social media

7 Tasks That You Must Fulfill Before You Get Another Like Or Follower

July 20, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

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.

How To Interact With Your Social Media Audience

July 13, 2015 by Marc Guberti 8 Comments

Social media includes the word “social,” and this well-known fact eludes many brands when they go about their social media strategies. Many brands and individuals use social media as a way to broadcast their message without responding and getting to know their audience—the very people brands are meant to serve. Many of the brands and individuals who don’t interact with other people don’t interact because interaction rarely leads to short-term results.

Although interaction does not lead to short-term results, it does lead to long-term results. Some of the people I engaged with on Twitter continue engaging with me and my content to this day. Thousands of people have tweeted about my blog posts, and I interacted with many of those people. In fact, I still interact with some of them, and I have interacted with some of these people in the past 24 hours. Several of these people became my customers. The long-term result of meaningful interaction is a strengthened relationship in which a person likes you and trusts in what you do. Interacting with the people in your audience will allow you to amplify your message because more people will share it on their social networks. Most successful people don’t become successful on their own. They get help from other people. Interacting with your audience will allow you to find people who will help you become successful, meet new people who you can build relationships with, and give you and your audience a better experience on social media.

Now that you know the importance of interaction in a successful social media strategy, here are some of the methods you can use to interact with your social media audience.

#1: Thank Them

Each time one of my followers shares one of my blog posts, I thank that follower for sharing the article. Few people get thanked for sharing content on social media, and based on their response, my followers appreciate when I thank them.

Thanking someone is an act of courtesy, but in this case, also an act of humility. I acknowledge that all of the individuals who visit this blog allow it to become successful. I can create the blog and write the content, but if no one visits my blog, then my message won’t spread. My audience makes it possible for my message to spread, and for that, I am deeply grateful. Realizing how important your audience is for your brand’s growth and current progress will allow you to develop a deeper appreciation for the people in your audience. Acquiring this deep appreciation for your audience will give you a good reason to thank someone in your audience each time that person does something as simple as sharing one of your articles.

#2: Be Kind

Regardless of whether you interact with your audience with your personal account or your brand’s account, your responses form a part of your reputation. If you always respond kindly on social media, then that will positively impact the reputation of you and your brand. However, the moment your responses become disrespectful and insulting, the reputation of you and your brand gets damaged. Building a reputation takes a long period of time, but that same reputation can be destroyed and taken down in a matter of minutes. Consistently showing kindness 100% of the time will allow your reputation of kindness to stay strong, and if your audience sees you as a kind individual, they will pay more attention to your brand.

Not only is kindness important from a reputation standpoint, but kindness also encourages more conversations to take place. We like to interact with the people who are kind to us because they appreciate what we do. Moreover, it is easier to interact with a kind person and have a meaningful conversation than it is to interact with a rude individual and expect a meaningful conversation to build. Kindness allows you to strengthen your reputation, and if you have a strong enough reputation, the people in your audience will gravitate towards you and your message.

#3: Ask Questions

Once you start interacting with someone on social media, you want that interact with that person for as long as possible. One of the most basic ways to continue an interaction on social media is by asking a relevant question that you know the person in your audience could easily answer. You don’t want to quiz your followers too often (i.e. asking when Twitter was created), but you should ask them opinion based questions (i.e. asking whether a follower uses Twitter more often than Facebook or vice-versa). Asking opinion based questions allows you to hear the opinions from the people within your audience, and some of these opinions can become inspiration for your next product or blog post.

Once you get a response for your question, there are several ways to take the conversation further. You can ask another question, but in most conversations, excessively asking questions leads to an annoying encounter. You want the conversation to be a blend of your questions and insights. When in doubt of how to respond to someone’s social media post, think of an actual conversation in real-life. The person interacting with you on social media is someone behind a computer screen who knows the difference between an enjoyable conversation and a socially awkward encounter. How would you respond to that person in real-life to keep the conversation going? What is the best way to respond (on social media, you actually have time to think before you respond)? After asking yourself those two questions, type your response and send it. Then, wait for the other person to respond.

#4: Seek Relevant, Meaningful Conversations

When you first start out on social media, the conversations don’t readily come into your notifications tab. As you get more followers, your notifications tab will be filled with people interacting with you and trying to start a conversation. Regardless of whether you are a beginner or massively successful on social media, seeking relevant, meaningful conversations is a great way to interact with more people and grow your audience in the process.

With over two billion tweets getting sent every week along with billions of other posts from different social networks, relevant, meaningful conversations occur all of the time. The only problem is trying to discover these conversations so you can interact with the people having the conversation. Using a social network’s search engine and looking for keywords within your niche is an easy way to find conversations that take place. If you use Twitter, then you can use the Twitter Advanced Search to find conversations taking place in your niche. In my opinion, the Twitter Advanced Search is the best social media search engine on the web.

Once you find a relevant, meaningful conversation that you want to be a part of, become a part of that conversation. Leave your response. When you leave your first response, you don’t introduce yourself. You simply jump right into the conversation. Once you jump into the conversation, wait for the other people in the conversation to respond, and formulate your next responses based on the other people’s responses. Don’t stick around if you see a conversation going out of control.

#5: Provide Insights In The Conversation

You won’t always get the opportunity to provide your insights in a conversation, but when you get the opportunity, include your insights. When you add value to the conversation, the people you interact with will be grateful for that additional value. Some people will be so grateful for the initial value that they will look for more value that you provide. These people will go to your blog and take a look at your product sales pages and possibly buy your products. One central belief many people share is that a product must be better than free value (i.e. blog posts and YouTube videos). If you over deliver in free value, then your product offers will be more attractive because the people in your audience will believe that the value in your products must be legendary. At that point, all you must do is live up to that promise.

In Conclusion

Interacting with your audience allows you to know the people within your audience. Too many people exclusively use social media to share content without interacting. These people want more traffic for their blog posts and social media posts that spread farther. Taking 5-10 minutes every day to interact with your audience allows you to build the long-term relationships that are necessary for consistently rising blog traffic and social media posts that spread farther. If you want to grow your social media audience, then it only makes sense to engage with the audience that you have already built.

Do you interact with your followers? Do you believe interacting with your audience is worth the time? What tips do you have for getting more interactions and continuing conversations? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How To Start A Successful Pinterest Board

June 26, 2015 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Are you leveraging Pinterest for your brand’s growth? Pinterest is increasingly growing in significance and user base, and some brands rely on Pinterest for their overall social media strategy. While the results for each of these brands differ, some brands have gone viral on Pinterest and tapped into new audiences. Many brands go on Pinterest with an aspiration to achieve the same success.

Becoming successful on Pinterest requires a plethora of successful boards. It takes time to create successful boards that generate massive audiences, so instead of focusing on creating multiple successful boards, focus right now on creating one successful board. If you can create just one successful board, then you know what it takes to create multiple successful boards that generate massive audiences.

All you have to do at this point is know how to create a successful board and then create it. Content factors into the value of a board, but there are other factors that impact the experience the people in your audience have when they visit your board.

#1: Keep Your Board Fresh With New Content

When people visit your board, they want fresh content. If the last thing you pinned on your board was from a year ago, then that board won’t be attractive enough to keep someone’s attention for a long period of time. All successful boards do an excellent job at keeping people’s attention over a long period of time over a series of encounters. That means a first-time visitor who enjoyed your board then must still enjoy it a week later (because the content is fresh, relevant, and valuable).

How do you keep a board fresh with new content? One way is to schedule your pins in advance with ViralWoot. You can schedule up to 100 pins per month free of charge, but then ViralWoot has rates that apply if you wish to schedule over 100 pins per month. At this rate, you could schedule three pins per month free of charge. Three pins per day is sufficient for making one of your boards successful, but that same number is insufficient if you want to make multiple boards become successful.

Remember that you want multiple/all boards on your profile to become successful which also requires more work on your part. If you want to have 10 successful Pinterest boards, then you would have to schedule 30 pins per day for all of those boards (or send some of them directly from Pinterest, but if you publish too many pins at one time, you will annoy your followers). That adds up to 900 pins per month which takes a significant amount of time and requires a paid ViralWoot account.

When I came to this realization, I quickly got overwhelmed. I send over 100 tweets per day, write 5,000 words on a bad week, do videos for upcoming training courses, write books, and go to school. Scheduling hundreds of pins per month would be nearly impossible for me to do on my own. I couldn’t possibly do it all by myself.

Then came the contributors.

I knew I couldn’t do it all by myself and didn’t want to pay people to put pins on my boards. The logical solution was to invite people to contribute to my boards. I recently started to implement this strategy, and now some of my Pinterest boards have hundreds of contributors which completely systematizes my Pinterest strategy. New pins get added to some of my boards every day without my involvement. For some of my boards, I simply moderate everything that gets pinned to make sure none of the content is inappropriate or irrelevant (so far, that has never happened. My contributors are the best). At one point, I gained over 1,000 Pinterest followers without pinning anything new on my account. All of the contributors helped update my boards and keep the content fresh.

Why would contributors be so eager to pin on my boards without getting paid? The answer is the exposure. I have over 10,000 followers on all of my boards, and when someone accepts my invitation to become a contributor, that person gets over 10,000 followers to interact with overnight. I give people to power to share their thoughts and ideas on a larger platform. Many of the people I invite take me up on the offer and pin valuable content on my boards. I aspire to have several boards on my account with over 1,000 contributors, so if you want in, let me know.

#2: Optimize Your Pins

When you allow contributors to pin on your boards, you must recognize that not all of the pins that appear on the group boards will be created by you. While this is a great way to systematize Pinterest, you must occasionally publish your own pins. When you do publish your own pins, your pins must optimized to do well on the platform.

The first thing that comes to mind in a pin is the picture. It does not take much time to discover that not all pictures on the web are created equal. While some of the pictures look nice, others are duds, but just because a picture looks nice does not mean it is properly optimized for Pinterest.

The first thing to note is the height of the picture. If the picture you choose is a square, then it will show up on Pinterest as a square. If the picture is 800 pixels by 800 pixels, then it will get reduced to 600 pixels to 600 pixels when it goes on Pinterest. The problem is that although the picture may look nice, it isn’t tall enough. Pictures optimized to do well on Pinterest must be tall enough to take up the entire screen and have little to no background. This explains why pins of lengthy infographics perform much better than the average pin.

The pixel dimensions are just a nice, random fact if you get pictures from Google Images (you can’t change the pixel dimensions unless you use some type of photo editor), but if you create your own pictures, then you have the power to choose the dimensions of that image. Creating a picture may sound difficult at first glance, but creating your own pictures is surprisingly easy with Canva. Canva lets you choose from their pictures, text, and backgrounds to create a picture that you would be proud of. You can also upload pictures from the web that you have permission to use or your own pictures to Canva. The best part from a Pinterest standpoint is that you can customize the size of the image so it is optimized for Pinterest. An optimized picture has a width of 600 pixels and a height of thousands of pixels. Remember that the taller your image is, the more you must add to the image so the background does not take up too much space. You also have the power to specific the color of your background and the colors of various parts of the image. Make these colors bright colors because bright colors perform better on Pinterest than dull colors.

After the picture is another part of the pin that not as many pinners consider when optimizing their pins. The other part of a pin is the pin’s description. Here is how you would optimize a pin’s description:

200-300 characters is the sweet spot with 250 characters being the ultimate sweet spot. Don’t focus on the 250. If your pin is 233 characters or something along those lines, then your description is fine. Remember, people on Pinterest want details.
Include 1-2 hashtags. Hashtags help you get found on Pinterest because they generate traffic from Pinterest’s search engine. They also lead to more engagement, but if you overuse hashtags in your descriptions, your followers will have a tough time reading your pins’ descriptions. If a description is tough to read, your followers will get confused, and confused followers never stick around.

#3: Make Your Profile More Attractive

If people really enjoy one of your boards, they will wonder who created the board, but they won’t be wondering for very long. It is easy to discover who created a group board.

With that said, the way you present yourself affects how people think of your board and brand. That’s why colleges are increasingly asking for students’ social media accounts in the college application process. That’s why there are job interviews. That’s why event organizers ask a potential public speaker some questions before hiring the public speaker to speak at the event. That’s why the first impression is so important.

On Pinterest, your first impression is your profile. You need to have a good picture of yourself that looks professional. In your bio, list your top credentials and hobbies with nothing but commas (no conjunctions, period at the end of the sentence, or anything like that. Your bio should be a sentence fragment with no subject or verb). The hobbies are just as important as the credentials because people get to know you on a more personal level (this connection helps strengthen the relationship between you and your followers). Making your profile attractive gives you a good first impression which will entice your followers to become returning visitors who frequently like and repin your pins.

In Conclusion

Pinterest continues to grow as the days go by which makes now the perfect time to take it seriously. The key to thriving on Pinterest is to know how to create a successful Pinterest board and then make one of your boards become successful. You would do this by having contributors, optimizing your pins to perform well, and bolstering your profile.

Do you think more people should take Pinterest seriously? Which tip about creating a successful Pinterest board did you like the most? Do you have any additional tips for creating a successful Pinterest board? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

4 Ways That Anyone Can Use Social Media To Drive Leads

June 24, 2015 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Social media is the most effective tool to make connections, grow an audience, and give a greater meaning to what you do. Experts have used social media over the years to completely transform their businesses and spread their messages. Despite so many people using social media to level up their businesses, other people find themselves stuck. They don’t know how to leverage social media as a lead generation tool.

If you fit into the category, then the first step towards generating leads is to know how to generate leads. If you want to know how to generate leads, then you are at the right place. This article will discuss four of the methods that you can use to generate more social media leads right now.

#1: Create And Promote A Landing Page

One of the most effective ways to generate leads is to have your own landing page. Upon creating your own landing page (I use Optimize Press for mine), you will quickly discover that creating a landing page does not guarantee more leads. The only way to get more leads from a landing page is to get people to see the landing page. I get people to see my landing pages by promoting them across my social networks.

Most of the subscribers I get from my blog come directly from landing page traffic that I get from my social networks. Before I created a landing page, I only had 300 subscribers. 150,000 visitors only led to 300 subscribers. In short, my blog was poorly optimized for getting subscribers. Then, I created multiple landing pages and started to promote them across my social networks. The result was a massive increase in subscribers. I quickly went from only having 300 subscribers to gaining well over 300 subscribers every month.

After you create your landing page, the next step is to promote that landing page. As mentioned before, promoting the landing page on Twitter alone led to a massive increase in subscribers. However, the way I promoted the landing page is another story. Twitter is the type of social network that people go on for a short period of time to see what’s new, and since so many people tweet on Twitter, it is easy for the timeline to get filled up. As a result, most of your followers will miss your tweets and not engage with them.

One way to solve the problem is by pinning a social media post to the top of your feed. That way, that post promoting your landing page will automatically show up on the top, even if you post something new. Facebook and Twitter have this option enabled on their platforms. Here is an example of a pinned tweet:

The tweet was sent before 2015, and yet it still appears before the tweet I sent a few minutes ago. This tweet has significantly more engagement that most of my other tweets because of the added exposure of being a pinned tweet. Most tweets and Facebook posts have short half-lives (when that half-life is over, the tweet or Facebook post basically gets little to no impressions for the rest of its existence), but when you pin a tweet or Facebook post to the top of your feed, that tweet or Facebook post has an infinite half-life which means people will always see it.

The tweet also has more engagement than most of my tweets. While most of my tweets get a few thousand impressions, this tweet has over 20,000 impressions. That means over 20,000 people saw that one tweet. Of course, the engagement isn’t where I want it (only 3% of those people engaged and only 1% clicked on the link), but those are the percentages that many tweets on Twitter generate.

How could I possibly get 300 subscribers every month on Twitter when the pinned tweet only has 275 clicks? The answer is that I constantly tweet about my landing pages. I send one tweet every hour about one of my landing pages. This is how I get numerous people to visit my landing page every day, and this is how I get my subscribers from Twitter. While the pinned tweet gets the most engagement for my landing page, the other tweets I send on a daily basis are just as important.

#2: Interact With Your Individual Followers

Have you ever heard of the saying, “Ask and you shall receive”? It seems as if the more we ask for, the more we get (don’t abuse this power). When I interact with my followers, I will occasionally ask if the follower got a chance to download my free eBook 27 Ways To Get More Retweets On Twitter. I may also ask about the Productivity Rubric or another free eBook I offer called 27 Simple Ways To Get More Blog Subscribers (I like the number 27).

I started implementing this tactic in March 2015 and saw great results from it. Some people said they received the book and went on to say how much they enjoyed it. I asked these people what they liked about the book the most and if the conversation allowed, I asked if a particular follower had the chance to grab another one of my free eBooks. I would become a part of dozens of these types of interactions every day, and the numbers show for it. I got over 110% more subscribers in March than I got in January.

How many interactions does it take? Well, take a look at how many interactions I had in January compared to the number of interactions I had in March:

Here are the statistics from January:

Now you will see the significant increase in interactions in March:

The trend is an increase in interactions that gained momentum as I asked more people whether they got a chance to download my free eBook or not. When people said they never heard about it and expressed interest in the eBook, I included the link to the landing page in the next tweet I sent to those people. Many of them ended up subscribing.

Interacting with your followers is not just important for generating leads, but interacting with your followers is also important for your overall success as a brand. Your audience buys your products, reads your blog posts, and spreads the word about you. Taking the minute or two to interact with several people in your audience will strengthen the relationship between you and the people in your audience. This relationship is important for your success.

#3: Promote Your Landing Pages On Social Media Group Pages and Forums

Social media group pages and forums about your niche are great places to promote your landing pages because both of these platforms consist of numerous people in your targeted audience. Not only do you get to promote your landing pages to your targeted audience, but the platform is already built for you. If you become a member of a Facebook group page with over 10,000 members, then that’s over 10,000 people who can potentially become leads. If you post on a forum with 100,000 members, then that’s 100,000 potential leads.

Social media group pages and forums work well because members constantly come back to interact with other members. Just as an audience keeps your brand alive, the members of a social media group page or forum keep that social media group page or forum alive by building a community on the platform. This means many people will see what you post in the social media group page or forum, and that can lead to massive traffic.

Before you take the plunge and post a link to your landing page, see how the community interacts and responds to certain posts. You want to make sure describing your landing page and then posting a link to that landing page would go well amongst the people in the community, but you also want to make sure you are not violating any rules. Some social media group pages and forums will suspend users who over-promote themselves or promote themselves in any possible manner. The rules and consequences vary by social media group pages and forums.

#4: Use Reddit

Reddit is a hit-or-miss tool in which promoting yourself can work wonders, but you don’t want to over-promote yourself. A typically Reddit post can get anywhere from no engagement to thousands of upvotes. One of the posts I put on Reddit resulted in no leads. Another post I put on Reddit got me over 500 leads in just 24 hours. The leads I gained that day did not carry over far. Within a week, I was back at my normal lead generation rate. You can think of Reddit as the spike in traffic that doesn’t last very long but allows more people to know about you. I wouldn’t rely on Reddit for lead generation, but it is an underrated tool that can either lead to zero results or wonders.

In Conclusion

If you want to generate more leads, then you must create a landing page and promote that landing page as often as you can on your social networks. Tell one follower about the landing page. Then tell another follower. Post a link to your landing page multiple times per day on your social networks.

Which of these tips was your favorite? Do you have any stories with using social media to generate leads? What tips would you recommend? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

7 Reasons Why You Should Not Depend On Social Media For Blog Traffic

December 24, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Social media has been established as a powerful way to get more traffic and build an authority on the web. Many people have used social media to become the leaders of their niches and ultimately dominate their industries. Social media brings over 10,000 people to this blog every month.

Although social media is powerful, it is not something that we should rely on for blog traffic. There are several people who get all of their traffic from social media, or worse, one social network in particular.

The risk with relying on social media, or even worse, a single social network to bring in the bulk of your blog’s traffic is that you are putting all of your eggs in one basket. Although the basket may look nice and stable now, the basket can suddenly break, and then all of your eggs are splattered on the floor. Do you want that to happen to you? Chances are you don’t, and just in case that was not convincing enough, here are the seven reasons why you should depend on social media for blog traffic.

#1: Social networks change

One of the main reasons why I wrote this blog post was because I recently read an article about Twitter experimenting with an algorithm similar to Facebook. These algorithms enforce a pay to play system where growing a presence is no longer enough.

Facebook posts now only get seen by about 3% of your audience which means to have a big impact on Facebook, you need to have a ginormous audience. There was a time when Facebook did not have these algorithms and everyone was happy. With Facebook’s change, many people say a noticeable decline in Facebook engagement and traffic. Would you be happy if you had a Facebook Page with 300 fans, but only nine of those fans could see the posts on their home feed?

Does Twitter follow this exact path and create a pay to play system? Only time will tell, but Twitter talking about an algorithm suggests how little power we have in the decisions that popular social networks make. If Twitter decides to enforce the same policy as Facebook, then too bad. We will complain, but every social network has the final say in what happens.

#2: There are other options available

With the thought of a Twitter algorithm causing dissent amongst many users and a pay to play system being enforced, blogging has become more important than ever. Just because social media is powerful does not mean it is the only option.

With a blog, you still have the power to publish content and share it with the world. Blogging also gives you numerous advantages such as growing an email list and bringing in more sales. These advantages allow you to control the communication that you have with the people who stop by. On the other hand, social media has direct control over all of the interactions you have on it. If a social network decides to suspend your account, all conversations come to an end whether you want them to or not.

#3: All social networks get hacked

Many people look at Burger King’s success on the day it got hacked and aspire to be hacked themselves. Some accounts have even faked being hacked just to gain popularity. However, the latest hacks have not gone as well for the hacked accounts.

An example of this was when Uber Facts lost over 10,000 followers on the day it was hacked. Ouch! The worst part about hackings is that in most cases, they are not under your control. Some information leaks out of social networks. Remember Heartbleed?

Changing your password reduces the chances of your account getting hacked. However, anything on the web to get hacked nowadays, but if your social network gets hacked, and you have no other way of communicating with your audience, that spells trouble. Not only are you barred from your audience, but the hacker may use your account to insult your audience or post inappropriate content–all under your name.

#4: All social networks have bugs

There are some social networks that encounter strange bugs that make them perform differently. There are some Twitter users who get their accounts compromised every single day for no reason whatsoever. When these accounts get compromised, no tweets can be sent out. That means all of those tweets that got scheduled on HootSuite cannot be sent out because of a flaw out of your control.

No one is hacking into the account, and many of these Twitter users have resorted to 30 character passwords which still does not solve the compromise problem. If a bug affects your ability to post content on your social network, then you are losing blog traffic, interactions, and possibly sales.

#5: Not everyone will see your posts

No matter how much hard work you put into growing your social media audience, most of that audience will not see the social media posts that you publish. If every single one of my Twitter followers saw one of my tweets and clicked on the link, I would be getting hundreds of thousands of visitors every day (at that point, move over Huffington Post).

Too bad that is not the case. Unfortunately, no matter which platform you choose, not everyone will see your posts. However, social media happens to be a place where few people click on your posts and engage with you. I get over 10,000 visitors every month from Twitter alone. Assuming there are no repeat visitors (which is not the case), that would mean less than 10% of my followers see at least one of my tweets every month. The typical email list leads to more engagement than the typical social media account.

#6: Social media is addictive

Although social media is a great way to bring in more blog traffic, it is also extremely addictive. Some people spend hours on social media every week, and the amount of time people spend on social media takes time away from the big projects. Social media eats up more time than most people realize. Many people are spending three hours every day on social media while others are on social media for a longer amount of time.

When someone finally logs out after spending three hours on social media, that person may remember the blog post that needed to get published or the video that should have been uploaded to YouTube. If you are unproductively using social media for three hours every day, think about how much time you are spending unproductively on social media within a given week, month, or year. It adds up.

#7: Social media is not a direct way to make money on the web

When people think of making money online, they want to make money as directly as possible. Many people have tried turning social media into a direct revenue stream, but that’s not how social media works.

The function of social media is to build an awareness for your blog, get more traffic, and then have your blog optimized so it is able to bring in revenue. Since social media is addictive, it is entirely possible that the time you invest in social media does not necessarily result in more revenue.

In Conclusion

Just like the millions of other people who use them, I love social media. I am able to interact with my followers, build connections, and get more blog traffic. However, with the popularity of social networks, many people have become dependent on social media traffic for their blogs.

Regardless of how many visitors a social network is bringing in, you need to avoid having all of your eggs in one basket. If that basket gets dropped (whether it’s your fault or not), your blog traffic will suffer.

Utilizing social media while utilizing other avenues of traffic will allow you to become a successful blogger who is not dependent on one thing. Be sure to branch out by getting more traffic with different methods whenever you can.

7 Social Media Excuses You Need To Expel From Your Thinking So You Can Thrive

December 5, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

There are many people who have grown large audiences on social media. Some of these people have thousands of people in their audience while others are up there in the millions. However, there are few people who get to see these accounts develop to those stages.

Teen celebrities, fashion stars, and digital marketing experts are three of the many types of people who have dominated social media. They all started out with zero followers, and at one point, the only people who knew about them were family members. You don’t just get born with fame. It takes countless hours of work in order to build that fame and have a large audience.

Despite many people being successful on social media, there are many people who are constantly giving themselves excuses that limit their capabilities. Anyone on the web has the power to become successful and build a powerful presence based on their expertise. This statement is by no means an exaggeration, but if you want to truly be successful on social media, these are the seven excuses that you must expel immediately.

#1: I’m not popular enough

The current popularity any individual has is not final. If no one knows about you, it is still possible to build a large audience. One of the most important things to remember is that everyone started from the ground up.

You may not be what you define as a popular person, but you can become popular. Reading articles like this one show me you have a desire to be successful on social media. Having this desire makes you one step closer to becoming popular on social media.

#2: “Why would a random person want to follow me?”

Some people who create social media accounts tend to think, “Why would a random person want to follow me?” The problem with asking this question is that “random person” is too vague. Vagueness is the main reason why most people get confused about what they need to do on social media.

In order to identify who would want to follow you, you have to replace the word “random” with “targeted.” One small change changes the question to, “Why would a targeted person want to follow me?” That one small change makes a big difference. At this stage, you want to identify who your target audience is. Here’s the quick summary:

Identify what you are going to tweet about most of the time (at least 90% of the time)
Identify which people are interested in that type of content (look at a popular account that tweet content in the same niche. That account’s followers would be interested in your type of content).

Once you identify your target audience, follow some of the people in your target audience whose numbers suggest that they would follow you back. As you gain more followers, your confidence will grow, and then you will eventually be asking yourself, “Why wouldn’t someone want to follow me?” Just don’t be a show off.

#3: Who is really going to like what I say?

More people than you would think.

Your targeted audience is the group of people who would like what you have to say. Since there are over 1 billion people using social media, it is almost guaranteed that there are millions of targeted people on the same social network as you. You just need to make the connection happen so that person knows about you and can see your posts.

Social media gives you the power to put your own voice on the web, and you need to be proud of that voice. If you want help with crafting powerful posts, look at what the leaders of your niche are going. The two best ways to learn on social media are by example and experimentation.

#4: I don’t have the time

This excuse is one of my biggest pet peeves. Not having enough time is another way of saying one of two things:

You have more important things to do.
This is just absolutely never going to happen.

The people with the big audiences have the same amount of time in a day as you. Everyone has 24 hours in one day, and we all spend a good portion of that time sleeping, eating, and drinking water.

What happens after the necessary activities to keep life going are what make or break success. I find it preposterous that many people complain about not having enough time, and yet the average American watches 32 hours of TV every week. You have more time than you realize. Carving out time from unproductive activities will allow you to find the time you need to grow your social media audience and learn more about building a powerful presence on the web.

#5: I’m not getting results fast enough

Starting your journey towards growing a large social media audience is the equivalent of signing a contract that says, “I understand that there is no such thing as overnight success.” It takes multiple years before a large audience develops. It took me multiple years to come up with an effective Twitter strategy that I currently use to gain hundreds of Twitter followers every day.

No matter which social network you choose, it will not take a few days to go from no audience to 1 million followers. If it were that quick and easy, then there would be no point. There would be nothing special about having a large audience. It does take a while before you grow your large audience. However, it feels extremely good once you have the big audience and realize you built it from the ground up.

#6: “There are too many things I have to learn about social media”

No matter what you pursue in life, there will be a necessary learning curve to cross. Social media is no exception. The reason why there is no overnight success is because it takes time to learn how to be successful, and it takes time to implement the same process at a consistent rate until you get the audience that you want.

Many people jump into social media head-on and try to learn everything about every social network. This approach is what results in people saying that there are too many things to learn about social media. Instead of trying to learn everything about every social network, only focus on one social network. Then, when you master one social network, move onto the next social network. It is better to learn about a bunch of social networks in a few years and have big audiences on all of the social networks that you master than it is for you to attempt to learn about every social network right now and not have a big audience on any of them.

#7: It’s too late to jump on the social media bandwagon

Just because social media has been around for a little over a decade does not mean it is too late to jump on the social media bandwagon. Social media makes it possible for anyone to thrive, regardless of when they join.

It is never too late to be successful on social media. There are rising stars on social media that started off with no followers just a few months ago. Now, some of these people have big audiences.

If you can interact with your followers and provide them with value, you can be successful on social media, regardless of when you create an account.

In Conclusion

There are over 1 billion people on social media, and it is possible for anyone to become successful on any social network. We often use excuses to get out of putting in the work or because we think a goal is impossible.

Success on social media is attainable for any individual, and there is no overnight success in any niche. However, once you have that large audience, you will be proud of all of the work that you put in to make that big audience possible. Eliminating the excuses is a great way to start on the path towards social media stardom.

Which of these excuses resonated with you the most? Are there any other excuses that you believe hold others back?