In 1955, Jack Daniels wasn’t the best selling whiskey in the world. In fact, most people had never even heard of Jack Daniels. It was a small, regional brand selling just 150,000 cases annually of its black labeled Tennessee whiskey.
But by the end of 1956, sales had doubled and there was a Jack Daniels shortage. Demand in the U.S. for the whiskey steadily increased at such a high rate, the distillery wouldn’t have enough product to export to other countries for almost two decades.
So what changed? One tiny little sentence uttered onstage by just the right person – Frank Sinatra.
Frank brought a glass onstage and uttered this line: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Daniel’s, and it’s the nectar of the gods.”
Here’s what we know:
One endorsement from the right person and your product can potentially take off. The above example was long before the days of social media, so imagine what can happen today.
Caution: This was also before endorsements and brand ambassadors became a thing. Now if someone well-known endorses your product, people might think this person is getting paid, even if he’s not.
Jack Daniels didn’t even know Frank liked their product until this business changing moment. But once they heard what happened, they made sure Frank’s glass was never empty again. Wherever Frank performed, there was a case of Jack Daniels waiting for him in his dressing room.
And here’s how we can use this information:
Make a product so terrific, people will endorse it even when they’re not a paid spokesperson. With social media today, even an unknown person can become an ambassador for your brand if they love what you do.
When someone endorses your product, thank them and never stop. The free products you give this person will be dwarfed by the profits you earn from their efforts to get your brand seen and used.
Get your product in front of as many well-known people in your niche as you possibly can. Jack Daniels got lucky, but you can make your own luck by giving away sample products to bloggers and social media mavens.
Anytime you hint that you have information that’s not readily available to the public, or that most people don’t know, you’ll make people curious enough to find out more.
Use words like secret, shocking, surprising, little known, finally revealed and so forth to communicate that you’ve got something interesting to share.
Examples:
Aphids Eating Your Plants? Surprising Home Remedy Kills Aphids Dead without Poisoning Your Harvest
Is Your Dog’s Behavior Driving You Crazy? Little known Training Trick Makes Dogs Listen to Your Every Command
Can’t Afford College? The Secret to Getting PAID to Go to University
5: The [New Product or Method] that [Somebody] Now Loves
If your audience is skeptical of your product, or if your product is brand new and no one’s heard of it, this can be a great headline.
Examples:
The New Weight Loss Method that Medical Doctors Recommend to Their Patients
The Strange Home Remedy that Psoriasis Sufferers Love
The So-Called ‘Scam’ Investment System that Insiders are Secretly Using to Make Fortunes
6: [Authority Figure] [New Information]
For the ‘authority figure’ you can use a celebrity, an authority in your niche, a particular organization or whatever.
Examples:
Brad Pitt Reveals His #1 Strategy for Getting Over a Failed Relationship
The Exact System Warren Buffet Uses to Double His Money Daily
3 out of 4 World Chess Champions Use This Program to Improve Their Game
7: [Problem] [Solution]
This one is straight forward and easy to use.
Examples:
Investors Are Losing Everything in This Volatile Market: How to Safeguard Your Money While Earning 10-16% Interest
Over 50 and Tired all the time? How to Have More Energy than a 20 Year Old.
Can’t Get Dates Because You’re Not Skinny? How to Have Men Begging to Go Out with You Regardless of Your Weight
And there you have it – 7 headline formulas you can use for subject lines, book titles and of course headlines.
Would you like to write a great blog post or email in half the time without losing quality – and perhaps even make your content better in the process?
Here’s how you can start writing better, faster and more:
1: Create an outline. Your outline is your plan, and it’s going to make your entire task easier for 3 reasons:
Having a plan diffuses procrastination. When we look at a project our mind tells us it’s big – too big. This causes stress, which makes us want to avoid the whole thing. By having a plan, we can break the writing down into manageable, stress free steps.
Having a plan keeps you from wandering off topic. If you have a simple outline to follow, it’s just a matter of filling out each section of the outline. But without a plan, you could waste a great deal of time writing about things that in the end don’t even pertain to your main topic.
It makes research super easy. Once you have an outline, researching can be as simple as Googling each item on your outline. Without a plan, your research can lead you into never-ending time-wasting circles.
2: Once you’ve got your outline, set it aside for an hour or a day and let it bake in your brain.
By setting it aside, you can let your mind focus on something else. Meanwhile, your subconscious is still working on that outline. You’ll be surprised by what your subconscious gives you. All of a sudden you’ll realize you left out the most important part, or you’ve found a much better way to illustrate your main point.
3: Write every day. Writing, just like anything else, is a skill. The more you do it, the better and faster you will get.
Write even when you don’t ‘feel’ like it. As Stephen King has said, “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration. The rest of us just get up and go to work.”
Or as another writer stated, “I wait for inspiration to strike. Fortunately for me, it strikes every day at 9 am.”
Even if you absolutely, positively do NOT want to write, tell yourself you’re going to write for just 15 minutes. Then start writing. You can write anything – anything at all – but you must write. Pretty soon you’ll be working on your project and wondering why you were feeling such resistance to something you actually enjoy.
4: Use deadlines in your favor. Without a deadline, there is no stress. With no stress, your brain puts off the task of writing for later. After all, writing takes brain power, effort, thinking and decision making – things your brain would rather put off until later. Or never.
But when you have a deadline, you have stress to get the job done. The closer the deadline, the more stress. To relieve the stress, you’ve got to get busy. Now your brain is telling you to, “Write now!”
If self-imposed deadlines work for you, then you know what to do. If not, you’ll have to find a way to get others to hold you accountable for your deadlines. For example, telling your blog readers that your next post goes live on Tuesday at 10 am PST should work nicely.
No blog readers yet? Have a friend hold you accountable. If you don’t make your deadline, you owe them dinner.
5: Focus on the “feel goods.” Back when I had a regular job, I loved my days off. I especially loved them when I knew well in advance that they were coming.
But if I found out that morning that I wasn’t working, then half the joy of having time off was gone. There was no anticipation. No looking forward to that day off. Frankly, I felt ripped off if I didn’t know I wasn’t working until that same morning.
You can use this knowledge to self-motivate yourself. Think about how great it will feel to hit publish or send. Think about closing the file and doing something you love as a reward. Think about the accolades you’ll receive for finishing the project, or the money you’ll earn, or whatever it is that motivates you to keep working until you’re done.
6: Turn off the internet. Some folks, me included, tend to get distracted by the internet. We think we’re going to ‘sneak off’ for 5 minutes to check Reddit, and an hour later we still haven’t gotten back to work.
So whenever possible, just disconnect your wifi. Turn off your cell phone. Remove anything else that tends to distract you. And then go to work.
7: Speed up your typing. If you’re not able to type at least 50 words per minute, maybe it’s time you improved your typing skills.
It’s difficult when your thoughts are coming faster than your fingers can tap them out. But you have options:
Type faster. There are plenty of free and paid courses online that will teach you how to touch type faster.
Use a voice to text program such as Dragon Naturally.
Record yourself and have it transcribed.
Writing by itself isn’t hard. It’s all the baggage we attach to it that makes it difficult.
But if you can think of writing as simply assembling the pieces to a puzzle, you’ll do it much better and faster.
Bad information keeps many people from making money online.
People give a half-hearted effort to one form of marketing, get disappointed that it didn’t work, and then cry out to the world that it no longer works…
How many times have you seen one of these headlines:
“Email Marketing Is Dead!”
“SEO No Longer Works Thanks to Google…”
“Content Marketing Has Lost Its Luster…”
Or the big one:
“Affiliate Marketing Is for Scammers!”
When something is proclaimed dead or not working any longer, it’s probably because someone was gaming the system and the system owners plugged the hole.
Ethical marketing always works in the long run.
That’s why Affiliate Marketing has worked for decades and will continue to work for the non-scammers of the world.
But the headlines persist, and the myths and misconceptions flourish.
Let’s talk about the top 5 myths about affiliate marketing today…
1) Affiliate Marketing is easy…
There’s a misconception out there that the newbie online marketer can grab an affiliate link, put it on their Facebook page, and the money will start rolling in.
Not so fast…
Affiliate marketing like any other business model IS a business.
And it should be treated like a business.
While affiliate marketing may be the exact business model you need as a new entrepreneur, it’s important to understand and accept that it is NOT a get-rich-quick scheme.
As with any business, your primary job is to present a solution to a market with a desperate problem. The problem must be so severe that they are willing to pay for that solution quickly.
Is this beginning to sound like work yet? It should.
Affiliate marketing can be VERY rewarding, but it is not easy, especially if you have no business experience. But affiliate marketing can be the best way to learn how to build a business with very low-risk.
Your investment as an affiliate marketer is low because you don’t have any product or delivery costs. Your focus must be on building a market, knowing that market inside out, and learning how to sell.
These are essential skills for any business owner to master.
Driving traffic and measuring conversions to build your marketing list is the primary tool of every affiliate marketer.
2) Affiliate marketing doesn’t work any more…
The days of throwing a link up on the social marketing sites and making a million dollars overnight are gone…if they ever existed.
Social media has heightened the importance of building relationships with your target market, and that can be a slow process.
Your followers and email subscribers must feel a connection with you. If they don’t, they find someone else where that connection is real.
Affiliate marketing not only works with an audience that knows, likes and trusts you, but they will ask for your affiliate link for new products. Sometimes, they feel such a close relationship that they’ll pass around your affiliate link for you.
Affiliate marketing without real relationships (even if they’re automated) is hard, but can be done with a lot of effort.
But affiliate marketing with real connections with an audience that has been nurtured and embraced works like a charm because you’re genuinely looking out for their interests.
3) The competition is too steep in affiliate marketing…
First, let’s agree competition is good.
That means there’s a market for the product. If not, no one else would be trying to sell that product.
Competitors can also become your best traffic source. Using the right tools like iSpionage.com, you can target your competitors, and step in front of their traffic with better offers, Facebook ads, or other techniques.
Sound a little cutthroat?
Nope, it’s just business. Once you become the Big Dog, everyone will target you too.
Your job is to offer better bonuses, better services, better support, and better experience to that market. And by doing that, you’re building a better relationship.
Find out how your competitors are building their audience (keyword research) and jump in there to grab that audience yourself.
Business is about competition, so if that bothers you, you probably need to get a job.
4) The more I promote my affiliate links the more money I’ll make…
Listen, this one is tricky.
In theory, this is true. But there are other considerations like…
Does your message match the right audience? This is where you’ve got to get good at knowing your market including their hopes, dreams and issues.
In the consulting world, they call these the FUDs – Fears, Uncertainties and Doubts.
What is your audience trying to do? And how can the solution you put in front of them solve that issue?
Promote to the right audience and you don’t have to “sell them” often because you become part of their go-to-problem-solver while you’re building a relationship.
Spamming your links to an audience never works.
But offering a solution to a problem always works.
5) Affiliate marketing is high risk and low ROI…
Ok. There is risk in any business endeavor. In affiliate marketing, you could make a lot of sales for a product only to have the product owner go out of business.
That’s always a risk.
And the return on investment could be very low, but only because you’re not making sales.
That usually means you don’t have the right message for the right target market. Conversions are much easier and ROI much higher when you convert prospects to customers.
Opponents of affiliate marketing will jump in here and declare you’d be better off building your own products, selling them online and keeping ALL the money.
Here’s the truth about that:
If you can’t sell someone else’s product and get a good ROI, what makes you think that you could invest a lot of money on your own product and sell THAT to the same target market.
Affiliate marketing is attractive because the risk is extremely low. You don’t have to create a massive infrastructure to support your products. You’re letting someone else take that risk on.
And the low ROI? Wrong.
The potential in affiliate marketing for those people who learn how to build an audience and convert that audience to paying customers is HUGE because it’s a pay-for-performance model!
The more you convert, the more you make and the higher your return.
Of course, like everything else, affiliate marketing only works if you know how to do it correctly.
If you have the right mindset, then everything else will work itself out. But if you have the wrong mindset, nothing else will work.
Here’s how to get your head on straight:
1: Trust your own ideas and strengths.
Stop comparing yourself, stop second guessing yourself and stand behind your own ideas and decisions.
2: Know your worth. Charge accordingly.
Dan Kennedy suggests that every business owner immediately raise their rates or prices.
You’ll get better customers and clients who appreciate you, fewer headaches and more revenue. So go ahead and give yourself a raise.
3: Realize you can’t do it alone.
Whatever ‘it’ is, you need help. Focus on the ideas, make the decisions, do the parts you’re good at and outsource everything else. You’ll stay sane and your business will prosper. Remember, teamwork makes the dream work. Start building your team today.
In my never ending search for ways to better appeal to my audience, I sometimes venture into the dark recesses of the human psyche so that I might better understand my customers and even myself.
I’m not picking on psychopaths here. Nor am I villainizing them. As I understand it, psychopaths are born the way they are – it’s not a choice.
A psychopath is generally someone who feels little or no real emotion, and instead has to fake it. They might lie a great deal. They have an inflated sense of self-worth. They use superficial charm and glibness to manipulate and con others. They lack remorse, guilt or empathy. And they constantly are in need of new stimulation.
About 1 out of 100 people are psychopaths. Odds are you know at least one, yet you might not realize it. Remember, most of them are not killers as the media might portray them.
But they can be incredibly charming and persuasive. Some psychopaths can find a person’s weak spot in minutes, manipulate that person using that knowledge, and actually make their target very happy and thankful to have been manipulated.
I’ve seen psychopaths at work. They fake emotions and use the techniques I’m about to cover to make people like them almost instantly.
Have you ever met someone and almost instantly thought you had a lot in common with them? Maybe you did – or maybe they were a psychopath adept at making you feel that way.
Now then, for those with active imaginations, I’m not recommending you turn into a psychopath when it comes to your marketing endeavors. And I’m certainly not suggesting you manipulate your prospects into becoming customers, either.
What I am suggesting is two-fold:
First, we can learn about influence from those who are skilled at it – and psychopaths tend to be especially adept at influencing others.
Second, forewarned is forearmed, which is to say once you are aware of these manipulation techniques, you will be better able to recognize them when they are being used on you or even against you.
Flattery: This isn’t just compliments and buttering you up, although that’s a part of it. Psychopaths can hone in on your insecurities and then provide you with the reassurance you crave to make you feel better. This makes you like them, trust them, and follow their suggestions.
As Marketers we do a variation of this in sales letters, agitating the problem and making the prospect feel the pain of the problem before we offer the feel good solution.
Favors and Gifts: The psychopath will do you a favor or give you a gift you might not even want. But still, now you feel obligated when s/he asks you to do something for them.
We do this in marketing, don’t we? We give away things, and in turn folks feel obligated to take a good look at what we’re offering.
False Intimacy: They’ll pretend to be interested in everything about you – your hobbies and interests, the kinds of music you like, your job, your family and so forth. Then they’ll tell you fake secrets to create an even deeper intimacy, at which point you’ll reciprocate and tell secrets about yourself. This is how a psychopath can go from ‘stranger’ to ‘new best friend’ in one or two meetings.
Again, marketers use a variation of this in sales copy, by first showing how similar we are to the prospect. “I had the same problem you do, here’s my story with all my dark secrets, etc.”
False Expectations: Psychopaths pretend things are already happening the way they want them to happen, before others even have a chance to think. So instead of asking, “Do you want to go to dinner?” They’ll simply say, “Let’s have dinner tonight, I’ll meet you at Harvey’s Grill at 8pm.” You’re not thinking IF you want to go to dinner, but instead you’re already making plans to meet him there.
Marketers and sales people alike will often ‘assume the sale’ to get the prospect to simply go along, rather than feeling like they have to ‘decide.’
Silent Treatment: Psychopaths will give random and unexpected silent treatments to throw you off. You might wonder if you did something wrong, and even try to make up for it with gifts or overt kindness. If you do, then the psychopath knows s/he’s got you wrapped around their finger.
In marketing, going silent is seldom going to pay. Out of sight is very quickly out of mind.
Over Asking: This is crafty – the psychopath asks you for this BIG favor, knowing you’ll balk. But then you feel bad that you had to say no. So when they now ask you for a small favor, you readily agree. Of course, it was the second request that they really wanted all along.
If you’re not using this technique in marketing, you’re probably losing money. Let’s say you offer your live coaching class for $1,000. Obviously a lot of prospects won’t buy it, which is when you offer them a recorded version for a whole lot less money.
Or maybe you want a fairly big name marketer to do an interview with you. You’ve already started building a relationship with them, so you ask if they would like to co-author a product with you. When they say no, you then ask for what you really wanted – a 30 minute interview. (Sneaky, right? But done correctly it does work, but only if you’ve already got a relationship with them.)
False Equivalence: A psychopath uses a logical fallacy to imply that if you don’t do what they desire, then it means something else. For example, if you don’t do what they want, then you don’t love them, or you’re stupid, or you’re immature, etc.
I just want to note here that outside the realm of psychopaths, false equivalence generally means two things are given the same weight, even though they are radically unequal. For example, if you have a scientist backed with decades of research stating a fact, and a non-scientist sitting next to him denying the fact, it appears both have equal weight, when in fact the scientist is backed by 99% of his or her peers on the subject as well as thousands of scientific studies.
In marketing, we can certainly use tactics like these to manipulate our customers, but it’s shady at best. I do recommend you stay on the lookout for it.
You’ll see this tactic used continuously on television and the internet, with ads telling you that you’re not a man if you don’t drink a certain drink, smoke a certain cigarette, drive a certain car and so forth.
Or if you don’t own an iPhone, you’re not part of the ‘in’ crowd.
It would be like me telling you that if you don’t subscribe to my newsletter, then you’re a lousy marketer. That’s blatant manipulation and in my opinion it’s time marketers let this one go forever.
Fake Normal: They communicate that, “Everyone is doing this,” so that the person feels inclined to do it, too.
We use this one a lot in marketing. “Everyone is grabbing ABC product, you better get yours, too!”
Fill Emotional Needs: Psychopaths will find your insecurities and unhappiness, and then provide reassurance. They’re giving people what they want and saying what they want to hear.
If we’re honest, we have to admit that we do a version of this all the time in successful marketing campaigns.
It’s perhaps a little surprising how much marketing has in common with psychopathy. Then again, we’re all about persuading and to a certain degree, manipulating – hopefully towards the BENEFIT and not the detriment of our customers.
If you are manipulating your customer for their own good, that’s one thing. If you’re doing it just to make a sale, you probably won’t be in business for long.
But one thing I learned from studying psychopaths is this – there is still far more that we can learn about persuasion, and sometimes we’ll find the answers in the oddest of places.
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
Whose content do you most consume on social media? If it’s whoever happens to come up in your news feed that day, you might want to rethink. After all, do you want to be somebody, or just anybody?
Choose 5 people to follow online based on what they have accomplished and what they can teach you.
Then read their posts, listen to their podcasts and consume everything they put online.
If you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and you’re spending your time with five highly successful people, what do you think will happen in your life? There is one secret you need to follow though… Be sure to ACT on the most important things you learn from these mentors.
Why the picture of dogs? Frankly, many of life’s greatest lessons can be learned from them… Wouldn’t you agree?
You don’t need major skills to be a drop shipper these days. You don’t need to stock inventory, ship anything, or even guess what might sell.
Heck, you don’t even have to use your own money to pay for the goods.
You can work a couple of hours a day or week, depending on how serious you are.
And frankly the drop shipping method I’m about to show you is so straightforward, a teenager can do it.
Hint: Get your kids started with this when they’re in 8 or 9th grade, and by the time they graduate high school they’ll have a very nice nest egg for college, along with more real world business skills than most college graduates.
Now then… how do you find products? Amazon can give you a wealth of information on what’s selling and what’s hot at the moment.
Go to Google (yes Google, not Amazon) and run some searches such as…
Most popular kitchen gadgets on Amazon
Most popular fitness items on Amazon
Most popular electronic gadgets on Amazon
Most popular pet products on Amazon
Etc.
The first few results will be from the Amazon website itself, but don’t stop at those.
You’ll also find articles showing what’s new, what’s selling and what’s especially popular.
Be sure you’re only looking at results from the last 12-18 months – anything else might be out of date, especially if you’re looking at anything electronic in nature.
Make a list of possible products you’d like to sell. Once you’ve got some research done, you should have an idea of what niche you’d like to focus on.
Once you’ve chosen your niche, dig deeper into that niche to find products. You might even choose a sub-niche to make targeting your prospects easier. For example, instead of choosing ‘dogs’ as your niche, you might choose a single breed like ‘Great Danes.’
When you have your chosen niche and your products, go to Shopify and open your own store with their 14 day free trial.
Next, go to Oberlo and sign up to get their free plugin. This is going to make it super simple to add products to your store.
Now add the Oberlo plugin to your Shopify store.
Set up your payment processor. This is probably going to be Paypal or Stripe, or whatever service you are currently using.
Once you’ve done that, import your products to your store by using the Oberlo plugin.
Did this sound like a lot of work?
Remember, you only have to set up these accounts once. After that, anytime you want to add a new product, it will only take you a few minutes to open things, grab the product and put it on your site.
Once you’ve done these things, you’re ready to start driving traffic and making money.
If you already have a list in this niche, then that’s your first go-to place to get traffic.
Same way if you already have social media accounts and followers in this niche, you’ll want to promote your store in those accounts.
When you’ve done those things, it’s time to invest a little money and start advertising.
Let’s use $100 as an example. And if you don’t have the $100 to spare, you can always sell something on a site like Craigslist or Gumtree to get it, or just borrow it someplace.
Your goal will be to set up a Facebook page for your store and test ads until you find your winner. Plan on initially spending $10 a day for 10 days to find the ad that gets the sales.
Don’t overthink this or get stressed. If you’ve chosen hot selling products, this really isn’t going to be that difficult.
As an alternative, or in addition to using Facebook, you can also find large Instagram pages in your niche that have at least 50,000 followers and decent engagement.
To figure out the engagement rate, add up the number of likes for their last 10 posts, and then divide that number by 10 to find the average likes. Once you have that number, divide it by the total number of followers to find the average engagement rate.
You’re looking for a bare minimum of 1% engagement. Once you find these pages, send them a direct message asking if they’re willing to promote your product.
Rates for promotion are typically $15 for 50,000, $20-25 for 100,000, and $30-$50 for 200,000. But these rates aren’t written in stone. The higher the engagement, the more you might want to consider paying. And a lower engagement means you shouldn’t be paying as much. Negotiation is key.
Look for the pages that most closely match what you’re selling. For example, if you’re selling something for rose enthusiasts, you ideally want to find a page that focuses on roses, not on gardening in general.
By investing $50 to $100 in Instagram, you should get 2-6 promotions and several sales or more. Use your profits to reinvest in your advertising.
Closely monitor what’s working best, and do more of that. Tweak and test your page for optimal results. Add products, rinse and repeat.
See how easy that is? Yet I know that 98% or more of people who read this won’t do it. Which is good news for you… much less competition that way. Ready… Set… Go!!! 😉
With so many tweets being delivered to every Twitter user, it can be difficult to get your tweets seen and clicked. Twitter has 400 million current active users and growing so it’s no wonder why the average Twitter user’s tweets aren’t seen (but you’re not average)…
Done correctly, Twitter can still be a great source of traffic.
And as you know, if your Tweets aren’t driving traffic, then they’re not doing you or your business much good.
That’s why I’ve compiled this list of 15 ways to get your Tweets seen and clicked on by your followers.
1: Add Images
Did you know that tweets with images receive 18% more click-throughs, 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets?
And you can create multiple images for each blog post, using attractive colors, centered headlines and interesting textures.
Studies show that few things in print or online media captures people’s attention faster than faces, so why not use them?
3: Use Your Own Face
Don’t forget to tweet your own face now and then, especially if you’re using a logo as your profile picture.
You’ll increase the stopping power of your tweet as well as build more of a personal connection with your followers.
4: Use Brackets
This is a great subject line trick as well – include something such as an afterthought in brackets, like this:
“Love the shoes [too sexy!]”
5: Quote Someone
Twitter users love quotes. They can be funny, famous, timely and so forth. When you come across something inspiring or thoughtful, by all means share it.
And if the quote is over 140 characters, feature the quote in an image.
Your tweets are usually seen only by your followers. But if you add a hashtag or two, your tweet can potentially be found by others as well.
7: Make Your Tweets Contagious
To get your tweets shared, Jonah Berger, the author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On, says to make them viral using any of the following:
Social Currency – how smart a user looks to others when they share your tweet
Triggers – top of mind content people are triggered to think about
Emotion – focus on feelings rather than function
Public – built to show, built to grow. Think of a brand that puts a red bottom on all of their shoes and you get the idea.
Practical Value – news you can use
Stories – tell stories people want to share
8: Add Emojis and Symbols
Non-text characters make your message stand out. If you’re using a smartphone, you’ll find the emojis right on your keyboard.
If you’re on a computer, you can download a Chrome extension or copy and paste Twitter symbols from a Twitter library such as this one. https://www.piliapp.com/twitter-symbols/
9: Ask Questions
Posing questions to your followers is an effective way to engage people.
Be sure to follow up with everyone who answers you so they know you’re listening.
And you can always highlight answers by retweeting them with your response, keeping them alive and inspiring even more interaction.
10: Use Polls
Twitter Polls are a great tool for attracting attention and engaging followers.
Click the “Add poll” icon beneath the tweet box, add up to four questions, and choose how long you want your poll to run.
11: Thank Profusely and Often
When your fellow tweeters have promoted your content or even contributed to it, thank them. This makes you look like a really nice person, plus it’s great for building relationships.
12: Use @ to Get Specific Attention
If you want someone specific to see your tweet, mention them by including their username preceded by the @ symbol.
13: Use an Image to Grab Group Attention
If you want to get the attention of a group of people, include an image in your tweet. Then when Twitter prompts you with “Who’s in this photo?” you can tag the image with up to 10 users without affecting your character count.
14: Use Twitter Cards
Twitter cards let you include additional media types – such as images, videos, audio and download links – in your tweets.
Tweets go by so fast, many of your tweets will never be seen.
That’s why you want to tweet about that new blog post of yours several times over the course of a few days.
This service lets you increase the reach of your content as you share free links. Here’s how it works:
First you add a branded badge with content within any link.
Let’s say you’re sharing content from Mashable – you simply add a branded badge to the link.
Next, you share your third party content to increase engagement. After all, a link from Mashable will often get more clicks than a link from your own website.
And by the way, this doesn’t just work with Twitter – it works with Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and several other social media networks.
Lastly, your re-shared links continue to carry your recommendations to new audiences, exposing them to your content.
And you can track, measure and get instant insights on the performance of your third party content, too!
Make the very most of your Twitter time by using these little tricks to get your tweets noticed and shared. If you’re going to be Tweeting, make sure that your song is heard!
Do you sell a monthly membership? If not, you might want to consider it.
Here’s 3 reasons to start a membership site:
1
. Monthly memberships mean residual income. You sell a membership once and you get paid for it month after month until the customer cancels.
2. Selling a membership generally isn’t any harder than selling a one-time product, yet you can get paid a whole lot more for the same effort.
3. If you offer a trial membership, it’s even easier to get new subscribers. In fact, it can be easier than selling a regular one time product. Yet you can make a LOT more, as this case study will show.
Michael Hyatt has a membership site called Platform University. Twice a year he opens the site up for enrollment. Of course, you can take new enrollees into your membership site as often as you choose, but Michael likes to do it just twice a year – probably because it seems more exclusive that way.
Membership costs $37 a month.
But when his recent launch ended, he decided to offer a $1.99 trial membership to anyone who didn’t take the full $37 a month membership.
So after the one week trial period ended, he sent out an email to everyone who didn’t become a member.
In the email he offered a 7 day trial for $1.99, but the catch was they only had 24 hours to grab it.
That email went out to 40,000 people. 819 signed up for the trial offer.
(If you’re going to do the math to see how much 819 times $1.99 is, you’re going to miss the point. But it’s $1,629)
Of those 819 people, 292 cancelled the membership before it rolled into the $37 a month auto payment.
That sounds bad, doesn’t it?
It’s not. Because that means 527 new members paid their first $37 a month.
At $37 a month, that’s an additional $19,499 of monthly recurring income that Michael never would have had if not for the trial membership.
And things get even crazier, because the average member stays for 17.3 months, which is a lifetime value of $640.10 per member.
Which is to say, that $1.99 trial offer resulted in over $300,000 of possible future revenue.
Wow.
Really, it makes you wonder why he doesn’t just offer the trial membership.
But here’s the thing: By spending a week or even two weeks selling the membership at full price, he really builds the value.
So when he does offer the one week trial for just $1.99, it is such a no-brainer that people sign up in droves.
The campaign to get new $37 members is really a campaign to show people how valuable the membership is, and set it up so that the $1.99 is just too good to pass up.
If he had ONLY offered the $1.99 membership, he would not have properly established the value of the membership, and I don’t think his results would have been as good.
And all of this isn’t even counting the members he did sign up during that week long campaign at $37 a month each.
So how can you use this in your own membership?
First, you want to provide plenty of value inside your membership so that new members stay for a long time. Find out exactly what members want and give it to them. Have a place inside your membership where members can actually request new features to be added to your membership.
Next, really establish the value to prospects. Use lots of testimonials to show how your membership helps members to achieve their goals. You want to build the value so high that the cost of membership seems low by comparison.
Lastly, offer your trial membership for only a day or two before closing it. This gets people off the fence and grabbing the trial before it’s too late. You can always open the trial back up again in a month or two, as you see fit.
Finally, track your numbers. See how many people sign up at the regular rate, how many sign up for the trial, and how many convert from the trial to the regular paid membership
Of course, keep track of how long members stay. Find ways to get them to stick around longer and you will consistently increase your monthly income for even bigger paydays.
One more thing – imagine working your tail off to get your membership up and running. You might invest, say, two months into finding out exactly what people want, setting up the membership and filling it with content, software, etc.
Then imagine four months beyond that – you’ve got hundreds or even thousands of members with more joining. You’re making residual money on people who joined months ago. In fact, every month your income increases. You invest part of that money to continue to provide the content, software or services that members get, and the rest is yours. And life is sweet.
If you haven’t started a membership site of your own yet, what are you waiting for?
