Marc's Blog

5 Ways To Build Your Email List

May 22, 2014 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

No matter what niche you are in, email lists are critical towards your success. Email lists allow you to build a list of loyal subscribers who will very likely end up being your next customers. However, the art of growing a large email list is challenging. Few bloggers have email lists with over 100 people, and even fewer bloggers have email lists that exceed 1,000 people. In order to build your email list, follow these tips:

Offer a free prize to people who subscribe. A free prize will encourage people to enter their name and email and go on your list. The free prize needs to be something that you could have charged for so people who subscribe stay on the list.
Write quality content. Quality content makes your free prize look better. Many people subscribe to blogs for the quality content. Your subscribers want to read quality emails every time, not emails that anyone could have written.
Host an online webinar that asks for email addresses. Hosting the online webinar will allow you to get more subscribers. People who see the webinar would automatically subscribe to your blog.
Run a giveaway exclusive to subscribers. Whether you offer a $10 Amazon Gift Card or a free copy of your book, you need to run giveaways for your subscribers. Running giveaways exclusive to your subscribers will entice more people to sign up. The best giveaways for you are the ones that promote your own products. That way, you get a new customer.
Strengthen your social networks. In order to get more people on your list, you need to build your social media presence. The person with 100,000 followers is able to get more people on his/her list than the person with 5,000 followers. Social media is a very valuable tool to grow your email list.

Those are the 5 ways to grow your email list. By growing your email list, your product launches will be more successful each time. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

The Biggest Mistake People Make When Using Sticky Notes

May 22, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Sticky notes are a very effective way to boost your productivity. Although sticky notes have been proven to work, there is one mistake that too many people make. This mistake prevents people from accessing the true potential of sticky notes.

Are you ready for it?

The biggest mistake people make when using sticky notes is letting the sticky notes accumulate. A sticky note is designed to remind you about a goal so you can get that goal accomplished. If you have 1 sticky note on your desk with three goals, you are reminding yourself to accomplish three goals. However, if you have 10 sticky notes on your desk with three goals each, then you are reminding yourself to accomplish 30 goals.

If you only had to pick one or the other, would you rather have three homework assignments due the next day or 30 homework assignments due the next day? When sticky notes accumulate, you are given more work to do. The only problem is that the workload becomes overwhelming. Sticky notes get thrown into the garbage, goals get crossed out, and the end result is no productivity.

If you want to use sticky notes to boost your productivity, then I applaud you. It does work. However, when you use sticky notes, you need to make sure there is never an accumulation. A desk cluttered with sticky notes results in less productivity and drains your attention away from the work that you are doing.

4 Good Ways To Use Sticky Notes

May 21, 2014 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

sticky note pile

One of the big reasons my productivity has gone up is because I use sticky notes. Every day, I use sticky notes for a variety of methods, and at the end of every month, I put all of my sticky notes into a designated envelope for that month. The number of sticky notes in these envelopes have dramatically increased over the months that I started–just like my productivity. In order to increase your productivity, you need to know the proper ways to use sticky notes. These are the Big 4.

Write down your daily goals. Since sticky notes are designed to be made and thrown out quickly, only write down your daily goals on your sticky notes. Writing down your daily goals will allow you to stay on task.
Make sure you can easily see your sticky notes. I put all of my sticky notes right next to my computer. That way, when I glance away from my computer screen, I look at the sticky note and see all of my goals. If you want your sticky notes to grab your attention, only use yellow sticky notes and only write with a black marker. The human brain registers yellow faster than any other color, and black on yellow is just as noticeable.
Write down a plan to accomplish a certain goal. If you have a big goal for the day, write down how you are going to accomplish that goal. When are you going to take breaks? When you are working at your goal, what steps of action will you take to accomplish those goals? These are the things that you can write on your sticky notes.
Write down things that you want to remember. Ideas come and go. As the idea remains as a memory for a longer period of time, it becomes easier to forget about that idea. Having sticky notes with you solves the problem. If you think of a brilliant idea for a blog post, but you have to go somewhere for a few hours, write the idea on a sticky note and leave it by your computer. That way, you will remember the brilliant idea when you go back to writing on your computer.

Those are the 4 ways that you can effectively use sticky notes. By effectively using sticky notes, you will increase your productivity and get more work done in a shorter amount of time. If you use sticky notes every day, your goals that once appeared impossible will be in reach.

5 Things To Look For In Your Bitly Stats

May 21, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

bitly stats

Bitly is the best place to get your links’ statistics and store those links in a database for free. However, many people only use Bitly to get a shortened URL, and most people do not know all of the statistics that Bitly offers. While it is important to get a shorter URL and track your links, it is also very important to know what Bitly’s statistics mean for you.

I have used Bitly to track my blog’s growth for several years now. I use Bitly’s statistics to identify which links get the most clicks and which links do not generate as many clicks. By using this strategy, I identify which blog posts should still be tweeted and which blog posts should be replaced by another tweet. In order to change your strategy by using Bitly’s statistics, these are the 5 things you need to look for.

Daily clicks for all of your links. How many clicks do you get every day. Bitly shows you how many clicks you got for up to 30 days. You can see when your clicks rose and fell. By figuring out when your clicks dramatically change, you need to identify what you did that day to get the change. If not sending out any tweets for the day resulted in a 50% decrease in clicks, then you need to send out more tweets. If sending out twice as many tweets resulted in a 50% increase in clicks, then you need to schedule more tweets.
Daily clicks for your individual links. These statistics allow you to discover what kind of content your followers and visitors like. If one of your blog posts gets clicked on 10 times more than the others and got promoted just as much as your other links, then you need to continue tweeting about that blog post. If one of your blog posts gets no clicks while your other ones average 20 clicks each, the blog post that got 0 clicks needs to be taken out of your social media strategy.
See what time of day your links get the most clicks. Did you know that you could see how many times your links got clicked in the most recent 24 hours? Whether you want to see how many clicks your link got at 6 am or 3 pm, Bitly allows you to see both. Seeing what times your links get clicked the most on can help you figure out when most people click on those links.
The referrers. Out of all of the clicks I get from Bitly links, 87% of those clicks are from Twitter. By identifying the referrers, you can identify your biggest source of traffic as well as other sources that you need to improve on.
The countries that people live in. Using this statistic will allow you to identify which country contains your largest audience. In addition, you can share links that favor the countries that you get the most visits from. If most of your visitors are from the U.S., tweet once or twice a day about American facts, culture, tradition, or anything else. If most of your visitors are from India, share some things related to India. Those links will probably get clicked on more than some of your other links.

Those are the five things to look for in your Bitly statistics. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional statistics that you look for in Bitly? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Why Only Tweeting About Your Blog Is Okay

May 20, 2014 by Marc Guberti 7 Comments

There are many articles that recommend you only tweet about your blog 20% of the time. These articles emphasize the need to share other people’s content instead of your own. However, I only tweet about my blog posts. Other than 4 motivational quotes, the other 68 of my daily tweets are my blog posts.

At first, I was not ready to implement this tactic. I remembered what all of those articles said about sharing other people’s content 80% of your time and only sharing your content 20% of the time. However, I decided to give it a try.

The results were incredible. My blog’s traffic immediately doubled (I had a big following when I started this experiment), and it has continued to grow ever since. Many people favorite and retweet my blog posts while others have conversations with me that started when I shared a blog post. The experiment was successful, I have continued to implement it since, but this experiment taught me a valuable Twitter lesson.

When you promote How-To articles, articles with tips, or anything similar, your followers do not care who wrote the article. It does not matter whether your friend wrote the article or that article appeared in The New York Times. Your followers only care about the content. Followers only care about the writer after reading the content. If you get a follower to read at least five of your blog posts, chances are that follower will subscribe to your blog and eventually buy your products.

Tweeting about your blog often (or always) is not a mistake. As long as your blog posts contain quality content, your followers will not be unhappy if all of your tweets are links to old and new blog posts with the titles of those blog posts.

Reanalyzing The Day After The Super Bowl 48: Was The $1.5 Million Giveaway Worth It?

May 19, 2014 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

The first commercial after Super Bowl 48 cost $1.5 million less, and that was the amount of money Esurance gave away. The giveaway took over Twitter for the next two days. Fake Esurance accounts were created to get more retweets and followers, hundreds of thousands of tweets were sent out containing the hashtag, and there was even a $5 giveaway at some point that trended on Twitter as well.

Esurance gained over 200,000 followers in one day, and at its peak, Esurance had over 250,000 followers. Esurance’s growth was remarkable. At certain points, the account gained more than 50 followers every second. Esurance took over Twitter for two days, but two days only.

While Esurances tweets got retweeted thousands of times, people were in it for the money. The people who followed Esurance those last two days only followed Esurance for the giveaway. Once the giveaway was taken out of the equation, there was no longer a good reason to follow Esurance. As a result, the thousands of people who followed Esurance for the giveaway unfollowed Esurance when the giveaway ended. After the giveaway, Esurance was just another insurance account, and people did not want to read those tweets.

Esurance’s statistics from January 1st and on look like a roller coaster. Their growth in January was very slow. Their growth gradually picked up until the day after the Super Bowl when their growth skyrockted. Just like roller coasters, Esurance experienced a noticeable downward trend. Within 4 days, Esurance lost 40,000 followers. Esurance has not had a net gain in followers since that giveaway ended. Esurance has been consistently losing hundreds of followers every day. Here are some of the statistics that give you a good summary of what happened (for the people who view this blog post 6 months later and can no longer see the TwitterCounter statistics for Esurance during the Super Bowl).

In addition, Esurance’s tweets get no more engagement than they got before the Super Bowl ad. Even with over 100,000 followers, Esurance’s tweets barely get retweeted or favorited. All of the engagement for Esurance’s tweets died away along with the giveaway. Esurance was successful in its quest to gaining hundreds of thousands of real followers, but it was not successful in the quest of giving those real followers a reason to stick around after the giveaway concluded.

Esurance’s fame lived and died with the giveaway. Right when the giveaway ended, Esurance lost its fame. If you want to host your own giveaway, you need to give people a reason to stick around. Esurance could have offered 3% discounts to all customers who tweeted with #EsuranceSave30, a 3% discount for following the Esurance Twitter account, and a 3% discount for engaging with one of Esurance’s tweets (with an appropriate response, not something just for the sake of getting the discount) for an entire year. In total, that would only be a 9% discounts for the customers every year, but that would have allowed Esurance to keep its followers and enage with those followers as well.

The big problem with Esurance’s strategy is that they had no strategy after the giveaway. If Esurance had a decent strategy after the giveaway, they might still have over 200,000 followers. It had great potential, but Esurance did not execute it properly. There’s always next year.