With the recent unleashing of Google+ things are about to get a lot more competitive, too. It was easy to see the value in belonging to so many different sites, but with Google+ tying everything together that most web users area already using, competition is definitely heating up. For instance, you can expect to see RSS feeds that are of interest to you pulled right into your Google+ account.

But, wait a second! Whatever happened to RSS feeds as one of the best ways to market your blog? It used to be that readers demanded access to a feed on every single site and every single blogger was talking about how to set yours up. Well think of RSS feeds sort of like Netflix: everyone is using it, but we’re so used to it that we’ve stopped talking about it.

RSS Feeds 101

So, what if you’re not using RSS feeds or focusing on them properly in your blog? What can you do to get started or to do things better? First of all, don’t use the built in feeds that are provided with your content management system.

They can’t be tracked properly and won’t give you the opportunity to claim the clout that you deserve. It’s more important for you to use a tool like Feed Burner, where you can easily track the number of subscribers. This will give you the ability to properly push to your RSS feed.

How Do You Get People to Sign Up?

One of the best things to do with your RSS feed is use it as a way to promote content early. If you are frequently ahead of schedule with your blog posts, you can push things to your RSS feed before they go live on your site. As people see these posts and interact with them, you can make last minute changes to improve your content.

You can also offer them a free report or e-book. There are many articles out there to teach you how to quickly put together a killer e-book or report, so if you aren’t experienced with this you should go look it up right away. Offering the e-book to those who sign up to your RSS feed is a great enticement that should help increase your numbers drastically.

Making Money with Your RSS Feed

You can also use your feed as a way to improve your ability to sell products. For instance, if you are selling click bank products, you can release special posts just to your feed community discussing these products. You can make your community feel special by telling them that they are the only ones you are sharing this information with.

There are also many programs that will enable you to advertise in your feed. The good news is that this feed is generally separate from your main content, meaning you can experiment with different advertisers without violating any of your agreements. Be extra cautious to check the fine print, though.

What RSS Feeds Can’t Do

RSS feeds are only good for getting those who are already interested in your content to continue following you. The RSS feed alone can’t bring you more users. It wasn’t designed this way.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. This means that it allows people to integrate your content into their routine. Whether it is a single person bringing it into their RSS reader of choice or another publisher taking your content and publishing it on their site, that’s what it does.

Having an RSS feed won’t bring you more viewers. It’s not like Twitter or Facebook where people interested can share your content or let others know that they like it. It just doesn’t work that way.

But if you already have a group of people coming to your site on a regular basis, then it may provide you an additional alternative to keep people in the group. If you notice you have a large amount of people who come to your site every month, but they don’t regularly join your community, then this might be a part of the solution.

Reconciling your Blog and your RSS Feed

One of the things most people will have trouble with is making sure that they have a good idea of how many people exist on their blog independently from their RSS feed. This can be very difficult to keep track of. The important thing is to go back and check your historical data.

If you could see before your RSS feed that you had, let’s say 100 new visitors per day, and that each month your total number of visitors was increasing by about 30, this would show you how quickly your blog is increasing: one new regular visitor per day.

If you started an RSS feed and saw that you were gaining about 2 new subscribers per day, this would give you some information to work with. Reconciling these numbers is pretty much impossible, though. The best that can happen is getting a rough idea of how many people join the RSS feed but don’t return to the site.

Using survey tools you can publish a survey on your RSS feed and publish another on your site. Ask people to vote as to whether they subscribe to one, the other, or both. Then you can actually reconcile these numbers.

Regardless of your choice to use an RSS feed or to ignore it entirely, you should consider it a viable means to capture audience attention. Many people are still using RSS feeds as a way to keep themselves focused on content without having to visit websites on a regular basis, and that’s what counts.

Here are a few simple ways to make a connection with a guru you admire who can help get you a significant amount of exposure to your blog.

Follow Them

First, of course, you need to be following on Twitter any guru who you want to connect with. Seek them out and make sure you follow them and pay attention to what they are sharing on Twitter. They cannot know you if they have never seen you!

Retweet Their Tweets

You should definitely make sure you re-tweet the things that he or she shares on Twitter. Do not share everything, as that might get a bit weird! However, do re-tweet the things that they want to have shared – maybe a link to their new blog post or something that they want to share publicly. Doing this may well garner some goodwill and attention from them as you try to connect with them.

Reply To Their Tweets

When the guru you want to connect with on Twitter shares something that you could reply to, send them an @ reply. Converse with them about what they shared. They may not always be able to respond, but you may well get their attention if you do it enough! Keep in mind with this, however, that he or she may get a whole bunch of replies when they tweet something, so they may not always be able to respond to you if you reply to their tweets, so do not get upset if your reply goes unanswered.

Send Them A Direct Message

If you want to make a personal connection, you can also them the guru a direct message on Twitter. Send them a brief introduction and an invitation to connect. Keep in mind with this as well, that they may receive many direct messages, and direct messages are often automated messages, so some people ignore them entirely. Therefore, you might not get a response this way, either, but it is just another way to get your name in front of them.

Follow Them on Other Social Media Sites

Check to see if they have a Facebook page, a LinkedIn account, etc., and follow them there as well. Try to interact with them on these sites, too, as this is another way, outside of Twitter, to get the guru’s attention and to get your name in front of them once again.

Comment on Their Blog

If they have a blog that they post on regularly, make sure you leave a post there that is helpful. Join in the conversation by adding value to it in the comments. Do not however, try to solicit their help in their blog by being overly self-promotional in their blog comments. This is generally frowned upon by website owner and bloggers.

Go To Live Events

Will the guru you want to connect with be speaking in your area, make sure you attend! I actually got to do this recently and had the opportunity to meet in person with someone considered a guru, and whom I admire, greatly before and after a meeting he held in my city. It was a great chance to chat, and now he knows who I am if I ever contact him.

Send Them Information

Let them know about when you are posting something new or something exciting on your blog, especially if they are in that person’s area of expertise or experience. They might just see fit to share it with all of their followers!

Seek Out More Than One Guru

You may not hit it off with the first guru you get in touch with. Keep in mind that they probably get flooded with information and invitations, so you may or may not hear from them in the long run after trying. So, hedge your bets! Try to contact several different gurus. By doing so, you significantly increase the chance that someone will get back with you and will share your profile or your information with others.

What you will find is that there are only 5-7 big players in any niche and you want to be one of them. The best way to get there is by following the other 5!

Do Not Be Annoying (That’s Just Creepy)

While following all of the above ideas can get your name in front of any gurus who you want to connect with, keep in mind that you do not want to annoy them with too many messages or invitations to connect via twitter or anywhere else.

Think about how you would feel if someone sent you several messages daily. This is probably not a good plan! Keep the interval to once every few days at most on your attempts to connect, and if your attempts are ignored after a long time of trying, it may be best to move on so that you do not alienate the guru entirely. You never want to push too hard and alienate someone who could be a great partner in the future.

Once Connected, Continue To Give

Once you have connected with a guru and they have sent out information, make sure you thank them publicly on Twitter and elsewhere, and make sure you continue to keep that relationship with them. After all, you do owe them some gratitude for their assistance.

Conclusion

If you will work to connect with gurus on Twitter by using the steps mentioned above, then give them good information that they could share with their followers and constituents, you might just find that one of these days, you are the guru that everyone is trying to get in touch with for assistance! By the way, if that day comes, make sure you take the time to remember the little guy and help them out as well if you can.

When you’re just starting to learn how to start a blog – regardless of your industry – your main focus should be on creating your mailing list. Here are 5 tips to help you understand the fundamentals, and get more subscribers to your list.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Give-Aways

People love free stuff. People love instant gratification. If you give someone something free for signing up for your list, everyone wins. So give away something. Anything! They give you their information in exchange to some kind of content or product.

Make sure to offer something of genuine value like a free ebook, report, e-course or podcast. The implicit question you need to answer clearly for your visitor is, “What’s in it for me if I subscribe?”

Members Only Benefits

People love being part of exclusive clubs and we all know they love deals. So offer subscribers of your list something no one else can get. Exclusive content is just like your free stuff, only it’s kept for those special readers that complete a certain task you ask of them.

Just as an ebook or free report helps build your email marketing list, exclusive content offers readers something more and provides the bribe needed to get them to complete a call to action. Make them feel privileged by including exclusive courses and opportunities to buy before the general public, discounts or promotion codes in your newsletter.

Continue to remind them that they are an exclusive group of insiders that gained special access to exclusive content and offers as a reward for subscribing to your list. This makes them feel special and adds value to your list. There is nothing greater but to make readers feel they are valued and are part of something that values them.

Make Your Subscription An Aspirin, Not A Vitamin.

Vitamins are great, they boost your energy levels, but you don’t have to take them. But when you have a headache, you NEED an aspirin. Make your subscription indispensable. Fill it with real value that people want and need.

Pack every issue with valuable content, information about the hottest information in your industry, interviews with top-tier experts and insightful tips and strategies that actually improve the lives of your readers.

Always go the extra mile and try to get into your readers’ minds and overcome their fears and objections. Spare them of:

• Too many updates
• Messages that aren’t in line with what was originally promised
• The worry that their personal data will be sold to spammers

Also, find out what your readers want and need. Include interactive quizzes in your newsletter and gain valuable insights on who your readers really are. Address their concerns and you’ll find that they will be happy to give you their address. Over-deliver and remember that going the extra mile is never crowded!

Try Pop Up Ads

Though it’s controversial, big pop ups prompting people to sign up for your list can work wonders. Our personal experience – we added a hover over opt in list at askdanandjennifer.com that we only show only once to new visitors – increased our opt-ins by over 200% with very few complaints.

A direct call to action converts a lot better than a soft one that is trying to please people.

For example:

• Soft: “Why not subscribe to our list?” vs. Direct: “Enter your information today and get started!”
• Soft: “Get a free ebook!” vs. Direct: “Download your free ebook now!”

When people are given strong calls to action, they often feel more secure because they believe the person knows what they are doing. When you use direct orders for subscriptions, you are conveying the message that they are doing the right thing.

Build Your World Around It

Your list sign up should be a big, noticeable part of your web design. People should feel compelled to sign up and not be able to miss the signup section. Let them know that it’s important to be on your list…

Make it as easy as possible, so place your opt-in form at the top of the page where readers’ eyes go first. Most site owners have an opt-in form in all of their web pages. This is the best way to convince people that they really need to be part of your list.

You can put a line saying what your readers can get for subscribing. You can say, “subscribe to a free informative newsletter about…” or “subscribe to a valuable report packed with the latest tips in the industry.”

Studies revealed that this is a very effective way to get more subscribers to your list, because the benefits are stated loud and clear. Never leave people hanging without offering them your enticing products or information. By creating an attractive ad for sign up, they will eventually become part of your list and even advocated of your brand.

Get Out There And Do It!

The golden rule of email marketing is always present all the benefits your readers will get by subscribing to your list. Tell them what you want them to do, exactly how to do it and that you want them to act now. Praise your subscribers, as they are a more valuable metric than any other measure of site success, including page views and traffic.

Needless to say, you must use a powerful email marketing service  like AWeber and a professional web hosting company. Remember, loyal subscribers are the life blood of any successful business and learning to create genuine relationships and respond to their needs will get yourself a goldmine.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Patience, grasshopper. You need to learn to walk before you and run, and in this case, we are going to teach you what NOT to do first.  Here’s the wrong way of doing things.

The WRONG way

Have a company Twitter account without the name of the person(s) doing the tweeting

Using this nameless corporate account to post corporate updates or thinly veiled corporate updates masquerading as tweets from a real person. No one cares. This makes you come off as some out of touch “mega” corporation and that is just not going to get you anywhere.

Post links to your press releases

No one wants to read your press releases and they really aren’t too interested in connecting with a business either. They want to make a personal connection, and they want to know they’re dealing with the real deal.

Don’t follow others

Twitter is interactive. That’s the whole appeal of it. If you don’t follow others, they won’t follow you. You just can’t start an account and wait patiently and expect to become the next Twitter sensation. It just doesn’t work that way. Waiting for things to happen on Twitter is about as effective as waiting for the phone to ring when you’re looking for love (or anything else, for that matter).

Don’t contribute to the discussion

Twitter is a medium where people can interact, share ideas, followers and more, but who wants to do that? Why get involved and do things to grow your business when you can just sit there? You’re just setting up a Twitter account and maybe you’ve actually decided to follow people who follow you or maybe even follow people who’ve never heard of you, but get involved beyond that? That’s just crazy talk.

Inconsistency

Sure, you could be a trusted source of tweets, dispersing them at regular intervals, but why? You’d rather tweet randomly and inconsistently. Why regularly post your tweets say every four hours when you can post ever ten minutes for two days and then disappear for a month! That’ll get them interested, right?

Well… not so much actually. To be fair, this is a playbook that people actually follow, intentionally. They really believe that doing these things will work. Problem is, they don’t. It’s a one way ticket to irrelevance.  If you want to guarantee that no one will know or care about you on Twitter, by all means go ahead and use them.

The RIGHT way

So if that’s what you shouldn’t be doing, what’s the right way? Well, there is no wrong or right, there is only what you should be doing to get the results that you want. That’s what we mean, by “right.” That being said, here we go:

Being a real, authentic person

Your Twitter account should really reflect who you are. It should have your name on it, and ideally a picture of you or your brand to let people know you’re the real deal. This is the biggest thing ever to remember about Twitter. You must be real.

You can be as weird or as out there as you want, just as long as that represents who you really are. Otherwise, you’ve got yourself a one way ticket to becoming the “Vanilla Ice” of Twitter.

Making “Frienemies”

You ever hear the expression “the friend of my enemy is my friend?” That’s a bit of an extreme example, but the point is that on Twitter, you need to seek out the people who are in your niche and engage them. Find the people who are out there, doing whatever it is you do and become friends with them. Retweet their posts if you find them useful (we’ll get to that in a second). Ask them questions, start a conversation.

This will raise your profile and their followers will become aware of you, and may follow you back as well. That’s all part of becoming relevant in your niche.

Be present and consistent

If you want to lose weight or change your body, you don’t need a radical diet or exercise plan. You just need to find the right program for your goals and be consistent about it. Same goes for Twitter. Some people only post once a day. Some people post once an hour. Both are valid. Figure out what you want your schedule to be and then set it and stick to it.  This will help you become an ever present and consistent force on Twitter

Use a scheduling tool

So you’ve decided you want to post every four hours, 24/7. Are you really going to have to sit there at the keyboard at 4 am? Not if you use a scheduling tool. There are various services that offer this feature, but we’re big fans of Sendible because it just works and they’re very responsive.

Also Sendible works with most any social service out there, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc. With Sendible, we schedule out what to post and when, and then it automatically posts at 4 am (or whenever), without interrupting our beauty sleep. Just remember, Twitter and Facebook are “social media” so schedule your Tweets with caution.

Do a fun giveaway

It’s a fact. People love free stuff. Could be anything from the latest product your company is promoting to a signed picture of David Hasselhoff that you found at your neighbor’s garage sale. Just make sure it is fun and tailored to your audience, and ideally is tied into them working to promote your product or get you new followers.

Encourage people to interact

This is what social media is all about. Getting people talking. Post an article and ask your followers what their opinion is on it. Post a poll topic, get people to vote on it. Post a picture of your baby and ask people to rate it. Anything! Just get them talking and get them talking in a way that helps you achieve your goal(s) that made you join social networking in the first place.

All that comes first, before you can promote or sell anything. Once you’ve built a loyal, consistent following, in time you’re going to become the go-to source for information in your niche. And that’s when you can start running promotions and campaigns that lead to sales (read: making money), more business, etc. Just don’t stop doing what got you TO that place in the first place – participating!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Staying Relevant In Your Niche

Using social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook is one of the easiest ways you can stay connected to your blog readers and relevant in your niche. Regular Tweets and Facebook posts keep people reading and keep people “in the know” about your favorite topics. Also, one of the best forms of advertisement is through word of mouth. Fans of your Facebook page will inadvertently direct their friends to your page via their Wall and so on and so on. Your Twitter followers might Tweet about a topic you’ve already Tweeted about and tell their friends about it and so on. Using social media outlets is a must if you really want to be a successful blogger and build your own brand.

The Benefits Of Scheduling Your Tweets

The benefits of scheduling your Tweets is that you don’t always have to be at your computer when you want something Tweeted. While there are applications that can allow you to Tweet from your cell phone, sometimes you just want to take some time off without completely withdrawing yourself from staying on top of things and staying relevant. That’s where scheduling your Tweets (and your blog posts) comes in handy.

Tweeting Responsibly

There is definitely a fine line between using Twitter and Facebook scheduling tools and abusing them. While you can schedule many of your Tweets, it quickly becomes obvious that all you’re doing is scheduling your Tweets and you’re not really relevant in your niche anyways. Your Twitter followers and Facebook fans will ask you questions, and it’s important that you answer them. Although you do schedule some of your Tweets, you should add to it by answering questions and having real conversations with people. This is the best way to build your brand and let people know that you’re available and interested in what your blog is about. Social media outlets give you the opportunity to actually be in the action instead of simply being behind the scenes. Use your Twitter and your Facebook pages to talk about your favorite topics, ask your fans and followers questions of your own and get them involved and interested in your blog topics. Not only will this generate tons of traffic for your blog, it will also generate real interest, and that’s something that can’t be bought. Be responsible with your Twitter and Facebook. Take the time to talk to your fans and followers, and schedule your Tweets and posts when you have to.

What are these buttons? Usually they’re tiny logos representing a handful (or 20+) social media sharing sites.

But here’s the catch: for most people these social media buttons are confusing. At first glance the uninitiated (read: non-techie) reader has no darn idea what those buttons are. Once  you look closer you’ll see

Most people have just never heard of all those fancy social media sharing networks. But just about everybody and their dog has heard about Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

So should you really add these social media buttons to your site?

Absolutely! If you want people to bookmark your articles and share them with their friends, you have to give them a very easy way to do that.

But do it in a way that’s not confusing, focusing on just the top few sites that the readers of your site are likely to recognize.

Sadly we didn’t include these very visible buttons on our Ask Dan & Jennifer site or on our other sites… instead we opted for the “all social media buttons in one” Add-To-Any widget (more on this below). But ultimately it proved a little confusing and was too easy to ignore or just plain not notice.

So… we finally decided to add some social media buttons at the bottom of aritcles for our major sites: Ask Dan & Jennifer, Blog Success Journal, and our Personal Blog. Just to make it easy for people to share and bookmark stories they like on these sites.

What Social Media Buttons Should You Choose?

Ah, now to the rubber hitting the road… That’s a very fine line. Most people opt for showing every button available, to increase the odds that your visitor happens to have an account on one of those sites. In theory that’s a good startegy, but it can backfire.

Pretend you’re not a blogger, but a non-techie person who happened to stumble onto a great blog. Fact is, too many buttons can confuse non-techie readers. So you need to figure out what are your “big bang for the buck” sites… which sites best target your core readers base.

To find the rigth buttons for your site, Ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you have a techie readership that prefers Digg or Reddit?
2. Do you have a more mainstream (non-techie) readership that prefers non-techie sites like StumbleUpon, Yahoo Buzz?
3. How about Facebook and Twitter… would your readers know what those are?
4. What’s  the primary language for your audience… are you perhaps popular in places that speak other languages? Think “Meneame” for example, the Spanish-language Digg-like site.
5. Out of the answers above, which sites are most likely to drive more traffic to your site if bookmarks are shared there?

For us, after significant deliberation (probably too much, LOL), we came up with our top list, in this order: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Yahoo Buzz, Del.ici.ous,  Meneame, and StumbleUpon.

What’s the best way to install these buttons on your blog?

Probably the easiest way is to find a social media button service (such as AddToAny) that will give you a simple piece of Javascript you can add to your site.

If you’re running WordPress you can also choose from a myriad of plugins that will show these buttons. And there are LOTS of these types of plugins to choose from.

Which begs the question…

What are the best social media button plugins or services for your blog?

There are so many social media button options out there, it’s hard to even begin listing them. So we’re not going to. If you want to find all the options we didn’t choose after doing extensive research, you can search Google yourself for “social media button wordpress plugin” or something to that effect.

We’re just goint to tell you about the ones that we like enough to actually use ourselves.

AddToAny – A great one-size-fits-all social media button bar

AddToAny is a really cool, customizable, and easy to use widget that you can add to literally any blog. Oh, and it’s free too.

You just go to their site, customize how you want the button to look, etc. and they give you a piece of Javascript code to add to your site. It’s that simple.

Here’s what the AddToAny widget looks like:

 

And it works great, which is why we use it. We recommend AddToAny highly, you should definitely get it set up on your blog or website.

But here’s the question… is it enough? We used to think so, but no longer.

The problem with JUST having the AddToAny widget is that not everyone clicks on your pretty little “share or bookmark” button. Sure some will, but many won’t. They may not see it, or they may just not care.

SocioFluid – The first truly unique social bookmark button solution we’ve seen to date

So, we set out to find a good set of very pretty, polished, and unique social media buttons to add to the bottom of our posts… to make a facebook user say “hey, this was good, i’ll click on that facebook icon and share it with my friends”. Same for Twitter, etc.

When we started looking for the right social bookmark plugin / utility for our sites we were disappointed with all the blah, boring, all-the-same button options out there. And finally, finally we found one that is truly unique!

It’s called SocioFluid and it’s just plain and simply cool. It comes as a customizable WordPress plugin… and more recently, it’s also available as a simple javascript widget that you can add to any blog, even if it’s not WordPress (get that from SocioFluid.com).

Want to see this REALLY COOL tool in action? Just scroll down to the bottom of this article and hover over the nifty social bookmark icons… Facebook, Twitter!

OK, Now a question for you!

So what social bookmark / sharing plugins or widgets do you use for your blog? let us know in the comments below!

And be sure to Tweet this article or Share it on Facebook! Just click on one of the pretty sharing icons below!
Thanks! — Dan & Jennifer