Marc's Blog

Content Writing and Marketing Services

PPS30: Personal Branding As A Speaker Allows You To Command Higher Speaker Fees With Stephanie Scheller

by Leave a Comment

Stephanie Scheller is the founder of Grow Disrupt, a San Antonio based training organization for small businesses, an accomplished speaker and has been behind the scenes with more than 2500 companies within the past five years to analyze and address their sales, marketing, and systems.

She is a TEDx speaker, Forbes 30 under 30 nominee, a 2019 New York Life Woman of the Year nominee, a two-time bestselling author, entrepreneur, coach, and trainer. 

Here are the key links for this episode

Stephanie’s site

Grow Disrupt

Subscribe to Stephanie’s YouTube channel

Schedule a free strategy call with me

Check out this episode!

E420: It’s Okay To Be Rich With Nancy Showalter

by Leave a Comment

Today’s guest is a Certified Law of Attraction Life Coach & Spiritual Mentor. She is the author of It’s OK to be Rich: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Increased Wealth and Personal Mastery, endorsed by T. Harv Eker. She is the host of “Spirituality for the Politically Incorrect” podcast.

Here are the key links from this episode:

Quantum Life Academy

Nancy’s site

It’s Okay To Be Rich

Healthy Living Every Day — get your copy today

3 Strategies To Grow Your Facebook Group

by Leave a Comment

Imagine growing a Facebook Group and having thousands of active members. Many of these members are on your email list and some of them have already bought your products.

This is what can happen if you commit to growing a Facebook Group.

It’s a very helpful asset to get more traffic from your social media marketing efforts.

My Facebook Group is approaching 1,000 members, but just because of a change I recently implemented, that group has allowed me to add 100s of people to my email list.

For every new 1,000 members added to the group, I can expect to get an extra 700-800 subscribers to my email list.

How is this possible? I’ll explain shortly, but first I’m going to share some strategies you can use to grow your Facebook Group.

 

Strategy #1: Provide Exclusive Interviews

Bringing guests into the Facebook Group and interviewing them is a great value add for existing members.

However, these interviews can also get more people in the group.

One strategy I utilize is asking each guest to promote the upcoming interview to their audiences. That way, not only do I promote the interview to my audience, but someone else is promoting the interview as well.

You have two options for growing your Facebook Group and email list.

The first option is to lead people to a landing page where they subscribe to get notified about the interview.

In the welcome email, you proceed to tell them to join your Facebook Group because that’s where the interview will be.

The benefit with this strategy is that you can have better email copy with those new subscribers through your autoresponder. You can adapt your email copy based on who the speaker is and what subject material will be covered.

In other words, it’s more than just a generic autoresponder sequence.

The second option is to lead people to your Facebook Group. This will grow your Facebook Group more than the previous method because some people who join your email list will forget to join your Facebook Group.

The boost in new members and engagement will also help you rank better in Facebook’s algorithm which will help you attract new members.

So there are benefits to each.

But how do we get new members to join our email list? The answer is by asking new members a few questions.

If you ask too many questions, pending members won’t bother to fill them out.

That’s why I only ask three questions. You can ask more questions later on by following-up with new members (Facebook doesn’t let you automate this part).

These are the three questions you should ask:

  1. Why do you want to join [your group]?
  2. What is your email address?
  3. Are you interested in receiving a free income spreadsheet you can use to track your income and expenses?

You could also finish question #3 with “If so, please enter your email address below,” and change or remove Question 2, but this method works for me right now.

I may A/B Split Test it to see if changing Question 3 gets different results.

In any event, asking these types of questions will allow you to grow your email list. All you then do is copy and paste the individual emails into ConvertKit or your equivalent.

Most of the people who join the group are also interested in the Free Income Spreadsheet. As a result, they join my email list.

This is the secret to getting new members to join your email list. You can post something in the group asking current members if they are interested in the resource, but it works better once you have the questions set up for each person who wants to join your group.

 

Strategy #2: Optimize Your Group For The Facebook Algorithm

How many people are really searching “Breakthrough Success” in Facebook’s algorithm. If they are, it’s likely people who already know, like, and trust me.

For a long time, my group was just named Breakthrough Success. I recently changed the name to hit on a few keywords people would actually type into Facebook’s search engine.

The new name of the group is Breakthrough Success – Entrepreneurship I Digital Marketing I Grow Your Biz. Those are some of the keywords people type into Facebook to find different groups to join.

People who search “Breakthrough Success” likely know who I am. People who search “Entrepreneurship” may come across my brand for the first time.

You can also work more keywords into your description to get that extra SEO juice.

It’s important to note that Facebook only lets you change your group’s name once every 28 days. Do your research to make sure you’re picking the right keywords to rank for in your title because you’re stuck with them for almost a month.

 

Strategy #3: Boost Group Engagement

Facebook wants to promote groups that will keep people on their site longer. If you get good engagement in your group, Facebook interprets that as a positive sign and pushes out your group to more people.

You can start the process by posting into your group at least 3 times per week. I aim for daily posts to get in front of more of my members more often.

When I increased my frequency to daily posts, I got more likes and comments for my posts. Open ended questions such as “What’s one goal you want to achieve in 2020?” tend to get the most comments.

When someone comments on one of your posts, put that person on a list of people to continue reaching out to. Some people will leave a comment on one of your Facebook Group posts and then never leave a comment again.

This happens because people forget about you or spend the rest of the time in your group lurking and seeing what others are posting.

To avoid this, get into more individual conversations with people who have commented on past posts. Reach out to them using Facebook Messenger and continue the dialogue. If they have a birthday, wish them a Happy Birthday. Like their posts and leave a comment.

This is especially important to do in the early stages of the group when it is growing and gaining momentum.

To boost engagement even more, I use the cover photo for my Facebook Group to encourage people to click the notifications button.

People who click on notifications will get notified each time something new gets posted in the group.

This increases the likelihood these people continue to participate in the Breakthrough Success Group and leave comments on future posts.

 

In Conclusion

If you want to use Facebook to grow your business, you need to start your own Facebook Group. Facebook Pages get more pay-to-play as the years roll by and a personal account is great for business relationships.

However, a group helps you build relationships while growing your email list and revenue.

Facebook Groups continue to be an under utilized opportunity with everyone rushing to Facebook Ads and thinking that’s the only way to make money on Facebook.

What are your thoughts on Facebook Groups? Do you have any questions for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

E419: How To Analyze Your Data To Accelerate Your Business With AJ Yager and Meaghan Connell

by Leave a Comment

AJ Yager and Meaghan Connell are a data-driven power couple and the co-founders of Praxis Metrics, one of the fastest growing data companies in the world. They have built a team of over 25 team members who build dashboards to scale businesses and provide analytics consulting, resulting in exponential growth for their customers. They also provide online and in- person data education training that teaches founders and teams how to take action from their data.

Here are the key links from the episode:

Praxis

Jobber — start a free trial and save 20% off for your first 6 months

December 2019 Performance Report

by Leave a Comment

This is my last blog post of 2019…of the entire decade. I am extremely grateful and appreciative for all of the times you’ve taken the time to go through some of the work I’ve put out over the years.

Hearing from people about how my work has impacted them gets me through the challenging times…and I definitely had a few of those this decade (I’m sure we all have).

Yesterday I shared a video containing some of my goals for 2020. I’ll embed it below for anyone who is interested.

With that in mind, here is the Performance Report for December 2019.

 

I’m Done With School

The biggest reason I am excited to see what I can do in 2020 is because 2020 is the first year of me truly being a full-time entrepreneur.

Up until this point, I have been doing entrepreneurship, podcasting, book writing, coaching, virtual summit hosting, social media and everything else that I do part-time.

Now I can go all-out for the entire year rather than just in the summer.

It’s not like I was making excuses while in school, but now between the commute, homework, classes, and final exams no longer in my schedule, I have more time to do more things.

I enjoyed my time in school and got to learn a ton about finance, but I am excited to now see what I can do.

 

The Half-Marathon

To cap off my 2019 running schedule, I ran the Big Apple Half-Marathon in Central Park at a time of 1:37:57. I had just recovered from sickness and not able to get proper runs in two weeks leading up to the event. My fastest half-marathon time is 1:25:00.

But wow was that marathon scenic. I ran the half-marathon with fellow podcaster Debra Kasowski and we had a great time.

It’s been a great motivator now that my two week break is over and I’m back to focusing on qualifying for the Boston Marathon and other majors.

One of the ideas I’m throwing around for 2020 is to start a running channel on YouTube. Let me know if you’d be interested in hearing more about my running journey and get some fun videos in the process.

I’m not fully committed to the idea yet but I am getting somewhat close to that commitment point.

 

More Books On The Way

I enjoy writing books for you because they are a more affordable way to receive high quality information.

I haven’t charged $1,997 for a training course and only briefly charged $997 for one of them. I do promote affiliates who charge these types of prices for their courses if I believe what they’re all about, but I don’t like pricing my courses too high.

The low priced books create the possibility of one reader buying 10 of my books which has happened a few times.

With that in mind, I have more books on the way.

One of my 2020 goals is to write my 50th book which means doubling the current amount of books in my catalog.

My last final exam was on December 11th. In the 20 day stretch leading to 2020, I finished writing two books.

The first one, Build Your Authority Platform, has already been published on Amazon. As soon as I’m done writing this Performance Report, I’m submitting my dividend investing book so it’s submitted before 2020 hits.

My newer books are around 18,000 words which is around 100 pages. That’s all I go for in a book. Smaller books are easy to produce and are also easier for the reader to read in one sitting.

Since I write 1,000 words each day and bring that up to 2,000 or 3,000 words on some days, I can go from idea to published book in under two weeks.

Publishing books en masse gives me more books to run Amazon Ads for. Combine that with the experience I can provide in a book, and you can see why I’m focusing a lot of my attention on publishing more books in 2020.

 

YouTube Is My Key Social Network For 2020

I will still be active on the other social networks and grow on them. My Twitter audience is the largest and growing my Facebook Group to 2,000 members is one of my 2020 goals.

However, YouTube will be the social network I focus on the most in 2020. Now that I have more time, I can fully embrace YouTube without cutting back on podcasting, virtual summits, and the other stuff I am doing.

Since I’ve been on the school schedule for a while, I’ve had to learn how to be productive with less time. Now that I have more time, I can fully embrace more things.

The reason I am focusing more on YouTube is because a YouTube subscriber is worth far more than any other social media follower.

On Instagram, you’d be happy if a follower scrolled through their feed, happened to find your picture, like it, and leave a comment. Then that Instagram user keeps scrolling through their feed. Maybe they spend 10-20 seconds on your picture before moving on.

On YouTube, you can get someone’s attention for several minutes or even hours if you have enough videos that complement each other.

Getting someone’s attention for just 3 minutes gives you a lot of space in that person’s mind. Three minutes is enough to build a relationship and get someone to continue following your content…and that was the average view duration for my videos in 2019.

This is similar to why I started podcasting. Not only do I get people to spend more minutes consuming my content, but I’m also building relationships with the guests.

However, YouTube is different in the sense of the data it provides.

In fact, there’s so much data that it’s hard to figure out which data is important.

On YouTube, three pieces of data matter: the clickthrough rate, the minutes watched, and the retention rate.

If people click through your thumbnail and watch most of your videos, you are off to a great future on YouTube. Combine that with lengthening your videos, and people will spend more minutes on YouTube.

YouTube rewards creators who get their viewers to stay on YouTube over longer periods of time.

For 2020, I will be working on my retention rate and my clickthrough rate. The retention rate for most of my videos is around 35% which is average. I will be aiming to get this number as close to 40% as possible.

There are some variables that impact retention rate so I am not too concerned. However, if a video’s retention rate drops below 30%, I rewatch that video to figure out why so I don’t repeat the same mistakes.

Furthermore, half of YouTube’s channels and videos have clickthrough rates that vary between 2% to 10%.

The clickthrough rates vary for each video. Titles and thumbnails are the most important factors when optimizing for the clickthrough rate.

My goal for each video I publish in 2020 is to have at least a 5% clickthrough rate. This will involve me spending anywhere from 15-30 minutes working on each thumbnail to make sure it’s click worthy.

Below are two of my recent videos that have clickthrough rates hovering at around 8%.

Upon seeing the success of the dividend investing video’s clickthrough rate, I decided to create a similar thumbnail for my Math Behind Making $100,000/Yr From Self-Publishing Video.

That video’s clickthrough rate hovers at around 5% which is good, but not at the same level of the dividend investing video.

I created a thumbnail with that set-up one more time and got a clickthrough rate closer to 4% which is more average.

Fast forward to my video of How I Self-Published 25 Books Before Graduating College.

The title is good and the thumbnail was customized. I didn’t use any preexisting templates to create the thumbnail. I recorded a brief video of myself posing for that picture and took a screenshot of the video.

I put a lot of thought into that thumbnail and now it has an 8% clickthrough rate.

I’ll be creating custom thumbnails like this rather than exclusively using a thumbnail template and up the frequency to two videos each week and build from there.

Right now dividend investing, self-publishing, YouTube growth, and podcasting seem to be three topics that will frequently find their way on the channel.

I was pressed for time when creating the thumbnail for the 2020 Goals video and used a  thumbnail template for that video. So far the clickthrough rate isn’t that great but it can get a little better over time. I currently don’t expect it to have a higher clickthrough rate than the videos I’ve mentioned so far.

I even started new YouTube channels for each of my podcasts…and the running channel may come into play later in 2020.

 

In Conclusion

Thank you so much for all of the support this decade. This journey has been incredible and it’s about to get so much better.

Please let me know your thoughts about this Performance Report in the comments and your thoughts on the 2020 goals. I’d also love to hear what you’re doing.

PPS29: Designing Your Decade With Rosann Santos

by Leave a Comment

Rosann Santos is the Director of Alumni Relations at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. She has worked in higher education for over 20 years and is now a career motivational keynote and among the best education keynote speakers for high school and college students in the nation. When she is not on a college campus, she is busy coaching clients as a trained and certified Gallup StrengthsQuest facilitator and coach where she focuses on leading her clients toward a strength-based approach to their lives and careers.

Here are the key links from this episode:

Rosann’s site

Schedule a free strategy call with me

Check out this episode!