authority Archives - Marc's Blog

Who wouldn’t want more likes and followers? The primary goal of using social media from a business standpoint is to grow a large, targeted audience of people who will engage with our content. However, this primary goal is insufficient for generating a full-time income. Having a large, targeted social media audience will help you towards achieving a full-time income, but when talking about an income, other elements come into play.

Not only do other elements beyond social media come into play, but the way you use social media and present yourself also affect how successful your brand becomes. It is great to get likes and followers, but what are they worth? What type of impact do they have on your brand? We must ask ourselves what happens after we accumulate the likes and followers. We must ask ourselves how we can use our time on social media more productively. We must ask ourselves what tasks we must fulfill before we get another like or follower. These are the big seven.

#1: Know Your Niche

The most important thing to do before you get another like or follower is to know what your niche is. This is a basic step, and many people with decent sized audiences know what niche they are in. If you already know your niche, you should skim through this section and head over to the second method. However, if you do not know what your niche is, it is time to discover which niche is the best one for you. The best niche you can choose for yourself is a combination of these factors:

Passion for potential niche
Knowledge about potential niche
Willingness to constantly learn more about potential niche

You should choose a niche that fits into all three of these factors. Those are the ideal niches that present the easiest choice for pure domination. Remember that in your lifetime, you can do anything. You can be anything from a motivational speaker to an expert on gadgets if that’s your style. Once you identify your niche, you must build your social media audience around that niche.

#2: Know Your Customers

Once you know what your niche is, it is easier to know who your customers are. Your customers are the people who buy your products and make your entire journey possible from a monetary point of view. Not only do your customers make the continuation of your brand possible, but knowing their specific needs will allow you to create better products that better serve your customers. Knowing your customers all comes down to knowing your targeted audience, and knowing your targeted audience all comes down to two simple questions:

“What is my brand’s purpose? What type of people would be interested in my brand’s purpose?”

The more specific you are when you identify your brand’s purpose, the easier it will be for you to know who your customers are. If your brand’s purpose is too vague, then you won’t grow a strong customer base. If you own a restaurant, then your purpose shouldn’t be just to feed people. In that case, your targeted audience would be anyone who eats, which initially sounds good because everyone eats food, but with many options, people won’t notice you. Instead of presenting yourself as the ideal choice for everyone, you must get specific. Is your restaurant an all-vegan restaurant? Does the Wi-Fi Free experience allow real-life conversations to develop? You may not own a restaurant, but you need to ask yourself those types of questions for your brand, regardless of what your niche is.

#3: Create A Better Posting Plan

The way you post your content affects how your audience sees you as an individual and how often your audience sees your content. Publishing posts daily is completely different from publishing one post per month. You must post content on your social networks several times per day, but if you publish 10 posts in five minutes, then you are bound to annoy your audience. The workaround is to create a better posting plan which consists of the following:

Scheduling posts. If you are looking for a way to schedule posts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and a Google+ page among other options, then look no farther than HootSuite. The HootSuite Pro feature makes it easier to schedule content in bulk. I can literally schedule over 100 tweets in just six clicks.
Posting content made to spread. Each social networks has a different set of rules based on users’ experiences that determines what spreadable content is. However, almost all of the viral content posted on social media contain pictures. You can use the free, easy-to-use tool called Canva to create stunning pictures. I use Canva for hundreds of pictures that appear on this blog.
Knowing when to post. Facebook Insights allow you to discover when the highest percentage of your audiences is on Facebook while Tweriod is the equivalent for Twitter. Schedule your posts to get published at the times you know when the highest percentage of your audience is on that social network so your posts get the optimal level of engagement.

#4: Look Over Your Social Media Profile

Looking at your social media profile and making sure you are proud of what you see is a way to gain verification that you are on the right path. Not only do you gain verification about your path (or if not, you’ll have an idea of what needs to be changed), but in a rapidly moving world, many things are bound to change in the next six months for your brand. Maybe you won an award that you could mention in your social media bio. Maybe you acquired another hobby worth mentioning, and mentioning your hobbies on social media is not so bad. Maybe you changed your brand’s logo or want a cooler background picture. Maybe your bio needs to be re-polished. By checking your social media profile once per month and making changes where they need to be made, you will always reflect up-to-date information within your social media profile. You don’t want to change your brand’s picture, bio, or background just for the sake of doing it because that affects your brand’s recognition. If Apple constantly changed its logo, it would be more difficult for customers to remember the brand. Only make a change when a change is necessary.

#5: Get Your Email List Straightened Out

If you are going to do one thing before you get another like or follower, you must straighten out your email list and choose which paid service you will use. I use iContact to build and manage my email list, but MailChimp, Aweber, and Constant Contact are three other worthy options among the pool of efficient emailing services. You must choose a service that allows you to send custom emails to your subscribers (in other words, not just the RSS Reader type of emails) and enables autoresponders. Autoresponders allow you to build the relationship between you and your subscribers which will increase the chances of someone buying one of your products. If you want to go the extra mile and get more subscribers from your social media efforts, create a landing page (I use Optimize Press for mine. Here is an example of a landing page) that collects email addresses. Then, promote that landing page to your social media audience every day. If you wish to promote your landing page to your social media audience every day, then you must schedule numerous posts per day so you don’t appear to be over promoting your landing page.

#6: Have At Least One Method To Generate Revenue

Social media won’t generate much direct revenue for your brand, but social media is great at generating traffic that can lead to more revenue. You can lead the people within your social media audience to your landing page, your blog, and in rare cases, your product sales page. You want your social media audience to generate a high ROI, and in order to get that ROI, you must lead people to places where you can potentially make revenue for every transaction that takes place.

#7: Procrastinate Less Often On Social Media

Social media is the least expensive method I have come across to generate a massive audience, but it can also take away a large portion of our time. Never before has their been a double-edged sword like this for business owners. If you procrastinate less often on social media, you will have more time to create products, write blog posts, and grow your audience.

The first step to reducing procrastination on social media is to identify what causes you to procrastinate in the first place. Knowing the problem is the first step towards finding a solution. The second step is to do something about it. I found myself reading through the trending topics often. The solution for me was to only read the first five posts about a trending topic so I know what happened. I also spend less time looking at the trending topics because I do more of my social media activities on HootSuite nowadays, and HootSuite does not have a trending topics section for me to get distracted by.

In Conclusion

Every business wants a larger audience, but what are you going to do with your audience? How will you become successful once you get the large audience? What most people do not realize is that a big audience does not guarantee success. You need to have a big audience of people who appreciate what you do and are willing to pay their money for your expertise and/or product. You must also use your time more effectively and specialize in what you do so you get the right results in the right areas.

What are your thoughts on these seven tasks? Which task do you think is the most necessary? Do you have an 8th task that you believe everyone must do before getting their next like or follower? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Build Authority On The Web

Ever wonder how to build an authority on the web? I’m talking about the type of authority that allows you to become a credible leader in your niche, generate a full-time income, and help others. When you build an authority on the web, you become a beacon of excellence for others to follow. Building an authority on the web takes time, but a good portion of that time is spent searching for the blueprint. How can you do something if you don’t know how? You can’t solve a Rubik’s Cube unless you know the necessary steps. On the same token, you can’t become an authority on the web unless you know what it takes to become one. No more guessing. I’m showing you the blueprint.

#1: Provide Free Value

Providing value is essential for the success of your business and what you stand for. Many people understand this principle. However, some people have a natural tendency to skip over the word “free.” Some people believe they must only provide value in their products and that they can get away with haphazardly putting together the free stuff.

The problem with that approach is that customers nowadays look for the free value before they buy anything you sell. People are not visiting your blog or YouTube channel for the first time, eager to buy your product. They are looking for free value. Many of the people who buy my books read my blog posts first.

[tweetthis twitter_handles=”@MarcGuberti” url=”http://bit.ly/1Oja7M0″]Customers nowadays look for the free value before they buy what you sell.[/tweetthis]

The free value you provide is so important because one of the beliefs many customers have is that the paid product is better than the free product. Another belief shared by many customers is that if the free content and videos are duds, then that person’s paid products can’t be that good either. Providing free value in your blog posts and your YouTube videos allows them to spread, reach more people, make your products look better, and ultimately lead to more revenue. Think of the most successful blogger you know, and ask yourself whether that blogger’s free content is valuable or not. I read Seth Godin’s blog posts for a year or two before I decided to buy most of his books and training courses.

#2: Build Relationships

Providing free value is critical towards building healthy relationships with the people in your audience, but starting the relationships requires more than just valuable content. Building relationships means emailing people, interacting with people on social media, and responding to comments on your blog. If you look through the comments on my blog, you will notice that I respond to them. I respond to comments to encourage more conversation, build relationships with my readers, and let everyone know that I am a person who responds.

What many successful people tend to do is ignore others. Many people in high positions look at their email and don’t always address the newbie asking a few questions. I make it a point to respond to them. Taking the time to leave a quick response allows you to help others, and the people you help will see you as a role model of excellence. In the first welcome email I send, I let people know that I respond to the emails they send me. Of course, if I see an irrelevant email or comment, I won’t respond, but that rarely happens.

On social media, the relationship starts when you follow someone and that person follows you back. The relationship continues when you both interact with one another. After interacting with each other over a long period of time on social media, these people may email you and have conversations with you one email at a time. As the relationships continue to build, these people may eventually buy your products, but the relationships don’t stop there. They keep building, gaining momentum, and leading to the symbiosis of you and the people you interact with.

#3: Create Products

When it comes to building an authority on the web, affiliate marketing only goes so far. Having your own product, being able to call yourself an author, and creating more products along the way will establish yourself as an expert and create a nice revenue for yourself at the same time. I have experimented with numerous revenue generating methods. I have done anything from social media ads to being an eBay affiliate. Creating your own products and effectively marketing them is by far the best and most reliable way to make money on the web.

Creating a product also gives you more respect in your niche. If you write a 100 page book or create a five hour training course, your audience will look at those products and realize that you knew enough about your niche to create those lengthy products. At this point, the products just have to be packed with value, and you must continue learning more about your niche. The products you create reflect how much you knew at the time, but learning more will allow you to create better, more successful products in the future. Better yet, you can update your products to reflect the new things you learn about your niche. Updating your products allows you to over-deliver to your current customers and provide a better experience for your new customers.

#4: Grow Your Audience

Once you implement the first three methods, all you have to do now is get more people to know about you. When you grow your audience, you can build relationships with more people that eventually lead to customers and opportunities for more growth.

The most effective tool on the web to grow your audience is social media. Whether you use Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or another social network, you must use social media. If you want to grow a massive social media audience, then you must take on one social network at a time. Imagine trying to learn five different languages at the same time. That’s what we do when we try to master Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and Google+ at the same time. I recognized this trap and committed all of my time to Twitter. Once I mastered Twitter, I started to master other social networks.

One thing to know about social media mastery is that all social networks follow similar patterns. If you master Twitter, it becomes easier for you to master Pinterest. If you master Pinterest, it becomes easier for you to master Instagram. Each time you master one social network, it is easier for you to master all of the others. If you master five social networks and have tens of thousands of followers on each of them, then mastering a 6th social network would be simple.

[tweetthis url=”http://bit.ly/1Oja7M0″]The more social networks you master, the easier it is to master others. However, master one social network at a time.[/tweetthis]

Growing your social media audience is an effective way to build an authority on the web, but where you lead your social media audience is just as important. You must lead your social media audience to your blog, and in particular, your landing page. You want as many people to subscribe to your email list as possible because that’s where the money is. I make more money sending emails to my email list than through any other method because communicating with the people on your email list and occasionally promoting products works very well.

In Conclusion

Building an authority on the web is only as difficult as we think it is. What initially looks impossible at first glance is quite possible, and the more work you put in, the easier it will become. If you want to view building an authority on the web as an easy endeavor, then you must take rapid action. Many things look scary because we don’t take immediate action. There are many things in life that don’t look as scary once we do them. Take the time to build your authority on the web, stick with it, and who knows, you may become the next success story others aspire to become.

How do you view building an authority on the web? Do you have any other tips for us? Please share your thoughts and advice below.