audience

How To Hit Your Blog Traffic Goals

January 22, 2018 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

It’s very common for bloggers, video creators, and podcasters alike to set site traffic goals. Some people aim for 100,000 monthly blog visitors while others aim for 1 million podcast downloads.

But most of these site traffic goals involve a significant long-term time investment. Some people get frustrated with slow progress and give up on these goals all together.

And yet it’s possible to achieve our site traffic goals faster than we realize. It’s possible to surpass 100,000 monthly blog visitors in under a year. But if it’s possible for some people, why aren’t we all doing it?

There are only two reasons for this phenomena:

It’s a lot of work, and only a few are willing to put in that much effort.

We don’t know how.

You’ll learn the how part soon enough. At that point, it’s up to you to put in the work. Let’s go deeper so you discover how to hit your site traffic goals.

#1: Optimize Your Content For Social Shares

From here on, I’ll refer to the people with hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors, millions of downloads, and millions of views as colossal content influencers. That will make it easier for me to write this blog post.

Colossal content influencers tend to share a few things in common. A glaring commonality is that they all get hundreds or even thousands of shares for all of their new content. These individuals have large email lists of devoted fans, but that’s not the entire story.

These same people optimize their blog posts for social shares. It’s common practice to include social sharing buttons at the top or bottom of every blog post. This is a default option you can get from WordPress and similar options.

But this is a limitation.

You need to give your visitors as many opportunities as possible to share your content. You can include blocks of text throughout your content that invites people to share your content. You can even have the social media buttons on the side as someone consumes your content.

For YouTube videos, you can include a Click To Tweet link in the description.

#2: The Ultimate Hack For Getting People To Share Your Content

For every blog post I write, I set a goal to include at least five outbound links. Outbound links lead to other people’s content. For videos and podcast episodes, you can mention at least five articles and people in each new release.

A few days before the blog post goes live, I’ll then contact everyone I mentioned. In this email, I do three things:

Let them know I mentioned them in the upcoming blog post
Tell them when the blog post goes live
Ask them if they can share it

If people say yes, I’ll follow-up with the link on the day the blog post gets published. I’ll also provide a prewritten tweet to make it easier for these people to share my content.

Since I publish a new blog post every day, that means I have to mention people a grand total of 1825 people every year asking them to share my content. Since these people are in the blog post, many of them will share it. Some of these people will even consume your content and become devoted fans.

They’ll point back to your content frequently and show people where you mentioned them. They’ll spread the word on social media and to their audiences.

Some of these people can drive 10 visitors to your content. Others can drive 100, especially if some of these people decide to share your content more than once.

If you mention 10 people per blog post, you’ll then contact 3650 people every year asking them to share your content. The more people you mention in your content, the better these numbers serve you.

I reach my goal of mentioning at least five people in each of my blog posts by writing the blog post first and mentioning others later. Once I have a view of the entire blog post, I can then determine what kinds of content and people I can include within my content.

For videos and podcasts, I plan out who I will mention before I start recording. For interviews, it’s more off the cuff, but I have a general idea of who to mention if a specific topic comes up (i.e. I know who to mention when the conversation turns towards webinars).

#3: Add More Depth To Your Content

depth

My blog posts are rarely under 1,000 words. Most of my podcast episodes are 30 minutes or longer. Why so much?

The answer is depth. I’m providing my audience with more value for each piece of content I publish. People don’t want to filter through a bunch of blog posts, episodes, and videos when all of the information is in a single piece of content.

We want lengthy guides instead of fragmented advice. This is why long form content outperforms short form content.

When I started writing 2018’s blog posts in late November, I set my benchmark at 1,000 words. Now I am gradually increasing that benchmark. Every week, I’ll add an extra 100-200 words to the benchmark until I can consistently write 2,000+ word blog posts in an hour or less.

Long form content also requires a different content consumption mindset. Your visitors need to stick with you for the long haul to finish reading the 2,000+ word blog post or listening to the 30 minute podcast episode. If you get people to invest that kind of time into your brand, you can expect them to enthusiastically come back as long as the value is good.

#4: Grow Your Email List

Your email list is where the magic happens. This is where you turn visitors into subscribers, and eventually, into devoted fans. Everything you do for your content brand should always be done with the intention of growing your email list. If you decide to send tweets promoting your content, ask yourself, “How is this action helping me grow my email list?”

As you grow your email list and inform them of your new publications, you’ll attract more returning visitors who will share your content with their friends.

#5: Stay Optimistic

i'm possible

It’s easy to get discouraged when we fall below our expectations. As you continue to create and promote content, remember that you have a long journey ahead of you. Growing a content brand takes time.

The people who seem to hit massive site traffic goals in under a year had to squeeze at least three years of work into that one year.

So I encourage you to stay optimistic. If you believe in yourself, learn each day, and have a bias towards action, you’ll achieve your site traffic goals.

In Conclusion

Most of these tactics focused on social shares. Adding more depth to your content creates a more valuable experience and helps your search engine ranking, but social shares generate the buzz and help you move much closer to your site traffic goals.

To maintain long-term traffic regardless of how much the rules change, get as many of your visitors as possible to subscribe to your blog.

The journey is a long one, but well worth it for those who put in the effort. It’s not about if you’re willing to put in the effort. It’s about actually putting in the effort.

What are your thoughts on these tactics for achieving your site traffic goals? Do you have any tactics for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

4 Ways To Use Social Media To Understand Your Customers

February 7, 2017 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

Have you ever bought something simply because someone you know recommended it? I’m sure you have. But while this behavior might seem trivial on the surface, underneath lies one of the greatest truths about social media marketing, and marketing in general.

We often rely on our friends to get product recommendations. After all, we know and trust our friends. More importantly, they know us. If you’re an avid reader, for example, your friends won’t likely recommend a good baseball glove. Rather, they’ll recommend a good book.

Having said that, one way to describe marketing is product recommendation. Even when we are trying to sell a product, we are, in essence, recommending it. Some messages are crafted better than others but, in the end, we don’t actually sell products. We recommend them. It’s the customer who takes action.

Part of making a great recommendation is to know your customers as well as you know your friends. It’s easy to recommend something to a lifelong friend. Imagine if it was just as easy to make recommendations for your potential customers. Now imagine if your potential customers responded the same way as your friends.

That’s possible, but only when you learn as much as you can about your customer. And social media can help you extract the information you need. Once you learn more about your customers through social media, you’ll get more sales and generate more revenue.

Let’s get started!

#1: See What Your Customers Share

You can learn A LOT about a person just by what they share on social media. For instance, I share blog posts about productivity, digital marketing, and blogging. Whether you believe I’m an expert on those subjects or not, you know right away that I care about those topics.

I’m interested in getting more traffic from my digital marketing efforts. I want to boost my productivity. And I want to write killer blog posts. And no matter how much I improve my skills, I’ll always want to do better.

Take a look at what your customers are sharing on social media. They share the products they like using, the articles and information they find interesting, and they often share how they feel about certain people and issues.

If a majority of my Twitter followers started sharing Pinterest-related articles, my next training course would be about Pinterest. See what I mean? When you know people already want something, offer them relevant solutions and your product recommendations will carry more weight.

#2: Read Their Bios

A bio can say a lot about a person. For instance, here’s my 160 character bio on Twitter:

Based on my tweets, you know that I care about social media marketing, blogging, and digital marketing (note: I don’t say that I’m passionate about them because people don’t always share what they’re passionate about, but they always share what they care about).

Looking at my bio, you also know I’m a runner, dog lover, and Red Sox fan. Do you offer a DVD workout routine that helps me cut 10 seconds off my mile within 30 days? If so, I’m all ears. And if you recommend something that will make my dog love me even more, you have my attention.

If you have some epic Red Sox memorabilia, I’m listening to you. I will not listen to anyone who offers Yankees memorabilia (unless it has something to do with Derek Jeter or Mariano Rivera). Likewise, if you’re selling a cat bowl, you will lose my attention immediately.

Doing this type of homework lets you discover what to recommend, and what not to recommend, to your customers. Depending on what you offer, and the information you provide in your bio, you can offer something that appeals to multiple interests.

If you recommend a Red Sox dog costume, you’ve won my heart. Envisioning my dog in a Red Sox outfit satisfies my love for dogs and my desire to watch the Red Sox win another World Series (and then another one. That cycle of desire will continue forever).

#3: Look At Who Your Customers Follow

Almost every social network lets you to discover who your customers are following. From a marketing perspective, we aren’t concerned about every individual a customer follows. We are more concerned with patterns.

Are your customers following accounts that post inspirational quotes? Are they following social media influencers? Understanding these common patterns will allow you to identify which recommendations will resonate strongest with your customers.

Now I’m going to share a trick to ensure your audience will become more receptive to your recommendations. Let’s say I want an audience consisting of people who follow other social media influencers.

These people were interested in social media marketing before I discovered them. Following them, and getting them to follow me back, will result in more individuals who will see my recommendations and potentially take action.

#4: See How Your Audience Engage With Your Content

If you follow an influencer’s followers, you are more likely to grow an audience. Combine that with the above-mentioned tips and you’ll grow a targeted audience.

But even when you have a targeted audience, you won’t FULLY understand what they want. If your audience is interested in social media, for instance, you may not know which social network they use most. But there are two ways to figure this out:

Conduct a survey and ask your audience to fill it out (keep in mind this method works better with an email list).
Examine how your audience engages with your social media content.

A few years ago, I noticed that my Twitter and blogging-related content received the most retweets. That’s why my first training courses were about Twitter and blogging.

Then I saw increased engagement for my productivity and social media-related blog posts (social media in general, not specific networks).

Therefore, I created more training courses about productivity and social media. The more often you share content on social media, the more data you’ll have to play with. Having more data to play with always allows you to make more accurate conclusions.

In Conclusion

Speaking of conclusions, you’ve reached the near-end of this blog post. Understanding your customers allows you to provide products and services that your customers will buy before you even say a word.

So far, social media is the most revolutionary marketing tool of the 21st century. While we’ve learned many methods of social media marketing, we still have much to learn. The evolving trends in social media marketing will be very exciting.

Regardless of how marketing evolves, the emphasis will always revolve around knowing your customer. By knowing your customer like you know a friend, you can make recommendations that result in happy customers and more revenue that you can use to expand your business.

What are your thoughts on using social media to learn more about your customers? Have any tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

4 Keys to a Successful Blog

November 18, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

create a successful blog

There are many factors driving a successful blog: high-quality content, engagement, social media traffic, search engine traffic, domain authority and more. I focused on all of those and attracted hundreds of visitors to blog, but did that make my blog a success? Nope. Here’s what made my blog successful:

Serve Your Audience

Focusing too much on SEO and metrics can lead to overlooking the most important part of your blog: your audience. Serve your audience and you’ll build a loyal following. I’ve heard this advice a hundred times over.

While it’s valuable advice, it has become a bit overrated. Don’t get me wrong. Serving my audience has helped a lot, but it’s only piece of the puzzle. Serving your audience means being attuned to their needs and interests, and creating valuable content accordingly.

But in a world filled with good content, writing more of it just isn’t enough. To truly serve your audience, you’ve got to do more. Think of content as an appetizer in a three course meal.

A Recipe for Success

Some bloggers mistakenly think success is a numbers game. But traffic and visitors alone won’t propel you to the top. Some blogs thrive because they enjoy hundreds of thousands of visitors while others struggle with that kind of traffic, or any kind of traffic for that matter.

But the real winners are the bloggers who truly LOVE their readers. I’m talking about the bloggers who, in addition to offering valuable content consistently, nurture their communities. They make themselves available by regularly answering readers’ questions, responding to their comments and engaging with their content.

If you view everyone in your audience as little more than a potential customer, your blogging journey will hit a lot of bumps. View each member of your audience as a human being with something to offer besides a pocket full of money.

Go Above And Beyond

You should already be going above and beyond with your content. But you should also strive to go the extra mile with your audience by acknowledging and showing appreciation for their support, and offering your own.

Writing alone doesn’t do that. Acknowledge your audience by engaging with their social media posts, responding to their emails and thanking them for sharing your content. Always try to be available.

Neil Patel writes some of the longest SEO related blog posts known to mankind. I’m sure he’s written at least a few posts that exceed 10,000 words. He also spends a lot of time marketing himself.

One would think a busy man like Neil would have little time to dedicate to his audience. But that’s actually where he dedicates most of his time. According to an infographic on his blog, Neil receives around 207 emails every day. He responds to 91 of them!

contact neil patel infographic

Neil spends four hours a day going through his inbox and responding to anything from business questions to interview requests. He also makes the time to respond to readers’ comments on his blog posts, which easily attract 100’s of comments! His older posts consistently receive engagement as well.

Make Your Audience Part Of The Action

For a long time, I saw guest blogging as a personal opportunity but hesitated to accept guest posts for my own blog. Yet the benefits of opening your blog to guest contributors are many. It saves you time, keeps your content fresh and varied, helps increase your traffic and adds value.

Not only that, guest contributors become part of your story.

I have written many guest posts. Two that stand out were for Jeff Bullas’ Blog and ProBlogger. When I first started out, these blogs were the holy grail of blogging and social media, so I read them every day to learn more about my niche. Once I gained experience and expertise, it was an honor to be given the opportunity to contribute to these blogs.

Contributors inevitably have different motivations for writing guest posts. Some enjoy seeing their name on a credible blog (and potentially building their own brand), others enjoy giving back to the blogs they’ve learned from in the past. But every contributor becomes a small part of the blog’s story, of your story.

As an added bonus, you get a backlink. You can also do something similar on YouTube by recording collaborative videos with audience members.

Don’t Oversell

Overselling to your readers is a surefire way to make the relationship sour. You may be overselling if you are:

Creating products in bulk.
Involved in affiliate marketing.

Of course, some people who create products into bulk and/or engage in affiliate marketing don’t fall into this trap. The danger arises when you’re too heavily promoting a product (yours or an affiliate’s) every month. I made this mistake.

I first got involved with promoting other people’s courses in 2015. The first time I promoted someone else’s course to my email list I got a bunch of sales. The next month, I promoted a different course and got a bunch of sales. The following month, I did the same.

I spend five straight months promoting other people’s products and very little time delivering value. The result? Increased unsubscribes, fewer email opens, and fewer clicks. It was an email marketing nightmare. My email list is still somewhat scarred by the aftermath but my open and clickthrough rates are gradually increasing.

The point is I enjoyed increased revenues initially, but eventually my sales and email subscribes took a hit. Why? Because I was too focused on pushing products and not providing anything of free value. Worst of all, I saw my email list as just that: a list. Nameless, faceless people with wallets.

It’s was a big mistake, and hard to admit, but if I can help you avoid making the same error I’ll be happy. In fact, I can thank one of my subscribers for helping me see the light. His email said, “You’re better than this.” And his sentiments were likely shared by the others on my list, the silent majority.

In Conclusion

While I still occasionally promote other people’s training courses, I am more focused than ever on my audience’s needs and interests, and giving them something of value that they can use.

Any successful blogger is successful because of his/her audience. Tenacity and grit factor in, but a blog is useless without a loyal following. If you love your readers, they will love you back (and will also be more open to trying your products and services in the future).

What are your thoughts on audience engagement? Do you believe there is a more important determinant of a blog’s success? Sound off in the comments section below.