5 basic blogging tips and tricks you might be over looking - See more at: http://www.drewiaconis.com/blogging-tips-and-tricks/#sthash.e5AmdtpO.dpuf

There are various common mistakes I witness in bloggers when they are creating their first website.

Of course this is understandable because they are just beginning.

So I decided to throw together 5 basic blogging tips and tricks, I feel most people over look and will benefit beginners.

Whether you are blogging to create an income through a business or for the passion of creating amazing content.

You will require consistent persistence in order to create an abundant amount of engaging viewers.

What I have done for you is put together my top 5 blogging tips and tricks that I am confident will assist any novice writer seeking an audience.

Here are my top 5 blogging tips and tricks for the beginner…

#1 Target Your Content to a Specific Audience

When it comes to creating content for your blog, you must look at one of the most important factors in order to have success, and that is knowing your audience.

Knowing who you are speaking to is the first thing you should always be focusing on.

Whenever a viewer lands on your website, ideally you will want to speak that persons language.

This keeps them engaged and gives you a greater chance of having them return to your blog in the future.

If you are not aware of your audience, you are basically shoot yourself in the foot every time you put out new content.

Having your website content congruent with your audience is a key factor in building your blog and when done correctly will keep your viewers returning engaged.

#2 Create Genuine Rapport

We all have razor sharp B.S. meters.

As soon as we sense someone isn’t being genuine, they are dismissed.

Whether you know it or not, your subconscious is doing it.

After all, it’s impossible to have a real deep connection, with meaningful rapport, without actually knowing who you are talking to.

Sure you may be friendly, but you’ll always be missing something…

…something big.

The something that makes two people connect as husband and wife or two buddies become lifelong friends. 

It’s because at some point they decided to be open. Simple as that.

The world and our experiences within it are all based on genuine personal connection. Without it we miss out on the best parts and end up being pretty miserable in the process.

I challenge you to be more of who you are and you will create a rapport that will have your audience returning regularly.

#3 Blog Consistently

When I first started this blog, I would write a post once a day consistently for over 90 days. (Some I have removed as they did not provide value or are irrelevant to the audience I now target.)

As I wrote posts on a daily basis, my writing improved, my grammar was correcting itself and this website you are on right now started popping up in search engines everywhere.

I was attracting organic, targeted views.

Once you establish yourself after 90 days, it won’t really matter if you post every day, a couple times a week, or a couple times a month.

As long as you are posting consistently you will see the engagement grow monthly.

Naturally, blogs with more frequent posts tend to receive more traffic than blogs that post once a month, but in this case the goal isn’t necessarily to bring in hoards of traffic right away.

It is to get your readers used to coming to your blog and have them return.

It will create a posting schedule so people who follow your blog will remember, so that they know when to expect your next post.

It’s simple and it works.

Writing consistent blog posts will also give you as a writer, many benefits.

This teaches you discipline, how to meet your deadlines, that you are capable of writing under pressure, and proves that writing well while uninspired is possible.

#4 Syncing and Sharing Your Blog Via Social Media

There was a time when traffic to a site was only dependent on search engines or via buying traffic.

Now, this scenario has completely changed as internet marketers and bloggers are using social media marketing strategies to tap into targeted traffic from social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

Now that you have created a Blog, you have already achieved the first mile-stone in your social media presence and it is now time to move to leverage the power of these social media sites and turn it into profit.

From a Blogger perspective, it will be idle if you are driving traffic, then converting that traffic into subscribers.

From a brand perspective, receiving feedback from user/costumer and engaging them on your social media campaign should be your first target.

Once the trust part builds, and you gain rapport, converting user into a costumer will be a much easier process. 

It’s all come down to building trust and reputation.

#5 The Importance of Learning Basic SEO

An important aspect of having a blog is learning the basic concepts of Search Engine Optimization.

It makes your website easy for both the user and search engine robots to understand.

Although search engines have become increasingly sophisticated, in many ways they still do not hold the ability to see and understand a web page the same way a human does.

SEO helps engines figure out what each page is about, and how it may be useful for users.

It is not just about getting the technical details of search-engine friendly web development correct. It’s also about marketing.

This is perhaps the most important concept to grasp about the functionality of search engines.

You can build a perfect website, but its content can remain invisible to search engines unless you promote it.

The engines by themselves have no gauge of quality and no potential way to discover the fantastic pieces of content on the web.

Only the users have the power to discover, react, comment and link to.

Great content cannot simply be created, it must be shared and talked about.

Search engines already do a great job of promoting high quality content on websites that have become popular, but they cannot generate this popularity.

This is a task that demands talented Internet marketers.

I actually shot a video for you with a good friend of mine who is a blogging connoisseur, where we go more in depth about my top 5 blogging tips and tricks.

So in conclusion…

I am very confident that these blogging tips and tricks will give you a great head start in creating a desireable enviroment on your website.

Why am I so confident these will help?

I used these same blogging tips and tricks when I started and saw an increase in a growing, engaging community.

There are many ways to maintain a website online, and these are just several simple methods you can follow in the meantime leading in you in the right direction of creating a website people will want to come back to.

So I am curious, what do you think of my top 5 blogging tips and tricks?

Let me know if you think these simple tips and tricks helped assist you with your blog?

I look forward to your feedback as I am always answering my emails and providing value to my followers.

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11 Cool Things You Can Learn About Facebook Marketing From A 20 Year Old CEO

If you know me then you will know I love Facebook marketing. This March I attended Social Media Marketing World in San Diego and while I was there I met Alex Houg, the twenty year old CEO ofBlitzMetrics. I have been watching Alex’s journey from afar over the past number of months and wondered, what could this young CEO teach me about Facebook marketing?

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Some Background

At 14, Alex was an internet marketing entrepreneur with his own online gaming accessory website which he later sold. Today he leads a team of 22 people at BlitzMetrics, helping small business owners drive leads and sales via Facebook.

His focus with BlitzMetrics is the QuickStart program, fully implementing and tuning Facebook ads with packages available for all levels of business. His other projects include The Untern Movement- A program designed to help college students discover what they love and gain valuable job experience in cooperation with universities. With this program, his goal is to provide participants with a certification program built around what they enjoy, free of charge.

Alex strives to help others around him succeed, empowering people to do what they are passionate about.

I took on the task of reading Alex’s blog to find out what I could learn about Facebook marketing. Some of the points are news related but I have extracted so much value and I hope you will too.

#1. Facebook Knows What You Did Last Night!

Yes and again if you know me I’m not afraid to share my most recent meal on Facebook and neither are the guys at BlitzMetrics. If you don’t have Graph Search yet you can access it by changing your language on Facebook to US and it should appear.

You may not be utilizing Graph search yet and if not you need to get on it. By running some simple searches you can find out more about your target audience. As the feature develops, Alex tells us that Facebook will make recommendations to users based on their interests! This may be powerful for you as a brand. Try these and see what results you get:

• Interests of people who like your brand
• Interests of people who like your competition
• Places liked by people who like my page

I could write a huge list, but this blog post is long enough. You see the idea is that you can also start to create the kind of content that interests your fans.

I had fun doing this search for photos of people who like Tweak Your Biz – and I spot some of my favourite people in there!

What you need to do now: Carry out some of these searches. Take a screenshot and use them in a post to thank your fans and customers. I do think it’s better to target people who already know you, but this exercise is a good way of finding out what your fans are into.

#2. Clever Ways to Impress Friends and Clients on Facebook

Of all the posts I read on Alex’s blog this one was my favorite. Being truly social means you need to listen and when you listen you pick up all sorts of information about the person you are meeting with. Now imagine you choose something relevant from that conversation and you send your client/friend a gift based on what they are passionate about. Check this out:

What you need to do now: Social Media is great and making connections is what it’s all about, but there’s nothing quite like making an impact with a customer. If they are really social they are likely to share your random act of kindness  and this will give you some great visibility with their network, but remember it truly is better to give than receive.

#3. Keep Your Friends Close, Have Fun, Be Timely, Relevant and Helpful

Social Media is a powerful force that is evolving every day. One thing you can learn by following Alex is that there is no right or wrong answer. Social has to be at the heart of your content strategy and delivers what your customers need.  If you are truly social your brand will build meaningful relationships with the right people who will either become your customers or it will strengthen the relationship you already have with customers. We are all learning  and marketing on Facebook presents constant challenges but it’s really important to keep your friends close, have fun with what you do and deliver timely, relevant and helpful content.

What you need to do now: To be successful you need to be passionate about what you do and how you help. Alex certainly does this well.

#4. Will the New RHS Ads on Facebook increase Ad CTR by 300%

Facebook has re-designed the newsfeed, pages and to enhance the change the RHS ad looks different. Will this affect your ads CTR? Probably not if your using oCPM because Facebook balance placement but the net affect will be an increased average CTR and you should see an improvement in campaigns. The new re-design will save you some time now because you can use the same creative as you would for newsfeed.

Read the full story here

#5. Facebook Marketing Does not Work for B2B

This is a common complaint that I hear from B2B marketers, but as Alex points out the targeting options on Facebook are now more advanced. Not only can you target a workplace, but you can target people by job title, industry, office type and workplace. Are you looking to influence the influencers? Here’s your opportunity. Take your already performing ads and duplicate them with these categories.

Here’s a great example from Blitzmetrics. Alex and his team co-presented with Marketo, then they posted the content to their blog and targeted people who work at Marketo.

What you need to do now: If you go to a big event and want to impress the influencers, write a great post and target them in your ad using these options.

#6. Should You Use Mobile Apps on Facebook?

This is a question people regularly ask. If you are a large brand with a development team and budgets apps add great value. Small business owners can use a number of solutions also. Using apps should only be used if they are central to your marketing strategy and to get the most from them you will need to amplify them with ads.  Alex advises that you should always focus on creating great content that adds value to your fans.

Here are some great companies that can provide you with all you need.

• Agorapulse
• Antavo
• Heyo
• Shortstack
• Tabsite
• Woobox 

What you need to do now: Keep creating great content and adding value to your fans. Apps are really useful for list building and engaging fans but always think about your goal.

#7. Sadness for Facebook Admins as “Always On” feature is turned off

Yes, it was a sad day for me too when this feature was turned off and to be honest a real pain. Running an ad that automatically updated with every post was a real time saver. The good news is you don’t have to deal with the barrage of disapproved ads because images broke the 20% rule and when you used Facebook in your text. In addition the Boost Post (yes I just used that word and we will get to that subject later) has been revamped with smarter targeting options.

What you need to do now: Create some time every week to promote posts individually!

#8. Is it Really Possible to Get 100% CTR on ads?

How happy would you be to see that in an ad report? Alex says it is possible but only if you use super target audiences. It’s not uncommon to get a CTR of 20%-40% but how can this be when most people are lucky to get 1%. How you do this is target the people who have already bought from you and use custom audiences. This way your CTR will increase and your cost per conversion will decrease.

What you need to do now: Get your customer list and upload it to Facebook. People who already know you, like you and trust you will buy from you.

#9. Facebook Ad Groups/Sets: How to Get the Best from them

More changes to the way Facebook ads look and feel. Personally I like this change. Now each of your ads live in their own set. Budgeting and end dates are at the ad group level, so now there is no need to create a new campaign for every post. Campaigns are still by objective so audience-engagement-conversion framework still applies.

What you need to do now: To get the best from ad sets test out a number of creatives to see which perform the best.

#10. Are Boosted Posts a Waste of Your Ads Budget?

Alex entitled his post $88 to reach 360 people? What you need to know about boosted posts is that Facebook’s estimator is not accurate when you add additional budget to your boosted post. Alex says“We’ve been able to get a reach of 50,000 on this very post for only $72.  So it’s unlikely that it would jump to $240″. The takeaway here is that you can still get results if you have great content and your targeting is spot on.

What you need to know: If you don’t have time or your budget is small and you need to promote something in a hurry boosted posts can work. Be warned though your targeting must be relevant and you need to have rock solid content that you know works for your target audience.

#11. Do Boosted Posts Really Work?

This leads on from the last point and really I’m pointing out boosted post because many smaller local businesses with limited targeting options use this feature. The other challenge is a lack of time and budget to do anything more advanced. Here are some reasons that you may want to boost a post

• Increase engagement but not conversion
• Select interests as oppose to fans and friends of fans
• If you have a highly shareable product for which you have reviews
• If your content is excellent and that is evidenced by people liking it

The team at Blitz Metrics boosted a post for $15 which got 28 interactions and 20 clicks to their website.

What you need to do now: I saw this great comment on Alex’s blog from Benjamin Harries:

“Find the product that people like, create a post to promote it, target the right people based on their interests and keep satisfying customer demand” Don’t forget it’s not about finding loopholes it’s about knowing what your customer wants.

“The training BlitzMetrics puts on is completely free to students-even the travel and lodging. The businesses we have as clients subsidize these efforts, whether it is the NBA, Infusionsoft, Marketo, Jack Daniels, and other brands.  This gives students hands-on experience. Non-students must pay for training, which we conduct online and in our offices in Minneapolis”

To re-cap on this post and as a reminder, Alex Houg is a twenty year old CEO,  he knows much about marketing on Facebook and if you want to stay ahead of the curve keep an eye on his blog.

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Beginning your social media marketing presence

Your blog is only the start of your internet presence.
Hopefully, you set your blog up for free. I use www.blogger.com as it is owned by google, so it is ideal for a social media platform when promoting.

You also need a Twitter account (www.twitter.com) and a Facebook account (www.facebook.com) - I would suggest you start new accounts to make your business separate from your personal accounts. 

I would also suggest starting a new email using www.gmail.com for your business (as this is also owned by google)

You will next need an opt-in page (also called a squeeze page) and an Autoresponder.

I will cover the autoresponder first as this has to be paid for - I use www.aweber.com and have never had a problem with them so I can recommend them personally, but there are others available so I will leave it up to you to choose.

I will say though that aweber are offering your first month for just $1 (it is $19 a month after that)

I will cover opt-in/squeeze pages in a later post
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You will hear marketers always say 'the money is in the list' - it is very true, and this is why you have to have an autoresponder.

Hope you are doing well so far - let me know if you don't understand anything I have said.