Face it, the reason you want to be a great blogger is to grow your business and make more money, right? Of course, you do. In order to make money from your blog you will need to find ways to monetize your blog. If you do not offer anything for sale on your blog the money fairies will not automatically you give you money just because you’re an excellent blogger.
You have to do things that enable you to earn money. You have many options but let’s just talk about three of them.
Your Own Products / Services
One of the best ways to make the most money is to offer your own products and / or services. In order to know what type of products or services to sell to your audience you must know who your audience is, what problems they have that you can solve, and how much they can afford to pay. This requires a lot of market study, thought and consideration, but it’s the most profitable way to make money from your self-hosted blog. With your own products you can even get affiliates to help you sell them.
Advertising
You can earn money placing advertising on your blog. You can work with a company, or you can work on getting the sponsors yourself. There are many options when it comes to placing advertisements on your site. The drawback to going with a company is that you are not usually in charge of which ads appear on your website and there could be cases where competitors’ ads appear. If you are in control of which ads appear, you’ll be better off. You want to be careful about sending your visitors off to other sites. Some ad networks do allow you to block some ads, and some don’t. Therefore check out each solution before signing up.
Affiliate Marketing
Another really great way to make money from your blog is to find products and services that solve problems for your audience that someone else made. Once you find the product or service you market it on your site via textual ads, graphic ads, and by blogging about the product or service so that your audience understands what’s in it for them if they purchase what you are recommending. You can’t just put the link on your blog and expect them to click it and buy it; you need to talk about it in multiple ways: blog about it, promote it on social media, mention the product in a webinar or podcast, and so forth.
As you see, there really isn’t just one way to make money. In fact you should choose more than one type of money making activity for your blog. You want to create multiple streams of income so that you are not just relying on one thing to make money. Within each category there are also multiple ideas from very low cost entry products, to very high cost one-on-one coaching and personal services that you can offer. Be very focused on the type of products you will offer your audience and you will earn money and become a profitable blogger.
Need help with your blogging? If so, contact me I offer coaching for business blogging.
One of the most valuable assets an online business can have is an opt-in list. What’s this and how does it work? We’re here to help!
An opt-in marketing list is where a customer (or potential customer, but it’s most often somebody who has purchased something from your site) gets an option to include themselves in on an email list that your company sends out.
This is very different from spam, which is where unscrupulous business owners go “phishing” for random email addresses that they find on the Internet and relentlessly bombard these poor souls with emails. Spam does nobody any good and basically ends up costing a business a lot of money and ends up irritating people.
Opt-In Lists
An opt-in list, though, is a brilliant for business because the people who receive your emails are actually interested in receiving them. You can send to this list of people whoare interested in keeping in touch with your business by sending occasional emails and only when you have something of worth to say or offer – which can detail everything from the current goings-on of your business to deals and offers and promotions. Many companies offer special promotions to those who join their opt-in list as an incentive to, well, opt in.
Opt-in lists give customers who are interested in you your attention. Even better, the effect of an opt-in list is entirely traceable, as if you start offering promotions through your list you’ll be able to tell how many of them get redeemed. Opt-in lists are also another great way to get out more of that free expert content you offer, specially designed for those who wish to follow you. Many smaller businesses offer Q and A sessions through their opt-in list, where followers can ask specific questions that can be answered through the general forum of your email.
Promotions
These lists are also the digitalequivalent to having “regulars” at a store and engaging them in casual chat. Through an email list you can develop more intimate relationships with customers as compared to the normal “anonymous buyer” that hops into your site to pick up a few items, and then hops out without you knowing anything more about them other than what they bought. Close relationships with customers generate brand loyalty, which is a hot commodity.
Want another bonus? Email marketing can also be entirely free if you manage it yourself. Even if you choose to outsource your email marketing or leave it to an employee to handle, it is much cheaper than print advertising because of how targeted it is. Individual customers make specific requests, and you fill them by sending out the information direct to those who asked for it. It’s a very simple, yet incredibly effective method of advertising that is guaranteed to optimize conversions and get people talking about you, particularly if you make your opt-in list a desirable deal to join.
We are here to help you with your email marketing needs if you’re overwhelmed and need help. Contact us today!
You’ve heard the old saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Now, more than ever images are more important in your marketing plan.
We live in a visual world. We make decisions based on what we see. Images appeal to our emotions.
Content may be king, but images are queen. With networks like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, images are shared instantly from your smartphone.
Visual content including photos, videos and graphs, have been proven to grab the attention of your readers and are more likely to be shared than text alone. As a marketer, images can help you build effective and shareable selling campaigns.
Of course, you don’t want to just throw random images into your marketing mix. You need relevant and professional looking images that engage and help communicate what you are trying to say?
The 3 basics of creating effective visual content should be:
The style and type of image needs to be consistent throughout your all your products. That doesn’t mean all your images have to be photographs or clip art. What I mean is you should be keeping a consistent color and font style.
Know your target market. Knowing who your target market is and their preferences will help you determine where and what types of images to use.
Think outside the normal. Be creative in your use of images. Go ahead and change images, add text to photos or combine images.
Where can you use images?
Full length articles need images to break up big chunks of text. Images can be used in your branding and logo. Use images in your social media channels to make it more interesting.
Use images online in your website and offline in any advertising or conferences you participate in.
Images are clearly a major part of buying behavior because they grab attention and evoke emotions in your buyers.
You work hard to get people to opt-in to your mailing list. Once you get them on your list the last thing you want is your emails to end up in the dreaded spam folder. Here are some tips to help make sure your emails get to where they need to be – in their inbox.
1. Do not buy lists! Sure, we all want huge amounts of subscribers but it’s not worth your reputation to pay for those subscribers for a few different reasons. One, it’s not a targeted list of people. Out of say 1,000 people maybe a handful of them will actually be interested in what you have to offer. And two, these lists have the potential to get you blacklisted. How? If people don’t recognize you and mark it as spam or there are a bunch of bad (dead) emails that start bouncing back these are red flags and can quickly classify you as a spammer. When it comes to protecting your reputation and your mailing list, please stay away from lists of names you can purchase!
2. Pay attention to the from field. When setting up your list(s), it’s important to pay special attention to the from field. You want to use your name or business name so that people will recognize you right away. As mentioned above, if someone doesn’t recognize the from name (and even the email address you use), it’s way too easy for them to mark your email spam.
3. Clean up your lists regularly. It doesn’t take much, at least not in Aweber – the service I use and highly recommend – to go through and clean up your lists. What do I mean by cleaning up a list? Removing those subscribers that have been inactive for long periods of time or bad email addresses.
4. Don’t use words that are considered spam. When writing your subject line, it’s imperative that you skip words that look like spam. One of the most obvious words is free (and that includes writing it like this: FREE. In fact, don’t ever use all capital letters period). If at all possible avoid using this word in your emails. But there’s also some other words that can send an email straight to the spam folder:
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Stepping outside our comfort zone can be one of the hardest things any of us can do. Some people experience panic attacks or freeze up just thinking about trying new things. Have you stepped out of your comfort zone lately?
I like change and learning new things but I still have my comfort zone. So what I purposely do is make myself step outside the zone all the time. I’m not going to lie sometimes its scary and nerve racking but well worth it in the end because I know that’s were awesome happens. You end up gaining new skills and experience that otherwise you may have never mastered.
Many successful people will tell you that challenging yourself and trying new ideas and strategies doesn’t always work but if you’re not learning or growing you will never experience awesome!
Being a marketing coach and consultant I find that change is a constant in my marketplace. My job is to help my clients stay current and also step outside their box. Just this past week I worked with my one of my clients and together we both tried something new. She had not really done much video marketing and I had never produced anyone in a video (besides myself) so together we did it!
What a great time we had with the camera crew and the staff at GMLCPA. We both made our debut, stepped outside the zone and gained experience. What more could you ask for, right? Well now I’m ready to do more of these and so is my client because we got over the scary part of trying something new.
I’d like to challenge you to take time this week and step outside your comfort zone and push your personal boundaries. Try something new. Stretch yourself. Push yourself to do something even if it’s a small step and be the brilliant, talented and brave person that you know you can be. Please be sure to share your experience with us here on the blog.
One of the best things about online marketing is the advent of social media. Social media lets you promote your content, expand awareness of your brand, and engage with your clients and potential customers. But you can’t just send blind updates without doing just a bit more to ensure that your audience wants to engage with you. Getting your audience to respond to your calls to action is all about engagement. After all, social media is supposed to be social, right?
1. Update Your About Pages & Social Media Profiles
First things first – start updating your “About” pages on your websites, and all your social media profiles. You want there to be no mistake what your brand stands for, and who you are. In addition, every change you make is a chance to cross-promote on other social media. Your About pages, Contact pages and Social Media profiles are great places to cross promote.
2. Provide a Blurb of What’s to Come When Promoting Content
When you share any content, whether yours or someone else’s, always provide a little blurb to help pique interest and make your audience curious. For instance, if you’re sharing a Top 10 Ways that You Can Engage Your Clients thru Social Media article, you might say something like “Pay special attention to tip number 2” in your promotions. This will make your audience want to click through to read the blog post or article. In addition, ask them “What’s your favorite tip? Come back and share here in the comments.”
3. Use Multiple Types & Forms of Content to Keep Your Audience’s Interest
Don’t only share one type or form of content. There are so many forms of content to choose from, such as images, text, eBooks, articles, blog posts, infographics, memes, videos and so forth. There are also many types of content (such as evergreen content) that will be current for a long time, and then there is newsworthy timely content that you will want to share as soon as it occurs. Keep your audience interested by being exciting and different.
4. Never Forget Your Call To Action (CTA)
When you share anything on social media, always remember to put a CTA. It’s also important to vary the CTA. For instance, sometimes you might say, “share this with your friends” another time you might say “comment if you disagree, like if you agree” or you might say “buy now” as your CTA. Whatever you choose as your CTA, don’t overwhelm your audience with too many choices. But always include one, and make it different than the last time.
5. Show Off Your Personality (Let Your Helpers Do So Too)
Consumers want to feel as if they’re engaging with real people. Since you’re a real person that should be easy. But, we often get so tied up with automation (which is wonderful and useful) that we forget to engage with people. If you outsource to anyone who is handling your social media, they don’t need to act like robots. Let them show their personality too. Keep your business’s mission statement handy not only for yourself but for those who represent your brand. As long as you stay on message, it’s okay to let your personality show through.
6. Use Your Metrics To Improve Your Efforts
What posts, updates, and sorts of shares are your fans currently interacting with the most? By knowing what the numbers say, you can use that information to increase your efforts in a smart way so that you avoid doing what isn’t working, and do more of what is working. Not every audience will respond the same to every type of content that you share. But it’s impossible to know without looking at the analytics. When is your audience online? What types of content do they like, share, respond to the most? Never rely on guesses; rely on the facts and figures that you can obtain.
7. Use Apps & Technology to Improve Your Connections
There are so many apps that you can use to schedule, study, and interact with your audience. Did you know that there are custom apps that you can use for Facebook that will help you run contests, encourage email sign ups, add a storefront and more? Try Heyo to create mobile optimized campaigns for Facebook. Want to create useful Facebook Tabs, awesome cover photos, scheduled posts and more? Try Pagemodo.com. There are apps that can do so much, the best thing for you to do is ask your colleagues what they use, or simply do a Google search.
8. Keep Conversing With Your Audience
Speaking of apps, you can put apps on your smartphone that enable you to speak with your audience at all times. You want to talk to them at “off” times as much as “on” times. You might seem too robotic if you only post on Monday through Friday during business hours. It’s also great to post from different locations; it shows that you’re a busy person who nevertheless cares about your audience. Be sure to use some automation for this, such as using apps to schedule weekend updates.
9. Add the Right Metadata to Your Websites & Pages
Metadata is information that essentially summarizes data on your site, like the title, description, author, date and other things such as identifying images and more. The thing to remember is which metadata is important to include on your website so that when you share a link on social media the right information is presented in an attractive way. This will make your audience want to click through.
a. Titles – This is the keyword rich title of your article or blog post. On Facebook, it will show up in bold above the link.
b. Description – This shows up under the link and is usually the first words of your article or blog post that are NOT header text.
c. Image – You can use the code of your page to specify the images that are allowed to show up in the thumbnail.
d. Canonical URL – Within the code of the site you can ensure that everyone goes to the same home page when clicking through to your site.
It’s important to consider these factors when creating your WebPages and blogs so that when you or others share articles or blog posts they find interesting on their social media sites, it looks good and gets the message across that you want.
10. Ask Your Fans What They Want
Finally, never forget to ask your current fans, connections, and followers what they want from you. You can send out a survey, answer questions, and more to find out what your connections what. The more you give them what they want, the more they’re likely to engage with you in social media.
Use social media to communicate the story of your brand. As you use these top ten ways to engage your audience in social media, try to remember what your business core values are, what the benefits of your products and services are to your clients, and your point of being on social media.
Let us help you brand your business. Visit our services area on our site to find out how we can make YOUR BUSINESS more visible and unique. If you don’t see a service that you need let us know how we can help you GROW your business.
When you realize that the entire point of social media is to drive traffic to your website, which should be the center of your online marketing world, you start to use social media correctly. Social media is not supposed to be the destination of your followers. No, social media should only be the beginning of a long relationship that involves sharing, interacting, learning, and engaging.
Use social media to remindfollowers to visit your website for more information, products and services. Use social media as a way to listen to what your audience wants. Use social media as the method by which you become an important industry expert from whom your audience seeks information. The following tips are used by industry experts, large organizations and businesses alike to drive traffic from social media to their websites. No need to reinvent the wheel, these ten tips work.
1) Become a Thought Leader
It may seem strange that the more popular you can become off the Internet, the more popular you will be on the Internet and the more people will connect with you, follow you, and then go to your website. Spread yourself around, write for other popular blogs, magazines, and newsletters then cross promote. Accept speaking engagements outside of the Internet but record them, and put them on YouTube.com, embed the recordings or links on your site, and share via social media. Write a book, and use that as your calling card.
2) Create an Interactive Community
People love to talk to each other about issues that affect them. If you really want to offer a huge benefit to your customers and potential customers, form a community around them. Create a message board that is interactive and generates a lot of visitor activity and participation. Promote the board, which will promote your website – thus gathering not only more traffic the first time you promote the forum, but if it’s active people will also come back again and again.
3) Don’t Forget SEO
Search engine optimization is a very important component in any online marketing strategy. Optimize for social media by including the right keywords, the right metadata, and including information about images, content, and more, so that you can be found. Remember to focus on both on-page and off-page SEO for best results.
4) Engage on Social Media
You can’t just open a social media account, fill out a profile, start blasting updates and expect any results unless maybe you already have celebrity status. You need to start with a plan, understand your goals, choose your tactics, and then seek to engage with others on social media to ensure that your plans happen and your goals are met.
5) Listen to the Buzz
A really great way to use social media is to use it to listen to the buzz about your business. But don’t just listen. When you find something about your industry or product in general, or your business in particular you want to ensure that you respond with the right answers, links, and information so that you can get your message out to participants. If you don’t find any buzz, create it. Make your own groups, start your own discussions, and share, share, share.
6) Track, Measure & Adjust
Find out which types of content get more shares, more comments and more action. Know what your customers want to read. Ask them what they need to know. The more you can track the success of your campaigns the more you can improve. You can actually adjust and improve any campaign in progress if you have the right information.
7) Use Strategic Paid Advertisements
Paid advertisements can be very expensive if you aren’t sure why you’re doing it. When it comes to social media, run an advertisement to get more signups for your newsletter or more likes on your Facebook Page. Then market your products and services to them that way, rather than using the ads as a way to market your product directly. While at first you may not notice much of a change in traffic, you will over time because you’ll have them in your marketing funnel.
8) Use Varied Content on Social Media
Mix up what type of content you share and add to your social media updates. Use newsworthy content, evergreen content and content in different forms like video, infographics, and text. You want to write a blurb before each share in order to pique the reader’s attention and share high-quality, relevant content on a regular basis.
9) Work with Influencers
There are always going to be “rock stars” in every industry that are well known and who can highly influence your audience. Researches who these people are, connect with them, and find ways to engage with them in a way that helps you leverage their audience to spread your message. If you can get an influencer to recommend your products and/or services to others, your traffic will explode.
10) Present Content with Strong “Call to Actions”
Never send out any content on social media without a call to action (“CTA”). Your CTA must be varied, and to the point. Don’t beat around the bush. If you want your audience to share your infographic, ask them to. If you want your audience to “like” your post, ask them to. If you want your audience to click through to read the rest of something on a website, ask them to. Finally, if you want them to buy something, ask them to buy it. Tell them the benefits of doing so, and ask them to do it.
It’s clear that social media can be an important avenue to gain more traffic to your website or blog. But, it’s not going to happen automatically. You are going to have to work a little bit more to get the ball rolling. Fortunately, these tried and true tips really do work. By using them you will drive more traffic to your website from social media. Not only that, if you’re clear on your message you’ll drive targeted traffic that is ready to answer your calls to action.
Chances are you’re putting a lot of time, energy, and effort into your blog or website. Are you getting the results that you want? Are you achieving your online business goals? If not, you may not be making the most of your website or blog.
Test, Test, and Test Some More
The best way to make the most of your website or blog is to test what works and what doesn’t. There are many different things you can test and ways to test. Test headlines, test calls to action and test different content formats.
For example, your audience may respond more energetically to video content than they do to print content. Or maybe they prefer reviews over “how to” articles. Testing is the only way to know what your audience is responding to. Once you know, then you can adapt your strategies and tactics. Split testing is often the easiest method to test.
Analytics
Analytics are almost a website or blog essential. They tell you who visits your site, how long they stay there and what pages they navigate to. Analytics can also tell you the organic keywords used, or the link used, to find your website. Google Analytics is a free tool that makes it easy to create an account and then literally cut and paste a piece of code into your site’s code.
Just cutting and pasting code isn’t enough, though. You need to also review the analytics and base your strategy and decisions on the information. For example, if you find out that the majority of your visitors come from the south then you might create more content, promotions, and offers that appeal to that region.
Facilitate Engagement
If you’re not encouraging participation, comments, and interaction then you’re missing out. Create systems and opportunities to connect and allow conversation. Blog commenting is a start.
However, the posts need to ask questions and motivate responses. Even more, you want to reply to comments in a thoughtful manner that motivates more comments and feedback. Plug-ins that create forums, chats, and social media participation are another means to facilitate engagement.
To make the most of your website or blog, you want to create a stronger connection with your audience and visitors. By testing, using analytics to track the results, and by creating opportunities for conversation, you’re able to take your site to the next level. It strengthens your relationships with your audience and helps increase traffic, opt-ins, as well as conversions and sales.
What have you found to be helpful in developing your web presence? Are you blogging? I have found that sharing my blog posts on my social media platforms works well for my business perhaps it might help you if you haven’t tried it.
Confused on the best ways to approach your online marketing? We offer one-on-one coaching to help you with navigating the sometimes confusing options of online marketing. Contact us today! https://strategizeyoursuccess.com/staging2/coaching-consulting
LinkedIn is a specialty social networking site. It’s much more specialized than the others due to the audience it attracts. LinkedIn is specifically for professionals. If you’re looking for a job then it’s a must. However, business owners looking to attract prospects and connect with industry professionals can also utilize LinkedIn in a productive and prosperous way. LinkedIn is a platform that has worked exceptionally well for me to reach my target audience. So let’s take a look at this platform a little closer.
What Is LinkedIn?
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with 225 million members in over 200 countries. It’s a social networking site that offers professionals a number of benefits and features. It began in concept in the living room of the owner and was launched in 2003. Ten years later it is a thriving social networking site that can be used in a number of business building ways.
The Many Features and Benefits of LinkedIn
Company Pages – The first element of LinkedIn is that it allows business owners to create Company Pages. Unlike Profile Pages, Company Pages comes with analytics as well as an ability to share meaningful content and promote your business. If you have a business and are on LinkedIn I’d advise taking this extra step.
LinkedIn groups – This feature may be one of the most beneficial because it allows you to join groups that are specific to your audience and your industry. Within a group you can connect with other professionals and prospects to build an audience. Groups support conversations, article posting, polling, and display group icons on your Profile Page to further enhance your connections. If you feel comfortable enough with LinkedIn you can start your own group.
Advertising – Like many social networking sites, LinkedIn offers advertising options for members. You can reach a targeted audience with ads that you can test and track for best results.
Marketing solutions – LinkedIn offers a professional membership that goes above and beyond the standard membership. You can then utilize features like their Marketing Solutions program that also lets you create specific messages for your audience through targeted content marketing.
Integration – Finally, LinkedIn is a site that understands you want to make the most of your social networking efforts. You can integrate many social media management sites with your LinkedIn pages. Integration saves time and maximizes your results so you can write and schedule posts, manage comments, and monitor analytics from one place. However, being active in the conversations that occur in groups for instance is key to having success on LinkedIn.
Creating Content for LinkedIn
It’s important to remember that while you can integrate your social marketing efforts, LinkedIn has a unique audience. It often makes sense to create unique content for LinkedIn followers. They tend to be professionals and their needs may be different than your general audience.
People tend to trust the information they find on LinkedIn more than other sites. This simple fact can help you build tremendous authority and credibility in your niche. If you’re not using LinkedIn to grow your business or you’ve let your profile lag, consider giving this top rated social media site the attention it deserves.
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Social media sites have been offering advertising programs for a while now. Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn provide business owners with the means to promote and reach targeted audiences on their sites. The programs are becoming quite popular because of the results they’re able to deliver. Additionally, it’s a new way to reach your audience and may help you extend your advertising strategy beyond Google.
Why Social Media Advertising Works
In addition to the fact that millions of people access their Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts on a daily basis, they’re also accessing the sites on their mobile phone. That means that as an advertiser on one or more of these sites, you’re getting in front of your audience on a fairly consistent basis and that is what we all want, right?
Unlike other advertising mediums, it’s new so it grabs their attention. Some types of advertising can begin to lose their potency when users become accustomed to them. Their eyes barely glance at the ad before they move on. Social media advertising is still new and therefore it’s effective for many types of businesses whether it’s for your business or not as to be determined by experimenting with the different platforms. What works on LinkedIn may not work on Facebook or vice versa. So let’s talk about how you can target your ads.
Targeted Ads
One of the great things about social media is that it has the unique ability to market directly to highly targeted prospects. For example, Facebook makes the following statement, “While most online advertising provides about 38% targeting accuracy, Facebook, on average, delivers 89%. On Facebook, you’ll only pay to reach the right people who’ll love your business.”
This is because Facebook and other social marketing sites allow you to segment your audience. You can create ads based on your prospect’s location, age and gender, interests, and connections. I have found this to be a great way to build our audience and our client’s audiences with the right prospects. For example, you can advertise specifically to people to have them join a Facebook event. In some cases you can also find people who are similar to your best customers and create ads specifically for them.
Social media advertising is also generally less expensive than many other advertising opportunities and tactics. You reach more people and get more response from those people. Social media advertising also provides analytics, whereas some advertising methods do not provide this and make advertising efforts a guessing game.
Without analytics, you just don’t know if your ad worked or not. With any type of advertising for an internet business, analytics are essential and a clear-cut way to identify which ads are working and how well. You stay in control over your budget and your results.
If you have an advertising budget and strategy, consider adding social media marketing to that plan. You may be surprised at the results. It could change the way your business approaches advertising. Trying something new or shaking up your current ad campaigns can be a great way to expand your current client base.
At Strategize Your Success we offer coaching and consulting for those needing help in devising a marketing plan or strategically planning your advertising on social media. Contact us today! https://strategizeyoursuccess.com/staging2/coaching-consulting
