Content Writing and Marketing Services
A while ago, I thought it was a bad idea to put your content on other people’s blogs. There was a prevailing myth that putting your content on other people’s blogs meant duplicate content–and that it was disastrous for SEO.
Putting your content on other blogs allows more people to see your content, and it can actually be a good thing for SEO. In this video, I’ll bust the myth and reveal how you can get your content on other blogs.
[Tweet “Myth Busting: Your #Blog Posts Are Only For Your Blog.”]
The money is in your email list. It’s a well-known fact that gets mentioned again and again on blogs like this one.
The importance of an email list has led to marketers all around the world trying to grow their email lists as quickly as possible. The thinking is that the more people on the email list, the better.
If you know how to promote your content and products to your email list, then yes, more is better.
So most marketers grow their email list by using some of the same tactics. Create a landing page and promote that on each social network. Have a subscription box on the blog’s sidebar. Maybe some Facebook advertising if you’re serious about getting leads.
Those methods work, but there are certain methods for getting subscribers that remain untouched by most marketers. These methods can result in a significant increase in subscribers because of the logic behind the methods combined with how your audience would react to these methods.
#1: Content Upgrades
I only write one blog post per week now. Every other blog post I put up is a video. This decision allowed me to save a massive amount of time. The extra time allowed me to pursue a new email list building idea.
Content upgrades!
Content upgrades are additions to the current blog post that your visitors can get access to in exchange for an email address. I first learned about content upgrades through Jeff Bullas’ Blog.
I remember reading the article a while ago thinking that it sounded like a great idea, but in the end, I didn’t have enough time. I was also in the middle of my junior year of high school.
Outsourcing and video blogging reintroduced me to a lot of extra time. That’s why all of my future blog posts will now include content upgrades.
In other words, EVERY blog post I write from here on is also a LANDING PAGE.
I am also working towards adding content upgrades to my most popular blog posts. And the conversion rates for content upgrades are amazing.
According to the article from Jeff Bullas’ Blog, you can expect a 20% conversion rate from a content upgrade. Some content upgrades have over 50% conversion rates.
The reason content upgrades work so well is because they are hyper-targeted to the specific blog post that is being read at the time.
I recently started using content upgrades for my blog. Here’s what I did for my blog post about avoiding the top five distractions.
It’s targeted and directly below the blog post. People don’t have to click on a link and get redirected to a landing page.
Imagine what would happen if 20% of your blog visitors became subscribers. If you wanted to gain 100 subscribers per day, you would only have to get 500 visitors per day in order to get that many subscribers per day—assuming all of your blog posts came with content upgrades. And that doesn’t even include subscribers from landing pages.
#2: Live Streaming
I am still exploring the possibilities of live streaming, but it is very exciting to think about the possibilities.
Live streaming apps like Periscope, Meerkat, and Blab give you the opportunity to interact with your audience live. You can answer their questions in real-time, and your audience will hear how you answer the questions.
One thing you can do with live streaming is promote your landing page. As you wrap up a live recording, you can mention a landing page related to what the live stream was all about.
This is where Blab outshines the competition. Blab comes with an interactive chat section that allows viewers to ask questions and engage with one another.
Within this chat section, you can insert the link to your landing page for everyone to click on. If you want to use something like Periscope or Meerkat, then you must state what the link is.
To make it easier for everyone to remember the link, you need to come up with a custom link.
For instance, https://marcguberti.com/2016/01/twitter-audience-remember-and-trust-you is a link that would be very difficult for me to say and very difficult for my audience to remember (where do the dashes go).
Having a link like marcguberti.com/twitter makes it a lot easier for people to access the same URL. It’s much easier to remember that “Twitter” goes after the slash line instead of all of the mumbo jumbo after the slash line for the first link.
#3: Webinars
Promote your landing page in a webinar? No, no. You promote products in webinars.
You use webinar landing pages to collect email addresses.
There are some notable differences between a webinar and a landing page.
First off, the webinar is set at a specific time and date. The landing page you use to promote the webinar won’t be good forever, so you have a stronger incentive to promote that webinar’s landing page to as many people as possible.
The incentive will force you to get more creative with how you promote your landing page. However, the creativity and extra work with promoting a webinar isn’t the only advantage to having a webinar.
The other advantage is that you can get a lot of sales with a good webinar. If you want to get high conversions for sales, host a great webinar with a call-to-action.
As an affiliate who has promoted many people’s products, I generate most of my total commission on the day I promote someone’s webinar with my affiliate link.
Webinars grab people’s attention, and the audience can ask questions. At the end of the webinar, people can take immediate action and buy your product—if you provide the call-to-action.
Then, you can invest some of that money into growing your email list even more (i.e. Facebook advertising).
In Conclusion
Building your email list should be your top priority regardless of what niche you are in. Email marketing is the most successful type of marketing on the web.
Email marketing allows you to build the strongest relationships and generate the most sales at the same time.
Literally everything you do online should have the primary aim of getting you more subscribers.
What are your thoughts about growing your email list? Do you have any tips for us? Sound off in the comments section below.
My Email Marketing Strategy
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A few weeks ago, I decided to incorporate video blogging within my strategy, and the results so far have been massive. In this video, I’ll tell you how video blogging has benefitted my business. I believe anyone with a blog should definitely consider video blogging in their strategy.
We have all read the case studies. We know some of the bloggers who get hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors and are absolutely crushing it.
Blogging works, but it does not work for everyone.
Most blogs aren’t getting 100,000 monthly visitors. Most blogs don’t even get 1,000 monthly visitors. When looking at epic case studies, it is easy to either get very motivated or very discouraged.
I look at these case studies as motivation for what I can do in the future.
But there is more behind a blog’s success than your motivation. That motivation must be combined with the right work ethic.
More specifically, you must know what works and what does not work. Blogging doesn’t work for most people. Some of them still consider it a hobby while others give up on it.
I don’t want you to be one of those people. I want you to be one of those people who eventually gets hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors to your blog.
Don’t believe it’s possible? Consider the FACT that all of those people with the glamorous case studies started with NOTHING. They started with less than what you have now.
Still don’t believe it’s possible for your blog to get so many visitors? I hope the answer is no.
It’s just a matter of avoiding what does not work and focusing on what does work. This blog post discusses what you should avoid.
But in discussing what you should avoid, this blog post also discusses what you should do. Without any further adieu, these are the five reasons blogging is not working for you.
#1: You Aren’t Focused On Growing Your Email List
I could have put this method anywhere on the list. I decided to list it as Method #1 for a reason.
If you haven’t heard people mention the power of the email list, you’re going to hear about it later.
With an email list, you get to know your readers and develop a bond with some of them. In addition, email by far gets more response than social media posts.
Some people get over 20% of their subscribers to click on a message. While this is well above the average level, it does happen.
If you have an email list of 100 people, and 20% of them click on the link to your blog post, then you got 20 new visitors.
To fully understand the power of an email list, we need to inflate the numbers. The marketers with over 1 million subscribers and the 20% clickthrough rate get over 200,000 visitors to the blog post.
Juicy.
But you don’t need a massive email list before you get a lot of traffic and revenue from that email list. You just have to start growing your email list.
But maintaining an email list can get expensive. If you don’t want to spend money in the beginning, then use MailChimp.
MailChimp lets you have up to 2,000 subscribers for free before you pay a single penny.
Right now, I use iContact for my email list. As I continue to grow my email list, the cost increases. That’s the nature of the game. However, as I grow my email list, my profit increases.
Just focus on growing your email list. Don’t overthink it. Just get to the step in which you are gaining a new subscriber each day.
I discussed some of the tactics I use to grow my email list in an earlier blog post.
#2: You Publish And Pray
It’s good to pray. I pray five or more times per day. Publishing and praying on the other hand. That ain’t good.
The Publish and Pray approach was first coined by Brian Dean. Here’s how the approach works:
If you rely on this approach for getting more blog traffic, then prepare to be disappointed. It’s like expecting that if you create something the people will somehow, magically come.
The Publish and Pray approach does not work. What works then? Promotion through a variety of platforms:
There are plenty of ways to promote your blog post. As long as you are actually promoting your blog posts in one way or the other, you are doing more than publishing and praying.
You are actually taking action.
#3: You Don’t Write Blog Posts Consistently
The interesting thing about blogging and entrepreneurship in general is that it’s all on you. You don’t get a wage for writing blog posts. You can’t get fired.
But it’s all on you.
You have to find the willpower and the time to write your blog posts at a consistent rate. If you don’t write blog posts at a consistent rate, then it is more difficult to grow an audience.
The reason is that when you write blog posts and always publish them at specific times and days of the week, people know when to check in for new content.
It’s the reason why every successful TV show is successful. The next time you watch your favorite TV show, pay attention to the marketing.
At the end of every The Big Bang Theory show, fans like myself are reminded that the next episode is on Thursday night at the same time.
As an experienced fan, you don’t have to tell me that The Big Bang Theory is on every Thursday at 8 pm eastern. I know.
When I first started watching the show, I had to be told.
Once people know when you publish your blog posts, and they check in enough times, they don’t have to be told when you are publishing new blog posts. They know and check in.
The blogger I admire the most is Seth Godin. You don’t have to tell me when he publishes his blog post. I know that he publishes a new blog post at 6:30 am eastern.
That’s what happens when you write blog posts consistently. But in addition to giving your readers a time and day to check in, writing consistently also boosts your accountability.
Once you write blog posts consistently for a long enough period of time, you have a strong desire to continue writing them.
I have easily spent thousands of hours writing blog posts for this blog. I’m not giving up on it now. I never will.
The only way you will get to that point is by consistently writing blog posts.
#4: You Don’t Enjoy Writing The Blog Posts
I don’t like the blogs that are inspired by shiny object syndrome. There is no passion behind the content. These blogs just focus on the next big thing and try to run away with it.
When revolutionary ideas and tools get introduced, there are passionate people who write awesome blog posts.
However, some people will jump on just for the sake of making the buck. Once the shiny object isn’t so shiny anymore, the blogs inspired by shiny object syndrome die out.
Then these bloggers move onto the next shiny object.
Shiny object syndrome is one reason why bloggers get stuck with topics they don’t want to write about.
In other words, these bloggers ask themselves “What content would make me the most money?” before asking themselves “What do I actually want to write about?”
Only write blog posts about topics that you enjoy. No matter what topic you choose, it will take a long time before your blog ends up making money.
The only way bloggers survive to eventually thrive is by writing about topics that they enjoy writing about.
#5: You Overthink Successful Blogging
You can view the path to success in two ways:
Most people view success as an impossible maze. They don’t know where to start.
They think about all of the possible ways they can complete the maze. But by thinking too much about how they will complete the maze, people stay stuck at the starting line.
If we did everything we thought about, we’d all have successful blogs right now.
The challenge is to take action.
A while ago, I gave up on thinking about how I would get through the maze. The maze indicates luck and that success is all chance. Make the right turn and then you’re closer. Make the wrong turn and then it will take you longer to complete the maze.
I decided to view success as a staircase. You don’t know how many steps are on the staircase, but what you do know is that the final destination is success.
Small things like promoting my blog posts on social media, sending out email blasts, and writing the blog posts in the first place. Those are some of the steps on the staircase.
Sometimes I like to stop where I am and look back at all of the steps I walked up.
I like looking at my past achievements, but the only part of the future I look at is the grand vision. If I think about all of the steps I have to take to get there, it would be overwhelming.
Instead, I focus on the task at hand. Only once I complete the task at hand do I start acknowledging the next task that I must complete.
If you spend too much time thinking, then you won’t spend enough time doing.
In Conclusion
Blogs are powerful tools for building audiences and thriving by following your passion.
Knowing what works and what does not work will aid in your quest to become a successful blogger. But having the knowledge is just half of the story.
The other half of the story is taking action. Writing that blog post. Tweeting the one you wrote a few days ago. Growing that email list. Letting as many people know about your blog as possible.
Which of these tips was your favorite? Do you have any other advice on what we shouldn’t do with our blogs? Sound off in the comments section below.
The biggest lesson I recently learned is that outsourcing most of your work is essential. The way people increase their productivity when they “hit a peak” is by outsourcing.
For a long time, I was a lone wolf. I managed to make it, but making it wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to excel.
The way my workload and schedule were set up, I had no extra time to excel. At the time, it seemed like a legitimate excuse.
It’s funny how when we make excuses, the sound legitimate to us at the time. Outsourcing most of my workload eliminated that excuse.
Most of my social media activity is now outsourced. Outsourcing is the only reason I could focus more of my time towards Udemy and still write these blog posts.
It was scary to hand over some of my power to someone else, but it was worth it. You need a team of freelancers who can lighten your workload.
Now with social media outsourcing mastered, my eyes are now set to outsourcing many of the activities that happen on this blog. The end goal is that I only do two things with this blog:
Everything else I do with this blog stands in my way. That’s how I choose to see it. I have outsourced many activities that once stood in my way. The result: more time for myself and my business.
So what should every blogger outsource right now? Here are the big five:
#1: Editor
No matter how great you are at writing content, you are bound to make some mistakes. You wouldn’t want a typo ruining the way people perceive your blog—and even worse—how they perceive you.
With so many blogs on the web, we expect a great experience. Any flaw has the potential to depreciate the experience.
Depending on how many blog posts you write, proofreading your blog posts may take up hours of your time every week. The worst part is that you may skip over the mistakes as you rush to read your blog posts.
If you proofread your blog posts too early, you may not even notice the mistakes. Here’s where a proofreader comes in.
Right when you finish writing a blog post, you can submit that blog post to the proofreader. Then, have that proofreader double-check your blog post for any errors. You can even ask this proofreader to add additional value to your content or reword certain paragraphs.
When I proofread my blog posts, I rely on spell check. Sometimes I will proofread my blog posts from start to finish, but that takes too much time.
If you find yourself proofreading your blog posts too much (or typos find their way on your blog), you should hire an editor to make sure your content is sharp.
#2: Picture Creation
For the most part, this blog has had a fair amount of eye-popping pictures but also a fair amount of decent pictures. Just like any blogger, I want more eye-popping pictures in my blog posts.
I heard about a free tool called Canva. It is an AMAZING tool for creating free pictures. However, I didn’t have enough time to create awesome pictures with Canva. Some of the pictures I created for my blog posts were nice. Other pictures were decent.
So I decided to outsource that part of my blog.
I no longer create the pictures you see on the top of my blog posts. I hire a freelancer who knows far more than I do about creating eye-popping pictures.
It would take me 10 minutes just to create a picture and insert it into the blog post. The same process now takes me less than 15 seconds (I just get the provided picture and insert it into the blog post).
In other words, I shaved off 9 minutes and 45 seconds from the blog scheduling process—for each blog post I schedule.
All of that extra time adds up.
#3: Content Research
Providing data to support your content will give you more authority in your niche. There is a difference between saying, “Twitter is great for business” and providing credible statistics and facts that explain why Twitter is great for business.
That data comes from content research. It is simply the process of using Google or Bing to find articles and information that would strengthen your content.
Some blogs rely more heavily on content research than others. If you find yourself Googling and Binging too often for the sake of your content, a content researcher is the next person you should hire.
Even if you know how to find the right information to strengthen your content, outsource the work.
Successful entrepreneurs don’t exclusively outsource that tasks they don’t know how to do. They also outsource the time consuming tasks, even if the task is relatively simple. Time is money, and entrepreneurs always need more time.
#4: SEO
Let’s be honest. SEO is a bear. Technically, it’s a panda or penguin depending on what Google chooses to call it. Of course, the updates are named after the innocent animals that we aren’t scared of.
But for many people, SEO is this giant maze that seems to double in size when you think the finish line is near.
And if you are one of the people who knows a lot about keyword research and SEO, then you know it takes a large amount of time.
Which keywords to choose? What description would work the best? So many questions and so much work once you know the answers.
Outsourcing your blog’s SEO solves that problem.
However, you want to be very careful when you outsource your blog’s SEO. There is a lot of contradictory advice and not all SEO experts are actually experts.
If you choose to hire a freelancer, ask that freelancer who he/she has already worked for and how much the freelancer knows. If you know a lot about SEO, simply tell the freelancer what you would do and then have the freelancer do it.
#5: Someone To Add The Finishing Touches
Consistent bloggers almost never hit the “Publish” button. We click the “Schedule” button. We must designate the time and date in which all of our blog posts must be published.
Then we add categories and tags to our blog posts to make it easier for readers to navigate through our blogs.
Depending on your blog, you may have numerous finishing touches to make once you write the content and have all of the picture ready.
I have to play around with the HTML to make the big text a specific size. Here is the HTML I manually type in to make the big text the way it is:
<span style=“font-size: x-large;”>#5 Someone To Add The Finishing Touches</span>
Manually making that change takes up time too, and I am sure you have to make similar finishing touches.
Imagine if those finishing touches were all done for you. Outsourcing those finishing touches to other freelancers makes that possible.
In Conclusion
As first glance, outsourcing is scary. Outsourcing requires trust and a willingness to hand over some of your workload to someone else.
Once you become comfortable with outsourcing, you will quickly find extra time in your day. Imagine half of your workload suddenly getting taken off of your shoulders.
The amount of time you would save. The goals you would accomplish. Just imagine it.
Outsourcing makes it possible. Out of all of the tasks associated with a successful blog, those five tasks are the ones you need to look into outsourcing now.
Even if you can’t outsource all five of those tasks now, outsource at least one of those tasks.
Which of these tasks do you think is the most important to outsource? Do you know any other tasks in the blogging process that you believe should be outsourced? Sound off in the comments section below.
The main reason most people give up on blogging is because they don’t make money right away. These people look for a short-term way to make money, hope blogging will be the solution, and then get disappointed.
In the long-term, blogging can become very profitable, but in the short-term, blogging doesn’t make a lot of money. This realization results in many people leaving their blogs behind and leaving them in the back of the internet’s closet.
Some of these people come back to their blogs and ask themselves, “How do I start over again?”
These people want to become bloggers again and understand that although there isn’t much short-term profit, the long-term profit can be huge.
But blogging isn’t all about money. If you don’t enjoy writing blog posts, you won’t have fun and you won’t make money. The most successful bloggers also love what they write about. That shouldn’t be shocking.
If you find yourself returning to your blog for the first time in several months, or if you need to renew your blogging spirit, it’s time for you to make a comeback.
Type Away
If you consistently write over 1,000 words per day, it will quickly become a habit. Habits are easier to stick with since they eventually become encoded into our work ethic without second thought. For me, writing thousands of words per day is a habitual process because that’s how many words I write every day.
So how does typing thousands of words per day become a second-nature habit? The first step is to understand how habits are formed in the first place. If you do the same activity every day for a little over two months, that activity suddenly becomes a habit.
For two months, it was difficult for me to keep the commitment of writing 1,000 words each day. Now keeping that commitment is just as easy as keeping my commitment of eating food and drinking water. Writing thousands of words per day has become an essential part of my day.
The other step is to give yourself an incentive to continue. Give yourself a reward for staying commitment and a reason to avoid stopping. No technique works better than the Jerry Seinfeld technique. Here’s the technique in a nutshell:
Soon enough, you will be riding on a hot streak. Once you are on a hot streak, you will never want it to end. It’s one of the reasons I still play on the piano, write over 1,000 words, and do something for my Udemy courses every single day.
I have hot streaks in multiple areas. It would be a shame for me to let any of those hot streaks go back to zero.
Figure Out Why You Left Or Lost Your Enthusiasm For Blogging In The First Place
We’ve all heard of the phrase, “Don’t make the same mistakes again.” If you make a mistake the first time, it is still possible to make the same mistake a second time. Some people make the same mistakes dozens of times.
Identifying why you took a course of action that led to a mistake is one solution to not making the same mistake again. Knowing why you stopped blogging or lost your enthusiasm for it will let you know how to avoid making the same mistake.
Once you know what happened, you can then create adjustments that prevent you from making the same mistake again. Build habits that prevent you from making the mistake(s) that resulted in you losing your enthusiasm or stop blogging all together.
The Best Is Yet To Come
Each time I felt down about my business, I would always think of this saying. I’ll never forget the impact it had on me the first time I heard it. Depending on how seriously you take this advice and how you combine it with your work, these six words may become your prophecy.
When you write your blog posts and look at your stats, understand that the best is yet to come. Just because you may not be getting many visitors now does not mean that will always be the case. This saying doesn’t guarantee success, but it will inspire you to put in more work than you have ever put in before.
This was the piece of advice that made me realize I had to outsource most of my business now so I could repurpose my time towards more important goals. The more work you put in the more luck you get. Believe that the best is yet to come, and you will always have something to head towards.
In Conclusion
On some days, blogging gets challenging. For some reason, our goals seem to become the most challenging as we approach the accomplishment of those goals. During one stretch, I felt incredibly challenged with trying to grow my Twitter audience. In five years, I wanted to have 100,000 Twitter followers. It felt impossible.
Then, I hit a breakthrough and now have over 250,000 Twitter followers. In my original plan, I still wouldn’t be past 100,000 Twitter followers.
Maybe the reason why you feel uncomfortably challenged is because you are about to hit a breakthrough.