Episodes

  • Episode 14: The Launch

    Episode 14: The Launch
    Jul 12 2022
    This Podcast is FREE! Donations are appreciated https://busk.co/loganSo, you have got a product, your date is set, your sales funnel is ready, and your army of affiliates is standing by. It’s time to launch your product (but first, a quick note on pre-launches). Pre-launch One thing you might want to do in the days prior to launch is a pre-launch. Pre-launches are a little less common today than they used to be, but they can be super useful. Generally, a pre-launch just consists of a landing page where people can sign up to be notified of your launch and, ideally, you will incentivize them with a special low price or early access or both. The idea here is that if you can get a significant amount of people interested in advance, get them committed, and get their email addresses, you will be able to mail them and start your launch off with a boom. You will want to ensure you’ve got your pre-launch landing page designated with your affiliate platform in a way that gives affiliates credit for anyone they send to the pre-launch page prior to launch.Launch week This is it. This is the moment you’ve been working towards all along. It is launch week. Hopefully, you did a good job of communicating to your affiliates what time you want them to start mailing and hopefully you didn’t make a rookie mistake like forgetting to set your product listing to “allow sales” or something. Now there are several things to keep in mind for launch week. Firstly, make sure you make a good impression on your customers by keeping an eye on your help desk and answering tickets and fixing issues ASAP. Secondly, keep your affiliates up-to-date and motivated with regular updates about the JV leaderboard and the funnel’s performance. Do this via email, social media, your blog, and so on. Third, it is tempting to stay up all day and all night watching the sales roll in or worrying about customer support issues (especially if there’s something problematic happening with your membership or software) and yes, you’ll likely not get as much sleep during a launch, but don’t wear yourself out too much. Whether things are going badly or really well, remember that life goes on. Make some time to hang out with your loved ones and be sure to get some good rest whenever able. Post-launch If you’ve had a particularly taxing launch, it’s tempting to want to put your feet up and disappear for a few days afterwards. Not so fast… You have got important post-launch work to do. Firstly, you need to ensure you send out a big thank you message/post/video to all your affiliates. It is important to make them feel appreciated since you’ll likely be relying on them again on the next launch. Then, ensure you pay out or ship off whatever prizes were won by the JVs on your leaderboard. Also make sure you go in and make any manual commission payments you still owe (e.g., with JVZoo your Stripe transactions do not automatically “split” so you have to manually pay affiliates for those sales). Don’t forget to increase your product price. False scarcity makes people angry and causes a loss of credibility for you and your affiliates. If you said the launch price was going to end at midnight, you need to increase it after that. Finally, ensure you have a robust autoresponder sequence scheduled to kick in for each buyer right after they finish your welcome indoctrination series. Keep in mind, your buyers have a hundred other marketers bombarding their inboxes all day long, if you don’t start your email marketing immediately after their purchase, they’ll forget about you and will wonder who you are and how you got their email.  Evergreen Just because your launch period has ended does not mean the doors are closed. On the contrary, you want to bring is as much consistent evergreen traffic as possible. Make a note on your JV page that you are now evergreen and encourage existing affiliates and future ones who may happen upon your page to plug your offer into their autoresponders as an evergreen product. Also, consider reaching out to affiliates for private promotion opportunities where you can put a message like “special offer for followers of so and so” at the top of the page and let their audience get the offer at the original launch price. Everything you have learned here has the potential to get your business off the ground and your buyers list built in no time. But it will have been completely useless if you don't start taking action right away. Put together a plan for how you are going to implement what you’ve read in this book and get started today!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/a-guide-to-internet-marketing/donations
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    5 mins
  • Episode 13: Affiliate Recruitment

    Episode 13: Affiliate Recruitment
    Jul 12 2022
    This Podcast is FREE! Donations are appreciated https://busk.co/loganWhy Recruit JVs/Affiliates? There are plenty of ways to drive traffic today. But generally, when you need to drive large amounts of it for a product launch, you will be using paid methods. In many industries, the standard is, of course, paid advertising - usually pay-per-click or PPC. This is risky because you are paying out money for traffic without a guarantee that those clicks you paid for will convert to sales. So, you’re risking loss and you have little or no control of what your ROI will be. For example, you might pay $200 for 200 clicks and only make $210 from the handful of sales you made. It is great that you at least broke even, but you had no control over that outcome and in the next campaign you might make back less than you spent. You can still make this model work, obviously, but it requires a lot of testing, tweaking, adjusting, and a ton of “ad spend” just to get to the point where you have optimized and gained better control over your expected ROI. Compare that to the JV/affiliate model. When you do a JV-driven product launch, you don’t have to worry about ad spend. You’re only paying for successful sales after they happen, and you know in advance what amount you’re paying per sale. You also don’t have to spend any time or money testing and tweaking and targeting. You are handing all that hard work over to JVs with their own lists and audiences that they already know well and know how to pitch and market to. When you compare the two, clearly the JV/affiliate model holds an advantage, especially if you are an independent entrepreneur and not a business with a huge advertising budget. Bottom line: if you want to launch a digital product, you need JVs sending traffic to your offer or you can kiss your dreams of having a big buyers list goodbye.   What to Pay Them If a buyers list is your priority, rather than profit – and it should be – then the indisputable best commission rate is 100%. 100% commission launches automatically pop out and appear more attractive when JVs are looking at upcoming launches. Remember, your launch is not the only one out there, vying for affiliates. If an affiliate can make more money with other launches, he or she will ignore yours. So, if your front-end product is less than $20, you should seriously consider 100% commissions (you can always drop it to 50% after the launch). If your front-end product is higher than $20, then it is acceptable to offer something like 50% or 75%. The most common commission rate for the rest of a funnel is 50%. Where to Recruit Launch announcement sites are an excellent place to let JVs know about your upcoming launch. The two most popular ones are Muncheye and JV Notify. Both have a free level where you can list your upcoming launch. However, to get an extra edge, you might opt to pay for added exposure on these sites. Both have paid options that will cause your JV recruiting ads to be more prominent and get more views. Another good place to advertise your launch is on the affiliate marketplaces themselves. JVZoo, ClickBank, and WarriorPlus all have paid advertising options that will allow you to get your launch in front of potential JVs. The success rate and ROI of these advertisements will vary quite a bit. You can also announce your launch in one of the many Facebook JV/launch announcement groups. These groups tend to be private, so you will have to request to join each of them. There are literally a ton of these groups on Facebook. Many of these groups are like notice boards where everyone posts their launch but very few people read about launches, while others are much more interactive and fruitful. Since it only takes a moment to post in each of these, you might as well post even in the lower quality ones, but just be aware that results will vary. A Note on Coaches as JVs Arguably, the quickest and easiest way to get a high-level JV on your team is to join their coaching program. Many IM coaches offer to promote your product as part of their coaching package. However, you should typically do this well in advance of your launch or even in advance of your product creation. This is because these coaches desire to work with active students and do not want their coaching programs to become “affiliate for hire” programs. Coaching programs tend to be expensive, but they are often, ironically, less expensive and more effective than the above-mentioned paid ads that people often spend a lot of money on. Affiliate Signup Page A JV signup page is vital to getting affiliates on board and there are a ton of important elements that you should include, starting with a JV invite video. Your JV invite video is most effective if it features you in “talking head” format. You should describe your product thoroughly as well as all the details of your launch. This means you should mention your funnel and commission model, your contest...
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    10 mins
  • Episode 12: Building Your Launch Structure

    Episode 12: Building Your Launch Structure
    Jul 12 2022
    This Podcast is FREE! Donations are appreciated https://busk.co/loganBefore you start recruiting JVs and sending traffic to a hard launch, you will need your actual launch structure in place. Your launch structure includes your sales pages, your sales funnel, your pricing model, as well as the marketplace or payment platform you will use. Your launch structure also includes the backend infrastructure you will need for delivering your products to buyers and your initial interactions with them after they purchase. This includes setting up a support desk, a member’s area (or product delivery apparatus), and an autoresponder welcome sequence. (Note: many would argue that these last three items are better categorized as CRM rather than part of your launch structure, and that is a valid point, but we’re dealing specifically with the immediate post-purchase interactions that often make the difference between happy customers and angry refunders, so we’ve included them as part of your launch structure). Let’s take a closer look at each of these. Sales Funnel Before you start building the pages, you’ll need to establish your funnel flow. Hopefully, you’ve done a good job of splintering your product into multiple stand-alone components or combining your product with other relevant products. The reason you need to do this is so that you will have multiple products to upsell and downsell through a funnel in order to maximize your revenue. If you haven’t done this yet or aren’t sure how, see the guide on Product Creation. The flow of your sales funnel basically handles what happens after a person buys your front-end product. Ordinarily, they will be offered a relevant, higher-priced product as an upsell. This product should ideally augment or reinforce what the front-end product does. You’ll then need to plan for a “yes or no” scenario. You will (probably) want a second upsell in case the buyer purchases the first upsell, and you’ll need a downsell if they decline it. This can theoretically go on as long as you want, but generally you’ll annoy people if your sales funnel is more than 4, maybe 5 products deep. Depending on what marketplace you will be using (discussed later), you will be able to create product listings and set up your sales funnel before designing your actual sales pages. Pricing Finding the perfect pricing strategy for the products in your funnel can make a world of difference. First, you will want to establish what your “normal” price will be after your launch period. In most cases, this will already be lower than your product’s actual assessed value. But then, for your special launch period, you will typically want to offer an even lower price to encourage early adopters. But be careful. This is not a race to the bottom. Often, a price that is too low will kill the perceived value of your product and can drive prospects away. You will want to think long and hard about how to find the perfect “sweet spot” that maintains the perceived value of your product while also making it a no-brainer to snatch it up before the launch ends. Plan on a few different pricing ideas and combinations throughout your funnel so that, if you feel the offer isn’t performing well, you can change it up. Be sure to be taking notes if/when you make changes so you can compare performance at various price points. Marketplaces The last component of your structure that needs to be established before moving on to the sales pages themselves is which marketplace or payment platform you will be using. If you are relatively new to product launching and you’re relying heavily on JVs, you’ll want to stick with one of the big affiliate marketplaces rather than your own payment platform. This is because you will have a greater chance of attracting affiliates and many of these marketers are only comfortable with these marketplaces anyway. The reason this decision should come before your actual pages is that some of these marketplaces have specific guidelines and requirements for vendors and their pages. For a long time, ClickBank was the preeminent, go-to affiliate marketplace for digital goods. In recent years, however, JVZoo has emerged as an even more popular marketplace for hard launches. ClickBank has the benefit of being a little easier to use from an affiliate point of view because most products do not require you to wait for the vendor to manually approve you as an affiliate. However, ClickBank is also much stricter in its guidelines for vendors and their pages, and they also seem to be more evergreen oriented than launch oriented. JVZoo, on the other hand, is much more launch oriented and seems to be the preferred affiliate marketplace for both vendors and affiliates when it comes to launching new products. Another marketplace worth mentioning is WarriorPlus. This one is not necessarily “new” but it’s been recently updated and expanded and is making a big comeback. It seems ...
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    11 mins
  • Episode 11: Introduction to Product Launching

    Episode 11: Introduction to Product Launching
    Jul 12 2022
    This Podcast is FREE! Donations are appreciated https://busk.co/loganWhy Launch a Product? (The Super List)  So, what does every guru online tell you to do if you want to grow your internet marketing business? Give away lead magnets to freebie-seekers. Build your list. Market affiliate products to them. Make commissions. We have all heard it, right? And you know what? That strategy worked. Back in 2012... Problem is, it doesn’t work anymore. Nowadays, freebie-seekers have secondary “junk” email accounts that they reserve for collecting lead magnets but otherwise they never log in to them. Your emails are going to inboxes where they are left untouched, floating in a sea of thousands of other marketing emails. This, combined with the fact that many people even use fake email addresses, is what has led to such severely low email open rates throughout the industry. And not only does a list of freebie-seekers almost never open your emails, but the few of them that do will almost never buy anything. Why? Because they are freebie-seekers! So, what is it that successful internet marketers are doing differently? They are each building a “super list”. A super list (phrase coined by the great Alex Jeffreys) is a list of real people, with real email addresses that they check, who actually habitually take out their credit cards and buy things online. In other words, it is a buyers list. The difference between a buyers list and a freebie-seeker list is night and day. One makes you money and the other makes you angry. So how do you get a buyers list? Easy. You launch a product, and you get affiliates to send traffic to it. Then you simply integrate your payment platform with your autoresponder service so that buyers get added as subscribers automatically. Don’t worry. It’s not as crazy as it sounds and, more importantly, it’s the only way you’ll move forward in internet marketing.Now we should note that this guide assumes you have already got a core product created. It’s okay if you don’t have a sales structure set up yet, such as sales pages, a funnel, or a member’s area, because we’ll cover all that next. But at a minimum we are assuming you’ve already got a product created, whether it be an eBook, a video course, or a software tool. If you have not created a product yet, just grab our Product Creation guide which will have you cranking out digital products in no time. How Do You Launch a Product? There are a few ways to launch a digital product. One way is to do a “soft launch”. A soft launch is a low-key opening of the doors, so to speak. You set up a product, have it ready to accept sales, and instead of having a major announced launch period with special promotions, you simply start sending traffic to it.On the other hand, there is a “hard launch”. A hard launch is a publicized launch period with a specific beginning and end date. The idea here is to drive large amounts of traffic to your new product in a short period of time. In most cases, there is a special discount during this short period which encourages people to adopt the product early. Ultimately, the goal of a hard launch is to bring in a large number of new customers (and revenue) and to make a very visible splash in the marketplace. Since the goal of this guide is to get you, a buyers list as quickly as possible, we will be focusing on how to accomplish a hard launch. The most important “how” of your product, however, is traffic. Where will you get it? You certainly COULD drive your own traffic with paid ads and hope that you make a profit, but the most popular approach is to recruit affiliates (also called “JVs”). If you can convince and incentivize several affiliate marketers who already have their own audiences and email lists to promote your product, you are basically handing off the problem of traffic generation to someone else. It’s also great because you don’t have to worry about spending your own money in advance. You are simply paying commissions using money from sales that were already made by the affiliates. You also have the benefit of not having to worry about targeting and tweaking and other stuff you must mess with when you pay for your own traffic. All the people on these affiliate marketers’ lists are already interested in your niche and are likely already habitual buyers of products like yours. So, for the purposes of this guide, we will be focusing on getting a bunch of JVs/affiliates to promote a hard launch. But before we start recruiting JVs and sending traffic, you will need to set up your launch structure and that’s what we’ll be covering next.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/a-guide-to-internet-marketing/donations
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    5 mins
  • Episode 10: Content Strategy

    Episode 10: Content Strategy
    Jul 12 2022
    This Podcast is FREE! Donations are appreciated https://busk.co/loganNow that you have got your goals established, it’s time to start cranking out some quality marketing content. Let’s look at some of the types of content you can create, curate, and leverage in your social marketing. Basic Posts So much emphasis has been placed on visual media like photos, memes, and videos in recent years that many people have forgotten the power of good old-fashioned text. A basic textual post can accomplish a lot and, in fact, can stand out a lot today in people’s feeds that are often filled with non-stop cliché viral images and videos. A standard textual post can be an excellent pattern interrupt in these cases. A textual post, whether it be from your personal profile, a business page, or a group, can be about anything you want. It might be a piece of content in and of itself, like an informative blog post. It could be a link back to some other content elsewhere such as your blog or website or your YouTube channel. Other great ideas for content are questions, stories, and jokes. These can be great for boosting engagement and getting conversations started. Also, a poll is a great way to boost engagement in your textual posts as well. Asking questions is already something that boosts engagement and people love voting on things, so naturally when you pair the two together, you’re likely to get some great social traction. HINT: For polls, always say something like “tell us ‘why’ in the comments below” so people can talk about their opinions and get some conversations and extra engagement going. Image Posts and Memes It has been almost a decade, and we’re STILL seeing images Boromir from Lord of the Rings looking at us in our newsfeeds and telling us about how “One does not simply… [insert funny variable here]”. Why? Because it gets people’s attention, gets your point across, and usually still results in a few likes, shares, or comments. Whether it’s Sean Bean saying, “One does not simply run Facebook ads without a using a tracking pixel” or the Dos Equis guy sipping on a beer and saying, “I don’t usually try to lose 5 pounds in one week, but when I do, I use High Intensity Interval Training”, the fact is memes work in almost any niche. In fact, it is precisely their goofy and ironic application to unexpected niches that causes them to be so funny and get a rise out of people. So, it is settled, if you can find a few minutes per week to make a funny meme for your niche, it’s definitely worth your time. Other images can be beneficial as well. If you are working an “authority” angle, try posting images of you on stage at events. If you are promoting a free report or free digital offer, you can use an image of the eCover itself or even a generic stock image Adobe Stock. Make sure the images are relevant to your offer and audience. So, if you are targeting restaurant owners, a smiling business owner standing outside of their restaurant might work. If you are doing a weight loss product, a stock photo of a woman stretching or a man running might be the ticket. If you are selling physical products, use an image of the product itself or of a person using the product. And remember, these are organic posts, not paid ads, so you’re not bound by some of the usual restrictions like the “text to image” space ratio and so on (although there are still some ToS that apply to all content, so be sure to familiarize yourself with those).  Videos Video. The uncontested king of engaging content. This still has not changed. In fact, if anything, it is becoming even more of a norm than ever. If you are not using videos in your social marketing, you’re missing out big time. While it used to be common to use YouTube for hosting your videos and simply embed/link to them on other social platforms, many platforms like Facebook and Twitter have since then started to beef up their own video hosting functionality. For example, today, Facebook is giving YouTube a run for its money and many people are now beginning to lean toward using Facebook as their primary video sharing venue. This is beneficial not only to Facebook, but also to marketers because Facebook has made its videos super engaging by making them autoplay, with no sound, while people are scrolling/swiping past them in their newsfeeds. This results in a ton of views and engagement. This same trend is being seen on other platforms as well. So, video content is a must. But what types of videos should you incorporate into your marketing? There are several options. Regular vlogs, talking head videos, selfie videos, screen capture videos, instructions, tutorials, tips & tricks, funny videos, motivational videos, animated explainer videos, short “ad” videos, inspirational videos, slideshow videos… the list goes on and on. Anyway, you are able to convey content or messages via videos is great. More recently, some social sites ...
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    10 mins
  • Episode 9: Social Marketing Goals

    Episode 9: Social Marketing Goals
    Jul 12 2022
    This Podcast is FREE! Donations are appreciated https://busk.co/loganEstablishing marketing goals is critical to the success of your social marketing. Countless entrepreneurs and businesses have setup a social presence, made a few posts, and then let it sit untouched for months or even years. This is usually due to a lack or absence of goals. So, before you even begin establishing any sort of social presence or strategy, you need to establish clear marketing goals. Your goals should be specific, measurable, and attainable. They can be long term, short term, or a mix of both. Deadlines and milestones can be helpful as well. “I want to increase my social following” would be an example of a bad goal that will likely result in your marketing efforts petering out after a while because there are no specific milestones. “I want to gain 1,000 likes by Christmas” is an example of a good goal. It’s specific, measurable, and certainly attainable. Below are some examples of the various goal categories you might be interested in. Traffic to Website (Sales, Leads, Content) Probably one of the most popular goals of Social Marketing is to funnel your traffic back to your own web properties. After all, most businesses don’t to business “on” social media, per se. You are leveraging social media to obtain traffic and convert that social traffic into brand-followers, leads, prospects, and customers. So maybe your goal is to get people to a landing page with a free offer where they can subscribe to your list and become a lead. Maybe they are being sent to a sales page or an eCommerce store. Maybe you just want to do some content marketing and send them to your blog. Whatever the case, the end goal for a lot of businesses will likely be bringing social traffic AWAY from social platforms and over to their own web properties. Social Following  In this goal category, your aim is to build a large number of followers. This usually means “likes or followers” in the case of a business/brand page or it could mean “friends” if you are focusing on your personal profile. The main sought-after benefit here is to increase the number of people who will see your posts or tweets in their feeds. In this sense, your social posts become like sending out email broadcasts via your autoresponder. It should be noted that some social networks have recently adjusted their algorithms in such a way that people tend to see less posts from businesses they have followed. This means a much smaller percentage of your followers will see your posts in their feeds today than did in the past. Still, if you grow a large enough community, this can still be greatly beneficial and if your content is engaging enough to get a lot of traction in the form of likes, comments, and shares, you can significantly increase the range of your organic reach into people’s feeds.   Passive Presence Some businesses might have purely passive goals. Simply being present and discoverable inside social platforms is a benefit that has wider appeal and greater utility than you may think. In many cases, a company’s social presence might supersede or even totally replace what was once the role of a website or blog. Your business’ phone number, address, directions, hours of operation, mission statement and so on can often be put on your social accounts and, depending on your audience, that might be where most people seek you out, rather than your website. The ease of posting announcements, updates, photos, and other content without relying on a web developer or having to use a web-building platform also makes social presence an attractive alternative to the traditional website model. This same approach can also be used for events, communities, and brands. Brand Awareness Another goal that is less thought about might be spreading brand awareness and recognition. If you are just starting out, there is a good chance your brand might need a jumpstart. If nobody has ever heard of you, a great way to increase recognition is to simply create and share unique, helpful, or entertaining content and get your name, logo, and overall brand identity in front of as many people as possible as many times as possible. If this is your goal, you want to avoid being salesy in the beginning. Ensure you’re focused almost entirely on posting helpful, relevant, or entertaining content. Expand Existing Audiences If you have already got an audience, your goal might be to make it bigger. This can be done via several social marketing methods. Sharing viral content, either curated or created yourself, can lead to a huge increase in your social audience. Recently, a restaurant in Southern California released a 60 second video with shots of people enjoying their signature menu item, an enormous T-bone steak topped with melted cheese, and it went viral in one day. They had already garnered a respectable audience prior to the video, but after the video, their Facebook audience...
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    9 mins
  • Episode 8: Intro to Social Marketing

    Episode 8: Intro to Social Marketing
    Jul 12 2022
    This Podcast is FREE! Donations are appreciated https://busk.co/loganSocial media marketing has come a long way in the last several years and has changed the way many businesses think about marketing in general. For some marketers, social followers have replaced email addresses, posts and tweets have replaced promotional emails, and likes have replaced email opens. Virtually every successful business today has not only a social media presence, but a clearly defined social media strategy. Most of these strategies revolve around posting consistent content. But it’s more than just posting promotions and offers. A successful social strategy will include various types of nonpromotional content for various types of goals. Posting about a charitable cause associates your brand with feelings of goodwill. Posting about trendy topics makes your brand seem relevant. Posting useful tips without a sales pitch makes your business come off as genuinely helpful. Posting humorous or “feel-good” content associates your business with positive emotions, and so on. But more importantly, these types of non-promotional posts are accomplishing two other goals. First, they are encouraging social sharing, which grows your following even more. Secondly, they are creating top-of-mind awareness for your brand. People will get used to seeing your content and your business name, logo, and USP. As a result, when they have a problem that your business fixes, they will be more likely to think of you first. All those social media concepts revolve around organic activity. However, the major social media platforms today have also developed robust paid advertising systems. The most game-changing of these has been the concept of social “native advertising”. Native advertising refers to advertisements that have the appearance of organic content except for a tiny one-word disclaimer somewhere designating it as “sponsored” or an “advertisement”. This new form of paid social media advertising has proven to be remarkably effective because social media consumers are already in the habit of looking at, consuming, and engaging with anything that looks like an organic post in their social feeds. In addition to this, the line between organic posts and paid native ads have become increasingly blurred as these native ads act and function just like organic content (they can be shared, liked, etc.) and businesses now can pay to promote an organic post to give it further reach. Now that we have discussed social marketing in general, let’s have a closer look at each of the top social media platforms in more detail. Facebook One could argue that there has truly never been anything like Facebook. The undeniable king of social networks took the web by storm several years ago and has since become a household name. Almost everyone has a Facebook account (and about 3/4 of all U.S. adults check it regularly). There is simply no other platform so consistently and universally used all around the globe.For many businesses and organizations, their Facebook presence has replaced their actual website (at least in importance) because people are more likely to interact and receive updates there. Is there a blackout in your city or an emergency in your local area? There is a good chance the power company or news agencies will be posting updates on Facebook more quickly and consistently than their own websites. Why? Because that is where everybody is. And you need to be where your audience is. Facebook has done an excellent job of developing an environment where people stay inside the platform. Although links to the outside are easy to create, it’s now just as easy and perhaps more beneficial to keep things inside Facebook. For example, until a couple years ago, most people who wanted to share videos did so by linking to a Youtube video. Today, however, Facebook has made it both quick and easy to upload videos within the platform and has even made it the best option by allowing Facebook videos to autoplay as people are scrolling through their newsfeeds, making this option the most beneficial for people doing the sharing and the most pleasing for those doing the consuming. The result? After years of this sort of structuring and positioning, Facebook users now actually feel more comfortable when they remain inside Facebook. People trust and feel safe with the Facebook interface and prefer to consume content inside of it. Hence the enormous success of Facebook Native Ads. The point is, if you want to market your business or brand in the place where your audience spends most of their time and in a context in which they feel most comfortable (hint: you do), then you need to be marketing on Facebook. To fully get the point across, here are some for statistics that will give you a fuller appreciation of Facebook’s size, reach, and importance. Almost 40% of the entire world’s online population is on Facebook. Of the remainder who do not use ...
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    20 mins
  • Episode 7: Blog Topics

    Episode 7: Blog Topics
    Jul 12 2022

    This Podcast is FREE! Donations are appreciated https://busk.co/logan


    Coming up with ideas for blog posts can seem difficult if you are not used to creating content on a regular basis. However, once you get started, you can expand on your existing writing with more detail and update posts with new information. Here are some post ideas to get you started:

     

    -       Current trends or news in your industry

    -       Interview an expert (could be someone on your team)

    -       Point out common mistakes that users make

    -       How-to posts

    -       Guest posts from industry leaders

    -       Guides to buying the right product

    -       Answer frequently asked questions

    -       Beginner’s guides for products

    -       Comparison of similar products

    -       Feature a customer success story

     

    Each of these topics can be built upon and turned into a suite of posts that all reference one another. For example, a good post about frequently asked questions that is shared on social media will invite more questions in the comments- when you have enough questions, create a second post! Customers love to interact with content that relates to them, so make sure to encourage that by asking for their thoughts at the end of each blog.

     

    Blogging can be intensive, particularly if you want to post multiple times a week. There are many organizational tools such as Trello and Asana that can be used to keep you on a regular schedule. Some people like to write their posts one at a time according to their posting schedule, whereas others prefer to spend one or two days a month writing all their posts and then publishing from their cache. Some people just find that they don’t have the time to blog on top of everything else they’re doing within the business.

     

    This can lead to some businesses not creating a blog at all, but blogs are such powerful resources that this should be avoided if possible. If you don’t have the time to blog yourself, consider outsourcing to a freelance writer. Many companies do this with great results, and if you find the right freelancer, you can get all your content done without needing to hire a new person every time. Freelance writers will have the writing skills you may not have, as well as the time to do the work to a high standard.

    If you are interested in earning money through your blog, there are a number of advertising styles you can implement on your site. Most options display ads on your site and the amount you earn is decided on the amount of views or clicks it receives. These options work best for high-traffic sites, and it’s important that you consider how they will affect your readers’ enjoyment.

    A more subtle way to advertise is the use of affiliate links, which also allows you to only endorse brands that are relevant to your industry and that you believe in. To create an affiliate link, you need to reach out to a company and join their partner program, if they have one. Joining this program gives you a unique link ID that you include in your ads or blog posts. When a user clicks this link and buys the product, you receive a commission. Affiliate links and other advertising methods work best for large blogs, so this might be something you do in the future rather than right now, but don’t be afraid to consider it if you’re writing posts about specific products.

     

    Blogging can be time-consuming and requires you to think creatively about the link between you and your customers. These might feel like large obstacles to some people, but the rewards of blogging for your business are so great that they will outweigh the negatives you face in that initial learning curve. Regular blogging can double or even triple your website traffic, and informational pieces about your industry will create a strong brand voice that customers trust. The key is to blog early and blog often, so use these tips and get started today!



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