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Setting Up Your Own Affiliate Marketing Blog
Setting Up Your Own Affiliate Marketing Blog
When you decide to embark on an affiliate marketing career, an affiliate marketing blog is a must have strategy. It can seem a little overwhelming to set one up if you’re not technologically advanced but setting up a blog is actually pretty simple with a few easy steps and should be an integral part of your affiliate marketing plan
First, you’ll need to register a domain (use Namecheap). This is your website address – also known as your URL. Make sure you choose carefully when you choose your domain and see that it reflects the topic of the niche. You’ll have to pay a small fee each year to keep your domain name.
Second, you’ll need to set up hosting. A2 Hosting is one of the most economical and popular options for hosting and gives you great technical support. You’ll pay a monthly fee for hosting – unless you want to pay up front for a discount.
Once you have a domain and hosting, it’s time to set up your blog. The easiest way to do this is to use Fantastico. This is a program built into A2 Hosting that installs your blog on the website. It’s very user friendly and doesn’t require you to have a technical background.
You’ll need to choose a theme for your blog. There are many options – from very simple freebies to very detailed, paid custom designs. When you’re starting out, it’s best to choose a simple theme. Once you’re more comfortable with blogging, you may decide to install something more advanced.
WordPress offers free themes you can install onto your site. These are easy to use, and you’ll find that you can be up and running with your blog in a matter of minutes. After using Fantastico to install your blog theme, you’ll need to set up the blog settings.
It’s important to make sure your blog is set up to be searched by search engines. Under Settings, you’ll want to give your site a title and a tagline, which tells people what the site is about. You’ll also want to assign an email address and set up your date and time zone. Then you’ll need to decide how you want comments and posts to be displayed on your blog.
Finally, you’ll want to personalize your blog. You’ll select a header that reflects your niche. You’ll also want to create an about page so that people can understand who the author is. This is known as an About page. Make sure you share a photo so that readers can connect more personally with you. Create a disclaimer page that helps you abide by any legal rules or terms of service.
As you write posts, you’ll want to make sure that you’re personal and friendly and work to develop relationships with your readers. This is the best way to build a community of devoted readers who will trust your advice.
Setting up your own affiliate marketing blog is actually quite simple. As you go through the process, it will get easier. The more you work with your blog, the more you’ll understand about how it operates and how you can use your blog to promote products in your niche.
So, now you have your blog up and running, let’s have a look at the optimal way to do a product review, an integral part of your affiliate marketing strategy.
The Best Way To Review Info Products Online
While reviewing digital products isn’t completely different from tangible products, there are some differences in the best way to review info products online. First, you’ll want to purchase the product yourself and then begin to implement it.
You can’t really review an info product unless you’ve tried it yourself. But as you implement, you’ll want to document the entire process from beginning to end. Begin with the buying process. What did the sales page look like? What was the cost? How did the message affect you?
Then move on to the process of buying and downloading and explain how that went – including One Time Offers, Upsells and Downsells. In addition, look for customer service information and test it out. Even email the author of the product to see what kind of response time you receive. Write about all of these tasks as part of your review.
As you document the process you’ll want to share both your excitement about new ideas or strategies as well as any frustrations or disappointments you have with the product. You’ll want to share your feelings about the product as honestly as possible.
At the same time, you’ll want to avoid giving so much detail that your reader doesn’t need to buy the product. For one thing, it’s plagiarism to share someone else’s system once you’ve bought it. For another, consider the fact that you’re working as an affiliate marketer, and you want to encourage sales of the product.
Your review of an info product can take several days or even weeks depending on the product. You’ll want to write as you use the course so that you don’t have to back and remember what you were doing and how it was going.
As you implement the product, you should be open about what’s going well and what isn’t going smoothly. You should also make sure that you discuss any results you’re having. For example, if you purchased a course on list building, have you been able to actually increase the number of people on your list?
The cardinal rule for an info product is that you always have to be honest with your review. When you’re honest, your readers will be able to trust what you say. Then when you make positive reviews and recommendations you’ll have better sales.
If you’re dishonest and gloss over problems, your readers may discontinue their trust in your recommendations, and you’ll see a decline in your sales as well. The best way to review info products online is to share your experience openly and honestly – warts and all.
Now we’ve looked at the best way to do a review, let’s take a look at what you should avoid when doing any type of affiliate product review.
The Best Way To Ruin An Affiliate Product Review
As an affiliate marketer, it’s important to make sure that you don’t get in your own way and ruin an affiliate product review. First and foremost, you want to deliver a review that people can trust. That means you must be honest about what you’re promoting.
So the first rule of thumb is to make sure that you don’t lie in any of your reviews. If you say something is wonderful, but it turns out not to be, you’ll lose the trust of your readers. You can only make money with affiliate reviews if people trust what you have to say about the products.
That means that you’ll point out some things you like and point out criticisms as well. It could also mean that you just tell your readers there’s a bad product on the market. It’s better to miss out on possible commissions from that one product than to mislead people into wasting money.
As soon as you decide to lie and say that a product is perfect, you destroy your credibility. If you truly do love a product yet still find flaws, you can be honest about it. Just don’t try to pass off a product as perfect when you’re clear that it isn’t.
It’s also important to choose quality products to promote. You may think something is going to be great, but after you purchase it and take a look, you realize it doesn’t deliver quality. In that case, consider it a small loss of your time and money and move on to something better.
Don’t try to promote products that you know don’t deliver. When you recommend junk products to your readers, you won’t be trusted. You’ll diminish your reputation, and you’ll have trouble bringing in income from your reviews.
Instead, make sure that you’re always honest. Discuss the positive things about the product as well as the drawbacks. Promote products that are high quality and will deliver valuable information and tools to your readers.
With affiliate marketing, it’s important to build relationships and trust. When you have trust and recommend a product, people will be more likely to make purchases. But if you recommend shady products, your readers will not only hang on to their money, but they may even quit reading your recommendations.
The best way to ruin an affiliate product review is to be dishonest and promote bad products. But if you avoid these behaviors, you can build a following that will help you to bring in steady income.
Anyone can make a career out of affiliate marketing but not everyone who attempts to succeeds. You should be ready to work hard and choose those programs that are genuine and that will provide you with an opportunity to grow and use your blog to promote great products and keep your reviews honest.
I hope these affiliate marketing tips have helped, and if you want to know more about affiliate marketing check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 😊
Grow Your List With Your Content
Grow Your List With Your Content
All marketers will tell you that the most important asset you can build is your email list and it is something they all wish they had focused on earlier. You own your list and can follow up with highly targeted email marketing to turn prospects into buyers.
Creating lead magnets of various descriptions is a great way to entice people to part with their valuable email address in return for a highly valuable free gift.
These gifts can be reports, checklists, video, audio, infographics etc. The point is they must be high-quality and extremely useful; in fact, your readers should be prepared to pay for it. Don’t go for volume; we are all swamped with too much information, and this is why quick checklists and the like are becoming more popular than a 100 page eBook!
OK, now that you’ve created and made multiple freebies and given your audience multiple entry points to your list, you can focus on growing your list, and a great way to do that is to write highly informative content on your blog, and then to offer a congruent freebie in exchange for their contact details.
By the way, if you are serious and want to take your blogging and content marketing to the next level, check out the Rapid Blogging Blueprint. This is a premium level training that takes you through each and every step of setting up your own highly profitable blog and profiting from it. You can check it out here.
Of course, you need to get eyes on the content first, so let’s look at a few ways to attract readers to your blog content using a couple of content marketing staples.
Write Enticing Headlines
When creating content to get more traffic, it’s important to make sure that people are interested in the topic. Interest begins with appealing headlines that make people curious enough to click on them.
So, what makes them curious? Many things in a headline can make the reader mentally ask a question when they see the wording and phrasing.
Let’s look at a few strategies and techniques you can use in your content publishing, specifically your headlines.
Some tips for writing effective headlines include:
- Use Numbers – Using a number implies a certain amount of information will be given to the reader and it makes them curious. Compare these two headlines. “How to Build Your List” or “7 Free or Low-Cost List Building Strategies”. Which one would you be more likely to click, if you were interested in building your list?
- Use the Right Keywords – It’s essential that you know what words your audience uses when they talk or think about their needs, pain points, and the solutions. This is because knowing the exact phrases and concepts will help you choose the words, phrases, and feelings that will persuade them to take action. You can also research keywords using tools like those from SemRush.
- Make Readers Think and Question – Using the right words can challenge your audience’s perception about something, just by reading the title. It can make them think, “How can that be?” or “Have I missed something?” This works well if you craft a title that mentions their problem and hints at the solution using an unexpected word or phrase.
- Mention the Benefits – People always care more about their results rather than how fancy the features are. A good way to develop a click-worthy headline is to focus on the benefits or the ultimate result of the solution provides. For example, “Save $50 Per Week Using These 3 Tools.”
- Offer Realistic Hope/Promise – Another tactic you can use to create headlines is to offer realistic hope and solutions. “How Single Mother Quits Waitress Job and Earns Six Figures with Part-Time Home Business” is a good headline that offers readers hope and encouragement for changing their status quo. The headline promises to tell you how to earn six figures from home, using the single mother as their case study or example. However, the hope must be realistically do-able for most people. Avoid unbelievable, sensationalized, exaggerated, or click-bait headlines at all costs.
Taking the time to create the right headline for your target audience ensures that you reach and connect with them in a more personal way – through their needs, thoughts, and feelings. Once they feel connected with you and want the benefits offered, they are compelled to sign up for your opt-in freebie or other item.
Make On-Page SEO A Top Priority
Another way to get more traffic to your opt-ins is to rank higher on SERPs. On-page SEO can help you accomplish this. Your audience usually finds you via search engine result pages (SERPs). A search engine’s job is to provide their audience with a list of relevant, useful information and content, based on the words they used in the search.
Your job is to ensure that your target market can find your content using the specific words and phrases that are natural to them.
Here are a few SEO strategies and tips to help you rank higher on search results pages:
- Titles – Use keywords in the first three words of page URLs and titles. Try not to use more than 50 characters per title. Be sure to clean up the URL by taking out the stop words unless it makes the URL misrepresent what the content is about.
- Make Content Long Enough – Long content of 2000+ words isn’t a must. However, when it comes to getting more traffic, Google and other search engines tend to rank longer content (2,250 to 2,500 words) higher on the results pages. Hubspot reported that some readers prefer to read content that contains at least 2000 words (current in 2021 but the ongoing trend is for higher quality lengthy content). So, the take-away here is to incorporate both types of content on your site. Depending on your goal, your “ideal” word count likely needs to be greater than in previous years.
Keep in mind that you are writing for your readers and they don’t count words. They want accurate, detailed information that fully answers their questions and solutions that help them fix their problems. Give them what they want/need and a little more.
- Avoid Duplicate Content – This is important whether the content is on your site or off your site. If you have duplicate content on your site due to sales pages, set the site to skip indexing the duplicate content. Also, avoid plagiarizing by double checking content using a service like Grammarly.com or Copyscape.com.
- Include Meta Descriptions – These are necessary to ensure that your audience can find you. Include the keywords that help your audience find the content. If you use software like Yoast SEO, it will help you optimize your content.
- Create Title and Alt Image Text – Don’t just upload an image to your site without filling out this information. This is helpful to search engines and readers, in case the images don’t load. A side benefit is that it helps people with visual impairments to read your site more easily.
- Use Header Tags – You have H1, H2, and H3 header tags that you can use to organize and make your content look better and make certain words stand out. In addition, it helps search engines determine what information is important. Make these tags logical with the most important words using H1 tags.
- Edit Well – Spelling and grammar do matter. If you spell things wrong, the search engines may not send the traffic your way. If people find the content, they won’t trust you as much if you have these issues. You don’t have to be perfect, but you do need to use grammar that is appropriate for your audience.
Finally, be sure to add internal linking under the articles and blog posts with relevant content. This helps your audience find related information on your site. In addition, it also helps search engines to properly map your site and send the traffic to you.
If you want to know more about nurturing you list, check out the featured resource below for a free Simple List Building report; download, read it and take action 😊
Authority Marketing – Be Where Your Audience Is
Be Where Your Audience Is
In a previous post on Authority Marketing, we talked about the importance of knowing your audience through market research so that you can position yourself in a way that people relate to, resonate with and believe in.
And one of the best things you can do to position yourself at the top of your market is to learn as much as possible about your competition, as well as what’s selling in your niche and what your customer base wants most from you.
And remember that you should never aim for a broad niche. When it comes to positioning yourself as an authority in your market, you want to become the go-to person for a specific topic, or section of the market.
Then later, you can expand.
That way you’re not only able to locate your customer base, but you’ll also have a clear focus and a solid action plan. Instead of trying to be everywhere at once, you’ll also be able to narrow down the places that you can best connect to your audience.
OK, so, the next logical step is to be where your market spends most of their time.
Creating your own forum or message board is great, but it’s always easier to connect with people within the social platforms and websites they are already familiar with and actively use.
What one social media platform is most commonly used by your core audience?
When conducting research for one of my markets, I discovered that most of my younger customers spend more time on Twitter or Instagram while the older generation seems to prefer Facebook.
You might even find that your ideal customer likes some other platform entirely, like Pinterest, Reddit or YouTube.
The point is: do your research and find out where they are spending their time online. Then join the discussion!
Set up accounts on these platforms and create a content plan that stays true to your brand. Don’t confuse your business brand with your personal life, either. You’ll want a separate account where you’re going to share expert advice and high-quality information that targets specific areas of your niche.
You don’t need family photos or your political views on that platform. Keep it separate and keep it focused!
Also, don’t overextend yourself or you’ll lose your ability to truly connect with your audience through consistent engagement. Instead, choose one or two of the platforms where your customers spend the most time and set yourself up.
Create a consistent theme across all platforms as well. Use the same color scheme and other components and elements so that you’re able to solidify your brand and become instantly recognizable. This is critical when it comes to creating a well-known brand that people identify.
Use a good professional photo and profile picture. If you need royalty-free images, try Dreamtime or Shutterstock. It’s usually best to spring for a good professional photo you can use on across your platform.
Create a killer bio, focusing on what really matters to your audience. This will include relevant keywords that instantly identify who you are and what your focus is. And of course, include a link to your website or squeeze page where you offer a free incentive for joining your inner circle.
Then, spend time connecting with your core audience! Offer quality information, link back to a blog or website as often as possible and focus on delivering value.
That’s how authorities are created.
Tip: Look for things like:
- Commonly asked questions posted by your target audience.
- Posts with a high number of comments or likes.
- Posts with the highest number of social shares.
Identify Pain Points
Now that you’re on most popular social media platforms that your customer base uses, pay attention. Follow trending hashtags (#) in your area of expertise to see what people are talking about.
“Friend” or “Follow” some other experts and read their posts. Always work towards staying engaged. Comment where appropriate so people begin to associate your brand to being a knowledgeable person and thought-leader.
What you’ll want to focus on is gaining valuable insights that you can later use in your marketing campaigns. You’re researching your customers to see what they need and how you can give it to them. Some researchers call these “pain points” – what are people complaining about or feeling pain from?
Not particularly emotional pain, but what struggles are they facing in their personal or business lives?
This step takes a bit of time, but it’ll be worth it in the end because you’ll know, with certainty, exactly how to solve problems and position yourself as someone who can help them reach their goals.
You can’t possibly learn enough from your core audience based on one or two posts or comments.
Really dig down into these ongoing conversations and see what the majority of people are saying or needing help with within your market.
What do they already know and what do they need to become aware of?
What areas have been exhausted and where do you see a niche you can fit yourself into?
Remember, you’re looking at what the majority needs help with. Never focus your marketing campaigns on what one or two people need help with. Instead, always look for ways to solve the largest problem in your market.
Engage in conversations regularly. This goes beyond just social media as well. You should be frequently visiting authority blogs, or forums, as well as Facebook groups that include an active audience.
The point is to make yourself visible and to stay on people’s radar.
The more you interact and engage your audience, the easier it will be to position yourself an authority in your market.
In fact, you’ll automatically build an audience just because you’ve dedicated time to addressing problems and consistently provided helpful content that resonated with them.
If you want to know more about leveraging the power of authority marketing, then check out the featured resource below for a free report that expands on this post; download, read and take action 🙂
The Top 2 Marketplaces To Sell Your Online Courses
The Top 2 Marketplaces To Sell Your Online Courses
If you’re an entrepreneur and into online marketing and planning to create a video-based digital marketing course, you’ll want to look at SkillShare. This is also a great place to start because they let you upload individual lessons rather than having to create a full-length course.
Lessons must be 10 minutes or longer, however most videos range from 15-25 minutes long, on average.
Students enroll in the courses that interest them, and you’re paid royalties each time someone watches your videos.
Best of all, there’s no approval process, so you can get started right away.
It’s one of the best places for those who are just starting out because there aren’t a lot of requirements and it’s really easy to put out a simple course just by uploading a single lesson.
Here’s the link:
Another course marketplace that I really like is Teachable.
Teachable provides you with the ability to fully brand your course, including creating and customizing a complete online school using their easy website building tool.
You can then incorporate your design into your main course page, lectures and even sales pages. When it comes to revenue share, Teachable works a bit differently from other programs by offering membership tiers that cost anywhere from $39-299 per month.
You are charged a 5-10% commission fee per sale unless you choose to upgrade to a paid membership plan but when just starting out I recommend testing out the free plan to get a feel for how things work, and then upgrading later.
You can find out more information here:
https://teachable.com/pricing/comparison
Now you have a platform to sell your course, you need to ensure that there is a market for it…
Validating Your Course Topic
“Validating” your market simply means taking steps to ensure that the market is there and that there are people likely to pay for a course on your chosen topic.
It’s clear to see why validating your market is so important, right, and this is important for any business venture, including internet marketing?
You don’t want to spend a lot of time working on a course that no one is willing to pay for.
Here’s how to validate your topic:
Create a list of 4-5 question-based phrases you feel a prospective student might use when searching for help on the problem you’re considering covering in your course.
Then, run a test by entering these questions into places like:
Google.com
Why not start with the major search engine? You’ll be able to quickly spot the number of blog posts that address these questions as well as uncover social media accounts, and websites that cover this topic.
Pay attention to all of the following:
Are there any actual courses already available?
Try adding “course,” “lessons,” and “training” to your search terms in order to come up with relevant results.
Are there relevant ads on the page?
If so, chances are it’s a profitable niche market and one worth taking a closer look at.
Do videos appear on the first page?
If you’re finding lots of links to YouTube videos after running your search, it’s a good sign that the topic is in-demand.
Amazon.com
Run your searches through Amazon and pay attention to the number of books available on the topic.
Take things a step further by reading reviews left by customers, as well as the overall ranking of the top 50 books.
Udemy.com
Udemy is one of the leading marketplaces online when it comes to selling courses, but it’s also a goldmine of information when researching niche markets and possible digital products.
In fact, Udemy is one of the easiest ways to not only evaluate the profitability of any course topic you’re interested in, but you’ll be able to instantly come up with a complete outline in a matter of minutes.
Quora.com
Question and answer websites like Quora make it easy to conduct niche research and get a feel for what your market is most interested in. Browse for trending questions and open discussions, paying close attention to the thought leaders who commonly provide answers.
Following those influencers can be a great way to come up with ideas for courses based on hot topics they cover on their websites and blogs, as well as their social media profiles.
I hope this has helped you come up with a few ways to validate your topic.
Next, let’s look at a powerful way to deliver your course…
Live Sessions = Profits
Have you ever seen a live session in action?
One of the most powerful ways to deliver your course related content is with live session training.
This lets you schedule meetings with all of your students which obviously will increase engagement and get people excited about your information.
Live sessions have huge impact on the overall value of your course and can really help you stand out in competitive markets.
The more you engage your audience – the more popular your course will be.
Make sense?
People love getting hands on training, especially when it’s in real time because they know the information begin given is current and up to date.
Here’s a great marketplaces where you can create a course designed around live sessions:
WizIQ: https://www.wiziq.com/
WizIQ has been around for more than 10 years and continues to thrive as a centralized community for live classes and popular courses.
WizIQ supports all file formats, so you can create a course that offers a variety of content ranging from video to audio, as well as include quizzes, surveys and tests that serve as auxiliary components.
Finally, let’s look at some ways to ensure your course is profitable from the very beginning…
Course Profit Strategies
I’ll leave you with a few last-minute tips and strategies to help you launch your course and maximize your income.
Just creating a random course and expecting the profits to come rolling in is rather naïve and is rarely going to happen, so you need to think strategically.
These 3 or 4 tips can really make a difference to the profitability of your online courses so please consider them carefully.
1: Consider Your Content Formats Carefully
The four main content formats you typically see in online courses include: video, audio, text and digital downloads (like PDF’s, workbooks, spreadsheets, etc.)
Usually, the preferred format is video, and there’s good reason for it: It’s multi-sensory. Your students can both see and hear the instruction which means it’s far more engaging and entertaining.
For that reason, you should always include at least a few video based modules in your course.
2: Give Your Course A Sexy Title
Successful courses always have a targeted, clear title that appeals to the majority of their market.
If you’re creating a course on how to build a profitable blog, a title like “6-Figure Blogging” would likely attract the right audience.
It tells your prospect what the course is about and gets them excited about the possibility of earning 6-figures a year.
3: Price Your Course Strategically
Don’t stick a price tag on your course without doing research. You want to make sure that you’re focusing on goal-oriented pricing.
What that means is that you’re assigning a value to your course based on the results your students can expect, rather than the time it took you to create the course.
You want to set a reasonable price without under valuing your content.
You also need to keep your personal goals in mind, such as:
- The number of people you are trying to reach. Obviously a lower price point will drive in a higher number of learners.
- Your income objectives. A higher price point will generate more money even with a lower enrolment.
And finally,
4: Use Your Course As A Springboard To Greater Profits
A course is a natural steppingstone to upsell from so keep this in mind when creating and pricing your course.
It’s a great way to introduce your brand to a new audience, and to build credibility in your market.
A course lets your leads get to know you!
I’ll leave you with a course checklist that will help you create a profitable course that will stand out to your audience.
Step 1: Validate your topic idea
Make sure you’ve researched your market in order to verify overall demand and give your course the best chance at success.
Step 2: Create your Course Outline
Building a course from scratch can take time but if you work with an outline you’ll have a strong foundation for your training product. It will also help ensure you stay focused while covering the most important steps needed for your students to be successful.
Step 3: Create your Course Content
Try to provide a variety of formats, and always include at least one video module in your training program.
Step 4: Give your course a sexy title
Come up with a powerful, attention-grabbing title that will stand out in the market while giving students a clear idea as to what your course is about.
Step 5: Launch your course!
Chances are you’ll sell access without doing any off-site marketing of your own, but if you really want to maximize your income you should do your best to connect with your audience and make them aware of your training program.
Spread your marketing message via social media, create a Facebook group only for students, create a lead page that offers a free incentive for those who subscribe to your list and always be on the lookout for new ways to increase visibility.
If you want to know more about creating a profitable online course, check out the featured resource below for a free report; download, read it and take action 😊
Social Media Analytics
Social Media Analytics
Are you a social marketer? One thing that is hard to do sometimes is to interpret what actions mean on social media. The fact is, not all actions even matter. It’s important to know what matters and what doesn’t and this may vary between the various social media platforms.
It’s also important to know what everything means or potentially means based on other factors and the goals you set. Below are some important questions to consider when social media marketing.
* Leads – How many new leads did you get from the action you performed? If you set up a freebie guide and marketed that, how many people signed up and downloaded it? If people downloaded a freebie, how many who did that took further action?
* Engagement – When you make a post, how many people respond in some way to the engagement? What was the point of the engagement? Did the audience do what you thought they’d do?
* Reach – How many people shared your post? How far did the post reach, meaning how many people laid eyes on it and shared it? If a lot of people shared it, you might consider adding more content like that.
* Impressions – When you boost a post on Facebook, how many impressions did it make versus how many people saw it, shared it, and engaged with it? What did they do afterwards?
* Funnels – With your analytics software you can set up a means to testing out your funnels to find out which type of funnel works best. This can help you identify holes in your plans to reach your goals.
* Unique Visits – It’s important to know how many unique visits you get each day, where they came from, and what they did after they got there. Did they convert? Did they sign up for anything? Did they download something? Did they search your site?
* Repeat Visits – Having a lot of repeat visitors is a sign of a healthy site with a lot of content for the audience to read and look at. What is the percentage of repeat visitors versus new traffic? If it’s low, what can you change? Are you targeting your audience correctly?
* Bounces – Are people coming to your website and then leaving before doing anything? If this rate is high, then that means something is wrong. Find out where the links are coming from and try to determine if the content is badly targeted or not.
* Exits – How and what page are people using to exit your website, and if they came from social media where did they come from? Can you pinpoint what is making them leave? What you can do to encourage them to stay or to convert them in some way, for example by using an exit pop-under?
* Time on Site – How long are your visitors staying on your page and what exactly are they doing while they are there? What do they read the most? What do they watch the most? What exactly are they doing that keeps them on the social media site? If they’re only there a short time, what did they do?
* Growth – How fast are the visitors to your social media page/platform improving each month? Is it going up or down? What actions affect growth? How can you do more of those things to keep growing your website and your influence?
* Response – When you create a post, how long does it take your audience to respond and what type of responses do you get? Are they commenting, liking, sharing, retweeting and so forth?
* Inbound Links – How many others are sharing your social networks and causing people to link to your social media networks? Who is sharing your platform more and why?
Finally, the only thing that really matters in the scheme of things is conversions. If you’re not meeting your conversion goals, then you need to readjust. Remember that conversions are what you determine that they are.
You may be tracking email sign-ups, clicks or sales. It’s up to you what a conversion means and if your social networking is deemed successful or not.
Using Analytics To Understand Your Competition
The more you can understand your competition, the better business you’re going to have. You can learn so much from them – especially if they’ve been around longer than you have.
If you know for a fact the competition is profitable and that they are good at what they do, it’s even more important to learn all you can from them. You can do that by using analytics.
* Google Alerts – This is an excellent, free service. Sign in and choose keywords, names, and more to search for. Then, set up how often you want to receive the alerts in your email inbox. You can scan each email to find information about your competition that you can use in your own business.
Link – https://www.google.com/alerts
* Social Mention – Use this cloud-based search engine to search websites, blogs and more for mentions about your competition. Then you can go take a look at what they’re doing. Identify the gaps in their offerings and you can outshine your competition in no time.
Link – http://socialmention.com/
* Website Grader – While it does ask for your website and not your competition’s (and your email address), you can still use it to check the health of someone else’s website. The information you will receive is page size, page speed, redirects and more, including how many requests for the site have been made. It also tells you how they’re doing on SEO and more.
Link – https://website.grader.com/
* Link-Assistant.com – Using this downloadable software you can study keywords of your competitor’s site so that you will know what keywords they’re using. You can then use them on your own website to nab their traffic.
Link – http://www.link-assistant.com/
* SocialAdNinja – You can use this software to copy and make your competitor’s ads your own. Of course, you don’t copy them exactly, as you are selling your own products, but this will help you duplicate the most successful ads online.
Link – http://www.socialadninja.com/
* KeywordSpy – This software is an amazing way to profit from your competition’s hard work and research. You can find out what keywords they’re using, what they’re spending for AdWords, their ROI estimate, and much more.
Link – http://www.keywordspy.com/
* Open Site Explorer by MOZ – You can get a lot of information about your competition from this cloud-based option. You can get information about the links that come into the site and the anchor text used, and you can even compare five sites. What’s more, it’s free when you sign up.
Link – https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/
Using these tools to discover important data to analyze about your competition is a great way to grow your business and please your audience. By keeping an eye on your competition you can learn about what your audience really wants and what they really respond to.
While social media marketing is powerful, it is important to try to get them off these platforms and onto an email list that you own. If you want to know more about growing and nurturing an email list the right way, check out the featured resource below for a free Simple List Building report; download, read it and take action 😊
