Cross-posting on Social Media: Should You Do It?

Social media has become an essential tool for promoting websites, running marketing campaigns, providing customer support, getting out your fresh blog post and much more. Having an effective social media strategy is crucial if you intend to run a successful online business and engage with your potential clients. 

Unfortunately, using social media can be complex because of the wide variety of platforms, tools, and techniques that are available. Understanding how to share your content across channels effectively is not always clear, which may eventually lead to a loss of brand reputation and customer loyalty. 

To give you more insight into using social media, this article will take a closer look at the benefits and drawbacks of “cross-posting” the same content across different social media channels.

 

What is Cross-Posting? 

Cross-posting is the act of creating content and posting it across multiple social media platforms. For example, you could write a blog post and submit the same piece to a variety of social media websites including LinkedIn, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Google+. Cross-posting is often accomplished with the use of scheduling tools like Hootsuite and Buffer. 

 

The Benefits of Cross-posting on Social Media

Cross-posting makes it easier to remain active on social media. Social media accounts that are active tend to be more popular because users enjoy receiving a regular stream of content and updates, especially if you are a reputable brand. Hence, a lack of social activity may lead to a loss of engagement and an eventual decline in subscriber rate. 

Cross-posting content allows you to take a single piece of content and use it across many different platforms – keeping your social media accounts active and healthy. This can help you to retain your existing audience, broaden your reach and attract new followers.

You can save an enormous amount of time


If you are a busy entrepreneur or a manager of a small business, you probably have a lot on your plate and overlook multiple business channels. You may not have the time required to write unique content that is specifically targeting different social media networks. Cross-posting allows you to create one great piece of content and push it out to multiple social media platforms in a small amount of time. You can also invest more time creating a single piece of “great” content instead of three or four “mediocre” pieces that are designed for different platforms.

Greater exposure for your content


Many social media users have a strong preference for certain platforms. For example, a user may log into LinkedIn or Twitter every day but rarely uses Facebook. You can only be assured of reaching these types of users by posting your content “everywhere.” What’s the point of spending hours writing an incredible blog post if only a handful of people get to read it?

More user engagement, more connections and more followers


Active social media channels grow rapidly and gain more followers. By regularly posting content to all platforms you can reach more people, grow your online presence and drive website traffic.

The Drawbacks of Cross-posting

Your content may not be appropriate for every social media platform


The users of different social media platforms have different goals and preferences. A LinkedIn user is typically looking for content that is highly informative, unique and useful for their professional development. A Facebook user may be looking for entertaining or mildly interesting content.

The content that you create for these platforms should be tailored to suit the audience that each platform attracts. The length, tone, language and topic of your content will determine how appropriate it is for each channel. If you post an inappropriate or irrelevant piece of content to a particular social platform it may be ignored or worse – it could cause followers to unsubscribe.

Different social media networks also use different vocabularies. For example, Twitter has “retweets” and Facebook has “reactions.” If you accidentally post a piece of content to Facebook that asks people to “retweet” your post, they are likely to realize that the content is re-posted. This can make the piece appear “spammy” and tarnish the reputation of your social channel and overall brand authority.

Dedicated followers may feel cheated

Some followers may be subscribed to more than one of your social media channels. If they begin to see the same re-hashed content appear across multiple platforms, they may begin to feel like they are being sent spam. This is a substantial problem because these dedicated followers are often your best and loyal customers.

Users feel less inclined to engage with your channel


If users realize that your content is posted to dozens of other media channels, they are likely to encounter the feeling that your account is automated and does not have a unique "personality." Their willingness to engage with your social media channel is reduced if they believe it is just another location where you repost your rehashed content.

Using Cross-promotion Instead of Cross-posting

If you are concerned about the negative impact of cross-posting content, you can use cross-promotion instead. Cross-promotion uses one piece of content posted to one or two social media platforms, which then gets promoted across other channels.

This approach means that you are not spamming the same piece of content across multiple networks, but you are making all of your followers aware of the content. Care must still be taken to tailor your message to the audience on each social platform. It can be a very practical approach and avoids some of the negative aspects of cross-posting content.

https://www.semrush.com/blog/cross-posting-on-social-media-should-you-do-it/ 

3 Quick Tips to Make Better Facebook Ads

Would you like to improve your advertising efforts and make better Facebook Ads?  How about spending less money and getting better results?  Yes, please!
Often I see that people can make just a few tweaks to their campaigns to improve their return on investment.  Sometimes people just aren’t sure where to look or what to test to know if they are getting good results.
In this article, I’ll share 3 quick tips to make better Facebook Ads.

#1 Test at least 2 ads (probably more)

The best way to make better Facebook ads is to test more ads.  We often don’t know what will work best and I’m often guessing wrong as to what people will like.  Testing multiple ads will help you see exactly which ad performs best.
Even by just testing two ads, you’ll have more information than just trying one and thinking that it didn’t work.
But you have to approach your testing systematically.  Don’t change too many things at once or you won’t know which change made the difference in the results.
I typically start with the demographics and see which demographic responds best to the ad (keeping the text and image of the ad the same).  Then I’ll move on to test other things.

You don’t even have to have a big budget with these tests, just $20-50 for each ad over a few days will give you good information. 

#2 Use the right targeting

If you want to make better Facebook Ads, reaching the right people is key.  Sometimes I see people with targets that are too wide or two narrow.  Targeting anyone who is interested in Business with an ad that is selling your product will probably be a waste of your money.

Getting the right targeting is probably the single-most important part of your ad.
Facebook has a lot of targeting options such as:

• Lookalike audiences – audiences that are like a custom audience such as email subscribers or website visitors
• Retargeting – showing your ad only to your website visitors or email subscribers
• Engagement targeting – targeting people who have interacted with your Facebook Page or Facebook vidoes
• Targeting by Job Title, income level, behaviors, or targeting the fans of another Facebook Page with an ad

Testing your demographics and targeting is the best way to figure out what audience responds best.

#3 Watch the right stats

The Facebook reports often default to a very basic level of information and if you dive a little deeper you will be able to compare the right stats so you can really know which ad is performing best.

In this example I sorted by CPC to compare which ad in the last 6 weeks was getting the best over all cost per click.

You can change your view of the columns by using the drop-down menu and customizing what you want to see or choosing one of their pre-built reports.  The best one I think is Performance and Clicks.  You can set that as your default view so that you don’t have to always switch back to it.

http://www.andreavahl.com/facebook-advertising/3-quick-tips-make-better-facebook-ads.php 

Blog Post Ideas: Maximize Your Reach with the Right Topics - Whiteboard Friday

With the ubiquity of blogs, one of the questions we hear the most is how to come up with the right topics for new posts. In today's episode of Whiteboard Friday, Rand explores six different paths to great blog topic ideas, and tells you what you need to keep in mind before you start.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!

Video transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week, we're going to chat about blog post ideas, how to have great ones, how to make sure that the topics that you're covering on your blog actually accomplish the goals that you want, and how to not run out of ideas as well.

The goals of your blog

So let's start with the goals of a blog and then what an individual post needs to do, and then I'll walk you through kind of six formats for coming up with great ideas for what to blog about. But generally speaking, you have created a blog, either on your company's website or your personal website or for the project that you're working on, because you want to:

• Attract a certain audience, which is great.
• Capture the attention and amplification, the sharing of certain types of influencers, so that you can grow that audience.
• Rank highly in search engines. That's not just necessarily a goal for the blog's content itself. But one of the reasons that you started a blog is to grow the authority, the ranking signals, the ability to rank for the website as a whole, and the blog hopefully is helping with that.
• Inspire some trust, some likeability, loyalty, and maybe even some evangelism from your readers.
• Provide a reference point for their opinions. So if you are a writer, an author, a journalist, a contributor to all sorts of sources, a speaker, whatever it is, you're trying to provide a home for your ideas and your content, potentially your opinions too.
• Covert our audience to take an action. Then, finally, many times a blog is crafted with the idea that it is a first step in capturing an audience that will then take an action. That could be buy something from you, sign up for an email list, potentially take a free trial of something, maybe take some action. A political blog might be about, "Call your Congress person." But those types of actions.

What should an individual post do?

From there, we get into an individual post. An individual post is supposed to help with these goals, but on its own doesn't do all of them. It certainly doesn't need to do more than one at a time. It can hopefully do some. But one of those is, generally speaking, a great blog post will do one of these four things and hopefully two or even three.
I. Help readers to accomplish a goal that they have.

So if I'm trying to figure out which hybrid electric vehicle should I buy and I read a great blog post from someone who's very, very knowledgeable in the field, and they have two or three recommendations to help me narrow down my search, that is wonderful. It helps me accomplish my goal of figuring out which hybrid car to buy. That accomplishment of goal, that helping of people hits a bunch of these very, very nicely.
II. Designed to inform people and/or entertain them.

So it doesn't have to be purely informational. It doesn't have to be purely entertainment, but some combination of those, or one of the two, about a particular topic. So you might be trying to make someone excited about something or give them knowledge around it. It may be knowledge that they didn't previously know that they wanted, and they may not actually be trying to accomplish a goal, but they are interested in the information or interested in finding the humor.
III. Inspiring some amplification and linking.

So you're trying to earn signals to your site that will help you rank in search engines, that will help you grow your audience, that will help you reach more influencers. Thus, inspiring that amplification behavior by creating content that is designed to be shared, designed to be referenced and linked to is another big goal.
IV. Creating a more positive association with the brand.

So you might have a post that doesn't really do any of these things. Maybe it touches a little on informational or entertaining. But it is really about crafting a personal story, or sharing an experience that then draws the reader closer to you and creates that association of what we talked about up here -- loyalty, trust, evangelism, likeability.

6 paths to great blog topic ideas

So knowing what our blog needs to do and what our individual posts are trying to do, what are some great ways that we can come up with the ideas, the actual topics that we should be covering? I have kind of six paths. These six paths actually cover almost everything you will read in every other article about how to come up with blog post ideas. But I think that's what's great. These frameworks will get you into the mindset that will lead you to the path that can give you an infinite number of blog post ideas.

1. Are there any unanswered or poorly answered questions that are in your field, that your audience already has/is asking, and do you have a way to provide great answers to those?

So that's basically this process of I'm going to research my audience through a bunch of methodologies, going to come up with topics that I know I could cover. I could deliver something that would answer their preexisting questions, and I could come up with those through...

• Surveys of my readers.
• In-person meetings or emails or interviews.
• Informal conversations just in passing around events, or if I'm interacting with members of my audience in any way, social settings.
• Keyword research, especially questions.

So if you're using a tool like Moz's Keyword Explorer, or I think some of the other ones out there, Ahrefs might have this as well, where you can filter by only questions. There are also free tools like Answer the Public, which many folks like, that show you what people are typing into Google, specifically in the form of questions, "Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Do?" etc.
So I'm not just going to walk you through the ideas. I'm also going to challenge myself to give you some examples. So I've got two -- one less challenging, one much more challenging. Two websites, both have blogs, and coming up with topic ideas based on this.
So one is called Remoters. It's remoters.net. It's run by Aleyda Solis, who many of you in the SEO world might know. They talk about remote work, so people who are working remotely. It's a content platform for them and a service for them. Then, the second one is a company, I think, called Schweiss Doors. They run hydraulicdoors.com. Very B2B. Very, very niche. Pretty challenging to come up with good blog topics, but I think we've got some.
Remote Worker: I might say here, "You know what? One of the questions that's asked very often by remote workers, but is not well-answered on the internet yet is: 'How do I conduct myself in a remote interview and present myself as a remote worker in a way that I can be competitive with people who are actually, physically on premises and in the room? That is a big challenge. I feel like I'm always losing out to them. Remote workers, it seems, don't get the benefits of being there in person.'" So a piece of content on how to sell yourself on a remote interview or as a remote worker could work great here.
Hydraulic doors: One of the big things that I see many people asking about online, both in forums which actually rank well for it, the questions that are asked in forums around this do rank around costs and prices for hydraulic doors. Therefore, I think this is something that many companies are uncomfortable answering right online. But if you can be transparent where no one else can, I think these Schweiss Doors guys have a shot at doing really well with that. So how much do hydraulic doors cost versus alternatives? There you go.

2. Do you have access to unique types of assets that other people don't?

That could be research. It could be data. It could be insights. It might be stories or narratives, experiences that can help you stand out in a topic area. This is a great way to come up with blog post content. So basically, the idea is you could say, "Gosh, for our quarterly internal report, we had to prepare some data on the state of the market. Actually, some of that data, if we got permission to share it, would be fascinating."
We can see through keyword research that people are talking about this or querying Google for it already. So we're going to transform it into a piece of blog content, and we're going to delight many, many people, except for maybe this guy. He seems unhappy about it. I don't know what his problem is. We won't worry about him. Wait. I can fix it. Look at that. So happy. Ignore that he kind of looks like the Joker now.
We can get these through a bunch of methodologies:

• Research, so statistical research, quantitative research.
• Crowdsourcing. That could be through audiences that you've already got through email or Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn.
• Insider interviews, interviews with people on your sales team or your product team or your marketing team, people in your industry, buyers of yours.
• Proprietary data, like what you've collected for your internal annual reports.
• Curation of public data. So if there's stuff out there on the web and it just needs to be publicly curated, you can figure out what that is. You can visit all those websites. You could use an extraction tool, or you could manually extract that data, or you could pay an intern to go extract that data for you, and then synthesize that in a useful way.
• Multimedia talent. Maybe you have someone, like we happen to here at Moz, who has great talent with video production, or with audio production, or with design of visuals or photography, or whatever that might be in the multimedia realm that you could do.
• Special access to people or information, or experiences that no one else does and you can present that.

Those assets can become the topic of great content that can turn into really great blog posts and great post ideas.
Remote Workers: They might say, "Well, gosh, we have access to data on the destinations people go and the budgets that they have around those destinations when they're staying and working remotely, because of how our service interacts with them. Therefore, we can craft things like the most and least expensive places to work remotely on the planet," which is very cool. That's content that a lot of people are very interested in.
Hydraulic doors: We can look at, "Hey, you know what? We actually have a visual overlay tool that helps an architect or a building owner visualize what it will look like if a hydraulic door were put into place. We can go use that in our downtime to come up with we can see how notable locations in the city might look with hydraulic doors or notable locations around the world. We could potentially even create a tool, where you could upload your own visual, photograph, and then see how the hydraulic door looked on there." So now we can create images that will help you share.

3. Relating a personal experience or passion to your topic in a resonant way.

I like this and I think that many personal bloggers use it well. I think far too few business bloggers do, but it can be quite powerful, and we've used it here at Moz, which is relating a personal experience you have or a passion to your topic in some way that resonates. So, for example, you have an interaction that is very complex, very nuanced, very passionate, perhaps even very angry. From that experience, you can craft a compelling story and a headline that draws people in, that creates intrigue and that describes something with an amount of emotion that is resonant, that makes them want to connect with it. Because of that, you can inspire people to further connect with the brand and potentially to inform and entertain.
There's a lot of value from that. Usually, it comes from your own personal creativity around experiences that you've had. I say "you," you, the writer or the author, but it could be anyone in your organization too. Some resources I really like for that are:

• Photos. Especially, if you are someone who photographs a reasonable portion of your life on your mobile device, that can help inspire you to remember things.
• A journal can also do the same thing.
• Conversations that you have can do that, conversations in person, over email, on social media.
• Travel. I think any time you are outside your comfort zone, that tends to be those unique things.

Remote workers: I visited an artist collective in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I realized that, "My gosh, one of the most frustrating parts of remote work is that if you're not just about remote working with a laptop and your brain, you're almost removed from the experience. How can you do remote work if you require specialized equipment?" But in fact, there are ways. There are maker labs and artist labs in cities all over the planet at this point. So I think this is a topic that potentially hasn't been well-covered, has a lot of interest, and that personal experience that I, the writer, had could dig into that.
Hydraulic doors: So I've had some conversations with do-it-yourselfers, people who are very, very passionate about DIY stuff. It turns out, hydraulic doors, this is not a thing that most DIYers can do. In fact, this is a very, very dramatic investment. That is an intense type of project. Ninety-nine percent of DIYers will not do it, but it turns out there's actually search volume for this.
People do want to, or at least want to learn how to, DIY their own hydraulic doors. One of my favorite things, after realizing this, I searched, and then I found that Schweiss Doors actually created a product where they will ship you a DIY kit to build your own hydraulic door. So they did recognize this need. I thought that was very, very impressive. They didn't just create a blog post for it. They even served it with a product. Super-impressive.

4. Covering a topic that is "hot" in your field or trending in your field or in the news or on other blogs.

The great part about this is it builds in the amplification piece. Because you're talking about something that other people are already talking about and potentially you're writing about what they've written about, you are including an element of pre-built-in amplification. Because if I write about what Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has written about last week, or what Danny Sullivan wrote about on Search Engine Land two weeks ago, now it's not just my audience that I can reach, but it's theirs as well. Potentially, they have some incentive to check out what I've written about them and share that.
So I could see that someone potentially maybe posted something very interesting or inflammatory, or wrong, or really right on Twitter, and then I could say, "Oh, I agree with that," or, "disagree," or, "I have nuance," or, "I have some exceptions to that." Or, "Actually, I think that's an interesting conversation to which I can add even more value," and then I create content from that. Certainly, social networks like:

• Twitter
• Instagram
• Forums
• Subreddits. I really like Pocket for this, where I'll save a bunch of articles, and then I'll see which one might be very interesting to cover or write about in the future. News aggregators are great for this too. So that could be a Techmeme in the technology space, or a Memeorandum in the political space, or many others.

Remote workers: You might note, well, health care, last week in the United States and for many months now, has been very hot in the political arena. So for remoters, that is a big problem and a big question, because if your health insurance is tied to your employer again, as it was before the American Care Act, then you could be in real trouble. Then you might have a lot of problems and challenges. So what does the politics of health care mean for remote workers? Great. Now, you've created a real connection, and that could be something that other outlets would cover and that people who've written about health care might be willing to link to your piece.
Hydraulic doors: One of the things that you might note is that Eater, which is a big blog in the restaurant space, has written about indoor and outdoor space trends in the restaurant industry. So you could, with the data that you've got and the hydraulic doors that you provide, which are very, very common, well moderately common, at least in the restaurant indoor/outdoor seating space, potentially cover that. That's a great way to tie in your audience and Eater's audience into something that's interesting. Eater might be willing to cover that and link to you and talk about it, etc.
The last two, I'm not going to go too into depth, because they're a little more basic.

5. Pure keyword research-driven.

So this is using Google AdWords or keywordtool.io, or Moz's Keyword Explorer, or any of the other keyword research tools that you like to figure out: What are people searching for around my topic? Can I cover it? Can I make great content there?

6. Readers who care about my topics also care about ______________?

Essentially taking any of these topics, but applying one level of abstraction. What I mean by that is there are people who care about your topic, but also there's an overlap of people who care about this other topic and who also care about yours.
hydraulic doors: People who care about restaurant building trends and hydraulic doors has a considerable overlap, and that is quite interesting.
Remote workers: It could be something like, "I care about remote work. I also care about the gear that I use, my laptop and my bag, and those kinds of things." So gear trends could be a very interesting intersect. Then, you can apply any of these other four processes, five processes onto that intersection or one level of an abstraction. 

All right, everyone. We have done a tremendous amount here to cover a lot about blog topics. But I think you will have some great ideas from this, and I look forward to hearing about other processes that you've got in the comments. Hopefully, we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care. 

https://moz.com/blog/blog-post-ideas-whiteboard-friday 

Blogging For Money – Is Affiliate Blogging Right For YOU?

There are 21 reasons why you make THINK affiliate blogging (blogging for money) is not right for you – or that it won’t WORK for YOU. Let’s shed some light on the truth… Can YOU make money online?

What’s Holding You Back?

Go ahead, make a list of all the things you can think of that are holding you back from getting to real work online.  Seriously, write them down and face them – then burn it.

My list might have looked like this a few years ago:

1. Have no idea what I’m doing.

2.  Afraid this is all a scam.

3. Other people tell me I will fail.

4.  Other people tell me this is a scam.

5. This will take a LOT of time to get there.

6. My computer is slow.

7.  I like to golf on the weekends…don’t want to work.

8.  Easier to just go get a JOB and let someone pay me a little and then I go home.

9.  Not sure I have enough money to do this.

10. Not sure I have enough SMARTS to do this.

11.  I read in marketing forums and I have NO CLUE what they’re talking about.

12.  No one will help me.

13. If I ask for help, people will laugh at me.

14.  If I ask for help, no one will answer.

15. No one understands what I am trying to do because *I* can’t even explain it.

16. I don’t have enough time.

17. This won’t happen over-night.  I have to be determined and persistent – and give up a lot of any free time I have.

18.  There are so many ways to do this – I don’t know which way to go!

19. I don’t know anything about marketing.

20.  I am gonna have to write…a LOT.  I don’t think I can come up with anything to write about.

21. Trying this will put a lot of strain on my family, both financially and time-wise.  I should just take the easy route and not bother with this internet marketing stuff .

Those are just 21 reasons right off the top of my head.  Anything sound familiar there?

Now, let me take that same list and tell you the TRUTH

1. Have no idea what I’m doing.

NO ONE knows what they’re doing when they first start.  We ALL have to learn.  Everything you learn gets you closer to the other side.

2.  Afraid this is all a scam.

It’s not.  The online marketing taught like this is NOT a scam.  It’s very, very real.

3. Other people tell me I will fail.

Usually these “other” people are folks who don’t know anything about internet marketing either.  Also, why do you put value in the opinion of someone who tells you that you WILL fail?  By the way, proving them wrong is kinda cool  =)

4.  Other people tell me this is a scam.

Again, this is usually said by people who have no idea about all this either.

5. This will take a LOT of time to get there.

This is correct.  It WILL take a good bit of time and effort on YOUR part to get there.

6. My computer is slow.

Great!  There is no better motivation to earn money than having a computer that can’t think as fast as you do.  Get started, make some money and buy a NEW computer.

7.  I like to golf on the weekends…don’t want to work.

What if you gave up a few weekend golf rounds in this next year so you could play golf  3 times a week all the years following?

8.  Easier to just go get a JOB and let someone pay me a little and then I go home.

Yup, easier…maybe.  Depends on where you live and what jobs are available.  This is the safe route and if you have mouths to feed with no money coming into the household, I HIGHLY recommend getting a”real” job while you learn internet marketing.

9.  Not sure I have enough money to do this.

If you’ve read thru my blog here at PotPieGirl.com enough, you know that it doesn’t take money to get started making money online.

10. Not sure I have enough SMARTS to do this.

You do.  If you’ve been using your computer all this time for browsing, emailing, socializing, and shopping, you are totally smart enough to get your computer to make money for you.

11.  When I read in marketing forums I have NO CLUE what they’re talking about.

If they say a phrase you don’t understand, Google it.  Learn what they are talking about.  Once you learn it, you OWN it.

12.  No one will help me.

Learn how to help yourself.  Trust me, 99.9999% of the answers can be found in Google.

13. If I ask for help, people will laugh at me.

Maybe, but that’s a sure sign of that persons integrity and character.  BUT, there are tons of folks online that WON’T laugh at you.  This is a big reason why I am such an advocate of newbies getting a membership at Wealthy Affiliate.  The forum there is so safe with lots of helpful people AND there are lots of other questions being asked by people just like you every minute.  Wealthy Affiliate is the safest learning center I have found online.  I wish I had joined there when I first started learning.

Also, Google NEVER laughs or casts judgement =)

14.  If I ask for help, no one will answer.

Google ALWAYS answers – learn to use Google to find your answers.

15. No one understands what I am trying to do because *I* can’t even explain it.

That’s ok.  Want a “generic” answer for when people ask what you do?

Them: So, what do you do for a living?

You: Online marketing

Them: What’s that?  Like eBay or something?

You: I sell other peoples products online and make commissions.

95% of casual acquaintances won’t ask you anything further.  I struggled with that “what do you do?” question for so long.  I also felt this need to explain what it is (and that it’s legit).  One day I realized that when I was a managing golf Pro, I just said what I did and no one asked or doubted it’s legitimacy.  Sure, that was a “real” job…but you know what?  So is internet marketing.  Say it with confidence.

16. I don’t have enough time.

If you can spend one hour a day getting one web page online, you have enough time.  No, you may not get ‘there’ as quickly as someone who has 10 hours a day.  But there is another positive side to the “not enough time” excuse.

Once upon a time, I was a single mom, running a golf course.  Trust me, there was not an extra MINUTE in the day to spare.  A woman in a regional golf association asked me to run for President of that association.  I literally said, “Are you crazy?  I barely have time to THINK let alone head up an association!”

She said, “Jennifer, I KNOW how full your days are, but let me tell you something I have learned.  If you want something done well and efficiently, give it to a woman who doesn’t have enough time to do it.”

C’mon moms, show of hands – How many of you have baked a “oops mom I forgot” batch of cupcakes or done a science project at 2 am?

We moms get things done  =)

17. This won’t happen over-night.  I have to be determined and persistent – and give up a lot of any free time I have.

This IS very, very true.  This does NOT happen over-night.  Commit to the plan and take action.  Trust me, you will love yourself for following thru down the road  =)

18.  There are so many ways to do this – I don’t know which way to go!

Yes, there are a LOT of options.  To me, that is the coolest thing about online marketing – there is no one ‘right way’ to do this!  The sky is the limit!  What way interests YOU the most?

19. I don’t know anything about marketing.

First off, you don’t need to.  Secondly, yes, you really do know a lot about marketing because we are all consumers.  You know what makes YOU buy something, don’t you?

 20.  I am gonna have to write…a LOT.  I don’t think I can come up with anything to write about. Yes, using the free methods to make money online does require a lot of writing.  Now, you do NOT have to write novel-length blog posts like I am doing right now, but you will have to write.  If this is something out of your comfort zone, get to writing so you ARE comfortable. 

21. Trying this will put a lot of strain on my family, both financially and time-wise.  I should just take the easy route and not bother with this internet marketing stuff . 
This was a BIG one for me.  Know what it really is?  It’s guilt.  When we have families, we are not only taking OURSELVES out of our comfort zone, the family gets uncomfortable too.  I think we women struggle with this more than the men because of our own perception that it is mom’s job to make everyone comfortable. 
I handled this fear in myself by talking a lot about what I was doing.  Each day, when my husband would come home, we would talk about his day then I would tell him things I learned that day, what I did, what I figured out, and all that good stuff.  I needed him onboard with me….and I needed what I was doing to not be such a mystery.  Let’s face it, if your significant other suddenly started spending hours and hours online, wouldn’t you be concerned? 
Anyway… I would let him watch me make a webpage or something.  He was amazed at how it all works and learned right along with me.   I do the same things with my kids.  Heck, I’ve been known to talk about my blog post over a Happy Meal with the 4 year-old  =) 
My best advice here is to keep the communication open.

• 
  What are your reasons for starting or not starting?

Facebook now pinpoints individual posts to keep clickbait out of the News Feed

By evaluating individual posts, Facebook can better isolate and eliminate the occasional clickbait from the average publisher.

Facebook is getting more precise in its fight against clickbait.
After training its news feed algorithm to recognize clickbait headlines last year and penalize the sites and Pages associated with these posts, Facebook will now target individual posts that link to articles that overpromise and underdeliver in order to better isolate and eliminate the clickbait trying to invade people’s news feeds.

Previously, Facebook considered website domains or Facebook Pages at large when hunting for clickbait. That helped its system to broadly identify bad actors that push out a lot of clickbait, but it also made it harder to quarantine the occasional clickbait from an otherwise reputable publisher. Now, by taking into account individual posts, Facebook can strike down these one-off offenses without leveling an entire publication or needing to wait for a publication’s clickbait volume to mount.

Facebook expects that most Pages “won’t see any significant changes” to their reach and that publishers who are affected won’t be impacted after they stop posting clickbait, according to the company.

Clickbait types: exaggerations and withheld information

Facebook’s algorithm will also now distinguish between headlines that withhold information and headlines that exaggerate the story. The divide-and-conquer tactic is supposed to make Facebook’s system more effective when evaluating whether a post links to a clickbait.

That post isn’t clear on exactly how the change helps. But since Facebook is running a bunch of headlines through its computers so those computers can learn what a clickbait headline looks like, it’s possible that the computers had a hard time finding those patterns when considering a headline like “When He Opened the Door, He Didn’t Know He’d Be Met by This…” and one like “This Article Will Change Your Life.” The first headline uses a lot of plain language, whereas the second has common clickbait keywords like “change” and “your life.” So most likely Facebook’s computers needed to separately learn the first headline type to more accurately understand its characteristics, which is exactly how Facebook has trained its computers to distinguish between these two types of headlines.

“We categorized hundreds of thousands of headlines as clickbait or not clickbait by considering if the headline exaggerates the details of a story, and separately if the headline withholds information. A team at Facebook reviewed thousands of headlines using these criteria, validating each other’s work to identify large sets of clickbait headlines,” according to Facebook’s blog post.
Facebook will also start to test fighting clickbait in other languages besides English. Sometime in the coming weeks, its algorithm will begin to evaluate posts that are written in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai and Vietnamese.

http://marketingland.com/facebook-now-pinpoints-individual-posts-clickbait-214935 

7 Big Mistakes New Affiliate Marketers Make

When I first started in affiliate marketing, all I wanted was to just make money. Off I ran in every direction, trying everything, with no real idea of the mistakes I was making that could very well affect my chances at long term success.

Through my years of experience with both affiliate marketing and teaching other affiliate marketers, I have come to the conclusion that there are 7 big mistakes new affiliate marketers make.
Let’s talk about these mistakes in more detail.

 

1) Selling Rather Than Helping

Yes, the word “marketing” is part of the phrase affiliate marketing, but for the most part, our job as an affiliate is not to sell — that is the job of the sales page our affiliate links lead the reader to.

When I first started, my overwhelming (and totally naive) impulse was to fill my pages with words and links that screamed “BUY THIS NOW!”. I didn’t help the reader learn why they should have this product. I only wanted them to click a link which would hopefully lead to a commission for me.

People want to hear from other people when making a decision to buy a product or not — that’s why the reviews on Amazon products are so powerful. Those reviews are genuine feedback from people who (usually) have absolutely nothing to gain if someone buys that product or not.

When we talk more like an unbiased reviewer rather than a high-pressure salesperson, we will find we make more sales and people will come back for advice on other products in the future.

 

2) Too Many!

This is another big mistake I made when starting out — joining any and every affiliate program I came across. While I absolutely do believe in cultivating multiple streams of income when working online, there is a point where you have too much to deal with and it becomes unmanageable.

Choose your affiliate programs wisely and don’t overload yourself.

3) Not Testing

Whenever I choose to promote a Clickbank offer (for example), I put myself in the shoes of a potential customer and opt in to test the vendors’ follow up sequence.

I learned this the hard way.

Nothing breaks a reader’s trust more than being led to a promotion that will blow up their inbox. Put yourself in the shoes of a potential customer and see what will happen if they follow your advice.

4) Not Tracking

This was a BIG mistake I made when I first started out. I began my affiliate marketing career using free-to-make web pages on a site called Squidoo (and I still do this to this day).

I am fond of promoting Amazon products on these pages, but would forget to use unique tracking affiliate links on each page.
Why is this a mistake? Very simple — when you make a sale, you want to know WHERE the sale came from. This enables you to know which pages are converting well so you can grow and scale that campaign.

Creating a unique tracking ID for an Amazon link is easy. Simply log in to your Amazon affiliate dashboard, click “Account Settings” at the very top on the right, then click “Manage Tracking IDs”. From there you can make a new tracking ID so you can track which web page/campaign sold what.  You can learn more about using Amazon’s Tracking IDs here.

Yes, making any commission is cool, but knowing where and how you made that commission is what makes you a better marketer. It lets you grow and scale your campaigns — as opposed to working blindly.

5) Not Comparing

One of the best converting tactics I use to sell affiliate products online (especially physical products from Amazon) is to compare the “main” product with two other similar products.

When people are in buying mode for a physical product, they tend to have their options narrowed down to 2 or 3 and need help making the choice that is best for them.

By comparing the “3 Best Widgets For _______”, I not only help my readers make a choice, but I also have my affiliate links there for THREE products instead on only one.

Over time, when I track that web page, I will be able to see which product is most interesting to readers and move the best converting product to the top of the page for better CTR.

Comparison web pages are not only very popular and helpful for readers, they are also very profitable for you.

6) Make Money Online Products

Perhaps you’ve seen this before. You’re in a “learn online marketing” type forum. A person publishes a post complaining that they can’t make a dime online. But in their signature line they have something along the lines of “I Made 50 Million Dollars with This” followed by their affiliate link.

It happens all the time. Please, don’t be that person.

If you’re new and you want to promote products in the Make Money Online arena, don’t make false claims that it made you money. In fact, don’t make false claims at all!

Sure, talk about the benefits of the product/training — maybe even why it sounds awesome to you — but don’t try to trick people. You will ruin your credibility.

7) “Oh Look! A Butterfly!”

This is the biggest downfall for any new affiliate marketer. In fact, it can cause really big issues for seasoned affiliate marketers as well.

It is all too common to be working on one thing when all of a sudden, something “shiny” comes through your inbox or is mentioned in a forum you frequent. Then off you go chasing some new idea to make money online.

Ignore the “butterflies” that are sure to fly by on a constant basis. They will just distract you from your project/campaign at hand. One completed and profitable campaign is worth so much more than 50 almost half-finished campaigns or projects.

Affiliate marketing is a business that requires self-motivation and focus. For many of us, these are learned skills. Once you are aware of the the mistakes that can cause a lack of profits and productivity, you will be better able to grow your business and be profitable long-term.

Best of luck!!

http://marketingland.com/7-big-mistakes-new-affiliate-marketers-make-19195 

5 Yelp Facts Business Owners Should Know (But Most Don’t)

Business owners: Yelp doesn't have to be a source of anxiety! Columnist Brian Patterson explains how you can make the review site work for you.

If you ever want to hear a business owner rant, just grab some popcorn and casually bring up Yelp.

The mere mention of the controversial company’s name generates a range of emotions — often times negative with a tinge of despair. At best, business owners are frustrated with the volume of sales calls they receive; at worst, they are on the receiving end of a number of negative reviews they don’t know to handle.

We work with many multi-location and franchise businesses every day to improve Yelp presences, and I can say definitively that the despair is often unnecessary. Yelp is not a black box, but rather a nuanced platform that you can navigate to your advantage.

Here are five facts about Yelp that, if understood and embraced, can morph that despair into determination to turn Yelp into a positive asset that helps the business.

1. The Filter Is Fluid

The Yelp Filter is the most frustrating part of Yelp for many business owners, so let’s address it first. Many reviews come into Yelp, appear on the page for a day or two, and then disappear.

These reviews are stuck down in a “not recommended” section, causing them to no longer be (easily) visible. This does not impact the overall Yelp score.

To find these filtered reviews, scroll to the bottom of the page and find the light gray text referencing them:

The filter can be a blessing and a curse; on one hand, some of your great reviews can slip into the filter, but, on the other hand, some of your 1-stars might slip into it, too.

Those lost 5-star reviews are painful; however, when something slips into the filter, all hope is not lost. We know that the filter is fluid, so even if a review initially goes to the filter, it can be pulled back out.

Combine this fact with what Yelp says in their explanation video, and you can start to build a strategy:

Every Yelp review is automatically evaluated by Yelp’s recommendation software based on quality, reliability, and user activity on Yelp. More often than not, those useful reviews come from active members of the Yelp community.

The key phrase here — and what you can actually do something about — is “user activity.” Often times, those reviewers relegated to the filter have just a handful of reviews and minimal friends on the site.

If you can identify the customer who left a positive review in the filter, you can reach out to them and let them know their great review is being hidden because they aren’t active on Yelp. Additionally, you (and other employees) can add them as a friend and mark their reviews as useful and cool.

At scale, we’ve found a strategic approach to de-filtering positive reviews is able to pull ~20 percent of 5-star reviews out of the filter. This can have a tremendous impact on a company’s star rating.

2. You Can Ask For Reviews

Yelp has done a poor job of communicating their policy on how businesses can ask for reviews. You’ll hear people claim, “Yelp says you can’t ask for reviews!” And indeed, Yelp has pages on their site that indicate that position.

However, about a year ago, I emailed Yelp asking explicitly if businesses can ask customers to leave a review on Yelp, and they replied with the following:

The response is clear. They discourage owners from asking for reviews, but it is not a violation of Yelp’s Terms of Service. What is a violation is incentivizing customers to leave (or remove) reviews.
For me, this is an open-and-shut case: you can ask your customers for reviews. When you know a customer is happy, you absolutely should ask them for a Yelp review.

3. Flagging Does Work, And You Can Ask For A Re-Review

When a negative review comes in for a business I’m working with, the first thing I do is assess the content to see if anything violates Yelp’s Content Guidelines. Not all reviews violate them, but if there is anything questionable, it is certainly worth a shot.

The Content Guidelines are short and definitely worth understanding well. I often find myself quoting aspects of the guidelines when I flag a review and request its removal. I look at flagging as my chance to play armchair lawyer; I’ll write a compelling case, citing evidence from the review and text from the content guidelines to build a compelling plea for removal.

If there is a violation and you’ve done a good job of highlighting it, you’ll be rewarded with an email like this several days later:



Sometimes you’ll receive a notification that the review has already been reviewed, typically because someone before you has flagged it. In these cases, Yelp won’t review it again without going down a separate path. To escalate a review for further consideration from Yelp, use this form to again plead the case:  http://www.yelp.com/support/contact/flagged_content

Continuing the legal analogy, think of this escalated review as an appeals/Supreme Court ruling. They are likely to agree with the previous ruling, so you need to make a very strong case for it to be reversed.

The success rate is lower here, but they will indeed do a re-review and reverse positions if the appeal is compelling.

4. You Need To Understand The Environment: It Is Gray, Not Black And White

What I often find with business owners and marketing directors is that there is great angst with Yelp as a platform, but they don’t actually use it personally. I always encourage them to set up a profile and get active, as there really is no better way to understand the platform and the mindset of its users. As “The Art of War” says, “Know thy enemy.” (And indeed, many business owners and marketing directors consider Yelp the enemy!)

When a business owner starts using Yelp and leaving honest reviews, they start to see the little things that make a big difference from a consumer experience perspective. They can now apply this new lens to their own business and make improvements, so that future Yelp reviews have a better chance of being positive.

Great customer service, a generous return policy, friendly staff, cleanliness and flexibility are some of the common characteristics of businesses that do well on Yelp.

5. Your Sales Contact Can Do More Than Sell You Ads

Yelp’s sales team is aggressive… sometimes too aggressive. They can drive busy business owners crazy by calling weekly to inquire about advertising on the platform. However, we’ve found that their eagerness to start a dialogue can be used to your favor.

In one instance, we worked with a company that had moved their location just a few blocks down the street. However, instead of their Yelp profile address simply being updated, Yelp “closed” their old location page and started a brand-new page for the new address. The reason this was an issue was because their previous page had a hard earned 50+ reviews and 4-star rating.

We tried all of the recommended routes by Yelp to resolve this to no avail. Then, we brought the issue up with the eager-to-help sales team, and it was fixed in just a few days. We didn’t promise the salesperson anything; we simply brought an issue to them and said that we wouldn’t discuss any advertising until something they broke with our business was corrected.

In another case, we had a business whose corporate headquarters was on Yelp. While their individual business locations might belong on Yelp, their corporate headquarters services no customers and shouldn’t really have a Yelp profile.

We tried and tried to get Yelp to remove the page, but we were continually denied. We then explained the issue to our Yelp ad rep, and they took the page down.

If you have a problem with your Yelp profile and feel stuck, it doesn’t hurt to discuss it with your Yelp sales rep.

What To Do Next

First, get active on Yelp. If you don’t have a profile, set one up. Install the mobile app. Begin checking into businesses and leaving reviews.

Beyond that, it really pays to sit down and think through a Yelp strategy. You can do some initial triage work on existing reviews, but you should also develop a clear plan for how you will get new 5-star reviews over time. Use the Yelp improvement calculator to determine how many positive reviews you need to reach your milestones and goals.

You’ll also want to analyze all of your customer touch points to ensure they are handed in a way that would elicit positive organic reviews.

The fact is that Google’s hand has been forced (literally, by Congress) to show Yelp in the search results, so they aren’t going anywhere. You should be working on a Yelp strategy if you don’t have one already.

Have you had problems with Yelp? 
http://marketingland.com/5-yelp-facts-business-owners-should-know-163054 

How to Create the Perfect Social Media Post

Taking the time and effort to create the perfect social media post has never been more important. All social media platforms are swamped with content – both good and bad. After you’ve taken the time to create great content or curated something to share, you need to present it in the smartest possible way.

“Content is currency — something we trade for our audience’s attention.” Frank Strong

I think that social media is the new television and that you need to be entertaining and informative with your social media. You’ve worked hard to build your content strategy but having a laser beam focus on only your brand doesn’t always build or maintain people’s attention which is as best around seven to ten seconds. The average attention span was twelve seconds in 2000 and was eight seconds in 2012 according to Statistic Brain. Wow, right?

So, what does this mean for today’s social media marketers and professionals? You need to be entertaining and add some fun into your social media content mix. Promoting only your product, book or blog non-stop won’t be interesting to anyone, most likely not even yourself. Keeping your ratio of content at 90 percent other people’s content (OPC) and 10 percent your own content will help you but don’t be too dry or stuffy when you create your editorial calendar.

Tips by social media platform

 Google+:

 

1. Use great images on each post. 800 pixels x 600 pixels or 800 pixels x 1200 pixels look fantastic.
2. Make your posts stand out! — It don’t mean a thing if it don’t have that bling! Use some formatting to give your posts some pizzazz. Give your post a bold title, and use some italics, sprinkle in a few relevant hashtags and voila! Your post is ready to go.
3. Make sure you give credit to the source of the text and photo that you are sharing. Being a good citizen by giving proper credit is very important.

 Pinterest:

 

1. Create niche boards with a tight theme.

2. Add descriptions of 200 characters with keywords to help people find your pins through search.

3.  Create vertical images to maximize your real estate. Pinterest images should be long and narrow to take up the maximum amount of visual space and get noticed! Look at your favorite pins and see what the images have in common so you see what types of images are repinned and shared. I create images that are up to 735 pixels by 1102 pixels. This creates an engaging invitation to repin your pinned article. Edit the pin to add the link in the source. 

Twitter:

1. Write tweets between 120 and 130 characters – leave room for retweets with comments. 2. Tweet links at a slow pace – use Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule your tweet. 3. Use action words in your tweets.

Facebook:

 

1. Post consistently to stay in the News Feed. 2. Add variety to your content by posting photos, videos, and articles. 3. Have fun with your Facebook posts – this is a more personal network so let people get to know you here.

LinkedIn:
1. Be relevant. LinkedIn is the place to show your smarts. I don’t recommend posting quotes as status updates here. I love them on Pinterest and Twitter but I don’t feel they carry enough weight for a LinkedIn update.

2. Be consistent. Post at least one update per day and up to four per day spread out through the day to remain active in the LinkedIn stream.

3. Quality counts. Share your own content as well as the best content in your field of focus. The content that you curate and share reflects your own content and should be strong.

The Golden Rule: Tweet Others The Way You Want To Be Tweeted.

Tweet others the way you wanted to be tweeted. Sounds so simple yet everyday you see things on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ that are perplexing. Being kind to others is so important: in life and on social media. Greet others cordially and you may be blessed with a delightful response. The message that you send is amplified and you do not know who may end up reading your comments or what their frame of mind is while they are reading.

My mom always said “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” This is especially true in social media. Please don’t spout angry paradigms at the masses, no one is interested in reading or retweeting those tweets.

Another word of caution is using sarcasm, which I personally love, but must be used with care as it can be taken incorrectly by the intended receiver of the tweet or someone else who is reading it. I love my sarcastic tweet buddies and created a list called Sardonic Super Pals to honor their fine use of sarcasm however, using caution may be wise. While it may lessen the sarcastic boom of your comment, add something that lets people know that you are joking or being sarcastic. I like to add hashtags so it is fun. When you have an established group of social media friends that are sarcastic amongst themselves, it can be great fun but be aware that each tweet or post goes to all your followers, sometimes their followers and where the tweet stops, nobody knows.

If you are unclear of the intent or meaning of a tweet or post, don’t go off in a huff or respond in anger. Simply ask for clarification. The fragile connection on social media can crumble like a crisp autumn leaf, don’t lose friends over misunderstandings. Sometimes this requires a direct message, phone call or Skype conversation and isn’t a friendship worth that effort? I say, yes!

Be a generous retweeter or sharer of your pals and people that you follow. Take time to occasionally flow through your stream of “All Friends” and give them some RT love. Everyone appreciates it and most reciprocate as well. One of my friends makes it a point to check her new followers tweet stream and RT them right away which is a great way to break the ice and start building a relationship.

Calling out people for what you perceive to be a mistake is obnoxious and rude. There are no steadfast rules for social media, only best practices and guidelines. Be kind to other people and help them if they need it.

Tweet others the way you wanted to be tweeted. Simple and effective.

http://pegfitzpatrick.com/the-golden-rule/