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6 Pinterest Mistakes You Do Not Want To Make If You Want A Big Audience

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Pinterest is a unique social network in its design and usability. Many brands such as Nordstrom Rack have accumulated millions of followers that, as a combined force, make pins from these brands go viral. There are marketers who are utilizing Pinterest as well, and I can testify that Pinterest is a great way to promote your content.

Although I do not use Pinterest as often as Twitter, I have been able to accumulate over 15,000 followers. Pinterest users love to share other people’s content because the social network turns sharing other people’s pins into a reward. Many Pinterest users want to have boards with numerous pins. The Pinterest board with 100 pins looks way better than the Pinterest board with only 1 pin. Having more pins on their boards allows users to create a more enticing account for potential followers.

Pinning valuable content will allow your pins to spread farther on Pinterest, but there are mistakes that may prevent you from growing the big audience needed to go viral and build an authority on Pinterest. If you want to have a big audience on Pinterest, these are the six mistakes that you must avoid.

 

#1: Surfing on Pinterest

The double-edged sword fact about Pinterest is that it is highly addictive. The advantage of the double-edged sword is that if you have a large audience, some of those people will scroll through your entire boards and repin everything in sight. This means more exposure for you, and in some cases, more traffic for your blog as well. The disadvantage is that Pinterest can eat away a giant chunk of your time. The Pinterest memes on the web that say things like, “I’ll be on Pinterest for a few minutes hours” are popular for a reason.

Pinterest has millions of users that could benefit from your content which means with great power comes great responsibility. If you strive to grow a big audience on Pinterest, you must spend a bulk of your time on Pinterest sending pins instead of looking through other people’s pins.

 

#2: Pinning numerous pins in a row

Pinning frequency is an interesting topic of discussion. When you are a newbie, it is important to fill your boards with pins. However, once you have enough boards filled with pins and an audience, you need to pin smarter. If you send out more than three pins in one minute, you are pinning too much at one time.

Pinterest users who surf see their updates on a timeline, similar to Twitter, Facebook, and most of the other social networks as well. The only difference is that Pinterest users see their timeline in the form of large pictures that take up more space on the screen than a tweet.

I recently went on Pinterest to see how pins appear on my feed. Here is what I saw

  1. Two pictures and their descriptions
  2. Half of an infographic
  3. Half of two pictures and no text

I was startled to realize that I only saw five pins on my feed, and I couldn’t even see everything that three of those five pins contained. On Twitter, I typically see five tweets from start to finish. Many Pinterest users like Pinterest because of the variety it has. If you send out 10 pins in 1 minute, there is no variety. It’s all you, and that results in some people clicking the unfollow button.

While pinning constantly in a short period of time is initially a great way to get more pins on your board, it will annoy your audience. A good fix to the problem is to create a secret board and add 100 pins or more to that board before publishing it. That way, you don’t have to annoy your followers with 100 pins in a few minutes.

 

#3: Not taking the time to craft an effective bio

Your bio is one of the most important components on any social network or blog. It is the make or break point of your authority. People will not know anything about you until they read your bio. Sure, having pins available related to your niche does help, but since Pinterest is all about variety, you may have some boards related to your niche and some boards that have nothing to do about your niche.

An effective bio allows people to know who you are, and this clarity makes people feel more confident when they click the follow button. In your bio, it is important for you to list your expertise, accomplishments, and hobbies. I let people know that I am a digital marketing expert, but I also let people know I am a runner.

Letting people know about my expertise, accomplishments, and hobbies allows me to be compatible with more people. The more people you are similar to, whether the similarities are small or huge, the more people are going to follow you. We like to follow and listen to people who are similar to us.

 

#4: Not verifying your blog on Pinterest

Including your blog’s link in your Pinterest bio and verifying it on Pinterest is one of the easiest ways to get a backlink for your blog. In addition to providing a backlink, verifying your blog also gives you the checkmark that allows you to stand out from the crowd. The checkmark combined with a large audience will let people know that you are a big deal. You are verified which means you must be important.

Just as we like to follow and listen to the people who we are similar to, we also like to follow and listen to important people. Even if you have iPhones, iPads, and Macs galore, wouldn’t it be nice to meet Bill Gates. He is important, wealthy, and smart–and those are the types of people who many people enjoy listening about.

Although the checkmark may not give you Bill Gates status, it lets people know you are important. It lets people know you are worth following. It lets people know you are a valuable person in your niche.

 

#5: Having too many boards with not enough pins

The value of a Pinterest board is not just in the value of the pins. It is also in the quantity. The typical Pinterest user will not browse through a Pinterest board with five valuable pins as much as a Pinterest board with 500 valuable pins.

The more pins your boards have, the more someone will scroll through your board. Some of these people will repin as many pins on one of your boards as possible. Some individuals have repinned hundreds of pins from one of my boards.

Your boards need to have more pins, but it is also important to avoid annoying your followers. That is why I mentioned that pinning numerous pins in a row is a mistake before mentioning this mistake. You don’t want to send out 500 pins in 30 minutes at the cost of losing a good chunk of your followers.

 

#6: Not Having A Variety Of Boards

Pinterest is all about the variety. If someone searches for food on Pinterest (by the way, food pictures on Pinterest happen to be very popular), that person will see fruits, vegetables, meat, recipes, and more. When other people search for vacation destinations, they will find pictures on the beach, mountains, cities, and other places as well.

The great thing about Pinterest is that you can still let people know your expertise while pinning content related to both food and vacation destinations. Pinning content related to these two topics will result in your pins and boards related to those two topics appearing on Pinterest’s search engine.

When you are pinning about a variety of topics, you can easily let people know your expertise by putting all of the boards related to your expertise on top of your other boards. However, pinning about all of these topics will allow you to reach out to more people and grow your audience.

Some people may be skeptical because not all of these followers are necessarily targeted followers. Someone who only followed me because of my Pinterest board with cool bookshelves may not be as interested in my digital marketing articles. Growing your audience through this method has three major benefits:

  1. You get better social proof
  2. They are real followers
  3. Most important of them all: You need a big audience to rapidly spread on Pinterest, and growing this type of audience will give you the leverage you need to reach out to more people. Some of the people you reach out to through this method may end up being targeted users.

Having a variety of boards will ensure that you get more followers, but you also need to make sure these boards are heavily populated with pins. My recommendation is to make sure that a majority of the boards on your account has under 20 pins. None should have under ten.

 

In Conclusion

Pinterest is a powerful social network that is highly addictive. Pinterest has the power to grab attention. As long as you are the one pinning content that grabs attention and not surfing, you will have the much needed time to implement the other methods and grow your audience.

Like any other social network or any blog on the web, it takes time to grow a Pinterest audience. It may take you a year to reach 5,000 followers, but each time you reach a certain milestone, it will be easier to achieve the same milestone quicker. If it took you 100 days to get your first 1,000 followers, it may only take you 90 days to get your next 1,000 followers. The reason it gets quicker each time is because you are learning new things about growing your audience and implementing them along the way.

Which tip was your favorite? Do you have any additional tips for the people who strive to grow a big audience on Pinterest?

The 3 Steps To Accomplishing Any Goal

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Goals

One of the most important traits of successful people in the ability to accomplish goals. Unfortunately, goal accomplishment is also a trait that most people lack. For most people, expectations get created, but they never get reached. The reason many people do not accomplish their goals is because they never take the time to set themselves up for success.

Before doing anything else, these people need to identify their goals. That is the first step, and believe it or not, it is a step that many people do not think about, or they do it wrong. First off, your goals need to be clear. If you want to make more money online, you can make $0.05 and have a fulfilled goal. Instead, be specific. How much money do you want to make, and when do you want to achieve this goal?

After that, you need to create the framework you will use to accomplish the goal. This second step is all about planning. You need to identify what days you are going to work on your goals as well as what you will do on those days.

The third and final step, by far the most important, is implementation. Without applying the third step, then the other first two steps were in vain. If you create a plan but never implement it, then what really was the point?

By accomplishing goals with this three step formula, you will increase the likelihood of you accomplishing your goals. What are your thoughts on the list, and how do you do with accomplishing your own goals? Please share your thoughts below.

 

The Power Of Setting A Date For Your Goals

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Deadline Approaching

The biggest lies are soon and later. I’ll start this soon. I’ll work on that later. Those are stallers that make an attempt to hide the fact that you don’t want to do anything that you say you will do soon or later.

Setting a date eliminates the problem of soon and later. Soon and later do not define a date. As far as we know, soon and later can range from a few days to a few years. Setting a date will be the only way you will get your goals accomplished.

Setting a date forces you to give yourself a deadline. When I decided to self-publish 1 book every month, I was able to do just that. Then, I started writing a book that I gave myself no due date for. That’s when my self-publishing career hit a bad note, but ever since I reapplied the 1 month rule, I have been able to write, and self-publish 1 book every month. Instead of saying soon or later, I made sure that soon and later meant by the end of the month.

If you continue to say soon and later, then don’t bother. Setting a date is the only way to tell yourself that you are serious about a particular goal and want to accomplish it.

 

The 7 Laws Of Social Media Marketing

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Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is one of the most important ways to grow your business. Social media allows you to build connections that last for a long period of time, and marketing your products and blog posts on a powerful platform will allow you to get more traffic. The only way to be successful with social media marketing is by knowing what tactics must be followed. These are the Seven Laws Of Social Media Marketing:

  1. Provide quality content. You can spend $100,000 on advertising, but in the end, quality content is what makes people stick around. You may get a big spike in traffic in the beginning, but that traffic will go on a rapid decline if the content you lead your visitors to is bad.
  2. Be patient. It’s easily to get discouraged with only 100 followers. However, by being patient and constantly learning, you will eventually grow your following dramatically. There was a point when I had 0 followers on Twitter, and there was a point when I was stuck at 1,667 followers for several months. By being patient, I ended up discovering a method which I now use to gain 500 followers every day. In addition, the only reason this blog is successful is because of my Twitter account. Then, everything else (SEO, better content, etc) came into place.
  3. Optimize your blog. This one is a must (but then again, they all are). Once you get visitors, throwing away that traffic would be such a shame. This is the part that many people forget, and as a result, they throw away the traffic they get. Boost the chances of having someone subscribe to your blog by creating a blog that is designed to have a very low bounce rate.
  4. Have a clear message. Your message determines who your targeted audience is. Make your message clear by focusing on specific niches instead of having an unclear message with too much clutter. It is better to focus on 1 niche than it is to give some of your attention to 10 things you are interested in and make that your message.
  5. Listen to others. One of the qualities of leaders is to listen before speaking. Take the time to read your followers’ tweets before you respond to them. In addition, listen to people’s problems concerning your niche. What are certain aspects of your niche that give people the hardest time? Listening will help you identify the answer to that question and give you an idea for your next product.
  6. Include a free prize. The more free prizes you have, the better. Include a free prize in your social media marketing strategy so you get more likes, retweets, repins, or any other social media metric that you want. You can also include a free prize on your blog so more people who go to your blog from social networks are likely to become subscribers.
  7. Post content more often on your social networks. Going from tweeting once every hour to tweeting once every 30 minutes did me a lot of good. Going on to send out one tweet every 20 minutes yielded better results. Part of social media marketing is getting seen by as many people as possible. By scheduling posts (which allows you to post consistently), more people will be able to see your posts. In addition, send out posts when most of your followers are online. Facebook has its own statistics for Facebook Pages that allow you to see this while you can use Tweriod to see when people are on Twitter.

In order to get the best results from social media marketing, you need to follow these rules. Although they do not guarantee overnight results, performing these actions will allow you to see a dramatic increase in traffic and conversions over time. What are your thoughts on these social media marketing laws and do you have any other tips you would like to share? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

 

Mortality As A Motivational Tool

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End Of The Road

Everyone is looking for a source of motivation. Some people look for motivation in the music they listen, the books they read, and the inspirational quotes they get from the Forbes list. However, few people are able to keep the motivation they get from the songs and quotes they read and listen to on the internet. In order to gain and keep motivation, you need to think of a bigger picture that will almost force you to accomplish your dreams. It’s very easy to think of, but for most people, it will also be very scary. This kind of motivation is your own mortality.

Although not everyone agrees about where you go once time is up, it is agreed upon that we are by no means immortal. Many people want to think that they will live forever and only pursue dreams at an old age when they seem almost impossible to reach. Although there are success stories such as the one of 65-year-old Colonel Sanders founding KFC, most people give up on their dreams and do not get their goals accomplished at this age. Unfortunately, this occurrence is too common in every age group. Fewer people are pursuing their own dreams because they lack the motivation to do so.

I get my sources of motivation just like anyone else. I have an inspirational quotes app on my iPhone, watch some of Tony Robbins’ videos, and read success stories about people in my niche who make six figures every year. Then came a new way for me to gain motivation–thinking about my own mortality. In my opinion, one of the few problems (depending on how you look at it) technology will not be able to fix is our mortality. Technology has made us live longer and can make us live even longer, but immortality is out of the question.

If someone came up to me and told me about the motivational “secret weapon”, I would be very objective when I heard that the “secret weapon” was thinking about mortality. It’s scary and makes us realize that we don’t live forever. However, the person who used his own mortality as a source of motivation was the leader of a generation, Steve Jobs. I could go on about how he got kicked out of Apple and then ended up saving the day while doing other cool things along the way, but it is more important to realize what motivated him throughout his life. Some of the years he lived were very tough. He was adopted, dropped out of college because his family couldn’t afford it, and right when Apple started to become successful, Steve Jobs got fired. The difficulties he faced and his perseverance alone are incredible. Even when he became successful and regained his position as Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs continued to be innovative. The motivation behind his desire to do so much in his life was his own mortality.

His belief in using mortality as a motivational tool towards success was reflected upon in one of his most famous inspirational quotes, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

We all have an effect on the people around us, and some of us have an effect on people on a global scale. Steve Jobs had an effect on people in California, New York, Europe, and everywhere else in the world. When most people think of Steve Jobs, they think of the visionary that transformed Apple. There are also people throughout history who are remembered for bad reputations and villainous acts. People will remember you for how you lived your life and what you did while you were here.

You may have a bucket list of all of the goals you want to accomplish. You may have the list of 100 places you want to visit before you die. You may want to make $1 million every month so you will be able to live a life without financial worries. You may want to become a bestselling author because it is something you strive for. You may want to run the mile in under four minutes for the glory of doing so. You may want to become successful at a faster rate and start moving instead of staying where you currently are.

We all want to accomplish many things in our lifetimes. However, we only have so much time to accomplish all of the things that we need to accomplish. There are more valuable things we can be doing with our times than watching 32 hours of TV every week. Time gets lost this way; time that you can never get back. Having efficient time management is one part of the puzzle, but a strong motivation the other part of the puzzle.

That motivation, the other piece of the puzzle, is thinking of your own mortality.

It’s something very scary. It’s something that few people ever want to think about. There are so many things uncertain about what happens when mortality creeps in. We have no clear idea of what happens after this stage and are forever left guessing until the time comes. However, there are events in your life that you can control. You may not be living the ideal life right now, but you can change that. Whether you are a stay at home mom trying to bring in more revenue, someone who works at three different jobs, or someone who gets fired too often, there is always enough time to change your life and fulfill your dreams. Colonel Sanders started KFC at 65 years old and got to live to be 90. He did not let the life he lived earlier prevent him from pursuing and eventually fulfilling his dream. Now we remember Colonel Sanders as someone who stayed true to his dream and never gave up on it, not someone who gave up on his life and stopped trying.

The leader of an entire generation used his mortality as a motivational tool to be very productive and accomplish his dream in a predicament where most people would have given up. Although avoiding the thought of mortality at all costs is the easier option, it may be the motivation you need to realize your time is so valuable and you only have so much of it in your lifetime.

 

How Sticky Notes Have Become A Big Part Of My Success

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sticky notes

The scenario I am about to describe happens to everyone. The scenario happens to some people more than others, but it happens to everyone. The scenario is the “I forgot” scenerio where something was important, needed to get done by the end of the day, and did not get completed.

Some people encounter the scenario too many times. I used to encounter the scenario frequently as well. The goal of writing 4 blog posts in 1 day turned into a day where no blog posts were written simply because I forgot about the goal. Other goals took its place and I used my time doing different things.

That problem stopped happening once I decided to use more sticky notes. I have all of my sticky notes next to my computer. While I am typing, I quickly look over the sticky notes to remind me of everything that I need to do for the day. Sometimes I use 3 sticky notes in 1 day. Other times, I use 10 sticky notes in 1 day. The amount of sticky notes I use primarily depend on how many things I need to do before the end of the day.

Although I did not start doing this in the New Year, I am going to start saving all of the sticky notes. At the end of 2014, I am going to look at all of the sticky notes that I wrote for the first half of January, and all of the 11 months of the year. Then, I’ll lay them all out on a table to see all of the goals I gave myself to accomplish in the year. We will all be able to figure out if all of the sticky notes will take up the entire table or if I need a second table to put my sticky notes on.

Sticky notes allow me to remember what needs to be done so I have less “I forgot” scenarios. After I write something on a sticky note, the only thing left to do is implement. Sticky notes have become a big part of my success, and when you use sticky notes, they will become a part of your success as well.