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Will YouTube Still Be Top Dog After My College Graduation?

May 27, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

YouTube VS Meerkat VS Periscope VS Facebook

When YouTube made its debut, it was uncontested. If you wanted to upload a video, you went to YouTube. No questions asked. Over 1 billion users later, YouTube is still popular, but unlike in the past, YouTube now faces competition. Vimeo was the first competitor, and YouTube dominated. Twitter’s acquisition of Vine and Instagram’s 15 second videos to compete with Vine provided social media users with new ways to watch and upload videos that had nothing to do with YouTube. Sure, YouTube still thrived after Vine and Instagram, but what about now?

Meerkat and Periscope are now on the scene for real-time videos. Facebook is now an option for people who want to upload their videos to the web. Expect Pinterest to roll something out in the next year or two for video uploads.

I would graduate college in 2020, and a lot has changed on social media ever since high school started (I can only wonder what adults think about the changing world). One of those changes is social networks trying to copy each other while trying to be unique. Facebook now uses hashtags. YouTube now uses cards. Twitter’s update resembled Facebook’s update. More social networks are looking at YouTube’s empire and wondering, “Where are our videos? Why do we have to rely on YouTube?”

If you built your entire presence on YouTube, then you don’t have to worry just yet. YouTube’s saving grace is its age and Google power. It is already known that Google favors YouTube videos in its search engine. Moreover, the most popular videos on the web are on YouTube. If everything remained as is, YouTube would survive for my college graduation. It would still be a cool social network that people would visit for many years to come.

In the last two years, many video-focused social networks came into existence, and well-known social networks provided the option to their users. Vine now has millions of users while Meerkat and Periscope went viral days after they were released (I personally believe Periscope will be the superior of the two). Instagram and Facebook combined have over 1.25 billion users. Again, if everything remained the same, YouTube would definitely survive, but in this day in age, rapid innovations happen fast and often. In 2016, there will probably be another social network based on uploading videos. Twitter and Facebook both own multiple social networks capable of uploading videos without relying on YouTube. These social networks make it easy for users to upload videos via mobile. On YouTube, that’s a little complicated.

It is quite common for teens to migrate from social networks with parents to other social networks with fewer parents. That’s one reason why millions of teens migrated from Facebook to Instagram. YouTube is a place where parents go. My dad watches a YouTube video every day, and there is a zero percent chance that my dad is the only parent who watches at least one YouTube video every day. Teens already migrated to Vine. As Meerkat and Periscope get better, they may go over to those platforms and spend less time on YouTube. Let’s not forget that at one point, MySpace was the largest social network around.

For now, YouTube is safe. However, with innovation constantly on the horizon, YouTube must make changes so it can remain the top dog. YouTube must come up with an easier way for people to record and upload videos through their mobile devices. One of the annoying parts about YouTube is that you have to upload the video through something like iMovie, your computer’s camera, or ScreenFlow, and then upload that video to YouTube. On the latest social networks that specialize in videos, you can record a video right on the social network and then publish the video right form the social network. The entire process saves you a few steps.

YouTube allows live streaming, but the live streaming needs to be easily accessible to any YouTuber. My suggestion would be the ability to create videos within YouTube and a button that allows you to decide whether to do a live stream or not. YouTube needs to change in some way, and in particular, mobile optimization. More people nowadays use their mobile devices than their laptops.

I think the chances of YouTube surviving and thriving after my graduation and beyond are high, but the danger exists. By responding to the danger now while it is still far ahead in the game, YouTube should have a strong future. What are your thoughts on YouTube’ status? Do you believe apps like Meerkat and Periscope are the real deal or fluff? Please share your thoughts below.

70 Amazing Twitter Tips

June 9, 2014 by Marc Guberti 52 Comments

Twitter is a powerful social network that has transformed this blog and others as well. However, when it comes to using Twitter, many people get confused. They do not know how to create quality tweets with only 140 characters, build a strong following, or interact with the followers that they have. In this blog post, I will provide numerous tips that cover all three of these aspects on Twitter and others as well.

Retweet other people’s tweets. If you share other people’s tweets, then others will be more likely to retweet other people’s tweets. If you have not retweeted anyone else’s tweet in one week, then you are using Twitter wrong.
Grow a targeted following. A targeted following is the best kind of following to have. These kinds of followers are the ones who are interested in your tweets before they even start to read them.
Ask questions. Asking questions will encourage people to respond with their answers. This will allow you to engage more with your followers.
Answer questions to join a conversation. If you want to engage with new people, then look for the people who are asking the question. By answering these people’s questions with a tweet, you may get some new followers, but the conversation will more than likely continue.
Tweet every 30 minutes. Tweeting every 30 minutes allowed me to build a strong presence on Twitter. No, it’s not annoying to tweet this many times every day.
Better yet, tweet every 20 minutes. The more you tweet, the more times people are going to see you. Tweeting every 20 minutes allows almost all of your followers who logged in on that day to see one of your tweets. I didn’t annoy more people by tweeting this much. In fact, I gained more people and saw more engagement for my tweets.
Schedule tweets. The only way you are going to tweet every 20-30 minutes is if you schedule tweets in advance.
Get HootSuite Pro. It will make your life much easier and save you a lot of time. I am able to schedule 36 tweets in just 6 clicks.
Tweet about your blog 80% of the time. If you want to drive more traffic to your blog from Twitter, you need to tweet about your blog at least 80% of the time. Only tweeting about your blog 20% of the time is a mistake. Your followers won’t care if your blog posts are filled with quality content.
Tweet pictures. Pictures have been proven to increase retweets, favorites, and conversations you have with your followers. Basically, it’s something that you must do.
Tweet at the moment. Don’t schedule a question! If you get answers right away, you can extend those conversations by replying as soon as possible.
Get the Twitter mobile app. The Twitter mobile app allows you to tweet at the moment no matter where you are. If you’re in the parking lot waiting for someone to get to the car, you can send out a tweet with the mobile app and respond to people in real time.
Use Twitter’s search engine to find targeted people. It’s cool, reliable, and easy to find targeted people with Twitter’s search engine.
Follow journalists. If you follow these journalists and build a strong presence for yourself on the web, then these journalists will be more likely to write about you in a popular magazine.
Follow the right people. Follow targeted people who are likely to follow back, people that you like, people you want to (and can) build connections with, tweet awesome stuff, and/or the leaders of your niche. Don’t follow the people who are not going to provide more value for your Twitter experience.
Tell everyone about what you do in your niche in your bio. You bio is a place for you to tell people what you are an expert at.
Also tell people about all of your accomplishments. The accomplishments are proof that you are an expert. The social media expert who got on the Forbes Top 50 Social Media Power Users list looks much better than the social media expert with 500 followers.
Get more words in your bio by using commas and incomplete sentences. Your English teacher is not going to come and haunt you if you use sentence fragments and do not have a verb in your bio. Simply list everything you do as well as your accomplishments by separating everything with commas.
Use TwitterCounter to keep track of statistics. The best way to grow on Twitter is to know when you did well and when you did bad. TwitterCounter allows you to see how many followers you gain for up to 6 months (free version). It’s a nice tool to utilize.
Use Tweriod to see when your followers are on Twitter. Using Tweriod will allow you to identify the times when most of your followers on Twitter. Now you know when to send out your most important tweet.
Include RT or r/t at the end of some of your tweets. Including RT or r/t at the end of some of your tweets does lead to more retweets. However, if you overuse RT or r/t, its effect will ware off, and you will not get as many retweets if you include RT or r/t at the end of your tweets.
Thank the people who share your blog posts. Thanking people for sharing your blog posts is an unexpected act of courtesy that can result in this person sharing more of your blog posts and being grateful that you thanked them.
Favorite tweets on occasion. Talking with someone is better than clicking the little star.
Use more verbs and fewer nouns. You will get more retweets this way.
Use hashtags. Using hashtags also has a good effect on getting more retweets. However, any tweet with more than two hashtags does not get retweeted as much.
Make your tweets 70-100 characters long. This is just another way to get more retweets. 70-100 characters seems to be the sweet spot.
Do not connect your Facebook account with your Twitter account. It’s annoying for your friends and followers on Facebook. It’s not worth it.
Use your Twitter account to promote your other social networks. If Twitter is your biggest social network, it may take a small push to turn your other social networks into something extraordinary as well.
Promote your Twitter account on your other social networks. Getting multiple small pushes to leverage your Twitter account can lead to something incredible.
Pin a tweet to the top of your profile. Make it the tweet that you want everyone to see. Choose wisely.
Focus on one specific niche. People follow specific people. If you scatter around from niche to niche, people will not know why they are following you.
Tweet motivational quotes. No matter what your niche is, motivational quotes always increase engagement.
Get in touch with the leaders in your niche. Leaders chat with other leaders. Show people that you are a leader by talking with the leaders. In addition, you will be able to learn new things by talking with the leaders of your niche.
Tweet a tip of the day. This allows you to provide your followers with easy to access knowledge about your niche.
Use Twitter to make a difference. Vivienne Harr has done that quite nicely with her Make A Stand Lemon Aid. She’s also six years younger than me.
Take advantage of trending topics. If you say something clever, you will get more retweets for that tweet than your typical tweets. Trending topics are popular which means when you get discovered, it will have a big impact on your engagement.
Follow others instead of trying to be a rock star. Don’t be the guy or gal who wants to have 100,000 followers and only follow 10 people. It doesn’t work that way, and even if you got that to happen, you are not using Twitter to its fullest potential (building connections).
Use Bitly to shorten links. *Almost* any method you can use to save characters is a good method. Bitly links also come with detailed statistics.
Hire someone to create your background. I hired someone to design my book cover and saw unprecedented success in my book sales. Hiring someone to create an awesome Twitter background for as little as $5 on Fiverr can make you look more professional.
Follow back the people who follow you. This is all about building the connections that you have gained through Twitter.
Do not use automated DMs. That is, unless, you like getting unfollowed.
Properly use DMs to contact some of your followers. Personalized messages to a few followers strengthens the connections you have with those followers. In addition, you can have long conversations by sending DMs back and forth to one of your followers.
Turn your Twitter followers into fans. Tweet incredible content and build your credibility. Become someone who your followers would be proud to show off to their friends.
Become a guest blogger. Guest blogging is an easy way to get more exposure and followers on your Twitter account. In addition, becoming a guest blogger builds on your preeminence.
Get people to interview you. You credibility gets boosted and you get more followers at the same time.
Interview other people. For most people, this tip is easier than Tip #45. The people you interview will be very likely to follow you on Twitter and tell their followers about you.
Give yourself goals to aim for. Instead of striving to gain more followers, strive to gain 10 followers every day. Then go up to 20 followers every day and keep on building.
Proofread your tweets before you send them out. It sounds like something completely unnecessary, but it is important. You would be shocked with how many typos are on Twitter.
Look at the Twitter strategy you already have in place. Identify its strengths and areas of improvement.
Don’t argue with anyone on Twitter. It’s wrong and makes you look bad.
Regularly check your profile and keep it up to date. The information you wrote on your bio three months ago could be outdated. You could also be doing something more remarkable than anything on your bio and may want to add that in your bio.
Only list one person for Follow Friday. Follow Friday is overrated, but if you participate in it, only list one person for every Follow Friday. No one likes to see a list of 10 usernames with no motives to follow those people.
Review your Twitter apps to make sure there are no problems. That’s how you get hacked. I got hacked once because I did not review my apps carefully. Learn from my heartache.
Use ManageFlitter. It’s a great tool that allows you to identify the people who are not following you, the people who are following you, and other cool features as well.
Use Tweepi. Tweepi helps you grow a targeted following by displaying a list of someone’s followers based on last tweet, follow back ratio (the most important), number of followers, and more!
Look at your Bitly links and continue tweeting the links that get clicked on the most. If people liked it the first time, they’ll like it again. If you see a decline in clicks for one of your Bitly links, then that link needs to take a break.
Have perseverance. Remember that Rome was not built in 1 day. Neither was anyone’s Twitter presence.
Don’t ask to be followed. Instead of asking people to click the follow button and build a connection made from pity, build your presence on Twitter.
Don’t ask for a shout out. Just don’t. Ever.
Don’t send out boring tweets. If you send out boring tweets such as status updates of you walking your dog or something else, it will bore the reader.
You should tweet about one thing 80% of the time. Stay focused on one niche. You can go out of your niche sometimes, but use this 80% rule to make sure most of your tweets are the ones that your followers want to read.
Don’t think about lost followers and connections. Instead of looking at what you lost, look at what you have gained.
Know why people follow you and would want to read your tweets. Knowing is the first step towards seeing better results.
Check your notifications three times every day. By checking your notifications three times every day, you will be able to reply to more of your followers faster. If you check your notifications more than three times every day, then that’s even better.
Use a real location in your bio. There’s no harm in adding your location, and it can result in strong connections with people who either live near by or used to live where you live now.
Raise your Klout Score. People look at your Klout score to determine how influential you are on the web…and Twitter!
Have a good bio picture. The bio picture is one of the most important factors when someone decides whether someone will follow you or not.
Use Twitter every day. If you want to become successful on Twitter, you need to be dedicated.
Look at what the leaders of your niche tweet. Then see if you can tweet something similar.
Tweet slideshares and infographics. Those happen to work very well on Twitter.

Those are 70 Twitter tips. Chances are you will choose some of these tips from the list and implement them one at the time. In order to get the best out of this article, I highly recommend that you revisit this article once a week so you can see how many of these tips you are implementing. By implementing all of these tips consistently for a long period of time, you will eventually be able to gain thousands of followers on Twitter every week.

10 Reasons Why Twitter Would Suspend Your Account (And Solutions)

May 9, 2014 by Marc Guberti 41 Comments

Twitter suspension rules is not on the top of everyone’s reading list, but it is better to be aware of these rules now than it is for you to learn about them after your account gets suspended. Hopefully, it does not have to come to that. Sending an appeal is a messy process that still prevents you from tweeting to your followers. In fact, people who get suspended and do not get the desired result from the appeal would have to start all over again trying to build a strong following. I learned about some of these rules fairly recently and revamped my strategy so I would not be violating any of the rules. These are the 10 reasons why Twitter would suspend your account. If you are safe, that’s good. However, it is better to know that you are safe than it is for you to be sorry in the long run.

Aggressively following and unfollowing people in a short amount of time. This one is the most obvious. People try to hack the system by following a lot of people and then unfollowing everyone who does not follow back. People who game the system tend to have a perfect 1 to 1 ratio or something very close to perfect (something like a 1 to 1.01) and continue to gain followers at the same rate their following number goes up. Another tip is to avoid passing the 1,000 following limit. If you reach that limit multiple times in a row, Twitter will notice, and that won’t be good. When you unfollow people, you can unfollow some of the people who do not follow you back, but also unfollow some of the inactive users who have not tweeted for a while. Following inactive users will tell Twitter that you are not only unfollowing the people who are not following you back.
Favoriting too many tweets. I did not know about this rule for a long time. Before learning about this rule, I simply favorited tweets of people mentioning me at will. Now, I only favorite 5-10 tweets every day. If I do not favorite a tweet of you sharing one of my blog posts, that’s because I do not want to risk breaking the rule. Regardless of whether I favorite someone’s tweet or not, I am always grateful when people share or read my blog posts. A good way to substitute favoriting tweets is sending those people DMs. Not only does this reduce the risk of your account getting suspended, but DMs are more personalized messages for the people who shared your content or said something good about you.
Spamming people (this one is really important). When people think of spamming, they think of a bot that sends out 500 tweets every day about the same thing. However, spamming also means sending out a lot of tweets (even if that means 24 tweets every day) and not having a lot of conversations with your followers. It is a harsh definition for the people who do not mean to spam, but with the real definition in place, you might be “spamming” your followers. Having conversations with your followers shows Twitter that you are a real person and will make Twitter less likely to suspend your account for this reason.
Following too many people after creating your account. New Twitter users get too excited. They look around for all of their favorite celebrities and follow hundreds of them on the first day. Soon, these new users are following 1,000 people but only have 50 followers. Twitter does not like these kinds of accounts and associates them with spam and fake followers. The fake follower industry is a multimillion dollar business, and Twitter is doing everything it can to suspend users who look fake–whether those users are fake or not.
Tweeting too much. No user can tweet more than 1,000 times every day. If you are caught reaching the limit multiple times, Twitter will eventually suspend your account. My recommendation is to stay under 100 tweets per day. For most people, that will not be anything to worry about since few people have enough time to send out 100 tweets in 1 day. If you feel the need to send out more than 100 updates every day, you should split those updates amongst multiple social networks.
Creating too many spammy looking Twitter accounts. If you are creating too many spammy looking Twitter accounts with the same computer, Twitter will catch you. Remember how Twitter defines spam before deciding whether you are innocent or guilty. This tactic is used to catch and suspend fake followers that are created by the same person. When Twitter catches someone doing this, all of the accounts made by that person get suspended–even the real ones.
Harassing people. Think about what you say before you post it. If a user harass someone, that person will most likely report that user to Twitter for harassment. If enough people report that user for harassment, Twitter will look into the situation and most likely suspend that account.
Tweeting inappropriate content. In some cases, tweeting the inappropriate content may not be your fault. This is why it is very important to avoid getting your account hacked. Someone hacked my account, and all of the links for smart phone users led to porn sites. While my account was hacked, I was afraid that someone would report me for inappropriate content, but luckily, my followers knew there was something wrong with my account. The only way to solve this problem is not to tweet inappropriate content in the first place.
Misusing trends and popular hashtags. Be sure that you know what something means before you tweet it. You would have to be consistently (multiple times every day) misusing trends and popular hashtags in order to get suspended for this reason. Twitter does not want news or events to be misinterpreted which is why they enforce this rule for people who do this on a consistent, daily basis.
Twitter thinks your account has been hacked or compromised. Although it’s not your fault, Twitter may suspend your account if they think it was hacked or compromised. Just look through your list of third-party apps and make sure none of them are bad. In addition, choose a password that would be hard to figure out. If your password is 8 characters long, then it’s too short. The best way to avoid this problem is to make it harder for someone to hack your account.

Those are the 10 reasons why Twitter would suspend an account. If your account is not violating any of these 10 rules, then your account will be safe. If your account slightly violates one of these rules, you should fix that problem so your account is not in risk. What are your thoughts on the list? Have you been suspended for other reasons? Please share your thoughts below.

3 Quick And Easy Ways To Make Your Twitter Account Safer

May 6, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

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.

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.
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.
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.

Is $0.99 The New Free?

April 18, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

I happened to stumble across a book on Amazon recently called Is $0.99 The New Free? by Steve Scott The title intrigued me, so I decided to do some searching. This book, and most of the other author’s books are priced at $0.99, and many of these books have over 100 reviews. His books are close to 50 pages, and I decided that I should be able to do something like that. On Kindle Direct Publishing, selling a book for $0.99 results in you getting a 35% commission per sale while selling a book for $2.99-$9.99 results in you getting a 70% commission per sale.

The next thing that came to mind is the highly successful App Store in which most of the successful paid apps are priced at $0.99. Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, and all of the other cool paid games are worth $0.99.

While working on Lead The Stampede, I have decided to give this a try. I am aware that this would result in a commission cut, but the volume of sales can easily make up for the commission. It is better to make 5 sales and make $10 than it is to make 1 sale and make $10. As more people get their hands on the $0.99 books, that will result in more reviews which will result in more customers as well.

Lead The Stampede will still be published in the summer, but I may be able to write another book before the start of summer. By the end of the year, I will most likely be selling a $0.99 eBook.

How To Create A Powerful KeyNote Presentation

January 23, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

There are several reasons why people create KeyNote presentations. Some people create KeyNote presentations for school projects. Other people create them for fun. There are also those experts that create KeyNote presentations so they can present them to the public. By creating a powerful KeyNote presentation, you will be able to captivate the audience.

In order to create a KeyNote presentation that captivates the audience, you need to have pictures on multiple slides. A picture is worth a thousand words, and the pictures will grab everyone’s attention. By adding special effects to your KeyNote presentations (but not going overboard), you will be able to grab more of your audience’s attention.

After you grab the audience’s attention, your KeyNote needs to be something that your audience will want to pay attention to. If your audience is people who want to learn more about Twitter, a KeyNote presentation on Twitter will be something your audience will want to pay attention to.

In your KeyNote, you need to provide essential information that your audience will be able to retain and implement. In a Twitter presentation, the essentials would be how to get more retweets, how to get more followers, how to get more engagement, and so on. These are the basics, and as your presentation progresses, introduce some of the advanced information you know about your topic of choice.

If you are presenting your KeyNote to an audience in public, have a Q&A page where people in the audience get to ask you questions. The Q&A acts as a mini break that allows people to engage in conversation with each other and you. Giving your audience good answers will further establish yourself as an expert of your niche.

Whether you are a public speaker, or you are going for an A in your class, creating powerful KeyNote presentations is a skill with many benefits. In order to create compelling KeyNotes that captivate your audience, you need to make sure these aspects are in your KeyNotes.