HOW TO COME UP WITH A NEVER-ENDING STREAM OF BLOG TOPICS


You ever feel like you’ve said everything you need to say about a topic?

“I’m empty, this is it,” you might think…

But the truth is, you probably haven’t even scratched the surface.

You see, I run the content side of a few different businesses – and I have to come up with 7-1o blog topics each month for each business. I thought I’d run out of topics months ago…

But here I am now, still throwing out topic after topic. Just when I feel like I hit a “wall”, I switch my perspective up a little bit and load up with new, fresh ideas.

And you can do the same – and put your content marketing on virtual steroids.

How?

When you feel like you’re fresh out of ideas, try doing these 10 things to get a “never-ending” stream of blog topics.

  1. Discuss the problems that your product or service solves
    Your customers like you because your product or service helps solve a problem (or problems) of theirs.

So, what better way to connect and add value to your customers than to help them with those problems through your content?

For example, if you have a webinar software company, you help make it easy for people to host webinars. You could write about how to make money from webinars, how to get more registrants, how to plan the webinar, etc.

  1. Address misconceptions around your main topic
    Every topic has myths and misconceptions. A lot of times, these misconceptions prevent your prospects from even trying to find a solution to their problem. They think it can’t be done, or it’s not worth it.

“XX is too expensive, I can’t afford it.”

“XX requires these skills, and they are too hard to develop…”

When you take the time to “debunk” these misconceptions, you offer prospects a fresh outlook. “Maybe this can be done,” they think. And they are that much more likely to give your product or service a try.

  1. Help readers improve on the skills relating to your topic
    Let’s say you offer a product that helps people write best-selling books in Kindle. There’s a lot of skills that go into that – writing, coming up with book ideas, storytelling, book outlining, formatting, marketing, book cover design, etc.

And that presents a great opportunity for you – you can use your content to help prospects improve on all of those skills.

Make a list of all the skills required to succeed at your topic, and see if you can think of some indirect skills that also might pertain. For example, if you have a webinar platform, one skill would be public speaking.

  1. Be vulnerable
    Sometimes you have to lay it all out on the line. Be open about your journey to success relating to your topic. Talk about your fears, your challenges, and your low points, and how you overcame it all.

Wrap your readers in with a great story of how you got to where you are now. This can be very relatable and build serious trust with your audience.

A great example of this is pretty much any post on James Altucher’s blog. That guy is an open book, and his vulnerability has been rewarded with a number of best-selling books and a huge, dedicated following.

  1. Tell a Story
    Have customers had a lot of success with your products or services? Tell their story! But you don’t need any crazy or inspirational “plot” for a good story. You can even tell the story of your day, and relate it with a strong takeaway that your audience can vibe with.

For example, if you own a health supplement company, you can tell the story of you and your friend debating whether or not coffee is healthy – and have the takeaway be your “take” on coffee consumption.

  1. Deconstruct fears
    Just as there are misconceptions around your product/service/topic, there are also fears. And like the misconceptions, these fears can also prevent people from ever giving your product or service a try.

Make a list of the common “fears” surrounding your topic, and see if you can deconstruct each of them. That could make for a series of powerful blog posts – and even some more eager prospects.

  1. Promote a product or service
    Yes, you can even promote your product or service. You can talk about new updates and deals, new features, etc. These are okay to do every month or two, but don’t blast out blog promotions every week.
  2. Keyword research
    What are people saying about your topic on sites like Quora and Reddit? These communities provide tons of opportunities to learn about your prospects. They’ll talk about current challenges, fears, desires, etc. Look at the most talked about questions/threads and create blog topics out of them. It’s already clear that people are interested in the topic.
  3. Read books related to your main topic
    Every time I read a book, I feel like I get 4-5 awesome content topics. If you read a 2-4 books a month, you’re guaranteed to fill your mind with some awesome new topics and perspectives. Reading will make you a more interesting person, and it will make your content a lot more interesting too.
  4. The 10 Ideas Rule
    James Altucher isn’t just great for vulnerability – he’s also great for coming up with ideas. He has the “10 idea rule”. Basically, you write 10 ideas down every day. They could be ideas for blog content or for new business ventures – the important thing is that you’re forcing yourself to come up with new ideas, and in doing so, flexing your “idea muscle”.

Whether you’re feeling “stuck” for ideas or not, this is a great exercise to add into your daily routine.

You don’t need to run out of blog topics – there’s a never-ending stream of things to write about. So, next time you’re feeling “out of ideas”, try these exercises and you’ll have an awesome list of blog ideas in no time.

Are you looking for some awesome blog content for your site? Send us an email or let us know in the comments below!

HOW FACEBOOK’S NEW REACTIONS WILL AFFECT YOUR FACEBOOK ADS


Earlier this week Facebook announced that they are beginning beta testing of “Reactions” in both Spain and Ireland.

Reactions are Facebook’s reaction (pun intended) to continued requests by users for a ‘dislike’ button – but with a twist. Reactions are “an extension of the Like button that gives people more ways to share their reaction to a post in a quick and easy way” – according to Facebook.

This new feature will be present on any post that normally would include the Like button. To access reactions you simply hold down (or mouse over on desktop) the Like button to access the six new reactions.

The initial reactions to roll out in addition to “Like” will be “love,” “haha,” “yay,” “wow,” “sad” and “anger.”

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How will this affect my posts and ads?
Facebook hasn’t explicitly said how (or if) different reactions will have a positive or negative effect on your posts and ads other than Reactions will have similar impact on posts/ads that Likes currently do. What they have said is that Reactions will give businesses and publishers additional tools to understand how people are reacting to their content and help them cater more content to specific Reactions.

Page managers (and advertisers) can access the Reactions to their posts inside their Page Insights. We can expect Facebook to use the information and feedback they learn in this initial beta test to improve the feature, and likely add additional weight to how the different Reactions will affect post and ad delivery.

What does this mean for advertisers?
Here’s a list of what Facebook has told us:

Metrics that include Likes in ads reports will also include Reactions. However, these won’t be broken out as individual Reactions.
Advertisers who want to see a breakdown of Reactions can do so in their Page insights only.
Reactions are treated the same as Likes for ads delivery (ex: Loves carry no extra weight than Likes in the auction).
In the same way that you can’t remove a Like, you can’t remove a Reaction.
The important thing here is that at this point, the different Reactions will have no positive or negative effect on ad delivery. Meaning if more people “Love” your ad, you won’t necessarily be given priority over a post with equal number of “Likes”. The same in the opposite direction for “Anger”.

If Advertisers want to see the number of different Reactions to their ads, they will not be able to do so within Ads manager – they will need to visit the individual Page Insights. However, the total number of Reactions, Likes included, will be reported as “Likes” in the ad reports – at least for the time being.

What direction can we speculate this will go?
While it’s still VERY (ahem, less than 48 hours) early in the game to make many assumptions about which direction this new feature will head, we can start to speculate!

Different Reactions may eventually have a positive or negative effect on ad delivery and bidding. If people are responding ‘negatively’ (Sad/Anger) you may see your ad delivery drop versus ads that people responding ‘positively’ to (Like/Love/Haha).

Different Reactions will have a polarizing psychological effect on how users react to posts and ads. As people scroll through their News Feed, they will be paying more attention to Reactions than they previously had to Likes. If ads/posts have a large number of polarized Reactions, people will be more likely to click through and see what is creating all the buzz. It has always been a good practice to try to create an emotional response with your ads, but advertisers can use this to their advantage by creating ads/content that create a very polarizing emotional response and then having strong calls to action on the landing pages of their ads.

It remains to be seen what direction that Facebook will take this new feature, but people sure are excited. Users have been asking for a way to portray other emotions other than simply “Liking” and even though it took Facebook a number of years to figure it out – I think they delivered a home run on this new feature.

Your turn: What do YOU think??

THE SECURITY OF YOUR TWITTER BRAND IS AT RISK!


Online security is a huge topic right now. Credit card numbers getting stolen. Private email accounts being hacked into. Then you have the security concerns with social media networks, like Snapchat, who recently had a breach of security and 4.5 million photos (you know, those photos they insist disappear) leaked onto a website. These are all big concerns, and there are all sorts of blogs out there with tips to secure your social media networks, but what people don’t talk enough about is how to protect the value of your brand.

Building a brand takes time. Unfortunately, if you don’t protect your brand, the integrity of your brand is at risk. A breach in the integrity of your brand can cause significantly more harm to your company than most any security breach. The social network in which you can build a brand the quickest, but also harm it the quickest, is Twitter. However, if you follow these four guidelines, you’ll minimize risk and allow for your brand to be as protected as it can be.

How to Protect your Brand on Twitter:
Step 1: The Basics – Twitter Account Security:
You can’t protect your brand if you don’t protect the access to your Twitter account. All social networks are vulnerable, and Twitter is no exception. These three tips can help you secure your account.

Change your password every 30 days
Limit who has access to the Twitter account. I suggest limiting access to 2-4 people.
Limit and be cautious with the third-party apps you allow to have access to your account. Many Twitter account security breaches come through third-party apps that users unknowingly granted access to.
Step 2: Integrity – One Strategy, One Voice:
Have a thorough Twitter strategy and a well defined brand voice. Everything you do on Twitter should fit within the strategy and comprised of the brand voice. This creates consistency. Moreover, it leads to brand integrity. If you only share content and interact within the boundaries of your strategy, you’ll always uphold your company values. Here are three tips to ensuring brand integrity:

Create a thorough Twitter strategy and stick to it.
Develop a company voice and don’t deviate from it.
Delete any content (Block/Unfollow people if needed) that does not fall within tips 1 or 2.
Step 3: Monitor -Who is Talking about you & What are they Saying:
You need to monitor the Twitter chat about your brand. This goes further than simply reading what people tweet at you or send via direct message. You need to search for mentions of your brand. Often, people will talk about your brand but not tweet it at you. You may find some things you don’t like. You might find some things you need to address. You can’t protect your brands value if you don’t know what people are saying. You may also uncover customer service issues that you did not know existed. Here are three tips to help protect your brand through monitoring:

Designate one employee that monitoring is part of their daily responsibility.
Setup a process to handle customer service issues. Once you start monitoring what people are saying about your brand, you will find customer service issues and you will need a system to handle them.
Use a tool or software, if needed, to monitor your brand on Twitter. There are several that do a great job. If you need a suggestion, contact myself or ARCH.
Step 4: Employees – Have a Twitter Policy and Educate your Employees:
Employees can be your biggest advocate on Twitter. If they are engaged, they can help give a big boost to your brand. However, employees are often your biggest liability. If they list you as their employer, they represent your brand, no matter what disclaimers you or they put out there. You don’t want to be a company with strict social media policies; nobody will want to work for you. However, you need some basic policies in place. Here are three tips to help educate your employees so that you can protect your brand from them and ensure they are advocates not liabilities:

Have a social media policy. Make sure all employees fully understand and agree to that policy. (I suggest working with your HR Department and legal counsel on creating the policy. Don’t just “wing it.)
Take immediate action when the policy is broken. Involve your HR and/or legal team if needed. The value of your brand is important. You need to protect it. When employees violate the Twitter usage policy and when they damage your brand, take action.
Encourage employees to get involved with growing the brand via Twitter. When you involve the employee with building the brand, regardless of their job title, they are more likely to always keep the integrity of your brand in the forefront of all they do on Twitter.
Do you notice the common theme with each of these four steps to protecting the value of your brand on Twitter? The common theme is that you are in control. It is difficult for anyone else to harm your brand when you take the steps to proactively protect your brand. The biggest threat to your brand on Twitter is yourself. Take the steps needed to ensure the security of the value of your brand.

I can confidently say that I speak for everyone at ARCH when I say that each specialist takes the value of our own personal brand, the value of the ARCH brand, and the value of all of our clients brands very serious. We take respecting the value of your brand equally as serious and any question you may have regarding how to protect your brand on Twitter is welcomed. Whether we ever work together or not, if you have a question about protecting the value of your brand, don’t let it sit and wait, please ask.

UPGRADE YOUR WEBSITE FOR OPTIMAL SOCIAL SHARING


I spend a lot of time auditing websites for clients, and geeking out in curious website research. Lately, I’ve noticed how many website make it VERY difficult to share their content or to simply locate where they are on social media networks. What’s even more concerning is that the websites offering the most native content are the biggest culprits!

They’re missing out!

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that native content is king these days. And what does that mean? Any content that comes directly from a brand – content made by a brand, i.e. blogs, videos, photos, etc. Content that can ONLY be aligned with your business.

As the proliferation of marketing continues to work its way through all our favorite social networks, we’ve become numb to marketing messages, and that’s important to take into account. Because what sets your brand apart is the native content it’s producing, and how it’s utilizing that content to tell stories and share the brand values.

But you can make the best, coolest, most beautiful content on the web, and if it’s tough to share from your website OR it’s tough to find your social channels on your website – you’ll completely miss the mark. And all the content you’ve spent money or time on creating won’t benefit you in anyway.

That. is. tragic.

So I’ve put together action steps to upgrade your website for optimal social sharing. While ensuring a website is optimized for social sharing isn’t a complex topic – it’s one that’s CRUCIAL, and overlooked so often I had to write this article!

Let’s jump in:

  1. Display social channels prominently on your Home page
    When an Internet peruser comes to your website, it’s vital that your social media channels are displayed prominently or very easy to find.

If they have to spend time finding your social channels to follow you online – they won’t, and then they won’t be privy to all that awesome content you’re sharing.

Don’t overvalue your importance to visitors and/or think they’ll hunt you down.

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  1. Make social channels buttons open in a new tab
    This is my biggest pet peeve for social sharing on websites – make sure whenever someone clicks on your social channel buttons that they open in a new tab.

Why?

You do NOT want them to leave your website – that’s where you make money! But you DO want their support on social media, so ensure that clicking a button doesn’t cover up your website with a social media website.

I can guarantee they won’t find their way back 8 out of 10 times.

  1. Utilize clear and easy-to-use sharing buttons
    If social media sharing buttons aren’t easy to find, they won’t share. Period.

Even in this day and age, I can’t tell you how many blogs I come across that don’t make it easy to find their sharing buttons!! Drives me crazy and I usually leave. Or send them a nasty note – no, I’m joking.

But if I love their content then it makes me feel like they don’t really care about sharing it, and that’s not a message you want to convey.

I suggest placing the sharing buttons at the top and bottom of posts. While side hanging bars can look cool (I have one that needs to be replaced #argh), they don’t optimize for mobile sites, and can wreak havoc when the Internet swishes the website on other browsers (happens all the time).

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  1. Use beautifully designed (and effective) social sharing plugins
    I’ve seen some hideous social sharing buttons that were basically unusable and/or were placed somewhere that intercepted the content itself.

And update to something modern! Those outdated little boxes must go! They’re ugly, and people like pretty – so use attractive plugins for your sharing buttons.

Take the time to do your research to find effective and easy to install social sharing plugin that can optimize your shares.

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  1. Add Pinterest buttons to all your photos
    All the photos on your website should be easily pinnable (yea, that’s a word now).

If you’re unsure of how to do this, Pinterest offers excellent tutorials to guide you along the way.

Even if your business doesn’t use Pinterest to market, it doesn’t matter – Pinterest drives a TON of traffic, and you never know how one addition could change your traffic sources.

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  1. Display social network buttons from the side bar
    The side bar of your website is another way to get your readers to see you’re online and follow you.

Most templates come with social buttons installed for sidebar use, but if not, use a plugin for the sidebar.

It adds another layer to people being able to find you. And that’s what we want!

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Overall, my message is simple – MAKE IT EASY to find your business online and share its content.

We’re all busy and hectic and running about the web with our heads cut off, so if your social networks buttons are hiding or the sharing buttons disappear, you’re throwing $$ out the window.

And we want the bling.

Alright, your turn – what am I missing??

USE FANTASY FOOTBALL ADVICE TO IMPROVE YOUR FACEBOOK ADS


It’s that time of the year when you can’t turn your head without hearing something about Football. With an estimated 41 million people playing Fantasy Sports, Fantasy Football has become the center of many an office discussion over the past eight weeks of the NFL season. Fantasy sports participants spend hours each week analyzing statistics and probability then building their teams accordingly.

The question is, how can we harness what has typically been deemed a distraction in the workplace into something that helps drive business results? If we employ Fantasy Football strategies to improve our Facebook Ad performance, suddenly all the ‘wasted’ hours become time well spent.

So read on Fantasy Football lovers, and be prepared to show your boss why all that ‘useless’ knowledge is actually beneficial to your Facebook Ad Strategy.

Research Before Drafting Your Campaign
Many Fantasy Football seasons are won and lost at draft time. Facebook Ad campaigns are no different. We must do our preseason research before drafting a Facebook campaign.

The two areas we need to focus our preseason research are:
Campaign Type
Campaign Targeting
When Choosing a campaign type we must choose the campaign which aligns with our business objective. Why are we running a campaign? What is the goal? Choose a Facebook Ad campaign type based off our business objectives.

Some of the most important preseason research we can do is on the Campaign Targeting level. Who are our ads intended to reach?

The more precise we can get with our targeting, the better the results for our campaign. Establish a persona for your ideal target, who is this person that we are trying to reach with our ads and then cater your ad targeting to that specific person. The possibilities here are endless.

Take a Chance on Sleeper Ads
After doing our preseason research and drafting our campaign type and targeting, it’s time to build our ads. It’s during the ad building process that we get our second piece of Fantasy Football advice – take your chances on sleepers. Sleepers are usually the long shot players with very high upside. When we build ads, we should include these long shot ads that have a very high upside.

We should always be A/B testing ads against each other, but even more so we should throw into the mix some long shot ads that have potential to produce results (sleepers). We’ve seen this time and time again, it’s not the ad that you think was the ‘best’ while building out your ads that produce the most efficient results.

Facebook wants your campaigns to be successful so you keep coming back with more advertising spend. In order to produce the best results for you Facebook will deliver the ads that your consumers are reacting with the most – if your consumers aren’t responding to an ad, Facebook simply will not show it. It is through this type of ad delivery that we will find the sleepers on our ad roster.

Cut Under Performing Ads from Your Lineup
The key to any successful Fantasy Football manager’s season, is reacting to the performance of the players on his team. Players should be cut and picked up, based on their performance throughout the season. This same thing is true for any successful Facebook ad campaign manager, we must cut and boost posts based on their success throughout our campaigns.

We must monitor our ad campaigns relentlessly within Facebook Ads Manager. This is paramount for success. We should be watching for which ad sets are getting the most results at the cheapest price. We should be monitoring which ads are delivering over others. And ultimately, we must make adjustments throughout your Facebook ad campaign’s delivery.

If you have under performing ads, they need to be cut from your lineup. This will give your top performing ads access to a larger portion of your budget. While Facebook does this to an extent, the best managers will be monitoring performance and cutting under performing ads from campaign lineups to improve the overall campaign.

All Puns Aside
When it comes down to it, there are three takeaways we can use to help improve the strength of our Facebook Campaigns:
Research your target audience and business objectives before ever building an ad.
Use A/B testing to fine tune your ad strategy and determine what your consumers respond to.
Monitor your campaign performance and continually make tweaks to improve the
Now it’s your turn: What has worked for you when tweaking your Facebook Campaigns? How do you improve your campaigns? What is the record of your Fantasy Football team?

5 LEAD MAGNET IDEAS TO RAPIDLY GROW YOUR EMAIL LIST


Is your email list growing at the rate you’d like it to?

If not, it may be due to your lead magnet (or your lack of one).

A lead magnet is basically a “bribe” that offers something your reader wants in exchange for their email address.

And no – offering a “weekly newsletter” does not count as a lead magnet.

By changing or creating a better lead magnet, you can get a big influx of subscribers quickly, as well as earn many more subscribers over time.

Here are 5 lead magnet ideas to help you rapidly grow your email list

  1. Cheat Sheet
    Remember how awesome cheat sheets were back when you studied for tests in school? Well, we all still love cheat sheets. They’re easily digestible – with a cheat sheet, you know exactly what you’re going to get, and you know you can go through it quickly, because it’s just a cheat sheet.

This also makes it easier to create for you – and it’s a great way to grow your list.

But what kind of content can you put into a cheat sheet?

Ideally, something that helps your prospects solve one of their big problems.

Here are some examples:
The Headline Cheat Sheet – 35 headlines to captivate readers
The Webinar Cheat Sheet – 10 quick tips to make your webinar a success
The Drop Shipping Cheat Sheet – 7 tips for creating your first successful drop shipping store
Whatever the content, try to keep it short – otherwise it won’t be a cheat sheet!

  1. A Recorded Webinar
    Have you ever hosted a webinar for your business? Webinars are usually packed with valuable content, and they also provide a great way for new prospects to get to know you better.

If you have a recorded webinar on hand, consider using it for your lead magnet. Create a landing page with some bullet-point benefits that people will get from the webinar.

  1. A Checklist
    A checklist is similar to a cheat sheet in that it’s easily digestible, and usually on the shorter side. It’s perfect if your prospects are looking for an easier way to complete a certain process that relates to your business.

It also paints you as the expert who they can look to for guidance.

Here are some examples of good potential checklist lead magnets:
The Blog Checklist – 15 steps to a viral blog post
The Landing Page Checklist – 10 steps to a high converting landing page
The Guest Post Checklist – 7 steps to landing your next guest post

  1. A Simple How-To Ebook
    A how-to ebook is another great way to outline a process. It’s a bit more in-depth than the checklist or the cheat sheet.

Here, you take them by the hand and explain how to do something (i.e. some type of process that relates to your business).

Once again, this positions you as the expert and also helps you to earn your prospects’ trust. You’re taking the time to create a free resource that adds value to their lives.

  1. A Toolkit
    What tools can make your prospects’ lives easier?

The toolkit is simply a list of tools that your prospects can use to solve their problems/accomplish something.

Simply, it’s a PDF with links (and maybe pictures) to specific tools with explanations of how they can help your prospect.

Some good toolkit examples could be:
The 5 dirt cheap tools I use to create high quality videos
The 7 tools I use to get on (and stay on) the first page of Google
5 simple tools to create an high converting email marketing machine
Lead magnets are important for gaining new subscribers and growing your business. You can use these lead magnet ideas to quickly get more opt-ins.

Do you want us to create a high converting lead magnet for your business? Send us an email and let us know!

HOW TO CREATE AN ENGAGING COMMUNITY ON TWITTER


An empty dance floor is like a Twitter account with no engagement: useless. Twitter can sometimes be like a grade school dance; People standing all around the dance floor. There is a lot of music and side-chatter, but nobody going into the center of the dance floor and engaging. To create an engaging community on Twitter, you have to figure out how you are going to get people out on the dance floor with you.

I want to give two disclaimers before I share how to create an engaging community.

First, Twitter is not one-size-fits-all. I will share a few strategies that should lead to engagement and have created an engaging community for me and my clients but you have to ultimately decide what strategies will best work for you. There is no turn-key strategy that will work for all.

Second, I want to share that engagement is not the end result. Engagement helps you reach your Twitter goals. Seeking engagement for the purpose of engagement will lead you nowhere. Define your why. Why do you want people to engage? What is the ultimate goal? Focus your strategies around that. Test which strategies work for you, and then consistently work the strategies that are effective.

Before we talk about how to create an engaging community, let’s first define what we mean by engagement. It can be an ambiguous term. In the broad definition, engagement would be any action taken by a Twitter follower, which includes a retweet, favorite, reply, but also the act of viewing and reading your tweet or clicking to follow you is an act of engagement.

The replies are what we prize because replies lead to conversations and build relationships. However, to have an engaging community, you need to have every form of engagement occurring. You need people engaging by deciding to follow you (if you have no followers, you have no potential of people to engage.

The more followers you have, in theory, the more potential for engagement). You need people to read your tweets, which means your content needs to add value to your audience. You need people engaging by retweeting you or favoriting your tweets. You need engagement by people direct messaging and tweeting at you. All of these types of acts of engagement work together to create an engaged community.

Here are 3 Tips to increase your Twitter engagement:

  1. Proactively Engage
    Think back to the grade school dance analogy. If you sat back and waited for people to come up to you and invite you to dance, that might work, maybe, possibly. However, the more effective solution would be to take the first step, walk across that dance floor and invite someone to join you to dance. That is what proactively engaging on Twitter does.

How to Proactively Engage:
Decide who your target audience is. Identify people within that target audience. Follow those people. Retweet those people. Reply to their tweets and initiate conversation. They won’t all engage back with you, but some of them will and that will be the start of your engaging community.
Insider Tricks:
Identify your competitors. See who engages with them. Follow and engage with those people. They are likely highly targeted followers.
Show an interest in what interests your followers. If they mention a hobby in their Twitter bio, Tweet at them and ask them a question about that hobby.

  1. Tweet Often
    People can’t engage with someone who is invisible. If you don’t tweet 10+ times per day on Twitter, your Twitter presence is nearly invisible. Twitter is not like other networks. 1-2 Tweets per day won’t do the trick.

How to Tweet Often:
I get it, tweeting 10+ times per day can seem like a daunting task. Keep in mind this does include replies and retweets. There are tools out there, like Hootsuite, that allow you to schedule tweets throughout the day. I highly recommend doing so. However, keep in mind, don’t automate then forget. If you won’t be available to reply to people who engage with you, then don’t schedule content during that time.
Insider Tricks:
Look into tools like BundlePost and Buffer. There are tools, like the two mentioned, that help you find quality content to Tweet. This is important because people will likely only engage with you if you’re adding value to them, and quality content adds value to your followers.
Use images when applicable. Images get more views, replies and retweets.

  1. Be Human (even if you’re account is a business account)
    If you don’t value people and relationships first, you won’t have an engaging community. Engaging with your community comes down to the same principles, whether you have 1 follower or 1 million followers. Yes, every engagement is an opportunity to eventually make a sale. However, the mindset that leads to having an engaging community is realizing that every engagement is an opportunity to be human and develop a relationship.

How to be Human:
You have to reply to people. I try to reply to all tweets within 60 minutes. If you’re interaction becomes so high that you can’t reply to all tweets, then you need to create a system that allows for you to reply to everyone. If someone says hello to you, part of being a human is saying hello back. That principle applies on Twitter too. When someone shares your post, thank them. When someone asks a question, answer the question. That is part of being human. When you don’t reply, you’re telling that person that you don’t value them. When your followers feel that they don’t matter to you, you won’t have a community nor engagement.
Insider Tip:
Show your personality. Robotic replies and press release type content won’t do the trick. Share a joke. Talk about what is trending. Share something about your life. When you open your personality up to your audience, they’ll be much more likely to engage on a meaningful level.
Takeaway Plan of Action
In this blog, I’ve mostly shared theory with you. I want to leave you with something that you can implement right away to help to start creating an engaging community. Here are 5 things I want you to make sure you do each day on Twitter.

Tweet 10 times
Follow 5 targeted followers and Reply to or Retweet one of their tweets.
Thank, compliment or congratulate 3 people.
Ask 2 people a question about a topic listed in their bio.
Send 1 humorous reply to a tweet (show personality).
Growing a community takes time. Engagement increases slowly over time. There is no magic pill or secret sauce to growing an engaging community, but if you make sure to proactively engage with people, consistently provide value added content, and make sure to value relationship building and stay human, you’ll grow an engaging community.

HOW TO LIVE STREAM AN EVENT WITH PERISCOPE OR BLAB

Live streaming is ALL the rage these days thanks to the heavy hitters of 2015 like Meerkat, Periscope, and now, Blab.

But live streaming is just getting started. The pathways of possibilities with these tools has only begun for marketers and business owners alike, and the best part is that anyone can be successful with it.

I started dabbling in live streaming on Social Media Day of 2015. Although I watched Meerkats and Periscopes, I hadn’t waded into the water. I remember the shock by the first Meerkat I watched – it was someone singing in their car, and when it went live, my initial reaction was to cover the camera on my phone. I felt like he could see me! Thankfully he couldn’t. But it seemed like I was privy to a very private moment.

However, the marketer in me started geeking out over with all the branding opportunities this medium presented for personal and professional brands.

This year I traveled to NYC and Minneapolis to work for clients to live stream events, and help to create an experience for the folks unable to join. The first conference was the PhotoPlus Expo in NYC. This event is the largest photography conference in the US, and it was impressive to say the least. Over 30,000 flocked to the Javits Center to enjoy the gorgeous displays of Canon, Nikon, and many more. And my job was to make that available to the folks unable to attend the conference, and amplify the brand I represented. I Periscoped photography classes, conference attendees, and keynotes like Jimmy Chin, who I could have listened to all day.

The second project was a tech conference called MobCon hosted annually by MentorMate, a leading Android/iOS mobile app development company that’s paving the way for mobile tech. This project was very different in that I was covering an event for the host, not as an attendee, and it made an enormous difference in how much control we had and what we were able to accomplish.

This knowledge is what I want to share with you because live streaming an event can be very lucrative for any brand. It will produce a LOT of content to be repurposed and used for social networks, it will extend the reach of your brand during the event, and will create experiences for those unable to join who may choose to do so in the future.

I could easily write several posts on all I learned during these projects, but for this purpose of this article, we’ll stick to the how-to’s. I’ll write follow-ups in the future.

So roll up your sleeves and start taking notes because if you want to do it right, it will take a lot more than flipping the switch on a Periscope channel.

How to Live Stream an Event

1. Define the live streaming goals.

Goals are crucial to every project, no matter how small or large. They will help you to stay focused on the bigger picture, and make planning easier. Live streaming an event is no different. You’ll want to be clear on exactly what you hope to do and the outcome of those actions.

Here’s a list of a few things to consider:

1. What is the main purpose of live streaming for this event?
2. What moments do I want to capture?
3. Will I be conducting interviews?
4. What equipment will be needed?
5. What kind of resources do I have for the venue?
6. Will I need help or assistance?
7. How will I backup the captured content?
8. Do I need to consider any private policies for speakers/attendees?
9. Which live streaming platforms will be used: Periscope, Meerkat or Blab?

2. Make a schedule for the event

With MobCon and PhotoPlus Expo, there was a speaking/event schedule published months ahead of the conferences, so I compiled a schedule for myself on what needed to be done and where once I defined my goals for the event.

Print out a copy of the event schedule and create one for yourself based on your goals. Things to take into consideration:
1. If you want to interview people – contact them ahead of time to ask for their permission and give them a head’s up. This ensures they’re ready to be on camera (key for the ladies) and displays professionalism.
2. Are there any time issues to work out ahead of time? Pinpoint all time disruptions and decide how to deal with them ahead of time, if possible.
3. What kinds of equipment will be most useful at this event? The tech gear used for MobCon was very different than PhotoPlus Expo because we had control of the space at Mobcon, and could choose where to host interviews or Periscope keynotes. If you know people who live stream events, it’s always a good idea to reach out and ask their opinion on the latest tech. Even if you don’t end up using it, you’ll have a good idea on what options are available.
4. Go visit the space ahead of time. This won’t always be possible, but the earlier you understand the layout of where the event will be held the better. I’m a visual person, so it’s very useful to me to know what space I’ll be working in ahead of time.
5. Set up ways to catch your live streaming outside of the the actual stream. If you’re using Periscope, set up a Katch account. If you’re Blabbing, you’ll want to record it. BUT it’s crucial to think about backups of your backups. At MobCon, we encountered a random technical issue during an interview with the conference’s favorite speaker, and we didn’t know it until it was too late. Instead of having an excellent 20 minute interview to share, we were only left with a little over 6 minutes. Talk about SAD! But it was a great lesson to always have an additional camera set up to capture interviews in case Periscope and Katch don’t work out. With Blab, you could use an app like Screenflow to capture what’s happening on your desktop. Bottom line, just like photography – have a backup for your backup.
6. Decide who you want to interview and get to know them. At Mobcon, I was responsible for interviewing several of the speakers, so I did a lot of research ahead of time on who they are as professionals and everyday people. I wanted to feel comfortable talking business, but also have the insight to refer to their personal interests during the interviews. This let them know I was genuinely interested in who they are as people. When you can reference something that isn’t common knowledge, it always brings a smile to their face. But bottom line, it’s professional to do your homework ahead of time and be prepared. In addition to research, write out your questions ahead of time, but know you won’t necessarily have to follow that line of questioning if an answer brings out another interesting concept. My best advice and something I learned at MobCon is to play off of my natural curiosity when interviewing someone. This gives the interview a natural feel instead of being scripted. BUT being prepared will allow the confidence to make those decisions.

3. Start promoting the live streaming online

Now that we’ve discussed the background work, it’s time to start promoting what you’re doing. The sooner you can get started ahead of the event, the better, especially if you have a small audience or haven’t been live streaming up to this point.

If you haven’t ever conducted a Pericope or Blab, you’ll definitely want to create an account and start promoting those channels across other social networks, email newsletters, blogs, and on your website. Utilize any channel you can to bring new followers to the account, and don’t be shy to straight up ask for it from your current followers. If you’re already providing value then they will want to hear from you in other places, and will be curious to see new things.

For the PhotoPlus Expo event, I was notified of that event a little over a week ahead of time, so there wasn’t much of a chance to promote what we’d be doing. But we created a Facebook ad, pushed the information out on multiple social channels, promoted the new Periscope channel, and conducted a Periscope the night before the event started at the brand networking event. However, with Mobcon we started a month ahead. Ryan did a few Periscopes leading up to the event, I did one, a blog was written, it was promoted on social networks, and in company emails.

The additional time with MobCon made a big difference in how much participation we had during the event. Even though it was still a relatively small audience, they were excited and engaged throughout the conference.

Finally, it’s key to utilize any contacts who are already on Periscope or Blab and ask them to promote your event and/or interview you about it. This is a great way to get promotional coverage without it being directly from your brand, which can make a huge difference. Pinpoint influencers you have relationships with and who would be interested in the type of event. It will be easier to get their support IF it’s something they’d naturally be interested in.

4. Share the event set up

The event setup is the part that happens before folks arrive.

If it’s a conference, you typically have a day of seats being arranged, equipment tests, etc. and this can be a fun and engaging way to kick off the live streaming. It will be the perfect time to test out all your equipment – mics, tripods, stabilizers, cameras, etc – and give the audience behind-the-scenes access to setting up the event.

A few things to consider:
1. What equipment needs to be tested?
2. Where is the best place to set up equipment during the event?
3. Where is the best lighting for interviews (if you’re conducting them)?
4. What is the quality of sound with and without additional mics?
5. Are there places to leave additional equipment?
6. WHERE will you charge up?

It’s NOT sexy to run out of batteries mid-stream or mid-interview, so take every precaution to avoid it. At MobCon, we had an additional charging panel installed beneath our seats where we worked throughout the event to charge our phones and laptops. But both of us were amply prepared with additional chargers if need be. At one point, I had a charger hanging off my phone to keep it charged during a Periscope because the outlet was too far.

Bottom line, be as prepared as possible ahead of time. Leave nothing to the imagination if you can help it.

5. Ready, set, action! Now that you’ve done all the work, it’s go time!!

My best advice is:

1. Get lots of rest and be hydrated for the event. You’ll be anxious and that’s normal, but if you’re rested and taking proper care of yourself, you’ll deal with the stress effortlessly.

2. Make a decision ahead of time that you will go with the flow, regardless of what happens. No matter how much you plan and measure ahead of time – there’s going to be plenty that won’t work out. And that’s okay! At MobCon, we wanted to a lot more than we had time for. While that may upset some people, the way I view it is that we’ll have more surprises to pull out of the bag for the next conference.

3. Print out all your materials and be prepared. Take the conference schedule, your schedule, and speaker questions with you. Also, prepare titles for the live streaming ahead of time, so you can copy and paste them without hurry.

4. Have fun!! I had a blast at PhotoPlus Expo and Mobcon, and even though not everything worked out according to plan, I was able to enjoy them because the work was done ahead of time.

Overview:

There’s a TON of information I’m leaving out, but that simply means you’ll need to come back!

Live streaming an event is much more about the background work than the actual on site work, so do your research, nerd out with schedules and tech, and make sure you’re prepared because when the day comes – you should enjoy it! Similar to cooking – when it’s prepared with love, it melts in your mouth. But when it’s prepared by a stressed out or anxious person – it won’t be enjoyable.

But now I want your opinion – Have I left out anything?

HOW TO BUILD A THREE STEP FACEBOOK ADS FUNNEL


When you are building your Facebook Ad campaigns, do you have an overarching strategy or do you find yourself creating different ads for different purposes at random?

With the proper preparation and three Facebook ads, you can build an automated Facebook Ads funnel that introduces new people to your products, converts them into engaged prospects and then closes them into paying customers.

And you can automate this all within Facebook Ads.

We will help you develop a Three Step Facebook Ads Funnel strategy that utilizes landing pages, Facebook retargeting pixels and Facebook ads to automate the nurturing of your prospects into paying customers.

The Set Up
First things first… in order to utilize this strategy you’ll need a few things:
Blog Post(s): At least one relevant blog post that you can drive targeted traffic to.
Lead Magnet Delivery and “Thank You” page: We will use a lead magnet as a way to prequalify your prospects and move them through your funnel.
Sales or Product page: This is your final goal, what do you want your prospects to do? Purchase a product? Schedule a demo? You will need a landing page that your prospects can use to complete your desired action
Retargeting Pixels: The Automation in your sales funnel will rely on retargeting pixels to serve ads to prospects at different stages throughout the funnel, you need to be able to place these pixels on your website.
Once these weapons are in place, you can being concepting and forming your funnel.

The Funnel, Simplified
The funnel we are building is broken into three stages. Attraction. Conversion. Closing.

Attraction Stage: You will use Facebook ad targeting to deliver content (in this case a blog article) to the people who will benefit most from it. This will not only introduce your target audience to your brand, but also draw people into your Facebook Ads funnel.
Conversion Stage: You will engage your audience with an expanded piece of content, a Lead Magnet. Use this stage to prequalify your prospects into the final stage of the funnel by separating those casual browsers from those truly interested in what you have to offer.
Closing Stage: The final stage will deliver your sales page to the prospects who have pre-qualified themselves at earlier stages in the funnel. By pre-qualifying your prospects, you’ll know you are only serving ads to people who have already shown an elevated interest in your brand or product.
Below we will break each stage into your backend setup and your Facebook Ad Set up with suggestions for each.

Building the Funnel
Step One: The Attraction Stage
Stage one is all about attracting a targeted audience and introducing them to your brand. In order to attract your target audience into your funnel you’ll need a piece of content that draws people out of their news feed and onto your site. It needs to be relevant and helpful.

Backend Setup: You will need to place a pixel in the header of your website that will build a Facebook custom audience from anyone who visits your website (including your blog). You can access this Custom Audience set up through the “Audiences” tab under the Tools Section of your Facebook Ads Manager. We will call this audience “Website Visitors”. Once you have confirmed your pixel is ready to be used, you’re ready to start driving a targeted audience to your website and capturing them.

Website Vistors

Facebook Ad Setup: The first ad in the funnel will be promoting a blog post on your website. Choose your audience targeting based off your ideal customer: Who is your product or service designed for? What need does it fufill? Be as specific as possible while still having a large audience size. The size of this initial audience will affect the size of subsequent stages in the funnel. Build this ad as a “website clicks” ad with the intention of driving as many people as possible from your target audience to your website to be captured by your retargeting pixel.

When everything is setup, The Attraction Stage will introduce targeted prospects to your brand and capture them via the retargeting pixel on your website and add them into the “Website Visitors” audience and move them to the second stage of your funnel. Keep the content of these ads fresh and deliver new blog posts frequently to engage new members of your target audience.

Step Two: The Conversion Stage
Stage two of the funnel is all about qualifying and converting your prospects inside the “Website Visitors” audience. This stage will help you separate your true prospects from those who are only mildly interested and the casual browsers. We will use a lead magnet to extract some information from our prospects and prep them for the final stage of the funnel.

Backend Setup: This step requires two things. First, a lead magnet that requires a person to submit their personal information in order to be delivered content. This lead magnet must have a “thank you” page that the prospect is delivered to after they submit their information. The second portion of the setup happens on this “thank you page” where we will add a second retargeting pixel. This pixel will be set up exactly the same as your first retargeting pixel, but will only create an audience from prospects who have landed in your thank you page. We will call this audience “Qualified Prospects” and use it in the third and final step of your funnel.

Qualified Prospects

Facebook Ad Setup: The second ad in the funnel will deliver your lead magnet to your “Website Visitors” audience. The targeted prospects in this audience will have shown some initial interest in your brand by either visiting your website, or clicking on your first Facebook ad, so they will be familiar with your brand. Now is your chance to engage them and showcase your value. A/B test the tone and imagery of this and be sure you are closely monitoring your results. If an ad isn’t working, try something new. Build this ad with the goal of “Website Conversions”, because you ultimately want people to download or register for your lead magnet and be sent to your ‘thank you’ page where they will be moved to the third and final stage of the funnel.

*Keep in mind the size of your retargeting audience and use a daily budget that is appropriate.

By delivering an advanced form of content to engaged members of your target audience you will be able to convert and qualify your prospects more easily. By allowing your prospects to qualify themselves, you are setting them up for stage three of the funnel with little to no pressure on your part.

Step Three: The Closing Stage
In the third and final stage of your funnel, you’ll be making the pitch (and sale) to your qualified prospects. In The Closing Stage we will deliver a sales or product page to the “Qualified Prospects” retargeting list that was developed in stage two. This will be the final stage of the funnel with the goal of completing a purchase from you.

Backend Setup: The setup for this page is simple, you’ll need a product or sales page that you will deliver to your “Qualified Prospects” retargeting audience that we generated on the “thank you page’ of the ad in The Conversion Stage. This page will depend on your niche or industry, but the goal here is to have people exit the funnel as a paying customer.

Facebook Ad Setup: The final ad in your Facebook Ads funnel is another “Website Conversions” ad. This ad will make the hard sell of your product or service. Use powerful imagery and text that delivers your value proposition. Because of the way that the funnel is designed, only people who are familiar with your brand will be delivered ads, so you aren’t trying to make a cold sale. Your ads just need to close the deal.

*Again, keep in mind the size of your retargeting audience in this stage, it will likely be relatively small. Use a daily budget that is appropriate.

In order for people to make it this far into your funnel, they will have had to: first, visit your website and engage with your content. And second: Interact with your lead magnet in exchange for personal information. These people have already shown immense interest in your brand to this point and have pre-qualified themselves for a sale.

Put It To Work
This funnel, once set up, will automate your prospects from stage to stage at their own pace. Consider the following tips as you begin to implement this strategy:
Keeping your top of funnel content updated and relevant will help attract more people to your retargeting audience and speed the process along.
The size of your funnel is determined by the size of your original target audience and also the budget of your initial campaign. The larger the audience and more money you invest in feeding your funnel, the more potential prospects your funnel will be able to draw down into paying customers.
Always be monitoring and tweaking your ads to optimize performance. A/B test relentlessly.
With a little investment in quality content, a lead magnet and some set up, you can start to automate portions of your sales process and see your revenue stream grow! Let us know if you have any special tricks for automating your sales process with Facebook Ads in the comments below.

3 SIMPLE WAYS TO GET MORE EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS RIGHT NOW

Everybody wants more dedicated email subscribers.

But a lot of businesses struggle to acquire them. They scrape by, getting a few email subscribers here and there, but in general, they don’t reach the numbers they’d like.

This is usually for a few reasons…

Their website isn’t optimized to convert visitors into email subscribers, and/or they don’t get enough consistent traffic.

Recently I faced the same problem with one of my websites – until I started implementing some of the things I’m about to show you.

Let’s dive in…

  1. Get a Non-Spammy Exit Pop-Up
    You’ve all seen spammy pop-ups when you visit web pages. Your first instinct is to click away and leave the website.

But the truth is, you actually can have success with the right kind of pop-up. And it can immediately boost your conversion rate and increase your email subscribers There are a few keys to doing this:

Have it “pop up” when visitors move their mouse to exit the page. Basically, the pop up will show every time a visitor scroll up to hit the back or the “X” button. This is important because it doesn’t interrupt the visitor from reading your content (because they were about to leave anyway) and in doing so, it makes them more likely to opt-in.
Use software like photoshop to create an eye-catching design
ONLY have it “pop up” once per day, and only on your actual blog posts. The reasoning here is that you’ll probably already have calls-to-action on your other pages, so the pop up would be overkill
Here is a good example of a high-converting exit pop-up:

If you’re looking for a pop-up software that makes it easy to do all of these things, I highly recommend Ninja Popups. It’s cheap, works well, and I’ve had great success with it.

  1. Post Your Content in a Relevant Subreddit
    If you haven’t been using Reddit, now is the time to get started. Seriously – you’ve been missing out.

This week alone, I’ve had over 30k visits on one of my websites – with about 90% of that traffic coming through Reddit. It all stemmed from this post:

Screen Shot 2015-12-18 at 12.20.20 PM

Since my article was about dating, I searched through relevant “dating” subreddits. The “Seduction” subreddit was the most popular, so I posted my article there. I had two friends upvote it to get the ball rolling…and before I knew it, it was snowballing.

But even when I’ve posted articles that only got a few upvotes, I still received a few thousand extra visitors. This has turned into hundreds of extra subscribers for me – and it can do the same for you.

But if you’re like I was, you might not know the first thing about using Reddit. So here’s how you can get started:
Go to reddit.com
Search for a keyword in the upper righthand corner
Scroll through the list of subreddits and open each of these in a new tab
Repeat this process until you have about 5-10 subreddits
Bookmark these subreddits
These will likely be the most relevant subreddits for you to post articles and advice in. Post at least one article per week in these subreddits, and reply to other reddit posts throughout the week and add value to people (always be adding value).

  1. Guest Post
    Guest posting is a tried and true way to get more traffic back to your blog – and with the right exit pop up optin, you should be able to convert these visitors into subscribers.

Here is a simple way to reach out to influencers and get them to accept your guest post:
Go to Buzzsumo.com
Type in the influencer’s website
Take a screenshot of the top 4 shared articles
It will look something like this:

From there, include the screenshot in an email to the influencer. Explain that these are their most shared posts, and based on these, you’ve come up with three topics that should also perform well with their audience.

This strategy works surprisingly well – and it shows that you’ve taken the time to look through their blog and really think about great potential topics.

Building your email list is a process, and it takes a bit of patience and perseverance. But if you follow the above tips, you should immediately see a big boost in your number of subscribers.