Courtesy of blossomblogs.com

The Talking Head Video Defined

A talking head video is the quickest way to add valuable content to your YouTube feed. It usually costs you nothing but effort to make, and some basic editing skills. ‘Talking head’ videos are called this because they have a fixed screen position that focuses on a person’s head. You then talk on screen and use your dynamic personality to keep people entertained.

Here’s how to make your exciting talking head video for YouTube:

• Wear a uniform or film the video in a room with a presentable background. You can easily create a ‘set’ for yourself with a few well-placed items or a hand-made paper background. Branding your video works well here.

• Use exciting props. Just because the camera position is fixed, doesn’t mean you can’t bring in interesting props and extras to highlight your point. A whiteboard will help you explain something crucial, and household props are great for analogies.

• Add in some images to enhance emotion. Images are great to use in talking head videos as they give your viewer a break from you. Inserting an amusing image into your dialogue to illustrate a point is a technique used often on YouTube.

• Add extra text. Sometimes cutting away to text in point form can really bring a presentation or dialogue to life. Use text for dynamic recaps of important information, or to ensure that the viewer retains what you’ve just told them.

Courtesy of vimeo.com

• Facial expressions matter. You may not be a television presenter, but you are being viewed by random people that don’t know you. That means you must take advantage of your facial expressions and body gestures to make what you say entertaining. Practice your on-screen presence and it will improve.

• Get someone else on screen. If you are struggling to make your videos entertaining, turn your talking head video into a talking heads video, by adding another person into the mix. The back and forth can be very entertaining, and this fresh perspective may be exactly what you need.

• Be original. The best thing you can do for your channel is to find a specific and original way to present information to people. Take some time and watch at least 20 videos by 20 different YouTube talking head stars. You’ll see that they each have something special to contribute, based on style or tone.

Talking head videos may sound easy to do – but they take time, strategy and effort. Remember, it’s your goal to get these videos viewed and shared all over YouTube. That means you have to start thinking like the owner of a television station. What do people want to see, and how can you give it to them on your budget? Good luck!

What was the last brilliant talking head video you watched? Leave the link here for our community to see!

Courtesy of business2community.com

Creating Your Awesome MySpace Page

Every business owner belongs to a certain niche, or perhaps several niches – depending on your career. The best way to sell on MySpace is to use a set niche to leverage your products and create buzz for your brand. I’m going to use a clock-maker as an example.

Now, clock-makers don’t have the most ‘in-demand’ product, like many small businesses out there. They also have to compete with just about every other clothing or retail store, selling cheap imported watches for next to nothing. For this business to survive it needs a creative MySpace campaign. One that will result in lots of fans and even more sales.

Brands are allowed on MySpace, but people tend to get more responses. This is especially true if the small business owner doing the posting, spends a decent amount of time listening to music, commenting and sharing on MySpace already.

Here’s how to streamline your PERSONAL profile and transform it into a promotional tool:

• Do some keyword research around your core products. For clocks, some keywords that pop up are – time, wasting time, clocking out and in the nick of time.

• Your page’s theme is going to be clocks. You sell them, and you ARE your brand. Create a nice profile pic for yourself and feature one of your best clocks in this image.

• Similarly, create a brilliant and sharable clock background, showcasing your love of clocks.

• In the ‘tell us about yourself’ section, mention that you’re a creative clock-maker, and add in a witty, short saying about time.

• Add your business URL to the website URL space that MySpace provides.

Courtesy of geekwire.com

• If you want some extra exposure for your website or a certain sales page – then include your URL in the ‘about us’ section. It will display on your homepage.

• There are only 3 account types that allow you to upload podcasts, these are ‘comedian,’ ‘DJ’ and ‘musician.’ If you want to create and share dynamic marketing podcasts, then choose one of these accounts instead.

• Otherwise, you can still upload VIDEOS to your personal MySpace account. A good video strategy can get you lots of sales on MySpace. Simply add some of your existing YouTube materials to the platform, or create new ‘music-based’ videos for your feed. Choose songs related to time and clocks, then brand them with your logo and URL afterwards.

• Post 2-4 updates daily, including links to articles you’ve written, images you’ve created, your sales sites, your Amazon pages or other social media content.

• Finally, search for songs that complement your themed topic. Become the best ‘songs about time’ account on MySpace, and your community will grow.

You can use this basic strategy to begin selling from your MySpace page. It works well enough in many niches – pet food, restaurants, doctor’s rooms, graphic designers, web designers – the list really goes on. Don’t be afraid to leverage music and video on MySpace to improve your monthly sales. They can be significant!

Have you ever tried selling anything on MySpace? What was your result?

Courtesy of sellorelse.ogilvy.com

The Social Media Sales Funnel

As a small business owner and online marketer, you probably already know all about the social sales funnel. It can drive traffic to your websites and sales pages, and make those crucial monthly sales that will keep you in the green. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest have a secondary power that you need to learn about.

These social media sites should be used as a supportive tool to promote carefully selected items that will help CLEAR out stock that isn’t selling, or will boost SALES items that aren’t performing as they should be. This is called individual product promotion, and it’s used as a secondary marketing strategy to keep your online sales healthy and growing.

• Use social media to sell one item in bulk
• Use it to clear out old stock
• Use it to sell stock that didn’t perform as well as planned
• Use it to sell expensive items that move slowly
• Use it to sell cheap items that move quickly

As a social media manager and business owner, it’s always your goal to make as many sales as possible. This is possible with long-term marketing and social media maintenance, but sometimes you’ll come across opportunities for blow-out sales. This is when you need to use your social media pages to sell in bulk, to everyone!

Identifying Individual Products For Mass Promotion

As you sell online, you’ll begin to notice and track what people want, what they don’t want, and how they behave on your storefront pages. I’ll never forget coming across some strange analytics data that prompted a new social media strategy for me a while back. I had my good sales, my great sales, and my poor performers – as all stores do.

Then I noticed I also had a particular product that was being visited like crazy, but no sales were happening. The bounce rate was even low – people were reading the product descriptions and looking through the images. Demand was there, but sales were not. I decided to give this product more exposure on social media sites.

The result was that by the end of week 3, I had run out of stock. I had also made a ton of extra sales, simply by honing in on a problem, and finding a solution to it. Here’s basically what I did, and how you can do it too!

Courtesy of socialselling.com.au

• I set a goal for the product: one month to sell-out
• I dedicated my financial resources to creating content for the promotion of this one individual product
• I had 10 additional images made, 3 infographics, 2 tutorials, and the rest were product images (some were used in real-world situations)
• I created a series of 5 blog posts around the product, and 2 guest posts that I used on some of my friend’s blogs
• Each image was paired with social media content. For Facebook I did high impact updates, for Twitter high converting tweets. Pinterest and Flickr got the images.
• I let my LinkedIn groups know about this special product sale
• I used other social media promotional tools like StumbleUpon, Dig, Reddit and Delicious
• I created a brief talking head video outlining why people should use the product
• I created 5 sales emails linked to social media pages, and a newsletter dedicated to exposure for this one product

I spent very little money, and the return on investment was large. I think there’s a good reason why this worked so well on my social media pages. For once, my customer base wasn’t being told to go and look at products. They were being told to buy a specific product, which is much more streamlined and efficient.

Secondly, my social media community helped make my images go viral – which meant that I managed to get thousands of viral views on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter because the content I created was credible, interesting and usable by other people or sellers. It reminded me how sometimes we just need to focus on the little things.

Yes, overall sales are important for your storefront – but having micro strategies can often lead to better results than you think. I sold maybe 3 or 4 of those products before this campaign, and moved literally hundreds of products by week 3.

Thanks to my social media infrastructure I got more fans, and even additional sales at my online store from one product promotion. That’s why today I’m giving you some homework to do. If you have an online storefront brimming with products that aren’t selling, try choosing and promoting just one. Have solid reasons for choosing it, via analytics.

Courtesy of flyingstartonline.co.uk

Then spend the next month launching a full-scale exposure campaign, focused on this one thing. See how it goes. I bet that the sales and the traffic returns will surprise you.

Adding these micro strategies to your overall marketing strategy will almost always result in a boost in site sales. Plus, you get the added bonus of getting rid of products that aren’t really selling.

The next time around, you can find some products that sell better, and add them to your inventory instead. Analytics is about performing these tests and changes, and utilizing the social media power of exposure to keep your profits rolling in.

I find that these strategies are very useful just after the holidays. Who wants to buy a Christmas tree ornament in January? Quite a few people actually. It’s just about using your social media networks to find them.

Have you ever tried focusing all of your social media power on one product? I’d love to hear about it!

Courtesy of copyblogger.com

The Ebook Marketing Saga

Once your ebook is complete, the real hard work begins. You may not realize it yet, but marketing your ebook appropriately will be the real success indicator. Selling ebooks is challenging. No-one knows who you are, or what is inside that book. Imagine trying to sell something to your average reader, when they can buy 5 others ebooks on the subject!

Worst of all, these 5 other ebooks are written by people that have some measure of fame already. Your goal from the beginning is to outline your plan, know your targets and to help your readers see the value in purchasing your ebook instead of someone else’s ebook.

Selling ebooks involves:

• Knowing how much money you plan on earning online
• Knowing how to value or price your ebook for sales
• Knowing which markets to hit
• Knowing which marketing materials best sell books online

Courtesy of blog.winepresspublishing.com

#1: Your Ebook Earning Strategy

Selling ebooks isn’t about collecting sales for the next 10 years, like you would do as an authentic published author. Ebooks have a short shelf life, and they should be treated as products that can sell like crazy for about a year. So, you have one year to make your ebook sell as many copies as possible, before sales will wind down.

This isn’t true for everyone – but it’s mostly true for bloggers. The older your book, the less likely it will sell. Give each ebook three months to reach its sales peak, and push to keep this peak going for as long as possible. When you have a timescale, you can arrange your marketing goals to maximize your sales.

#2: Pricing Your Ebook

Most new ebook authors grossly over-value their ebook – and end up selling far less ebooks than they had planned. Selling ebooks is not about making a fortune on one book, it’s about building up quality sales to make some great money on several books. Here’s what to look out for when deciding the price of your book.

• If it’s too expensive no-one will buy it, and you exclude your middle market
• If it’s too cheap no-one will buy it, as they will think the information is worthless

Assuming you’re offering a quality ebook that is well-written, professionally formatted with an eye-catching cover – you should always begin selling at these pay scales.

• 10 page ebook: $2.99
• 20 page ebook: $4.99
• 30-60 page ebook: $14.99-$19.99
• 100 page ebook: $19-99-$29.99
• 200+ page ebook: $39.99-$69.99

Courtesy of bitethebook.com

On rare occasions if your subject matter is unusual, and the industry often prices your kind of niche much higher than others – do so as well. Always check on comparable ebooks in your niche and see how they are priced. But take note of when they were published. The older the book, the lower the price. Selling ebooks can be easier with the right price scale.

#3: The Ebook Markets To Hit

Selling ebooks is more effective if you pick the right platforms or online places to sell them. Sometimes authors only use Amazon, and they wonder why they don’t even make back their initial investment in the writing. If you spent $1000.00 getting your ebook created, you can realistically expect about $30,000 return over the next few months.

That’s if you’ve sold your ebook for $29.99 and used all publishing options available to you. As a rule, reinvest about half of this into additional advertising and marketing – and you can make up to 10,000 sales, bringing your total to about $300,000. This isn’t what you get to keep – you only get a percentage of this on some platforms.

• Publish your book on Amazon
• Publish on Lulu.com
• Publish on Clickbank.com
• Publish on Ebay.com
• Publish on Payloadz.com
• Create sale pages of your own
• Sell directly from your website
• Sell your ebooks via social media
• Publish on as many book seller sites as you can manage

Don’t forget to do a little marketing where readers live. Hit the online book clubs, the Facebook book clubs, and get as many bloggers as you can to endorse your book.

Selling Ebooks Using Affiliate Marketing

You can offer a program to affiliate marketers, whereby you will give them a high percentage of the sales, if they can sell your book for you. Offer a great program at 30%-40%, and you’ll attract the best affiliate marketers in the world to your book. When they sell it for you, they earn money. This can be more effective than selling off Amazon, if you get it right.

Selling ebooks via affiliate marketers also gives you another benefit – it gets your name out there. Create media kits that your marketers can use, that include nice graphics, content, articles, headlines, sales pitches, information and more. They will then build websites selling your book, and invest in advertising for you.

Courtesy of puzzledsquirrel.com

The Basics of Ebook Production

To sell an ebook it has to look like something worth buying. You will need to spend a little on the following exterior features:

• A brilliant cover
• An incredible blurb that reels in the reader
• An attractive price
• An ANGLE* (more on this below)
• Big names to endorse your book
• An excellent title

*ANGLE: The angle of a book is really what sells it. The more specific you are the better. For example, the title of this post isn’t ‘how to sell ebooks’ because everyone under the sun has used this tired title. It’s ‘how to earn $300,000’ which is very specific. Selling ebooks is about taking an old subject and making it new by offering a fresh perspective on it.

Also make sure that your readers have a choice of formats. Some people like to download PDF files, others prefer to read your ebook on their Kindle device. Always provide all format options to maximize sales. You want to reach the most people possible.

The Rules Regarding Endorsements

The one thing that sells more ebooks online than anything else, is securing the right endorsement. You can write a book on computers, and no-one will care. Write a book on computers that Bill Gates endorses, and suddenly you’re news. You need to find some authorities in your niche to write reviews or endorsements for your book.

#1: Identify who in your niche, you need to contact
#2: Make a list of these people, along with their contact details
#3: Introduce yourself on social media
#4: Ask them if they would mind checking out your ebook for free
#5: If you encounter reluctance, offer some free guest posts for their blogs
#6: Send them a free copy of your ebook
#7: In the email, ask for a brief review a paragraph or two long
#8: Send this to as many authorities as you can
#9: Use this review material as social proof
#10: Publish on all your platforms and sales pages

Selling ebooks is pretty simple if you have about 20 top bloggers or personalities supporting your book. It’s the one mistake that first time ebook sellers make. You have to be relevant and important to sell ebooks – the only way to do this is via affiliation.

Recycling Your Profit For More Profit

You will want to gain momentum in your selling strategies so that each week, the numbers go up considerably. This means using more than half (I’ve seen people use 80% of their profit with great success) to sink back into marketing and selling ebooks on your pages.

Remember you have a time limit, so reinvestment should begin to wind down when sales begin to dip at month 8 or 9. It takes practice and practical experience to know where to invest these profits for maximum impact.

I always find that the classics work best. Selling ebooks using Google advertising is very effective, especially when you’re spending a few thousand dollars on it every month. Here are the areas to invest in.

• Invest in Google ads
• Invest in Facebook and Youtube ads
• Get more keyword content created for you
• Pay top bloggers to create review posts for you
• Get even more materials to your affiliate marketers
• Create videos to promote your subject and ebook
• Invest in your blog

I once knew an ebook seller that had 50 copies of his ebook published in print, to boost his online sales. He would host a small event at a local book store, and take lots and lots of photos. The photos would act as the credibility he needed to convince online sceptics that he was the real deal. Press releases would go out, and his sales would skyrocket.

Ever thought about using blog commenting for selling ebooks? Find out how with this post I wrote! (Click!)

Courtesy of Huffingtonpost.com

Press Releases and Media Attention

How do you get media attention for something like an ebook? Easy! You have press releases created that relate to your ebook. Selling ebooks is not about creating press releases that SELL your ebook, the press release is just exposure. You’ll want to create a release that is about something related to your ebook that is relevant to news outlets.

Provide a professional quote for someone, and they will need to mention you and your book in their press release. Sites like HARO allow you to connect with media people for free. All you have to do is sign up, and wait to be cited as an expert source.

In the meantime, you can circulate press releases of your own. These are very important if you want to look like an official authority in your niche. The media can make or break ebooks! Working with them makes it a lot easier.

Tweaking Your Ebook Sales

Selling ebooks is also about reviewing what has worked the best and where you are getting the most money. If you are selling like hotcakes on Amazon, then sink money into exposure there, or into creating an audio or video product for your book, that you can sell alongside your original product. There are always ways to maximize sales.

Most ebook authors spend a lot of income reviewing their platforms and building up their social media sales funnel and website sales. That way, when you sell ebook #2, you will have much larger audiences to reach. Start an email list, and don’t stop driving traffic to it. Your email list can be a superb bestseller.

Other than this – the little moving parts of selling ebooks are up to you to figure out. Everyone is different. You might end up selling 1000 books your first week, and not make another sale for 3 months. It’s all about experience, and learning to leverage the platforms and marketing tools available to you. Remember selling ebooks is about – people – platforms – profit!

Are you looking to sell your ebook for the first time? Tell us all about your experience or ask me a question! I’m here to help!

Courtesy of queensquill.com

#1: The Super-Powered About Us Pages

Creative companies are using Twitter Vine to add looping videos to their ‘about us’ page on their websites. They tell their brand story in snippets, instead of simply using boring old words. The result is an SEO boost, a traffic increase and a much lower bounce rate. What more could you want from new marketing method?

#2: Product Showcases and Sharable Content

An image of a product can only do so much, but Twitter Vine lets you showcase the product in all of its glory. Include something really interesting about your product and show something exciting, or useful. An example may be to showcase your new juicing machine, along with the best recipe result ever – like a trademark smoothie.

Courtesy of business2community.com

#3: Get Your Product Fans Posting with Hashtags

Whether you own a hair salon, or sell gadgets off the internet, Twitter Vine can be one of the most powerful methods of social proof ever created. Get your fans and friends to take Vine videos and post them on Twitter under your brand hashtag, and on your Facebook page. People love user-generated reviews and tutorials.

#4: Show Your Customers The Human Side of Your Business

If there are ever events, workshops or conferences where your employees are all together making a difference – use Twitter Vine to show your fans and customers how awesome you are. This puts a human face on your business and encourages repeat sales. You can also take Vine videos of each employee to showcase who they are on your website.

#5: Use Twitter Vine as a Portfolio Snippet Tool

Entice your potential clients to buy from your company by using Twitter Vine to take snippets of your services or products – and send it to them as portfolio ‘sneak-peeks.’ A wedding company for example, might send a Vine video of the table decorations they’ve done from the last few weddings they were involved in. Instant sales tool!

Courtesy of Twylah.com

#6: Feel Good Formulas For Additional Sales and Traffic!

Everyone loves a good story, and I’m sure your business has many. Tell them by using Twitter Vine videos and posting these on your social media pages. You can also illustrate how to enter a competition that is based on one of your social media pages. Businesses all over the world are joining in on this 6 second extravaganzas.

On Twitter right now you can enjoy many creative, and business-based Twitter Vines, brought to you by the big brands online. It’s time you, as a small business, started capitalizing on this virtually free application that can do so much for your brand. A Vine today could mean an additional 1000 hits tomorrow, so get moving!

Join our Twitter page here!

Have you tested Vine yet? How do you use this app to improve your business?

Courtesy of portent.com

Why Do I Need To SEO Pinterest?

Pinterest is the world’s fourth largest referrer of website traffic, leaving other sites like Youtube and Yahoo in the dust. The potential is there for Pinterest to be a referral traffic powerhouse, so why wouldn’t you use it for Pinterest marketing?

The A-Z of Pinterest Marketing SEO

The aim of marketing on Pinterest is to get lots of followers, repinners and people that will click through to your website or share your content.

Courtesy of seoclerks.com

1. Become a Viral Master

• Make sure that your images are highly sharable by creating ‘instructographics,’ ‘infographics,’ inspirational images and by sharing meaningful quotes on the site.

• Post your viral Pinterest marketing images at the right time of day – namely at six in the morning, and at six at night. You can also work out the time zone differences for the UK, Europe and Australia, to post at these times.

• You have to share to be shared. Build up lots of great boards that show fans that you share other people’s images. They will share yours if you shared theirs. Empty boards don’t get noticed, so fill them up to improve your SEO potential.

2. The Intricacies of Pinterest Marketing SEO

• Earn on Pinterest by getting more traffic – how? By using keywords in your comments, titles, descriptions and for your board names. Don’t forget to put your pins in the right categories so people can find them.

• Pinterest link building is very popular. Everytime you post an image you can include a URL, which creates a backlink to your sites and improves SEO.

• Link your Pinterest marketing account with your Facebook account. It improves your viral potential as people love to share their pins on Facebook too.

• Add ‘pin it’ widgets to all of your websites, blogs or product pages so that people can choose to pin your images.

• Make friends with 10 people and form a pin network. Share each other’s pins, to reach a greater number of people on Pinterest. This Pinterest marketing tactic exposes your pins to more people, so you get more comments and shares.

Courtesy of megantegtmeyer.com

All of these great techniques have been 100% proven, by expert marketers and by myself. Pinterest marketing is more about offering value in the form of an image than anything else. Don’t forget to strip your images with a URL in case they do go viral.

These Pinterest strategies will help rapidly improve the traffic that you get to your sites, both directly and indirectly. Imagine one image of yours reaching millions of people, and then even 2% of these people visiting your sites. That’s the Pinterest marketing potential!

Don’t forget to diversify your keywords and don’t be too repetitive with your content or you might be seen as a spammer.

Any Pinterest tips to add to our proven SEO guide?

Why not sign up for our webinar on LinkedIn here? You’ll learn a lot of great tips!

Courtesy of articles.nydailynews.com

The Black Friday Rush

Black Friday is traditionally the day after Thanksgiving, when the Christmas season officially begins. It marks the first day of the ‘shopping’ season when online shops and shopping malls are able to sell more products because of Christmas time. You’ve probably employed some basic Christmas Facebook strategies before.

But how do you prepare for the busiest shopping day of the year?

Shop.org has reported that they believe online shopping sales will balloon this year by 12%, to about $92-96 billion dollars in the US alone. It’s definitely time for some strategy!

Facebook Strategies: Page Design

Black Friday is coming, and you need to have all of your businesses best deals out there for your Facebook public to see. This is how to do it.

• Change your cover page to promote Christmas sales
• Change your description URL to specific sales pages
• Make your brand profile image fit your new Christmas design

Include the words ‘Black Friday’ in your Facebook strategies – it motivates people to check out your deal and specials – because there are often a LOT of good ones this time of year. If you really want attention, use a ‘buy X and get Y free offer.’

Courtesy of modbodblog.wordpress.com

Facebook Photo Strategy

As Facebook strategies go, you can’t go wrong with a bit of image advertising. It takes a few minutes to mock up an ad in Photoshop, or you can commission an affordable designer to create several images for you that you can use as advertising.

You’ll need to include a great sales pitch, loud red sales prices, and one or two special products per image. Then create a very alluring update to publish with the picture. If you get some great feedback on these specials leading up to Black Friday – spend
a little more and make your best image ad a REAL promoted ad on Facebook.

Facebook strategies like this will work, especially if your goal is to get people to your sales pages. “Get a free 25% discount coupon instantly when you click this ad.” That works!

Facebook Strategies: Post Updates

Get into the habit of creating posts that tug on the heart strings. Christmas is about giving right? So create some great Facebook strategies that use the family unit, Christmas morning and smiling kids as an incentive to get your buying public to buy more.

Super Power Your Black Friday

If there was ever a time to leverage viral marketing, it’s now. You can improve your Black Friday sales a whole lot if you can get a video to go viral in the days leading up to Black Friday or Christmas.

Facebook strategies like viral video can be the difference between a few thousand dollars, and hundreds of thousands of dollars that you could potentially make on that day. Use your Facebook page to promote a brand –orientated viral video that is entertaining, funny and that is worth sharing. It can make a big difference to your bottom line!

Educate Yourself!

Speaking of Facebook strategies and bottom lines – if you want to learn more about how to increase leads, revenue and brand awareness, I have something for you today.

Sign up before Nov 20th!

Sign up to my free webinar now, where you’ll get to experience a live discussion on 9 Facebook Strategies that you’ll need for this time of year, or any time of year!

Facebook has changed so much in the past few months, you’ve probably missed some really important stuff. Enroll in this free webinar, and you’ll get to take part in our live Q&A sessions afterwards, with our awesome experts.

Just register here.

The webinar begins on Tuesday November 20th 3PM EST. It’s just in time for Black Friday!

Otherwise, what Facebook strategies do you use to leverage Black Friday?

Courtesy of wouldyoukindly.com

The A-Z of How To Podcast

I often get asked how businesses can boost their blog readership without having to go through the expense and camera trauma involved in being a Youtube star. The answer is always the same – learn how to podcast!

A podcast is a simple audio clip that you can record at the office or in the comfort of your own home. All it takes is a bit of podcasting software that you can download free online, and a basic podcast script.

• Download a free sound recorder – Camtasia or Audacity
• Choose an appropriate file format (mp3 is the best)
• Create a basic album cover in Photoshop to promote your podcast

Okay so that’s how to podcast. That in no way details how to create an excellent podcasting strategy that you’ll use to grow your blog readership! That’s step 2.

Courtesy of proguide.io

Your Podcasting Strategy

Learning how to podcast means figuring out what sort of audio ‘show’ your readers would love. What do they need? How can you present this information in a fun, interactive way? Should there be more than one person speaking on the podcast?

Begin with a title: “How to Podcast Like a Pro”
Length: 2 minutes
Description: 2 Social Media Experts Talking About Podcast Creation
Featuring: Stats, Jokes
Goal: To educate your reader as part of a bi-weekly blog series

This outline will help you flesh out the structure of your podcasting strategy. When putting together “How to Podcast Like a Pro” these are the details you’ll give to a professional script writer or blogger, if you’re getting it done by an expert. Writing audio scripts is challenging, so this may be something you want to consider.

If there’s one tip I can give you about learning how to podcast, it’s that practice makes perfect. You’ll have to be careful about your tones, and the way you form your words – and you’ll need to practice getting into the ‘dynamic voice’ character.

There’s a reason why radio station hosts always sound like they’re drinking Red Bull! You have to know how to podcast that will affect your ‘listeners’ so that they come back for more. Gaining podcast listeners is much more simple than blogging, especially if you have an angle or show that you do weekly.

Courtesy of michaelhyatt.com

How To Podcast For Traffic

To build traffic your podcasts need to be popular. You can put them on popular podcasting sites to funnel traffic to your blog – like PodOmatic, Podbean, iPodder and Podcastalley. You can also use Pinterest to promote your podcasts by uploading your album images there.

On Facebook, how to podcast is equally as basic – just pop your URL in a status update to attract new listeners and traffic from there. Don’t forget your album covers there as well! Create full blog posts that promote your podcasts, and make it a feature on your blog!

Did you like this post on how to podcast for blog traffic? Then please share it!

Are podcasts a good tool for attracting fans and readers to your sites?

Courtesy of iloveseo.net

A Quick Curation Guide 101

Curating content simply means collecting content from various credible places online. When you share someone else’s blog post on your Facebook page, that’s curating content – or when you retweet something on your Twitter feed. If it involves someone else’s work and you’re sharing it on your own network, you’re curating content.

Twitter As a Curation Tool

There are three reasons why you’ll want to use Twitter as your main content curation tool.

1) Twitter is to the second, which means content is always fresh there
2) Twitter is home to some expert curators, which makes your job easier
3) Twitter is brimming with content gems waiting to be discovered

First of all subscribe to these 3 accounts:

• @BreakingNews (4 million followers)
• @nytimes (6 million followers)
• @Reuters (2 million followers)

If you subscribe to these 3 accounts you’ll always be informed when breaking news hits, and you can then use it to boost your social strategy. For example, news is rampant because of Hurricane Sandy in New York. If you were warned early of this, you could have used it to create a thoughtful blog post.

Courtesy of mashable.com

Use Twitter Search

I love Twitter search, it’s a vastly underused resource for content creators online. Simply type in the term or topic that you’re searching for, and you’ll be able to find incredible accounts with amazing content. Then save your search, so you can find those accounts again when you need more info later.

Use Twitter search for:

• Facebook post updates
• Twitter retweets
• Finding niche authorities
• Creating interesting blog post topics
• User generated research for ebooks or whitepapers
• To find great hidden blogs the search engines hide
• To find unique Pinterest images

Think of Twitter as a super-powered search engine, except it’s run by people and not stats. If I type in ‘social media’ for example, I immediately get a list of real people and companies working in the social media niche. Then I can pop onto their pages and find relevant content for this post.

Courtesy of twitter.com

Clicking on @mauricefreedman (Social Media Expert) I find an interesting article on how brands can now buy video ads on Linkedin. I can then choose to create a post of my own about it, write a response post to his blog or just share the info with my social network.

Twitter has the power to provide you with new information, something you always need when you’re running your own social campaigns. So, keep your eyes pealed and take advantage of breaking news, trends and hot topics in your niche, by using Twitter as a curation tool.

If you liked this blog post on Twitter curation, please share it with your friends

How do you find content to share online?

Courtesy of covenantsolutions.co.uk

The 5 Laws of Engaging Facebook Posts

#1: Increase Your Edgerank Score

Edgerank is the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine how close you are to individual fans. It decides how relevant you are to your fans, and when to show them your posts. Increase your Edgerank score by tagging fans in photos.

Right: “Fan poll: How do you use engaging Facebook posts to boost your business?” (Then tag 10 or so fans in the image you use with this question – they will be prompted to answer, and your edgerank score will increase, meaning they will see more of your posts)

#2: Use a Striking Image

People love engaging Facebook posts with images in them. It’s been proven that posts that have images vastly out-perform posts that don’t have images. Choose thought provoking, funny, emotional, intelligent or witty images and construct an equally as engaging text line to go with it.

Courtesy of anitaloomba.com

Right: “Engaging Facebook posts like this image, increase your edgerank score by 45%. Can you tell why? Tag the area you think has the most impact” (Then start the response list by adding in a comment below your post)

#3: Use Short Video Clips

It’s important to use short video clips, because people don’t tend to watch video longer than 4 minutes on Facebook. If your engaging Facebook posts are going to work, then select videos with huge viral potential. They need to be funny, shocking, fascinating and impossible not to share. Add an extremely tantalizing text line to the video.

Right: “Something in this video doesn’t make sense. Can you tell what it is?”

#4: Links For Engaging Facebook Posts

Links are always a powerful engagement tool, and they are even more-so on a site like Facebook. But don’t just share the link – that’s boring. For engaging Facebook posts that go viral – share an image from the page, and include the link in the text portion of the comment. Then give your opinion on WHY you are sharing the link.

Right: “What do three elephants, an egg and a chainsaw have in common? It all makes sense when you read Rod’s article on engaging Facebook posts here. Brilliant!” (Include an image that captures the imagination)

Courtesy of wearesocial.com

#5: Focus on Top Text Updates

The key to great text posts, is to invite discussion or debate. Keep it short so that people can read it without clicking on the ‘see more’ link. Speak directly to your fans. Get them to share their knowledge, so that they look like authorities on the subject. Engaging Facebook posts happen when you make it easy for your fans to look good.

Right: “To write engaging Facebook posts I need to ________ “

Use calls to action, questions, trivia, word tricks, challenges, quotes, holiday themes and polls to get your fans talking.

Use these rules to create engaging Facebook posts, so that your business page can come alive with conversation. Don’t forget to use Facebook Insights to track which posts do better than others. Always test and improve – for better results!

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How do you create engaging Facebook posts on your page? Any tricks you’d like to share with us?