#but mine was only good because I spend all my free time writing on quora and tumblr or watching videos where people critique fiction
Text
So, I had to talk in church today, and I’ve been writing about anime on the internet and working in retail long enough that it actually ended up being really good.
Afterwards, a mom came up to me and told me it was so amazing, one of the best talks she had heard in years.
And like. . . there’s something ironic about me, a pimo exmormon who hasn’t believed in god in years, talking in this Mormon church and managing to do a better job then the people who actually believe. How did it end up like this.
#i probably sound so pretentious lol#but mine was only good because I spend all my free time writing on quora and tumblr or watching videos where people critique fiction#plus I work in retail and that translates surprisingly well into public speaking#I’m not better than anyone I just have a really useful skill set for this particular situation#exmo#exmormon#pimo#physically in mentally out#mormon#the church of jesus christ of latter day saints
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Why write? Why publish? What’s the point? And Marcus Aurelius? — Will Marin Journal Entry #1
December 16 2019
Greetings world! My name is Will Marin. Welcome to my first published journal-entry!
Why do I write in a journal? Because I am attempting to make sense of the world. Why do we use language? We use language to make sense of the world. We use language for communication, and communication is a tool for making sense. (Shoutout to Sam Harris.)
Many people keep a private journal; but why have I decided to start publishing mine? Because there is a chance (nevermind how small) that what I write in my journal could be valuable in someone else’s life. Furthermore, publishing my thoughts keeps me accountable. Furthermore, publishing my writings provides me the opportunity to get feedback; feedback about my ideas, or about my writing itself. This public journal is not only a way to share my ideas, but also a way to improve my skill as a writer.
Another reason I’ve decided to start publishing my journal is because journal entries — or articles, to use another word — can act as conversation-starters; they can become the basis or foundation for communication, for connection; and if you continue to read my writings, you’ll learn that I’m all about communication and connection. I believe connection, of which communication is an important piece, is what (literally) holds the world together. Without connection, all we have is a void of unrelated free-flowing garble... but with connection, we have a well-rounded account of the world. This is why I always encourage connection; and I encourage you to communicate with me online via Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, email, etcetera... (Visit willmarin.com for those links).
So, since this is my introductory journal-entry, I suppose I ought to give you some insight into just exactly what type of content this journal will consist of.
One reason why I’ve decided to publish my journal (instead of publishing a book, for example; although I do plan to publish a book in the future) is because my interests vary widely. I’m super interested in economics and global politics, but also super interested in fantasy and science-fiction. I’m super interested in journalism and current events, but also super interested in philosophy and spirituality and metaphysics. For this reason, instead of writing a book on one of these topics, I thought it would make more sense to write a daily journal (or a weekly journal; or every-other-daily, or just randomly... haven’t decided yet... probably multiple times per week, if not daily) which explores all sorts of different subject matters. With a real-time daily journal, I can talk about history in one paragraph and science-fiction in the next. This also might prove to be less boring for readers. Honestly, I prefer reading lots of different short articles on many different topics, as opposed to reading one long book which covers one topic.
So, this online journal will cover all sorts of things; from science-fiction to history, finance to philosophy, and even book reports or album reviews. This will truly be a journal for the modern renaissance man or woman.
As a continuation of this first journal entry, I’d like to discuss something I’ve thought about a bit today. When I was a young child, starting around age seven, I wrote fiction comics and novels. Usually they were either fantasy or action novels. For example: I wrote a novel about a boy living in a medieval fantasy world, whose father disappears in battle, so the boy goes on an adventure to find his father; I wrote a comic-book of political satire where President George Bush gets impeached and flees America on a motorboat; I wrote a novel about two elementary-school students who run away from their home in Massachusetts and go on an adventure across America, only to end up at a juvenile detention center in California.
Writing fiction has been a huge passion of mine for basically my whole life. However, at some point in my adolescence, somewhere between age fourteen and sixteen, I hit a roadblock with fictional writing. This question began growing in my mind and gnawing away at my motivation to write: “What’s the point of writing fiction?” The logic was this: There’s a huge world around me, full of humans and other species, with lots of interesting things going on. Why spend time writing about things that don’t exist, when there’s a massive world with things that do? So I gave up writing fiction for awhile.
But then around age nineteen, the inspiration to write fiction came back. A story came to me; a story for an epic medieval fantasy novel. But something had fundamentally changed about me as an artist: I was no longer just a child without a care in the world; I was a young adult, and money was starting to become more and more of an important variable. New thoughts began to form in my mind as an artist: “What if I spend two years, hours and hours everyday, working my ass off to finish this novel... and then it isn’t successful? What if I don’t make any money from it? Wouldn’t it be better to just spend my time working a job where there’s a guaranteed paycheck?” Perhaps in the mind of a non-artist, this would have been a no-brainer: Work for guaranteed money, and don’t gamble on a novel. And then another thought appeared in my mind: “Worrying about the desire to make money from my art is ruining the creative process.” I had a point there, too, because trying to creative sellable art can corrupt the creative process and result in worse and less-creative art. It felt as if I were stuck at a catch-22.
And this brings us to today: I’m twenty-three years old, and I am still passionate about writing (as you can plainly see); but I have never published a single piece of writing that is more than a few pages long. Why? Because I’ve always wondered: What’s the point? And I’ve always decided that there is no point.
But I’ve also been realizing that if I truly believe that there is no point to publishing my writing, and specifically publishing fiction stories, then I’ll never actually publish anything. There must be a purpose to it, if I’m going to be motivated enough to actually do it. So now, I’m going to answer this question for you, and for myself: What is the point?
Well, there are many points; so let’s go down the list...
Firstly, love; love for the creative process. If you love writing, then you ought to write, simply for the sake of writing. If you love to sing, then you should sing, even if no money or fame come from it. And the same goes for anything else.
Secondly, when it comes to writing fiction, imagination is important. Just because something doesn’t exist, doesn’t mean it won’t have an impact on what does exist. By writing a fantasy novel, you may inspire someone to improve their real life. And furthermore, when you put your imagination on the page, then in a sense it becomes real.
Thirdly, as Marcus Aurelius said: “What we do now echoes in eternity.” If you love something, and you do it now, whole-heartedly, then you’re literally creating energy out of love; and who knows what positive impact this energy will have in the future! The point is, we have no idea how what we do now will affect the world of tomorrow... but if you act out of love, then how can you go wrong? Something good is bound to come from it later! So do what you love now, and marvel at the results later!
Fourthly, exploring the imagination is fun; and as I said before, things which only exist in the imagination can still have an impact on things in the real-world; and furthermore, things which only exist in the imagination can eventually become real (for example, a nonexistent device from a science-fiction novel eventually being invented by a scientist and implemented into daily life).
So, there are some of the reasons for fiction, as a reminder to you and to myself. And those reasons can also go for anything else you desire to do!
As a side-note to the prior paragraphs about writing fiction, here is a really interesting list I found on Quora, written by Abhinav Goel:
So, there it is: my first published journal entry. I’m looking forward to writing more of these. Lots of interesting ideas to be shared and discussed; and speaking of discussion, please feel free to message me with any questions or comments. You can reach me directly through Tumblr, but also on other platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and more. I cast a wide net.
All my links can be found at willmarin.com. Cheers! 🙂💜
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MyTrafficJacker 2.0 Review And Bonus
MyTrafficJacker 2.0 Testimonial
MyTrafficJacker 2.0 is the FRESHLY Upgraded & 100% Distinct Web-App. It permits you to Legally Steal Traffic & Authority From YTube, Wikipedia, BBC & Quora And Also Earn Affiliate Payments In 24 Hours Or Less.
Let's take a look at what you can do with MyTrafficJacker 1.0.
With MyTrafficJacker 1.0, you can look by key words on either Wikipedia & YouTube as well as locate LIVE, but RAN OUT web links that're STILL posted on these internet sites and also pick them up for as little as $10 as well as redirect that web traffic and also authority ANYWHERE you would certainly such as!
And also there have actually been Lots of success stories considering that MyTrafficJacker was released to the world.
Nonetheless, you would neglect to restore domain names that you would published on YTube & Wikipedia, there HAD TO be OTHER websites that ALSO had Ended domain names published on them as well. that is why MyTrafficJacker 2.0 was born!
Just how To Start Your First Affiliate Website (Component 2)
In our rowing instance, we gave them a total buyer's overview for acquiring a rowing maker so probably, after a couple of days, they're ready to take MyTrafficJacker 2.0. Below's an instance autoresponder series I might send to these people to obtain them over the line:
Why I selected the ABC Rowing Machine as my initial rower
Here's a totally free 6-week rowing exercise strategy
I've arranged a 20% off special for these Rowing Co rowers (lot!)
Appropriate rowing strategies to guarantee you don't hurt on your own
Just how David shed 45kg with rowing
Free delivery on these rowing equipments (restricted time only)
My testimonial of the top elected rowing equipment for novices in 2018
See just how mixing personal tales, other complimentary resources and offers can integrate to develop a wholistic autoresponder sequence?
This is the stuff that will drive affiliate sales for you.
Rinse & & repeat to develop your material plan
There you have it, a total approach to developing your content plan.
It can be summarized right into the complying with two factors:
Everything is driven by your site visitor intent.
Funnels are where you will certainly make the cash.
Your next actions:
Determine what drives your audience at different stages in your specific niche (visitor intent)
Brainstorm 5-10 material items based around each of the MyTrafficJacker 2.0 site visitor intents that you determined
Develop preferable resources that individuals will certainly leap over themselves to download and install in exchange for their email address
Develop a series of e-mails (an autoresponder/campaign) that mixes individual tales, complimentary sources as well as, obviously, associate uses that match their purchasing purposes
Where do you go after this?
If you have actually composed every one of the write-ups you brainstormed and also you have actually put funnels in place for each and every of the site visitor intents you identified, you just have to feed the machine a lot more.
Create more short articles to attract even more people
Look at paid acquisition
Check out guest publishing as well as other advertising and marketing strategies to attract even more individuals
Your goal now is to attract even more people and pump as lots of people through to your website's funnels as possible. Your funnels, thinking you've executed them effectively, will certainly care for the rest.
A tool you can make use of to apply your autoresponders
There's a number of e-mail advertising devices around and you've possibly become aware of the big ones like Mailchimp and Aweber.
I do not like either of these devices any longer as a result of these factors:
They run around "lists" indicating you have several lists and also there could be double ups throughout the listings. Indicating you're spending for a client two times. That's simply unjust.
Since they're listing based, they don't make use of identifying. This implies you can't easily determine individuals's intent and put them with numerous series. Usually one intent brings about one more which then leads to another which is how you can remain to earn money off the same customer in time. These e-mail advertising devices do not let you do this quickly.
They aren't built with advertising and marketing automation in mind. It's something that they bolted on due to boosting pressure from their consumers to add MyTrafficJacker 2.0 functions and also automation workflows and because of this, they're half-baked.
The device I suggest you investigate is called Drip.
MyTrafficJacker 2.0 Overview
Vendor: Joshua Zamora
Product: MyTrafficJacker 2.0
Date Of Introduce: 2020-Jun-04
Time Of Launch: 11:00 EDT
FE Price: $37-$ 47
Sales Web Page: https://www.socialleadfreak.com/mytrafficjacker-2-0-review/
Specific niche: Video
MyTrafficJacker 2.0 can
Get an EXPIRED domain that STILL has a LIVE web link from ANY of those sites (YouTube, Wikipedia, BBC & Quora)
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Pick up a domain name that's still connected to from a HIGHLY ranked post on Quora.
Pick up a domain name that has a LIVE link from a web page on BBC.
With MyTrafficJacker 2.0, you will certainly be able to begin legally pirating domain names from all 4 of these sites and getting traffic and sales in as low as 24 hr.
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WITHOUT needing to create a site
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WITHOUT having a hosting account
MyTrafficJacker 2.0 Benefits
Below're 10 various ways you can turn a profit rapidly with this application.
Direct-Link Affiliate Advertising And Marketing
This is possibly the most FAVORED money making approach. It's the easiest & fastest to implement. ALL you have to do is permit MyTrafficJacker to locate these gold-mine domain names for you, you choose them up, and also begin REROUTING the web traffic to ANY affiliate supply you would certainly such as. Also you can redirect the web traffic to a ROTATING web link so that you send web traffic to MULTIPLE different offers and discover the one that converts the best.
Direct-link Item Marketing
If you have your OWN products, you can utilize MyTrafficJacker 2.0 to find domain names that remain in the SAME NICHE as you're and start redirecting EVERYTHING traffic to YOUR website rather. You can locate among your COMPETITORS domains that they neglected to renew and also you can choose it up for simply $10 and also set up a basic redirect to YOUR site! MyTrafficJacker 2.0 is really effective to produce sales for your OWN products.
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Passive Adsense Profits
This is a REALLY powerful and EASY approach to profit with the domain names you will certainly be locating. You will certainly transform these domain names into basic adsense profits websites. And after that they will be coming with traffic as well as authority built-in.
Simple Domain Turning
You just merely purchase the domains that are going to contain EXTREME degrees of domain authority, and then PROMPTLY detail them on Flippa or any other domain name flipping web site as well as money in BIG. Not only they are AGED domains that more than likely had some fantastic material on them, think of how much WORTH they will have from STILL having a LIVE web link on Wikipedia.com Or how much VALUE they will have from STILL getting click-through traffic from YTube! Search Engine Optimization Marketing & Agencies alike, would certainly pay BIG money for domain names that have ENERGETIC web links on Wikipedia.
Build a POWERHOUSE Private Blog Site Network (PBN).
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Buy & RENTAL FEE your PBN
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Resell The Domain Name BACK to the initial owner
This can easily tread on many people's moral compass, but can STILL be incredibly rewarding. Often the initial owners just merely NEGLECTED to renew the domain prior to the grace period was up. You can provide to sell it back to them for a quick $250-$ 500 (or MORE). It's Tolerable of an ROI on your $10 investment.
Authority Redirect Rankings
With this method, you just merely grab the domain and quickly redirect it directly to any kind of YTube video clip or specific niche website to give it a SUBSTANTIAL increase in rankings! Simply ONE rerouted link to ANY niche site or YTube video clip from a domain name that has a LIVE web link from Wikipedia is VALUABLE as well as will generate LARGE outcomes!
Rank your eCom website or Amazon.com Shop Noting
Simply redirect these domain names to your particular niche website or YTube Video, you can also leverage these domain names to place your eCom website and/or Amz shop listing. The POWER of integrating a domain name with a LIVE wikipedia web link as well as the MASSIVE authority of Amazon.com are very excellent. You would control your ENTIRE niche!
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3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Subscribers are a goldmine of marketing potential.
They share your content, heed your advice, buy your products, and tell their friends. They are easier to upsell, more profitable, and more loyal.
They return again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to.
Sadly, knowing the value of subscribers isn’t going to help you get more of them.
Which is why you’re here.
So how do you start mining for gold?
Start with email to collect subscribers.
In the world of subscription, emails rule.
If you build an audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Medium, your success is at the mercy of the platform you’re using. And I don’t need to show you another example of a self-made celebrity who upset their digital place of business at the cost of their career.
With email, though, the audience is yours. No one can tell you what to send, say, offer, or do. And that’s a nice dose of freedom for a growing business.
But email isn’t just the safer option. It’s also an effective place to build a subscriber base.
A study of 605 businesses done by HubSpot, the massive marketing company, found that businesses that collected subscribers by email had 12 times more subscribers than those that used RSS feeds.
To start collecting emails, you’ll need approachable content that you consistently promote to new audiences. And you’ll need to add a dose of incentive.
Here’s that three-step process.
Make your content approachable
The first step to gaining subscribers is creating approachable content.
Content that attracts your ideal customer, delights them once they click, and encourages them to enter their email address in that glorified empty text box.
But creating content that is approachable is a lot easier said than done.
After all, what makes content approachable? Is it the way you talk? The way you write? The way you design?
Well, it’s a little of all three.
First, let’s take a look at the design of your website. When people arrive on your website to view your content, what is their immediate reaction? Is it one of neutrality, enjoyment, or outright horror?
Imagine, for instance, that you arrived on this website: Gates N Fences.
I don’t know about you, but I’d leave the moment I arrived.
Which means that I wouldn’t read any of the actual content, and I definitely wouldn’t subscribe.
With a design like that, practically no one would.
That’s exactly why you need a website that communicates expertise, confidence, simplicity, and above all, trustworthiness.
And you can do that on a low budget. Just keep your website design simple and include plenty of whitespace. When in doubt, don’t add any extra elements.
Booktrep, for instance, is a low-budget WordPress website that is simple, elegant, and, for those reasons, trustworthy.
Of course, the bigger your design budget, the more intricate your website can be. Just ensure that you don’t overdo it like the good ‘ole Gates N Fences example from above.
Consider something like the BigCommerce blog where its intricate design doesn’t confuse navigation, crowd content, or provoke distrust.
The last thing you want to do is spend hours upon hours creating quality content, only to drive traffic to your website that sows distrust among visitors.
The whole point of creating content is to generate subscribers who will turn into customers in the future.
If you place the unnecessary roadblock of a poorly-designed website or lazy navigation between you and that audience, then your subscriber base, customer base, and thus, revenue, will suffer.
Riffing on that same note, you also need to consider the load time of your website. The longer your site takes to load, the fewer people who will stick around to see what you have to offer.
But a fast website means more visitors, which means more subscribers.
Unfortunately, too many large image files, locally-hosted video content, or HTML and CSS discrepancies can kill your website’s load speed faster than you can say, “But wait! There’s more!”
To check how fast your website is, you can visit Pingdom.
But it’s not just the design or speed of your website that determines whether or not your content is approachable. It’s also the content itself.
Research from Medium, the massive online public blog, found that the ideal blog post takes 7 minutes to read and sports about 1,600 words.
That might sound like a long blog post. But notice how the four-minute marker on that graph doesn’t show much decline?
The real punishment arrives when the reading time is three minutes or less. In other words, you can probably get away with 800 to 900-word articles and reap many of the same benefits.
When it comes to video content, that rule doesn’t apply.
In fact, with video, shorter is better across the board.
You have 10 seconds to grab the attention of a viewer. 33% of people will leave after 30 seconds, 45% will leave by one minute, and 60% will leave by two minutes.
This means that you should structure your video content a bit like a journalist. Start with the most important, intriguing, visceral information, and then gradually include less critical information as the clock ticks.
For pacing within a blog post, consider sprinkling images throughout the piece like I’ve done thus far. This gives the reader a break between blocks of text and makes the article easier to read.
Finally, you can practice empathy within your blog posts to create approachable content.
Be empathetic to the visitor’s concerns, experiences, and current understanding of the world.
Consider how Colin Newcomer starts his blog post on the massive online blog, Smart Blogger.
Here’s what Colin does so effectively.
He recognizes the problem that his reader is facing.
He agitates that problem to show him how well he understands their pain.
And he offers a solution.
And that formula makes for an article that readers feel understands them, is trustworthy, and offers valuable information.
A clean web design, fast load time, and optimized content length have a similar effect on visitors.
Which means that people will be more likely to give you their email address.
Promote your content to new audiences
If you’re not reaching new people, you can’t gain more subscribers.
So once you’ve created that share-worthy content, it’s time to show that content to new audiences.
One of the benefits of publishing content on your own blog is that you still reserve all of the rights to that content — with other publications, that might not be the case. This means that you can reuse the content whenever and however you like.
For instance, you can republish the piece on Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn. Which can be a wildly effective way to gain email subscribers. Daniel Ndukwu writes about how he increased subscriber base by 339% in 60 days using Medium and Quora.
This strategy doesn’t take any extra time, and it gets your content in front of a brand new audience.
It’s a no-brainer marketing strategy that should become part of your regular publishing routine.
Another no-brainer strategy you should use is Social Media sharing. Every time you post a new piece of content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with a link to your website.
But here’s the part that might not be such a “no-brainer.”
Tag any friends you think might be interested in the piece of content. Sort of like Shopify content marketer Aaron Orendorff does with his Facebook posts.
Why?
Because doing so won’t just encourage the people you tagged to look at the article. It will encourage all of their friends to look at the article as well.
You see, when you tag someone in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, that post will show up to all of the friends of the people you tagged. That’s a massive audience increase by just typing the “@” symbol.
By using social media tags, Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn to get your content in front of new audiences, you’ll build a subscriber base in no time.
Create a lead magnet
Some visitors will be more difficult to turn into subscribers. They’ll require more… incentive.
And the best way to create incentive is by creating a lead magnet. Basically, an exclusive piece of content that you only give to those who opt in to your email list.
Aaron Orendorff does this on his website, iconiContent.
This is what his homepage looks like.
Then, if you scroll a ways down the page, this will pop up on the side.
Lastly, if you scroll through one of his blog posts, this scroll-depth-triggered overlay will appear near the end.
To create your own lead magnet, ask yourself these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What is their biggest struggle?
What kind of content could I create to solve that problem?
Then, create the piece of content for your audience, turn it into a PDF, and make it a downloadable resource for those who opt in. Or, you can repurpose a piece of content you’ve already created and do the same thing.
You can use PDF Converter to turn an old blog post into a lead magnet for free.
Conclusion
You know the potential of subscribers.
You know that they represent a goldmine of selling and upselling potential – that they’ll tell their kids, spouse, friends, and coworkers about your business.
That they are loyal, profitable, and revenue-driving.
But you also know that they aren’t automatic.
Building a loyal audience takes work. Specifically, you should focus your efforts on email-subscription, create approachable content, consistently promote that content to new audiences, and build a lead magnet for an additional incentive.
Only then will you dip your pan in the correct stream.
About the Author
Brad helps SaaS startups create actionable long-form content for a fraction of the price of a content writer. Give him a pug and a pencil and he’s off to the races!
from FEED 9 MARKETING http://ift.tt/2AHMnkk
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3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Subscribers are a goldmine of marketing potential.
They share your content, heed your advice, buy your products, and tell their friends. They are easier to upsell, more profitable, and more loyal.
They return again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to.
Sadly, knowing the value of subscribers isn’t going to help you get more of them.
Which is why you’re here.
So how do you start mining for gold?
Start with email to collect subscribers.
In the world of subscription, emails rule.
If you build an audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Medium, your success is at the mercy of the platform you’re using. And I don’t need to show you another example of a self-made celebrity who upset their digital place of business at the cost of their career.
With email, though, the audience is yours. No one can tell you what to send, say, offer, or do. And that’s a nice dose of freedom for a growing business.
But email isn’t just the safer option. It’s also an effective place to build a subscriber base.
A study of 605 businesses done by HubSpot, the massive marketing company, found that businesses that collected subscribers by email had 12 times more subscribers than those that used RSS feeds.
To start collecting emails, you’ll need approachable content that you consistently promote to new audiences. And you’ll need to add a dose of incentive.
Here’s that three-step process.
Make your content approachable
The first step to gaining subscribers is creating approachable content.
Content that attracts your ideal customer, delights them once they click, and encourages them to enter their email address in that glorified empty text box.
But creating content that is approachable is a lot easier said than done.
After all, what makes content approachable? Is it the way you talk? The way you write? The way you design?
Well, it’s a little of all three.
First, let’s take a look at the design of your website. When people arrive on your website to view your content, what is their immediate reaction? Is it one of neutrality, enjoyment, or outright horror?
Imagine, for instance, that you arrived on this website: Gates N Fences.
I don’t know about you, but I’d leave the moment I arrived.
Which means that I wouldn’t read any of the actual content, and I definitely wouldn’t subscribe.
With a design like that, practically no one would.
That’s exactly why you need a website that communicates expertise, confidence, simplicity, and above all, trustworthiness.
And you can do that on a low budget. Just keep your website design simple and include plenty of whitespace. When in doubt, don’t add any extra elements.
Booktrep, for instance, is a low-budget WordPress website that is simple, elegant, and, for those reasons, trustworthy.
Of course, the bigger your design budget, the more intricate your website can be. Just ensure that you don’t overdo it like the good ‘ole Gates N Fences example from above.
Consider something like the BigCommerce blog where its intricate design doesn’t confuse navigation, crowd content, or provoke distrust.
The last thing you want to do is spend hours upon hours creating quality content, only to drive traffic to your website that sows distrust among visitors.
The whole point of creating content is to generate subscribers who will turn into customers in the future.
If you place the unnecessary roadblock of a poorly-designed website or lazy navigation between you and that audience, then your subscriber base, customer base, and thus, revenue, will suffer.
Riffing on that same note, you also need to consider the load time of your website. The longer your site takes to load, the fewer people who will stick around to see what you have to offer.
But a fast website means more visitors, which means more subscribers.
Unfortunately, too many large image files, locally-hosted video content, or HTML and CSS discrepancies can kill your website’s load speed faster than you can say, “But wait! There’s more!”
To check how fast your website is, you can visit Pingdom.
But it’s not just the design or speed of your website that determines whether or not your content is approachable. It’s also the content itself.
Research from Medium, the massive online public blog, found that the ideal blog post takes 7 minutes to read and sports about 1,600 words.
That might sound like a long blog post. But notice how the four-minute marker on that graph doesn’t show much decline?
The real punishment arrives when the reading time is three minutes or less. In other words, you can probably get away with 800 to 900-word articles and reap many of the same benefits.
When it comes to video content, that rule doesn’t apply.
In fact, with video, shorter is better across the board.
You have 10 seconds to grab the attention of a viewer. 33% of people will leave after 30 seconds, 45% will leave by one minute, and 60% will leave by two minutes.
This means that you should structure your video content a bit like a journalist. Start with the most important, intriguing, visceral information, and then gradually include less critical information as the clock ticks.
For pacing within a blog post, consider sprinkling images throughout the piece like I’ve done thus far. This gives the reader a break between blocks of text and makes the article easier to read.
Finally, you can practice empathy within your blog posts to create approachable content.
Be empathetic to the visitor’s concerns, experiences, and current understanding of the world.
Consider how Colin Newcomer starts his blog post on the massive online blog, Smart Blogger.
Here’s what Colin does so effectively.
He recognizes the problem that his reader is facing.
He agitates that problem to show him how well he understands their pain.
And he offers a solution.
And that formula makes for an article that readers feel understands them, is trustworthy, and offers valuable information.
A clean web design, fast load time, and optimized content length have a similar effect on visitors.
Which means that people will be more likely to give you their email address.
Promote your content to new audiences
If you’re not reaching new people, you can’t gain more subscribers.
So once you’ve created that share-worthy content, it’s time to show that content to new audiences.
One of the benefits of publishing content on your own blog is that you still reserve all of the rights to that content — with other publications, that might not be the case. This means that you can reuse the content whenever and however you like.
For instance, you can republish the piece on Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn. Which can be a wildly effective way to gain email subscribers. Daniel Ndukwu writes about how he increased subscriber base by 339% in 60 days using Medium and Quora.
This strategy doesn’t take any extra time, and it gets your content in front of a brand new audience.
It’s a no-brainer marketing strategy that should become part of your regular publishing routine.
Another no-brainer strategy you should use is Social Media sharing. Every time you post a new piece of content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with a link to your website.
But here’s the part that might not be such a “no-brainer.”
Tag any friends you think might be interested in the piece of content. Sort of like Shopify content marketer Aaron Orendorff does with his Facebook posts.
Why?
Because doing so won’t just encourage the people you tagged to look at the article. It will encourage all of their friends to look at the article as well.
You see, when you tag someone in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, that post will show up to all of the friends of the people you tagged. That’s a massive audience increase by just typing the “@” symbol.
By using social media tags, Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn to get your content in front of new audiences, you’ll build a subscriber base in no time.
Create a lead magnet
Some visitors will be more difficult to turn into subscribers. They’ll require more… incentive.
And the best way to create incentive is by creating a lead magnet. Basically, an exclusive piece of content that you only give to those who opt in to your email list.
Aaron Orendorff does this on his website, iconiContent.
This is what his homepage looks like.
Then, if you scroll a ways down the page, this will pop up on the side.
Lastly, if you scroll through one of his blog posts, this scroll-depth-triggered overlay will appear near the end.
To create your own lead magnet, ask yourself these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What is their biggest struggle?
What kind of content could I create to solve that problem?
Then, create the piece of content for your audience, turn it into a PDF, and make it a downloadable resource for those who opt in. Or, you can repurpose a piece of content you’ve already created and do the same thing.
You can use PDF Converter to turn an old blog post into a lead magnet for free.
Conclusion
You know the potential of subscribers.
You know that they represent a goldmine of selling and upselling potential – that they’ll tell their kids, spouse, friends, and coworkers about your business.
That they are loyal, profitable, and revenue-driving.
But you also know that they aren’t automatic.
Building a loyal audience takes work. Specifically, you should focus your efforts on email-subscription, create approachable content, consistently promote that content to new audiences, and build a lead magnet for an additional incentive.
Only then will you dip your pan in the correct stream.
About the Author
Brad helps SaaS startups create actionable long-form content for a fraction of the price of a content writer. Give him a pug and a pencil and he’s off to the races!
http://ift.tt/2AHMnkk
0 notes
Text
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Subscribers are a goldmine of marketing potential.
They share your content, heed your advice, buy your products, and tell their friends. They are easier to upsell, more profitable, and more loyal.
They return again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to.
Sadly, knowing the value of subscribers isn’t going to help you get more of them.
Which is why you’re here.
So how do you start mining for gold?
Start with email to collect subscribers.
In the world of subscription, emails rule.
If you build an audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Medium, your success is at the mercy of the platform you’re using. And I don’t need to show you another example of a self-made celebrity who upset their digital place of business at the cost of their career.
With email, though, the audience is yours. No one can tell you what to send, say, offer, or do. And that’s a nice dose of freedom for a growing business.
But email isn’t just the safer option. It’s also an effective place to build a subscriber base.
A study of 605 businesses done by HubSpot, the massive marketing company, found that businesses that collected subscribers by email had 12 times more subscribers than those that used RSS feeds.
To start collecting emails, you’ll need approachable content that you consistently promote to new audiences. And you’ll need to add a dose of incentive.
Here’s that three-step process.
Make your content approachable
The first step to gaining subscribers is creating approachable content.
Content that attracts your ideal customer, delights them once they click, and encourages them to enter their email address in that glorified empty text box.
But creating content that is approachable is a lot easier said than done.
After all, what makes content approachable? Is it the way you talk? The way you write? The way you design?
Well, it’s a little of all three.
First, let’s take a look at the design of your website. When people arrive on your website to view your content, what is their immediate reaction? Is it one of neutrality, enjoyment, or outright horror?
Imagine, for instance, that you arrived on this website: Gates N Fences.
I don’t know about you, but I’d leave the moment I arrived.
Which means that I wouldn’t read any of the actual content, and I definitely wouldn’t subscribe.
With a design like that, practically no one would.
That’s exactly why you need a website that communicates expertise, confidence, simplicity, and above all, trustworthiness.
And you can do that on a low budget. Just keep your website design simple and include plenty of whitespace. When in doubt, don’t add any extra elements.
Booktrep, for instance, is a low-budget WordPress website that is simple, elegant, and, for those reasons, trustworthy.
Of course, the bigger your design budget, the more intricate your website can be. Just ensure that you don’t overdo it like the good ‘ole Gates N Fences example from above.
Consider something like the BigCommerce blog where its intricate design doesn’t confuse navigation, crowd content, or provoke distrust.
The last thing you want to do is spend hours upon hours creating quality content, only to drive traffic to your website that sows distrust among visitors.
The whole point of creating content is to generate subscribers who will turn into customers in the future.
If you place the unnecessary roadblock of a poorly-designed website or lazy navigation between you and that audience, then your subscriber base, customer base, and thus, revenue, will suffer.
Riffing on that same note, you also need to consider the load time of your website. The longer your site takes to load, the fewer people who will stick around to see what you have to offer.
But a fast website means more visitors, which means more subscribers.
Unfortunately, too many large image files, locally-hosted video content, or HTML and CSS discrepancies can kill your website’s load speed faster than you can say, “But wait! There’s more!”
To check how fast your website is, you can visit Pingdom.
But it’s not just the design or speed of your website that determines whether or not your content is approachable. It’s also the content itself.
Research from Medium, the massive online public blog, found that the ideal blog post takes 7 minutes to read and sports about 1,600 words.
That might sound like a long blog post. But notice how the four-minute marker on that graph doesn’t show much decline?
The real punishment arrives when the reading time is three minutes or less. In other words, you can probably get away with 800 to 900-word articles and reap many of the same benefits.
When it comes to video content, that rule doesn’t apply.
In fact, with video, shorter is better across the board.
You have 10 seconds to grab the attention of a viewer. 33% of people will leave after 30 seconds, 45% will leave by one minute, and 60% will leave by two minutes.
This means that you should structure your video content a bit like a journalist. Start with the most important, intriguing, visceral information, and then gradually include less critical information as the clock ticks.
For pacing within a blog post, consider sprinkling images throughout the piece like I’ve done thus far. This gives the reader a break between blocks of text and makes the article easier to read.
Finally, you can practice empathy within your blog posts to create approachable content.
Be empathetic to the visitor’s concerns, experiences, and current understanding of the world.
Consider how Colin Newcomer starts his blog post on the massive online blog, Smart Blogger.
Here’s what Colin does so effectively.
He recognizes the problem that his reader is facing.
He agitates that problem to show him how well he understands their pain.
And he offers a solution.
And that formula makes for an article that readers feel understands them, is trustworthy, and offers valuable information.
A clean web design, fast load time, and optimized content length have a similar effect on visitors.
Which means that people will be more likely to give you their email address.
Promote your content to new audiences
If you’re not reaching new people, you can’t gain more subscribers.
So once you’ve created that share-worthy content, it’s time to show that content to new audiences.
One of the benefits of publishing content on your own blog is that you still reserve all of the rights to that content — with other publications, that might not be the case. This means that you can reuse the content whenever and however you like.
For instance, you can republish the piece on Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn. Which can be a wildly effective way to gain email subscribers. Daniel Ndukwu writes about how he increased subscriber base by 339% in 60 days using Medium and Quora.
This strategy doesn’t take any extra time, and it gets your content in front of a brand new audience.
It’s a no-brainer marketing strategy that should become part of your regular publishing routine.
Another no-brainer strategy you should use is Social Media sharing. Every time you post a new piece of content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with a link to your website.
But here’s the part that might not be such a “no-brainer.”
Tag any friends you think might be interested in the piece of content. Sort of like Shopify content marketer Aaron Orendorff does with his Facebook posts.
Why?
Because doing so won’t just encourage the people you tagged to look at the article. It will encourage all of their friends to look at the article as well.
You see, when you tag someone in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, that post will show up to all of the friends of the people you tagged. That’s a massive audience increase by just typing the “@” symbol.
By using social media tags, Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn to get your content in front of new audiences, you’ll build a subscriber base in no time.
Create a lead magnet
Some visitors will be more difficult to turn into subscribers. They’ll require more… incentive.
And the best way to create incentive is by creating a lead magnet. Basically, an exclusive piece of content that you only give to those who opt in to your email list.
Aaron Orendorff does this on his website, iconiContent.
This is what his homepage looks like.
Then, if you scroll a ways down the page, this will pop up on the side.
Lastly, if you scroll through one of his blog posts, this scroll-depth-triggered overlay will appear near the end.
To create your own lead magnet, ask yourself these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What is their biggest struggle?
What kind of content could I create to solve that problem?
Then, create the piece of content for your audience, turn it into a PDF, and make it a downloadable resource for those who opt in. Or, you can repurpose a piece of content you’ve already created and do the same thing.
You can use PDF Converter to turn an old blog post into a lead magnet for free.
Conclusion
You know the potential of subscribers.
You know that they represent a goldmine of selling and upselling potential – that they’ll tell their kids, spouse, friends, and coworkers about your business.
That they are loyal, profitable, and revenue-driving.
But you also know that they aren’t automatic.
Building a loyal audience takes work. Specifically, you should focus your efforts on email-subscription, create approachable content, consistently promote that content to new audiences, and build a lead magnet for an additional incentive.
Only then will you dip your pan in the correct stream.
About the Author
Brad helps SaaS startups create actionable long-form content for a fraction of the price of a content writer. Give him a pug and a pencil and he’s off to the races!
http://ift.tt/2AHMnkk
0 notes
Text
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Subscribers are a goldmine of marketing potential.
They share your content, heed your advice, buy your products, and tell their friends. They are easier to upsell, more profitable, and more loyal.
They return again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to.
Sadly, knowing the value of subscribers isn’t going to help you get more of them.
Which is why you’re here.
So how do you start mining for gold?
Start with email to collect subscribers.
In the world of subscription, emails rule.
If you build an audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Medium, your success is at the mercy of the platform you’re using. And I don’t need to show you another example of a self-made celebrity who upset their digital place of business at the cost of their career.
With email, though, the audience is yours. No one can tell you what to send, say, offer, or do. And that’s a nice dose of freedom for a growing business.
But email isn’t just the safer option. It’s also an effective place to build a subscriber base.
A study of 605 businesses done by HubSpot, the massive marketing company, found that businesses that collected subscribers by email had 12 times more subscribers than those that used RSS feeds.
To start collecting emails, you’ll need approachable content that you consistently promote to new audiences. And you’ll need to add a dose of incentive.
Here’s that three-step process.
Make your content approachable
The first step to gaining subscribers is creating approachable content.
Content that attracts your ideal customer, delights them once they click, and encourages them to enter their email address in that glorified empty text box.
But creating content that is approachable is a lot easier said than done.
After all, what makes content approachable? Is it the way you talk? The way you write? The way you design?
Well, it’s a little of all three.
First, let’s take a look at the design of your website. When people arrive on your website to view your content, what is their immediate reaction? Is it one of neutrality, enjoyment, or outright horror?
Imagine, for instance, that you arrived on this website: Gates N Fences.
I don’t know about you, but I’d leave the moment I arrived.
Which means that I wouldn’t read any of the actual content, and I definitely wouldn’t subscribe.
With a design like that, practically no one would.
That’s exactly why you need a website that communicates expertise, confidence, simplicity, and above all, trustworthiness.
And you can do that on a low budget. Just keep your website design simple and include plenty of whitespace. When in doubt, don’t add any extra elements.
Booktrep, for instance, is a low-budget WordPress website that is simple, elegant, and, for those reasons, trustworthy.
Of course, the bigger your design budget, the more intricate your website can be. Just ensure that you don’t overdo it like the good ‘ole Gates N Fences example from above.
Consider something like the BigCommerce blog where its intricate design doesn’t confuse navigation, crowd content, or provoke distrust.
The last thing you want to do is spend hours upon hours creating quality content, only to drive traffic to your website that sows distrust among visitors.
The whole point of creating content is to generate subscribers who will turn into customers in the future.
If you place the unnecessary roadblock of a poorly-designed website or lazy navigation between you and that audience, then your subscriber base, customer base, and thus, revenue, will suffer.
Riffing on that same note, you also need to consider the load time of your website. The longer your site takes to load, the fewer people who will stick around to see what you have to offer.
But a fast website means more visitors, which means more subscribers.
Unfortunately, too many large image files, locally-hosted video content, or HTML and CSS discrepancies can kill your website’s load speed faster than you can say, “But wait! There’s more!”
To check how fast your website is, you can visit Pingdom.
But it’s not just the design or speed of your website that determines whether or not your content is approachable. It’s also the content itself.
Research from Medium, the massive online public blog, found that the ideal blog post takes 7 minutes to read and sports about 1,600 words.
That might sound like a long blog post. But notice how the four-minute marker on that graph doesn’t show much decline?
The real punishment arrives when the reading time is three minutes or less. In other words, you can probably get away with 800 to 900-word articles and reap many of the same benefits.
When it comes to video content, that rule doesn’t apply.
In fact, with video, shorter is better across the board.
You have 10 seconds to grab the attention of a viewer. 33% of people will leave after 30 seconds, 45% will leave by one minute, and 60% will leave by two minutes.
This means that you should structure your video content a bit like a journalist. Start with the most important, intriguing, visceral information, and then gradually include less critical information as the clock ticks.
For pacing within a blog post, consider sprinkling images throughout the piece like I’ve done thus far. This gives the reader a break between blocks of text and makes the article easier to read.
Finally, you can practice empathy within your blog posts to create approachable content.
Be empathetic to the visitor’s concerns, experiences, and current understanding of the world.
Consider how Colin Newcomer starts his blog post on the massive online blog, Smart Blogger.
Here’s what Colin does so effectively.
He recognizes the problem that his reader is facing.
He agitates that problem to show him how well he understands their pain.
And he offers a solution.
And that formula makes for an article that readers feel understands them, is trustworthy, and offers valuable information.
A clean web design, fast load time, and optimized content length have a similar effect on visitors.
Which means that people will be more likely to give you their email address.
Promote your content to new audiences
If you’re not reaching new people, you can’t gain more subscribers.
So once you’ve created that share-worthy content, it’s time to show that content to new audiences.
One of the benefits of publishing content on your own blog is that you still reserve all of the rights to that content — with other publications, that might not be the case. This means that you can reuse the content whenever and however you like.
For instance, you can republish the piece on Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn. Which can be a wildly effective way to gain email subscribers. Daniel Ndukwu writes about how he increased subscriber base by 339% in 60 days using Medium and Quora.
This strategy doesn’t take any extra time, and it gets your content in front of a brand new audience.
It’s a no-brainer marketing strategy that should become part of your regular publishing routine.
Another no-brainer strategy you should use is Social Media sharing. Every time you post a new piece of content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with a link to your website.
But here’s the part that might not be such a “no-brainer.”
Tag any friends you think might be interested in the piece of content. Sort of like Shopify content marketer Aaron Orendorff does with his Facebook posts.
Why?
Because doing so won’t just encourage the people you tagged to look at the article. It will encourage all of their friends to look at the article as well.
You see, when you tag someone in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, that post will show up to all of the friends of the people you tagged. That’s a massive audience increase by just typing the “@” symbol.
By using social media tags, Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn to get your content in front of new audiences, you’ll build a subscriber base in no time.
Create a lead magnet
Some visitors will be more difficult to turn into subscribers. They’ll require more… incentive.
And the best way to create incentive is by creating a lead magnet. Basically, an exclusive piece of content that you only give to those who opt in to your email list.
Aaron Orendorff does this on his website, iconiContent.
This is what his homepage looks like.
Then, if you scroll a ways down the page, this will pop up on the side.
Lastly, if you scroll through one of his blog posts, this scroll-depth-triggered overlay will appear near the end.
To create your own lead magnet, ask yourself these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What is their biggest struggle?
What kind of content could I create to solve that problem?
Then, create the piece of content for your audience, turn it into a PDF, and make it a downloadable resource for those who opt in. Or, you can repurpose a piece of content you’ve already created and do the same thing.
You can use PDF Converter to turn an old blog post into a lead magnet for free.
Conclusion
You know the potential of subscribers.
You know that they represent a goldmine of selling and upselling potential – that they’ll tell their kids, spouse, friends, and coworkers about your business.
That they are loyal, profitable, and revenue-driving.
But you also know that they aren’t automatic.
Building a loyal audience takes work. Specifically, you should focus your efforts on email-subscription, create approachable content, consistently promote that content to new audiences, and build a lead magnet for an additional incentive.
Only then will you dip your pan in the correct stream.
About the Author
Brad helps SaaS startups create actionable long-form content for a fraction of the price of a content writer. Give him a pug and a pencil and he’s off to the races!
http://ift.tt/2AHMnkk
0 notes
Text
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Subscribers are a goldmine of marketing potential.
They share your content, heed your advice, buy your products, and tell their friends. They are easier to upsell, more profitable, and more loyal.
They return again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to.
Sadly, knowing the value of subscribers isn’t going to help you get more of them.
Which is why you’re here.
So how do you start mining for gold?
Start with email to collect subscribers.
In the world of subscription, emails rule.
If you build an audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Medium, your success is at the mercy of the platform you’re using. And I don’t need to show you another example of a self-made celebrity who upset their digital place of business at the cost of their career.
With email, though, the audience is yours. No one can tell you what to send, say, offer, or do. And that’s a nice dose of freedom for a growing business.
But email isn’t just the safer option. It’s also an effective place to build a subscriber base.
A study of 605 businesses done by HubSpot, the massive marketing company, found that businesses that collected subscribers by email had 12 times more subscribers than those that used RSS feeds.
To start collecting emails, you’ll need approachable content that you consistently promote to new audiences. And you’ll need to add a dose of incentive.
Here’s that three-step process.
Make your content approachable
The first step to gaining subscribers is creating approachable content.
Content that attracts your ideal customer, delights them once they click, and encourages them to enter their email address in that glorified empty text box.
But creating content that is approachable is a lot easier said than done.
After all, what makes content approachable? Is it the way you talk? The way you write? The way you design?
Well, it’s a little of all three.
First, let’s take a look at the design of your website. When people arrive on your website to view your content, what is their immediate reaction? Is it one of neutrality, enjoyment, or outright horror?
Imagine, for instance, that you arrived on this website: Gates N Fences.
I don’t know about you, but I’d leave the moment I arrived.
Which means that I wouldn’t read any of the actual content, and I definitely wouldn’t subscribe.
With a design like that, practically no one would.
That’s exactly why you need a website that communicates expertise, confidence, simplicity, and above all, trustworthiness.
And you can do that on a low budget. Just keep your website design simple and include plenty of whitespace. When in doubt, don’t add any extra elements.
Booktrep, for instance, is a low-budget WordPress website that is simple, elegant, and, for those reasons, trustworthy.
Of course, the bigger your design budget, the more intricate your website can be. Just ensure that you don’t overdo it like the good ‘ole Gates N Fences example from above.
Consider something like the BigCommerce blog where its intricate design doesn’t confuse navigation, crowd content, or provoke distrust.
The last thing you want to do is spend hours upon hours creating quality content, only to drive traffic to your website that sows distrust among visitors.
The whole point of creating content is to generate subscribers who will turn into customers in the future.
If you place the unnecessary roadblock of a poorly-designed website or lazy navigation between you and that audience, then your subscriber base, customer base, and thus, revenue, will suffer.
Riffing on that same note, you also need to consider the load time of your website. The longer your site takes to load, the fewer people who will stick around to see what you have to offer.
But a fast website means more visitors, which means more subscribers.
Unfortunately, too many large image files, locally-hosted video content, or HTML and CSS discrepancies can kill your website’s load speed faster than you can say, “But wait! There’s more!”
To check how fast your website is, you can visit Pingdom.
But it’s not just the design or speed of your website that determines whether or not your content is approachable. It’s also the content itself.
Research from Medium, the massive online public blog, found that the ideal blog post takes 7 minutes to read and sports about 1,600 words.
That might sound like a long blog post. But notice how the four-minute marker on that graph doesn’t show much decline?
The real punishment arrives when the reading time is three minutes or less. In other words, you can probably get away with 800 to 900-word articles and reap many of the same benefits.
When it comes to video content, that rule doesn’t apply.
In fact, with video, shorter is better across the board.
You have 10 seconds to grab the attention of a viewer. 33% of people will leave after 30 seconds, 45% will leave by one minute, and 60% will leave by two minutes.
This means that you should structure your video content a bit like a journalist. Start with the most important, intriguing, visceral information, and then gradually include less critical information as the clock ticks.
For pacing within a blog post, consider sprinkling images throughout the piece like I’ve done thus far. This gives the reader a break between blocks of text and makes the article easier to read.
Finally, you can practice empathy within your blog posts to create approachable content.
Be empathetic to the visitor’s concerns, experiences, and current understanding of the world.
Consider how Colin Newcomer starts his blog post on the massive online blog, Smart Blogger.
Here’s what Colin does so effectively.
He recognizes the problem that his reader is facing.
He agitates that problem to show him how well he understands their pain.
And he offers a solution.
And that formula makes for an article that readers feel understands them, is trustworthy, and offers valuable information.
A clean web design, fast load time, and optimized content length have a similar effect on visitors.
Which means that people will be more likely to give you their email address.
Promote your content to new audiences
If you’re not reaching new people, you can’t gain more subscribers.
So once you’ve created that share-worthy content, it’s time to show that content to new audiences.
One of the benefits of publishing content on your own blog is that you still reserve all of the rights to that content — with other publications, that might not be the case. This means that you can reuse the content whenever and however you like.
For instance, you can republish the piece on Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn. Which can be a wildly effective way to gain email subscribers. Daniel Ndukwu writes about how he increased subscriber base by 339% in 60 days using Medium and Quora.
This strategy doesn’t take any extra time, and it gets your content in front of a brand new audience.
It’s a no-brainer marketing strategy that should become part of your regular publishing routine.
Another no-brainer strategy you should use is Social Media sharing. Every time you post a new piece of content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with a link to your website.
But here’s the part that might not be such a “no-brainer.”
Tag any friends you think might be interested in the piece of content. Sort of like Shopify content marketer Aaron Orendorff does with his Facebook posts.
Why?
Because doing so won’t just encourage the people you tagged to look at the article. It will encourage all of their friends to look at the article as well.
You see, when you tag someone in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, that post will show up to all of the friends of the people you tagged. That’s a massive audience increase by just typing the “@” symbol.
By using social media tags, Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn to get your content in front of new audiences, you’ll build a subscriber base in no time.
Create a lead magnet
Some visitors will be more difficult to turn into subscribers. They’ll require more… incentive.
And the best way to create incentive is by creating a lead magnet. Basically, an exclusive piece of content that you only give to those who opt in to your email list.
Aaron Orendorff does this on his website, iconiContent.
This is what his homepage looks like.
Then, if you scroll a ways down the page, this will pop up on the side.
Lastly, if you scroll through one of his blog posts, this scroll-depth-triggered overlay will appear near the end.
To create your own lead magnet, ask yourself these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What is their biggest struggle?
What kind of content could I create to solve that problem?
Then, create the piece of content for your audience, turn it into a PDF, and make it a downloadable resource for those who opt in. Or, you can repurpose a piece of content you’ve already created and do the same thing.
You can use PDF Converter to turn an old blog post into a lead magnet for free.
Conclusion
You know the potential of subscribers.
You know that they represent a goldmine of selling and upselling potential – that they’ll tell their kids, spouse, friends, and coworkers about your business.
That they are loyal, profitable, and revenue-driving.
But you also know that they aren’t automatic.
Building a loyal audience takes work. Specifically, you should focus your efforts on email-subscription, create approachable content, consistently promote that content to new audiences, and build a lead magnet for an additional incentive.
Only then will you dip your pan in the correct stream.
About the Author
Brad helps SaaS startups create actionable long-form content for a fraction of the price of a content writer. Give him a pug and a pencil and he’s off to the races!
http://ift.tt/2AHMnkk
0 notes
Text
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Subscribers are a goldmine of marketing potential.
They share your content, heed your advice, buy your products, and tell their friends. They are easier to upsell, more profitable, and more loyal.
They return again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to.
Sadly, knowing the value of subscribers isn’t going to help you get more of them.
Which is why you’re here.
So how do you start mining for gold?
Start with email to collect subscribers.
In the world of subscription, emails rule.
If you build an audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Medium, your success is at the mercy of the platform you’re using. And I don’t need to show you another example of a self-made celebrity who upset their digital place of business at the cost of their career.
With email, though, the audience is yours. No one can tell you what to send, say, offer, or do. And that’s a nice dose of freedom for a growing business.
But email isn’t just the safer option. It’s also an effective place to build a subscriber base.
A study of 605 businesses done by HubSpot, the massive marketing company, found that businesses that collected subscribers by email had 12 times more subscribers than those that used RSS feeds.
To start collecting emails, you’ll need approachable content that you consistently promote to new audiences. And you’ll need to add a dose of incentive.
Here’s that three-step process.
Make your content approachable
The first step to gaining subscribers is creating approachable content.
Content that attracts your ideal customer, delights them once they click, and encourages them to enter their email address in that glorified empty text box.
But creating content that is approachable is a lot easier said than done.
After all, what makes content approachable? Is it the way you talk? The way you write? The way you design?
Well, it’s a little of all three.
First, let’s take a look at the design of your website. When people arrive on your website to view your content, what is their immediate reaction? Is it one of neutrality, enjoyment, or outright horror?
Imagine, for instance, that you arrived on this website: Gates N Fences.
I don’t know about you, but I’d leave the moment I arrived.
Which means that I wouldn’t read any of the actual content, and I definitely wouldn’t subscribe.
With a design like that, practically no one would.
That’s exactly why you need a website that communicates expertise, confidence, simplicity, and above all, trustworthiness.
And you can do that on a low budget. Just keep your website design simple and include plenty of whitespace. When in doubt, don’t add any extra elements.
Booktrep, for instance, is a low-budget WordPress website that is simple, elegant, and, for those reasons, trustworthy.
Of course, the bigger your design budget, the more intricate your website can be. Just ensure that you don’t overdo it like the good ‘ole Gates N Fences example from above.
Consider something like the BigCommerce blog where its intricate design doesn’t confuse navigation, crowd content, or provoke distrust.
The last thing you want to do is spend hours upon hours creating quality content, only to drive traffic to your website that sows distrust among visitors.
The whole point of creating content is to generate subscribers who will turn into customers in the future.
If you place the unnecessary roadblock of a poorly-designed website or lazy navigation between you and that audience, then your subscriber base, customer base, and thus, revenue, will suffer.
Riffing on that same note, you also need to consider the load time of your website. The longer your site takes to load, the fewer people who will stick around to see what you have to offer.
But a fast website means more visitors, which means more subscribers.
Unfortunately, too many large image files, locally-hosted video content, or HTML and CSS discrepancies can kill your website’s load speed faster than you can say, “But wait! There’s more!”
To check how fast your website is, you can visit Pingdom.
But it’s not just the design or speed of your website that determines whether or not your content is approachable. It’s also the content itself.
Research from Medium, the massive online public blog, found that the ideal blog post takes 7 minutes to read and sports about 1,600 words.
That might sound like a long blog post. But notice how the four-minute marker on that graph doesn’t show much decline?
The real punishment arrives when the reading time is three minutes or less. In other words, you can probably get away with 800 to 900-word articles and reap many of the same benefits.
When it comes to video content, that rule doesn’t apply.
In fact, with video, shorter is better across the board.
You have 10 seconds to grab the attention of a viewer. 33% of people will leave after 30 seconds, 45% will leave by one minute, and 60% will leave by two minutes.
This means that you should structure your video content a bit like a journalist. Start with the most important, intriguing, visceral information, and then gradually include less critical information as the clock ticks.
For pacing within a blog post, consider sprinkling images throughout the piece like I’ve done thus far. This gives the reader a break between blocks of text and makes the article easier to read.
Finally, you can practice empathy within your blog posts to create approachable content.
Be empathetic to the visitor’s concerns, experiences, and current understanding of the world.
Consider how Colin Newcomer starts his blog post on the massive online blog, Smart Blogger.
Here’s what Colin does so effectively.
He recognizes the problem that his reader is facing.
He agitates that problem to show him how well he understands their pain.
And he offers a solution.
And that formula makes for an article that readers feel understands them, is trustworthy, and offers valuable information.
A clean web design, fast load time, and optimized content length have a similar effect on visitors.
Which means that people will be more likely to give you their email address.
Promote your content to new audiences
If you’re not reaching new people, you can’t gain more subscribers.
So once you’ve created that share-worthy content, it’s time to show that content to new audiences.
One of the benefits of publishing content on your own blog is that you still reserve all of the rights to that content — with other publications, that might not be the case. This means that you can reuse the content whenever and however you like.
For instance, you can republish the piece on Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn. Which can be a wildly effective way to gain email subscribers. Daniel Ndukwu writes about how he increased subscriber base by 339% in 60 days using Medium and Quora.
This strategy doesn’t take any extra time, and it gets your content in front of a brand new audience.
It’s a no-brainer marketing strategy that should become part of your regular publishing routine.
Another no-brainer strategy you should use is Social Media sharing. Every time you post a new piece of content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with a link to your website.
But here’s the part that might not be such a “no-brainer.”
Tag any friends you think might be interested in the piece of content. Sort of like Shopify content marketer Aaron Orendorff does with his Facebook posts.
Why?
Because doing so won’t just encourage the people you tagged to look at the article. It will encourage all of their friends to look at the article as well.
You see, when you tag someone in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, that post will show up to all of the friends of the people you tagged. That’s a massive audience increase by just typing the “@” symbol.
By using social media tags, Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn to get your content in front of new audiences, you’ll build a subscriber base in no time.
Create a lead magnet
Some visitors will be more difficult to turn into subscribers. They’ll require more… incentive.
And the best way to create incentive is by creating a lead magnet. Basically, an exclusive piece of content that you only give to those who opt in to your email list.
Aaron Orendorff does this on his website, iconiContent.
This is what his homepage looks like.
Then, if you scroll a ways down the page, this will pop up on the side.
Lastly, if you scroll through one of his blog posts, this scroll-depth-triggered overlay will appear near the end.
To create your own lead magnet, ask yourself these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What is their biggest struggle?
What kind of content could I create to solve that problem?
Then, create the piece of content for your audience, turn it into a PDF, and make it a downloadable resource for those who opt in. Or, you can repurpose a piece of content you’ve already created and do the same thing.
You can use PDF Converter to turn an old blog post into a lead magnet for free.
Conclusion
You know the potential of subscribers.
You know that they represent a goldmine of selling and upselling potential – that they’ll tell their kids, spouse, friends, and coworkers about your business.
That they are loyal, profitable, and revenue-driving.
But you also know that they aren’t automatic.
Building a loyal audience takes work. Specifically, you should focus your efforts on email-subscription, create approachable content, consistently promote that content to new audiences, and build a lead magnet for an additional incentive.
Only then will you dip your pan in the correct stream.
About the Author
Brad helps SaaS startups create actionable long-form content for a fraction of the price of a content writer. Give him a pug and a pencil and he’s off to the races!
http://ift.tt/2AHMnkk
0 notes
Text
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Subscribers are a goldmine of marketing potential.
They share your content, heed your advice, buy your products, and tell their friends. They are easier to upsell, more profitable, and more loyal.
They return again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to.
Sadly, knowing the value of subscribers isn’t going to help you get more of them.
Which is why you’re here.
So how do you start mining for gold?
Start with email to collect subscribers.
In the world of subscription, emails rule.
If you build an audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Medium, your success is at the mercy of the platform you’re using. And I don’t need to show you another example of a self-made celebrity who upset their digital place of business at the cost of their career.
With email, though, the audience is yours. No one can tell you what to send, say, offer, or do. And that’s a nice dose of freedom for a growing business.
But email isn’t just the safer option. It’s also an effective place to build a subscriber base.
A study of 605 businesses done by HubSpot, the massive marketing company, found that businesses that collected subscribers by email had 12 times more subscribers than those that used RSS feeds.
To start collecting emails, you’ll need approachable content that you consistently promote to new audiences. And you’ll need to add a dose of incentive.
Here’s that three-step process.
Make your content approachable
The first step to gaining subscribers is creating approachable content.
Content that attracts your ideal customer, delights them once they click, and encourages them to enter their email address in that glorified empty text box.
But creating content that is approachable is a lot easier said than done.
After all, what makes content approachable? Is it the way you talk? The way you write? The way you design?
Well, it’s a little of all three.
First, let’s take a look at the design of your website. When people arrive on your website to view your content, what is their immediate reaction? Is it one of neutrality, enjoyment, or outright horror?
Imagine, for instance, that you arrived on this website: Gates N Fences.
I don’t know about you, but I’d leave the moment I arrived.
Which means that I wouldn’t read any of the actual content, and I definitely wouldn’t subscribe.
With a design like that, practically no one would.
That’s exactly why you need a website that communicates expertise, confidence, simplicity, and above all, trustworthiness.
And you can do that on a low budget. Just keep your website design simple and include plenty of whitespace. When in doubt, don’t add any extra elements.
Booktrep, for instance, is a low-budget WordPress website that is simple, elegant, and, for those reasons, trustworthy.
Of course, the bigger your design budget, the more intricate your website can be. Just ensure that you don’t overdo it like the good ‘ole Gates N Fences example from above.
Consider something like the BigCommerce blog where its intricate design doesn’t confuse navigation, crowd content, or provoke distrust.
The last thing you want to do is spend hours upon hours creating quality content, only to drive traffic to your website that sows distrust among visitors.
The whole point of creating content is to generate subscribers who will turn into customers in the future.
If you place the unnecessary roadblock of a poorly-designed website or lazy navigation between you and that audience, then your subscriber base, customer base, and thus, revenue, will suffer.
Riffing on that same note, you also need to consider the load time of your website. The longer your site takes to load, the fewer people who will stick around to see what you have to offer.
But a fast website means more visitors, which means more subscribers.
Unfortunately, too many large image files, locally-hosted video content, or HTML and CSS discrepancies can kill your website’s load speed faster than you can say, “But wait! There’s more!”
To check how fast your website is, you can visit Pingdom.
But it’s not just the design or speed of your website that determines whether or not your content is approachable. It’s also the content itself.
Research from Medium, the massive online public blog, found that the ideal blog post takes 7 minutes to read and sports about 1,600 words.
That might sound like a long blog post. But notice how the four-minute marker on that graph doesn’t show much decline?
The real punishment arrives when the reading time is three minutes or less. In other words, you can probably get away with 800 to 900-word articles and reap many of the same benefits.
When it comes to video content, that rule doesn’t apply.
In fact, with video, shorter is better across the board.
You have 10 seconds to grab the attention of a viewer. 33% of people will leave after 30 seconds, 45% will leave by one minute, and 60% will leave by two minutes.
This means that you should structure your video content a bit like a journalist. Start with the most important, intriguing, visceral information, and then gradually include less critical information as the clock ticks.
For pacing within a blog post, consider sprinkling images throughout the piece like I’ve done thus far. This gives the reader a break between blocks of text and makes the article easier to read.
Finally, you can practice empathy within your blog posts to create approachable content.
Be empathetic to the visitor’s concerns, experiences, and current understanding of the world.
Consider how Colin Newcomer starts his blog post on the massive online blog, Smart Blogger.
Here’s what Colin does so effectively.
He recognizes the problem that his reader is facing.
He agitates that problem to show him how well he understands their pain.
And he offers a solution.
And that formula makes for an article that readers feel understands them, is trustworthy, and offers valuable information.
A clean web design, fast load time, and optimized content length have a similar effect on visitors.
Which means that people will be more likely to give you their email address.
Promote your content to new audiences
If you’re not reaching new people, you can’t gain more subscribers.
So once you’ve created that share-worthy content, it’s time to show that content to new audiences.
One of the benefits of publishing content on your own blog is that you still reserve all of the rights to that content — with other publications, that might not be the case. This means that you can reuse the content whenever and however you like.
For instance, you can republish the piece on Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn. Which can be a wildly effective way to gain email subscribers. Daniel Ndukwu writes about how he increased subscriber base by 339% in 60 days using Medium and Quora.
This strategy doesn’t take any extra time, and it gets your content in front of a brand new audience.
It’s a no-brainer marketing strategy that should become part of your regular publishing routine.
Another no-brainer strategy you should use is Social Media sharing. Every time you post a new piece of content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with a link to your website.
But here’s the part that might not be such a “no-brainer.”
Tag any friends you think might be interested in the piece of content. Sort of like Shopify content marketer Aaron Orendorff does with his Facebook posts.
Why?
Because doing so won’t just encourage the people you tagged to look at the article. It will encourage all of their friends to look at the article as well.
You see, when you tag someone in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, that post will show up to all of the friends of the people you tagged. That’s a massive audience increase by just typing the “@” symbol.
By using social media tags, Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn to get your content in front of new audiences, you’ll build a subscriber base in no time.
Create a lead magnet
Some visitors will be more difficult to turn into subscribers. They’ll require more… incentive.
And the best way to create incentive is by creating a lead magnet. Basically, an exclusive piece of content that you only give to those who opt in to your email list.
Aaron Orendorff does this on his website, iconiContent.
This is what his homepage looks like.
Then, if you scroll a ways down the page, this will pop up on the side.
Lastly, if you scroll through one of his blog posts, this scroll-depth-triggered overlay will appear near the end.
To create your own lead magnet, ask yourself these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What is their biggest struggle?
What kind of content could I create to solve that problem?
Then, create the piece of content for your audience, turn it into a PDF, and make it a downloadable resource for those who opt in. Or, you can repurpose a piece of content you’ve already created and do the same thing.
You can use PDF Converter to turn an old blog post into a lead magnet for free.
Conclusion
You know the potential of subscribers.
You know that they represent a goldmine of selling and upselling potential – that they’ll tell their kids, spouse, friends, and coworkers about your business.
That they are loyal, profitable, and revenue-driving.
But you also know that they aren’t automatic.
Building a loyal audience takes work. Specifically, you should focus your efforts on email-subscription, create approachable content, consistently promote that content to new audiences, and build a lead magnet for an additional incentive.
Only then will you dip your pan in the correct stream.
About the Author
Brad helps SaaS startups create actionable long-form content for a fraction of the price of a content writer. Give him a pug and a pencil and he’s off to the races!
http://ift.tt/2AHMnkk
0 notes
Text
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Subscribers are a goldmine of marketing potential.
They share your content, heed your advice, buy your products, and tell their friends. They are easier to upsell, more profitable, and more loyal.
They return again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to.
Sadly, knowing the value of subscribers isn’t going to help you get more of them.
Which is why you’re here.
So how do you start mining for gold?
Start with email to collect subscribers.
In the world of subscription, emails rule.
If you build an audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Medium, your success is at the mercy of the platform you’re using. And I don’t need to show you another example of a self-made celebrity who upset their digital place of business at the cost of their career.
With email, though, the audience is yours. No one can tell you what to send, say, offer, or do. And that’s a nice dose of freedom for a growing business.
But email isn’t just the safer option. It’s also an effective place to build a subscriber base.
A study of 605 businesses done by HubSpot, the massive marketing company, found that businesses that collected subscribers by email had 12 times more subscribers than those that used RSS feeds.
To start collecting emails, you’ll need approachable content that you consistently promote to new audiences. And you’ll need to add a dose of incentive.
Here’s that three-step process.
Make your content approachable
The first step to gaining subscribers is creating approachable content.
Content that attracts your ideal customer, delights them once they click, and encourages them to enter their email address in that glorified empty text box.
But creating content that is approachable is a lot easier said than done.
After all, what makes content approachable? Is it the way you talk? The way you write? The way you design?
Well, it’s a little of all three.
First, let’s take a look at the design of your website. When people arrive on your website to view your content, what is their immediate reaction? Is it one of neutrality, enjoyment, or outright horror?
Imagine, for instance, that you arrived on this website: Gates N Fences.
I don’t know about you, but I’d leave the moment I arrived.
Which means that I wouldn’t read any of the actual content, and I definitely wouldn’t subscribe.
With a design like that, practically no one would.
That’s exactly why you need a website that communicates expertise, confidence, simplicity, and above all, trustworthiness.
And you can do that on a low budget. Just keep your website design simple and include plenty of whitespace. When in doubt, don’t add any extra elements.
Booktrep, for instance, is a low-budget WordPress website that is simple, elegant, and, for those reasons, trustworthy.
Of course, the bigger your design budget, the more intricate your website can be. Just ensure that you don’t overdo it like the good ‘ole Gates N Fences example from above.
Consider something like the BigCommerce blog where its intricate design doesn’t confuse navigation, crowd content, or provoke distrust.
The last thing you want to do is spend hours upon hours creating quality content, only to drive traffic to your website that sows distrust among visitors.
The whole point of creating content is to generate subscribers who will turn into customers in the future.
If you place the unnecessary roadblock of a poorly-designed website or lazy navigation between you and that audience, then your subscriber base, customer base, and thus, revenue, will suffer.
Riffing on that same note, you also need to consider the load time of your website. The longer your site takes to load, the fewer people who will stick around to see what you have to offer.
But a fast website means more visitors, which means more subscribers.
Unfortunately, too many large image files, locally-hosted video content, or HTML and CSS discrepancies can kill your website’s load speed faster than you can say, “But wait! There’s more!”
To check how fast your website is, you can visit Pingdom.
But it’s not just the design or speed of your website that determines whether or not your content is approachable. It’s also the content itself.
Research from Medium, the massive online public blog, found that the ideal blog post takes 7 minutes to read and sports about 1,600 words.
That might sound like a long blog post. But notice how the four-minute marker on that graph doesn’t show much decline?
The real punishment arrives when the reading time is three minutes or less. In other words, you can probably get away with 800 to 900-word articles and reap many of the same benefits.
When it comes to video content, that rule doesn’t apply.
In fact, with video, shorter is better across the board.
You have 10 seconds to grab the attention of a viewer. 33% of people will leave after 30 seconds, 45% will leave by one minute, and 60% will leave by two minutes.
This means that you should structure your video content a bit like a journalist. Start with the most important, intriguing, visceral information, and then gradually include less critical information as the clock ticks.
For pacing within a blog post, consider sprinkling images throughout the piece like I’ve done thus far. This gives the reader a break between blocks of text and makes the article easier to read.
Finally, you can practice empathy within your blog posts to create approachable content.
Be empathetic to the visitor’s concerns, experiences, and current understanding of the world.
Consider how Colin Newcomer starts his blog post on the massive online blog, Smart Blogger.
Here’s what Colin does so effectively.
He recognizes the problem that his reader is facing.
He agitates that problem to show him how well he understands their pain.
And he offers a solution.
And that formula makes for an article that readers feel understands them, is trustworthy, and offers valuable information.
A clean web design, fast load time, and optimized content length have a similar effect on visitors.
Which means that people will be more likely to give you their email address.
Promote your content to new audiences
If you’re not reaching new people, you can’t gain more subscribers.
So once you’ve created that share-worthy content, it’s time to show that content to new audiences.
One of the benefits of publishing content on your own blog is that you still reserve all of the rights to that content — with other publications, that might not be the case. This means that you can reuse the content whenever and however you like.
For instance, you can republish the piece on Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn. Which can be a wildly effective way to gain email subscribers. Daniel Ndukwu writes about how he increased subscriber base by 339% in 60 days using Medium and Quora.
This strategy doesn’t take any extra time, and it gets your content in front of a brand new audience.
It’s a no-brainer marketing strategy that should become part of your regular publishing routine.
Another no-brainer strategy you should use is Social Media sharing. Every time you post a new piece of content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with a link to your website.
But here’s the part that might not be such a “no-brainer.”
Tag any friends you think might be interested in the piece of content. Sort of like Shopify content marketer Aaron Orendorff does with his Facebook posts.
Why?
Because doing so won’t just encourage the people you tagged to look at the article. It will encourage all of their friends to look at the article as well.
You see, when you tag someone in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, that post will show up to all of the friends of the people you tagged. That’s a massive audience increase by just typing the “@” symbol.
By using social media tags, Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn to get your content in front of new audiences, you’ll build a subscriber base in no time.
Create a lead magnet
Some visitors will be more difficult to turn into subscribers. They’ll require more… incentive.
And the best way to create incentive is by creating a lead magnet. Basically, an exclusive piece of content that you only give to those who opt in to your email list.
Aaron Orendorff does this on his website, iconiContent.
This is what his homepage looks like.
Then, if you scroll a ways down the page, this will pop up on the side.
Lastly, if you scroll through one of his blog posts, this scroll-depth-triggered overlay will appear near the end.
To create your own lead magnet, ask yourself these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What is their biggest struggle?
What kind of content could I create to solve that problem?
Then, create the piece of content for your audience, turn it into a PDF, and make it a downloadable resource for those who opt in. Or, you can repurpose a piece of content you’ve already created and do the same thing.
You can use PDF Converter to turn an old blog post into a lead magnet for free.
Conclusion
You know the potential of subscribers.
You know that they represent a goldmine of selling and upselling potential – that they’ll tell their kids, spouse, friends, and coworkers about your business.
That they are loyal, profitable, and revenue-driving.
But you also know that they aren’t automatic.
Building a loyal audience takes work. Specifically, you should focus your efforts on email-subscription, create approachable content, consistently promote that content to new audiences, and build a lead magnet for an additional incentive.
Only then will you dip your pan in the correct stream.
About the Author
Brad helps SaaS startups create actionable long-form content for a fraction of the price of a content writer. Give him a pug and a pencil and he’s off to the races!
http://ift.tt/2AHMnkk
0 notes
Text
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Subscribers are a goldmine of marketing potential.
They share your content, heed your advice, buy your products, and tell their friends. They are easier to upsell, more profitable, and more loyal.
They return again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to.
Sadly, knowing the value of subscribers isn’t going to help you get more of them.
Which is why you’re here.
So how do you start mining for gold?
Start with email to collect subscribers.
In the world of subscription, emails rule.
If you build an audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Medium, your success is at the mercy of the platform you’re using. And I don’t need to show you another example of a self-made celebrity who upset their digital place of business at the cost of their career.
With email, though, the audience is yours. No one can tell you what to send, say, offer, or do. And that’s a nice dose of freedom for a growing business.
But email isn’t just the safer option. It’s also an effective place to build a subscriber base.
A study of 605 businesses done by HubSpot, the massive marketing company, found that businesses that collected subscribers by email had 12 times more subscribers than those that used RSS feeds.
To start collecting emails, you’ll need approachable content that you consistently promote to new audiences. And you’ll need to add a dose of incentive.
Here’s that three-step process.
Make your content approachable
The first step to gaining subscribers is creating approachable content.
Content that attracts your ideal customer, delights them once they click, and encourages them to enter their email address in that glorified empty text box.
But creating content that is approachable is a lot easier said than done.
After all, what makes content approachable? Is it the way you talk? The way you write? The way you design?
Well, it’s a little of all three.
First, let’s take a look at the design of your website. When people arrive on your website to view your content, what is their immediate reaction? Is it one of neutrality, enjoyment, or outright horror?
Imagine, for instance, that you arrived on this website: Gates N Fences.
I don’t know about you, but I’d leave the moment I arrived.
Which means that I wouldn’t read any of the actual content, and I definitely wouldn’t subscribe.
With a design like that, practically no one would.
That’s exactly why you need a website that communicates expertise, confidence, simplicity, and above all, trustworthiness.
And you can do that on a low budget. Just keep your website design simple and include plenty of whitespace. When in doubt, don’t add any extra elements.
Booktrep, for instance, is a low-budget WordPress website that is simple, elegant, and, for those reasons, trustworthy.
Of course, the bigger your design budget, the more intricate your website can be. Just ensure that you don’t overdo it like the good ‘ole Gates N Fences example from above.
Consider something like the BigCommerce blog where its intricate design doesn’t confuse navigation, crowd content, or provoke distrust.
The last thing you want to do is spend hours upon hours creating quality content, only to drive traffic to your website that sows distrust among visitors.
The whole point of creating content is to generate subscribers who will turn into customers in the future.
If you place the unnecessary roadblock of a poorly-designed website or lazy navigation between you and that audience, then your subscriber base, customer base, and thus, revenue, will suffer.
Riffing on that same note, you also need to consider the load time of your website. The longer your site takes to load, the fewer people who will stick around to see what you have to offer.
But a fast website means more visitors, which means more subscribers.
Unfortunately, too many large image files, locally-hosted video content, or HTML and CSS discrepancies can kill your website’s load speed faster than you can say, “But wait! There’s more!”
To check how fast your website is, you can visit Pingdom.
But it’s not just the design or speed of your website that determines whether or not your content is approachable. It’s also the content itself.
Research from Medium, the massive online public blog, found that the ideal blog post takes 7 minutes to read and sports about 1,600 words.
That might sound like a long blog post. But notice how the four-minute marker on that graph doesn’t show much decline?
The real punishment arrives when the reading time is three minutes or less. In other words, you can probably get away with 800 to 900-word articles and reap many of the same benefits.
When it comes to video content, that rule doesn’t apply.
In fact, with video, shorter is better across the board.
You have 10 seconds to grab the attention of a viewer. 33% of people will leave after 30 seconds, 45% will leave by one minute, and 60% will leave by two minutes.
This means that you should structure your video content a bit like a journalist. Start with the most important, intriguing, visceral information, and then gradually include less critical information as the clock ticks.
For pacing within a blog post, consider sprinkling images throughout the piece like I’ve done thus far. This gives the reader a break between blocks of text and makes the article easier to read.
Finally, you can practice empathy within your blog posts to create approachable content.
Be empathetic to the visitor’s concerns, experiences, and current understanding of the world.
Consider how Colin Newcomer starts his blog post on the massive online blog, Smart Blogger.
Here’s what Colin does so effectively.
He recognizes the problem that his reader is facing.
He agitates that problem to show him how well he understands their pain.
And he offers a solution.
And that formula makes for an article that readers feel understands them, is trustworthy, and offers valuable information.
A clean web design, fast load time, and optimized content length have a similar effect on visitors.
Which means that people will be more likely to give you their email address.
Promote your content to new audiences
If you’re not reaching new people, you can’t gain more subscribers.
So once you’ve created that share-worthy content, it’s time to show that content to new audiences.
One of the benefits of publishing content on your own blog is that you still reserve all of the rights to that content — with other publications, that might not be the case. This means that you can reuse the content whenever and however you like.
For instance, you can republish the piece on Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn. Which can be a wildly effective way to gain email subscribers. Daniel Ndukwu writes about how he increased subscriber base by 339% in 60 days using Medium and Quora.
This strategy doesn’t take any extra time, and it gets your content in front of a brand new audience.
It’s a no-brainer marketing strategy that should become part of your regular publishing routine.
Another no-brainer strategy you should use is Social Media sharing. Every time you post a new piece of content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with a link to your website.
But here’s the part that might not be such a “no-brainer.”
Tag any friends you think might be interested in the piece of content. Sort of like Shopify content marketer Aaron Orendorff does with his Facebook posts.
Why?
Because doing so won’t just encourage the people you tagged to look at the article. It will encourage all of their friends to look at the article as well.
You see, when you tag someone in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, that post will show up to all of the friends of the people you tagged. That’s a massive audience increase by just typing the “@” symbol.
By using social media tags, Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn to get your content in front of new audiences, you’ll build a subscriber base in no time.
Create a lead magnet
Some visitors will be more difficult to turn into subscribers. They’ll require more… incentive.
And the best way to create incentive is by creating a lead magnet. Basically, an exclusive piece of content that you only give to those who opt in to your email list.
Aaron Orendorff does this on his website, iconiContent.
This is what his homepage looks like.
Then, if you scroll a ways down the page, this will pop up on the side.
Lastly, if you scroll through one of his blog posts, this scroll-depth-triggered overlay will appear near the end.
To create your own lead magnet, ask yourself these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What is their biggest struggle?
What kind of content could I create to solve that problem?
Then, create the piece of content for your audience, turn it into a PDF, and make it a downloadable resource for those who opt in. Or, you can repurpose a piece of content you’ve already created and do the same thing.
You can use PDF Converter to turn an old blog post into a lead magnet for free.
Conclusion
You know the potential of subscribers.
You know that they represent a goldmine of selling and upselling potential – that they’ll tell their kids, spouse, friends, and coworkers about your business.
That they are loyal, profitable, and revenue-driving.
But you also know that they aren’t automatic.
Building a loyal audience takes work. Specifically, you should focus your efforts on email-subscription, create approachable content, consistently promote that content to new audiences, and build a lead magnet for an additional incentive.
Only then will you dip your pan in the correct stream.
About the Author
Brad helps SaaS startups create actionable long-form content for a fraction of the price of a content writer. Give him a pug and a pencil and he’s off to the races!
http://ift.tt/2AHMnkk
0 notes
Text
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Subscribers are a goldmine of marketing potential.
They share your content, heed your advice, buy your products, and tell their friends. They are easier to upsell, more profitable, and more loyal.
They return again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to.
Sadly, knowing the value of subscribers isn’t going to help you get more of them.
Which is why you’re here.
So how do you start mining for gold?
Start with email to collect subscribers.
In the world of subscription, emails rule.
If you build an audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Medium, your success is at the mercy of the platform you’re using. And I don’t need to show you another example of a self-made celebrity who upset their digital place of business at the cost of their career.
With email, though, the audience is yours. No one can tell you what to send, say, offer, or do. And that’s a nice dose of freedom for a growing business.
But email isn’t just the safer option. It’s also an effective place to build a subscriber base.
A study of 605 businesses done by HubSpot, the massive marketing company, found that businesses that collected subscribers by email had 12 times more subscribers than those that used RSS feeds.
To start collecting emails, you’ll need approachable content that you consistently promote to new audiences. And you’ll need to add a dose of incentive.
Here’s that three-step process.
Make your content approachable
The first step to gaining subscribers is creating approachable content.
Content that attracts your ideal customer, delights them once they click, and encourages them to enter their email address in that glorified empty text box.
But creating content that is approachable is a lot easier said than done.
After all, what makes content approachable? Is it the way you talk? The way you write? The way you design?
Well, it’s a little of all three.
First, let’s take a look at the design of your website. When people arrive on your website to view your content, what is their immediate reaction? Is it one of neutrality, enjoyment, or outright horror?
Imagine, for instance, that you arrived on this website: Gates N Fences.
I don’t know about you, but I’d leave the moment I arrived.
Which means that I wouldn’t read any of the actual content, and I definitely wouldn’t subscribe.
With a design like that, practically no one would.
That’s exactly why you need a website that communicates expertise, confidence, simplicity, and above all, trustworthiness.
And you can do that on a low budget. Just keep your website design simple and include plenty of whitespace. When in doubt, don’t add any extra elements.
Booktrep, for instance, is a low-budget WordPress website that is simple, elegant, and, for those reasons, trustworthy.
Of course, the bigger your design budget, the more intricate your website can be. Just ensure that you don’t overdo it like the good ‘ole Gates N Fences example from above.
Consider something like the BigCommerce blog where its intricate design doesn’t confuse navigation, crowd content, or provoke distrust.
The last thing you want to do is spend hours upon hours creating quality content, only to drive traffic to your website that sows distrust among visitors.
The whole point of creating content is to generate subscribers who will turn into customers in the future.
If you place the unnecessary roadblock of a poorly-designed website or lazy navigation between you and that audience, then your subscriber base, customer base, and thus, revenue, will suffer.
Riffing on that same note, you also need to consider the load time of your website. The longer your site takes to load, the fewer people who will stick around to see what you have to offer.
But a fast website means more visitors, which means more subscribers.
Unfortunately, too many large image files, locally-hosted video content, or HTML and CSS discrepancies can kill your website’s load speed faster than you can say, “But wait! There’s more!”
To check how fast your website is, you can visit Pingdom.
But it’s not just the design or speed of your website that determines whether or not your content is approachable. It’s also the content itself.
Research from Medium, the massive online public blog, found that the ideal blog post takes 7 minutes to read and sports about 1,600 words.
That might sound like a long blog post. But notice how the four-minute marker on that graph doesn’t show much decline?
The real punishment arrives when the reading time is three minutes or less. In other words, you can probably get away with 800 to 900-word articles and reap many of the same benefits.
When it comes to video content, that rule doesn’t apply.
In fact, with video, shorter is better across the board.
You have 10 seconds to grab the attention of a viewer. 33% of people will leave after 30 seconds, 45% will leave by one minute, and 60% will leave by two minutes.
This means that you should structure your video content a bit like a journalist. Start with the most important, intriguing, visceral information, and then gradually include less critical information as the clock ticks.
For pacing within a blog post, consider sprinkling images throughout the piece like I’ve done thus far. This gives the reader a break between blocks of text and makes the article easier to read.
Finally, you can practice empathy within your blog posts to create approachable content.
Be empathetic to the visitor’s concerns, experiences, and current understanding of the world.
Consider how Colin Newcomer starts his blog post on the massive online blog, Smart Blogger.
Here’s what Colin does so effectively.
He recognizes the problem that his reader is facing.
He agitates that problem to show him how well he understands their pain.
And he offers a solution.
And that formula makes for an article that readers feel understands them, is trustworthy, and offers valuable information.
A clean web design, fast load time, and optimized content length have a similar effect on visitors.
Which means that people will be more likely to give you their email address.
Promote your content to new audiences
If you’re not reaching new people, you can’t gain more subscribers.
So once you’ve created that share-worthy content, it’s time to show that content to new audiences.
One of the benefits of publishing content on your own blog is that you still reserve all of the rights to that content — with other publications, that might not be the case. This means that you can reuse the content whenever and however you like.
For instance, you can republish the piece on Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn. Which can be a wildly effective way to gain email subscribers. Daniel Ndukwu writes about how he increased subscriber base by 339% in 60 days using Medium and Quora.
This strategy doesn’t take any extra time, and it gets your content in front of a brand new audience.
It’s a no-brainer marketing strategy that should become part of your regular publishing routine.
Another no-brainer strategy you should use is Social Media sharing. Every time you post a new piece of content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with a link to your website.
But here’s the part that might not be such a “no-brainer.”
Tag any friends you think might be interested in the piece of content. Sort of like Shopify content marketer Aaron Orendorff does with his Facebook posts.
Why?
Because doing so won’t just encourage the people you tagged to look at the article. It will encourage all of their friends to look at the article as well.
You see, when you tag someone in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, that post will show up to all of the friends of the people you tagged. That’s a massive audience increase by just typing the “@” symbol.
By using social media tags, Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn to get your content in front of new audiences, you’ll build a subscriber base in no time.
Create a lead magnet
Some visitors will be more difficult to turn into subscribers. They’ll require more… incentive.
And the best way to create incentive is by creating a lead magnet. Basically, an exclusive piece of content that you only give to those who opt in to your email list.
Aaron Orendorff does this on his website, iconiContent.
This is what his homepage looks like.
Then, if you scroll a ways down the page, this will pop up on the side.
Lastly, if you scroll through one of his blog posts, this scroll-depth-triggered overlay will appear near the end.
To create your own lead magnet, ask yourself these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What is their biggest struggle?
What kind of content could I create to solve that problem?
Then, create the piece of content for your audience, turn it into a PDF, and make it a downloadable resource for those who opt in. Or, you can repurpose a piece of content you’ve already created and do the same thing.
You can use PDF Converter to turn an old blog post into a lead magnet for free.
Conclusion
You know the potential of subscribers.
You know that they represent a goldmine of selling and upselling potential – that they’ll tell their kids, spouse, friends, and coworkers about your business.
That they are loyal, profitable, and revenue-driving.
But you also know that they aren’t automatic.
Building a loyal audience takes work. Specifically, you should focus your efforts on email-subscription, create approachable content, consistently promote that content to new audiences, and build a lead magnet for an additional incentive.
Only then will you dip your pan in the correct stream.
About the Author
Brad helps SaaS startups create actionable long-form content for a fraction of the price of a content writer. Give him a pug and a pencil and he’s off to the races!
http://ift.tt/2AHMnkk
0 notes
Text
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Subscribers are a goldmine of marketing potential.
They share your content, heed your advice, buy your products, and tell their friends. They are easier to upsell, more profitable, and more loyal.
They return again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to.
Sadly, knowing the value of subscribers isn’t going to help you get more of them.
Which is why you’re here.
So how do you start mining for gold?
Start with email to collect subscribers.
In the world of subscription, emails rule.
If you build an audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Medium, your success is at the mercy of the platform you’re using. And I don’t need to show you another example of a self-made celebrity who upset their digital place of business at the cost of their career.
With email, though, the audience is yours. No one can tell you what to send, say, offer, or do. And that’s a nice dose of freedom for a growing business.
But email isn’t just the safer option. It’s also an effective place to build a subscriber base.
A study of 605 businesses done by HubSpot, the massive marketing company, found that businesses that collected subscribers by email had 12 times more subscribers than those that used RSS feeds.
To start collecting emails, you’ll need approachable content that you consistently promote to new audiences. And you’ll need to add a dose of incentive.
Here’s that three-step process.
Make your content approachable
The first step to gaining subscribers is creating approachable content.
Content that attracts your ideal customer, delights them once they click, and encourages them to enter their email address in that glorified empty text box.
But creating content that is approachable is a lot easier said than done.
After all, what makes content approachable? Is it the way you talk? The way you write? The way you design?
Well, it’s a little of all three.
First, let’s take a look at the design of your website. When people arrive on your website to view your content, what is their immediate reaction? Is it one of neutrality, enjoyment, or outright horror?
Imagine, for instance, that you arrived on this website: Gates N Fences.
I don’t know about you, but I’d leave the moment I arrived.
Which means that I wouldn’t read any of the actual content, and I definitely wouldn’t subscribe.
With a design like that, practically no one would.
That’s exactly why you need a website that communicates expertise, confidence, simplicity, and above all, trustworthiness.
And you can do that on a low budget. Just keep your website design simple and include plenty of whitespace. When in doubt, don’t add any extra elements.
Booktrep, for instance, is a low-budget WordPress website that is simple, elegant, and, for those reasons, trustworthy.
Of course, the bigger your design budget, the more intricate your website can be. Just ensure that you don’t overdo it like the good ‘ole Gates N Fences example from above.
Consider something like the BigCommerce blog where its intricate design doesn’t confuse navigation, crowd content, or provoke distrust.
The last thing you want to do is spend hours upon hours creating quality content, only to drive traffic to your website that sows distrust among visitors.
The whole point of creating content is to generate subscribers who will turn into customers in the future.
If you place the unnecessary roadblock of a poorly-designed website or lazy navigation between you and that audience, then your subscriber base, customer base, and thus, revenue, will suffer.
Riffing on that same note, you also need to consider the load time of your website. The longer your site takes to load, the fewer people who will stick around to see what you have to offer.
But a fast website means more visitors, which means more subscribers.
Unfortunately, too many large image files, locally-hosted video content, or HTML and CSS discrepancies can kill your website’s load speed faster than you can say, “But wait! There’s more!”
To check how fast your website is, you can visit Pingdom.
But it’s not just the design or speed of your website that determines whether or not your content is approachable. It’s also the content itself.
Research from Medium, the massive online public blog, found that the ideal blog post takes 7 minutes to read and sports about 1,600 words.
That might sound like a long blog post. But notice how the four-minute marker on that graph doesn’t show much decline?
The real punishment arrives when the reading time is three minutes or less. In other words, you can probably get away with 800 to 900-word articles and reap many of the same benefits.
When it comes to video content, that rule doesn’t apply.
In fact, with video, shorter is better across the board.
You have 10 seconds to grab the attention of a viewer. 33% of people will leave after 30 seconds, 45% will leave by one minute, and 60% will leave by two minutes.
This means that you should structure your video content a bit like a journalist. Start with the most important, intriguing, visceral information, and then gradually include less critical information as the clock ticks.
For pacing within a blog post, consider sprinkling images throughout the piece like I’ve done thus far. This gives the reader a break between blocks of text and makes the article easier to read.
Finally, you can practice empathy within your blog posts to create approachable content.
Be empathetic to the visitor’s concerns, experiences, and current understanding of the world.
Consider how Colin Newcomer starts his blog post on the massive online blog, Smart Blogger.
Here’s what Colin does so effectively.
He recognizes the problem that his reader is facing.
He agitates that problem to show him how well he understands their pain.
And he offers a solution.
And that formula makes for an article that readers feel understands them, is trustworthy, and offers valuable information.
A clean web design, fast load time, and optimized content length have a similar effect on visitors.
Which means that people will be more likely to give you their email address.
Promote your content to new audiences
If you’re not reaching new people, you can’t gain more subscribers.
So once you’ve created that share-worthy content, it’s time to show that content to new audiences.
One of the benefits of publishing content on your own blog is that you still reserve all of the rights to that content — with other publications, that might not be the case. This means that you can reuse the content whenever and however you like.
For instance, you can republish the piece on Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn. Which can be a wildly effective way to gain email subscribers. Daniel Ndukwu writes about how he increased subscriber base by 339% in 60 days using Medium and Quora.
This strategy doesn’t take any extra time, and it gets your content in front of a brand new audience.
It’s a no-brainer marketing strategy that should become part of your regular publishing routine.
Another no-brainer strategy you should use is Social Media sharing. Every time you post a new piece of content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with a link to your website.
But here’s the part that might not be such a “no-brainer.”
Tag any friends you think might be interested in the piece of content. Sort of like Shopify content marketer Aaron Orendorff does with his Facebook posts.
Why?
Because doing so won’t just encourage the people you tagged to look at the article. It will encourage all of their friends to look at the article as well.
You see, when you tag someone in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, that post will show up to all of the friends of the people you tagged. That’s a massive audience increase by just typing the “@” symbol.
By using social media tags, Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn to get your content in front of new audiences, you’ll build a subscriber base in no time.
Create a lead magnet
Some visitors will be more difficult to turn into subscribers. They’ll require more… incentive.
And the best way to create incentive is by creating a lead magnet. Basically, an exclusive piece of content that you only give to those who opt in to your email list.
Aaron Orendorff does this on his website, iconiContent.
This is what his homepage looks like.
Then, if you scroll a ways down the page, this will pop up on the side.
Lastly, if you scroll through one of his blog posts, this scroll-depth-triggered overlay will appear near the end.
To create your own lead magnet, ask yourself these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What is their biggest struggle?
What kind of content could I create to solve that problem?
Then, create the piece of content for your audience, turn it into a PDF, and make it a downloadable resource for those who opt in. Or, you can repurpose a piece of content you’ve already created and do the same thing.
You can use PDF Converter to turn an old blog post into a lead magnet for free.
Conclusion
You know the potential of subscribers.
You know that they represent a goldmine of selling and upselling potential – that they’ll tell their kids, spouse, friends, and coworkers about your business.
That they are loyal, profitable, and revenue-driving.
But you also know that they aren’t automatic.
Building a loyal audience takes work. Specifically, you should focus your efforts on email-subscription, create approachable content, consistently promote that content to new audiences, and build a lead magnet for an additional incentive.
Only then will you dip your pan in the correct stream.
About the Author
Brad helps SaaS startups create actionable long-form content for a fraction of the price of a content writer. Give him a pug and a pencil and he’s off to the races!
http://ift.tt/2AHMnkk
0 notes
Text
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Subscribers are a goldmine of marketing potential.
They share your content, heed your advice, buy your products, and tell their friends. They are easier to upsell, more profitable, and more loyal.
They return again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to.
Sadly, knowing the value of subscribers isn’t going to help you get more of them.
Which is why you’re here.
So how do you start mining for gold?
Start with email to collect subscribers.
In the world of subscription, emails rule.
If you build an audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Medium, your success is at the mercy of the platform you’re using. And I don’t need to show you another example of a self-made celebrity who upset their digital place of business at the cost of their career.
With email, though, the audience is yours. No one can tell you what to send, say, offer, or do. And that’s a nice dose of freedom for a growing business.
But email isn’t just the safer option. It’s also an effective place to build a subscriber base.
A study of 605 businesses done by HubSpot, the massive marketing company, found that businesses that collected subscribers by email had 12 times more subscribers than those that used RSS feeds.
To start collecting emails, you’ll need approachable content that you consistently promote to new audiences. And you’ll need to add a dose of incentive.
Here’s that three-step process.
Make your content approachable
The first step to gaining subscribers is creating approachable content.
Content that attracts your ideal customer, delights them once they click, and encourages them to enter their email address in that glorified empty text box.
But creating content that is approachable is a lot easier said than done.
After all, what makes content approachable? Is it the way you talk? The way you write? The way you design?
Well, it’s a little of all three.
First, let’s take a look at the design of your website. When people arrive on your website to view your content, what is their immediate reaction? Is it one of neutrality, enjoyment, or outright horror?
Imagine, for instance, that you arrived on this website: Gates N Fences.
I don’t know about you, but I’d leave the moment I arrived.
Which means that I wouldn’t read any of the actual content, and I definitely wouldn’t subscribe.
With a design like that, practically no one would.
That’s exactly why you need a website that communicates expertise, confidence, simplicity, and above all, trustworthiness.
And you can do that on a low budget. Just keep your website design simple and include plenty of whitespace. When in doubt, don’t add any extra elements.
Booktrep, for instance, is a low-budget WordPress website that is simple, elegant, and, for those reasons, trustworthy.
Of course, the bigger your design budget, the more intricate your website can be. Just ensure that you don’t overdo it like the good ‘ole Gates N Fences example from above.
Consider something like the BigCommerce blog where its intricate design doesn’t confuse navigation, crowd content, or provoke distrust.
The last thing you want to do is spend hours upon hours creating quality content, only to drive traffic to your website that sows distrust among visitors.
The whole point of creating content is to generate subscribers who will turn into customers in the future.
If you place the unnecessary roadblock of a poorly-designed website or lazy navigation between you and that audience, then your subscriber base, customer base, and thus, revenue, will suffer.
Riffing on that same note, you also need to consider the load time of your website. The longer your site takes to load, the fewer people who will stick around to see what you have to offer.
But a fast website means more visitors, which means more subscribers.
Unfortunately, too many large image files, locally-hosted video content, or HTML and CSS discrepancies can kill your website’s load speed faster than you can say, “But wait! There’s more!”
To check how fast your website is, you can visit Pingdom.
But it’s not just the design or speed of your website that determines whether or not your content is approachable. It’s also the content itself.
Research from Medium, the massive online public blog, found that the ideal blog post takes 7 minutes to read and sports about 1,600 words.
That might sound like a long blog post. But notice how the four-minute marker on that graph doesn’t show much decline?
The real punishment arrives when the reading time is three minutes or less. In other words, you can probably get away with 800 to 900-word articles and reap many of the same benefits.
When it comes to video content, that rule doesn’t apply.
In fact, with video, shorter is better across the board.
You have 10 seconds to grab the attention of a viewer. 33% of people will leave after 30 seconds, 45% will leave by one minute, and 60% will leave by two minutes.
This means that you should structure your video content a bit like a journalist. Start with the most important, intriguing, visceral information, and then gradually include less critical information as the clock ticks.
For pacing within a blog post, consider sprinkling images throughout the piece like I’ve done thus far. This gives the reader a break between blocks of text and makes the article easier to read.
Finally, you can practice empathy within your blog posts to create approachable content.
Be empathetic to the visitor’s concerns, experiences, and current understanding of the world.
Consider how Colin Newcomer starts his blog post on the massive online blog, Smart Blogger.
Here’s what Colin does so effectively.
He recognizes the problem that his reader is facing.
He agitates that problem to show him how well he understands their pain.
And he offers a solution.
And that formula makes for an article that readers feel understands them, is trustworthy, and offers valuable information.
A clean web design, fast load time, and optimized content length have a similar effect on visitors.
Which means that people will be more likely to give you their email address.
Promote your content to new audiences
If you’re not reaching new people, you can’t gain more subscribers.
So once you’ve created that share-worthy content, it’s time to show that content to new audiences.
One of the benefits of publishing content on your own blog is that you still reserve all of the rights to that content — with other publications, that might not be the case. This means that you can reuse the content whenever and however you like.
For instance, you can republish the piece on Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn. Which can be a wildly effective way to gain email subscribers. Daniel Ndukwu writes about how he increased subscriber base by 339% in 60 days using Medium and Quora.
This strategy doesn’t take any extra time, and it gets your content in front of a brand new audience.
It’s a no-brainer marketing strategy that should become part of your regular publishing routine.
Another no-brainer strategy you should use is Social Media sharing. Every time you post a new piece of content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with a link to your website.
But here’s the part that might not be such a “no-brainer.”
Tag any friends you think might be interested in the piece of content. Sort of like Shopify content marketer Aaron Orendorff does with his Facebook posts.
Why?
Because doing so won’t just encourage the people you tagged to look at the article. It will encourage all of their friends to look at the article as well.
You see, when you tag someone in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, that post will show up to all of the friends of the people you tagged. That’s a massive audience increase by just typing the “@” symbol.
By using social media tags, Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn to get your content in front of new audiences, you’ll build a subscriber base in no time.
Create a lead magnet
Some visitors will be more difficult to turn into subscribers. They’ll require more… incentive.
And the best way to create incentive is by creating a lead magnet. Basically, an exclusive piece of content that you only give to those who opt in to your email list.
Aaron Orendorff does this on his website, iconiContent.
This is what his homepage looks like.
Then, if you scroll a ways down the page, this will pop up on the side.
Lastly, if you scroll through one of his blog posts, this scroll-depth-triggered overlay will appear near the end.
To create your own lead magnet, ask yourself these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What is their biggest struggle?
What kind of content could I create to solve that problem?
Then, create the piece of content for your audience, turn it into a PDF, and make it a downloadable resource for those who opt in. Or, you can repurpose a piece of content you’ve already created and do the same thing.
You can use PDF Converter to turn an old blog post into a lead magnet for free.
Conclusion
You know the potential of subscribers.
You know that they represent a goldmine of selling and upselling potential – that they’ll tell their kids, spouse, friends, and coworkers about your business.
That they are loyal, profitable, and revenue-driving.
But you also know that they aren’t automatic.
Building a loyal audience takes work. Specifically, you should focus your efforts on email-subscription, create approachable content, consistently promote that content to new audiences, and build a lead magnet for an additional incentive.
Only then will you dip your pan in the correct stream.
About the Author
Brad helps SaaS startups create actionable long-form content for a fraction of the price of a content writer. Give him a pug and a pencil and he’s off to the races!
http://ift.tt/2AHMnkk
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3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork
3 Steps to Create Content That Turns Readers into Subscribers Like Clockwork written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing
Subscribers are a goldmine of marketing potential.
They share your content, heed your advice, buy your products, and tell their friends. They are easier to upsell, more profitable, and more loyal.
They return again and again, not because they have to, but because they want to.
Sadly, knowing the value of subscribers isn’t going to help you get more of them.
Which is why you’re here.
So how do you start mining for gold?
Start with email to collect subscribers.
In the world of subscription, emails rule.
If you build an audience on Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn, or Medium, your success is at the mercy of the platform you’re using. And I don’t need to show you another example of a self-made celebrity who upset their digital place of business at the cost of their career.
With email, though, the audience is yours. No one can tell you what to send, say, offer, or do. And that’s a nice dose of freedom for a growing business.
But email isn’t just the safer option. It’s also an effective place to build a subscriber base.
A study of 605 businesses done by HubSpot, the massive marketing company, found that businesses that collected subscribers by email had 12 times more subscribers than those that used RSS feeds.
To start collecting emails, you’ll need approachable content that you consistently promote to new audiences. And you’ll need to add a dose of incentive.
Here’s that three-step process.
Make your content approachable
The first step to gaining subscribers is creating approachable content.
Content that attracts your ideal customer, delights them once they click, and encourages them to enter their email address in that glorified empty text box.
But creating content that is approachable is a lot easier said than done.
After all, what makes content approachable? Is it the way you talk? The way you write? The way you design?
Well, it’s a little of all three.
First, let’s take a look at the design of your website. When people arrive on your website to view your content, what is their immediate reaction? Is it one of neutrality, enjoyment, or outright horror?
Imagine, for instance, that you arrived on this website: Gates N Fences.
I don’t know about you, but I’d leave the moment I arrived.
Which means that I wouldn’t read any of the actual content, and I definitely wouldn’t subscribe.
With a design like that, practically no one would.
That’s exactly why you need a website that communicates expertise, confidence, simplicity, and above all, trustworthiness.
And you can do that on a low budget. Just keep your website design simple and include plenty of whitespace. When in doubt, don’t add any extra elements.
Booktrep, for instance, is a low-budget WordPress website that is simple, elegant, and, for those reasons, trustworthy.
Of course, the bigger your design budget, the more intricate your website can be. Just ensure that you don’t overdo it like the good ‘ole Gates N Fences example from above.
Consider something like the BigCommerce blog where its intricate design doesn’t confuse navigation, crowd content, or provoke distrust.
The last thing you want to do is spend hours upon hours creating quality content, only to drive traffic to your website that sows distrust among visitors.
The whole point of creating content is to generate subscribers who will turn into customers in the future.
If you place the unnecessary roadblock of a poorly-designed website or lazy navigation between you and that audience, then your subscriber base, customer base, and thus, revenue, will suffer.
Riffing on that same note, you also need to consider the load time of your website. The longer your site takes to load, the fewer people who will stick around to see what you have to offer.
But a fast website means more visitors, which means more subscribers.
Unfortunately, too many large image files, locally-hosted video content, or HTML and CSS discrepancies can kill your website’s load speed faster than you can say, “But wait! There’s more!”
To check how fast your website is, you can visit Pingdom.
But it’s not just the design or speed of your website that determines whether or not your content is approachable. It’s also the content itself.
Research from Medium, the massive online public blog, found that the ideal blog post takes 7 minutes to read and sports about 1,600 words.
That might sound like a long blog post. But notice how the four-minute marker on that graph doesn’t show much decline?
The real punishment arrives when the reading time is three minutes or less. In other words, you can probably get away with 800 to 900-word articles and reap many of the same benefits.
When it comes to video content, that rule doesn’t apply.
In fact, with video, shorter is better across the board.
You have 10 seconds to grab the attention of a viewer. 33% of people will leave after 30 seconds, 45% will leave by one minute, and 60% will leave by two minutes.
This means that you should structure your video content a bit like a journalist. Start with the most important, intriguing, visceral information, and then gradually include less critical information as the clock ticks.
For pacing within a blog post, consider sprinkling images throughout the piece like I’ve done thus far. This gives the reader a break between blocks of text and makes the article easier to read.
Finally, you can practice empathy within your blog posts to create approachable content.
Be empathetic to the visitor’s concerns, experiences, and current understanding of the world.
Consider how Colin Newcomer starts his blog post on the massive online blog, Smart Blogger.
Here’s what Colin does so effectively.
He recognizes the problem that his reader is facing.
He agitates that problem to show him how well he understands their pain.
And he offers a solution.
And that formula makes for an article that readers feel understands them, is trustworthy, and offers valuable information.
A clean web design, fast load time, and optimized content length have a similar effect on visitors.
Which means that people will be more likely to give you their email address.
Promote your content to new audiences
If you’re not reaching new people, you can’t gain more subscribers.
So once you’ve created that share-worthy content, it’s time to show that content to new audiences.
One of the benefits of publishing content on your own blog is that you still reserve all of the rights to that content — with other publications, that might not be the case. This means that you can reuse the content whenever and however you like.
For instance, you can republish the piece on Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn. Which can be a wildly effective way to gain email subscribers. Daniel Ndukwu writes about how he increased subscriber base by 339% in 60 days using Medium and Quora.
This strategy doesn’t take any extra time, and it gets your content in front of a brand new audience.
It’s a no-brainer marketing strategy that should become part of your regular publishing routine.
Another no-brainer strategy you should use is Social Media sharing. Every time you post a new piece of content, share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter with a link to your website.
But here’s the part that might not be such a “no-brainer.”
Tag any friends you think might be interested in the piece of content. Sort of like Shopify content marketer Aaron Orendorff does with his Facebook posts.
Why?
Because doing so won’t just encourage the people you tagged to look at the article. It will encourage all of their friends to look at the article as well.
You see, when you tag someone in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, that post will show up to all of the friends of the people you tagged. That’s a massive audience increase by just typing the “@” symbol.
By using social media tags, Medium, Quora, and LinkedIn to get your content in front of new audiences, you’ll build a subscriber base in no time.
Create a lead magnet
Some visitors will be more difficult to turn into subscribers. They’ll require more… incentive.
And the best way to create incentive is by creating a lead magnet. Basically, an exclusive piece of content that you only give to those who opt in to your email list.
Aaron Orendorff does this on his website, iconiContent.
This is what his homepage looks like.
Then, if you scroll a ways down the page, this will pop up on the side.
Lastly, if you scroll through one of his blog posts, this scroll-depth-triggered overlay will appear near the end.
To create your own lead magnet, ask yourself these questions.
Who is my target audience?
What is their biggest struggle?
What kind of content could I create to solve that problem?
Then, create the piece of content for your audience, turn it into a PDF, and make it a downloadable resource for those who opt in. Or, you can repurpose a piece of content you’ve already created and do the same thing.
You can use PDF Converter to turn an old blog post into a lead magnet for free.
Conclusion
You know the potential of subscribers.
You know that they represent a goldmine of selling and upselling potential – that they’ll tell their kids, spouse, friends, and coworkers about your business.
That they are loyal, profitable, and revenue-driving.
But you also know that they aren’t automatic.
Building a loyal audience takes work. Specifically, you should focus your efforts on email-subscription, create approachable content, consistently promote that content to new audiences, and build a lead magnet for an additional incentive.
Only then will you dip your pan in the correct stream.
About the Author
Brad helps SaaS startups create actionable long-form content for a fraction of the price of a content writer. Give him a pug and a pencil and he’s off to the races!
http://ift.tt/2AHMnkk
0 notes
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