Marc's Blog

Content Writing and Marketing Services

Why You Should Never Use Social Media Bots

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Social media bots are seen as an attractive strategy to artificially inflate your social media numbers. The logic goes that no one would take you seriously if you only had 10 followers, so why not buy 1,000 followers. You can buy your way to clout.

Many business owners know better than to buy followers, but what about social media bots? Why not let AI handle your social media growth instead of you putting in that work? You could then focus on other areas of your business. Here are some reasons you might want to hold back on using social media bots.

The Bots Will Affect Your Engagement Rates

If a social media bot helps you get more followers, but those followers don’t engage with your content, it will negatively affect your reach. Social networks thrive on attention. They’ll only put content in front of users if they believe it will get and keep their attention.

If you have 1,000 followers and average 100 likes per post, that’s a great engagement rate. However, if you have 10,000 followers but still get 100 likes per post, that’s not a good signal to the social networks you’re trying to grow on.

These types of bots can negatively impact your engagement rates and your ability to reach real people through your content. 

ROI Concerns

Let’s say you find a bot that helps you grow your audience and boost your engagement too. While this type of bot will puff up your follower and engagement numbers, the numbers that matter the most for your business are revenue and expenses.

If you aren’t making revenue from your social media marketing strategy or taking people to your website, then what’s the point? If you’re spending $20/mo on a bot that brings in $0/mo, then you’re losing money.

The most successful social media strategies revolve around connections and relationship building. You don’t need to get thousands of likes for everything you post to thrive on social media. You just need enough followers who appreciate your content and are willing to pay for your products and services.

Perceived Relevance VS Actual Relevance

It’s no secret that influencers want higher numbers. Some are willing to juice their numbers via buying followers or enlisting the help of a social media bot. This is the wrong focus. Rather than build up a perceived relevance, build up actual relevance.

Actual relevance takes more work and time to build, but it is far more rewarding. I’m all for finding shortcuts and achieving success sooner, but if a solution promises to take away all of the work, it’s a red flag.

It’s not about how many people follow you or engage with your content. It’s about how many people actually care about your work.

E633: Dissecting A Successful Book Launch With Wendy Silveira

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Wendy Silveira is an avid gardener and amateur horticulturalist. She has been a contributor to a leading South African gardening magazine. Her recent book Container and Raised Bed Gardening for Beginners and Beyond is A Guide to Growing your own Vegetables, Herbs, Fruit and Cut Flowers.

 

Here are the key links from the episode:

Get your copy of Wendy’s book Container And Raised Gardening For Beginners And Beyond

Wendy’s Garden Store

E345: Becoming A Bestselling Author Is The Key To Becoming A Highly Paid Authority In Your Space With Michelle Kulp

 

Marc’s Links

5 Day Podcast Launch Mini Course

From $0 To $100K+ With Content Marketing

Schedule a free strategy call

 

Why I Don’t Care About Blog Post Length

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I’ve written about this topic several times. Most bloggers aim for a perfect blog post length. They believe that writing a certain number of words will help them gain more traction. Many experts peg it at 2,000+ words for a blog post to rank well on search engines.

It’s with this mentality where it’s easy to craft long blog posts thinking that’s what it takes to become successful. However, this frame of thinking prevents bloggers from looking at the bigger picture.

If you want to turn your blog into a business, you must treat it like a business. Each blog post you produce is an asset. They all take up your time and some of them require an investment too (you might hire someone to write the blog post or use a paid tool like Canva Pro for your pictures).

Some blog posts will provide higher returns than others, but the amount of time and money you put into each blog post determines your ROI.

Not every blog post is a winner. In fact, most of them fall flat. 90% of your blog traffic is going to come from 10% of your blog posts. You’ll get a spike in traffic if you promote it when it comes out, but most blog posts die out soon after.

The goal of each blog post is to build trust with your existing audience and reach new people in the process. If you can achieve the same goal with a 500 word blog post as you would with a 2,000 word blog post, why write the extra 1,500 words when you could end up with 4 blog posts instead?

If the next blog post you publish doesn’t do well, it would feel better if it were a 1,000 word blog post rather than a 5,000 word blog post with detailed research.

The blog is just one step in the relationship. You need enough time to cater to your readers while developing the other stages of the relationship building process that eventually result in sales and revenue.

If you can fulfill the promise of your blog post in 300 concise words rather than 1,000 words of filler, why write the extra 700 words? You already accomplished your mission.

Most of my blog posts are around 1,000 words but I don’t follow that rule for everything I write. The length of your blog posts isn’t the important part. The frequency of your blog posts and the value you provide are the two key areas that matter. The more you show up, the more people will come back to your blog again and again.

How To Grow Multiple Content Brands

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Have you wanted to branch out and write content about a variety of different topics, but you weren’t sure how to proceed with building a brand in the process? It’s actually possible to grow content brands around multiple topics without spending the entire day on each brand.

I first learned this truth when I started to create YouTube videos and Medium articles around personal finance and investing. While some people who want to learn about business and digital marketing would naturally want to learn about those areas as well, that truth doesn’t apply to everyone.

However, rather than just create content around personal finance, I decided to build it out into an additional brand. I thought I’d share some of my experiences with this journey to help anyone who wants to create content in multiple industries.

Set Up An Email List For Both Content Brands

For the digital marketing focused brand (this one), I have a variety of opt-ins and summits already in place. I’ve been in the digital marketing space longer which is why I have more assets.

Statistically speaking, the more opt-in pages you have, the more email subscribers you’ll get. That’s simply because you have more opt-in pages to promote. You give your audience multiple choices, and only one of those choices needs to be a good one for them to join your email list.

I don’t have the same amount of choices available for the personal finance brand. In fact, I just have a single opt-in page that encourages people to join the Become A Better Investor newsletter. 

It’s as basic as it looks and took less than 15 minutes to set up on ConvertKit. Despite how little effort it took to set up that opt-in page, it has an opt-in conversion rate just north of 40%. That’s a really great rate for something that didn’t take me too long to create. 

I don’t even provide a free guide, video series, report, or anything of that nature. Just the encouragement to subscribe in exchange for great content. Most people would love a 40% opt-in conversion rate, and the fact I could do it with a page as simple as that has made me think of additional content brands I can build in the future. 

Pump Out The Content

A 40% conversion opt-in rate means nothing if you only get 10 people to see your opt-in page each month. Sure, an extra 4 subscribers each month is better than nothing, but it won’t move the needle.

Content is at the core of any content brand. The moment you stop producing content is the moment your brand starts to die. 

For the personal finance brand, I produce 1 article and 1 video per day. For the digital marketing brand, I produce 1 blog post per day along with Breakthrough Success episodes.

While that output can sound daunting, it only takes me an hour each day to write the blog posts and outline videos. It takes some extra time to then create the videos and podcast episodes, but I rarely spend more than 2.5 hours a day on creating free content.

Find the workflow that best works for you. For me, I always start the day by writing articles. Then I do videos later in the day.

Build Relationships

Relationships are vital for every business. Content brands are no exception to the rule. Get involved in Facebook Groups related to your niche (easier than starting your own) and start a podcast to get into more conversations with people in your niche. 

Browsing through Facebook Groups 15-30 minutes each day can make a big difference for your content brands. Becoming an active member in each group you participate in will get you in front of plenty of additional people.

Interviewing 1 person each week for two podcasts can further amplify your reach. Breakthrough Success has done so much for my business, and I’ve recently brought back the Ditch The Job Podcast for the personal finance brand.

Monetize Your Brand

You can either create products or promote other people’s products through your affiliate links. You can apply the same concept to a service.

It’s important to monetize your content brand early on because that’s how it becomes sustainable. While promoting an offer is a common path to monetization, you can also run ads although the former offers more potential. In my case, I like to do a combination of both.

The more income streams you have, the better. 

I prefer to focus on offers that don’t require as much maintenance once they are already set up (i.e. books and courses). This makes it easier to address multiple brands and build out product offerings for each one.

E632: Planning The Path To Accomplishing Your Financial Goals With Mark Willis

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Mark Willis is a certified financial planner, bestselling author, and the owner of Lake Growth Financial Services. He’s the co-host of the Not Your Average Financial Podcast where he shares a variety of investing strategies and insights.

Here are the key links from the episode:

Lake Growth Financial Services

Not Your Average Financial Podcast

 

Marc’s Links

5 Day Podcast Launch Mini Course

From $0 To $100K+ With Content Marketing

Schedule a free strategy call

5 Ways To Boost Your Blog Traffic

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Your blog is your home on the web. Visitors will seek you out if you provide educational or entertaining content that matches what they’re looking for. Getting specific about the type of visitors you want on your blog will help you cater your content to that audience.

However, there’s far more to getting visitors than just writing great content. Promoting your content and putting yourself in front of more people will help you attract additional visitors to your blog. These strategies will help you expand your audience.

#1: Accept Guest Posts

One of the best ways to grow your audience is to accept guest posts. Each piece of content is another piece you can promote to your existing audience. Getting in front of your audience more often will make you more memorable. Some of the people who see you often may recommend you to their friends.

Guest posts also carry another important function. The contributors who submit content to your site will happily share the piece with their audiences. Not only do you have an extra piece of content to promote, but someone else will promote that content to an eager audience.

Accepting guest posts is a time investment as you’ll have to read through pitches and actively reach out to guest bloggers in your early days. However, if you’re open to contributions to your site, it can be well worth it.

#2: Link To Other People’s Content

Although I don’t always do this with my blog posts, linking out to other people’s content is a great way to gain extra momentum. Not only does this help from an SEO standpoint, but you can also let people know when you mention them.

Some content creators will be grateful you included their video, podcast episode, or blog post in your content and happily share your piece of content with their audiences. The more people you mention per article, the more people you can reach out to and build relationships with.

#3: Get Into Sharing Tribes

Some influencers set up pods where they agree to share each other’s content. If you share a few blog posts from other bloggers who then agree to share your content on social media, each of your new pieces will generate extra momentum early on.

That momentum can get you on the right track to long-term SEO traffic. As you wait for the SEO traffic to kick in, you’ll get an immediate increase in visitors from all of your blogger friends sharing your content.

#4: Write More Content

Accepting guest posts helps you publish more content, but you should also write more of your own content. When a reader sees your own content, they get to build a deeper relationship with you. 

The more times you share content published on your blog, the more likely readers are to remember your brand. On the other hand, the more times you share content you wrote and published on your blog, the more likely readers are to remember you and relate to you.

Each piece you write is an additional touching point. The more times you show up, the better.

#5: Focus On Email List Growth

Blog visitors can come and go, but if someone subscribes to your email list, you can freely communicate with them at any time. This luxury is unaffected by algorithm changes and is the most vital asset of any online brand.

One of the key objectives of any piece should be email list growth. Whether you end each blog post with a call-to-action or include your opt-in box in the sidebar, always present an option for first-time visitors to subscribe to your email list.

If you are looking for additional ways to grow your email list, consider reading this blog post containing 50 tactics to grow your email list.