Content Marketing Part 4

Content Monetization

    

        This part of Guberti’s book will help us make money doing what we love to do. However, we all must remember that no tactic or strategy can help us make money if we don’t implement it.

            So, here comes a few ways to monetize or make some money off of our content.

             First, and the easiest one according to Guberti, is to write a book for our targeted audience. Guberti expresses over and over again in his book how writing a book really isn’t as hard as we collectively think it is. Then he goes on to give us strategies to write a book, like eliminating distractions, maybe doing a video transcription, or even hiring a ghostwriter if we genuinely believe that it is too hard to write a book ourselves.

            Next, Guberti gets into training courses as a way to monetize. He says that they are his most profitable venture. And he should know because he has created a bunch of them. He also mentions how a book and a training course go hand-in-hand. And then Guberti shares his sales funnel where he explains how his multiple products set at various prices that begin at $7 and go all the way up to $997 and even $1445 help him lead people through his sales funnel in a way that he can monetize what he does.

            In addition, Guberti really loves his virtual summits, so there is no way his book on content marketing secrets and this section on monetizing wasn’t going to include his secret weapon of virtual summits as a way to make money. Through his all-access pass, which goes as high as $297 during the summit, and then jumps to $997 after the summit has ended, Guberti makes some good money as he monetizes his content and the content of others, while also building those relationships with other influencers.

            Near the end of his book, Content Marketing Secrets Guberti makes a good argument on why all of us need to learn how to use affiliate marketing so we can monetize what we do. In this section of the book, he shares with us how affiliate marketing can also lead to joint ventures, which will also lead to exponentially increasing our revenue, and possibly lead to coaching, consulting and who knows what other paid services, too?

            So, to sum it up, there are a lot of ways to make money doing what we love to do, especially within our own content creation. And Marc Guberti may still be a young guy, but don’t let that fool you. He really does have a lot to say, and we’d be really wise to listen to him, and we’d be especially wise to listen to him on his Breakthrough Success Podcast where he shares his success secrets on a weekly basis. Also, we’d also be extremely wise to read his book, Content Marketing Secrets cover to cover and then implement some of his strategies.       

Dan Blanchard is a bestselling author, award-winning speaker, and educator who has written books on leadership, education and professional speaking. He has been featured on over 100 television and radio shows, as well as some of the world’s top podcasts. To find out more about Dan please visit his website: www.DanBlanchard.net

Content Marketing Part 3

Social Media Marketing

   

        Guberti, says, “Social media is the core platform brands use to increase their visibility and communicate with current customers. This tool can open the floodgates to traffic, opportunities, and sales.”

            Guberti also shares in his book, Content Marketing Secrets that he believes we should only work on one social media site at a time until we master it. And then once we have a first social media platform on auto-pilot, then we can work on mastering another one. We also need to keep in mind that our goal is to keep visitors on our social media sites for longer and longer periods of time.

            Of all the social media networks, Guberti believes that Twitter is the easiest and cheapest to master. Our Twitter strategies should be to interact with our audiences and provide them with content that they want. Through using these strategies, amazingly Guberti was able to have his first 100,000 Twitter followers before he graduated high school.

            He shares in this book that we need to follow people who will likely follow us back. Let’s not try to convert people to our niche. Let’s just follow people who have already been converted to whatever niche we are trying to play big in.

            How do we find these people that have already been converted? Well, we need to find someone who is prominent in our field who has a large following. And guess what? Once we find them, we’re also going to notice that they have already built up the audience that we are looking for. So, let’s start following some of the fans of our fellow influencers who have already converted them so they too can know we exist and follow us back. Then let’s make sure that we’re also interacting with our new-found social media friends, as well.

            Now let’s move over to Facebook, which is dominating the targeted advertising realm. Facebook’s ability to target our audience or at least a future audience is incredible, especially if we have the money to pay for Facebook Ads. However, if we don’t presently have the resources for targeted Facebook Ads, then we’re going to have to be strategic in how we use Facebook.

            Facebook Live is hot right now. And it’s a great place for us to start integrating ourselves into our audience or niche for free. Also, joining some Facebook Groups and interacting with other people that hang out there is awesome, too. And so is creating our own Facebook Group within our niche. Starting a group instantaneously gives us creditability in our field of expertise. In addition, we can also create Facebook Groups for Facebook users who have read our books and want a place to be engaged in with others who are discussing the ideas our books offer to them.

            Now moving on to Pinterest. The great thing about Pinterest is that we don’t need a lot of followers for Pinterest to be effective for us. Guberti had one of his pins pinned over 1000 times when he only had 500 followers. That’s engagement. And that’s real viral potential.

            One of the secrets with Pinterest is that we need to be active on that platform. And one way to be active on that platform is to invite contributors to pin pins to our boards. Another way is to use a tool called Virtual Tag, which can schedule our pins and set up an evergreen posting cycle tor us that pins the same pin to multiple boards in a continuous cycle.

            YouTube is another way to use social media marketing, and it’s great for SEO because Google owns YouTube, so of course, it favors YouTube in Google searches. Also, in today’s times, people like videos, so it only makes sense to take advantage of YouTube in our social media marketing efforts. The thing about YouTube is that we have to upload more videos than most of us presently are doing. We should be doing at least one video a week. And sadly, many of us are just too sporadic when it comes to uploading our videos to YouTube to promote our content in our social media marketing efforts.

            In addition, we also need to make compelling videos that talk directly to our niche. This isn’t as hard as it sounds, though. All we have to do is to dig back through our old content, and now we have a diamond field of precious old content that we can repurpose for YouTube, which by the way, Google loves. Using YouTube will boost our Google ranking, thus making it easier for people to find us and our life-changing content.

            Moving on the Instagram. Instagram is on fire right now. According to Guberti, they have 300 million daily active, engaged users who love the pictures and products they find on this site. So, it only makes sense to be active on Instagram in our social media marketing efforts. And let’s also make sure that we “like” hundreds of pictures related to our niche because thousands of potential targeted followers can come from these pictures.

            Also, let’s find someone on Instagram who has a large audience according to Guberti, and follow people who liked this influencer’s post. Then, let’s repeat this formula with another Instagram influencer.

            Finally, LinkedIn. Guberti believes that LinkedIn is the most underrated social media network on the web. And the first thing we need to do is to get more LinkedIn connections. And the best way to do this is to first and foremost send meaningful invites to the right people. Then we need to publish posts on LinkedIn every day, as well as engage with other posts. And let’s also make sure that we ask for endorsements and have a professional bio. And finally, let’s also utilize the right LinkedIn groups who are filled with professionals that are in our niche and may want to work with us in some capacity.

Dan Blanchard is a bestselling author, award-winning speaker, and educator who has written books on leadership, education and professional speaking. He has been featured on over 100 television and radio shows, as well as some of the world’s top podcasts. To find out more about Dan please visit his website: www.DanBlanchard.net

Content Marketing Secrets Part 2

Content Marketing

 If no one knows our content exists, then we can have the greatest content in the world, and it ain’t going to make one iota of difference because almost no one is going to see it. And that means almost no one is going to know it exists, or that we wrote it, or that we exist. What a waste, huh? So sad, isn’t it? 

          Guberti and I see eye to eye on this next strategy of content marketing, which is to build relationships. Guberti says in his book that if we aren’t working on developing at least one new meaningful relationship every day, then our content brand is stagnant at best. Besides relationships being fun, they are also one of the greatest opportunities available to us authors and speakers to share our message and our content.

            And if we can build relationships with influencers who can share our message and our content on a huge stage or scale, then we’ve hit the relationship jackpot. However, influencers have to guard their time and brand, and rightfully so. So we can’t just go ask them for a favor. Instead, we have to provide some value for them first according to Guberti. And one good way to do this is to help them get extra exposure by asking them to be a guest on our podcast if we have one. Or, asking them to be a guest blogger on our blog, if we have one.

            Another great way to add value to the influencers first while creating a great relationship with them is to invite them to participate in our virtual summits if we are brave enough and bold enough to actually try to put on a virtual summit and invite all of our new friends to it.

            I really like Guberti’s next tip in marketing our content, which is just simply to repurpose our content. Repurposing is the easiest way to be everywhere so we can catch a few influencers attention.

            Here’s a simple example of repurposing our content. We could create a video within our niche and put it on YouTube, Facebook and Vimeo. Then we could repurpose our video’s content by taking just the audio and turn it into a podcast episode. Next, we could transcribe either the video or audio and turn it into a blog post, which we can post all over our social media channels. Next, we could turn our post into a slide share. And then take we could take pictures from the post and/or slide share, and even create a few with quotes from the content to post on Pinterest and Instagram. You see, all these social media channels have different audiences so we can reach new people. However, they also all kind of feed into one another. Our content can flow through our various social media channels in unique ways. And by repurposing our content through these different social media channels, we certainly do look like we are everywhere doing everything.

            Also, let’s make sure that we are also collaborating with our audiences too because they could provide us with opportunities for guest appearances on television, radio, podcasts, blogs, and other media platforms. Our audience can also become our contributors helping us create a larger amount of content while adding their unique value to our platforms. They might even become so excited about working with us that they also go out and tell everyone they know about us.

            Guberti includes building our email list in content marketing because we actually own this piece of the virtual real estate world. Plus, through the powers of email, we show up in people’s inboxes. In Guberti’s book, Content Marketing Secrets, Guberti provides us with 50 tactics to grow our email list from creating a bunch of landing pages to creating Udemy Courses, leveraging our blogs, appearing on other people’s YouTube Channels, providing perks, publishing a kindle book, and a whole bunch more of tips just waiting to be explored and implemented.

Dan Blanchard is a bestselling author, award-winning speaker, and educator who has written books on leadership, education and professional speaking. He has been featured on over 100 television and radio shows, as well as some of the world’s top podcasts. To find out more about Dan please visit his website: www.DanBlanchard.net

Content Marketing Secrets Part 1

   

Marc Guberti is still very young, but he has many years of experience, and regardless of his age, he has written a very useful and very valuable book for all of us authors and speakers out there who are trying to make a difference through our content. Guberti’s book is a four-part book that begins with content creation and then goes into content marketing, which we all know is very important. Part-three of his book is social media marketing, and finally part-four brings along monetizing because if we don’t make any money, we can’t continue to do what we do.

 Content Creation

            Let’s now begin with content creation because it’s the lifeblood of content marketing. If we don’t have any content, then there’s nothing to market, nothing to monetize, and nothing to make a difference with.

            So, now that we know that we need content, the new question becomes how to find content, and then find it even quicker than we are currently doing. Also, we also have to make sure that our content is good content. And for content to be good, it needs to provide a legendary experience. And for it to give a legendary experience it has to either entertain, empower, or educate, or do some kind of combination of these three.

            So, how does one find content? Well, according to Guberti, in his book, Content Marketing Secrets it’s simple. All we need to do is just go back and look at our old content and figure out what we missed, or what needs to be explained more. We can also do the same kind of thing with other people’s content or blogs, too. What did they miss? What do they need to explain more? And voila! We now have material to develop.

            Another great way to find content is to look at the questions that people ask at the end or the bottom of the blogs that interest us. Anyone of these questions could be a future blog written by any one of us.

            Inspirational videos and podcasts can also have great material that we can expand upon to come up with some great new content of our own.

             Now, according to Guberti, it is possible to create great content quickly, but to do it, we’re going to have to get out of our own comfort zone and consciously make a mind-shift toward action rather than fear of being judged.

            Also, according to Guberti, most spectacular content and/or blogs have a recipe for success. First, they start with an attractive headline, then the first sentence entices readers to read the first paragraph, and then the first paragraph hooks readers to read the article. Next, great content or blogs have a body that is skimmable and ends with a call to action. The outstanding ones also have some form of media sprinkled throughout the article.

            Finally, to create content, the successful ones create an environment and a schedule that is conducive to rapid quality content creation. According to Guberti, one of his secrets for popping out a ton of content is getting the right nutrition to fuel his body so he can perform at high levels. Also, believe it or not, Guberti is a big believer in taking breaks and 20-minute power naps, as well as getting exercise. He feels the combination of all of these things really helps him pop out a lot of content. And looking at his work, I can’t disagree with him. He seems to have found a winning formula for really popping out the content.

                        Oh, and one last thing here. Guberti also believes it is a good idea to outsource to freelancers on the things that he doesn’t love to do. At a minimum, he thinks we should at least outsource the jobs that take the most amount of time.

Dan Blanchard is a bestselling author, award-winning speaker, and educator who has written books on leadership, education and professional speaking. He has been featured on over 100 television and radio shows, as well as some of the world’s top podcasts. To find out more about Dan please visit his website: www.DanBlanchard.net

What to Say When You Talk to Your Self! Part 5

Part Five- Methods of Self-Talk

   

         The 1^st method of self-talk is called silent self-talk. We do this one all the time and aren’t usually even aware of it according to Dr. Helmstetter. Within this method all we have to do is switch old negative self-talk with new positive self-talk. This is the easiest and most natural of all the techniques to use. It generally takes more awareness than effort to do this one. So, from now on let’s start to pay attention to everything that we are silently saying to ourselves. Then, let’s override any negative and recreate a positive force out of it. Let’s do this every chance we get and make our lives better through this simple method of silent self-talk.

            Our 2^nd method of self-talk is called sell-speak. Anything we say out loud, regardless of what it is or who it is to, is self-speak. It truly is a powerful force in our lives. So, let’s be more cognizant of what we saying out loud and replace any poorly chosen self-speak with better directions for our minds to operate on.

            Here’s a little self-improvement trick to help us all become more cognizant of our own self-speak. Let’s begin to pay attention to the self-speak that comes out of others’ mouths. Then, let’s also occasionally ask ourselves the introspective question of, “Do I sound like that? Do I say those kind of words when I speak out loud?” This simple little trick will greatly help us become more cognizant of what we say out loud.

            Third on the list of methods of self-talk is self-conversation. This is a cool and funny one all at the same time. Self-conversation gives us a chance to stop beating up on ourselves and to become a best friend to ourselves, like we’re supposed to be, by speaking our loud to ourselves. Basically, this is having a conversation our loud with ourselves about the best about ourselves. We can even act it out if that floats our boat and makes it stick better. This can be a lot of fun according to Dr. Helmstetter because it involves multiple sense, is very effective, and will get us some good laughs as people look at us like we’re crazy. If you’re not brave enough yet for this craziness of people looking at you all weird, then just do this method in the privacy of your shower each morning instead of out loud in some public place each day.

            Our 4^th method of self-talk is called self-write. I’m going to warn you up front that most people won’t do this very effective method of self-talk because it takes effort and time. It’s just like the self-conversation of self-talk that we’ve already mentioned above, except that we added one more step of writing it out every day. It involves another sense through writing as well as some slower deeper thinking. Again, it’s effective, but time consuming, so most won’t do it beyond the first few days, if they do it at all.

            Finally, the 5^th method of self-talk is called tape-talk. This takes the best of method four and lets us simplify it so that more of us will do it. We simply just do the self-write once and then audio record ourselves speaking it. Next, we just simply listen to it a few times a day. It’s simple and powerful positive programming. As a matter of fact, Dr. Helmstetter believes that he has never seen a better tool than tape-talk in all of his years of studying self-development. It’s like having our own personal coach by our side pulling the best out of us each day.

            In conclusion, the workings of the human brain are completely indifferent to our stations in life. And that’s another good thing for many of us. You see, this means that anyone of us can use self-talk and benefit from it. But, first, we need to pick up Dr. Helmstetters book of, What to Say When You Talk to Yourself. Read it. Practice the principles. And use his tricks of the trade to help yourself succeed. Hint… Hint… there’s a bunch more secrets of success in his book just waiting for you to discover that I didn’t have room to share here in this article. Happy readings. And happy life!

Dan Blanchard is an award-winning author, speaker and educator. Learn more about Dan at: www.DanBlanchard.net. Check out Dan’s teen leadership book at: http://tinyurl.com/glxzjaf

What to Say When You Talk to Your Self! Part 4

Part Four- We Can Begin Right Now

   

         Let’s begin listening to everything we say about ourselves right now. Let’s erase what’s not working and replace it with what does work. Here’s the tricky part though. We need something to fill the void once we start erasing or we’ll just eventually fall back into that abyss of our old way of talking to ourselves and our old ways of behaving. We need to have a word-for-word vocabulary to replace the old with or our new and improved life won’t last.

            You see, wanting it is not enough. Deciding to do it is not enough either. According to Dr. Helmstetter, the human brain says, “Give me more. Give me the words. Give me the directions, the commands, the picture, the schedule and the results that you want. Then I will do it for you. Give me the words!”

            Dr. Helmstetter believes many times good self-improvement does fall short of self-talk because many of the self-improvement techniques out there are lacking some of the basic things that make up self-talk and make self-talk so powerful and enduring. These simple but powerfully effective things that self-talk has that many other self-improvement strategies lack is that self-talk is simple, easy to use, and it works.

            Now, don’t laugh yet at the simplicity of it all yet. Often, it is in the simplicity that the genius lies. Most self-improvement strategies can help us improve our lives for a while, but the bottom line is that if it isn’t simple, then eventually we’ll stop doing it. Next, if it’s not easy we’ll also stop doing it. For example, most of us probably don’t mind expending a few seconds of energy here and there for self-talk. But, how many of us will spend one hour every day improving ourselves? Not many. Lastly, it has to also work. If our thought patterns don’t change, something that self-talk does do, well then, we can keep on beating ourselves over the head with these other methods of self-improvement all we want, but sadly, they will eventually fail us because we still have the old crappy programming.

Dan Blanchard is an award-winning author, speaker and educator. Learn more about Dan at: www.DanBlanchard.net. Check out Dan’s teen leadership book at: http://tinyurl.com/glxzjaf