Weekly favorite online marketing tips July 2015

July 31, 2015 by John McDougall

I recorded a 45 minute podcast with John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing this week and I was inspired by his weekly favorite’s blog post routine. Every Saturday he recaps a few of the best things he found in his research during the week and I thought I would give the same type of post a shot.

To get this started, I began looking at my Chrome browser history and it was actually a lot of fun looking back at the last seven days of research.

Here are my top 5 online marketing tips and favorite pieces of content that I found this week:

How I Write 8 Blog Posts a Week While Running 2 Companies by NEIL PATEL

This is an older piece that I have read several times but I get something out of it every time I read it. My take away is that if Neil Patel can write that much while running two amazing companies, then I should stop being flustered about having too much on my plate and just do it.

Making an outline for each blog post before I write is going to be a new priority of mine.

Using Author Tags to Grow Your Audience By Vadim Lavrusik, Facebook Product Manager

Looks like Facebook has an authorship tag that experts and authorities need to know about. I have a draft post about this I am writing which I will share in the coming weeks.

EPISODE 6: THE TOP 10 MISTAKES BLOGGERS MAKE [PODCAST] by Michael Hyatt

What an awesome podcast about how to avoid mistakes when blogging. My biggest take away is one I’ve heard many times and still struggle with, which is to keep consistent in terms of how often you post and preferably what days you post. Consistency is more important than quantity.

How Much Does the Modern Content Marketer Need to Know about SEO? by Copy Blogger’s rainmaker.fm

Some people say SEO is dead but you need to stick around for the * that goes with it. It’s only dead if you lack a sizable content strategy or focus on outdated tactics. Check out this podcast for more inspiration about where SEO has headed.

Why Most Colleges Don’t Teach Internet Marketing By John Rampton for Inc.com

We have a lot of interns that come from some very good colleges to work with us. They have been studying online marketing, yet an extremely common response they give us is that they learned more in the first week or two with us than they learned in the last few years. That is because many colleges just don’t move fast enough to keep up with the quick changes in digital marketing. If you want to learn digital marketing, check this out and rethink how you study.

Check out more fav’s on the Duct Tape Marketing blog.

Conclusion

In addition to all these great pieces of content, I am super excited to be taking the blog post promotion course with Kristi Hines and to have recently signed up for Michael Hyatt’s Platform University.

Even though there is a ton of learning to do and endless research to perform, if you write as little as 1-3 blog posts a week, you can make great progress building your authority. You just need to be smart about how you organize your time and process.

What are some of your favorite digital marketing tips and content?

8 Free and Easy Blog Marketing Tips from Kristi Hines’ Blog Post Promotion Course

July 23, 2015 by Charley Mendoza

You spent countless hours researching, writing and editing your blog post. You wrote valuable content packed with actionable advice and reliable data.

You’re so sure it’s going to be a hit.

Then you hit ‘publish.’

And… Nothing.

(Cue rolling tumbleweed)

They say content is king, so you did all the work. Why then, did your blog post not get the attention you expected?

Honestly, the ‘content is king mantra’ is incomplete. It should’ve been, “Content is king when it’s marketed correctly.” Even Derek Halpern, founder of Social Triggers Blog, admits to spending 80% of time promoting his blog posts.

Fast and Easy Ways to Promote Your Blog Post According to Kristi Hines

Research ‘how to promote your blog post’ online and you’ll see a bunch of articles about it. Unfortunately, some of the stuff out there is just regurgitated content from so-called experts — vague and lacking actionable steps.

I’m referring to generic tips like, “Share it on social media.”

Advice like this makes me cringe. It’s so obvious, and so useless.

So I turned to one of my favorite resources for bloggers, where I discovered Kristi Hines’ Blog Post Promotion Course.

It’s an in-depth course on promoting blog posts through social media, promotion networks, forums, guest posts and more. The whole program has about 17 modules. So for this post, I’ll only include the FREE and EASY techniques, plus examples from when I used those strategies.

These are blog promotion strategies you can use when you’re:

Just starting out
Have no connections
A newbie blogger
Not so tech-savvy

With a little work and a few minutes, you can generate traffic and social media shares for your blog post.

Kristi Hines’ Blog Post Promotion Course, an Except:

Ask Experts to Contribute to Your Blog Post

I recently wrote a post about habits of likeable people, but instead of basing it on books and psychological tactics; I based it on celebrities. Now I don’t know anyone in Hollywood, but that didn’t stop me from getting experts for the piece.

Based on Kristi’s examples in the course, I wrote the email below:

Okay, I’m no “Mr.” but I got a favorable response from an expert already quoted in more established media.

Why did this email work?

Because it has the following elements:

Flattery
Specific questions
Benefits for the source
Respect for the expert’s time

Automatically Add Your Latest Blog Post to Your Email Signature

We all know email signatures can be used to promote your website and social accounts. But it’s just cumbersome to edit it every time you publish a new post.

Enter, WiseStamp, a free tool where you can create an email signature that contains your social media handles and latest blog post.

Just remember to remove other signatures you saved so your email doesn’t look weird.

Here’s what the signature looks like from Gmail:

Leverage Free Promotion Networks like Viral Content Buzz

Viral Content Buzz (VCB) is a promotion network, where you can earn credits for promoting other people’s content on your social media profiles.

Sharing other people’s content is great, as long as you carefully curate them. In the case of VCB, you can filter content according to niches so you can just share posts within your niche.

After you’ve earned enough credits, you can add your blog post (project) so other members can promote it for you. Just fill in the appropriate information in the ‘add project’ page, then choose your preferred promotion method:

Not everything can be promoted on VCB though. Back when I was new to the community, my first project was declined because of the ad placement within the post.

Add Tweetable Quotes to Your Content

Is there a powerful quote or tip on your post that people might want to share? Why not make it easier for them to do so?

ShareLinkGenerator is a free online tool that gives you a link or HTML code that you can insert like a typical hyperlink within your blog post.

It’s easy. Just choose a good message, preferably less 115 characters or less so there’s room for the post’s shortened URL and your Twitter handle.

Click “Create the Link” then insert the resulting URL to your post, like this:

Description: From Keep Inspiring Me, 9 Problem Solving Skills Great CEOs and Startup Founders Use to Tackle Tough Problems

Another tool you can use is ClicktoTweet, I just prefer ShareLinkGenerator because it can also create customized share-ables for LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest.

Use Google+ to Share Your Post and Email Friends in Your Circle

Google+ may not be the hit Google planned it to be, but it’s still a great way to get on top of Google’s search results. For example, when you enter “review Kristi Hines blog post promotion course” on Google, you’ll see this G+ status update at the bottom of the first page search results. It’s hard to do that using other social networks.

Next time you write a post, don’t ignore Google+! It only takes a few seconds to promote a post there, anyway. Simply enter the URL, a short description, a couple of hashtags (totally optional), then click share. Don’t forget to check the box that says, “Also send an email to Your circles.”

Use Slideshare to Breathe New Life to Old Posts

That post you published two months ago can be repurposed into a slide deck to drive new audience to your site. It’s a bit time consuming compared to the other tips listed here. But the lure of getting a sliver of Slideshare’s 60 million unique visitors a month makes it worth it.

The key here is not to complicate things. Create one slide for the introduction, then a slide each for every point you tackle, and the last slide for the blog post’s conclusion or call to action. If your blog post had 10 points, then it will probably have 12 slides including the introduction and CTA.

Here’s an example of a simple Slideshare from InstallCore:

How to Get Ahead as a First Time Manager – Advice from a GM from installCore

You can use PowerPoint, or other tools like Canva, or Haiku Deck.

Mention Brands, Experts, Tools and Resources You Referenced in the Blog Post

Did you interview an expert for your blog post? Did you mention a business, a tool or a book, perhaps? Great, that’s an extra promotional opportunity for you.

Everyone you mentioned probably have Twitter and Facebook accounts, and they’d be thrilled to see someone mention them. Yes, even the big brands love this because it gives them more visibility and improves their engagement rate.

You don’t need to write a novella or a gushy email. A simple heads up works just fine.

Go on a “Helpful / Insight Sharing” Commenting Spree on CommentLuv Enabled Blogs

Blog commenting was a tried and tested technique for getting back links, until spammers ruined it for everyone. Commentluv solves this by incentivizing people to share the site owner’s content in exchange for a choice of do-follow links to the commenter’s latest blog post.

Check out these sites for CommentLuv-enabled blogs, or Google “your keyword” + “commentluv enabled blog” to find a list of sites specific to your niche. Before writing a comment, read the WHOLE post first, then share something valuable by asking a thought-provoking question, or pointing a resource or tool not included in the post.

No more waiting time for the comment to be approved. It’s published as soon as you hit ‘post comment.’

Data is a Blogger’s Best Friend

Some of these strategies might work, some may not. Results may differ based on the content you write, your audience and the niche you’re in. To find out whether your blog post promotion efforts are working, track your results. Then do more of what works.

25 actionable blog post promotion tips

July 16, 2015 by John McDougall

I just bought a course by Kristi Hines on blog post promotion and before I take it, I wanted to brush up more on what others are saying. So this will be a multi part journey, as we explore together what numerous digital marketing experts are revealing about how to promote your blog posts.

I have 20 years of search engine optimization experience but “SEO” has changed and it has changed radically. SEO has potentially changed more from 2012 to 2015 than from 1997 to 2012!

1997 was the start of the Google era but it wasn’t until 2012 with the advent of Penguin that Google was able to enforce people to be authorities.

Gone are the good old days when we could rank in Google for things like “Saxophones”, “Hearing Aids” and “Wedding Locations” with all but a few adjusted title and meta tags and some on page optimization. And hush hush – maybe a few article directory links here and there.

Now you seriously need to put in some hard work to get traffic to your site and a blog is on the front lines of this battle. But a blog with no promotion is like a tree falling in the woods that almost nobody hears.

Here’s my first list of tips and stay tuned for more as my ideas evolve.

25 actionable blogpost promotion tips and rough workflow ideas

Create and optimize your blog posts properly as a pre requisite

Use SemRush to find keywords that are driving traffic to your competitors. Sort by search volume and cost per click to see what keywords matter. Promotion will make your chances of ranking for harder keywords more likely.
Create some of your content as longer, more shareable posts – 1,000 minimum to maybe 3,000 ish words and up if the quality stays high. If you are as pithy and concise as Seth Godin, go short but otherwise go with in depth content. See quicksprout.com as a good example of this.
Add a main photo (ideally numerous pics), bullet points to make your blog posts scan and skim friendly, social share buttons, quotes from influencers, links to back up factoids, an author name and a title/headline with a somewhat long tail keyphrase but that is also catchy like a numbered list or “how to”.
Optimize your posts title and meta description, alt tags/image names and keyword driven/short/enticing URL ( g. /25-actionable-blogpost-promotion-tips).

Use tools to find and outreach influencers and people who share regularly

Use Buzz Sumo to find content that relates to your important keywords.
Create a list of influencers / thought leaders in your niche partially based on who gets the most social media shares on their content according Buzz Sumo.
Get the Twitter handles of the people that shared the content of the top influencer posts. Use toofr.com or Rapportive to get the emails of those people.
Email 150 of these people who like to share content like yours and ask them if they would mind sharing your similar post. Consider BuzzStream for advanced outreach options.

Get good at social media or hid your head in the sand

Use Buffer to regularly share other people’s content, so that you build your own twitter following and can have more influence when you share your own content.
Use Hootsuite to engage people on Twitter through direct messages and replies etc. You need to interact and create relationships in the new “SEO” / digital marketing world, not just hide behind a wall of hopeful keywords, waiting for Google to always bail you out.
Comment on several blog posts a day with high quality, helpful suggestions and don’t link your site. Choose sites that are influential in your niche to get on the radar of the authors. Create a Disqus account for commenting.

It’s no surprise that the experts at Buffer nicely back this one up:

“One of the best ways I’ve found of promoting content is to develop relationships with people before you publish.” Belle Beth Cooper, Content Crafter at Buffer

Guest Post often – some people say to do this more than you post on your own site

Reach out to high quality and relevant blogs in your niche to ask them if they will accept a guest post from you. Try to write a several guest post per month. Don’t do it so much for the link. Do it almost exclusively for the traffic. Occasional links are great but Google doesn’t like this to be about the links. If you get enough guest posts, other natural links will come as you grow your brand.
Meet speakers at conferences and ask them for guest post or podcast interview opportunities.
Check out blogger communities: MyblogU, MyGuestBlog (was hit by Google) and Tomoson.
Use ahrefs.com to check out the sites that link to influencers and or search for author name + guest post etc.
Ann Smarty says when you reach out to bloggers, known their blog well and send manual emails. Be real. Don’t hire people in India to do this unless they are as good at this as Bruce Lee was at kicking ass. Otherwise, you will have your ass kicked and defeat the purpose of this process.
Connect with editors on social, join their Twitter chats or Google Hangouts or invite them to do the same with you.

Still not convinced? Neil Patel says: “I still regularly guest-post, despite getting over 500,000 visitors per month already.”

Join or start groups

Join or start relevant LinkedIn and or Facebook groups and be a regular contributor / helpful person and share your original content when it truly makes sense. If you have not done this before, join one group today and chime in on the conversation, after reading the flow of the threads.

Pay to play

Facebook promoted posts, LinkedIn and Twitter ads can also drive some traffic.
Stumble upon, Viral Content Buzz and Empire Avenue have options to “pay to be seen”.
Pay for consulting from influencers, which starts a relationship and can lead to other things.
Pay some of the top writers you can find, that also have a social following. You won’t get this for $50 to $100 a post if you are looking for deep traffic and connections. Don’t just pay writers but pay for their promotional help.

Email and email newsletters are one of the best blog promotion tactics

Build your email list by using free giveaways like ebooks, guides and interactive content like quizzes.
Share your best content with your list and ask influencers to share your content with their lists – which may require a joint venture / commission based type of arrangement.

Make a list of 25 influencers and avoid veering off course and thinking you have to reach out to one million. Even if you get a half dozen real relationships going, your guest post and promotion activities will increase significantly.

Want even more tips right now? Check out 32 Experts Share Their Best Blog Post Promotion Tips by Kristi Hines.

Conclusion

I may be an old school “SEO guy” who used to have it easy when you simply just added keywords and Google did the rest, but I am not an old dog that can’t learn new tricks. I am so excited to deepen my knowledge of blog post promotion and hope you will continue to join me as I interview other experts on this and write more posts about it.

The good news: It works and lots of people are doing it that get tens of thousands of visits a month that would not have come from simply selecting the right keywords.

The bad news: It takes way longer than old school SEO used to take.

If you are an expert and a thought leader but don’ have good website or blog traffic, these techniques are essential for you. You can do it on your own but be prepared for learning several pieces of software and various tactics. Or get some help on the tech side and focus on creating high quality content from your voice that SEO’s and social / promotion experts can help you share.

What are some of the best blog promotion techniques that you use?

How to Overcome Public Speaking Anxiety (with Jill Diamond of Accent Ace)

July 15, 2015 by John McDougall

John McDougall: Hi, I’m John McDougall and welcome to Authority Marketing Roadmap. Today my guest is Jill Diamond, President and founder of ACCENT ACE. Today we are talking about how to overcome public speaking anxiety. Welcome Jill.

Jill Diamond: Hi John, thanks for having me.

John: Yeah absolutely. Is it common to have a public speaking phobia?

Jill: I think so. I don’t know if you have ever heard the statistic that more people are afraid of public speaking than they are of dying. Have you ever heard that?

John: Oh, really? No.

Jill: And just to take it one step further, which I think is funny — Jerry Seinfeld has a joke and he says, “Well, if that’s true, that means that more people are afraid of giving the eulogy at a funeral than they are of actually being in the coffin itself”, which is kind of funny.

John: Nice. Rather die than have to get up there and speak in front of people.

Jill: Exactly.

John: In our site workingdemosite.com/authority, it’s all about thought leadership and getting experts out there. So that’s a problem, right?

Jill: Absolutely.

John: People trying to get their name and brand out there, there is a lot to be gained by public speaking.

Jill: Absolutely, because if you are an expert at something, it doesn’t mean you know how to communicate that. It can get lost at that very important moment whether you are giving a presentation, or giving an important meeting that you are leading.

It’s essential and I think too many people don’t really understand the benefits of it and how much…Listen to this statistic, Albert Mehrabian is a PHD and he did a study back in 1967 that looked at the elements of verbal communication, being the nonverbal component, the voice and the content. The verbal, the actual words you use.

Once you are an expert, provided that you are that expert, 55 percent of the message is influenced by nonverbal elements, and 38 percent is influenced by the voice. So it actually only leaves 7 percent once you get to that point of communication.

I think really working and developing on delivering skills, how to deliver that message, is underrated. It’s really, really essential to being an authority.

John: Sorry, what was the 7 percent left over part?

Jill: The content. The information itself.

John: That’s what I thought. Your tone, your body language, your vocal quality is basically the vast majority. If you are not confident and clear, then the message is just going to get buried.

Jill: Absolutely.

John: There is a difference between experts and authorities. Experts could be a guy in a garage or a girl in a garage that is really knowledgeable about something, but if they’re not out there in public and in their community getting recognition, then they’re more of an expert and less of an authority.

It’s great if you can take your expertise up into a public authority level. How can experts and entrepreneurs overcome public speaking anxiety?

Jill: If they do have anxiety, they have to look at how important it is for them to become that authority. If it’s important, it’s always about motivation. If you want to get better at golfing, you have to be motivated. If you want to take that expertise and become an authority, then you have to take a class.

You have to work with an expert, an authority if you will, in that field who can help you. I will tell you just as a tip to how to overcome that. One of the biggest ways to manage the anxiety is by focusing on your breathing. I think people don’t understand that, or they’ve never done it before.

But when you actually take focused breaths, you can slow down your metabolism. It’ll help you to focus, so your brain will work for you. Just start with breathing, that’s just the first thing that comes to mind.

John: I went to the Tony Robbins personal power type of conference a few years ago. It was awesome. I did the whole walking on fire.

Jill: Oh, cool.

John: It was great. I was always curious, “Jeez, is Tony Robbins really that great? Everybody talks about him, and he has a huge following”. In fact, I was really impressed, I really enjoyed it. One of the things he said was, “Stress is largely a breathing problem,” and he said, “You’ll be amazed. You get into stress, just start breathing.” That’s a great tip.

Jill: Absolutely. Let me take that one step further. In the days that I was an actor, one of the things that we always talked about is, you can develop a character by starting with how the character breathes. That I think goes very well with being a public speaker because in a way you have to take on that confident character, right?

You have to have everything it takes to make people believe that you know what you’re talking about. As in acting sometimes the actor starts with the breath.

John: Right, right and again if you’re not confident, they’re not going to get to that seven percent of the actual content. You’re not going to get your message out there, so slow yourself down, take deep breaths, and know that that’s really important. Not to add pressure to people in a way, right?

Jill: No, no, quite the opposite. You talked about slowing down, and that’s another really important technique or tip. It’s a technique called “thought chunking”. When we speak, we quite often leave out the punctuation in our voice, so where is the comma? Where is the period? When is that next new idea about to start?

And shouldn’t the pauses all be different lengths depending on where you are in your communication? It’s something that I think doesn’t take a whole lot of study. It just takes paying attention, and it takes listening to people who do it well.

Every good speaker has their own style, their own rhythm if you will, to that phrase. So that’s another tip, it’s called “thought chunking” — pausing and pacing as you speak.

John: If you are steamrolling over your sentences because you’re all excited, and you’re up there and waving your arms — and I do that, I know, and you’ve helped me with this — I get up there and I’m pretty confident, and I enjoy it, and I do a fair amount of public speaking, but you can then fall into the trap of you’re almost tripping over so many ideas. You’re getting them out there, and you’ve got all this great stuff, and you’re sharing it.

But if I understand you correctly, you have to be very intentional about “get an idea out there and pause”. Get an idea out there and pause a little bit, right? A little more, is that what you’re saying?

Jill: Absolutely what I’m saying. It’s two‑fold. It’s important for the audience members because when you pause, hopefully you’re pausing on a very key word, or an idea, so it gives them time to digest what you’re saying. That’s number one, it’s good for the audience.

Number two, it’s amazing how a millisecond of pausing will help you as the speaker, to check in, “How am I doing? Oh yeah, I was going too fast,” or “Maybe I’m not emphasizing what I really want to emphasize.” It gives you that instant to look at somebody in their eyes if you’re in a live setting to see, “Are people following me?” It helps the audience and it helps you.

John: They pick up that you’re confident from that even if you thought you were confident, again just using myself as a little guinea pig here. I’m out there being confident, and rolling, and rolling on all these ideas, but some people might even pick up on that as, “Whoa. This guy’s a little nervous or too much caffeine”.

Jill: For sure.

John: You want to check in on that, and a more powerful speaker has more intentional pauses.

Jill: Yes. They do, absolutely.

John: Awesome. What about building confidence? How else can people build confidence in public speaking?

Jill: I think a lot of times people underestimate the importance of practicing out loud. You spend all this time building your deck, having your meetings, making sure you’ve got all the information you need. Again, have you taken the time to outline what you’re going to say in such a way that it’s easy for you to grab your idea and say it?

The best way to be ready for those moments is to practice out loud because it always sounds really good in our head. But until we start talking to the wall, and using our voice, and moving across the room, we don’t know, “Wow. I’m not sure I’ve got this material yet.”

John: It really has worked well for me. One of my most recent talks was at Brandeis University. It was on authority analytics. I went a little further than I normally do to practice out loud. I think I did it four times. Now it’s an hour talk, so four times actually going through the entire thing is a good amount of time.

And maybe people do a lot more than that, I don’t know. For me, usually I’ll do it two or three times. And sometimes I’ll flip through the slides and not give the whole thing, but really envision what I’m saying as I go through each slide. That’s as I get to the tail end.

I made a greater effort to really give a good number of full out loud — one to a friend of mine, and several alone, but out loud. It really builds my confidence. When I go in feeling like I really know every slide, what I’m going to say, how I’m going to transition — oh man, my confidence goes way up.

Jill: Oh, you can ad‑lib. There’s so many things you can do when you know it cold, but I want to address a point. That is, that some people may be overwhelmed by the thought of, “Four hours just to practice it four times out loud, I don’t know, that seems like a lot. Right?” OK, you don’t have the time, you’re not ready for that commitment yet.

How about practicing the opening until it is something you can do in your sleep? Because it’s true when you start strong you have that confidence you need. I think that if you don’t have time to practice the whole thing, get the opening. Then may be work on some transitions, some really key transitions. Making sure that you like them and you know them because that will just make you feel better when you get there.

John: That’s a really good tip, definitely. What about public speaking quotes? One of my favorites is something along the lines of, “If you are nervous you are being egotistical, and really focusing on yourself when you should be there to serve people.” When I remind myself of that right before I go up to the podium it helps. Because it’s not really all about me here, I am here to give people a clear message. And that relaxes me a bit.

Jill: I think that’s really good, John, because we do get nervous. It’s all about how can we use that nervousness as a tool for energy to drive our enthusiasm, and our communication, which brings me to one of my favorite quotes.

When I was growing up, I was in a contest and I had to perform. My father had just finished a course in public speaking. He told me one of the things he learned which was to say right before you go out, “If you think enthusiastic, you will be enthusiastic.” Just to repeat that again and again, and it’s stuck in my head up to this day. I still say that to my clients because enthusiasm is contagious.

Enthusiasm shows up in your voice when you are speaking, and people get more interested in what you are saying when you are enthusiastic. For me that’s really an important thing to remember. That it’s not just about confidence but it’s about your passion and showing that.

I think what you brought up about the ego and focusing on the other, so often we forget that we are talking to human beings. We are going out there — it’s about building relationship, having rapport with these people.

So if you remember, one, to look at them in the eyes while you are talking, and bring that enthusiasm, and that confidence, and that pausing, and pacing of your speech. All of those things are going to take you away from your ego and yourself and put the attention on the other.

So I think those two things combined are really great for your audience today to keep in mind.

John: You can definitely learn this skill, right, public speaking? Not everybody is a natural born public speaker and they might feel, “I am nervous, and the best public speakers didn’t even start nervous”, but that’s not true, right?

Jill: That’s absolutely true. Jerry Weissman who wrote a book called “Power Presenter”, he makes it so clear that even if you were born with some kind of talent at public speaking, really you were not born as that expert speaker, it’s learned.

He has in some of his books — one of his books, Power Presenter — he has a lot of videos with the book that show, “Look at Bill Clinton when he wasn’t so great at public speaking and he couldn’t really manage the room, and now look at him when he can. Look at somebody like George Bush Jr. who maybe some of us didn’t think that he was such a great speaker. But he became more skillful, he developed a rhythm, a pattern, a pace, a way of pausing.

So everybody can definitely learn to be better and can learn to get over some of their fears.

John: And so, having a coach can help — that’s what you do, right? That’s one of the things you do. Tell us a little bit about your company and how people can get in touch with you and what services you provide.

Jill: Sure. I mentioned my acting background, and I also have a musical background. So I built a communication skills company that helps people with presenting and communicating in both informal and formal scenarios.

I’ve worked primarily over the years with non‑native English speakers. Helping them in this arena because it’s a space where it’s needed, to help people with the music of the language, and again with the organization of their message, and the delivery of their message.

Also I’ve worked with quite a few executives with public speaking from Americans as well, helping them to work on all of these skill sets. We do that one on one, we do that in group environments at management level. We do it offline, we do it online.

We’ve been in business 20 years, and work with everything from pharma companies, financial institutions, consumer goods. We are all over the map. We are there to help for sure.

John: Yeah. People should definitely check out your site, and your fun YouTube videos, and you playing guitar, and singing, and all that stuff. What is your web address again?

Jill: It’s www.accentace.com.

John: All right, good. Great, talking to you today Jill.

Jill: I appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.

John: Absolutely and check out workingdemosite.com/authority for more interviews and information on Authority Marketing. I’m John McDougall and see you next time on the Authority Marketing Roadmap.

7 simple steps for an effective influencer marketing strategy

June 29, 2015 by John McDougall

Influencer marketing is when you create relationships with people that are important in your niche. Influencers often have such a large following that a simple mention of your products, services or content can lead to increased traffic, social shares, back links and sales.

Many social media experts rave about influencer marketing and yet it is quite confusing for a lot of people. The barrier to get into it seems too high but using some of the simple steps below, you can cover a lot of ground with very little effort and get into the deeper aspects of it later.

Influencer marketing is not just about reaching bloggers to review physical products. It is also great for professional services firms and any company looking to raise their own thought leadership status.

1. Create an influencer marketing strategy document

It’s important to think about your goals in relation to influencer marketing before you get started. Are you looking for direct sales, to spread your content, or get more traffic to your website? Knowing your objective and documenting it is an important first step.

As Joe Paluzzi of the Content Marketing Institute says:

“Have an influencer strategy. I would say 99% of businesses that say they want to partner with influencers actually have no strategy. Start with why you are engaging with influencers (what is it going to do for the business).” @JoePulizzi

If you want to keep it really simple, create a one page strategy document outlining the following:

What is engaging with influencers going to do for our business?
What type of influencers do we want to reach the most?
How will we track your results? (E.g. more backlinks, shares and social engagement and or will you focus on sales etc.)

You can certainly create a much deeper strategy than this, but in my experience it is better to start small and have a completed document than to get way into the weeds and never finish.

2. Select influencers

Choosing influencers that are too large can result in no response, if you are just starting out. Picking people that aren’t quite at the top of the heap yet can result in faster progress. With that said, you might be pleasantly surprised at how many top-level people get back to you. Picking five of each tier is not a bad place to start.

Social influencer marketing tools to get you started

Generally speaking, top influencers have a large social following. Twitter is one of the easiest ways to find people of influence and these two tools can help you narrow down your search.

Followerwonk by MOZ is a great tool to look for people with large Twitter followings in your niche.

Rand Fishkin, the founder of Moz and who purchased Followerwonk to be part of his software in 2012 says:

“I use Followerwonk for Twitter analytics, connecting to new people, and improving my use of Twitter (which is my primary social network)” @randfish
Topsy is an amazing tool and according to the New York Times, it searches Twitter better than Twitter.

findyourinfluence.com is an interesting paid service and that helps you find and manage influencers or you can hire an influencer marketing agency to help.

There are lots of great influencer marketing tools but I suggest you start with one and get good at it for finding influencers before using another.

3. Share the content of your influencers using Buffer

Using the social media management tool called buffer, can help you to regularly share the content of your targeted influencers.

If you are going to build a social following, you are going to need to be sharing content that you discover. You might as well share the content of your influencers on a regular basis.

Buffer has a section called feeds. You can select 10 different blogs or websites with which you want to receive their latest updates.

By making the feeds your influencers, your regular content sharing activities will automatically be focused on them.

10 is a good place to start so you don’t get overwhelmed.

Joel Gascoigne, the founder of buffer says:

“The best things we know and love started as tiny things.” @joelgascoigne

Check out my recent post on how to use Buffer for more details and a workflow.

4. Comment frequently on the blog posts of your influencers

By regularly sharing the content of your influencers and by making thoughtful comments on their blog posts, you gain trust and credibility with them.

Blog commenting is often considered spam but it is definitely not, if you’re doing it in a helpful way. Please do not make a mindless comment and slap in a backlink to your site…

The other great thing about blog commenting is that it forces you to read your influencers content more regularly. You can’t really make a helpful comment unless you get a vibe on the post and the community of people having a conversation.

Neil Patel of quicksprout.com and who is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics says:

“When you comment on other people’s blogs, you won’t see a ranking increase. Or at least it’s been my experience with all of my blogs. So when commenting, don’t do it for higher rankings. Instead, do it for traffic, branding, and conversions.” @neilpatel

5. Quote your influencers in your content

Use quotes from influencers frequently in your blog posts like I am doing here. While it is fantastic if you can email them and get an original quote, it is perfectly fine to start with quotes that you take off of their website or even from other people that have quoted them.

You can link back to their website where the quote is from. When you share the content you have created on Twitter, make sure to use their Twitter handle.

PR services like helpareporter.com and PRLeads.com are largely driven by journalists looking for quotes from experts because good reporting isn’t just the voice of the media. If you ignore this long-standing tradition, your content will be mostly your own perspective without any other expert’s opinion or stats to back it up.

Aaron Agius, founder of Louder Online, when discussing using BuzzStream for influencer outreach says:

“If your piece of content is a blog post, put the quote in the post and add a link to the influencer’s website and social media accounts, such as Twitter. Once the article is published, email the influencer and tell them the content is published and ask them to share it on social media and possibly include it in their email newsletter.

This accomplishes two things: 1) you gain exposure to a new audience, and 2) your content becomes more reputable because you’re associating yourself with an influencer in your industry.

Reach out to multiple influencers. You probably won’t hear back from all of them, but you should hear back from at least one or two.” @IAmAaronAgius

6. Use LinkedIn groups for influence marketing

Neil Patel says he pays about $5,000 a month to LinkedIn for advertisements to get people to join his LinkedIn group. If you don’t have a LinkedIn group, you can join someone else’s. Neil explains why this is so important below:

“An even better way to connect with an influencer on LinkedIn is to look at their profile to find the groups they belong to. Join one of those groups. As a member of a shared group, you’ll be able to send a connection request.

Once you have connections with influencers, you can direct message them. Your connections will get a notice in their email inbox (depending on their settings).” @neilpatel

Using this technique you can create more connections and get into the inboxes of more influential people, where you might not normally be able to get their email address.

7. Ask for a favor

Now that you have done your influencers a favor by sharing their content and engaging on their site, it’s time to ask them for a small favor.

The influence principle of reciprocity, as stated by Dr. Cialdini, says that if you do a small favor for someone, they are likely to return it. So while you might not get everyone to respond, you are now set up for success. So much more so than just emailing people out of the blue.

Here are a few things that you can ask influences to do for you:

Ask them to share your content. Send them an email or LinkedIn email and say something along the lines of:
Ask for an interview. Interviewing an influencer puts you side-by-side with them, which increases your trust and credibility with the general public. The influencer might benefit a little bit from your interview, but it is mostly for you.
Ask them if they will accept a guest blog post from you.
Give them story ideas or helpful, short, original quotes if they are a media site, that they can use in their next story.

Start small and win big

The days of simple search engine optimization strategies are long gone and if you really want to succeed with search and social media marketing, you need to be seen as an authority. Google will pick up on your thought leadership status from the backlinks, media mentions and social shares of your content and influencers are at the heart of the processes that make those things happen.

Hoping that that content that you create will do extremely well solely because of the long tail keywords in your website pages or simply because you threw it out there on social media despite a limited amount of followers, is short sighted. Trust me, I have personally made these mistakes in the past and hope you’ll join me on this more modern digital marketing journey.

Influencer marketing may seem complicated but a lot of the steps to do it are things you should be doing anyway, if you care about growing your business. Great things start small and if you keep it simple, you just might start to really enjoy it.

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