If you have a product, or something to say to the public, you might want to check this book.
Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World is a book by Michael Hyatt that will teach you how to make your product or idea become popular and sold out.
The basic principle of this book is to create an amazing product or idea and promote it via your personal blog and social media websites.
And here are the 10 things I learned from this book that helped me grow my websites.
1. Create a compelling product
Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster.
That’s what David Ogilvy, the marketing guru, once wrote.
So, in order to create a popular product, you must first create a great product.
Here’s a hint: Create a product that you would personally use.
2. Give your product a memorable name
A name or a title of a product is one of the first things customers saw in a product.
Giving a name should be taken seriously if you really care about the success of your product.
A few of the universal tips for naming a product are: it can be easily spelled by every one in the world and it contain an information about your product.
But, of course, there are no rules in naming a product.
Please take your time when naming a product.
3. Define your goals specifically
Most people never write their goals.
Don’t be like most people, or you ended up like most people.
By actually handwriting your goals, you will get some benefits, such as:
- It will motivate you to pursue your goals
- It will force you to clarify what you want
- It will help you to track your progress
Write goals regarding your product.
What you want your product to do, how many of your product will sell, how many people will be affected, etc.
4. Get a great head shot taken by a professional
In most cases, you need to look good in photos if you want people to look up to you as a real expert.
After all, hiring a professional photographer is an investment.
People want to connect with other people, not companies or products.
That’s why so many brands are endorsing famous persons.
5. Start a blog and write the content yourself
Starting a blog is one of the most easiest ways to gain followers.
You can set a blog in minutes (although I recommend you to have a professional designed blog, which take a few days).
And by creating the content yourself, people will trust you as an expert and as a personal brand.
Never get your content written by other people, because people will find about it and perceive you as a poser.
If you don’t have the time to share your thoughts on things, then don’t do it.
Remember, people want to connect with you, not with your ghostwriter.
6. Avoid common blogging mistakes
What are the most common blogging mistakes?
First, you post too often.
This is often happens when a blogger think that he/she need to post as much as possible in order to get search engine traffic.
By doing this, you’re sacrificing the quality of your content.
And as you may know, people want premium high quality content on the internet.
Second, you post about something that is not useful.
Time is limited, so you should think about relevancy of your content.
When I surf the internet, I want useful or entertaining content.
If you don’t have something useful or entertaining, then don’t force yourself to publish a low quality, time waster content.
Third, you don’t have a conversation with your readers.
When people leave a comment on your blog, they expect a reply.
They want to have a real, human conversation with you as the owner and the expert.
And by having a conversation with the readers, people will believe that you are real and your blog is alive.
7. Build your subscriber list
This is one of the hardest parts in blogging, yet the most useful and profitable.
By having readers submitting their email addresses, you will have a database of people that are interested in you or your niche.
Basically, you will have a list of people willing to spend their money to buy your product.
Also, you will not lose your potential customers, as you’re keeping their contact information.
8. Stop losing readers
Doing the opposite of trying to get readers is the surest way to lose your readers.
Things like these are the most common reasons people left you and your blog:
You post about the same thing over and over again.
I get it, you want to tell people how expert you are on this field, but that doesn’t mean you should talk about it again and again.
You post irrelevant things.
Your blog is about martial arts, but sometimes you post about how you cook your first chocolate cake or how you had an argument with your neighbor.
Your readers doesn’t subscribe to your blog to know that you’re now a certified baker.
They want martial arts stuff.
You never have a conversation with the active readers.
Your readers left comments, expecting you to answer their questions.
But you never bothered to reply to them.
And guess what? They feel forgotten and they left.
9. Don’t respond to every comment
I know, I said it before that you need to respond to comments.
Don’t get me wrong, but when I said that, I mean that you should respond to comments that are beneficial and worth to be replied in the first place.
Spam comments obviously should be deleted. But what about “Hey, nice post!” comments?
In most cases, you only have to reply to those kind of comments if they were on of the first comments on a particular post.
If the 30th comments still sounds like that, I tend not to reply to them.
It would time-consuming and not worth my time let alone beneficial to the people.
10. Monetize your blog
After you have a successful blog that a huge subscriber list, what else?
It’s time to monetize your blog and earn your money. How?
Well, obviously you can start selling your product.
This is the main reason you start a blog, right?
So start promoting it your sidebar, or sending emails to your subscribers and let them know that the product is available.
Or, you can start selling other products through affiliate marketing if you don’t have a product yourself.
Experts who don’t have products usually do affiliate marketing using Amazon or Clickbank.
Should You Read This Book?
If you want to have an online following and audience, start with this book.
If you want a practical guide to help you market yourself, start with this book.
But if you’re a blogger with more than 2 years of experience, I don’t think you will need this book.
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