3 reasons Why Content Is King

We have all heard the phrase "content is king".  But have you stopped to ask why?  I'm not talking about content solely for social media, advertising for marketing just pure content.
Here are 3 reasons I have come up with.

1.  The first is obvious, the others not so. Content creates traffic with the aid of social media. The knock-on effect sees the traffic creating leads and these leads being converted into sales.  Traffic spreads your message, your why and your expertise.

2.  Smaller chunks of content can be woven into a framework. You own the framework even if you are introducing someone's content into that framework. A suitable framework can illustrate a concept.  In NLP this is known as "chunking up". The best frameworks are visual. Example include Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs" or Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective People". These two visual frameworks are based on triangles but there is no reason why rectangles, squares or circles cant be used. The purpose here is to aid in creating a relationship between the elements that compose a concept.

3.  The third is the most difficult. By turning content into a belief, you can change peoples' belief and in doing so influence others. In essence this is what a good sales script does, at a lower level. But it doesn't stop there. You position yourself as a thought leader in your field.

........thing is, its not for everyone but it is food for thought.

How To Get More Retweets - Infographic

 

Back-Up For Recovery

Dear Readers,
I'm currently recovering from a spinal injury.
I had a nerve decompression on my S1 in technical terms.
Once I'm back on my feet there will be plenty more posts on social media matters.
Regards,
Chris

Measure Your Twitter Engagement

I use social media to drive traffic and Twitter is an important part of that strategy.  What I have noticed is that even when a blog post starts to age and loose traffic you can still get a spike of page views.  These spikes of traffic are brought about by retweets, of that I am certain.  So I asked myself how can I monitor and record how many retweets I get and what do I need to do to get more retweets.




My favourite Twitter tool is Commun.it.  In addition to suggesting who to follow and who to unfollow, it has great Twitter stats.

Above we have a month on month report of Twitter activity.  I do check to see that the number of retweets that I receive are increasing.  I would put this down to a combination of tweeting the right content which makes the right connection with the right people.  Its about engaging with someone as passionate about your subject matter as you are.  Commun.it also calculates your reach which is the total number of people who could potentially see your retweets or mentions.  Naturally you like to see this figure go up, unlike the example above for some reason.

Klout, PerrIndex, Kred, TweetLevel and PeekAnalytics all measure influence.  But influence is a direct result of engagement.  What I like what about Klout is you can go to the page of someone with a higher Klout score and see what type of content gives a higher level of retweets.  I need to point out that there is a lot to be learnt from this.
For the cusious amongst you, tools that measure the influence of your content include mPACT Pro, TRAACKR and Appinions.

Additional Twitter engagement tools include:
Topsy http://analytics.topsy.com/  This gives the number of hits to your website/blog from Twitter.  I confess I wonder how accurate this is.
TwitterCounter http://twittercounter.com/  This shows the growth in your followers and following.  It predicts the number of followers you will have in 15 days but it does not measure engagement.
BufferApp http://bufferapp.com   Allows you to schedule tweets and gives stats on your tweets such as number of times retweeted, how often favoured and reach.

Experiment with these tools and establish a favourite to keep a check on your Twitter engagement.
Do let other how you handle engagement!  Chris

How To Write Your Own eBook

When it comes to internet marketing, we all know digital products are the thing to sell.  eBooks fall into this category. Writing your own ebook has the advantage of positioning you as an expert and maximising your sales commission.  Its also an automatable and low cost/low risk way to deliver an information product. 

I have been wanting to write an ebook for some time and thought I would share the following research with you.  The big questions are always:

• how to pick a subject matter
• how to break the work down, so its not overwhelming
• how to create the content

How to pick a subject matter.  Consider the following criteria:
It should address a  hungry market.
It has to something you are interested in.
It doesn't necessarily have to be something you know about, it can be researched.
Avoid any fads or time sensitive topics as you want your ebook to sell for years to come.
Make sure books have been written on the subject matter.  If your topic is too new you will waste too much time convincing people that they need to read about your chosen topic.
Make sure people are actively looking for your subject matter that way you are supplying to the demand.
One great expression I came across was "pain sells better than pleasure" meaning its easier to sell to someone who is looking for a solution to an uncomfortable problem.  The psychologists amongst you will know that everything we do takes us away from pain and towards pleasure.  If you can solve a universal problem, people will want to read your book.

How to break the work down.  Every book needs an outline.  There is no need to reinvent the wheel here.  Having chosen a subject matter, go to Amazon and search the contents of books on your subject matter.  List the repeated topics covered.  These will form the backbone of your book.  Add to these topics to bring the number up to about ten.  These will become the chapters of your book.
Now that you have chapter titles, it becomes easy to concentrate on your content.  You are now dealing with manageable chunks.  The next question is how long should each chapter or your ebook be?  I have found varying answers to this.  Probably the best answer is make it just long enough for the reader to feel that they are getting value. 

How to create content.  You have options here. 
You can always Google it or research the subject matter by reading other books. 
You could buy a Private Label Rights (PLR)  book on the subject matter and edit it. 
You could outsource it through the likes of Odesk, eLance or others.
You could interview an expert on the matter.  This is popular and creates interest, provided you know an expert or you know where to find an expert.
Or you could simply write it yourself.  Simply start typing away and then cut & paste.
Personally I am writing a series of blog posts one at a time with the hope of stitching them together.

I hope this will encourage you to write your own ebook.
Your comments are always appreciated.  Chris