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3 Things That Successful Bloggers Do

February 22, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

If you want to become one of the best bloggers, you have to look at what the best bloggers are currently doing.

In most cases, the best bloggers do a few things differently. Everyone puts in some level of work, but the quantity and quality of the work are slightly different.

Those differences often make all of the difference.

To become a successful blogger, these are the three things that you must start doing. Implementing these methods will potential change your entire strategy and move your blog in a better direction.

#1: Write Valuable Content

This is the most obvious tip here that seems to receive a lot of discussion. There is no reason to take time explaining its importance.

Writing valuable content comes down to your knowledge, writing experience, and your audience.

The more you know about your niche, the more you can write about.

The more experience you have with writing, the more value you can provide in a shorter amount of time.

Understanding your targeted audience lets you know what content specifically applies to them. Then you know what type of content you have to write.

Writing valuable content is an art that you get better at with practice. You can see that with my blog posts and with many other bloggers’ blogs.

My first blog posts were terrible in comparison to the blog posts that I write now. I recently looked back at the first blog posts of some of the bloggers who I have come to admire.

Same thing. Their first blog posts weren’t terrible, but they were terrible in comparison to what they produce now.

#2: Outsource Most Of The Work

The only two things that will never get outsourced for my blog are writing the blog posts and interacting with people who comment.

Everything else is fair game.

I can’t remember the last time I created a picture for one of my blog posts or scheduled tweets for my blog posts.

That work took up too much of my time. So I outsourced that workload.

Now I have more time to write content and look into ways to expand my reach and revenue. 80% of your results come from 20% of the work.

Outsourcing allows you to focus more on that 20% that brings forth 80% of the results.

The most successful bloggers are not doing all of the work.

They have a team around them that makes the work easier. Some of the successful bloggers will systematize the entire process of writing their own blog posts.

Either have a contributor write the content or hire a ghostwriter. The editor makes changes to the content and then someone comes through with the pictures.

You have to begin assembling your team of people to help you out. That way, you can focus more of your efforts on the work that yields most of your results.

Time is a blogger’s most valuable resource. The more of it you have, the more content you can write. The more marketing you can do. The more products you can create.

#3: Spend More Time Promoting Than Writing

You can write content all you want, but if no one visits your blog, then no one will know about your content.

Part of successful blogging requires your content getting seen by as many people as possible. The traffic your blog gets can translate into subscribers and sales.

The mindset for getting more traffic is to spend more time marketing your blog posts than actually writing them.

You can spend 30 minutes each day writing your blog posts, but then you should be spending an hour marketing your blog posts every day.

Connect with influencers, get podcast interviews, promote your blog through social media, grow your email list, and so on.

If that’s too much work for you, then outsource the work. Your team is there to make your blogging workload as light as possible so you can focus your time on what matters the most for your blog’s success.

In Conclusion

Successful blogging requires a different view of blogging. Successful bloggers don’t just put in a lot of work. They put in a lot of smart work.

Successful bloggers put their time towards the work that leads to the best results, and they are on the endless pursuit to outsource as much of the workload as possible.

Right now, I have 10 freelancers who take some of the workload off my shoulders. It’s a start, but I’ll be getting more. Someday, I imagine having hundreds of freelancers who help me in various areas of my business.

You need that team around you and a thirst for more knowledge. The more you learn about your niche, the more value you can provide.

In the same way, the more you learn about blogging successfully, the more likely your blog will become successful too.

What are your thoughts about these three things that successful bloggers do? Do you believe something should be added to the list? What are your blogging tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

5 Tactics To Leverage Marketing Within Your Videos

February 19, 2016 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

video marketing — Video is huge and you won’t want to miss out

Video was and still is huge. After years of consistently getting praised as one of the best ways to share your message, countless people have created their own YouTube channels and training courses.

Maybe you’ve heard a lot about the power of videos. Maybe you create video after video or are itching to get started.

The best videos are the captivating ones with subtle marketing added in. You have to market yourself and some of the products that you offer within your videos. However, you don’t want to be annoying.

The challenge is how. Here are five ways to subtly leverage marketing within your videos.

#1: Promote Your Platforms Within Your Videos

Your platforms are where you have an audience—social networks, your blog, and others.

You can subtly promote these platforms at the beginning of these videos with a footer. In the footer (the bottom of the video), you can include text (displaying your username) and pictures of social media icons.

YouTube Social Media Promotion

At the end of your videos, you can go into deeper detail about where else your viewers can find you on the web.

And don’t forget to talk about your landing page at the end of your videos. The money is in your email list.

#2: Promote Your Products Within Your Videos

Some of your videos may present you with the opportunity to promote your products. You may be talking about a topic related to your product.

At that point, you have the opportunity to mention your product, and better yet, give your viewers a discount. The discount will boost your sales and result in more exposure for your product.

You can also create a video entirely dedicated to your product. You can promote your product for the entire video or create a massive tutorial with “ads” of your own product at certain points in the video.

Since they are your “ads,” you must make sure you properly transition to product promotion.

I created a lengthy tutorial about writing more content. It is a 45+ minute video with a lot of free and useful content. At certain points of the video though, I promote the writing course that I created with Jerry Banfield.

Write Like Crazy Video Tutorial

I promote the writing course several times throughout the video. Jerry Banfield, the person who I created the course with, has created free tutorials that exceed two hours for some of his other courses.

When you promote a product within the video, don’t forget that discount. If you do not want to include a discount, then offer a free bonus.

You can introduce the free bonus by saying something like this: “Product A is worth $50, but if you buy it with this link, then I’ll give you Bonus B for free.”

#3: Promote Your Other Videos Within Videos

The most brilliant concept that explains going viral on social media is Brendon Burchard’s Circular Viralocity. I did not take his course about it, but I did write a summary of what I think happens in a portion of the course.

The concept behind Circular Viralocity is that you use your social networks to promote each other so the people in your audience go from one of your social media accounts to the other social media accounts that you have.

It’s like tweeting a link to your YouTube video and then having a link to your Facebook Page within the description of your YouTube video.

Keep that chain going for as long as possible, get enough people within that chain, and you’ve got Circular Viralocity. That’s how it works in a nutshell.

Now let’s apply this to videos (because the most successful YouTubers do this ALL OF THE TIME).

You have finished watching a video. The YouTuber takes the time to say where else you can find him/her on the web.

The next part is the most important part. For the last 5-10 seconds of the video, a few related videos created by the same YouTuber will show up. These videos show up before YouTube gets a chance to show you its selection of related videos.

YouTube Video Previews

One of the videos interests you and you click on the video. You watch that video to the end and see a new selection of related videos before YouTube’s selections show up.

You click on one of those videos and the cycle continues.

When you use this strategy, you can get the same viewers to watch several of your videos in one go.

Most YouTubers who use this strategy only provide 3-6 related YouTube videos for their viewers to choose from. Why not offer more? The answer lies in the famous jam study conducted by Professor Sheena Iyengar.

Maybe you’ve heard a version of the story. She goes to the grocery store and offers samples of jam and analyzes the conversion rates.

To some shoppers, she offered 24 different flavors of jam. Many people tasted the samples and Iyengar got a 3% conversion rate (number of people who bought at lease one box of jam).

To the other shoppers, she only offered six different flavors of jam. Shoppers tried fewer samples, but more of them made purchases. For this part of the experiment, Iyengar saw a 30% conversion rate for the sales of her boxes of jam.

The less we offer, the better the conversion rate will be. My recommendation is to just include 3-4 related YouTube videos at the end of all of your YouTube videos.

If you offer your viewers too many options, you will overwhelm them.

#4: Create Anticipation For Your Upcoming Videos Or Products

One way to become successful is by analyzing the most successful people in the world. I’m talking about the people and brands who dominate our every day conversations.

Remember, to be the best, you have to learn from the best.

I am a big fan of the 1989 album and often watch the Shake It Off YouTube video. After some looking around, I came across one of the outtake videos for the Shake It Off video.

At the end of each of those videos, there is a teaser that builds anticipation for the next video.

Luckily for me, the videos were all up by the time I watched the outtakes, so my anticipation was quickly satisfied. I still have to wait over a year for Star Wars Episode VIII

Star Wars VIII Video — Just come out already!

Sure enough, I watched them all. The first outtake I saw was captivating, and each one built upon the next.

At the end of your videos, you can create anticipation for your next video. Let your viewers know what the next video will be about, and better yet, when you plan on publishing that video.

As each teaser builds more anticipation, you will start to build a following based on that anticipation for new and better videos.

#5: Turn A String Of Videos Into A Product

All of the tips up to this point had a strong focus on marketing within your videos. However, what exactly are you marketing?

Yes, the platform you have built for yourself and your other videos.

But you are also marketing your products.

To market more products, you have to create more products. And one way you can create more products is by turning a string of videos into a product.

I do that all of the time on Udemy. I currently have over 20 training courses that are all a series of videos and PDFs wrapped together into a single product.

Udemy Profile

Why not make money with the videos that you create?

In Conclusion

Video will continue to be one of the best ways to spread your message and make revenue with your expertise. Video has lived up to the hype that it has received for several years.

The way we utilize video will continue to evolve. Our methods of communication will become more sophisticated.

Periscope gives us the option to do live videos. Blab gives us the opportunity to talk with people in a live interview (basically, Periscope with multiple people in the same live video).

What won’t change is the impact video has had on the marketplace. If you don’t create videos, then now is the time for you to start.

What are your thoughts about creating videos? How do you leverage marketing within your videos? Which of these tips was your favorite? Sound off in the comments section below.

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

December 8, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

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

Two pictures and their descriptions
Half of an infographic
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:

You get better social proof
They are real followers
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

September 12, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

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

June 18, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

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

June 14, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.