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
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.
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.
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.
So you’re on your computer searching Google, while sipping on your cup of coffee, trying to find ways to build your email list.
After all, you know that if you build your list you will sell more products and finally get your message out into the world.
So you keep searching Google.
But every article you find is giving the same old advice.
You know advice like…
- Start your own blog
- Market on social media
- Add an opt-in form to your blog
Need I say more?
And you can’t help but think.
“Wait! Something’s not right, someone has to be hiding the good
stuff. You know, the actual steps I should take to even get my offer
seen by my audience”
And guess what, you’re right!
Not that there’s some secret blogging society or anything.
But most list building advice is usually very obvious and repetitive.
And quite frankly you’re probably tired of hearing the same old vague list building strategies.
Even more importantly you want tactics that have been tried and proven to work.
But most articles cover up what it really takes to build your list.
For a few reasons but the main reason being, they think you’re scared of
a little hard work, to get the results.
But I know better.
I know you’re a hard worker who’s willing to put in the labor once you know exactly what you need to do.
So why wait any longer.
Let’s Jump In!
1) Create an irresistible bait
In order to grow your list filled with highly targeted people, you
must find out more about who they are and what they want most.
What is it that’s keeping them up until 3 am and how can your offer
be that solution. Your offer should tap into your ideal customers
overall aspirations for themselves.
Having the right bait is critical because you can have all the
traffic in the world but if your offer is not the right bait you will
miss out on getting a ton of new subscribers to your list.
2) Capture your audience attention
No matter how much traffic you get or how great your post or
newsletter is, if you can’t get your audience to take notice than the
content inside is practically useless because no one will read it.
Nowadays people are being too consumed with marketing ads and content.
So you must write headlines that will capture your audience attention to want to read more.
And if your headline can’t stop them in they’re tracks the odds of them reading your content is slim to none.
4 tips to write killer headlines
Write in List Format
Example: 16 unethical life hacks you won’t learn in school!
Write Great How To Formats
Example: How to Quit Your Job, Move to Paradise and Get Paid to Change the World
Add 1-2 Power Words
Example: Get 317 power words here
Be Specific
Specific headlines are more believable and you can make the headline more specific by adding numbers and a date.
Example: 5 secrets to lose 5 pounds in 7 days
3) Follow the crowd
When I first began blogging I was told to literately blog once a day.
I know sounds crazy and it is!
Here’s the facts, when you first began blogging 9x out of 10 unless
you already have a large sphere of influence, you will start off with a
very small audience.
That’s why I recommend guest posting to grow your audience and build your list.
Guest posting is great for a lot of reasons, but one major reason is
you’re able to instantly get your content in front of your audience.
In other words instead of you screaming from the mountain tops for
your target market to come to you, you take the back end approach and go
to where they are.
Though guest posting is a great way to grow your audience and subscriber list, the method only works when done correctly.
So here some things you will want to look out for when considering implementing guest blogging into your list building strategy.
My sacred Guest Blogging secrets to get the best results
- Always create engaging and great content.
- Guest post for some of the top blogs who are within your niche.
- Make sure that every blog you guest post for has awesome engagement
with their readers you can verify this by looking at the social media
shares and by checking how many people comment (10 comments average
throughout the blog is good).
- Make sure that whoever you want to guest blog for will allow you to
place your link of your website or capture page within your author bio.
- Make sure your bio links are very noticeable and that your author bio is not on a separate page from your guest post.
If the blog will not allow any links in your bio it’s not a great place to guest post to get more subscribers.
4) My strategy for getting Influencers to share your content
When you create your blog post make sure that you add a min of 10
links with the top influencers within your niche to your blog post.
Once you publish your post send out a friendly email to each person
you mentioned within your article just to let them know you referenced
them.
Most likely they will check it out and if the content is good 9x out
of 10 they will be thankful for the shout out and share your content
with their audience.
Which if you choose the right companies to reference it could be 1000’s of people your content is sent out too.
If your blog post is set up to capture leads this method alone can get you tons of new email subscribers.
Also, this method is a great way to begin networking and building great relationships with the influencers in your industry.
How To Outreach Like A Pro
Make sure to keep the message very casual and friendly.
4 resources to find the top influencers in any niche:
- Autorityspy
- Technorati
- Buzzsumo
- Bananatag –
A great free resource to use once the email is sent because it will
allow you to see if your blog link inside your outreach email was
clicked or not.
5) Get a ton of traffic and email subscribers using Google+
After you publish your blog post make sure that you follow the people
you’ve mentioned in the post, add this to the end of the post
“mentioned in this post (Then add their google+ name)”
Here’s an example of how that looks in action:
Because you’ve Google+ them to your post they will receive a
notification by Google, letting them know they’ve been mentioned in your
post.
Once they see the content they will have the chance to share it on their Google+ platform as well which means more blog views and new subscribers.
This method works great because instead of you being a taker like most people you’re being a giver.
By sharing others content and products you’ll stand out far more than your competitors within you field, who don’t do the same.
6) How to use PDF’s to your advantage
When people are reading your post and you’re providing a ton of value
and resources within your content, most readers (including me) wish
they could write down the information to refer back to it later.
But what if you could make it easier for your readers by providing
them the option to download the blog post in pdf format and require an
opt-in in exchange.
Here’s an example of how it looks in action
Once they press the image it pops up an opt-in box
Sure some will pass on the offer but others will take advantage of it
because it’s something they actually want and need right then.
In fact, I know someone who use this method in all of their post and she gets 1000’s of new subscribers because of it.
To get the best results, you will want to add it 2 times with your post once at the beginning and another at the end.
7) The underestimated strategy to finding hot free email subscribers
So you’ve probably been wondering if forum marketing works anymore and if it’s even worth your time and effort.
The very simple answer to that is Forum Marketing is far from being Dead!
In fact, Forum marketing is one of the best ways to begin building you’re email list when your just starting out.
The reason forum marketing works so well is because most forums are packed with super targeted people who are ready to buy.
What’s even more cool is that most of these forums are 100% free.
You can’t beat it!
The people who say forum marketing is dead are simply on the wrong forum or misinformed.
In fact, if you join the right forum there could be 100’s to 1000’s of people seeing your content every day.
Here’s a screenshot from one of the most popular forums out there the Warrior Forum
As you can see from the image above there is great engagement going
on with the content of this post, considering it reached over 900 views.
Even more cool though is that people are responding to the content on
the post which means if the offer at the end of the post matches the
desires of the readers they will become new subscribers.
So if you position yourself the right way you can get a ton of new subscribers to your list by using this method alone.
Here are a few tips you can use to make forum marketing work best for you:
- Join forums who cater to your target market- Omgili is a great resource to find forums in your niche
- Join forums that have great monthly traffic and you can check the website traffic on Alexa
- Check the Forums Members Agreement
- See what’s trending the most on that forum and post about those things.
- Create your name as the username
- Use Your Picture as the avatar
- Add your capture page within your forum signature.
- Comment on some of the top forum post.
8) Extract 100’s of new subscribers with the OPL List Building Method
Wouldn’t it be nice to market to someone else’s niche related list of hot buyers.
I mean with a small investment and a click of a button you can be in the position to get a ton of new subscribers.
Well, this is what the OPL (other people’s list) strategy allows you to do.
So essentially it’s similar to solo ads in which you pay others with a large list to promote your offer to those on the list.
Here are a few ways to make sure the OPL Method works best for you:
- Before you pay any vendor make sure that the list is a targeted list.
- Ask about the email open rate percentage.
- If possible ask the seller how their list has responded to offers like yours in the past.
- If possible see if you can market to a buyers list, meaning people who have bought something in your specific niche.
- Don’t spend 100’s of dollars upfront start with $50 and under to test the list and if it does well feel free to scale.
Just imagine how amazing it’s gonna feel to have a list of 1000+ people waiting to engage with you.
Imagine finally having a crowd of die hard fans that are holding onto
your every word and looking to you as the go to expert within your
field.
Sound impossible?
It’s not.
You’ve got what it takes to conquer your fears and overcome any obstacle necessary to reach your goals.
Just Take Action!
