Building a community on Facebook can be a powerful way to connect with your audience. Talking to people, understanding their pains and frustrations, can be beneficial for product development and growth of your company. But, eventually you get to a point where you want your Facebook fans to be able to easily connect with your website and subscribe to your list. You don’t want a 3rd party network, such as Facebook, to be your only route to talk to these people. That’s when you want to add a custom welcome tab on Facebook.
What the Welcome Tab Won’t Do
First, before we dig into how to add a custom Facebook welcome tab, let’s talk about the history of the welcome tab on Facebook. In the past, this has been an amazing feature. Unfortunately, a lot has changed and it simply does not do what it used to do.
It Won’t Be a One-Click Setup
It used to be that you can add a custom welcome tab by clicking one install button on a Facebook page to install an app. That is no longer the case. You can’t set it up with an app install. There is no option already in your Facebook page manager. You will need to use the Facebook developer tools.
It Won’t Be Editable in Facebook
You won’t be able to edit HTML directly within the tab on Facebook. Instead, you’ll need to have the page hosted somewhere and provide a secure (https) link to Facebook.
It Won’t Be the Default View
You can create a custom tab and you can rearrange where it appears in your list of tabs, but you can’t make it the default. The Facebook default home tab will remain the default and the very top in the list.
Way back when, you could make a welcome tab that was the default view for everyone that landed on your Facebook page. You could even create it as an incentive for people to like the page. They would see one image with an incentive, then after they click like the tab image would change to reveal a coupon. Those days are gone. That is no longer an option.
It Won’t Be an Option for Everyone
And lastly, the biggest change, not everyone will be able to add a custom tab. There is now a prerequisite that the page must have a minimum of 2,000 likes.
How I Got 2,000 Facebook Likes Using 1 Image
Okay, so the biggest hurdle to add a custom Facebook tab right now is the 2,000 page like requirement. For a big business, this is no big deal. But for a startup, a blogger, or a solopreneur who is new to social and still building their audience, this can be a difficult goal to reach.
My Facebook page had less than 100 likes. So, before I could create my custom tab I first needed to gain over 1,900 likes. To speed this up, I ran a paid ad.
These days I focus on organic efforts over paid efforts. So, my process was simple and could have been far more optimized. But, these are the steps I took.
Step 1: Get an Image that Creates Emotion
The first step is to find the right image. You need to capture attention. The best way to do this is with emotion. You can use an image that creates anger and fear or joy and delight. I decided to go with humor.
I wanted an image that would resonate with my desired audience. Something that a blogger trying to do their own marketing could relate to. And, ideally, something they would want to share.
I decided to commission a chart by Matt Shirley. If you aren’t familiar with these charts, you should really check out his Instagram feed. He strikes a perfect balance between information and humor. Even though these charts aren’t factual, they are entertaining and often easy to relate to.
And for any marketer, whether a DIYer or a pro, charts and analytics are always an important and exciting part of the day. So, it seemed like a great fit.
I reached out, he pitched three brilliant ideas, we picked one and a week later I had my image.
Here it is:
Step 2: Target Your Audience
Okay, now that I had the perfect image to use in my ad, I needed to set it up on Facebook.
The ad itself was simple. I added my chart as the image. Then I wrote a small line of text. I wanted to encourage people to comment and engage on the post. So, I added text asking who could relate to the chart and put a raised hand emoji for myself.
The more difficult part was determining the best people to target. Now, you can keep the audience broad and the ad will be cheaper. That is not what I wanted to do though. Since I was already spending money on the ad, I wanted to reach the right people. I didn’t want my page to have 2,000 likes from the cheapest 2,000 people Facebook could find me. I wanted it to have 2,000 people that I have the potential of helping.
So, I limited my ad first by country. I targeted the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada. In Google Analytics I can see that these are the three countries that bring in the majority of my organic website traffic, so this made sense for my site.
Next, I restricted the ad by age. I know from my marketing personas what age range I’m targeting. So, I focused my ad on the age most likely to benefit from my product.
Lastly, I restricted the ad based on interests. I targeted bloggers, entrepreneurs, content marketers, affiliate marketers, and founders.
Step 3: Send Invites to People Who Like the Ad
Lastly, I engaged with people who engaged with my ad. I liked or replied to every comment. Sometimes both. To every single person who liked the post but not the page, I sent them an invite to like the page. Facebook makes this pretty easy. Just click to view the post likes and to the right of each name it will either say liked or it will have a button that says invite.
The post got 935 reactions, 30 comments, 219 shares and ended up getting me 1,977 page likes. It did its job. It was interesting, engaging, and people shared and liked it.
How to Create a Page in WordPress to Use as a Facebook Custom Tab
Once you have your 2,000 fans there is one other requirement you will need to deal with. You need a page to display the content you want to appear on your custom tab. Facebook is only going to allow you to give them a URL, so you need the page to live somewhere other than Facebook.
Adding a page to your existing website is going to be the easiest option since you already have that domain set up and hopefully secured with SSL. But, chances are you don’t want your standard website layout to appear on your Facebook tab. You probably don’t want your header or footer and the width constraints on Facebook are likely smaller than your standard website width.
You can hide those elements on a single page so you can use it as your Facebook tab content. I’ll explain how to do this for a WordPress website.
, create a new page and find the page ID. When you’re editing the page in the WordPress admin interface, the page ID will appear in the URL. At the end of the URL look for where it says post.php?post=. The 4 digit number that appears after post= is your page ID.
Next, preview the new page you are creating. Right click on the element you want to remove, such as the header. Click on Inspect. This will open the dev tools and allow you to view the code for specific page elements. This works in most browsers, I normally prefer to do it in Chrome.
Identify the class for the element you want to remove. If you have the element selected properly it should highlight the area when you hover over the code in the dev tools. In the code you’ll see class=. That will show you the class name(s). Copy that.
Then, in your WordPress admin interface, go to Appearance > Theme Editor. Go to your style.css file and add in a new style rule. You’ll take your page ID and your class that you copied from the element you want to hide and specify that it should not be displayed.
Here is an example of what the style rule would look like:
That says, on the page with the ID of 1234, for the navbar element with those particular classes, do not display it. That will hide the navbar only on page 1234.
Next, you need to go back to your page and add Facebook friendly content. Facebook specifies that the content should be a maximum width of 520 pixels and a maximum height of 810 pixels. To keep the content in those constraints you can add a div to the page, and then add all of your content within that div.
Here is what the div would look like:
<div style="max-width:520px;max-height:810px;">
… Your Content …
</div>
What to Put on Your Custom Facebook Tab?
What you put on your custom Facebook tab will depend on your goals and your brand. If you already have a lead magnet on your website, I’d start there.
If you have some kind of giveaway or freebie like a cheatsheet or free course that you use to get people onto an email list, add that to your custom Facebook tab. Embed your email subscribe form so people can sign up directly through Facebook. This will help you move your Facebook audience to a source you have more control over such as email.
How to Add a Custom Facebook Tab
Okay, so now we have our 2,000 fans and content we want to display on the tab. We can finally add our custom Facebook welcome tab. Here is how you add it:
Enter the Display Name (the name you want to use for your welcome tab app) and Contact Email. Then click Create App ID.
Navigate to Settings > Basic and then scroll down to the bottom.
Click Add Platform then click Page Tab in the box that appears.
Then enter in the secure URL (https) you want to use for your page tab and the tab name.
After you’ve entered in the details click Save Changes.
Now, the next step to actually implement the custom page tab app into your Facebook profile is not intuitive at all. I didn’t find any information from Facebook directly on how to do this, but I did find a very helpful article from Opace that explained the entire process.
To add the app to your Facebook page, you’ll need to copy and paste the following URL into a browser tab. You’ll replace the APP_ID and URL attributes with your own values.
The APP_ID attribute will be found at the top of the basic settings panel.
The URL attribute is the secure URL you provided earlier as the page tab contents.
When you enter the URL with the appropriate attributes you will be taken to a page with a dropdown to select your Facebook page. Select the page you want to add the tab to and press Add Page Tab. That’s it, now it’s added to your page.
You can rearrange the tab by going to your Facebook page. Then navigate to Settings > Templates and Tabs. Scroll down and you will see all of the tabs for the page. You can drag to rearrange them.
Was it Worth it?
The short answer is no. The long answer is it depends.
I’m glad I did it. I’m glad I have more likes and a custom tab. And, if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be able to write this article or give advice on the topic.
Now, if you already have at least 2,000 likes then there really is no reason not to add a welcome tab. You might as well take every opportunity you can to get social followers on your website and list.
But, if you don’t have the social followers this is not a high priority item. I’m glad I have more than 2,000 likes now but it really doesn’t move the needle for my business. It’s more of a vanity metric than anything else.
Out of those 2,000 people, only 10-30 of them see each of my posts organically. If I want more of my audience to see my posts I have to pay Facebook to boost them.
Additionally, while it’s great that I have a custom welcome tab now, the tab is not ideal and has low visibility. It doesn’t appear at all on mobile, it’s only on the desktop version. Because of that, it’s only possible for a small percentage of my followers to ever see it. And, it will never be the first thing people see. You can’t replace the default Facebook home tab. People have to choose to click on another tab. Because of these restrictions it just doesn’t get very much visibility.
So, if you already have enough followers, then yes, you might as well add it. If you don’t, there are better ways to spend your time and money.
Do you have a custom Facebook tab? What content do you display on it and does it convert well? Let us know in the comments!
Do you want to listen to this article? Here’s the podcast episode:
Have you ever wondered, should I start a blog? Starting a blog is a commitment. Not only is there some technical setup involved, there’s also a time commitment. Creating content takes time. And, you have to consistently post content to see traction. It can take months or years, and to be successful, you’ll have to stick with it for the long haul.
So, how do you know if blogging is right for you? Should you start a blog? Here are the five signs to watch for that indicate you are ready to start your journey as a blogger.
Sign #1: You Want to Establish Authority
Are you trying to find a way to establish yourself as an expert in a particular field? You can do that with blogging.
Blogging gives you a voice. If you know what you’re talking about, that becomes clear in your blog. You will be able to build your authority by sharing your knowledge and letting your voice be heard.
Sign #2: You Want to Help People
Do you want to help people? Do you have a skill you want to share with others? Or, are you about to learn a new skill and want to share the journey for others to benefit?
A blog is a great way to help people by providing resources and knowledge to help them solve an issue. To really help people, make sure you have a focus. Understand the purpose of your blog and the pain you want your blog to solve.
A clear direction and strong focus will make it easier for everyone. It will be easier for you to plan content. And, it will be easier for readers to understand what the site is about and if it’s right for them.
Sign #3: You Want to Organize Your Thoughts
Blogging gives you a way to organize your thoughts. When you create a content calendar and plan out your blog articles, you’re building a roadmap to plan the future. You can organize your thoughts and brainstorm ideas by scheduling them out as blog articles.
Your entire blog also acts as great documentation. All of your past thoughts are documented thoroughly in a system you can refer back to at any time, your blog.
Sign #4: You Want to Easily Answer Frequently Asked Questions
Whether it’s from friends and family, or random people online, when you have mastered a skill people will ask for your opinion and advice.
Instead of answering each person individually, you can leverage your blog. Create blog articles with the most common questions you hear. Then, when someone asks it next you can just direct them to the article that answers the question.
That way, they’ll get an in-depth response with everything you have to say on the topic. It will be easier for you because you don’t have to explain it all over again. And, it’s better for them because the article will likely have more information than you would have remembered in a casual conversation.
Sign #5: You Want to Become a Better Writer
This is a big one for me. I can’t tell you how many years as a marketer I said the words “I’m not a writer”. I always tried to push writing projects to writers with the excuse that it wasn’t my strong suit. Have a pro write the copy, then I’ll build the landing page, create the email, make the ad, or anything else. Just don’t make me write!
Eventually, I learned that writing is part of marketing. And there’s no secret trick to get good at it. You just have to do it. So now I find myself taking every opportunity I can to write. The more I do it (instead of push it off onto other people) the better I get. It takes time but it’s worth it and a valuable skill to develop.
So, whether you enjoy writing or not, practicing the skill consistently will help you improve. If you’re looking for self-improvement in that area, starting a blog could be right for you.
Bonus Sign: Excitement
The biggest sign of all is excitement. If you’re excited to start a blog, you should do it. If you feel a drive to get your voice out there, feel you have something valuable to share, then do it. Just start now. Taking action and getting started will be the only way you’ll truly find out if blogging is right for you.
How many of these signs did you match? Share with us in the comments!
Do you want to listen to this article? Here’s the podcast episode:
One of the most important parts of growing a business is knowing how to prioritize and focus on the tasks that matter most. No one has time to do everything, so how do you know which items are worth your time and should be prioritized? You need to choose your priorities wisely to make the most use of your limited time. And of course, everybody will have different priorities. So, let’s walk through a three step process you can follow to choose the right marketing priorities for you.
Step 1: Know Your Audience
The very first thing you need to take care of in order to choose the right marketing priorities for you, is to understand who your audience is. You need to know who you’re talking to in your blogs, who your product is for, and who you want to visit your website.
Your first step is to define your audience. To do this, create a marketing persona. The persona is a fictional outline of an ideal avatar for your business. Though the actual person is fictional, all of the characteristics and demographics are based on data and the actual people your company supports.
Then, determine the channels where you’ll find the greatest amount of your target audience. Understand where your audience spends their time online. This will help you understand where you should focus your time and effort.
Are you targeting business owners that do most of their research with google searches and contribute to LinkedIn and Facebook? Are you targeting a younger audience that gets their information from Reddit and spends time on TikTok and SnapChat? Are you targeting a community that places high value on visuals and spends time on Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube?
Look at your Google Analytics data to see which acquisition sources are your top sources. Likely, these will be the sources you’ll want to focus on. Also, think about those top sources and consider how they align with your customer persona. Do they make sense? Is there possibly a different channel you don’t see in your existing traffic that makes perfect sense for your ideal customer?
Step 2: Set Goals
Make sure to set one primary annual goal. This will be your guiding light. You need to have a clear direction and goal in mind. That is the only way you’ll be able to determine if you are choosing the correct marketing priority. You need to know where you want to end up to know if each step you take is headed in the correct direction.
Choose milestones for your goal if desired. You can create monthly or quarterly goal milestones to try and make sure you are progressing fast enough toward your annual goal. This is completely optional. It won’t make sense for all goals and it won’t make sense for all people.
Your schedule will not be consistent. You will have busy seasons and slow seasons. Plus, you do have a life outside of work and sometimes that provides you with more or less work time.
If you create too many milestones that expect consistent growth it can be discouraging when you don’t meet them all. Sometimes projects have a slow start. Sometimes projects move quick at first, and you feel caught up, then the last ten percent of the project takes ninety percent of the time.
As long as you have an annual goal in mind, don’t stress about quarterly or monthly goals. But, by all means set them if it makes sense for you, your business, and the goal.
Lastly, set a weekly goal that moves you closer to your annual goal. It’s up to you how many weekly goals you want to set. I’d recommend between one to three. And that can vary from week to week.
The important part is that your weekly goal moves you closer to your desired end result. It should help you reach your annual goal. That is how you will understand how to choose the right marketing priorities.
Does the task move the needle and get you closer toward your target? If it does, then prioritize it. If it doesn’t re-evaluate if it’s worth the time.
Step 3: Review Time Consuming Tasks
Of course you will sometimes have tasks that don’t relate to your primary annual goal. That’s fine, it’s normal, and it will happen. Just be aware that the task is not related to your primary goal. Don’t ignore it completely, but instead be aware that it is distracting you from your primary goal. Monitor the time you spend on secondary tasks and if they start consuming more time than you have, reassess and reprioritize.
Think about what takes most of your time every single week. Is it an important piece of your annual goal? If it is, great. Sounds like that is a high priority item and is well worth your time.
If it isn’t an important step towards your goal then evaluate it. Is it a task that is still worth doing at all? Sometimes we get so used to a routine or system that we forget why we were doing it in the first place. Confirm that the task that is using so much of your precious time is even worth a minute of it.
Next, decide if the system you are using to complete the task is the best system available today. Is there a way you can automate the process? Tools such as Zapier can help anyone create automated systems. You can also use the combination of Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Google Sheets to automate some reports.
And lastly, do you need to be the one to do the task? Is it something that can be outsourced or is there anyone else that you can train to take over that task for you? Remember, it’s keeping you from getting to your goal. So, it may feel like it’s important for you to do it. But ultimately, your highest priority marketing tasks should be moving you closer and closer toward your annual goal.
Do you have a different system you use to determine your marketing priorities? If you do please share it in the comments!
Do you want to listen to this article? Here’s the podcast episode:
Creating quality content takes a considerable amount of time. And the sad fact is, unless you have an enticing title, there’s a slim chance anyone will ever even give it a chance. So, let’s go over a repeatable process you can follow to write catchy titles for blogs.
Step 1: Choose a Topic People Care About
The first step is to write about a topic your audience wants to hear about. If people don’t care about the content, it doesn’t matter how interesting the title is.
There are a couple of methods you can use to find content ideas people care about.
The first, is keyword research. Instead of picking randomly, you can review data to determine common search queries that fit with your niche. To find out exactly how that works, you can follow our simple keyword research system.
The next, is to answer questions from your readers. If people are asking you questions, that means you’ve found content to write about that your audience cares to read about. Prioritize these questions based on the demand. If you receive several requests, write articles about the questions asked most often.
If you only have a handful, don’t let that deter you. There’s a good chance if someone has the question, others will too. Just use your judgement and answer the questions that are relevant to your audience and niche.
Step 2: Try and Stand Out
The next step is to try and be unique, stand out. You want your headline to grab attention. The internet has lots of content. Just about any industry, any niche, any topic, will have quite a bit of competition on the search results page. So, don’t blend in.
Perform Google searches with the topics you’re considering. Look at the top search results. What are the headlines? How can you stand out?
Step 3: Keep Your Content in Mind
When you write your title, make sure it’s a match for the content. The content needs to follow through on the promise given in the title.
It’s important to create a title that accurately describes the article for a couple of reasons.
First, you want your readers to trust you. You want to have a good reputation. This will help you get repeat visitors and will encourage sharing.
Next, if readers bounce it can impact rankings. If someone clicks the article from search results because it has a catchy title, then immediately leaves because the content doesn’t seem to match the title, then clicks the next search result, that is considered pogosticking. If a high percentage of people immediately leave the page and go back to look for another search result, your search ranking can be negatively impacted.
Step 4: Brainstorm Several Ideas
When you’re writing a blog title, don’t just write one and call it good. Brainstorm several ideas.
Write at least 3-5 different title ideas. If you have time, and the ideas, you can try writing even more. Some bloggers brainstorm about 30 titles for each blog article.
This might seem like a pointless activity. But, if you try it a few times you’ll find you very rarely decide on the first title idea.
Step 5: Try a Headline Formula
If you’re having problems brainstorming titles, you can always try some formulas that have proven to be effective.
Listicles
Arrange your content into an ordered list. Then, create a headline that begins with a number. These list articles, or listicles, are very popular and commonly shared on social networks.
Don’t go crazy with the number of items in your list. If your list has 57 or 96 items it’s going to be overwhelming. Keep it simple. Somewhere between 5 and 11 items tend to work well.
How To Articles
How to articles are another popular type of title for blogs. These titles just start with the phrase how to and provide guidance on completing a particular task.
Since blogs are often read by people in a research stage, the how to article is a perfect fit. If the content is a tutorial or step-by-step guide consider using a title that begins with how to.
More Catchy Formulas
A quick Google search will bring up hundreds of different headline formulas. There are several good ones out there. Going through all of the available options can get exhausting though.
My favorites are from CopyBlogger. Specially, the formulas in the following three articles:
Even if you don’t use one of the formulas as-is, it can help generate new ideas. If you’re feeling stuck going through those formulas can get you moving in the right direction.
Step 6: Analyze the Headline
There are tools you can use to actually analyze the quality of your headline. Once you have all of your brainstorm ideas together these analyzers can be a fun way to help determine which one is best.
Here are a few headline analyzer tools you can use to assess your titles:
Don’t let the analyzer be the determining factor. It’s good to look at them, but remember to think about what makes the most sense with the content of your article and your target audience.
Step 7: Test Different Titles
If you really want to know what works best, test it.
Test on Social Media
Schedule up your article to post on your social networks. Each time you post it, try out a different title from your brainstorm list. You already spent the time thinking of multiple ideas, you might as well get some use out of them.
Plus, it will help you determine if there is one that works better than others. Which title has the most engagement? Does one have more likes, shares, and comments than the others?
If one particular title performs best on social media, consider updating your article with that title as the main headline. Listen to your audience and adjust your website to reflect what you’ve learned.
You can set it up so half of the visitors see one title, then the other half see the other title. You can then see which group has a higher percentage of completing your desired goal.
This allows you to make an informed decision using data.
Warning: Be Careful of Click Bait
We’ve all seen articles that have a title like “All she did was give her dog a chew toy. What happened next blew my mind.” Then, you make the bad decision to click on it because you have a dog and feel like you might need to know! Then, the article doesn’t even answer the question and is clearly just a website with several ads you really don’t care about.
Don’t do this. If you use a click bait title, at least deliver on it. Provide the content your title promised.
It’s best to just avoid click bait titles entirely though. People are starting to recognize them as false promises. These titles and articles represent your brand. Make sure they portray the image you want.
Do you have any tactics you use to create catchy blog titles? Please share them with us in the comments!
Do you want to listen to this article? Here’s the podcast episode:
SEO is always changing. And you have limited time. How can you make sure your time is spent focusing on the SEO tactics that matter most? Here are four simple ways you can stay up to date with SEO trends.
1. Follow Industry News
The first tip to stay current on SEO tactics, is to follow SEO industry news. You can subscribe to marketing resources to hear the latest changes.
You can find this information in whatever medium you find easiest to consume. You can get SEO news from blogs, podcasts, and email digests. To find links to my favorite marketing news sources, view the full digital marketing resource guide.
The key here is to subscribe to only enough sources to stay informed, not overwhelmed. If you aren’t sure how much marketing news you can add to your current routine, start small. Choose one blog or one podcast or one email digest to follow. Then, start to add more as you find the time.
If you instead follow as much as possible and start to feel overwhelmed, you will end up ignoring all of it.
These tools allow the search engines to directly communicate with you. If there is advice the search engines want to give you, you should be available to receive it.
These tools make it easy to submit your sitemap, get notified of crawl errors, and identify if there is any suspicious or malicious activity.
They are free tools, and there is no reason not to sign up and start benefiting from the extra data and communication.
3. Use ClearPath Online
Another way to stay up to date on SEO trends is to leverage a tool. You can use the ClearPath Online DIY SEO Tool to follow SEO tasks for your website.
Instead of you spending time to figure out the best SEO tactic to tackle, ClearPath Online will guide you through every task step-by-step. And when a search engine algorithm changes and completely disrupts the standard SEO tactics, you don’t need to know.
You just keep following the tasks in the ClearPath Online DIY SEO Tool. The tasks are updated to reflect the newest trends. That way, you know you aren’t wasting time doing something that improved rankings a few years ago, but now can hurt rankings.
4. SEO Periodic Table
Lastly, you can download and reference the SEO Periodic Table. The SEO Periodic Table is a graphic created by Search Engine Land. It visually describes the most important SEO factors. They update it annually.
It’s nice to look at and provides a good overview of what’s important for SEO this year. It won’t keep you updated daily, but it’s still a nice overview of what is the most impactful for SEO this year.
No matter how you choose to do it, if you want to be successful with SEO, you’ll need to find a way to stay up to date with the latest SEO and digital marketing trends. Hopefully one, or multiple, of these methods will be able to help you do so.
What is your favorite way to stay up to date on SEO trends? Let us know in the comments!
Do you want to listen to this article? Here’s the podcast episode:
Sometimes mistakes can be the best way to learn. Making them and learning from your failures is one way to do it. Or, you can learn from the mistakes of others and hopefully avoid making them yourself. In an attempt to learn from others, let’s go over seven mistakes that can lead to failed blogs.
Ideally you should publish a blog article weekly. If that isn’t feasible with your schedule though, then aim for monthly posts. If you have plenty of time and can commit to daily posts, do it.
The important part is you pick a posting schedule that works for you and then stick to it.
Keeping a consistent posting schedule helps everyone.
It helps readers by making it easier to understand when they can expect to hear from you. They know when they will be able to access new content. And they can have more confidence in your existing articles knowing that the blog is actively maintained and updated. It helps build your relationship together.
It helps search engines by providing more ranking opportunities and new content to crawl. Each new article you post has a new set of keywords and a new page that search engines can rank in search results. A consistent schedule also helps search engines understand how often to crawl your website. They want to keep search results accurate, so if you have new content to index on a regular basis, it’s easier to understand how often and when they should crawl your website to look for new content and updates.
It helps you by creating a routine. Staying consistent will help you get into a routine which will only make the process easier for you the longer you stick with it.
We just talked about keeping a consistent blogging schedule. That schedule should be at a pace that allows you to create high-quality content. If all of your posts are filled with useless fluff instead of valuable information, they won’t help anyone; you, the readers, or search engines.
A high-quality blog article should include:
Information your readers care about.
A format that is easy to read and easy to follow.
Only relevant information, no fluff or filler material.
Images, videos, and charts when relevant.
Links to articles to dig deeper into additionally referenced topics.
Mistake #3: Wrong Topic
Before you write your article, make sure it’s a topic your readers are interested in. You want to write content that people want to read.
Don’t choose topics randomly. When deciding on a topic to write there are two paths to create content people care about.
Create content based on questions and concerns from your audience.
When you create content based on keyword research, you’re using data to make an informed decision. This is a good tactic to use to create content that will grow your blog audience. Keyword research allows you to find the topics that are in demand, the queries people are actively looking to find a solution for.
Another tactic to write content on topics people care about, is to answer questions and concerns that you hear from your own audience. When you get a content idea from your existing audience you can be confident it is a topic that will resonate with your readers. If one of them spoke up and asked the question, there’s a good chance others are wondering the same thing.
Mistake #4: Ignore SEO
Another common mistake is to ignore search engine optimization.
I strongly believe that writing articles for the user, and not for the search engines, is the best long-term SEO strategy. However, there are some basic SEO best practices that don’t make sense to ignore in your articles.
Write your article with the user in mind. Then, when you’re done go through and make the following SEO improvements:
Another mistake is to spend all of your time creating amazing content, but not building a community. Try to collect email addresses, build a list and create your community.
Not everyone will want to give you their email address, and that’s okay. Make it easy for the people who do want to hear from you, be able to do so. Let them subscribe. When you post new content, let them know. Start building the relationship with the engaged users who want to hear from you.
Mistake #6: Lose Interest
You do not want to lose interest in your blog. Don’t get annoyed if it doesn’t take off right away. Building a blog takes time.
If you post consistently on a weekly basis, expect it to take at least two years before you start seeing the momentum you want. If you blog monthly, expect it to take even longer.
Think of this blog as your business, not your hobby. Commit to the long haul. It won’t be easy and it will take longer than it seems like it should, but if you stick with it you will see results.
Mistake #7: Monetize Too Early
The last mistake is to monetize before you know who your audience is. Of course you want to eventually figure out a way to monetize your blog, but don’t start there. Start by finding an audience. Build a community. Figure out who you’re talking to and what they need before you start selling to them.
If you’ve already made any of these mistakes, don’t worry. They are all fixable. Just start now. Knowing what not to do will hopefully allow you to focus on what you should do.
Have you made any of these mistakes? Do you think there’s another common mistake that we should add to our list? Let us know in the comments!
Do you want to listen to this article? Here’s the podcast episode:
You have a blog. And of course the hope is that you can figure out a way to monetize it. But how? When should you and then how do you do it? Let’s go over how to monetize a blog with WordPress.
When Should You Monetize Your Blog?
Before you worry about making money from your blog, focus on getting an audience. The first step is to find the people who want to hear from you. You need to figure out who you can help and what problem you can solve.
Make sure that your blog has a clear focus. If you are targeting a specific niche you will have an easier time identifying your target reader and understanding their frustrations. Spend the time to understand exactly who you’re talking to on your blog before you start worrying about monetizing it.
Once you know who you’re talking to, grow your audience. You want to have a large enough audience to be clear your messaging resonates and you are targeting the right person.
Once you understand your audience and their pain points, it’s easier to determine the monetization path that will be the biggest benefit to your readers.
5 Best Blog Monetization Types for Beginners
Now, let’s dig into the five best monetization types for blogs. We’ll focus specifically on the tactics that work best on newer WordPress blogs. Websites with under 1,000 monthly views will use different tactics than a site with over 30,000 monthly views would use. We’ll focus on the monetization types that work best for sites with lower monthly sessions.
Coaching
The easiest monetization route is to add a coaching or freelancing option. Your blog is positioning you as an authority in your niche. You can leverage that by offering coaching.
This option is easy to implement. You can add a contact form to your website to collect leads. When it’s time to invoice you don’t even need to process it through your website. You can send an invoice and have your clients pay via check. You can accept payment through Venmo or PayPal. If your bank has a digital banking system such as Zelle you can use that. Or you can collect payment through your invoice system such as Harvest or Wave.
So, you have lots of options. Basically there are two things you’ll need.
A way for people to schedule or request a coaching session.
A way to collect payment.
Here is the route I would take to accomplish this. I would use Calendly.
Calendly is easy to embed directly on your website. It’s as easy as copy and pasting the code. The only thing you have to do with their code is paste it where you want it on your website.
All of the settings and configurations are easy to manage on the Calendly website. You specify your availability. You also specify the coaching parameters such as session length. With the Pro plan (for $15 a month) you can even collect payment through PayPal.
Calendly has built in reminders. They also allow group events. You can manage the coaching scheduling and payments all through the one tool, and your website visitors receive a seamless experience.
And, your coaching clients can schedule at a time that works perfect with both your schedule and theirs, without back and forth emails to arrange it.
The one downside with this option is you’re exchanging time for money. People are paying for your time so your profits are limited by your availability. It’s possible to increase this with group sessions but it is still more limited than some of the other options.
E-Book
Another way to monetize the authority you’re building with your blog is to create an e-book. These days, you don’t need a publisher deal to write a book. You can self publish. You don’t even need to deal with the cost of printing a book. You can sell a digital version.
It costs nothing to self publish a book through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. Amazon provides all of the directions you need and even offers a free course with resources to get you started.
Write your book. Make an attractive cover. (You can use Canva to make a cover. They have several customizable templates.) Then, get your book published on Amazon.
Once you have a book, make a landing page on your website with a link people can use to purchase the book.
Digital Course
If your blog already has resources and guides your readers enjoy, you can enhance (and monetize) the experience by creating a digital course.
To administer a course, you’ll need a Learning Management System, or LMS. There are a handful of different LMS plugins you can use in WordPress. The most popular and most robust choice is LearnDash.
LearnDash isn’t free, it starts at $199 a year. That price tag includes all of the features you’ll need. You’ll be able to collect payments through PayPal or Stripe, add a shopping cart through WooCommerce, and be able to charge for access to your courses on a one-time basis or a subscription.
LearnDash is a plugin, not a theme, so it will integrate with the theme you’re already using. And if your theme is already responsive, LearnDash will be responsive as well.
Digital Downloads
Do you have a high value guide, resource, pattern, or tutorial? Add it as a premium digital download on your website.
You can use the Easy Digital Downloads plugin to add digital e-commerce options to your WordPress site. The plugin is free. It allows you to collect payments through PayPal or Amazon for no extra fee.
If you want to process payments through Stripe or a different provider you just need to purchase a premium extension for the plugin. The price can range from $50 to over $100 depending which extension you need.
Affiliate Marketing
Another monetization method you can use on your WordPress blog is affiliate marketing. This tactic can work especially well if you naturally have several product recommendations in your articles.
If you’re already recommending products, it makes sense to earn some commission for your referrals.
You can join an affiliate network. An affiliate network will allow you to have access to earn commissions from the affiliate partners in their network. The network will provide you with a trackable link for the product you want to refer to. When people purchase with that link, you’ll earn some money. The exact details and amounts vary depending on the network.
Here are some of the most popular affiliate networks you can join:
The other option you have for affiliate marketing, is to work directly with the affiliate. If you go to the product website you want to refer to, sometimes you can find a link to affiliate with them directly on the site. It will typically be in the footer, somewhere that isn’t obvious when the website first loads.
When you affiliate with the company directly the commissions are often higher than if you go through a network. You can also talk directly to the company and negotiate a higher commission amount. Keep in mind, you’ll have to have a steady flow of traffic to your website before you can do much negotiating.
Don’t Focus on Ads
We didn’t talk about advertising as one of the monetization types for your blog, and I wanted to discuss why we left it out. Ads can be a good source of revenue, but to make money you need to have a lot of traffic. You really need to have at least 30,000 monthly views to make money with ads.
Ad revenue is calculated based on impressions so you need to have eyes on your website before ads will bring you money. Since we know you’re looking for a guide for beginners, this didn’t seem like a good suggestion.
Also, at ClearPath Online we always try to think of people first. When you look at the pain points of your readers and try to think of a monetization solution to address their pain, it is extremely unlikely that adding advertisements to your website is the solution. You can use one of the other monetization types we discussed to create an offer that benefits everyone.
Remember: Keep it Relevant
No matter which monetization option you choose, you need to make sure you keep it relevant to the theme of your blog. Your blog already has a focus, you know who you’re talking to. Don’t forget about that focus and that ideal person when you decide to create a paid offer. If instead, you keep it relevant and continue down the path you’ve already established, your readers will be excited about your new product and not annoyed.
Do you want to listen to this article? Here’s the podcast episode:
To make life easier on Twitter you can try scheduling tweets. Scheduling your tweets is simple and can increase your followers and engagement if done right. We’ll go over the tools you can use and some strategies to follow when scheduling tweets.
The Benefits of Scheduling Your Tweets
Before we dig into how, let’s talk about why. What are the benefits of scheduling your tweets?
Consistency
One of the primary benefits is consistency. When you schedule your tweets you can post on a regular basis. This allows your audience to have a better understanding of when and how often they can expect to hear from you.
Less Likely to Neglect
Similar to being able to be consistent, scheduling your tweets makes you less likely to neglect Twitter. Social media is time consuming. When you have a business to run it’s easy to ignore social.
When you schedule out your posts ahead of time you can chunk your time to fit it in. Instead of it being a disruptive activity that you do every hour or so, you can choose a window of time once a week. You can even try to do it monthly if that fits best with your schedule.
Post at the Ideal Time
And lastly, a benefit of scheduling your tweets is you can post them at the times and days that you will receive the highest impressions and engagement from your audience. There are a few different ways to do this.
Export & Analyze Data: You can export your Twitter data through the Twitter Analytics interface. Then, you can analyze the data in a spreadsheet to determine the optimal days and times.
Scheduling Tool: Some twitter scheduling tools have automatic scheduling included in their system so your posts will be set to send at the optimal times. We’ll dig into the tools in more detail next, but Hootsuite and Buffer both have this option.
Hootsuite allows you to schedule posts on over 20 social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. They make scheduling simple by including an auto schedule feature that chooses the best day and time for your audience. They also provide a drag and drop calendar view to easily reorganize your posts.
They do have a free plan but it is limited. You can only connect up to 3 profiles and you can only have a maximum of 30 scheduled posts. If those limits won’t work for you I’d recommend the Professional plan. It’s $30 per month but it let’s you schedule unlimited messages on up to 10 accounts.
Buffer is another good option. Specifically the Publish product. Buffer allows you to connect Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Pinterest. You can set up a schedule using data from your audience so when you add a post it can automatically be scheduled for the next slot in your set schedule.
Similar to Hootsuite, the free Buffer Publish plan is pretty limited. They allow you to connect up to 3 accounts and set a maximum of 10 scheduled posts. Their paid plan starts at $15 per month but only increases scheduled posts to 100.
Twitter
Another option is to schedule posts directly through Twitter. To do this you need to go to Twitter for Business and then navigate to Twitter Ads. You don’t need to run any ads but you will need to enter your credit card information to setup the account. Once you finish the setup, you can navigate to Creative > Tweets to schedule out your tweets. For full details, please view the instructions from Twitter.
If Twitter is the only network you want to schedule posts for then this could be a good solution. If not, you may want to try Hootsuite or Buffer.
Another popular tool to schedule tweets is TweetDeck. This is a free tool and can be a good solution if Twitter is the only network you’re interested in. This can also be useful if you have multiple Twitter accounts you need to manage.
TweetDeck is owned by Twitter. And with TweetDeck, you can easily schedule tweets without setting up a Twitter Ads account.
My Preference: Hootsuite
My favorite tool to schedule tweets is Hootsuite with the Professional plan. Any of the tools we just discussed are good tools and I’ve used them all at different times. For me, I wanted to use a tool with an auto schedule feature to try and schedule my posts at optimal times for my audience.
Both Buffer and Hootsuite have an auto schedule feature. The system in Buffer is more rigid whereas in Hootsuite the experience feels more natural. In Buffer you have pre-set times so your posts are always at those times. In Hootsuite it uses an algorithm to determine the best next time to post. Because of that the posts are staggered in a way that feels very natural.
The combination of the auto scheduling, drag and drop content calendar, multiple social networks, and unlimited scheduled posts is why I went with Hootsuite.
Schedule Now, Edit Later
All of these tools let you edit your posts. Don’t be scared to schedule ahead. If things change you can always rearrange or edit your posts later.
How Often Should I Post?
With Twitter you can post much more often than other social networks before you start to annoy people. Some people say you should try to tweet at least 14 times per day.
Instead of trying to hit a specific target I normally aim for quality over quantity. I try to post content that is meaningful and important for my audience instead of blasting articles no one needs to read.
Even though I know the data shows you get more followers when you tweet more, I’ve been on the other side of it. I know how it is to follow a company you care about and then they tweet so much junk that you can’t sift through it to find the content you actually care about.
I’d rather have a few highly engaged people than thousands of people who do nothing more than increase my follower count metric. If someone cares enough about my brand to sign up for text notifications I don’t want to annoy them. I want to be a valuable resource on whatever channel people want to follow me on.
Remember to Engage People
When you schedule out your tweets it can be tempting to set it and forget it. Scheduling does give you a lot of flexibility with the time you spend on social but don’t forget to talk to people, not just at people.
If people comment on your posts, respond. If people share your posts, like them. And it’s okay to schedule out prompts to ask your audience questions. Start a conversation. Don’t only blast them with promotional content.
Remember Your Real Life Events
When you schedule tweets you still want to come across as genuine. You want your followers to understand you’re a real person. If you have public speaking engagement or meeting or public event where some of your followers may know you’re there, don’t schedule tweets during this time.
You don’t want to have a tweet go out while you’re speaking at a conference about something unrelated. It just makes it blatantly clear that you scheduled your tweet ahead of time and didn’t put much thought into it.
Of course, if you’re tweeting from an account for your brand instead of a personal account this is not as big of an issue. Just think about your real life obligations and make sure your tweets support them and don’t conflict.
Be Sensitive of Current Events
If there is a tragedy or big news event, you may want to pause your tweets. Be aware of what’s happening in the world around you and understand that sometimes tweeting about your company may not be the right message during difficult times.
Even if the current issue isn’t directly related to your industry, you might want to take a minute to be human. Be sensitive of others by changing up your regular content to express empathy for those affected by the situation.
Summary
Scheduling your tweets can make Twitter much easier to handle. If used wisely it can also increase the effectiveness by scheduling at optimal times for your audience. Just remember to be yourself. Engage with your audience when you can.
Do you normally schedule your tweets? Do you have any tools or tips you’d recommend? Please share in the comments!
Do you want to listen to this article? Here’s the podcast episode:
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