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growth hacks

How To Find More Time In Your Day To Create Epic Content

November 7, 2017 by Marc Guberti 10 Comments

epic content

When school is back in session, I always make adjustments my work flow. The long summer hours are getting shorter and I have less time to craft content for my business.

Whether you’re a student, 9-to-5 worker, or even an entrepreneur, it seems there’s never enough time in the day to get everything done.

You may write blog post, promote your content, or respond to an email, but you’ll likely find yourself struggling to accomplish several things in one day.

Some people use this reality as a crutch: “I simply don’t have the time,” they say, but that’s a classic excuse for not getting more done.

The truth is, making excuses allows you to believe that you have more important things to do with your time.

But finding more time isn’t always a solution. There comes a point in which working longer hours results in a decrease in overall productivity, rather than an increase.

So it’s not about the number of hours you spend working. It’s about the quality of those hours, which is another way of saying “work smarter, not harder.”

I no doubtedly work on my brand for far less time than most people each day, but the time I do spend working is far more intense.

Some people can only manage to squeeze in brand-building activities for 15-30 minutes a day, while others can handle much more. But anyone should be able to find short bursts of time for creating content each day, working smarter with the time they have.

Now you might be thinking that without knowing your schedule I can’t possibly be sure that you can find more time for content creation.

But even the time people spend rambling about their schedules to friends, family, and themselves is better spent more productively – creating epic content.

If you believe this doesn’t apply to you because your schedule is just too tight, prepare to have your mind blown.

Batch Individual Parts Of The Process

Every blog post contains an introduction, body, and conclusion. For a long time, I wrote entire blog posts from start to finish exactly in that order.

I was surprised to learn that this is an inefficient approach to writing blog posts. Instead of writing one post at a time in a traditional format, it’s better to come up with ideas for several blog posts at once.

After that, write the introductions for all of them. And after you’ve written the introductions, move on to the conclusions. Finally, wrap them all up with research and body copy.

This is definitely something that is rarely taught in the blogging world. The traditional format resembles essay writing, but blog posts are different, and require an altogether different approach.

Choose one day to write all of the introductions and conclusions. And another day to conduct research and write the bodies. Repeating the same bite-sized tasks over and over enables you to maintain a higher level of focus.

Without this batching process, you’re forced to make transitions each time you move from introduction to body, from body to conclusion, and from one blog post to the next.

Each of these transitions takes time that you can save by staying in the introduction mindset as you write the intros for several blog posts. Once you’re in the right frame of mind, you simply extend it to cover more ground.

How Much Time Do You Really Need?

It usually takes me around 30-60 minutes to write a 1,000-word blog post – likely because I’ve written dozens of books and thousands of blog posts. But I’ve been able to reduce this further simply by eliminating those nasty transitions.

At some point, your fingers either fall off or you become a fast typer. Not only will the batching process help you type faster, you’ll also think faster as you write each post. The result is a higher-value blog post in a shorter period of time.

If writing a 1,000-word blog posts intimidates you, there’s nothing stopping you from writing 250-500 word blog posts. Make it as easy as possible for yourself to write and publish content on your blog.

But the next time you write a blog post, keep track of how much time it took. That’s the amount of time you’ll need to make available each day or week, depending on your publishing schedule.

Use Opportune Moments To Write Your Posts

People most often write blog posts on a computer. Nowadays, you have a computer in your pocket. It’s called a smartphone, and while I’m not saying anything new for now, just read the next line.

Use your smartphone to write blog posts.

Anytime you’re waiting for an Uber, sitting on a train, suffering through tv commercials (or any other moment in which you’re waiting in line or for something to happen), add more content to a future blog post.

I’ve written dozens of blog posts from start to finish on my iPhone. That’s several months of additional content without any extra time investment. I wrote these posts during commercials, while waiting for class to begin (college life), or any other moment in which I found myself not doing much of anything.

You can also write blog posts while driving. No, I’m not advocating texting and driving. I’m taking about speaking and driving. Just install an app that transcribes your voice into text and speak out your blog post.

When you are in front of a computer with the transcription, you can then make edits and schedule the blog post for release.

It amazes me how many hours people spend commuting in a given year but how few of people turn those hours into opportunities.

Dictating blog posts is one option, but you can also turn your car into a university on wheels by listening to as many audiobooks and podcasts as possible (if you’re looking for a podcast recommendation, I recommend my Breakthrough Success Podcast with full, complete, and utter bias).

In Conclusion

We all have the same 24-hours in a given day. Your success is determined by how you utilize every one of them. I once heard that the average American spends at least four hours a day watching TV.

With those same four hours, I can write 10,000 words for my latest book, create an entire training course, or read several books.

And that’s just four hours repeated 24/7/365. Maybe you don’t watch TV for four hours a day, but chances are you do something similar that you can adjust.

For instance, I used to play a lot of video games. Then, I went cold turkey after a two week vacation (the vacation helped ease me into it). Now, I only let myself play video games when I’m visiting friends.

Your desire to create epic content must be greater than your desire to do other things.

What are your thoughts on these tactics for finding more time in your day to create epic content? Do you have any other tactics for us? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Blogging, content, growth hacking, Mindset Tagged With: blogging, blogging tips & tricks, content creation, growth hacks

How To Play More Offense For Your Business

August 8, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

business

The more offense you play for your business, the more successful you will become. All of the top entrepreneurs dedicate a portion of their time each day to play offense.

Playing offense does not mean writing the next blog post. It doesn’t mean engaging with your audience, creating videos, or doing anything else associated with being in your business.

Playing more offense involves you taking an aerial view of your entire business and asking yourself important questions. Is this working? What should I be focusing on? What small changes can I make that would yield dramatic results? How do I grow this?

This offense results in more directed action with a clearer path to victory. Instead of constantly creating content and marketing yourself, you now have more specific aims that you believe will create the most impact.

You may feel like you’re already on the right path, but taking 30 minutes to conduct that aerial view every day will open the door to old opportunities and platforms that can still lead to great results.

Write Down Everything That Constitutes Your Business

This is a one-time, time extensive task. You’ll occasionally go through this list as your business continues to grow. However, you need to take this step before you can truly play offense. Here are just some of the parts of my business:

  • Virtual Summits
  • Blog Posts
  • Guest Posts
  • Training Courses
  • Free Videos
  • Books
  • Public Speaking
  • Breakthrough Success Podcast
  • Coaching
  • Redistribution

Sometimes I focus so much of my time, attention, and energy on my virtual summits that I forget about other areas. When I took the aerial view, I rediscovered that I needed to pump out more content for my readers (plus, I LOVE writing content, and realized that I’d separated myself from my biggest passion for too long).

I also rediscovered my podcast outros need major updates. I didn’t see any traction from my previous outros because I mainly promoted my Udemy courses, but now I’m promoting more stuff on my site and a few tools which I use and am an affiliate for.

I also rediscovered that I could get more exposure by writing more guest posts and getting interviewed on more podcasts.

Discovering and doing are two different things, and if your schedule is constantly filled with in-business work, you never find the time to take that aerial view and ask yourself, “What should I really be doing?”

Then you need to rediscover and start implementing instead of letting these important tasks continue to remain unattended.

Writing down all of this information is so important because with tens of thousands of thoughts running through out minds every day, it’s easy to forget.

Start Delegating More Of Your Tasks

Delegating your tasks to others will open up hours of extra time. My freelancers are critical to my success because they subtract various tasks from my day. Over the long-term, I can easily see having a team of hundreds of freelancers, but I’m not there yet.

Some people may be interested in delegation but haven’t started yet. If that’s you, my friend Nick Loper from Side Hustle Nation has some great advice for you.

The two main ingredients you need to get started delegating are a log of where you’re spending your time and a well-documented process.

The time log will tell you where the biggest opportunities for outsourcing lie. What’s sucking up the most of your day? Is that something you HAVE to do, or could someone else reasonably handle it with a little training?

Next, you’ll want to have clear process documentation and instructions. This is like your recipe for completing the task, and the more detailed the better. Don’t leave anything to chance here, even though you probably take for granted some of the steps, especially if you’ve been doing the task yourself for any length of time.

How I normally create the process documentation is I take a screen capture video of myself doing the job and talking through the steps. Then I write out the steps in a Google Doc so I can share both a visual and written version with my assistant.

Delegating more of your tasks will also give you more time to play offense. Take some time to think about some of the important parts of your business, how you can take action, and then just do it.

Checking on your freelancers is part of playing offense because you want to make sure they have work, and more importantly, that your freelancers are effectively getting their jobs done. You should have more 10-15 minute meetings fill up your schedule to ensure that you and your freelancers are both on the same page. These meetings do take up some time, but they work like a charm for keeping everyone on track.

In Conclusion

I thought of ways that I could extend this blog post beyond my usual 1,000 word marker, but I decided against it. Playing offense for your business simply comes down to…

  • Taking the aerial view of your brand
  • Discovering/rediscovering what you need to do for the optimal impact
  • Start taking action

I could have said it in several different ways, but that’s the premise to working on offense. Taking action just comes down to putting the tasks on your schedule. If a task isn’t on the schedule, it doesn’t get done. If it’s on the schedule, it has a much higher probability of getting done.

What are your thoughts on playing offense for your business? Do you have any tips for us? Have a question? Sound off in the comments section below.

Filed Under: Business, Mindset, productivity, Success Tagged With: business, growth hacks, productivity, time management, tips and tricks

How To Optimize The Back-End Of Your Book

August 1, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

books

When most people think about a book as an asset, they think of sales, authority, and connections. If you don’t think of your book as a gigantic sales letter, then you are leaving a lot of revenue on the table.

Let me explain.

A reader who completes your entire book is a very warm lead for other products and services that you offer. It would be a shame to not provide several calls-to-action at the back-end of your book.

It’s acceptable to provide CTAs at the back of your book because they are optional and don’t add to the main content within your book. People will only decide to learn more about your offers at the back-end if they are interested and really enjoyed the book.

What Could You Offer At The Back-End?

Before we proceed, it’s very important to decipher what a back-end is NOT. A back-end offer isn’t your landing page where you ask for an email address.

You can provide a link to your landing page at the beginning of your book to capitalize on Amazon’s book previewer option.

This option will result in more customers, but more importantly, non-customers (which you can convert later) to subscribe to your email list.

Here are a few products/services that would make a great addition to the back-end of your book.

  • Coaching: You’ve shared a lot of great advice in your book, but some of your readers need a nudge in order to take action. That’s what you’ll offer with coaching.
  • Training Course: A frequently updated, more detailed analysis of the ideas in your book and the ability for readers to ask you questions.
  • Mastermind: You can gather a few readers together who help and keep each other accountable with your occasional input. Masterminds result in less revenue than coaching but you can mastermind several people at once, while coaching involves a 1-to-1 relationship.
  • Done-For-You Service: Your reader loves the value you provided but would prefer that you do all of the work. This is where a done-for-you service comes in. When you start out, you’ll have to do the work on your own, but as you grow, you’ll hire more freelancers to do most of the work for you. Charging a premium will ensure that you continue to make profits and accept clients even with increasing freelancer costs.
  • Your Other Books: As your readers just finished reading your book, chances are they’ll be interested in more of your books. This will generate the least revenue but also be the easiest source of revenue. Including the same back-end offers in these books will make your readers more aware of them and turn them into customers. This is more of a long-term strategy for acquiring high paying customers

Provide Memorable Links

If a reader is interested in one of your back-end offers but doesn’t remember how to access it, you’ll lose out on a potentially lucrative sale. It’s true that a reader can simply go back to the book, but since most readers never get past the first chapter, imagine how few readers decide to crack open the book a second time.

This is why you should make the links as memorable as possible. For instance, you can use yoursite.com/mastermind to lead people to the mastermind offer. This is an easy URL to remember compared to yoursite.com/2017-book-mastermind-for-success. There’s a big difference.

For the sake of argument, let’s say the reader is willing to crack open the book for a second time. The main problem is that some readers will put it off as it’s a seemingly easy activity that rarely gets put on the schedule. The bigger the time gap, the more likely readers are to forget about their desire for your product or service…or go with someone else instead.

Make it as easy as possible for someone to buy something from you.

Create A Facebook Group

Some of your readers will go through your back-end offers and decide that none of them apply…for now.

But if you continue to build a relationship, over time you can get the same people to become your customers. So how do you build the relationship?

Start off with the essentials like consistently providing content and engaging with your audience, and then move to something slightly more advanced like a Facebook Group.

Create the Facebook Group and (this is important) include it in the same place you make the back-end offers. This way, if people aren’t immediately convinced, they can opt to join your Facebook Group (it’s free so they might as well join) and become part of your community.

As these readers continue to see you more often, they’ll think about your back-end offers more and more. This is how you turn a no into a maybe and then a yes.

Sprinkle Offers Throughout Your Book

While you showcase your offers at the back of your book, you can also sprinkle them throughout your book. Now it’s time to re-visualize your book as a gigantic sales letter. When appropriate, you can talk about success stories and experiences directly related to your product.

In a book about productivity, for example, I might talk about the level of productivity I needed to create one of my productivity courses. Choosing this topic gives me the ability to describe some of the benefits of the course without being salesy.

I can also share stories of people who went through the course and transformed their productivity – I can share what they did and, specifically, how the course helped.

Finally, you can start every chapter with a quote. In my Content Marketing Book (coming out in late October or early November), I began each chapter with evergreen quotes from my virtual summit.

I’m also leading off with quotes from my Content Marketing Plaza course to drive more attention to that. Then I’ll feature CMSS, The Plaza, and a few other products at the back-end of my book.

In Conclusion

Writing a book is exciting. However, if you miss out on including back-end offers, you will miss out on thousands of dollars (or even more). Most of the people who read your book from start to finish will adore your knowledge and will want more.

That’s where your back-end offers come in, and at the very minimum, these readers will join your Facebook Group. Make sure the URLs are easy to remember so your readers have an easy time taking action on your back-end offers.

When sharing the URLs, consider that some can get outdated. For instance, contentmarketingsuccesssummit.com currently leads people to the summit that took place a few months ago.

In 2018, that same URL will lead people to the next CMSS.

I want to consistently lead readers to the 2017 version which is why I’ll incorporate contentmarketingsuccesssummit.com/2017 as the link. I want to lead readers to the 2017 version because that’s the one I currently have, and the book is based on the summit.

What are your thoughts about including back-end offers in your books? Have any tips for us? Do you have a question? Sound off in the comments section below.

 

Filed Under: Books, Business, content marketing, freelance writing, Marketing Tagged With: book publishing, growth hacks, offers and promotions, self publishing

5 Hacks For Writing Blog Posts Faster

July 7, 2017 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

blog posts

Writing blog posts takes time, effort and commitment.

You need to think up an engaging topic and headline, write an outline and the actual post, proofread and edit, then publish and promote your post before starting the entire process again.

But there are unconventional ways to hack the writing process and speed things up. Here are five ways to write your blog posts faster:

 

#1: Write On Your Smartphone

Just to clarify, I always prefer to write blog posts using a computer, but that isn’t always an option.

In fact, I’m writing this post in TJ Maxx. Why? Well, it’s not because I enjoy shopping (I find what I need and get out as quickly as possible), but today I am in the company of people who like to browse.

 

So instead of idly slouching against a wall, I decided to slouch against a wall and write the post you’re reading now. This way, the time I spend inside the store is actually productive.

 

Now I’m not saying to go shopping just so you can write blog posts. However, you can use moments of waiting as opportunities to begin, add to, or edit a post.

 

Certainly I could write much faster on my computer, but if I finish the post here in the store I won’t have to write again later today.

 

I could go on and on about this method because it’s the one I’m using now, and use often when I’m waiting, but let’s move on to the next hack.

 

#2: Get Your Videos Transcribed

Some people may be natural talkers but not natural writers. It takes more brain power for them to write than to talk. Just talking about your topic will help it flow out quicker and easier.

 

Not only that, but you can spend a few minutes dictating content that would take 30 minutes or more to write.

 

Talk about a time saver! And you’ve also got a YouTube video to boot. You can even turn it into a podcast episode using the MP3 file.

 

#3: Hire A Ghostwriter

Sometimes the fastest way to get your blog posts written is by not writing them at all! You can have one writer, or a team of ghostwriters, write your content for you.

I still haven’t hired ghostwriters for content creation, but I learned a lot about how it works after hosting the Content Marketing Success Summit.

 

Bascially, you can give a ghostwriter an outline of your blog post’s topic and he or she will write it up (you can also ask that they make suggestions for topic ideas).

 

Keep in mind it’s important that ghostwriters are familiar with your blog and writing style so they can write in a similar voice.

 

This ensures your content is consistent (without having to write it yourself). Why not focus more of your time on other areas of your business?

 

#4: Accept Guest Contributions To Your Blog

When you are first starting out, you may not have a budget for ghostwriters. To remedy this problem, you can invite people to contribute your blog.

You basically get free content. All you have to do is give credit and let the contributor link to his/her site and other essentials at the beginning or end of the blog post (whichever you prefer).

 

The best way to find contributors for your blog is by looking at blogs in your niche that accept contributors. Then ask the same contributors to contribute to your blog.

 

The people who contribute to your blog will naturally share their posts, so you’ll get more exposure for your blog.

 

Also, as more people contribute to your blog, other contributors will contact you and ask if they can contribute content for your blog.

 

In the beginning, getting contributors to your blog will involve sending many emails to bloggers. But as you get more contributors, the snowball effect will eventually kick in and new contributors will contact you with their ideas.

 

#5: Memorize The Keyboard

Do you know where the “q” key is on your keyboard. Did you have to look down to find it?

 

Looking down at the keyboard takes time. Although it may only take a second to look down and look up, that action makes you type slower and temporarily removes your focus from writing the blog post.

 

The seconds you spend looking down at the keyboard as you write each sentence and each blog post quickly add up to minutes and hours.

 

To make up that time, you must memorize the keyboard. Your WPM (words per minute) will skyrocket and you will be less susceptible to distraction.

 

Any moment that your fingers aren’t moving quickly on the keyboard, you are susceptible to distraction.
So now that I’ve sold you on the benefits (or, at least, I’m hoping), here’s how you master the skill.

 

Start by memorizing all of the key placements for a single 4-5 letter word. If you can type the word “blog” with your eyes closed, you have memorized the locations of 4 of the 26 letters on the keyboard.

 

If you then memorize the word “each,” you have memorized 8 of the 26 letters on the keyboard.

 

Now typing a word like “beach” comes second nature as you’ve memorized the placements of those letters.

 

This is a simple exercise that will allow you to write blog posts faster. This one method has saved me countless hours of time.

 

In Conclusion

I’m wrapping up this blog post in yet another store. I didn’t bother looking for a table or taking out my computer. I simply wrote all of it on my iPhone.

 

Since the keys are located in the same places, I had no problem effortlessly typing words by memory.

 

Think about how many blog posts you can write while waiting for something or someone.

 

Think about how much time you can save with ghostwriters and contributors.

 

Think of how cool it is to not write them at all!

 

What are your thoughts on these hacks to writing blog posts faster?

Have any hacks for us? Sound off in the comments section below.

Until next time,
-Marc

Filed Under: Blogging, Self Publishing, Time Management, Tips and Tricks, Uncategorized Tagged With: blog posts, blog writing, growth hacks, tips and tricks

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I am a business freelance writer who writes for individuals, small businesses, and corporations. My content will help drive engagement and sales to your business. I have produced content for several companies, including…

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