Category Archives: Social Media

How to be as successful as Scott Eddy on Twitter & get 500,000+ followers

December 1, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

We all want to be huge on Twitter, yet so few of us get anywhere. I notice that the click ratio for my tweets is never that great even if the article is amazing. So, to get good clicks from links on your Twitter account you need a really large Account. Last time I checked, Scott Eddy had more than 671,000 followers. I started following him when he had only about 440,000 followers which was only two years back. I have six Twitter accounts myself. I had two for Notary, two for Outsourcing & Marketing, an acupuncture twitter and one for Travel. I found Scott Eddy while searching for interesting travel tweets. In any case, to get big on Twitter you need to have several ingredients in place.

1. Follow 1000 people per day.
In real life, it is hard to follow 1000 people per day. But, if you can identify which type of targetted profiles will be most likely to follow you back or even share your content, you will get a lot for your following time. You need to unfollow those 1000 after three or more days ideally. When your Twitter account is small, it might not be so easy to do this. But, as you grow, you can easily follow a 1000 and then scroll down 1000 deep in the people you follow to delete the old ones you have been following for 72 hours or whatever you deem the correct amount of time is.

2. Interact
Successful people on Twitter always make a habit of answering people’s questions. They often retweet their fans if their fans have something tweet-worthy as well.

3. Follow people back
I made the mistake for years of not following everyone back. Most people will dump you if you don’t follow them back. It’s hard to grow a huge following if 70% of your followers dump you. It takes twenty seconds a day to follow people back.

4. Create a Persona
If people get to know you via your Twitter profile and blog, they will engage with you better. Making your tweets more personal, and having photos of what you do, where you go, and you yourself wins the game. My Notary blog helps people to get to know me. The result is that it is a lot easier to sell them courses, advertising and more since they feel they already know me. Scott does exactly this as he has great photos and blogs of all his travel as well as retweeting really great content created by others.

5. Post a diversity of content
Quality is king. If you post poor quality content, your followers won’t come to your profile regularly. However, diversity counts too. Post a few really amazing quotes, links to great blog entries from others, as well as your own personal content.

6. Use analytics to see what your audience likes
Each audience is its own animal. You need to study your audience to see what they like. As you find what they like, you can spend your time writing blogs that cater to their interests. On the other hand, if you write about what you think is fascinating, that enthusiasm could become contagious.

7. Post, Post, Post
Successful people on Twitter post around the clock. That way if you visit their profile regularly, you will always find new content. Nothing is more fun that finding new content from your favorite account. Additionally, you can reach people who are on different schedules if you tweet at all hours of the day or night. If you only tweet in the afternoon, you will never reach particular people!

8. Amazing photos
I rarely use photos on my social media, but I should. I do on my more critical paid promotions. But, amazing photos can draw in the crowds in social media.

9. Lists and keeping organized
Some people attract others by having amazing lists that they created. I use lists to follow others. I see that other people will have lists of thousands of followers. To me that is wasteful. I want my lists to be focused so I can only see tweets from people who I want to see tweets from. Lists allow you to organize tweets in many creative ways. The minute I started using lists, my growth rate was immediately enhanced.

10. How come nobody said that before.
Scott Eddy is the master of having quotes so good, yet so unique that I’m always saying, “How come nobody said that before?” I asked him if he made them up or found them. He said a little of both. Here are some examples:

“There should be a calorie refund for things that didn’t taste as good as you expected”
“Getting results from other people is one of the hardest things an #entrepreneur has to do #startup.”
“Friendship is so weird…you just pick a human you’ve met and you’re like “yep I like this one” and you just do stuff with them.”
“Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes!!”

11. Combining travel, social media and wine
Some social media profiles are too focused while others are about a particular person’s life and have no theme. Scott Eddy has a lot of travel related content, regular commentary on wine, as well as social media dn business tips with an entrepreneurial twist. I find that his combination of elements makes his profile one that I want to go back to regularly as I share all of his interests. I actually do something similar with my main social media profile. I combine general business, outsourcing social media, programming, and call center themes all into one profile.

12. Keep doing it
There is a lot more to know about Twitter than what I just described. But, if you put a lot of time into your profile and keep it going over years, you can accumulate hundreds of thousands of followers. My growth rate on twitter is exponential, and not constant. The more I have, the easier it is to grow. I believe this is because Twitter introduces more people to me the larger I become

Doing some Twitter analytics. Click rates per 100,000 impressions.

November 15, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Analytics, Social Media | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

In the old days, I would just tweet my blog posts. I would write multiple tweets for popular posts. But, I would retweet posts that got more attention on Twitter. This turned out to be a good idea and a bad idea. After inspecting my analytics, I learned that we weren’t getting many clicks from Twitter.

My recent experiment was to post all of my blog entries. There are about 800 of them, so I posted them one by one. The ones that got clicked on were ones that I did some testing on. I tested a few dozen posts to see how well they would do if I published them multiple times to attain 100,000 impressions. I have 9000 followers on one of my business Twitter accounts and 19000 on the marketing account. I posted tweets on the smaller one, and then retweeted them each five times on the larger account over the course of 30 hours. The total number of impressions would be slightly above 100,000. I learned that some of the posts I had been ignoring for years did very well on Twitter. A few posts got two or three clicks when published with 100,000 impressions while many only got one.

I also learned that the average click rate for blogs published once on Twitter (instead of five times in a day) was roughly 1 in 98,000 impressions which is an interesting stat to know. Now I know what to expect when my Twitter followers grow to a few hundred thousand hopefully in a few years.

Doing well on Twitter takes a lot of work and there are a lot of things to measure and a lot of ways to measure various analytics and metrics. So, try to think about ways you can measure what is going on with your Twitter account.

Facebook knows you better than your mama. But, how well do you know your customers?

October 3, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Facebook knows you better than your mama knows you.
Don’t you be talking about my mama!

But seriously, how well do you know your customers?
Facebook knows who your friends are, where you went to school, who your parents are, what you like to read, your interests, and who your email provider is. Most of my old friends who came back to me found me on Facebook. There is no other way to find people these days now that we are all over the place. Thank God for Facebook. Personally, I feel there should be a national database of people that you can look up based on name, home town, or other things. But, in any case, the important thing Facebook knows is what you like. If a business knows your habits and what you like, they can cater to your needs.

In Facebook’s case, they can offer you friends who have similar likes and interest, articles that will please you, and maybe even products. Big businesses sometimes get it. They understand that knowledge is key. But, small businesses don’t bother understanding their clients. In the old days when people used to know each other, they knew their clients needs from knowing them. But, in this hi-tech age, you don’t ever see anyone. So, you get to know people by studying data. See what they click on, and what they like. You can survey them too, but what they say they like and what they click on may not match up as much as you think.

As a BPO or small business owner, you can keep database records of your client’s habits, wishlists, and other information about them. What information you keep is up to you, and your database will evolve over time. Yes it is expensive to maintain a database and dealing with the programmers is no easy task either. But, without knowing something about your clients and being able to segment them, you will not know how to please them.

SHELLY: Would you like your data entry done within 72 hours like you did last time, or would you prefer the two week economy package.

RAMESH: Oh, you kept records on how I purchased last time. I don’t even remember myself. Wow! You must be a very attentive company.

SHELLY: Well, we try. And next time you come by, did you want two glasses of masala chai with two lumps of sugar, or do you want to try a new energy drink called zap?

RAMESH: You even remember how many lumps of sugar I take? Usually I take one, but your chai was extra robust so I took too. I’ll do chai, but I’ll have a sip or zap.

SHELLY: Do you want a morning appointment like last time?

RAMESH: This time let’s do 3pm as my wife needs me to help her in the morning.

SHELLY: Oh yes, Amrita. Her Master’s degree program ended a week ago. Tell her I give her my congratulations.

RAMESH: I am getting my own Master’s degree just listening to all the things you know about me. Now, what is my online banking password?

SHELLY: Why, did you forget?

RAMESH: No, I’m just testing you.

SHELLY: It is 1811516.

RAMESH: I”m just kidding I don’t use online banking.

SHELLY: I know. I was just pulling your leg.

RAMESH: Ah-ha! Got you. I just had it amputated…. Just kidding.

SHELLY: You are too much. See you at 3pm. Parking is in the rear. We’ll assign you a spot that says, “Parking for Ramesh(es) ONLY”

How to use the right keywords in your blog titles that lead to instant popularity

September 17, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Using the right keywords is like having a magic key that opens the door to winning over the hearts of the readers in the blogosphere.

I have written a few thousand blog articles in my career. I’m by no means a professional writer or anything close to it. But, I spend a lot of time looking at google analytics. I use Google analytics, and also try to figure out what works in the Twittersphere as well as the Blogosphere. I used to think that writing interesting articles that were akin to the interests of your audience was the secret. I was wrong! Yes, you need to understand your audience and what your audience responds to, but keywords make all the difference.

Positive Keywords
The guy at the coffee shop in my neighborhood is so interesting. I was talking to him about keywords today. We must have talked about over a hundred topics so far since I’ve known him. I said that the word “fail” doesn’t work with my crowd. He said that the under 18 crowd loves the word fail. They’re only interested in watching people screw up, or fall off their skateboard. But, my audience doesn’t respond well to this word. I won’t get retweeted, and people won’t click on my blog. If I use fail — I fail. On the other hand, if I use the tag #failure on Twitter in a blog about #success, that seems to be okay assuming it is accompanied by some more positive tags too. In short, I learned that my crowd liked words like millionaire, CEO, success, expand, grow, best, good, etc.

How To Themes
In addition to being perpetually positive, my crowd loves nothing more than how to blogs. They run businesses (or want to) and want to know how I think they should create and grow their business. If I have one hundred different marketing techniques, they will read each one if I phrase the title correctly. The minute I’m just giving “good advice” nobody wants it, but if there is a “how to” in the title — it gets read. How to motivate, fixing mistakes and finding solutions to particular problems are blog title fragments that almost guarantee success.

Interesting Content
If every blog article you wrote started with “how to,” I think that people might get bored. But, spicing up your blog with some really interesting and unusual content is great too. Not all of us can think of zany ideas, but I have thought of a few. I wrote a piece about what it would be like if classically trained musicians ran IT companies in India. I wrote another about what it would be like to have your office in the Himalayas. Ideas come when they come, but my audience eats up these interesting ideas. If you have some cool rule of thumb that is easy to remember, that will win over readers too. I wrote a piece about the 2 minute contact rule. It was easy to understand the concept, plus it was catchy.

Pairing Strategies
Using language in a fun way wins over readers too. I wrote a piece called:
The pen is mightier than the sword; But, is flogging mightier than blogging?
The title caught on right away, especially after the drama in Saudi Arabia where a blogger disrespected Islam and was going to get a whooping. I wrote another title called: Good Sign; Bad Sign — what to look for in newly hired workers. Once again another pairing strategy that caught everyone’s eyes.

Relatable Content
If you write a blog article and the readers say, “You’re preaching to the choir!” Then, you have got the right idea. People love to read about someone else having the same problem that they have. If you write about stress to an audience of stressed out maniacs, they’ll love you for it. If you write about job training where your readers are younger workers who need training, they will relate right away. Sometimes I write about my personal experience and start the article with the word “diary.” This is a strategy that works well too.

What Doesn’t Work?
Writing about negative concepts, or things the audience doesn’t care about like politics, the economy, etc. (on my blog — your audience might love those topics.) If your articles are too analytical, that narrows down the audience who care to think that intricately. Additionally, if you write about boring and nagging topics, only dentists and grammar teachers will want to read it. Sometimes ideas that are too goofy backfire too. Humor as a rule is good in writing, but if you use it in a way your audience doesn’t like, then you wasted a good joke on a bad audience!

Pimp my Tweet – a BPO company specializing in Twitter

September 16, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: BPO, Social Media | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

I remember the MTV show long time ago called, Pimp My Ride. But, how come there is no agency that can help give tweets a makeover? Most people write boring tweets that could stand a lot of improvement. There are after all 140 characters and endless tag variations to work with. With all of this flexibility, why is it that most people can’t tweet? Even the biggest profiles that I follow that have over a million followers write very dull tweets. They tweet the title of their blog instead of working some magic out of it most of the time. And when they do rephrase the tweet based on some juicy internal content, it still isn’t all that.

Here is some sales literature from a fictional India based social media BPO company.

Pimp My Tweet BPO Pvt. Ltd.

Tired of the same old lame-ass tweets?
It’s time to put some style in your Twitter handle.
Here is what our experts recommend!

If the tweet don’t flow — then it must go
If the tweet ain’t hype, you must retype
If the link don’t fit, you must find wit
If you put your tag in the wrong spot—good job – Not!

For the dopest, phattest tweets around, come to Pimp My Tweet BPO.

(ring, ring)

SUJATA: Thank you for calling Pimp My Tweet BPO, this is Sujata, how may I help you?

CLIENT: Yes, my Tweets are quite boring actually. I was hoping that you could help.

SUJATA: Yes, we can help jazz up your tweets. Let me take a look…. (pause) Oh, I see the problem.

CLIENT: Were you able to take a look at my work?

SUJATA: Yes. It is not (pause) bad… But, it is too straight. You just tweet straight facts and basic sentences. You need to put some play in yo jive.

CLIENT: Wait a second. You are located in Bangalore, and you know 1970’s Bronx street slang?

SUJATA: Well, it’s actually a problem you see. If aunty ever finds out I work for a company whose title includes the name pimp, I’m in huge trouble. I have rehearsed what I’m going to tell her if there is a problem. It is a typo, and it was supposed to be “Pin My Tweet” — on Pinterest, you know. Aunty is used to typos, they make a lot of them where she works.

CLIENT: Got it. I know how that is. I was at a hamburger spot in Chennai called Mary Brown, and they spelled Mary like Marry which means to have a wedding, etc., if it has two r’s. Comical actually.

SUJATA: You sound like a character. Which makes you 139 short of a full tweet. Well Anyway, you basically need to put some strut to get out of your rut. Do some jive to get out of your hive, and most of all — don’t tag outside your territory, or that could cause a turf war.

CLIENT: Oh, you mean graffiti? Well, the internet isn’t like that.

SUJATA: I know that, but we are trying to appeal to New York Street sensibilities. Our clients grew up on the streets of New York. Generally on more affluent streets if they can afford us, but nonetheless they would be familiar with street culture.

CLIENT: The other companies can barely function in English, but you know our slang — at least the antiquated slang.

SUJATA: We aim(s) to please! And we’ll make your dull Twitter handle into the hippest, coolest, dopest account in Twitter history. Just give us a chance. We offer samples of our work for a low introductory offer. After that we have a contract for a monthly arrangement. 60 tweet revisions per month for one low price of rps3000 / month which is only about $60. And we have a viral surcharge. If any of our tweets go viral, we expect a generous tip.

CLIENT: You’ll get tips, referrals and more if you help me go viral. Thanks a bunch. I look forward to you guys pimping my tweets. Just don’t get up on my honeys.

SUJATA: Oh, no we wouldn’t think of it. And one more thing.

CLIENT: Yes

SUJATA: If you meet aunty on any subsequent trips to Chennai, please don’t mention that I work here. Let’s keep it between you and me. Can you dig it?

CLIENT: Yes, I dig.

Never hire a blogger to help you blog; Hire industry relevant people

August 31, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Semi-Popular, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

These days more and more of us own or write for blogs. There are also hundreds of social media “experts” and bloggers advertising their services on freelance sites hoping to bag their next gig. The question is, which one of them do you hire, and why? I tried negotiating with many bloggers, and the results were horrible. Not only did most of them lack any formal writing background, but they wanted commitments for large amounts of money when I had no indication that they would do good work.

The “What ifs” of hiring a blogger
What if their work wasn’t popular? What if the blogger couldn’t come up with ideas that were any good (none of them could by the way.) What if they weren’t reliable in their work? What if it took too much time to prep them before they could produce their first piece? Can I get a sample? None of the bloggers wanted to invest even five minutes in my cause to give me a few samples unless I would pay them for it. Such a stingy unfriendly attitude! The result was that I didn’t hire even one of these bloggers. I hired a comedy writer instead. He had a strong professional writing background, was really funny, friendly, and appealed to some (but not all) of my audiences! But, what “writers” captivated my audience the best? You’ll never guess.

The disgruntled call center agent
You will never guess where one of my most popular outsourcing blogs came from. It came from a frustrated call center rep. His writing was filled with grammatical mistakes, but it didn’t matter. First of all, my audience is not so particular about nitpicky things. Secondly, I was able to do a cleanup of his work in two minutes. The bigger issue was, the minute I laid eyes on his work I loved it. He captured seven different points of frustration that a call center worker could have and explained them perfectly in a way that everyone could relate to. You could feel his frustration and anguish in every paragraph. I knew the crowd would love it, and they did.

The frustrated call center manager
Two years ago I interviewed this very frustrated Indian guy. He was down on India and down on the entire Indian call center industry. He only would work for Filipino, US, or Central American outfits. After dealing with a hundred or so of India’s “finest” call centers myself, I began to see why he felt the way he did. But, he gave me fifteen ideas for articles to write about. He was an expert at call center metrics, call center marketing, and more. So, by talking to him for 45 minutes, he filled my head with exactly what people wanted to read about. No blogger could do that!

The upset Notary Public
We also run a Notary blog. I create most of the articles myself. We write about Notary marketing, technical & legal issues, Notary comedy and drama articles, and more. We keep it diverse so our audience won’t get bored. My articles are generally popular. But, the other guy who writes popular articles for me is not a blogger — he’s just another Notary. He happens to be smarter, and a lot better organized (not to mention experienced) than the other Notaries. But, he is not a professional writer. He is just a Notary who happens to be a good writer. He also comes up with winning ideas that our readers enjoy reading about.

So, where do I look for a writer?
In the real world, the guy most suited to writing your articles might not have the background necessary to get industry specific content to fill the article. You really need a team. You need someone who can pick great topics, someone who can get relevant information, and someone who can polish your writing work. Sometimes you can do it all yourself, while other times you need help. Sometimes a good social media agency or social media company is the best resource, but not if they hire incompetent or uncooperative employees.

Find people who work in the industry you are writing about to help you. You might have to look hard to find cooperative people, but they are out there. Even if you don’t “need” them, use them anyway to create a diversity of points of view in your blog. Nothing is more interesting than a blog with multiple writers — all of whom have unique and wonderful writing styles and perspectives!

You might also like:

Why you should hire a Comedian instead of a CEO to help you co-blog
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/06/13/why-you-should-hire-a-comedian-instead-of-a-ceo-to-co-blog/

10 quick factors that differentiate a good blog from a bad one
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/08/03/10-quick-factors-that-differentiate-a-good-blog-entry-from-a-bad-one/

Want to be popular at blogging? Write how-to blogs!
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/06/30/want-to-be-popular-at-blogging-write-how-to-blogs/

Hitting the 10,000 mark on Twitter; Halfway up Mt. Twitterest!

August 19, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Popular on Twitter, Social Media | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

.

I did it !!
A few months ago I hit 10,000 mark on my Twitter account, which is one third of the followers Bernie Sanders typically has at a campaign rally. Hitting 10,000 was very exciting, but didn’t change my life.

A flood of 140 emotions
I’m happy I got 10,000 followers, but to get major traffic or respect on Twitter, you need at least 100,000. Still, hitting a milestone felt good! On the other hand, I seem to have Twittered away more than an hour a day for the last year achieving this goal. I often ask myself, “was it worth it?” It’s hard to know if social media is worth your time, because the real reward only comes once you have developed a huge following and superior skills.

The reward comes at the end
Having been a student of the spiritual world over twenty-five years, certain phrases still resonate in my mind: “The reward comes at the end.” We spend years, decades and our entire life meditating to reach a lofty spiritual goal. But, we don’t get the rewards incrementally. We get the reward only when we reach the destination. Twitter, much like life seems to operate according to the same logic.

Twitter lends itself to exponential growth
You need a foundation to grow on Twitter, and you won’t get much return on your investment (even if you are Donald Trump) while you are building that foundation. However, once you have a solid following, you will find that using the same hour a day you spend (or three in Kim Kardashian’s case) you will gain more followers. I noticed that I went from getting about 20 followers a day to over 100 without spending additional time. If you have more followers, you will have more people who regularly retweet you which will get your messages across. You will also be better at writing tweets and picking the best articles to write or share.

Halfway up the mountain 10,000 feet (or followers) high
I have tweeted far and wide, and well past base camp which I passed several months back. It’s too late to turn back now. But, I am excited to see what is in front of me. I will breathe easier as I reach new plateaus (good thing this isn’t an actual mountain; otherwise I’d need an oxygen tank at this point.) My journey would have been much easier if I had had a Sherpa, but I guess hiking Mt. Twitterest doesn’t work that way. But, when I get stuck for ideas, I just ask my imaginary Sherpa for one.

Having it all figured out
After having struggled on Twitter for years, I feel like I have somewhat figured it out. I remember the types of hurdles I went through four years ago wondering why nobody liked my lame tweets. I learned to warm up my tweets to make them fun to read. I also learned how to experience and analyze which types of topics, articles and tweets do best. At this point, it is just about repeating the process. But, repeating the process means exploring many interesting articles and new themes for articles that I will soon write. Although I feel I know it all now, the growth rate, and the type of situations I will run into will continue to change — and there will never be a dull moment, but if there is, I’ll make sure it doesn’t show up on my feed!

Using Twitter as a tool rather than an addiction
I feel that I am too obsessive about Twitter. I shouldn’t spend as much time as I do. Google+ doesn’t get me much results, but it does get me SEO value whenever I publish anything. If I spent five minutes less on Twitter and spent those five minutes publishing daily on Google+, I would be using Twitter as a tool rather than an obsession. Every several months, I come up with a new plan to optimize my daily schedule. I think I just figured out my next small adjustment. Putting time management aside, use Twitter to learn new skills, read new articles, and figure out what works. You don’t need two hours a day for this. You can get huge on Twitter in as little as half an hour per day and still be able to follow, unfollow, tweet, select great articles, and interact with others.

The dream I had when I hit 10,000
I actually had this dream a month ago. I was hiking. Then, I got to a part in the trail that was too steep to hike up. I had to grab on to the long grass and pull my self up the slope for a stretch. Then, I got to a part which was very rocky and I had to climb up very treacherous sections. Finally I arrived at a ledge above me which I wouldn’t be able to get past unless I became a spider who could crawl upside down and backwards to get to the edge of it and then on top. But, I glanced to the right and there was a trail covered by a wooden structure. I quickly made my way into the wooden walkway and it led to a French restaurant and pastry shop. There were twelve choices for fruit pies; eleven after my imaginary Sherpa appeared out of nowhere and got his hands on one. My interpretation of this dream was that I had struggled up hill for years, but now I would enjoy the fruits of my labor!

Mastering other networks
I did spend two years trying to master Facebook, Google plus and a few other social media networks. I made excellent progress and our Notary Facebook account generates over 5000 clicks per month to my blog which is amazing. However, I never felt pulled towards those networks in the long run.

Social Media Saying:
Why do I keep climbing Mt. Twitterest? Because its there!

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You might also like:

10 quick factors that differentiate a good blog entry from a bad one
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/08/03/10-quick-factors-that-differentiate-a-good-blog-entry-from-a-bad-one/

What is the difference between a Twitter account with 1000 followers an a million?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/07/11/what-is-the-difference-between-a-twitter-account-with-1000-followers-and-1000000/

Why you should hire a comedian instead of a CEO to help you co-blog
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/06/13/why-you-should-hire-a-comedian-instead-of-a-ceo-to-co-blog/

18 ways to boost your social media marketing in 10 minutes or less per day!
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2015/05/05/18-ways-to-boost-your-social-media-marketing-in-10-minutes-day/

Wouldn’t it be nice to have your office in the Himalayas?
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2011/04/27/wouldnt-it-be-nice-to-have-your-office-in-the-himalayas/

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I didn’t get retweeted, but that’s okay…

August 9, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Social Media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

It sounds like a song, doesn’t it. Using Twitter is an art that even the best people on social media don’t entirely understand. Mastery of Twitter involves understanding the subtle differences between a tweet worded one way and a tweet with one or two different words. One slight change in wording could be the difference between a viral tweet and a dud.

So, in your endless experiments, doing a dozen tweet variations for each blog post you write, just understand that not all of your tweets will be popular. Yes, you need a few winners, but the losers don’t hurt you. So, if a post doesn’t get retweeted, just sing my little song:

“I didn’t get retweeted, but that’s okay; I’ll have better luck — another day!
I didn’t get retweeted, but that’s okay; My growth hacking analytics sorrows that I’ve had for many many years — will go away”

10 quick factors that differentiate a good blog entry from a bad one

August 3, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Semi-Popular, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Many people write blogs, but most writers are not that interesting. Even some of the more famous blogs out there have very predictable and dull contents. So, how do you write winning blogs every time? It is not an exact science, but here are some tips.

(1) Having the right photo vs. having “a” photo.
Any blog about blogging will emphasize how you need a photo and how you will get more shares on Facebook, pins on Pinterest, and popularity in general by having a photo. But, having a mediocre photo might not get you much traction. You need to compare photos and see which ones get you the best following. Compare your analytics and use your senses. A good photo makes you say, “awe.” If you don’t have a reaction to the photo you are using, it is probably not the best you can do. Be selective if you want traffic. Thriving on the internet is based purely on how good you are at selecting and/or crafting top content and not on having mediocre photos.

(2) Length matters
I have the habit of jotting my ideas down on my iphone’s notes section. Then I’ll write lots of quick blog entries. This is a great way to experiment. However, most of the quick blogs I wrote that were three or four paragraphs with no sub-headers didn’t get read more than a few times. The blogs that were the most successful were about 500-700 words, and had many points within a greater theme, each with bolded sub-headers above each paragraph.

(3) Uniqueness is a huge factor
Many people write blog entries on topics that have been done to death. This might be okay if you offer a unique new twist on an old theme kind of like how Mozart wrote dozens of variations on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as a child. However, picking unique themes that will be populur to a very general audience is the not so easy to master key to popular blogging. If you are in a niche industry, you might not be able to stay relevant while pleasing the masses, but at least please the masses who have some relationship to your niche market!

(4) Promotion on Social Media is critical
If you do not have a good social media presence, you might find it hard to promote your blog. If you blog regularly and the Google Gods pick you up, then you can get traffic from them. But, that can take hundreds of blog entries to accumulate a significant start with the Gods. It takes time to develop a massive Twitter, Instagram or Facebook presence, so try to master social media as that is one of your keys to getting your blog articles in the door with readers.

(5) Networking with co-bloggers
If you have a proofreader, partner, or comedian who can add some humor to your blogs, this can really help. It makes sense to invest in blog articles that are already popular by sprucing those ones up. There is no point in improving upon blog articles with ideas that didn’t work though or new articles which you are not sure about.

(6) Being too factual seems to alienate readers
There are many bloggers who are great at researching facts and figures. They pride themselves on providing “useful” information. But, the reality is that people want articles that are fun, interesting, or that can change their lives with little or no effort. Yes, a good blog article needs some facts to back up your claims and hypotheses, but being overly factual doesn’t normally lead to articles that get read much. The overly factual articles sit on the shelf.

(7) Articles with many points on a single topic often win big.
Do you see titles such as 8 ways to succeed on social media or 11 ways to get your cat to meao more? These are titles that work. On social media, most bloggers make the mistake of not including unique content in the tweet itself. The result is generic looking titles that I would not invest any reading time in. Blog articles that have a theme and two or three examples do not do well. Longer articles with seven, ten, or twenty-eight ways to for example succeed in social media seem to do better. But, be unique about how you write and promote these articles otherwise they too will end up lost in cyberspace.

(8) Excite and entertain
Nobody wants to go back to a blog that puts them to sleep. You need to find a way for your blog to be easy to read, fun, and exciting. With half of the world’s population now claiming to be bloggers, you have to differentiate your boring content from everyone else’s, so try to be interesting!

(9) Too much advice can be a bad thing
My very best blog articles did the worst. But, why? Because I gave really fine-tuned technical advice for how to do better in business, social media, or in hiring. Too much nitpicky and analytical advice doesn’t usually do well unless your audience demands it. Additionally, I am writing to an average business oriented crowd and not to a high-brow crowd. Sometimes if I write above the level of my readers, they become alienated.

(10) Sentence structure of the title really matters
If you analyze blog titles and which ones do well, you will quickly understand that simple grammar actually sells. Subject – Object -Verb is a great structure to start with. My best blog article of all time had a title – Steve Jobs watched his programmers carefully, so should you! It was simple, had a powerful message, and a call to action. Not all posts that use the formula for success will be successful, but it is a good place to start.

(11) A call to action
A good blog entry should get people out of their chair. There should be a call to action. They should want to get up and make a change to their life or business right after reading it. A call to action could be part of the title, like in my Steve Jobs example, and should definitely be at the end of a blog entry.

(12) Know your audience and personalize
It is hard to know the intricacies of your audience — their likes and dislikes. You have to experiment and learn little by little what they like as a group. And they will surprize you many times as well. I mentioned before that if I write articles that are too technical, analytical or high-brow my audience tends to not read them. On the other hand, if I write interesting articles with a meaningful and understandable point, they will get a generous supply of traffic.

(13) So, what can you do?
Start by experimenting and look at your analytics. Try to figure out which articles worked best and why. Look at what other people are publishing and what did better on their Facebook or Twitter. There is no way to absolutely master the art of knowing what is popular on social media, but the closer you look, the better you get. So start today, and as always, choose some pictures that knock your socks off! I am not using photos yet except on Facebook promoted posts, but I’ll begin using them soon as my blog grows!

Learning to profile the accounts you follow on Twitter can triple your growth!

July 12, 2015 by 123outsource
Categories: Analytics, Social Media | Tagged | Leave a comment

I used to have a simplistic following strategy
I just experienced something of a miracle. It was actually an example of the effective use of simple analytics for Twitter. In the past, my strategy was to follow people on accounts that typically got me a high follow-back rate. Since my main Twitter account focuses on marketing, my best “follow” accounts were mostly business, marketing, and one guy who did business, social media marketing and travel all in one. He had some very interesting and lively followers as you can guess. After a while, I wanted to pump up the volume a bit and follow even more people per day. Twitter allows a single account to follow up to 1000 people per day. I was getting about 500 people a day to follow from my best accounts and followed some less than optimal accounts for the remaining 500. The results were not very efficient. I was getting only 50-80 new followers per day after a lot of work!

I crunched some numbers
My number crunching was very unsophisticated and very ball park in many ways. I wanted to take a closer look at who was following me back on Twitter and who was retweeting me. I learned that marketers showed the highest rate of following me. Now, I did not take a close count of how many percent of the people I was following were in marketing. I estimated that perhaps 10-20% of those I followed mentioned marketing while about 25% of my new follow-backs were in marketing. I also noticed that CEO‘s represented about 3-6% of those I was following but about 7% of my follow-backs. I also learned that Entrepreneurs liked to follow me and accounts that were business profiles of various types of businesses liked to follow me.

Entrepreneneurs
The other day I had an argument with a friend about what an entrepreneur is. He claimed that an entrepreneur has to invent some new methodology or technology and learn to market it as a sole proprietor. I disagreed and insisted that any sole business person is an entrepreneur, although perhaps in pop culture, his definition might be more glamorous. My stats told me that entrepreneurs were fast to follow me, but didn’t retweet my content hardly at all. After seeing the dismal underachievement in the entrepreneur sector of my followers I began to doubt the way the word was used. I began to associate entrepreneurs as “wanna-be’s,” failures, or pretenders. People who were real business men portrayed themselves as founders, co-founders, CEO’s, or had other more formal titles. I also learned that those who followed Entrepreneur Magazine were not as “deep” in many ways as the followers of some of the other more serious business publications such as Bloomberg or Harvard Business Review. My bottom line is that I want people to retweet my content and entrepreneurs were not doing this. So, now I stopped following entrepreneurs altogether even though my biggest passion in life is entrepreneurship!

I tripled my growth rate
Now, I am getting 150-200 new followers after an active day of tweeting and following others. I am much more selective about who I follow. I follow business accounts as they tend to be more active. Business accounts are recognizable because they have a business name as their twitter handle account name. I am not sure which type of business favors me most, but I do know that the Real Estate crowd is the most dormant even on content that is specific to their industry!

How can you analyze your followers?
There are various ways to profile your followers. You have to break them into groups somehow. You also have to assess them in a kind of a level playing field. If you notice that 50% of your followers are web designers, but 80% of those you follow are web designers, then web designers might be a reasonable profession to follow, but not the most efficient. However, if you notice that managers of Flash programmers represent 20% of those who follow you, yet represent only 3% of those you follow, they would be a group to pay attention to. Identify your best segments for following you and retweeting or favoriting your content. You can triple your growth rate for obtaining Twitter followers too! You might be surprized.