thousands of likes for a few hundred dollars, then you will have a large audience to interact with. If you have landing pages to get more subscribers, and you promote your landing pages to your Facebook audience (preferably promote the landing page with an ad), then your email list would get super-sized. The result of a super-sized email list is that the next time you do some type of product promotion, you will generate more revenue, and some of that extra revenue can go into the Facebook ads. It is all a matter of starting that cycle to a point where you can always count on it for your business.

 

In Conclusion

With Facebook approaching 1 billion daily active users, Facebook Pages are constantly growing in importance. If you spend time every day growing your Facebook audience, your Facebook audience could potentially transform your brand. You can jumpstart your Facebook growth by spending some money on Facebook advertisements, but none of the growth matters if you are not posting new content on your Facebook Page and taking the time to interact with your audience.

Do you use Facebook for your brand? Do you think Facebook’s new rules restrict Business Pages to the point where the results are not worth the time and money? Do you have an additional tip for generating more traffic to your Facebook Page? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

The Ultimate Guide To Creating An Effective Blog Strategy

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Blog Strategy Guide

Success consists of various routes. Some people become successful by investing in stocks, singing very well, playing a sport very well, writing very well, or doing something very well that leads to a profit and meaningful, positive recognition. Success on the web also consists of various routes. Some people build their businesses around Twitter while others build their businesses around Facebook.

Although success on the web consists of various routes, 99% of all of the successes on the web have this in common—they all have successful blogs. Blogs are no longer online diaries. They allow you to build relationships with a targeted audience like never before. Blogs are now like business cards—you need them. Many people know that blogs are essential, and numerous people who visit my blog have blogs of their own.

However, having a blog does not guarantee that the blog will become successful or contribute towards your brand’s growth. Having a blog just means you have something that can potentially have a huge impact on your brand. Turning that potential into a reality is the challenge that all bloggers face at the beginning of their journeys. The most successful people who make their revenue on the web turned that potential into reality.

In order to get the same results from your blog, you must have an effective strategy in place. This effective strategy must account for various areas that all contribute towards blog growth, but in particular, it must account for traffic, SEO, social media, and subscribers.

 

Traffic

Without traffic, your blog won’t have an impact on your brand. You must come up with different methods of boosting your blog’s traffic and then implement those methods to see which methods bring forth the best results. You can use SEO, social media, and an email list to get more traffic, and I believe these three traffic-boosting methods are the most effective methods available. However, when you are first starting out, you need to generate some short-term traffic. Here are some tips that will help you generate the short-term traffic:

  1. Engage in forums based on the community guidelines. Don’t be over-promotional.
  2. Comment on viral pins. Your comment will almost always show up on the top since most pins (even the viral ones) get fewer than three comments.
  3. Encourage your friends and family to share your blog on their social networks. Social media shares will get you more blog traffic from the social networks and Google because social shares are critical factors in Google’s ranking system.
  4. Write guest posts and ask other bloggers within your niche to mention one of your top blog posts in the future.
  5. Write a lot of content. Longer blog posts rank better on Google, and updating your blog consistently also helps.

 

SEO

Once you start generating some short-term traffic, you should start learning more about SEO. My advice with SEO is to approach it with caution. There are thousands of SEO-related articles, and it is easy to get confused with the entire process of optimizing your blog for Google. It took me several years to master SEO, but part of the delay was that I spent most of my time on other things such as writing content and polishing up my writing skills. The first few blog posts I wrote were decent at best, but my writing has improved since then. Not only did I have to improve my writing, but I also had to learn how to optimize a blog to get more subscribers and to provide a noteworthy experience for first-time visitors. I read a few SEO articles every month, and now I am able to read them with greater intensity since my blog is optimized to perform well. To save you from reading countless SEO articles, I compiled a list of methods you can use to boost your blog’s SEO.

  1. Write longer blog posts. According to SEO expert Neil Patel, most of the blog posts on the first page of Google’s search results are 2,000 words or longer.
  2. Write blog posts at a consistent rate, preferably multiple blog posts per week. Google appreciates it when you update your blog consistently. No matter how good your blog is, if your blog does not get updated consistently and often, Google won’t put your blog on the first page. Google prefers to show blogs that get updated with fresh content. When was the last time you went to the first page of a Google search result and came across a blog post that was published two years ago on a now dormant blog?
  3. Use smaller pictures. Resizing a big picture into a small picture does not work here. You must choose pictures for your blog posts that are small from the start. I use Canva to create the pictures that I use for my blog posts. It is a free tool with a lot of versatility. Using small pictures makes your blog posts load faster, and speed time is another big factor of Google’s ranking system.
  4. Link back to your older blog posts. When I find it relevant, I will use a new blog post to promote an older blog post (just like this. NOTE: it’s an SEO blog post). Promoting your older blog posts will give those blog posts more traffic. A highly populated old blog post indicates evergreen content, and the search engines will promote it more often. The main function of this strategy is to decrease your blog’s bounce rate, and a low bounce rate lets search engines know that people stay on your blog for a long period of time. The search engine logic is that since people stay on your blog for a long period of time, it must be interesting. Therefore, the search engines promote your content with more intensity.
  5. Write blog posts with keywords. Although you want to avoid keyword stuffing (using the same keyword in every sentence just for the sake of SEO), you should use keywords in your blog posts often, and especially at the very beginning of your content.

It is better to apply a few methods to boost your SEO than it is to read hundreds of articles but not implement anything. Implement most or all of these tactics before you read numerous articles about SEO.

 

Social Media

The best way to strengthen your SEO in the beginning is to grow your social media audience and have that audience engage with your blog content. Getting more social shares from your social media audience will lead to an increased search engine ranking, and since you are growing a social media audience, you will get more traffic from your own social media accounts. When I started to get hundreds of daily visitors from Twitter, my SEO traffic increased to the same level, and the ratio of my Twitter traffic to SEO traffic is very close to 1:1.

Not only does social media provide you with more traffic and a better SEO rank, but you also get to interact with more people. Social media has allowed me to interact with thousands of people interested in my niche who now visit my blog and buy my products. Here are some tips to help you get started on social media:

  1. Focus on one social network in the beginning. Many people like to use them all and master them all in one go, but social media mastery does not work that way. Social media mastery works in the same way as trying to master multiple languages. You would not learn multiple languages at the same time because that would be confusing, and you would most likely end up being mediocre at a few languages but fluent in none of them. If you focus all of your time on one language, then it will be easier for you to become fluent in that language. In the same way, if you focus on learning one social network, then it will become easier for you to master that one social network. Moreover, once you master a social network, it will become easier for you to master a second social network, and each time you master another social network, it becomes easier for you to master the next social network that you attempt to master.
  2. Post consistently. The only way your followers will remember who you are is if they see you often. You can use a scheduling tool like HootSuite to schedule social media posts throughout the day.
  3. Interact with your audience. Interaction allows relationships to build, and some of the people you interact with will take you and your content more seriously after the interaction takes place. It will definitely be easier for these people to remember you and your brand.
  4. Grow a targeted audience. An audience consists of people. A targeted audience consists of people interested in your niche. There is a big difference between building an audience and building a targeted audience. When you interact with other people, look for the people who engage with the leaders in your niche. The people who engage with the leaders in your niche are targeted individuals who are interested in your niche. You want these types of followers to form your social media audience.
  5. Follow other people. The biggest mistake I made in the beginning of my Twitter journey was assuming I could get 100,000 followers and only follow a few dozen people. Although those numbers are possible, my account grew at a slow pace and got stuck at around 1,667 followers for an extended period of time. In short, this mindset did not work well for my social media audience. When I started following other people, and in particular, highly targeted individuals likely to follow back, my audience grew dramatically.

 

Subscribers

As the saying goes, “The money is in the list.” This powerful saying has encouraged thousands of bloggers to take their email lists more seriously. It is this saying that eventually led to my landing pages and optimizing my blog to grow my email list. You want to convert as many of your blog visitors as possible into subscribers because subscribers will buy your products and become returning visitors.

However, subscribers only engage with what you do if you interact with them often. You must send out at least one email blast every week to the people on your list so they constantly see your name in their inboxes. Although you don’t want to excessively send out email blasts, you must also send the email blast even if you lose subscribers. The reality about most email marketing efforts is that you will lose some subscribers every time you send an email blast, but if you never send an email blast, then you don’t get to tap into the goldmine that is your email list. Here are some tips to help you grow your email list:

  1. Get landing pages on your blog. Landing pages are optimized to collect email addresses. They typically offer a free prize that can only be received when someone enters his/her email address into a form. I use Optimize Press for my landing pages. The lowest price for Optimize Press is $97, but it is the best investment you can make as a WordPress.org blogger.
  2. Have a pop-up. Pop-ups work surprisingly well at getting more email subscribers. I was a bit skeptical to use a pop-up, but after I used Pop-Up Domination, my email list grew dramatically. Some technical problems prevented me from using the Pop-Up Domination plugin, and I saw a decline in the average number of subscribers I gained per day. If you buy a pop-up plugin, or any plugin for that matter, make sure that plugin comes with excellent support.
  3. Continue to get more traffic. At this point, this guide may sound like a yo-yo, and it should. The beauty of all four of these essential components of an effective blog strategy is that they all complement each other. More traffic leads to subscribers, and more subscribers leads to more traffic. Just get the cycle started, increase the power of that cycle, and then the cycle will continue itself as long as you continue writing blog posts and sending email blasts.
  4. Include a subscription form at the bottom of every blog post. I include a subscription form below my blog posts so that they people who enjoyed my blog post have easy access to a free resource that I offer in exchange for an email address. People who read through an entire blog post and appreciate the value will be more likely to subscribe, but no one will subscribe without a call-to-action. Including a subscription box or link to a landing page at the bottom of every blog post provides that consistent call-to-action.
  5. Use a paid emailing service. If you are not using a service like iContact, Aweber, or MailChimp, then you are not getting the best from your email marketing efforts. Many tools like Optimize Press work best with a paid emailing service, and these emailing services provide their users with functionality that free services don’t provide. Most of the paid emailing services provide their users with the ability to create autoresponders, segments, and send your own custom messages just to name a few of the available options.

 

In Conclusion

Creating an effective blog strategy requires you to focus on traffic, SEO, social media, and your email list. All four of these areas of blog growth complement each other well, and if you get a large enough audience through one of these methods (especially the email list), you can easily create a cycle in which people find you on social media, visit your blog, share it on social media (the social media visit and social share help SEO), and then these people may subscribe to your blog after reading one of your blog posts. Finally, these subscribers may decide to visit your blog and visit one of your social media accounts that you have on your blog’s sidebar. Then, the cycle continues. Continuing this cycle allows you to master blogging.

Which part of the effective blog strategy do you think is the most important? Do you have any tips to boost any of the four areas of the effective blog strategy? Do you think there is another essential factor to an effective blog strategy? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How To Interact With Your Social Media Audience

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Talk With Social Media Audience

Social media includes the word “social,” and this well-known fact eludes many brands when they go about their social media strategies. Many brands and individuals use social media as a way to broadcast their message without responding and getting to know their audience—the very people brands are meant to serve. Many of the brands and individuals who don’t interact with other people don’t interact because interaction rarely leads to short-term results.

Although interaction does not lead to short-term results, it does lead to long-term results. Some of the people I engaged with on Twitter continue engaging with me and my content to this day. Thousands of people have tweeted about my blog posts, and I interacted with many of those people. In fact, I still interact with some of them, and I have interacted with some of these people in the past 24 hours. Several of these people became my customers. The long-term result of meaningful interaction is a strengthened relationship in which a person likes you and trusts in what you do. Interacting with the people in your audience will allow you to amplify your message because more people will share it on their social networks. Most successful people don’t become successful on their own. They get help from other people. Interacting with your audience will allow you to find people who will help you become successful, meet new people who you can build relationships with, and give you and your audience a better experience on social media.

Now that you know the importance of interaction in a successful social media strategy, here are some of the methods you can use to interact with your social media audience.

 

#1: Thank Them

Each time one of my followers shares one of my blog posts, I thank that follower for sharing the article. Few people get thanked for sharing content on social media, and based on their response, my followers appreciate when I thank them.

Thanking someone is an act of courtesy, but in this case, also an act of humility. I acknowledge that all of the individuals who visit this blog allow it to become successful. I can create the blog and write the content, but if no one visits my blog, then my message won’t spread. My audience makes it possible for my message to spread, and for that, I am deeply grateful. Realizing how important your audience is for your brand’s growth and current progress will allow you to develop a deeper appreciation for the people in your audience. Acquiring this deep appreciation for your audience will give you a good reason to thank someone in your audience each time that person does something as simple as sharing one of your articles.

 

#2: Be Kind

Regardless of whether you interact with your audience with your personal account or your brand’s account, your responses form a part of your reputation. If you always respond kindly on social media, then that will positively impact the reputation of you and your brand. However, the moment your responses become disrespectful and insulting, the reputation of you and your brand gets damaged. Building a reputation takes a long period of time, but that same reputation can be destroyed and taken down in a matter of minutes. Consistently showing kindness 100% of the time will allow your reputation of kindness to stay strong, and if your audience sees you as a kind individual, they will pay more attention to your brand.

Not only is kindness important from a reputation standpoint, but kindness also encourages more conversations to take place. We like to interact with the people who are kind to us because they appreciate what we do. Moreover, it is easier to interact with a kind person and have a meaningful conversation than it is to interact with a rude individual and expect a meaningful conversation to build. Kindness allows you to strengthen your reputation, and if you have a strong enough reputation, the people in your audience will gravitate towards you and your message.

 

#3: Ask Questions

Once you start interacting with someone on social media, you want that interact with that person for as long as possible. One of the most basic ways to continue an interaction on social media is by asking a relevant question that you know the person in your audience could easily answer. You don’t want to quiz your followers too often (i.e. asking when Twitter was created), but you should ask them opinion based questions (i.e. asking whether a follower uses Twitter more often than Facebook or vice-versa). Asking opinion based questions allows you to hear the opinions from the people within your audience, and some of these opinions can become inspiration for your next product or blog post.

Once you get a response for your question, there are several ways to take the conversation further. You can ask another question, but in most conversations, excessively asking questions leads to an annoying encounter. You want the conversation to be a blend of your questions and insights. When in doubt of how to respond to someone’s social media post, think of an actual conversation in real-life. The person interacting with you on social media is someone behind a computer screen who knows the difference between an enjoyable conversation and a socially awkward encounter. How would you respond to that person in real-life to keep the conversation going? What is the best way to respond (on social media, you actually have time to think before you respond)? After asking yourself those two questions, type your response and send it. Then, wait for the other person to respond.

 

#4: Seek Relevant, Meaningful Conversations

When you first start out on social media, the conversations don’t readily come into your notifications tab. As you get more followers, your notifications tab will be filled with people interacting with you and trying to start a conversation. Regardless of whether you are a beginner or massively successful on social media, seeking relevant, meaningful conversations is a great way to interact with more people and grow your audience in the process.

With over two billion tweets getting sent every week along with billions of other posts from different social networks, relevant, meaningful conversations occur all of the time. The only problem is trying to discover these conversations so you can interact with the people having the conversation. Using a social network’s search engine and looking for keywords within your niche is an easy way to find conversations that take place. If you use Twitter, then you can use the Twitter Advanced Search to find conversations taking place in your niche. In my opinion, the Twitter Advanced Search is the best social media search engine on the web.

Once you find a relevant, meaningful conversation that you want to be a part of, become a part of that conversation. Leave your response. When you leave your first response, you don’t introduce yourself. You simply jump right into the conversation. Once you jump into the conversation, wait for the other people in the conversation to respond, and formulate your next responses based on the other people’s responses. Don’t stick around if you see a conversation going out of control.

 

#5: Provide Insights In The Conversation

You won’t always get the opportunity to provide your insights in a conversation, but when you get the opportunity, include your insights. When you add value to the conversation, the people you interact with will be grateful for that additional value. Some people will be so grateful for the initial value that they will look for more value that you provide. These people will go to your blog and take a look at your product sales pages and possibly buy your products. One central belief many people share is that a product must be better than free value (i.e. blog posts and YouTube videos). If you over deliver in free value, then your product offers will be more attractive because the people in your audience will believe that the value in your products must be legendary. At that point, all you must do is live up to that promise.

 

In Conclusion

Interacting with your audience allows you to know the people within your audience. Too many people exclusively use social media to share content without interacting. These people want more traffic for their blog posts and social media posts that spread farther. Taking 5-10 minutes every day to interact with your audience allows you to build the long-term relationships that are necessary for consistently rising blog traffic and social media posts that spread farther. If you want to grow your social media audience, then it only makes sense to engage with the audience that you have already built.

Do you interact with your followers? Do you believe interacting with your audience is worth the time? What tips do you have for getting more interactions and continuing conversations? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

6 Ways To Get More Blog Traffic With Your Email List

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Get More Blog Traffic From Subscribers

Have you ever heard of the saying, the money is in the list? Not only is the money in the list, but a stable increase in blog traffic is also in your email list. By interacting with your subscribers in an effective manner, you can potentially double or even triple your blog traffic depending on how many subscribers you have. Your email list consists of many of your best supporters who appreciate what you do and enjoy reading your blog posts.

Getting these subscribers on your blog will lead to more traffic for your blog. I look at all of my blog posts’ engagement, and I notice that when I send an email blast about my latest blog post, that blog post gets more social engagement, social shares, and comments than the blog posts that I do not promote to my email list. When I look back at my WordPress statistics, I can easily tell which days I sent an email based on the spike in traffic.

I will assume at this point that you use a service like iContact, Aweber, Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, or something similar for your email marketing. You must use one of these services because they provide many capabilities that free emailing services do not provide. In addition to providing various capabilities, the top tools for email marketing (i.e. Optimize Press) require that you use one of these popular emailing services to get the best experience possible. Optimize Press is responsible for the bulk of my subscribers in the form of landing pages and other tactics I use to build my list.

As you continue to build your list, it is important to interact with your subscribers in a way that would entice them to visit your blog more often so your blog generates more traffic from the initial email and generates more traffic indirectly because of the email blast. Here are six ways that you can get more blog traffic with your email list:

 

#1: Send Out More Email Blasts

One of the biggest mistakes people make is that they do not communicate with their email lists enough. You should send an email blast to the people on your list multiple times every week. The most successful bloggers appear in your inbox at least two times each week. Why do the most successful people send multiple email blasts every week? The answer is that these people want you to remember them. The moment these people stop sending emails, the more difficult it will be for subscribers to remember that person. Although you should avoid being excessive, you should definitely send out more than one email blast to your list every week.

 

#2: Use The Same Link Twice

In all of my email blasts that promote blog posts, I include a link to the blog post at the very beginning of the email and towards the end of the email. After running multiple split-tests, I discovered that when I included the second link at the beginning of the email, my email blasts got a higher percentage of clickthroughs.

It makes sense for an email to generate more clicks when a second link is added. Some of your subscribers who read your email won’t need to read the entire email to know they want to read your blog post. The title of your blog post may be convincing enough to get some people to read it. For these people, you want to include a link towards the beginning of your email. These people want expedited access to your content in the same way that people want Amazon expedited shipping—the only difference is that an email blast, your version of expedition is free. Some people won’t be convinced right away and will read the rest of your email to get an idea of what your blog post is about before clicking on the link and reading the content. I entice people to continue reading my blog post with a quick introduction of the blog post and a clickable link at the end of the quick introduction that leads to the actual blog post.

 

#3: Utilize Email Segments

Some people want specific advice more than others. There are some people on my email list that only want blogging advice while others only want social media advice. I occasionally send email blasts to individual segments for their individual desires based on which email list they signed up for. If you signed up on the landing page that promoted my free eBook 27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter, then you will occasionally get emails containing Twitter tips that are exclusive to the people within that segment. I rarely do this, but I see a higher percentage of engagement when I send an email that specifically relates to one of my email segments.

 

#4: Promote Your Blog In Your Autoresponder

In all of my autoresponders, I send a series of emails that contain past blog posts that still provide value. These types of blog posts are referred to as evergreen content, and the engagement that the blog posts generate to this day show that people still appreciate them. By sending these types of emails to the people going through the autoresponder sequence, the relationship between me and that individual is strengthened. Many of the people who get my autoresponder end up visiting my blog numerous times. With an autoresponder that sends emails several times before its completion combined with frequently emailing your subscribers, it will be easier for people to remember you, your services, your products, and what you do.

 

#5: Look At What Works For You

When I send an email blast to all of the people on my list, I analyze that email to see how it did. Then, I compare that email blast with some of the email blasts I sent in the past. When I see an email blast perform particularly well, I use the same form in my next email blast to see if it produces a similar result. There are countless ways to test your email blasts to see what leads to more engagement. You can change the subject line, where the links show up, how you start your email, and how you finish your email just to name a few of the methods you can use to enhance your email blasts.

 

#6: Look At What Works For Others 

I am not the only marketer with an email list who writes about the wonders of a large email list. No matter how large my email list becomes, I will continue reading other marketers’ articles and analyzing their results. When I read an article that indicated remarkable results that came from making a few small changes, I test out those methods and see if I get an increased clickthrough rate, open rate, or any other metric that I may be looking for at the time. Just because something worked for someone else does not mean it will always work for you, but when it does work out for you, you will know how to create a more optimized email blast designed to generate a massive amount of traffic.

 

In Conclusion

Your email list is a secret weapon that allows you to build a loyal audience of readers who come back to your blog often. I learned about building an email list late in the game, and because of this, I would have some really good months of traffic and then some really bad months of traffic. An email list gives you a platform you can use to consistently increase your traffic over a long period of time, and if you grow your email list large enough, you may get thousands of daily visitors to your blog just from your email list. Imagine the implications of getting all of those initial visitors. Some of them would share your blog posts on their social networks which would mean more social media traffic, and good social media engagement helps out with SEO. The email list is the not-so-secret to success.

What are your thoughts about using an email list to get more blog traffic? Do you find better uses for it? Do you have any tips on optimizing email blasts so clickthroughs and open rates increase? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How To Use Social Media To Promote Your Products

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Social Media Marketing Tips

Time and time again, I see people making the same mistakes when they promote their products or affiliate links on their social networks. Many people simply type the name of the product, put a link right next to the name of the product, and then send out the social media post. They look like this:
“[Name of product]. www.linktoproduct.com”

However, just because something is common practice does not make it correct. Generating sales from social media is a process that requires thinking outside of the norm. You can’t promote a product on social media in the same way you would promote a blog post. However, it is possible to promote a product on social media and generate sales. Here’s how:

 

Surround Your Product With A Story

Products with good stories are made to spread, and that’s because we all love listening and telling good stories. When we tell good stories, we wow our friends, and seeing our friends’ reactions makes us feel good. When we listen to good stories, we get wowed by them and want to tell our friends about those stories so they get the wow feeling, and we feel better about ourselves. Good stories spread in an infinite loop, and some stories will spread so far that you may hear the same story from two different people on two separate occasions.

Since stories spread far and wide, it has become a requirement for marketers to wrap a good story around the product. Once you come up with the story, promote that story on social media and use that story as the marketing message. Now, here’s how you come up with a good story:

  1. Start with why: Why do you do what you do?
  2. How do you do what you do: Give a brief summary.
  3. What do you do: Yes, you are explaining what you do at the very end.

Conveying the entire story in one tweet may be difficult. You should send a series of tweets throughout the day that help surround your product in the entire story, or you can use the next method below.

 

Use Pictures In Your Social Media Posts

Social media posts with pictures have been known to get more engagement than social media posts without pictures. Without implementation, this is just a nice fact that won’t do anything for your brand. When you promote your products, include pictures that create a deeper meaning for your product. Don’t simply use a picture of the product. Show the product’s use, provide insight, or do something else in addition to showing the actual product. Kim Garst uses Twitter to promote her latest book, Will The Real You Please Stand Up, and she uses pictures filled with insights quoted directly from the book to promote that book.

If you like the insights you get from the pictures of Kim Garst’s book, then you will love the book, and within all of those tweets is a link to the book’s sales page.

 

Make Your Product Cool

Cool products are made to spread. In an information product, being cool can mean having a great personality. In fact, the personality behind the product can be the making or breaking point of determining how cool a product actually is. With hundreds of products like ours, the personalities behind each product are the only difference makers. There are several ways to make a product cool, but you will know how cool a product is based on how people react with the product and tell their friends about it. Creating a cool social media marketing campaign that spreads and attracts attention will be the equivalent of a good story. People will tell their friends about it, and word of mouth will expand your product’s reach. The definition of a cool social media marketing campaign depends on the niche you are in.

 

Promote A Landing Page That Leads To A Product

One of the best ways to generate sales from social media is to generate them indirectly with a landing page. On a landing page, you promote a free prize that people receive when they enter their email address into the form. Then, if you use a service like iContact to create an autoresponder, you can interact with your new subscribers and promote your product at the end of the autoresponder. Autoresponders work well at getting sales because they allow you to build the relationship between you and the people in your audience. You can utilize the autoresponder to let people know more about your story so they feel a deeper connection with you.

 

Free Coupons

If you create a new product and are trying to gain an audience, offering free coupons to your products is a strategy you can use to jumpstart your customer base. This growing customer base can result in the first couple of testimonials for your product. Testimonials are important for a product’s success because potential customers want to make sure they are getting the best deal and the best possible value from a product. You don’t want to become dependent on offering free coupons for your products, but you will generate momentum for that product, and if you do a good job at providing value, your customers will have good things to say. All of the positive feedback associated with your product will lead to more sales, but only if you make it easy for potential customers to see the positive feedback. In the description of your product, include quotes from what actual customers said about your product so more people who visit your sales page will be enticed to make a purchase.

 

In Conclusion

The way you promote your products on social media determines how many sales you will generate from your efforts. Some people put in half the amount of work but get twice as many sales as the average individual. By generating the initial buzz with free coupons, creating a good story for your product that resonates with your audience, optimizing your social media posts for more engagement, and going after indirect sales via landing page sign-ups, your social media marketing results can skyrocket and lead to a reliable social media ROI.

What are your thoughts about promoting products on social media? Have you promoted one of your products on social media before? What advice do you have for people who are about to promote their products on social media for the first time? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

7 YouTube Mistakes To Avoid So It’s All Smooth Sailing

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YouTube Mistakes

The impact a successful YouTube channel has on a brand can no longer be questioned. The social media behemoth attracts over 1 billion unique visitors to its platform every month, and some YouTubers now generate full-time incomes because of this traffic. With success stories of certain channels bringing in six figure incomes, more people have looked at YouTube as a way to market their brands. However, as more people use YouTube from a business standpoint, more methods get mixed up and misconceptions lead to mistakes. These are seven mistakes that you must avoid so you continue to grow on YouTube.

 

#1: Not Uploading Enough Videos

Uploading YouTube videos at a consistent rate allows your channel to remain active and give your subscribers a good experience. The moment you stop uploading YouTube videos at a consistent rate, you will lose some of your subscribers, and your account’s growth will halt. In order to avoid the stagnation of your account’s growth, you must upload numerous videos at a consistent rate. The amount of videos you should upload depends on your channel and style. With that said, every YouTuber should upload and publish one video every week. Some people may feel capable of uploading and publishing two YouTube videos every week. The more YouTube videos you upload to your channel, the more choices you give your subscribers and potential subscribers. While you give your audience more options, you must ensure value in all of your videos. If the people in your audience do not appreciate the options you made available for them, then they will look for someone else. On YouTube, it is easy for someone to find videos just like yours. That is why your first impression in terms of value is so important for doing well on YouTube.

 

#2: Exclusively Uploading Short Videos

For some people, uploading short YouTube videos is their style. However, the longer videos tend to perform better on YouTube’s search engine. Longer videos tend to outperform shorter videos because YouTube uses minutes watched as an essential metric to rank its videos. It is better from a SEO standpoint when a visitor watches 10 minutes of a one hour video than it is when someone watches a three minute video from start to finish. Retention rate matters too, but the minutes watched metric is more significant for YouTube SEO.

 

#3: Bad Audio

The audio of your videos has an impact on how people perceive your channel and brand. If you have bad audio in your videos, people will find it difficult to listen to your videos even if you offer great advice or good humor. The way your videos sound is just as important as the value within the actual videos. If you don’t have any microphone, then your audio is decent at best. I use the Yeti Microphone for my videos, and many of the highly successful YouTubers use the microphone for their YouTube videos and training courses.

 

#4: Not Asking For Subscribers Or Comments

At the end of every YouTube video, don’t be afraid to ask your audience to subscribe and comment. The best way to get something is to ask for it, but you don’t want to beg either. There is a difference between saying “Please subscribe” and “Please, please, please subscribe.” I have an annotation that shows up during all of my videos enticing people to subscribe, and at the end of my videos, I encourage interaction and subscriptions. I want to make sure the people who appreciated my video the first time can easily get notified about my other videos and have a conversation with me.

 

#5: Branching Out Too Far On One Channel

As you get more experience with uploading and publishing videos, it will become tempting to branch out and create a broad channel. Creating a broad channel is one of the worst mistakes to make on YouTube. When you make a broad channel, you confuse your channel’s identity which will result in fewer subscribers. Let’s say you upload some videos about sports, some videos about fashion, and some videos about gadgets. It would be difficult to gain an audience what that channel because viewers won’t know what niche your channel fits into. Instead of creating one broad channel, create a series of specific channels with one clear niche. By creating channels with clear niches, it will be easier for you to build a strong following on YouTube.

 

#6: Not Breaking Your Channel Into Categories

As you upload more videos, you will get into specific areas within your niche. Getting into specific areas within your niche will fulfill specific needs and desires that your viewers have. However, your viewers won’t want to scroll through all of your videos to find the one video they are looking for. You can make it easier for your viewers to find what they want by breaking your channel into categories.

I have a digital marketing channel, but since there are various components that go towards successful digital marketing, I create different categories based on the videos I have done. I have a social media category and a blogging category because I know that some of my subscribers care more about my social media advice and other subscribers care more about my blogging advice. Breaking my channel into categories makes it easier for both of those subscribers to find what they are looking for in a time effective manner.

 

#7: Not Sharing Your YouTube Videos On Your Other Social Networks

Just because you put a video on YouTube does not guarantee it will get thousands of views let alone a few million. In order to get more views from YouTube’s search engine, you must generate some of the buzz on your own. When I upload a new YouTube video, I always tweet it and promote it on my other social networks. I have even started sharing my YouTube videos with my email list. I share my YouTube videos with the audience I have already built so more people see the video, and as a result, my audience grows.

 

In Conclusion

YouTube is still a leading social network, and optimizing it for your brand’s growth will put you in contact with a new audience. You can use the audience you already built to jumpstart your YouTube channel’s growth. By avoiding these common mistakes, YouTube growth will be smooth sailing, and the results will be more impactful for your business.

What are your thoughts on using YouTube for your brand? Do you make any of these mistakes with your YouTube strategy? Do you recommend any other mistakes we should avoid on YouTube? lease share your thoughts and advice below.