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We’re here with Rachel Martin and Dan R Morris, who seem to be warming up the crowd like a comedy show. It’s Dan’s birthday, and he’s wearing a birthday tiara. The two of them run Blogging Concentrated.
CEO Masterclass: 10 Ways to Build Your Business and Income Right Now
If you are attempting to earn income with your blog, you are your own CEO.
Pro tip: Dan posted a birthday card for himself on his Facebook page. Now all of his thousands of birthday comments are in a single thread.
We Gave Up Giving Up
No more excuses. In the movie Apollo 13, they had to make a filter fit. They really had to make a square fit into a round hole. There was no other option, because the astronauts only had what was available to them in their spacecraft.
FB insights is annoying and frustrating. Newsfeed is frustrating. We don’t own Facebook. We don’t know how it actually works. When it doesn’t work, it’s no different than when roadwork starts up in front of a retail store. You have to get over the obstacle. If you can’t get the reach on FB, then push to Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, or somewhere else.
Make sure you have the right audience. Quick example: Look at your Twitter profile (and your Facebook page, your Pinterest page, your business card) and see if your profile blurb says what you do and who should follow you. People use that quick blurb to make a split second decision about whether or not to follow you.
If you write about “everything,” you probably don’t write about Saudi Arabian oil pricing, or dental procedures, etc. Give people a sample of the “everything” you write about. (I’m wondering if “I blog. Small biz owner, writer, loving wife & mom, and Aspie with CFS, anxiety, & depression. WoW Frost Mage. My tweets are often TMI.” is sufficient for my Twitter bio.)
Guardian Leadership
Rachel talks about an incident where she went to a homeschool store and picked out $300 worth of books, and the store owner put most of it back, telling her, “You don’t need this.” She did need the $31.50 book. So the next time Rachel went back and the owner said, “I have this new book, and you have to have it,” she trusted her, and she didn’t care if it was $85. She trusted that she was being led the right way.
Be that person for your reader. Is everything you share with your readers valuable to them? Are you telling people about the things they need, and also the things that they don’t need? Can people trust the recommendations you make?
Dan wants us to watch the original Miracle on 34th Street. It’s about the original guardian leader.
Lead Them Home
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“Ruby slippers” by RadioFan (talk). Original uploader was RadioFan at en.wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia; transferred to Commons by User:Magnus Manske using CommonsHelper.
(Original text : I (RadioFan (talk)) created this work entirely by myself.). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Yellow brick road graphic on the screen. You can’t manifest your entire community on Facebook. You have to lead them to your home. Make offers. If you are a shoe blogger, people who read your blog like and want shoes. Offer eBooks, offer printables, offer downloadables to the people who want what you know about.
Facebook has something called Annotations that lets you put a link in your video. You can use this to get people to come back to your website.
Someone offers a free printable zen quote every week for people to print and put on their wall at home. She has hundreds of thousands of people who use this.
CEOs Build Foundations
(Superfluous apostrophe alert in the slide. Forgiven, because their presentation is so high-energy!)
Where is your community? What is it built on? If your community is based on Facebook giveaways, they’re not really in it for your community. They only liked you for the giveaway. What happens if Facebook shuts down tomorrow? Would it suck for your business? Do you have a plan, an exit strategy? Move people to your list.
DropBox is buying up tons of little companies, leveraging from one thing to the next. They may end up being the Facebook killer.
Product Creation
To make money, you need a product. Look at what you have, and there is probably already a product in your content. Is there an eBook you can compile? Make your blog post series an eBook. PayPal Merchant Services are a really easy way to create a button to allow people to buy your eBook. Packaging existing content into an eBook makes it convenient for your readers to have all of that info without needing to search for it. That’s the value they are paying for.
Sponsors
We’re going to talk about sponsors the way we’ve never talked about sponsors before. Ask your audience what magazines they read on Facebook or RankTheList.com. Go to the magazine’s website and click on their “advertise with us” link for that magazine’s demographics. Every company that advertises in that magazine is paying money to reach the same audience you have. These are some of the brands you can reach out to for partnerships, especially the smaller companies. Some of these companies are on Page 4 of Google and aren’t getting traffic. Little companies don’t care about PageRank, Alexa scores, or Compete scores. Put together a plan for a partnership on how you would like to work with them. Instead of $250 for a post, you can do $1,200 a month to do a video one month, to tweet out each other’s events and happenings.
Work only with sponsors that fit your brand. If you have a partnership with Udi’s, you can’t start promoting Wonder Bread. That’s not going to fly.
Championing Your Audience
They have a
coffee <br>
shirt and a hashtag shirt. We can all appreciate these. Make shirts your audience will appreciate. It probably won’t have your brand name on it. And that’s okay.
Be the Biggest Small Dog You Can Be
This one is for small blogs like mine! It doesn’t matter if you get <200 visitors daily. Decide to make it, decide to do it, and do what you do. Don’t let your size confine you. You influence a group of people, and someone is going to want to help you get to the top.
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That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.
