Every morning while getting dressed I have The Today Show playing in the bathroom. I enjoy catching up on the news and getting the forecast for the day’s weather.
At least until the commercials come on.
Category Archives: Social Media
4 Insights I Gleaned from Building My Own Platform
Last week, I spoke at the Catalyst Conference in Irvine, California on the topic of my new book, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World (Thomas Nelson, May 22). As part of my introduction, I shared how my audience has grown since I started blogging in April of 2004.
Note that these numbers reflect my average monthly unique visitors. I simply took the total number of unique visitors for the year and divided by twelve months (or in the case of 2004, eight months). With the exception of the first few years, this data came from my Google Analytics account.
How Podcasts Can Fuel Your Personal Growth
As you may know if you are a regular reader of my blog, I started a weekly podcast on February 14th. It is called, "This Is Your Life.” Since that time, I have become a more regular podcast listener myself.
Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/4112642
As Mike Elgan, opinion columnist for ComputerWorld, said,
What I’ve Learned About Blogging from Writing More Than 1,000 Posts
I started blogging eight years ago. Since that time, I have written 1,115 posts. At an average of 750 words per post, that is 836,250 total words—the equivalent of about fourteen full-length books.
Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/EdStock
During that time, I have learned a great deal about blogging:
Top Posts and Commenters for February 2012
In case you missed them, here are my top ten posts for February 2012, along with my top ten commenters. I am sending each of the top commenters a free copy of A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home by Steve Pemberton.
Graphic courtesy of Wordle.net
Here are my top ten posts:
Social Media Is Free, But Comes with a Price
I am mostly offline, attending a business conference. I have asked several bloggers to post in my absence. This is a guest post by Jason Stambaugh, who is a husband, father, founder of Wevival, and blogger. You can connect with him on his blog or follow him on Twitter. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.
“The best thing about social media is that it’s free!” I heard this the other day, and cringed. While it’s true that we don’t need a credit card or PayPal account to use Facebook or Twitter, there is still a cost to social media. We pay daily with our time.
Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/hogie
On an average day, I spend more than an hour engaging on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. Throw in a Tweetchat, a newsletter, a YouTube video, and four blog posts each week, and I spend twenty hours a week, using social media to build my platform.
That’s a part-time job! Multiply seventy to eighty hours per month by any hourly rate, and we’re talking serious money.
How to Become a Twitter Ninja in Less Than 30 Minutes a Day
Twitter is one of key tools in my platform toolbox. It represents about 21 percent of my blog referral traffic. In terms of the return, I don’t know of a better investment.
Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/by_nicholas
Currently, I have more than 110,000 followers on Twitter. According to TwitterCounter and RetweetRank:
Top Posts and Commenters for January 2012
In case you missed them, here are my top ten posts for January 2012, along with my top ten commenters. I am sending each of the top commenters a free copy of the New York Times bestseller, How Do You Kill 11 Million People?: Why the Truth Matters More Than You Think by Andy Andrews.
Graphic courtesy of Wordle.net
Here are my top ten posts:
The Power of Video to Sell Your Products and Services
Today I was talking with a New York Times bestselling author. He was explaining to me how he had used video to drive his most recent book onto the best sellers list. “Nothing sells like video,” he explained.
Many authors have done this in the past few years, including Brendon Burchard, Gary Vaynerchuck and Chris Brogan.
10 Ways to Generate More Blog Traffic
Whenever I speak on the topic of platform-building, someone always asks, “How can I generate more traffic for my blog?” Most are hoping I have a silver bullet, something that will instantly get them the recognition they deserve.
Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/burwellphotography
The bad news is that it’s not quite that simple. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is a platform. It takes doing several things right—and doing them over a long period of time.
12 Ways to Get More Twitter Followers
I rarely meet a Twitter user who doesn’t want more followers. A few argue that the numbers aren’t important. They are only concerned with “quality followers.” I’m not sure it is either/or, but I notice that most of the people making this argument have very few followers.
Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/matspersson0
Why would you want more followers? Three reasons:
- More followers provide social authority. Like any other ranking system, the higher your follower count, the more people assume you are an expert—or at least someone interesting. It may not be valid, but it’s the way it works in a world where there is a ranked list for everything.
