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.

An Expert Starter Guide to LinkedIn and Pinterest

Do you have a LinkedIn profile?

Chances are it could use some help.

Today, I'm going to show you how to really take advantage of that social network -- how to set up a custom URL, make your profile completely public, and much more.

I'll also show you some neat Pinterest tricks while we're at it.

Want to set up analytics? How about a tool to grow your audience and schedule out pins at the best times?

Let's get right to it...

 

7 LinkedIn Steps

You probably already optimized your LinkedIn profile back on Day 6 but here are some important things to double-check an go through now:

1. Create a custom LinkedIn URL using only your name (see below)

2. Try to get your main keyword (your name) as close to the beginning of your summary section as possible. 

3. Use your name naturally throughout your summary section a few times.

4. Fill out your job experience section and write a few sentences about your experience at each position. Remember to write in the third person.

5. Fill out as many sections as makes sense for you. Consider honors and awards, education, certifications, projects, and publications.

6. Connect with as many people as you can -- peers, classmates, people from a previous job, etc.

7. Make sure your profile is set to public to increase chances of ranking (see below)

Creating Your Custom LinkedIn URL

1. Look toward the bottom of the first box -- the one with your name and photo in it.

2. Find your LinkedIn URL to the left of “Contact Info”

3. Hover over it, and click the gear to the right of the URL

Then…

1. Look toward the top right, where it says “Your Public Profile URL”

2. Click the pencil to the right of your URL

3. Type in your main keyword and hit Save

Making Your Profile Public

1. Look toward the bottom of the first box -- the one with your name and photo in it.

2. Find your LinkedIn URL to the left of “Contact Info”

3. Hover over it, and click the gear to the right of the URL

Then...

1. Find the section under “Your Public Profile URL” that says "Customize Your Public Profile."

2. Check "make my profile visible to everyone" and check off as many items as you are comfortable with. The more you have public, the more items Google can crawl, and the better your profile will be for ranking purposes.

5 Pinterest Steps

By now, you should already have filled out your Pinterest settings -- custom URL, Bio, Location, and Website. If you haven’t, do that first. Then follow these steps:

1. Set up Pinterest Analytics (see below).
2. Verify your URL on the backend (see below).
3. Create at least 3 boards (see below).
4. Set up Viralwoot to grow your Pinterest following and reach (see below).
5. Set up Tailwind and schedule out pins for the week (see below).

1. Setting up Pinterest Analytics

For some reason, Pinterest only allows you to track analytics if you are set up as a business account. Why? Who knows.

1. Visit the Pinterest for Business page and click Convert now to convert your account

2. Use your main keyword (i.e. your name) for the Business Name

3. Pick a business type (Professional, perhaps?) and fill in your website

 

2. Verifying your URL on the backend

1. Use this guide to verify your URL if you have a Squarespace website.

2. Use this guide if you have a Wordpress website.

 

3. Creating Some Boards

Like Instagram, Pinterest is a fun, visual network. It’s all about getting creative and finding a more whimsical side to your professional brand.

Look at the top categories and brainstorm how your brand can fit in with those categories. Then create at least 3 boards with engaging names, descriptions, and relevant categories.

4. Setting up Viralwoot

Viralwoot is a tool that allows you to quickly grow your Pinterest following and reach. This is especially helpful when starting a new account. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to viralwoot.com and sign up for free

2. Log in and connect your Pinterest account

3. Go to Your Interests (under your name at the top) and fill it out

4. Go to Account Settings (same place) and change Seeds/New Follower to 10

5. Click Earn Seeds on the left and click Follow Pinners

6. Change the Category to something that interests you and follow 10 new users. That’s the limit, so try to follow users that give you the most “seeds.” Seeds are a form of currency, and you’ll want to rack up as much as you can here so you can pay others for following you! See how that works?

5. Setting Up Tailwind & Scheduling Out Pins

Tailwind is an amazing scheduling tool. It lets you pin at different times throughout the day and night -- especially optimal times -- to give your pins the best chance for engagement. This is key for great search results. You only get 100 free scheduled pins in the trial, but that’s good enough for us during this 28 day challenge.

1. Go to tailwindapp.com and log in with Pinterest

2. Google “Tailwind Publisher” and download the Chrome extension

3. Then open up your Tailwind account, click Publish → Schedule Pins to see how many slots you have in your schedule for the upcoming week. That’s how many pins you’re going to pin right now for your 3 boards.

There is only one rule. Instead of pinning a pin by hitting the Pin it button, you need to schedule it by hitting the Tailwind sail. That’s it -- have fun! You can always check back in Tailwind’s Schedule Pins section to see how many more you need, change time slots, or shuffle your queue.

How to Set Up Your Twitter From Scratch (The Right Way)

A whole day dedicated to Twitter?

Yes — if we set things up the right way now, we’ll move a lot faster when we want to quickly schedule tweets, find relevant influencers, and grow our following.

If you haven’t registered and optimized your Twitter profile yet, follow the steps from Day 6 first.

Okay let’s begin:

1. Set up Twitter Analytics

Go to analytics.twitter.com. You have to actually visit this page to tell Twitter to start tracking your analytics. Why don’t they do this automatically? Who knows.

2. Set up Buffer & Get the Extension

Buffer is an application we’ll use to schedule out tweets and find the best times to tweet.

Go to buffer.com → Sign in with Twitter to create your account.

(If you’re truly starting from scratch and have 0 followers, you’ll need to sign up via email.)

Connect your LinkedIn or Facebook accounts when prompted. This will allow you to post to those profiles from Buffer as well.

Put in your time zone and let Buffer figure out your optimal times to post. Choose how many times you want to post -- 2 per day is a safe choice for now.

Tracking links is good. Enter your email to finish up.

You should get prompted to add the Buffer extension. Go ahead and do that now.

3. Set up Hootsuite & Get the Hootlet Extension

You can only schedule 10 tweets with the free Buffer account. I’ve never had an issue with this, but if you’re feeling frustrated, you can use Hootsuite’s scheduling system. It’s not as user friendly but it gets the job done.

Go to Hootsuite, and sign in with Twitter.

Also install the Hootlet extension, which will allow you to schedule out retweets.

4. Set up RightRelevance & Add Content Feeds

RightRelevance is one of my favorite resources for aggregating quality content all in one place.

Go to Rightrelevance.com and connect to Twitter using the button up at the top.

After you’ve signed in, you’ll be prompted to enter your email address. Do that and then add a few topics for yourself using the search bar at the top.

I’ll choose personal branding. After clicking “Add Topic,” it shows up in my sidebar. The point here is I can always go back to this sidebar and see what content is trending in each of these topics. It makes it really easy to find share-worthy content and get ideas for your own articles.

Go through and add a few more topics in your niche.

5. Set up Crowdfire

Next go to crowdfire.com and login in with Twitter.

Crowdfire allows you to easily grow your following, clean out followers who are inactive, set up an automatic direct message to new followers, and a whole lot more.

Sign in with your email. Again, uncheck the follow button unless you’re dying to follow them on Twitter.

NOTE: The next screen asks you if you want to routinely brag to your audience about all the new followers and unfollowers you’ve gotten. You don’t, so hit NO.

(If you were going too fast and accidentally hit YES, go to Automate on the sidebar, click the Automatic Tracking along the top, and uncheck the “Tweet my follower and unfollower stats.”)

We’re going to wait until next week to start actually growing your following.

6. Add Tweets to Your Queue

Now let’s add some tweets to the queue.

Go to buffer.com and click on your queue. This is your tweet pipeline. It’s where your tweets will reside until they get sent out at the scheduled time.

Add your latest blog post

Copy the URL to the post, and don’t be alarmed when Buffer shortens it. Then give it a title, add a photo and a hashtag or two. Leave enough characters (20ish) so that people can retweet you without editing your post. Adding an image takes up a lot of characters but the extra engagement from images makes that move totally worth it.

Then add your article a second time. Don’t worry -- you’re not tweeting it out twice in a row. We’re going to fill in that space with other posts.

Try to give it a different title, maybe a quote or alternative title the second time around.

• e.g. The 28 Day Online #Reputation Management Challenge {URL} #ORM #personalbranding

• e.g. Want to get your #PersonalBrand in shape? Try the 28 Day Online Reputation Management Challenge {URL} #branding #ORM

7. Finding the right hashtags

Go to RiteTag.com (and sign in with Twitter.)

Type in the hashtag you’re curious about in the search bar. When I try #personalbranding, I see that there are 21 tweets per hour that use that phrase (my competition) and 30,000+ people who see those tweets per hour (my audience). Not bad.

#Branding is much more popular at 400,000+ people per hour. But there are also 217 other people using that hashtag every hour. More competition.

For reference, the blue tags have a longer shelf life because they’re not as popular as green. The green ones are trending -- you can take advantage of that by getting in front of more people but your tweet is likely to get buried in the noise faster as well. Grey hashtags are no good and red tags are overused.

If I have the space, I’d always prefer to use one blue and one green hashtag.

8. Fill in the rest of the queue

Go to RightRelevance and find some articles that fit your brand and add them into your queue using the same strategy. The goal will be to tweet your content and curate other high quality content to turn your Twitter into a content authority in your niche. 

9. Schedule Retweets

Finally, let’s schedule a few retweets.

In Twitter, search a person or a phrase that fits your brand. I like Neil Patel’s work so I found him on Twitter and scrolled down his feed to find one of his latest posts.

When you find the right post, click the little owl to activate the Hootlet extension.

Sign into Twitter. Then choose your Twitter account from the little dropdown menu. Click Post Later and schedule the post whenever you’d like. Perhaps on a day that you’re not tweeting.

Closing Note

And that’s it! Your Twitter is all set up and ready to kick ass.

Now you’ll be able to schedule tweets with ease, retweet your favorite authorities, and grow your following quickly and effectively. Tweet me if you have any questions :)

How to Write Your First Blog Post

If you don’t already have a list of blog topics and ideas, please go back to Day 7 and put your list together before starting here.

I’m going to keep this one nice and short because, well, you’re the one doing all the writing today.

First, go through your list of blog topics from Day 7 and find one that you’re most excited about. Then, use the following parameters to guide your writing.

And don't forget to have fun!

Here are your assignment parameters (and why):

• 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% 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 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 say 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.