content marketing

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.

11 Cool Content Marketing Tactics That Will Push Your Blog Traffic To The Next Level

January 10, 2017 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Effective content marketing can determine whether your content is read by thousands of people or a handful of people, and your content marketing strategy can determine whether you’ll make a full-time income as a blogger or struggle to get by.

Many bloggers know this, which is why they continuously test different methods to expand their content’s reach. The blogger with 100 monthly visitors and the blogger with 100,000 monthly visitors both strive to get their content in front of more people.

But how can you consistently expand your blog’s reach? How can you attract more readers today than you did yesterday? Here are 11 cool content marketing tactics you can use to push your blog traffic to the next level:

#1: Accept Guest Posts

My blog generated the most traffic when I published two posts per day. But as my blog posts became longer and more content rich, it became increasingly difficult to publish as frequently and consistently.

I’m slowly getting closer to achieving that same frequency, but not because I’m writing 14 blog posts each week. Rather, I started accepting guest posts from my community.

Now I get free content for my blog without having to write a single word. How cool is that?

Of course, I still love writing at least one blog post every week, but having to write (and publish…big difference) a blog post every day would prevent me from addressing other parts of my business.

Accepting guest posts results in more updates and fresh content, and that results in more SEO love.

#2: Hire A Contributor

If you want to take accepting guest posts to the next level, you can hire a contributor who will produce the content for you. I recommend finding a paid contributor on Upwork and making sure this person is passionate about your blog’s topics.

You don’t want to hire a contributor who will write a blog post without any passion behind the topic. That lack of passion will show in the final draft.

If you hire a contributor, I recommend monitoring his or her content for 1-2 weeks and engaging in frequent conversations. This way, you are both on the same page and you’re more likely to get the content you want and expect.

#3: Use Internal Links

By linking to your content internally, you increase the amount of time readers engage with your blog. And the more time people spend on your blog, the more likely they are to come back for more.

Keeping people on your blog longer also helps build trust and will result in more subscribers and sales over time. Bring attention to some of your older posts and every new post you publish. On the flip side, you can edit your older posts to link to your newer content.

#4: Outsource More Tasks

Outsourcing opens up so much time to pursue other parts of your business. I’ve outsourced social media posts, blog post editing, podcast episode editing, video editing, and an array of other tasks.

After I started outsourcing these tasks, I was able to concentrate on creative ways to promote my content such as reaching out to influencers, promoting my content through various outlets, and growing my brand.

Outsourcing will open up more of your time, but be sure to use the extra time productively. Otherwise you’re completely missing the point of outsourcing.

#5: Create A Content Calendar

An editorial calendar is a guide that lays out which content gets published when. You can organize the publication of your content in such a way that includes weekly or monthly themes on your blog.

Monthly themes can help with product launches or affiliate promotions. For instance, let’s say you write a blog about the best toys around in July (and also know that new LEGO sets are coming out in August).

You can use mid-July and the entire month of August to focus your content creation efforts on LEGO sets. By the time you introduce your affiliate links, your audience will be more conditioned to buy the LEGO sets.

#6: Write Longer Blog Posts

Longer blog posts like these grab more attention and provide more overall value. When I published two blog posts each day, most were only 250-500 words. While I’ve lost that level of frequency, my current blog posts are more in-depth.

Writing longer blog posts is also great for more blog traffic. Not only do search engines love longer blog posts, but you’ll keep people on your blog for a longer period of time.

Think about it. If you’ve made it to this sentence, you’re virtually committed to reading this entire blog post. You’re committed to knowing all 11 tactics mentioned in the post, even if you skim.

Of course, no one is forcing you to read through the entire post, but once you make it to this point, full commitment tends to be the unwritten rule of reading content.

#7: Write 1 Blog Post Per Day

If you can muster it, writing one blog post per day will result in a blog that’s consistently updated with fresh content. While it may take a while for search engines to boost your traffic, writing blog posts at a frequent rate will also give you more content to promote on social networks.

My Twitter usage motivated me to write two blog posts per day. I mean, I was tweeting every 15 minutes and wanted to share fresh, original content. And by spacing it out over a long period of time, I was able to garner strong interest for my content.

I still knew I could tweet some content over and over because my new followers wouldn’t have seen it before, and my regular followers wouldn’t have seen everything. I try to write a lot of evergreen content so a tweet linking to a blog post from two years ago would still be relevant to both groups.

#8: Submit At Least 3 Guest Post Pitches Per Day

Writing guest posts for other blogs is a well-known tactic to expand your reach. In my experience, it’s easy to approach guest blogging inconsistently.

It’s easy to send multiple pitches in a single week, but then concentrate on creating content for one or two guest p0sts, and stop or simply forget to keep sending pitches.

That’s a mistake. Sending at least three pitches per day helps step up your commitment to producing more content because you may have to meet a deadline that is not self-imposed.

If you submit at least three guest post pitches per day, you’ll submit 1095 guest post pitches each year. Assuming a conservative 20 percent acceptance rate, you’ll write at least 219 guest posts in a given year.

Writing one guest post every other day may seem like a lot of work, but it will result in many more people seeing your content (perhaps millions of additional people will read your content depending on where it’s published).

A single guest post of mine, published on Jeff Bullas’ Blog, was shared over 6,000 times. Talk about more exposure (and that’s just one guest post)! Imagine if you got those results from more than one of your 219 guest posts.

In fact, if you averaged 1,000 shares for all 219 of your guest posts, you’d get 219,000 shares for all of your guest posts that year. It’s very easy to assume that, at this point, over 1 million people will have viewed your content.

#9: Link To Influencers In Your Posts

Influencer marketing will be a strong form of marketing for a very long time. The idea behind influencer marketing is that you mention several influencers within your blog post. You then email them to let them know.

Some will share your content with their audiences while others won’t. The key thing not to do in every email to an influencer is to ask them to share your content.

I’ve gotten many emails from people mentioning me in their content and saying something like, “Can you share this with your audience?”

Influencers know how influencer marketing works. Instead of asking them to share your content, just tell them you featured them in your blog post. Don’t try to influence the influencer with explicit requests because those emails are usually ignored.

The more influencers you mention in your content, the better, but make sure the content doesn’t drag on because you’re trying to mention every possible influencer in your niche. That’s why you write multiple blog posts.

#10: Create A Content Series

There’s nothing more frustrating than not knowing the ending. Imagine going to the theater, watching Rogue One, and then halfway through the movie the screen stops working. The staff comes out and says they can’t fix the problem. You get a full refund, but you are left with only half of Rogue One.

You don’t know the ending, and that will frustrate you until you see it at another movie theater.

While it’s very difficult to reproduce the same feeling as stopping halfway through Rogue One, you can still create a content series without an ending.

Imagine writing a blog post called “5 Ways To Get More Twitter Followers.” At the end of the blog post you can say something like, “I actually have a bonus tip to get more Twitter followers, but I’ll reveal it in the next blog post along with four additional tips.”

Now you build suspense while creating a content series. People who read and enjoy Part 10 will be more likely to read the other nine blog posts in the series.

#11: Ride The Trendy Waves Of The Internet

Google Trends allows you to see what is trending on the internet. If you can connect a trending topic to your niche, you’ll write a blog post that will get traffic from its value plus additional traffic from riding a trendy wave.

One writer from Mashable rode the wave of Taylor Swift’s 1989 World Tour at just the right time. She wrote a post in June 2015 on the Taylor Swift businesswoman guidebook.

No, Taylor Swift didn’t actually write a businesswoman guidebook and publish it on Amazon. Rather, the writer analyzed Swift and came up with tips that Swift seemed to exemplify. The final result was a blog post filled with business insights and Swifty euphoria that was shared across the internet.

In Conclusion

The great thing about content marketing is that no matter how much traffic you get, you can always get more. You can always challenge yourself to do more today than you did yesterday.

Getting more traffic involves writing valuable content and spreading it. Spread your content to more people via search engines, social media, blogs and influencers, and you’ll eventually build an unforgettable blog.

What are your thoughts on these content marketing tactics? Do you have tips to share? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Create A Content Calendar

November 4, 2016 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

A content calendar is a necessary part of a solid content marketing strategy. From idea generation and promotion to follow through and analysis, an editorial calendar is the engine that drives a strong and successful blog.

Planning what kind content to create, when it should be published and how to promote it eliminates the guesswork and lets you to perform at a higher level.

Let’s say you publish a blog post. Your content may be live, but how will you promote it? If you don’t know the answer to that question, you’re missing an important piece of strategy. Be sure to plan out your promotional efforts before you publish or you will not likely see a return on your time and efforts.

Editorial calendars help you focus on topics that resonate with your audience, pinpoint ongoing themes and anticipate how to market each piece of content.

Include Content Type and Promotion in Your Calendar

For your blog to really benefit from an editorial calendar, be sure to include content type/idea and marketing. Using a simple template like Trello lets you assign specific topics to particular days of the week throughout the month. You can also plan time for drafts and revisions.

Not only will a calendar decrease the chance of writer’s block and save you time on idea generation. It also provides a specific date for each post, video or any other form of content, which helps keep your content fresh and consistent.

Once you’ve decided on the type and timing of each piece of content, you should turn your focus to promotion. While some of those efforts will overlap, each piece of content is unique and your approach to marketing may change accordingly. Tools like Trello and others allow you to choose where each piece of content will be promoted and with whom, for example, on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, your blog, etc.

Let’s say that next Wednesday, you’re publishing a blog post about Twitter. You may want to promote it only with the Twitter segment of your email list and/or to share it on Twitter 2-3 times that day or week. You may also choose to share a piece of content on Facebook only, or use paid promotion for something else. Being as specific as possible keeps you organized and makes it easier to take action in a timely manner.

Plan REALLY Far Ahead

Once your blog has become an important part of your brand and business, you should take it as seriously as Elon Musk takes Tesla and SpaceX.

When creating your calendar, try to plan at least three months ahead. Identify what type content you’ll produce over the next three months. Then decide when to publish and how you will promote each piece. Planning at least three months in advance makes it easier to align your content with your overall objectives.

In the past, I promoted training courses but my own blog content did not align with those efforts. For example, the week I promoted a copywriting training course I’d also written a blog post about traffic generation. Another time I tried to sell a course on self-publishing but had published a blog post about social media.

This was not intentional, but it was still a mistake. I should have planned my content according to those promotional efforts. Once I became aware of this error, I began planning my own content according to the training courses I promote on a regular basis.

Align Content with Your Overall Objectives

Rather than publish random blog posts, I started writing posts to supplement and reinforce my promotional efforts. I published two such posts, finding time to create a training course and making training course creation a breeze, during the same week I was promoting a course about how to create successful training courses.

The result? Increased audience awareness and retention. By offering content on the ease of creating a training course, and finding the time to do so, my audience was more receptive to the promotion.

While people often resist paid content precisely because of the price tag, most training courses are worth every penny. If you follow the instructor’s advice from start to finish you’ll end up crushing it. These courses teach you how to achieve a certain goal using every possible method. But I digress.

My new content strategy offered both free and paid content and reinforced the topic in readers’ minds. Supplementing paid content with free content increases interest in the subject, provides a teaser and increases expectations and the rate of purchase.

Be Consistent

My content calendar includes a vlog idea on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a blog post every Friday, and a Q&A video every Saturday. Every week, every month. Consistency helps you build and maintain an audience of people who regularly consume your content. An editorial calendar lets you work with weekly and monthly themes and keeps you on point.

Create Content In Advance

I have a policy to have at least one month’s worth of content scheduled in advance. Having that month long buffer gives me peace of mind and lets me focus on crafting valuable content without feeling pressed for ideas or rushing through the creative process at the last second.

Once the process in is place and works naturally, double down on your efforts with extra content. For example, record two videos rather than just the one you’ve scheduled. If your weekly blog posts have been written well in advance, see if you have time to write an extra one. The more content you have in reserves, the more you can begin experimenting with publishing content at an accelerated rate.

In Conclusion

An editorial calendar gives you a clear picture of what content you should produce, when it needs to be published and how to promote it.

Planning well in advance allows you to align your content with your product launches or any affiliate content you promote.

If you are a serious blogger, you absolutely need a content calendar. The cool thing about calendars is that there are many tools available online, and some are free. You can also Google “December 2016 calendar” and simply print out a template.

Whether you use a digital or paper calendar, always print it out and keep it on your desk. This will ensure that your calendar is always visible and accessible, and will strengthen your commitment to following through.

Have you created a content calendar? Are you thinking about creating one? Sound off in the comments section below.

How To Get People To Promote Your Content

May 16, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

How much would your business change if you had thousands of people promoting your content…and you didn’t have to pay these people a penny? That extra exposure could be enough to dramatically grow your email list and generate more sales.

Luckily, there is a way to get thousands of people to promote your content. In this video, I’ll reveal how.

[Tweet “How To Get People To Promote Your Content.”]

4 Ways To Make Money With Your Content

February 15, 2016 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

monetized content — Making money isn’t hard if you know how.

Writing is a lot of fun. You get to convey your thoughts on paper or in an online document. Then you share those thoughts with the world.

There are plenty of things to write about, but for some writers, writing becomes a passion. They want to write for the rest of their lives.

It is possible to write for the rest of your life, but why not also make money from it. Ditch that 9-to-5 job and do what you love instead.

Making money with your content is a process. Not only do you have to write the content, but you have to publish that content on the right places and promote that content.

In all challenging journeys, it is always beneficial to give yourself a basic roadmap. The basic roadmap just gives you an idea of where you have to go. Then it gets modified later based on your progress.

When creating your roadmap, consider these four methods of making money from your writing.

#1: Write Books

It’s far easier than ever to publish your own book. Before the internet, you had to pursue a publisher and make a deal. Now all you have to do is self-publish your own books (I self-publish my books with KDP and CreateSpace).

The only thing about writing books is that in the beginning, you won’t get many sales. That’s true about any product, but I had to let you know.

Unless you already have a large email list, chances are you won’t get many sales in the beginning. But in some ways, that’s good.

Not receiving many sales will motivate you to make more sales. You may decide to write multiple books (great idea) and see that one book start to take off.

The other books will eventually get consistent sales.

If you want to pursue the life of a self-published author, you’ll need to publish as many books as you can for lower prices (think $2.99 for the Kindle book). That’s the advantage self-published authors have over the authors who got a deal from a publisher.

#2: Write Blog Posts And Monetize Your Blog

If you are looking for the best way to improve your writing, then look no further than blogging. If you write blog posts every day, you will become very comfortable with writing content.

I wrote about 1,000 blog posts across all of my blogs before I wrote my first book. The more content you write, the more comfortable you become with writing.

So that’s all great. Blogging improves your writing. Now, show me the money!

The fact of the matter is that the content alone won’t make you money. You need to have your blog optimized for monetization. There are a wide variety of ways to make money with a blog:

Create products and promote those products. This is my go-to for making money with a blog. I promote my products each time people subscribe through my landing pages and promote direct product links at other locations on my blog. If you don’t have a product, you can offer consultation sessions as you create that product.

Affiliate links. Only promote affiliate products on your blog that are relevant to your audience’s interests. I wouldn’t promote an Amazon affiliate link to a LEGO product here because that wouldn’t go well with my audience.

Advertisements. These are overrated and I don’t like them. You should be getting over 10,000 visitors per month before you even consider ads. However, you can make more money by giving your products the same space that the ads would have received.

Those are the three main ways to make money with a blog. But there is one thing a blog gives you that can’t be overlooked.

Credibility.

Having your own blog filled with rich content will establish you as an expert within your niche. And if you’ve been writing enough blog posts, it will become effortless for you to write that rich content.

#3: Become A Ghostwriter

If you want to make money with your content without having any type of platform, then ghostwriting is a great option.

All you do is set up an account on UpWork and let people know you are a ghostwriter. Then, apply to people’s jobs where they ask for a ghostwriter.

The only challenge with UpWork in the beginning (and ghostwriting in general) is building credibility.

There are ghostwriters who (even if you are better than them) have more credibility than you. They’ve been hired more often and have more five star reviews.

In the beginning, you may have to charge a lower price for your services than you want just to attract clients. You can then scale up as you get more jobs and reviews.

However, that beginning will be tough. My best advice is to apply to as many ghostwriting jobs as possible (as long as you can do them) so you get enough credibility to raise your price per hour.

#4: Contribute Your Content To Other Websites

We have all heard of guest blogging. You can put your content in front of a larger audience. However, some websites that ask you for your content will pay you to write for them.

Some of these websites will pay you as much as $100 per article.

While this isn’t a way for you to make a living, you can definitely make thousands of dollars from your writing. Just make sure you can write content that these websites want.

I haven’t explored this opportunity much because most of these types of blogs are outside of my niche. For the curious writer, here is a list of these types of blogs and how much you make for each piece of your content.

I prefer to get paid by putting some of my content on places like HubPages and Zujava. I don’t write for them as often as I once did, but I’ll occasionally publish a new article on one of the two.

In Conclusion

All writers deserve the opportunity to make money from their content. After putting in all of that work, we should see some type of reward that creates positive reinforcement.

The best way to make money with your writing is to build a platform (your social media audience, your blog audience, and your email list).

The platform gives you an audience that you can always communicate with and occasionally promote products to.

Regardless of which opportunity you choose to make money with writing, there will always be more involved than simply writing the content.

Which of these methods of making money as a writer do you like the most? Are you writing to make money or just for fun? Sound off in the comments section below.

Great, Honest, And Thoughtful Content Wins

April 23, 2014 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

This seems obvious. However, we all need to be reminded.

There are shortcuts to writing. Sacrificing quality writing means a blog post takes less time to write. However, that kind of content never wins.

We are all focused on writing quality content, but that is not the only kind of content that wins. People are not going to like something just because it has quality. It needs to be something that is great, honest, and thoughtful.

Show your readers that you took the time to write a brilliant blog post. It is easy to stop at the first sentence. It is easy to overlook your writing and forget to fix the spelling mistake. It is easy to write a 5 paragraph blog post and then leaving out the last tip.

If you want to be an elite blogger, your content needs to be great, honest, and thoughtful.