Marc's Blog

Working Smarter and Faster VS Working Harder

August 20, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Work Smarter

Most people work hard. They put in all of their dedication into something and hope for the best. These people constantly do the same things every day and never bother to explore out of the norm.

Few people work smarter and faster. These people are able to get the same tasks done every day. Working hard is manually scheduling 80 tweets with HootSuite. Working smarter and faster is getting HootSuite Pro and scheduling 80 tweets with just 4 clicks with HootSuite’s bulk scheduler.

It’s great to work hard because there is dedication involved, but how can you get the same result in less time? Working smarter and faster will allow you to find more things to work hard at and ultimately be more productive.

How My Blog Got Over 100 Views From Twitter Alone In Less Than An Hour

August 20, 2014 by Marc Guberti 10 Comments

For the statistic crunchers out there, that adds up to over 2,400 daily views. At the time, my blog normally got around 32 views every hour which resulted 750 daily views. However, July 21st would be the day that I would call everyone together to help my blog get 1,000 views in one day. This was definitely a nail bitter. It was 11 pm and I had a little over 900 views. At the time, 900 daily views was rare, so I took the opportunity to bring it up to 1,000 views.

I started off by pinning my latest blog posts, but that only got me a few visitors. Most of the visitors I got from Pinterest ended up coming the next day. That helped me have back to back days of over 1,000 views, but for this particular day, Pinterest was not the strong point. When in doubt, I always resort to Twitter where my audience is the biggest.

I started off by increasing my tweeting frequency. From 11 pm to midnight, I sent out one tweet every five minutes. I really wanted this one and was willing to manually schedule tweets to get the job done. Sure enough, I was plugging away with Google’s calculator option, and as the minutes went by, I realized that my goal was less likely to happen. This was not the scenario where I wanted to make the mistake and learn from it. This was a scenario where I put everything on pause, still had work to do after midnight, and wanted to get 1,000 views in one day.

Then at 11:35 pm, I sent out the tweet.

https://twitter.com/MarcGuberti/status/491426440848482305

It got a few favorites, and now the tweets that were getting sent out got more attention. I was able to send out four more tweets with links to my blog posts. Throughout those 25 minutes, I kept everyone updated about my blog’s status.

https://twitter.com/MarcGuberti/status/491428754019717120

After I sent out this tweet, I realized that my goal was going to be realized. I kept on refreshing my blog’s statistics page until the blog passed 1,000 views.

https://twitter.com/MarcGuberti/status/491430155445735425

When my blog got its 1,000th view for the day, I sent out the celebration tweet. It got more attention than any of the other tweets.

https://twitter.com/MarcGuberti/status/491432102101913601

My blog ended up getting 1,030 views that day. That means in 25 minutes, this blog got 77 views. That’s 3 views every minute which adds up to over 4,000 views in one day.

Of course, this rate slowed down after I reached the milestone, but now this same milestone that once seemed impossible happens every day. I can now say that I get over 1,000 daily visitors.

This taught me three valuable lessons. The first lesson reminded me of how important it is to tweet at the moment. The second lesson taught me that the urgency of the matter encouraged myself and my audience to act. The third lesson is that if you build an audience of people who care about what you do, you will be able to go far and spread.

How To Take A Calculated Risk

August 19, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Calculated Risk

The successful entrepreneurs do not take risks just for the sake of risk taking. Instead, these entrepreneurs take calculated risks. These are the kinds of risks that are more likely to pan out in the end. Investing all of your money in one random stock is a risk that rarely pans out. Investing some of your money into one stock that has been picking up (and looks like it will continue to pick up) is a calculated risk.

In order to take a calculated risk, you need to calculate what would happen. Planning is a crucial step towards identifying whether the risk is going to work out or not. You need to set a framework for yourself before you take the risk so you know what to do. The better your plan is, the less likely a risk is going to hurt.

While planning is important, it is also important to weed out the calculated risks that are not worth taking. You need to take account of a calculated risk’s impact. The more impactful a calculated risk, the more important it is for you to plan and then take that risk. The more picky you are with the calculated risks you take, the better you will be at choosing the best calculated risks to take.

Finally, the name of this blog post is How To Take A Calculated Risk. You do need to have a plan, but if you overthink the risk, then you will not be able to propel yourself. Once you have the plan laid out and know it will be very impactful, you need to take the risk. Calculated risks with effective plans and big impacts are the ones made to implement.

Be a calculated risk taker and give your ideas a chance. What are your thoughts on taking calculated risks? Have you already taken a calculated risk for your business or any other area of your life? Please share your thoughts below.

Is Social Media Overrated?

August 18, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

On the social media blog of all places, responding with a big yes would be problematic. I’ll take the safe route this time and say that it depends on the individual, but I will also say that for most people, social media is overrated. Social media is a place to build connections and grow an audience. Many people use social media to procrastinate and escape their work. In this scenario, social media is completely overrated. As Abraham Lincoln put it, “You can’t escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

If you are spending more than an hour on your social networks every day, then it is overrated. That is too much time to delegate away from your work. In order to make revenue from social media, you need to have products that people would want to buy in the first place.

The worst part is that most people get addicted to the social networks. Some people are on Facebook for 6 hours every day. That’s absolutely ridiculous, especially when most of that time is you feeling bad about yourself because your friends posted pictures of themselves having a good time. Many people could write five extra blog posts every day if they cut down on the amount of time they spend on social media.

There is a way to use social networks that makes them pivotal to your success. By getting more done in a shorter amount of time and growing your audience, you will be able to tap into social media’s full potential. Some leaders got to where they are because of social media. In this case, if these people do not spend over an hour a day on their social networks, they are not overrated.

Social media has the power to grow your presence and allow you to become very successful. It can also eat away at hours of your precious time every day. With great power needs to come great responsibility. What’s your choice?

9 Lessons I Learned From Blogging

August 18, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

Blogging

Blogging is a way to build an audience, connect with that audience, and get more people to know about you. Although blogging is a powerful tool to grow your presence on the web, blogging will also allow you to learn many life lessons and things about your niche along the way. I have been blogging since 2011, and I started this blog towards the end of 2012. Now with over three years of experience, I have learned many lessons along the way. Here are nine of them.

Look back. I looked back at my entire journey as a blogger right when I finished writing the paragraph above, and when I looked back, it amazed me. Three years ago, I was just another blogger thrown into the mix. I was not the teenager entrepreneur, social media expert, or anything catchy like that. I was writing blog posts at inconsistent, infrequent rates about the Boston Red Sox, and typos were common. Here’s my very first blog I ever created paired with the very first blog post I ever created…ever. Who would have ever thought that three years later, the same blogger would be writing this blog post.
Embrace what you do. I only started to embrace blogging when I created my Yugioh Philosophy Blog. I updated it every day and enjoyed doing the research. Yugioh Philosophy was my first blog that ever brought in hundreds of daily visitors. Since there are not many Yugioh blogs that get updated every day, it’s fair to say that mine was in the Top 10 of the Yugioh Blogs on the web. Now the blog is inactive because I focus more of my time on this one, but I am proud to say that the Yugioh Philosophy Blog still has an Alexa Rank! It currently brings in a little over 100 daily views but is an inactive blog.
Get in even if you are unsure to avoid overthinking something. My first blog was about the Boston Red Sox, and no one (friends, family, you, and me) had any idea that I would end up writing blog posts about social media and blogging. If I over thought what I would create a blog about, then I would have never made it to this step.
The work you put in pans out in the end. Although my Yugioh Philosophy Blog was getting more traffic, it was not necessarily bringing in more revenue. I never sold Yugioh Cards on eBay (a problem that I am in the process of fixing) which means I had to rely on Amazon affiliate links. Just to give you an idea of the revenue I was making, the typical Yugioh Card got sold for $2, and I only made 4% per sale. That means unless a customer bought a lot of Yugioh Cards, I was barely making over $1 each time a customer bought Yugioh Cards. Since then, I have written my own books which now bring in at least $2 per sale, I have created my own training courses, and I have other plans for the future. No matter what the future holds, I know that the work I put in now will pan out in the end.
Learning and doing are two very different things. Some people learn that writing one blog post every day results in more traffic, but when it comes to doing, not everyone wants to put in the work to write one blog post every day. You can know how to get more blog traffic, but if you are not implementing that knowledge, then what is it really worth?
Do what you love. I have successfully escaped 40 hours of work every week to do 80 hours of work every week. I do not mind working the extra 40 hours every week because I am able to make a difference and do what I love. If you liked this one, never join the status quo.
Never stop learning. In order to grow your blog, you need to constantly learn about different techniques to grow your traffic, your email list, and turn your visitors into customers. The more you learn about something, the better you become at it. Another important thing to remember is that all skills are learnable.
Have a good role model. There are two types of role models. The first type is your family. They are the role models that should help you succeed. If your family does not have the right role models in it, then you need to be the role model that inspires change. The second type of role model is the person outside of your family. This is the person that you dream of meeting and inspires you to do your best work. For me, this type of role model would be Seth Godin.
Fight through the adversity. To this day, I continue to receive criticism. Most of the criticism I received at the beginning of my journey has gone away, but no matter how successful an individual becomes, there will always be critics. People have criticized past Presidents, do criticize the President we have now, and will criticize future Presidents. The critics criticize the people who are changing the world because they are envious.

After blogging for three years, these were the big takeaways. What are the lessons you have learned as a blogger, and which lesson on this list did you like the most?