Time for the Social Media Blitz!

Today’s a relatively easy day. You're going to go through and spend 5-10 minutes on each of your social networks. Queue up articles on Twitter, pin your favorite pinterest posts, and share your recent articles on Google+.

The goal is to share your articles and other industry posts to promote your brand in an organic way. We also want to ensure we keep our social properties active. Remember, Google likes consistent, organic activity!

Activity Recap

→ Spend 10m working on growing your Twitter following using the strategy from Day 14.

→ Refill your Twitter queue in Buffer with your most recent Slideshare slideshow, your 2nd article, and a few others from RightRelevance. Go back to Day 9 for a reminder.

→ Login to Instagram and Google+ and tackle 5-10m of activity on each. Follow the instructions from Day 11.

→ Spend 5-10m on each of your other social profiles. Keep them active!

→ Login to Quora and follow the instructions below.

Answering Questions on Quora

First make sure your Quora profile is optimized properly. Use the 6 step process from Day 6 if you’re not sure. Then follow these steps to start answering questions:

1. Login to Quora and use the search bar to see if there are any questions relating to your two most recent articles.

2. If you find a few relevant questions, briefly check each one out to gauge which one you should answer. Generally, the questions that are more recent and have more views are better than the older ones with less traffic. If you really can’t find any questions at all relating to your articles, then ask one anonymously to start a conversation.

3. Try to make your work easier by using your already-published material to answer the question. Of course, you may need to alter things a bit to make your answer really fit.

4. Naturally link back to your article in your answer.

To extend the organic reach of your answer:

1. Before you hit submit, click the checkbox to post your answer on Twitter.

2. Re-ask the question.

3. Find the ellipsis and click “Ask to Answer” and choose some of the people that Quora suggests for you. You can choose 15 people per question. This will hopefully get some more activity on that question, which will increase the people who view your answer.

How To Make A Great Infographic Without Any Design Skills

We’ve all seen those amazing infographics.

The ones that look professional and get the point across in a few seconds flat. The ones that tell a compelling story yet are powerful in their simplicity. The infographics that get shared over and over and over again.

There’s really not much point in making an infographic unless it falls into this category.

But the good news is that great infographic design is not as scary as you might think.

I’m going to show you how to make an infographic. No real design skills required. We’re going to use a website called Canva, which makes graphic design super easy. You can use Canva to make slideshows, blog graphics, Pinterest pins -- and infographics!

They have amazing templates, an intuitive workflow and lots of free icons, shapes, and more.

Follow me as I take you through the process step-by-step. I’m going to make an infographic along the way to show you what I mean.

Let’s go!

1. Decide Your Story

First decide the story you want to tell with your infographic.

What’s the one takeaway you want your viewers to get out of this? If you have your story and conclusion ready to go, designing will be MUCH easier. Every piece of data, every picture, every subheading will help tell that story.

For this example, I’m going to make an infographic that gets people motivated to take control of their online presence. The main takeaway will be that people should care about their search results.

2. Find the Data

Remember, infographics are a visual way to represent data or information. You first need some compelling data before you can represent it visually.

Find the data, information, or critical pieces of knowledge that you want to get across in your infographic.

I’m going to use these key pieces of data to tell my story:

1. Over 1 billion names are google every day 

2. 75% of hiring departments are required to look applicants up online

3. 70% say they have rejected applicants based on what they’ve found online

Conclusion: bad results hurt you; good results help you.

3. Find a Working Template

Go to Canva.com.

Under “Create a Design” pick Infographic.

Then scroll down on the left and find a template that gets you excited. There’s a ton of terrific free ones but feel free to use a paid one if you feel like coughing up $1.

4. Give Your Infographic a Title & Theme

First, I went ahead and deleted all the text on the template and titled my infographic.

Then I tried to mess with the size of the colored blocks. I soon realized that this template wasn’t very malleable, but that’s okay. Canva is so easy to use that I was determined to make this design work for me, template or not.

I liked the colored blocks idea (thanks Canva!) but wanted to make them myself to give me more flexibility.

So, I deleted the template. Then I went over to Search → Shapes → and chose a rectangle.

I resized it and changed the color.

Then I added my title back in.

Then I added two thin black lines on the top and bottom to give it a sharp border. All I did here was add two more rectangles, but made them black and super thin. That’s it. Already looks good though right?

I then did the same rectangle trick to make a general layout. Remember that simple designs are the most effective. That blue color is nice but I only used it in the title block so it would really pop. I’ll use the color again when I add in text and icons.

The last thing I did was add a small triangle to creatively transition from the title block to the next block. You can find that triangle in the same shapes section.

5. Show Your Data Visually

You already have your data so this step is the fun part. Take your first piece of data and decide how you can showcase that quickly to your audience.

My first piece of information is: Over 1 billion names are google every day.

There are a lot of ways to do this. I decided to just use text and a simple vector image of a globe. Remember, when it comes to infographics, less is more. Simple designs are easier to scan and concise text wins every time.

My next piece of information is: 75% of hiring departments are required to look applicants up online

Well, one of the easiest ways to represent 75% is a ¾ circle. I went over to Search → Charts and found the perfect free image. Then I changed the colors to match my blue theme.

I threw some white text over it and changed the sizes and fonts to emphasize what’s most important.

Then I did a similar thing for my third piece of data: 70% say they have rejected applicants based on what they’ve found online.

I made a judgment call and decided that I would make this piece of data more relatable by adding people to it. I used Canva’s search bar to locate a cool icon of “people” and then changed the color to match my blue theme. I threw some more white text on top and ta-da.

For my last piece of data -- Bad results hurt; Good results help -- I wanted to add that human element again.

First I just added the text. I used the same blue, but switched up the color at the end to make the point more clearly.

Then I added emoji vector images and gave examples of what I was talking about.

7. Add a Call-To-Action

Finally, make sure you add a call-to-action. You don’t want to spend all your time making this awesome infographic and not capitalize on it.

What do you want people to do? Sign a petition? Join a mailing list? Visit your website? Just share this on social media?

Whatever it is, make that ultra clear at the end of your infographic.

Closing note:

And that’s really all there is to it!

Here are 5 Infographic Best Practices to keep handy:

1. Tell a Story Visually -- First decide the story you want to tell with your infographic.

2. Captivating Design -- Colors are important. Infographics that stand out have staying power.

3. Less is More -- Too much data is confusing. Simple designs are easier to scan. Use extremely concise text.

4. Data is King -- The right data is naturally compelling. The right way to show it is in a way that’s easy to understand. Do your research ahead of time so you have your data ready to go when it’s time to start designing.

5. Call-To-Action -- What do you want people to do after they finish reading? Sign a petition? Join a mailing list? Visit your website? Share on social media?

Please give me a shout if you have any questions along the way!

Here’s a look at the final product:

How to Organically Grow Your Twitter Following

Growing your Twitter following can be invaluable.

A larger following increases the authority of your Twitter profile and broadens the reach of your own content marketing efforts. It opens up lines of communication in your industry, helps build upon your positive online presence, and offers you a pool of potential leads for your business. You’d be hard-pressed to find a downside to growing your followers.

Today I'm going to share with you a cool trick to growing your following with users in your industry. It’s a scalable process, so use it as much or as little as you’d like.

Let’s take a look:

The Tools You’ll Need

We’ll be using 2 tools for this process: Tweepi and RightRelevance.

1. First, connect your Twitter account to Tweepi. You’ll be using this tool to trim the fat -- that is, get rid of folks who don’t follow you back. Tweepi is an easy way to keep track of that and much more.

2. Then, connect your Twitter account to RightRelevance. We’ll use RightRelevance to easily find the users you want to follow.

 

The Strategy

Once you’re logged into RightRelevance, type in a category that’s related to your industry or niche. For me, I’ll try 'personal branding.'

Add it as a saved channel so you can refer back to it later.

Then click the influencers tab and decide whether you want to filter by people or organizations. I want to target individuals, so I’ve clicked the “Person” option.

Finally, decide if you want to tailor it even further by location. I want to filter my followers based on New York City, so I’ll click that option.

Now all that’s left to do is scroll down and follow the people that interest you. I’m not going to be too picky because I’ve already let the filters do that tailoring for me. I know that the accounts I follow are going to be people who fit squarely in my industry and live in my city. Perfect!

You can use this method to follow 20, 200, or 2000 people, depending on your goals and time limit. Don’t forget to switch to a new category and do the same thing all over again. I’ve already used “personal branding,” but I could also try “reputation management” and “content marketing."

 

The Clean-Up

Once you’ve followed a batch of users, give them a few days or a week to follow you back.

Then log into Tweepi and click on the category of users called “Not following back.”

The “not following you back” section is pretty self-explanatory. It shows you all the users who, well, haven’t followed you back. You can also see some interesting stats about when they last tweeted, where they’re located, their follower count and follower ratio.

Go down the list and “unfollow” anyone who you’re ready to cast aside. There are bound to be some people or organizations you want to still follow despite their unreturned thanks, so just keep your eyes peeled for that as you fly down the list.

 

That’s it!

Now that you’ve got the hang of it, try it out using other categories and other filter settings to see if you get different results. And let me know how it goes in the comments section below! 

Tips for Writing Your 2nd Blog Post

It’s time to crank out your second article!

Check your list and find another article that excites you. Remember, we want to aim for at least 500 words, so pick something you’d have fun writing about.

The same assignment parameters apply here (see below), but there are some new aspects to think about now that you've already written your first post.

Linking Back to Previous Articles

This time, try to think about how this article will link back to previous ones.

Let's say you're a personal trainer. Wouldn’t it be awesome if, in your article on insane fitness workouts, you could naturally add a link in the introduction back to your first article on the importance of stretching and warming up? You’ll be naturally directing traffic back to your own articles -- and you’ll actually provide more value to the visitor.

This kind of natural interlinking is also important from an SEO perspective so it's a good practice to get into.

Want an example? Look what I did in the intro of this article :)

Tips to Keep Your Reader's Interest

First person writing helps to tell a story. Short, snappy writing is much easier to read than walls of text.

Focus as much as possible on providing value for your target audience and making that value easily digestible.

I love this quote by Neil Patel:

"Reading a sentence is like holding your mental breath. You can only last so long before you start to pass out. 

Shorter sentences help readers take lots of breaths -- and that keeps them interested."

Fleshing Out Your Brand

Write what excites you but be brand-aware too.

As you start to fill up your blog, you are fleshing out your personal brand. That's great!

I suggest that you remain aware of the types of posts you're writing. How are you portraying yourself? What do readers learn when they scan through your blog's titles? 

In one sense, it's good to write about what interests you. If you feel strongly about a topic, your passion will probably ooze off the page. If you don't give a shit, your readers won't either. 

But it's also good to be generally aware, in a meta sort of way, how you are portraying yourself with your posts.

Let's say you're still a personal trainer and you're trying to get the word out about your training services. You're not a nutritionist, but you feel strongly about great nutrition. It relates to your brand as a thoughtful personal trainer so you write a post about it. 

If you write a few more posts about nutrition, you've suddenly made yourself out to be more of a nutritionist to the online world than a personal trainer. It's a small shift, but one that could impact your business.

Here are your assignment parameters:

• At least 500 words (aim for longer if you can)

  • Why: Quality is the name of the game here. Length is just one consideration of a quality blog post, but it’s still a factor. If you can say everything in 100 words, then you probably didn’t choose an appropriate topic. Plus, all else being equal, longer articles are more likely to be shared on social media than shorter ones. I usually go for 700+ if I can, but again, quality is most important here.

• An engaging style that matches your brand

  • Why: You may know I’m a fan of conversational content, but this won’t necessarily fit everyone’s brand equally. Consider who you’re trying to reach with your content and write with them in mind.

• At least one interesting image

  • Why: Content with relevant images gets 94 percent more views than content without.

• An engaging headline

  • Why: A failed headline is a failed article. If your headline doesn’t encourage anyone to click it, then nobody sees your article and where’s the fun in that? Spend at LEAST a few minutes drafting up a few headlines and finding your most engaging one. If you need tips for writing a great headline, read my article, “Don’t Waste Another Headline -- 4 Psychological Tricks To Get You Clicks.”

Tips

• Need help finding free images? You can always use the Creative Commons filter when searching on Google, or just use this free image resource.

• Read your work over OUT LOUD as if you’re speaking to your target audience. You’ll be surprised at the things that sounded fine in your mind but sound weird as hell when you speak it out loud.

• Make sure you cite sources when appropriate. All you need to do is hyperlink to the site when you would typically footnote.

Activity Recap

→ Go through your list of blog topics from Day 7 and find one that you’re most excited about.

→ Spend the next 60m researching, writing, and editing your blog post.

→ When you’re done, go post it on your Blog! Remember to embed your image(s) and fill in the SEO information in your plugin.

How to Use Canva to Transform Your Article Into a Killer Slideshow

So you finished an awesome blog post.

You’ve shared it on social media. You got some promising engagement and good feedback but now you’re ready for the next step -- it’s time to turn that article into a killer slideshow.

What’s the point? 

The first reason is that you’ll expand your article’s reach and grow your audience.

Slideshare -- where you’ll be uploading your finished product -- is trusted by 70 million professionals as a resource to quickly learn about specific topics. People post their slideshows and visual walkthroughs and get plenty of traffic as a result. If you’re not on Slideshare, you’re missing a valuable opportunity to promote your articles and build your brand.

Second, Slideshare tends to rank incredibly well in search results and it looks professional to boot. The fact that Slideshare is owned by LinkedIn doesn’t hurt either.

As if that’s not enough, I’ll show you how you can use your slideshow to direct more traffic back to your original article and your website. Win-win-win.

Here’s how to turn your article into a slideshow:

First, head on over to Canva.com and sign up. 

Canva is an incredible platform for ANYTHING relating to online design. I use it to make slideshows, infographics, Twitter images and custom Pinterest graphics -- the list goes on. It makes me feel like I’m a real designer.

Once you’re on the main screen, click Presentation.

Now choose one of the free layouts on the side. Every “paid” element will cost you a dollar, but there are TONS of amazing free layouts and images if you don’t want to pay a dime.

Once you pick a free layout that you like, it’s time to start messing with it to make it your own. Drag and drop a new image into the upload section. (Here is a great resource for finding free awesome images.) Change the text to make it your title. Change the font or color if you want. Do whatever floats your boat.

A QUICK TIP: Click on your image and click Filter to give your image a little something extra.

ANOTHER QUICK TIP: To make your image much darker like I did -- so that your white words can really pop -- just add a black square over your image. Then change the transparency until it’s just the way you like it. Do this with a white square and black text to get the opposite effect.

While I was working, I got inspired and decided to switch some things around. I added a new square on the top and bottom to frame the image. Then I changed the color and font of the text and added two little rectangles around CHALLENGE to emphasize it. It’s amazing what you can do with those shapes.

Once you’re happy with your cover page, it’s time to move on.

Figure out how to distill your article down to a few key points. If you’re stuck, try using 2-3 slides to set up the problem, another 4-6 to make your point, and 1-2 slides to conclude.

First, add a textbox and copy the first key piece of your article. Do not be afraid of white space. It’s simpler for you and tends to look better anyway.

Brighten things up with some colors, selective bolding, and some of Canva’s icons.

Once you’ve figured out a font size and font type, stick to it. Copy one of your existing text boxes and paste it in your next page to keep things consistent. Add an image for some visual appeal.

I like to search for free vector images -- like the one above -- so I can use them against any background color. For this one, I simply Googled “fitness vector image.” Then I clicked Images → Search Tools → Usage Rights and changed it to “labeled for reuse” to avoid any copyright issues.

Try making a few points visually in one slide with the help of some vector images or Canva’s own icons. You can even use their Frames feature to auto-split your slide in various ways.

I like to alternate between slides that force my audience to focus and slides that let them breathe.

Canva has a Charts section, which makes it really easy to showcase numbers and datasets visually.

Here’s another slide to let viewers catch their breath.

If you find it useful, take advantage of Canva’s stylized, pre-designed fonts in the Text tab. And don’t forget about their free icons and images!

Once you’ve figured out a slide style, it makes sense to use it again when appropriate.

And again.

And again!

It’s worth noting here that I used a small trick on my Week 2 slide. I made one slide look like this (without the winky face at the bottom) and copied it using the copy button on the side.

After I copied it, I then added the note at the bottom.

This adds a cool effect. When someone clicks to the next slide, it looks like a little message popped up. Neat, right?

Moving on…

If you can offer your audience enough info to make your slideshow useful -- and still leave them wanting to read the rest of your article or go to your website, that’s a huge win.

I always recommend some sort of call-to-action, typically with a link to your website.

Export your slideshow as a PDF (standard) and you’re good to go.

Now go and upload it to Slideshare. Make sure to fill in the title, an engaging description, a relevant category, and plenty of keywords to increase discoverability. 

You can check out my final product here.

And that’s it -- congratulations! Leave me a comment or tweet me at @ryanerskineNY if you have any questions.

How to Breeze Through Your Social Media Activity, Effectively and Efficiently

Breezing through your social media activity is all about strategic time management.

What does this mean for you?

It means staying focused and setting a time limit for each profile. Now is not the time to fall down the rabbit hole of addictive Youtube videos. These profiles can be fun, but we’re on a mission.

Remember, the point is to keep these profiles consistently active for branding purposes and, eventually, for ranking in search results.

Today I’m going to give tips on how to efficiently engage on Crunchbase, Google+, Youtube, About.me, and Instagram. If you're interested, I also have tips for Twitter as well as for LinkedIn and Pinterest.

Crunchbase

Crunchbase is one of the easiest profiles to keep active once you understand what’s going on. All you do is update sections on your profile with relevant content about yourself -- images, news, previous jobs, organizations, etc.

In my experience, people find one aspect of Crunchbase confusing -- the distinction between a user and a profile.

Here’s the deal.

Crunchbase is a database of startups, people, and organizations. When you sign up with crunchbase, you sign up as a user. Users don’t exist in Crunchbase’s database -- they merely exist to create and edit the pages that do exist there. When you first sign up, you have a user but no profile.

So the first thing you need to do as a user is build yourself a profile page. You’ll effectively be putting yourself in Crunchbase’s database. (There's a chance you might already exist in the database because anyone can contribute to anyone's profile. If that's the case, then just contribute to your already-existing page).

Let’s get started.

If you haven’t done so already, hit the + symbol at the top. Select Person and fill in the appropriate sections with your name and info.

Once you’re done, click the Update section in the first box and connect your LinkedIn and Twitter.

Now update your Personal Details with your bio and any relevant aliases.

If you still have time, go fill out some of the other sections -- Education, Jobs, Images, etc.

For the Jobs section, you may need to first add your company if it doesn’t already exist in Crunchbase’s database. For the News section, even if you don’t have any legit news about you, you can still add your most recent blog post there.

Get as much done as you can but remember to leave some tasks for you to do over the next few weeks. Consistent activity is key to good rankings!

Youtube

By now, you should have already filled out your Youtube profile. You can check this by going to My Channel in the dropdown menu. Fill out the description and add a link if you haven’t done so already.

If you have video content, you should spend this time uploading 1 or 2 of the videos and filling them out with descriptions and titles that include your main keyword.

Otherwise, playlists are the way to go. In the dropdown, click Playlists and create a new one.

In my experience, these playlists can actually rank well for your name, so include your main keyword in the title. For example I might name one Ryan Erskine | Personal Branding. Then add an engaging description.

Finally, search for some videos that fall in line with your brand and your new playlist. Hit the thumbs up to like them, Subscribe if you want, comment when appropriate, and hit the “+ Add To” to add them to your playlist.

Google+

You have three tasks today for Google+.

First, search for folks to add to your “Circles” as you would for LinkedIn connections.

Second, find the About tab and fill out as much as you can. The more the better, but it’s especially important to tackle your image, name, bio, location, and add your website as a link.

Third, go to Posts and share your most recent article as well as a couple of other interesting articles in your industry.

About.me

By now, you should have already filled out your About.me profile. If not, take the time to do so now. Fill out as much as you can, including Name, Image, Subtitle, Bio, Current Role, Education, Location, and Links to My Work.

Make sure you click Publish Backstory or else all that info won’t show up.

Now go to Edit → Info and fill in those sections.

Want a quick trick to make your profile even more SEO-friendly? Simply highlight over your name and click the link symbol to type in your website. A nice “dofollow” link for Google.

I would recommend clicking Unpublish Collections at the bottom of your page. It’s just a popularity contest that shows who complimented you and who you complimented.

Finally, let’s get some views on your profile! When you compliment other folks’ pages, they’ll receive a notification and will be more likely to check you out.

There are two efficient ways to go about doing this.

1. You can type an industry in the search field and see loads of people related to your field. Skim through their pages briefly and compliment the best ones.

2. Alternatively, you can click the Discover button up top and quickly scroll through loads of Staff Picks, Featured, and Popular profiles, complimenting them in the process.

Try out a mix of the two and let me know if you find any other best practices.

Instagram

Hopefully you’ve already filled in your profile with an image, SEO-friendly username, quick description and your website. If not, do that now.

Today we’re going to start posting and really focus on building your following.

First, figure out the first image you’d like to post. Perhaps you took one recently or have some saved in your digital library.

Do a little hashtag research. I like to take note of what others in the industry are using to index their posts and supplement that with what I find on Hashtagify.me.

Post your image. Use a filter if you want. Add an engaging description. Then, add a comment to include your hashtags. Doing this in the comments section means you won’t be clogging up your description with them.

Now let’s tackle your followers.

First I’d advise connecting to Facebook if you have one. This will allow you to quickly follow all your friends and will encourage them to follow you back.

Then search for one of the hashtags you used. Find a beautiful photo, click the user and quickly double-tap a bunch of your favorites before following him or her. This will get you more prominently on their radar. Do this as much as you can within your time limit.

Finally, download Followers+. It’s a great tool to track who’s not following you back. This allows you to follow folks in the industry freely and check back later to see who you can trim.

NOTE ABOUT POSTING: It’s much more important to keep your image quality high than it is to post frequently. Aim to post once every few days or, if you get really into it, try to limit yourself to 2-3 times a day. Anything more tends to be seen as spammy.