Marc's Blog

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5 Ways To Get More People To Contact You

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The strongest connections are the ones that take place one email at a time. There is no limit to the number of characters someone can use in an email. In addition, people in the conversation can go in-depth since their followers will not see the conversation. Five emails can have the same amount of content as 50 tweets. Followers who get 50 straight tweets about a conversation they are not in would get annoyed very quickly. Annoying your followers with these long conversations may result in some of those people clicking the dreaded unfollow button. Taking the conversation off social media and to the email solves that problem.

In addition, emailing blocks all of the distractions. When on social networks, some people are having 10 short conversations at the same time. Being able to email people will allow you to have one powerful conversation with someone and provide more information than you would be able to in a 140 character tweet. The person who you are having the conversation with will view your blog posts more often. Most of the people who are actively commenting on my blog are also the people who contacted me via email and had a lengthy conversation with me about social media, business, blogging, or my story. Some people may want to contact you about a speaking opportunity or another opportunity as well.

Basically, the more people get to contact you, the more connections you get to build. Allowing people to contact you is one of the most important ways to become successful. Everyone–whether the newbie or the people on Shark Tank, provide their visitors with a way to contact them. In order to get more people to contact you, implement these 5 tactics.

  1. Create accounts for multiple social networks. Although my main social network is Twitter, I use a variety of other social networks as well. I have a strong presence on Pinterest, occasionally use GooglePlus, and I have my own Facebook Page. Most people come to my blog from Twitter, but some people find me on Pinterest. The Little Pickle Press found me on Pinterest, and as a result, I ended up getting featured on their site.
  2. Have a Contact Me Page on your blog. Visitors should be able to contact you without scrolling up or down on your blog. By having a Contact Me Page that appears on the header of your blog, more people will know how to contact you.
  3. Forms are overrated. Before leaving my email address on the Contact Me Page, I had a form. The problem with having a form is that the form can be buggy. Although I was getting 100 daily visitors at the time, no one contacted me on my blog. I later learned that the reason people were not contacting me like before was because the form I used on my blog was buggy. All of the people who tried to contact me at that time got a message saying, “Are you sure you want to do this?” with no way of saying yes or no. Since then, I simply have my email address right there on the Contact Me Page. Leaving your email address on your Contact Me Page cancels the risk of a buggy form.
  4. Give the visitor at most three email addresses to choose from. A common mistake I see is that people create 10 email addresses and lump them all together on one Contact Me Page. Instead of creating a lot of email addresses, give your visitors subjects to choose to relay their message. If you need to have more email addresses on your Contact Me Page, you should have a Media Inquiries email address and one more of your choice as well. My recommendation though is to only have 1 email address available. Less is more.
  5. Turn yourself into someone who people would want to contact. Seth Godin is someone who people would want to contact. Mariano Rivera is someone who people would want to contact as well. In order to get more people to contact you, you need to boost your credibility. The person with a Klout score of 70 gets contacted more often than the person with a Klout score of 50. The person with 100,000 real followers gets contacted more often than the person with 10,000 real followers. The bestselling author gets contacted more often than the author that published his first book a few days ago. By turning yourself into someone who people would want to contact, you will be able to have more conversations that go from social media or your blog to back and forth emails.

In order to grow your presence as an entrepreneur, business, or writer, you need to build strong connections. Whether someone from NBC contacts you or a potential customer, you will be more likely to build a strong connection when you are sending emails back and forth to each other. Those strong connections can lead to business opportunities, but any of those connections can lead to a customer. When people contact you, be sure to respond as quickly as possible no matter who is contacting you.

 

7 Ways To Get More People To Engage With Your Pins

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In order to build strong connections on Pinterest, your followers need to engage with your pins. Being on Pinterest and getting people to follow you is not enough. You need these followers to engage with your pins so that you can have longer conversations with your followers. These are the 7 ways to get more people to engage with your pins.

  1. Include a call to action. A call to action encourages someone to do something (click, like, repin) instead of just reading what is there. Pins that include a call to action have 80% more engagement than pins that do not include a call to action.
  2. Pin about trending topics. When topics trend on Pinterest, millions of people are looking at those topics and engaging with the pins about those topics. Pins related to a trending topic get a 90% increase in click throughs compared to other pins.
  3. Pin more tutorial pins. People are constantly looking for more knowledge. They want to learn more about their niche, learn about a certain craft, or learn a random fact. There are many things that you know about your niche that others do not know. Pinning tutorial pins will portray you as an expert in your niche. In addition, tutorial pins see a 42% higher click through rate than the average pin.
  4. Pin when most people are on Pinterest. While most people on Facebook and Twitter use those social networks in the morning, most people on Pinterest tend to be active during the evening. In addition, many people are addicted to Pinterest, and these people are on Pinterest for several hours every day. According to HubSpot, the ideal times to pin on Pinterest are between 2pm-4pm and 8pm-1am It is important to not overlook that the time is 8 at night. The ideal time to post on most social networks is 8 am, but Pinterest is different. There are many night owls who use Pinterest, and it is important to pin at those times to get the most engagement for your pins.
  5. Like and repin other people’s pins. When you repin other people’s pins, those people will get notified that you liked and/or repinned one of their pins. Some of these people will decide to return the favor and comment on one of your pins as well.
  6. Decide whether you want people to share your pin or have a discussion. You will want some of your pins to get shared across Pinterest while you would prefer that other pins build discussions with you and your followers. Pins with a lot of repins are more likely to be shared across Pinterest while pins with more likes encourage more discussion. The best thing to do is have some pins that encourage sharing and other pins that encourage discussion. In order to find out which pins would lead to what effect, you need to see how your followers have engaged with the pins that you have already sent out. If you do not know how your followers engage with your pins, then you need to send out several pins and see which ones get multiple repins and which ones get multiple likes.
  7. Build a targeted following. A targeted following who is interested in what you provide will definitely like and repin your pins. If you talk about sports, and all of your followers love sports, your pins are going to see more engagement. Building a targeted following will also help you when someone clicks on the pin and gets sent to your blog.

These are the 7 ways to build more engagement for your pins. The average pin has a 1.1% click through rate. By using Tips 1-3 in the same pin, you would boost that click through rate to 5.3%. By using tips 4-7, you would get more people to see your pins with those high click through rates. By getting more people to see your pins with higher click through rates, you would be able to get several likes, repins, and comments for your pins.

 

7 Ways To Increase Your Conversion Rate

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Increase Conversion Rate

There are few bloggers who get conversions on a daily basis. While many bloggers dream of getting numerous conversions every day, the truth is that 95% of bloggers do not get traffic conversion. The main reason bloggers do not convert a lot of their visitors is because the blog is not designed properly to entice the visitor. If you want to get more traffic conversions, follow these 7 tips:

  1. Make the buttons bigger and easier to see. A giant button is going to get more visibility than a tiny button. Some people have reported that having a bigger button has doubled their conversion rates.
  2. “Download Now” buttons Work Better Than “Add To Cart” buttons. This is a proven statistic that can increase your sales. “Download Now” encourages the person to buy your product (or enter an email to get it for free) while the “Add To Cart” button is generic and does not encourage the potential buyer as well.
  3. Stop using the phrases that everyone else uses. Add To Cart is one of them. Another one is Click Here. Instead of saying, “click here to get the report,” say “Send me the report.” By starting the phrase with an action verb and using a phrase that is not too common, you will be able to boost your conversion rate.
  4. Give your product a better design. Everyone judges a book by the front cover. Although the bestselling books (usually) are filled with quality content, they also have really cool covers. The Pumpkin Plan is a quality book, but the cover of a pumpkin with the “$” sign on the leaf dwarfing city buildings is a good cover. A better design may be all you need to boost your conversion rate.
  5. Take advantage of color psychology. Colors have a big impact on conversion rate. Changing the color of your button may be all you need to do to boost your sales. I could go in detail about color psychology here, but QuickSprout provided a great infographic that explains how colors affect conversion rates. Before deciding what color to make your conversion buttons, you need to identify who your targeted customers are.
  6. Run tests. The best way to see which results will allow you to boost your conversion rate is by running tests. In order to run a test, you would need to have a control (the design you are currently using) and an experimental design (the one you think will boost your conversion rate). After a month of split testing the two designs, stick with the design that leads to the most conversions.
  7. Start with a quality free product. People are more likely to buy your products if you offer a free product. People are more likely to subscribe to your blog if your blog posts are really good. Then, that visitor knows that what you give them for free as a subscriber is going to be really good. Quality is always important in boosting your conversion rate.

Those are the 7 ways to boost your traffic conversion. Conversion is very important factor towards building a strong following and presence on the web. What do you think about the list? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

4 Lessons I Learned From Getting Hacked On Twitter

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AP Account Getting Hacked
What happened when the AP account got hacked.

It was definitely an experience I will never forget. With over 60,000 followers at the time, I had no control over what my followers would see when they clicked on my links. Links that were supposed to lead to my blog posts led to a porn site. Those two days were very rough. I wrote a blog post about how you could avoid getting hacked before getting hacked in the first place, but I decided to learn how to avoid getting hacked after my account got hacked (bad move on my part). The entire experience did allow me to learn several lessons:

  1. The internet is dangerous and unsecure which makes your reputation fragile. If universities decided to review my Twitter account on the day the hackings took place, I would have been rejected by many if not all of them. Two days of activity that were not my fault would have ruined my reputation. I am sure some people unfollowed me when they saw the spam. It was not my intention to spam people, but in the end, a hacker was able to damage my reputation in the eyes of some people. That is a harsh way to look at it, but it’s hard to see why that would not be true.
  2. We need to speak up about our problems. With no solution in sight, I was scared to tell everyone that my account had been hacked. As far as I knew, it could have taken several weeks or even months for my account to get back to normal. I tried contacting Twitter, but with this particular issue, contacting them is almost as challenging as using a Google tool that got updated a few days ago. I decided that the only solution would be for me to ask my followers and notify them about the issue. With fear and bravery intertwined into one, I sent out a series of tweets telling over 60,000 people that my account had been hacked. In the end, all of the people who contacted me were optimistic and very helpful. These people helped me reach a solution and told me whether they were redirected to my blog or not. I got to make some new friends, and when my Twitter account got unhacked, more people visited my blog. It was amazing, and it only happened because I spoke up.
  3. Be prepared for the storm before it hits. The hack hit like a storm, and I was unprepared. What could have taken a few minutes took me two days. Although you should not spend too much time preparing for the storm, you should know what to do when the storm comes and how to stop it before it inflicts a lot of damage.
  4. People support each other when both are against a common enemy. I highly doubt there is a single person who really wants his/her Twitter account to get hacked. When my Twitter account got hacked, some of the people supported me because they would not like it if their account got hacked. By identifying a common enemy, you will be able to create a team that supports each other with a common goal: taking down the enemy. Applying this to more than a hacked Twitter accounts, common enemies can include but are not limited to debt, procrastination, and stress.

I wanted to be sure that something came out of the two day experience of my hacked Twitter account. I was able to come up with 4 lessons. Although I am sure I could have come up with more lessons, these are the main lessons that you need to take away from my experience.

 

3 Quick And Easy Ways To Make Your Twitter Account Safer

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Twitter Private Account

There is a crazy world of hackers out there that affect thousands (or even millions) of people on Twitter. The people who hacked Donald Trump and Burger King’s accounts taught us how important security is. However, many people have the, “That won’t happen to me” attitude towards a problem that has spread across numerous accounts. From “Lol I saw this bad picture of you” to “I can’t believe this is you,” spam has made a notorious splash into the social network.

You do not want to wait for your account to get hacked until you take action. Sadly, I did not take action until my account got hacked. It was a messy two days where I lost hundreds of visitors who were redirected to porn sites when they clicked on links to my blog posts. Those two days were very bad indeed (luckily, I had a good track race, so that made me feel better about myself).

Do not make the mistake of ignoring this blog post. The tips here will help make your Twitter account safer. You do not want to be reading this blog post when your Twitter account gets hacked. You will want to read this blog post right now and implement the tactics here so your account never gets hacked in the first place. Thee are the 3 quick and easy ways to make your Twitter account safer.

  1. You need a (much) stronger password. Your password needs to be more than 8 characters long. In my opinion, everyone’s password should be at least 20 characters and have symbols to make things more confusing for the hacker. The longer your password is, the less likely a hacker is to figure it out.
  2. Change your password every month. Although this will be hard for some people to remember, changing your password every month is well worth it. Heartbleed and the NSA have revealed to us how not so secret our information is. Maybe when the NSA keeps our data safe and secure, we would not have to change our passwords every month. However, hackers will still find ways to discover your password which is why you should change it every month. In a fascinating blog post from CopyBlogger, they mentioned that their blog gets 50,000-180,000 unauthorized logins every day. That results in over 1 million unauthorized logins every week. By changing your password every month, you will reduce the likelihood of getting hacked.
  3. Remove third-party apps that you do not trust. Sometimes, we rush to give access to bad third-party apps by mistake. This was most likely the reason why my account got hacked and sent people to inappropriate content. The problem was quickly resolved when I purged through my list of third-party apps. In order to access your list of third-party apps, go to settings (the gear) and then on the left corner will be “apps.” Clicking on that will allow you to see a list of all of your third-party apps which you could revoke with a click.

Do not wait to implement these tactics until your account gets hacked. Because I waited, I had a race against time in order to find a solution. By waiting for my account to get hacked, I lost 300 visitors. If 1% of those people would have bought one of my books, then that means I lost three sales, but just as important, people who would stick around, read my content, and subscribe to my blog. Learn from my mistake so you will not get hacked, and if you do get hacked, you will know exactly what to do.

 

5 Time Management Hacks To Boost Efficiency

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Time Management Tips

Time management is the most important way to get more done. While there are certain ways to get better time management such as setting the goals and giving yourself the deadline, there are certain hacks that can boost your efficiency as well. These are five of them.

  1. Wake up one hour earlier. The earlier you wake up, the more you will be able to focus at the task at hand. When you wake up, you need to start the day off productively by working. Some of the most successful people wake up before 6 am. If you can do that, then that would be great. If you can eventually wake up at 7 am instead of 8 am, then that’s great too.
  2. Be happier. Happiness is the key to success. In fact, happiness is the truth. By being happy, you will have a deeper appreciation for what you are accomplishing. You need to be happy with what you are doing in order to see growth. If you are sad at work and do not look forward to the work you have to do, you need to give yourself new work to do that makes you happy.
  3. Listen to motivational music. There is motivational music that simply makes us want to be productive. I listen to the classic Rocky music before running on the treadmill. In fact, I listen to the Rocky music several times while I run on the treadmill. The music has worked wonders in my ability to run longer distances on the treadmill without feeling too fatigued…or too bored.
  4. Turn essential tasks into habits. In order to become really good at your work, you need to turn the essential tasks into habits. When I had difficulty writing and thinking of my own sentences, I was not a professional writer. Now that I am writing blog posts and books, I have had more practice. I turned an essential task into a habit, and now it is easy for me to write 4,000 words every day during the school year. I anticipate writing over 10,000 words one day in the summer.
  5. Take 30 minute naps. Naps are important to refresh the mind. Studies have shown that the people who sleep for 6.5-7.5 hours every day are the ones who live the longest. No matter how many hours of sleep you get, there will be some moments in the middle of the day when you feel tired. You may feel exhausted because you did a lot of work or just because you are a bit tired. Taking 30 minute naps is a great way to relax and take a break. After the nap, you will be wide awake and ready to go back to your big project.

Those are the five ways to hack time management so you are able to be more efficient with the time what you have. What are your thoughts on the list, and do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and/or tips below.