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If you want to learn how to be successful on Pinterest and Instagram today, my guest today, Jeff Sieh, from Manly Pinterest Tips, will show you how.
Jeff is a visual marketer, and he has his finger on the pulse of what’s working on these platforms (and yes, we even touch on TikTok too).
Want to learn how to optimize sales funnels for more sales by focusing on your customer journey? This episode with Monica Froese from Redefining Mom will show you how.
This interview is a continuation of a conversation we started in Episode #122 about sales strategies. In that episode we talked about the high-level strategy.
I’ve got my friend and Pinterest expert, Kate Ahl from Simple Pin Media, back on the show for her third appearance and we are talking about what’s working now on Pinterest.
Some of the topics we discuss in this episode:
Want to know how to up your affiliate sales right now? This is the episode for you. But before I begin…
Our new MiloTree Coaching Group is starting May 26th and I couldn’t be more excited.
Have you heard? Pinterest is making changes. In today’s podcast episode, Alisa Meredith, my dear friend and Pinterest expert, and I are talking about how to get ahead of the changes at Pinterest to win on the platform.
As bloggers, most of us depend on several platforms to drive traffic to our blogs. One of the major players in the game is Pinterest. Pinterest is responsible for driving millions of page views to our site, Catch My Party, every single month.
As bloggers and online entrepreneurs, our number one need is traffic.
If you want to increase your blog or business income, you need to increase your traffic first.
Today, I’ve got my friend, and MiloTree Community Manager, Paula Rollo, back on the show, and we are talking about tips to get more traffic to your blog.
SEO, Pinterest, email marketing, and MiloTree are all great ways to do it.
Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turning your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and YouTube.
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If I say the words, “social media,” what comes to mind?
Does it fill you with a sense of dread because you’re overwhelmed trying to figure out what you should be doing and how much? Or do you feel confident because you love social media and it the easiest part of your business?
Whichever way you lean, I think you will get a ton of information from today’s show where we’re talking about how to use social media to grow relationships and engagement with your audience.
Today, my guest is Neal Schaffer, a social media strategy consultant.
Neal teaches large companies how to best use social media to grow and stay engaged with their customers. We’re talking about many different social media platforms today, hearing his insights on how to have success on each.
But first, if you haven’t joined my Facebook group, The MiloTree Mastermind Group, I want to encourage you to do that today! Every Monday at 3:00 ET, I go live in the group to talk about that week’s podcast episode.
I go over the highlights, what I learned, and what I think it’s important for you all to take away from the discussion. It’s a great place for you to ask questions and to share your knowledge with others. I hope you’ll join me!
As bloggers, we work alone most of the time. It can be an extremely isolating lifestyle.
That’s why Neal puts a huge focus on building relationships. I want to tell you how I met Neal as a great example of using online research to build those relationships.
I use an app called Bonjoro to send a personal video to everyone who signs up for MiloTree.
Recently, I had sent a video like this to Neal, as he had signed up for MiloTree. A few weeks later, I was randomly researching “social media experts” and I saw Neal’s name on a list of people to follow.
I knew the name looked familiar so I went to his website and realized I had just recently sent him that video, welcoming him to MiloTree. And the rest, as they say, is history. We connected from there and here he is, on my show!
All of that to say, you have to be reaching out and building those relationships with your followers and with those you follow.
Neal points out that if you follow 1,500 people on Instagram and you send just 5 of them a direct message every day, you will have contacted every one of the people you follow in a year!
But don’t just message them; ask them how you can serve them. Being able to connect one-on-one is a huge step toward helping other people in the online space to remember you.
When your goal is to increase your presence online, build relationships, and increase brand awareness, you have to focus on consistency.
If you’ve been blogging for a while now and you feel discouraged, if you feel like things will never work out for you and you will never meet your goals, the first thing Neal wants you to remember is that success is often just on the other side of giving up.
Don’t stop creating content and putting it out there. Go back to your “why,” the reason you started your blog in the first place. What are you trying to accomplish by being on social media?
If you don’t know “why” you’re using social media, you aren’t going to be successful with it.
Most bloggers are very good at gaining followers. It comes naturally to us. The trick is what to do once we have those followers and how to monetize them.
The main goals of online business are:
If you want to attract people who will be interested in what you sell, you have to push out the type of content that will draw those same people in.
Focus on the platforms that give you the best returns and work on growing those. You don’t have to build every platform at the same time.
The platforms that work the best for Neal may not be the same ones that you are the most successful with. That’s okay; do what works for you.
Instagram requires a different strategy than other social media platforms. Neal posts a few times a week on IG but his goal is to be publishing daily.
While Neal has mostly used IG to keep in touch with people rather than using it for business, when he’s traveling and doing conferences, he focuses more on posting photos of what he’s doing.
Over the past year, he has focused on developing his own Instagram strategy, and that begins with the premise that IG should not be 100% dedicated to business.
When you have a broader reach and you post things your community will engage with, whatever that may look like, it helps your overall reach.
These days, Neal’s IG posts fall pretty neatly into 3 buckets of content:
His business posts get the worst engagement, but by mixing it up, he can at least keep people interested in that side of it.
Neal believes strongly that you need a lifestyle focus on IG and your posts should lean heavily in that direction. Why? Because those are the posts that allow your followers to feel like they really get to know you.
A potential client is following you and they see a post that makes them feel a connection to you. Maybe it’s a shared passion or a place they’ve also been to. You posting about your passions will connect you to those people who share your passions.
One of the cool things about Instagram is the options available. You have a main feed filled with posts but you also have the ability to share even more with your audience by using stories.
It’s important to post to stories more frequently since they do disappear after 24 hours.
Instagram now has the option of having a Creator account, which is what Neal has. This is not the same as a business account but it is public. It provides you with tools to better understand your growth and manage your IG presence.
While IG posts can be put off indefinitely, stories are more for what’s happening right now. Also, the IG audience tends to engage more with creators on stories than on posts.
Instagram is a bit different than Facebook when it comes to your followers vs who you follow.
You want to be focused on who you are following and how you are connecting with them and building relationships.
Neal is reducing his follower count because he does not want unengaged followers. He wants his content to go to the people who will engage with him.
If someone is following you and not engaging, you are wasting a follower.
Go into your app, and you will be able to sort the people you followed by the date you followed them.
Go back to your first follows, and choose 5 per day to visit their feed, send a message, and ask how they are doing. Just basically reconnect with them.
If you do these in order of when you followed them, just grab a screenshot of the last DM you sent, and the next day, pick up where you left off and keep going.
You don’t need to spend hours on social media to be able to build meaningful connections and grow your organic community.
Neal does not spend the majority of his time there. It can still be a valuable asset, but it is one that takes more work.
Facebook ads are still a great place to find your people and build community.
Neal still spends some time on the platform but it’s the bare minimum that keeps his account active. He typically posts once per day and does live streams occasionally. He also sometimes uses his Facebook lives to record his podcast.
Compared to Facebook, Instagram can have a bigger reach, simply because the sheer number of people on Facebook limits your reach.
Don’t disappear on Facebook but keep life support connected to it. Neal uses it for recording his live streams and for the ads. Otherwise, he focuses elsewhere.
Are you using LinkedIn as a blogger? Have you thought about using it? Isn’t LinkedIn just for trying to find a job or connecting with business people?
Here are a few very interesting statistics that Neal, shared with us:
Does this sound like anyone you are trying to reach or build relationships with? You want to be going after this audience.
There is one thing that never changes about social media: it never stops changing.
Algorithms change from day to day; audience engagement goes up and down based on the seasons; your content may not be applicable to every platform.
So how do you keep up with all the changes?
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Etsy can be a great way to sell handmade goods quickly. But you need to know these secrets on how to make money on Etsy to win.
One of the major advantages of selling on Etsy is it is a platform with millions of dedicated shoppers and great search, so you don’t have to work as hard to get eyeballs on your products.
Also, did you know that we offer an Etsy pop-up here at MiloTree? Yes, we do! Install the Etsy pop-up on your site and it links over to your Etsy store with a big “Shop Now!” button.
Go to MiloTree today to get your own customized pop-up for your site and start driving traffic to your Etsy shop today. Your first 30 days are completely free.
My guest, Nancy Badillo, has a blog and a YouTube channel, and teaches people how to run online businesses especially Etsy shops.
Nancy built her own Etsy shop from scratch, with no professional experience. Her shop, Forever Happy Prints, started earning big returns only months after starting.
If you’ve been listening to this podcast for any length of time, you’ve heard me say that the riches are in the niches.
Having a clearly defined niche guarantees more success and growth.
In addition to having a tightly defined niche, you need to do market research to learn who your competition is and who your audience is. Once you have that information, you will know if there is a felt need for your products on Etsy.
When doing your research, don’t bother looking at shops that have been open for many years.
Your market research should focus on shops that have been open for two years or less. If you have a product similar to theirs, you will know if it is going to do well in the market right now.
If you are in a very competitive niche, with a lot of other shops, it’s going to be hard to be found organically.
You need to understand the Etsy Listing Score. So, when you upload a new product, you are assigned a neutral score.
Your product gets placed on the first page of search results, and based on how the audience interacts with it over its first month, you can rank really well.
If your listing doesn’t get lots of clicks, likes, and sales, your listing will lose rank and Etsy will push it down in the search engine.
You need to have great photos, use correct keywords, and target your correct audience to get a good listing.
If your listing is pushed down or you’re in a saturated market, you can “pay to play” on Etsy using Etsy promoted listings.
Nancy has seen many creators become burned out when they try to expand to too many different platforms at once.
The best thing to do as an Etsy seller is to check your Etsy analytics. You can see where traffic to your store is coming from.
Whichever platform is driving the most traffic, focus the majority of your efforts on that one.
Nancy believes that a blog with Shopify installed is a better platform to sell your products on than Etsy.
You have more leverage because you can drive people to your own site, collect their email addresses, and grow your email list to have new people to market your products to.
Your Etsy shop can be closed down, but your blog is your own. You can build an audience there that will never be taken from you.
Understanding SEO is going to get more eyes on your products, track your right audience, and increase your conversions.
You want your keywords to be very specific so that you are targeting the right audience.
Using longtail keywords will help people who are searching for your products find you.
Using longtail keywords means that your overall search volume and views will be lower, but the quality of your viewers will be higher.
If you do not know who your target audience is, start your Etsy shop, put up your products with your specific keywords, hook your Etsy to Google analytics and after a month, study all the data.
Etsy will only show you a certain amount of data, whereas, on Google Analytics, you can see everything.
Once you identify who your ideal audience is, you will be able to be even more specific with your keywords.
The next step is to optimize your shop for your target audience.
Your main keyword needs to be in your title, in your meta description, and you can add additional keywords into your listing description.
Nancy believes 50 products is a good number to have in your shop.
If you have chosen a niche where it’s hard to have 50 products, you can duplicate product listings, but change the title, the tags, and the keywords.
You can change your product slightly, such as the color of a background or a different font.
It’s important to spend the majority of your time actually creating products for your shop. Nancy recommends spending about 60% of your time creating and 40% on marketing.
If you know you are in a saturated market, Etsy promoted listings is a good resource for you.
Facebook Carousel ads are a favorite because you can add up to ten products in one ad. If you don’t have a large budget, you can add ten different items for the price of one ad.
Google Analytics is so important. If you don’t understand the ins and outs of your business, you’re not going to be able to grow it like you want to.
There is no instant gratification in owning an Etsy shop. You have to work one day at a time and be patient.
Make a list of things to do for the current month, prioritize the most important items, and set aside time to complete these items.
Every time you mark something off the list, reward yourself and give yourself the credit you deserve for doing the work!
Treat your Etsy shop as a real business. Fill out the bio section, add a banner to your storefront, and read the Etsy seller’s handbook for a great resource on best practices.
Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more?
Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turn your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube.
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Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!
If you sell digital products, or you are thinking about creating them, today’s episode is for you! It’s all about how to win at selling digital products online!
Selling products involves learning about landing pages, tripwires, opt-ins, and sales emails.
To get a leg up on all this, you’re going to want to listen in as my good friend and popular podcast guest, Monica Froese, as we talk all things digital product sales.
In case you missed it, Monica and I chatted on a recent episode about how to make Promoted pins work for you.
When Monica creates an opt-in email landing page, she wants it to be very bold and clear.
She doesn’t want there to be any question about what the reader is getting for free, and where they need to enter their email address.
Monica’s most successful opt-in is her process on how she plans her goals for the entire year. This opt-in is a 14-page PDF that goes over how she plans for her family, herself, and her business.
Monica has experimented with every different opt-in page possible. The longer form opt-in has gotten slightly better conversions for her. She does prefer the embedded opt-in for her Promoted pin campaigns.
Monica uses the app, Proof, which is a paid plug-in software. Proof enables a pop-up that shows how many people have chosen to opt-in. She uses this on all her opt-in pages because it’s an easy way to give social proof, without quoting testimonials.
The second type of landing page that Monica uses are sales pages. The length of the landing pages depends on the product. For more expensive products, Monica will provide more information and images.
Monica sometimes provides a video of what exactly the user will be paying for. These videos are about a minute and a half, where she talks briefly about how the product will benefit them if they buy it.
She also puts seasonal spins on her products. Pinterest is very seasonal, so adding any kind of seasonal keywords is always a great idea.
Because Monica is driving a cold audience to these products from Pinterest, she also provides a freebie on the landing page. This allows them to walk away with something, even if they aren’t ready to buy just yet.
If they choose to enter their email address, they are automatically taken back to the original landing page and have the opportunity to purchase the product for a discounted price for a very limited time.
This is called a tripwire.
If they choose not to purchase, Monica sends them an email talking more about the product after they download their freebie.
Monica has a strategic series of emails she sends to those who decide to download her goal-planning process.
The landing page for Monica’s most expensive course (her $500 Promoted pin course) is a very long-form page. The main reason for that is because Monica is asking them to make a very large investment.
They need to know more about what she is offering and why they should purchase.
She has about 6 testimonial videos on that page. These testimonials allow the user to see what can be achieved through the course.
Monica talks about the pain points that her product can solve and how her product is different from other products on the market.
All throughout the sales page, she has “Buy Now” buttons. She has it on the page at least 6 or 7 times.
Monica plans to use Hotjar, which is a heatmap of your sales page to see where people are clicking and where people are falling off the page, with her next launch. We use HotJar at MiloTree and it’s extremely helpful.
Monica always says that there is not a lot of control over the ads on your site.
And the things about ads is that you are sending people away from you. She wants to be keeping people in her house and promoting her own products.
Pinterest makes it very easy to brainstorm product ideas. You never want to copy anyone, but you can gain great inspiration.
Do keyword research and look at what problems the other bloggers are solving. You can either do something better or just gain great ideas.
Sometimes people are afraid to ask for money for products that other people are offering for free. But almost all of Monica’s lower-end products can be found for free on Pinterest.
Pinterest’s product pins have around a 40% higher click-through rate. Your product doesn’t have to be super expensive. As a user, Monica gravitates toward paid pins because it will be a quicker win.
Using Pinterest to do your research allows you to know what problems people are having and how you can solve them. A lot of times you are already solving the problem and you just need to repackage it into a paid product.
In order to use product pins or rich pins, all you need is a business account on Pinterest.
I love Monica’s landing pages. And yet she is admittedly not a “website guru” or an expert coder. She takes advantage of products like Leadpages to create her amazing landing pages.
The thing about landing pages is that it takes away all the clutter. There aren’t sidebars full of buttons. There is no navigation bar. You’re asking the reader to do one thing and one thing only.
When you are putting money behind something, you want it to be super clear what you want. You don’t want the reader to experience any confusion at all.
Most of all, you just want to make the “yes” easy for your audience.
My challenge for you is to scroll through your Pinterest feed and go to some landing pages. Sign up for opt-ins that look good to you and learn from what that blogger is doing.
Monica’s are some of my favorites so I want you to look for hers specifically, but you can learn from others, too.
Notice how your favorite bloggers set up their landing pages. Read the email series they send you after signing up.
Make a swipe file of those emails so that when you get ready to sell your products. Definitely refer to those emails as you create your own.
The great thing about the internet is you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Look at what’s working for others, and use the same techniques.
Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more?
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Sign up for MiloTree now and get your first 30 DAYS FREE!
Today I am talking about new strategies for making more money with affiliates with Chelsea Clarke.
Chelsea, founder of the website, HerPaperRoute, helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses through affiliate sales.
We talk about knowing your audience, talking to your audience, and selling them products that are useful for making their lives better.
If you want to know more about affiliate sales and how to make the most of them, this is the episode for you!
You may have heard that “the riches are in the niches.” If that’s true, what niche should you choose?
Chelsea says that any niche can be made profitable with affiliates. The one defining factor is you.
Do not get into a niche just because you’ve heard it makes a lot of money. You need to pick your field based on what you love, what you know about it, and what you can offer to your audience.
There are literally millions of affiliate possibilities out there. How do you choose the ones that will fit best with your niche?
First, you want to choose a high-commission product. Something that gives you $2 per sale is a waste of time when you think about how much time you’re spending building relationships with your audience to offer them products.
Promote something that is going to pay you more like $40 per sale.
Chelsea doesn’t promote Amazon products as much because their commissions are typically so low for her. However, there are people that make thousands of dollars a month from Amazon affiliates.
Amazon affiliates are a bit different than others in that they pay a commission to you for anything your audience purchases within 24 hours of clicking through your link.
If there’s a brand you want to work with, you can go straight to them and pitch yourself. Many companies want to work directly with bloggers.
There are two ways to reach out to brands successfully to build an affiliate relationship.
You can go to their website, find a contact, and send an email about how you love their product and want to review it. You can ask about setting a deal up.
Another way you can do it is to join the affiliate program first. Once you have the affiliate program manager’s contact information, you can reach out to them.
Chelsea doesn’t work for a commission of 10% or less unless it’s a very expensive product.
If she can’t negotiate for a higher commission, she knows it’s not the right product for her at that time.
There have been a few times when Chelsea will take a lower commission because she knows the product is interesting and will be helpful to her audience.
Chelsea works mainly through email. She does everything herself personally, answering all the questions that come into her inbox.
In the very first email Chelsea’s audience receives, she asks them to respond with where she can follow them on social media.
When you connect with someone on their social media channels, you get to know them and they get to know you, because chances are they’re going to follow you back. Now you have a whole new group of people rooting for you and giving you new business.
This is successful because it opens up a one-on-one conversation, where the audience gets to know the face behind the company.
The very first people who hear about Chelsea’s sales are the people on her email list.
Pinterest is Chelsea’s favorite social media marketing tool.
Taking the time to target the right keywords and getting your pins to show up higher in search will result in your traffic growing on its own.
For newer bloggers who aren’t ranking much on Google yet, Pinterest can be the key to blog growth and getting your message out there to more people.
Pinterest is a different type of SEO. You want to focus on appropriate keywords, pin to the right boards, and pin as much as possible.
You want your content to get out there.
Pinterest is a digital wall of billboard advertisements. The higher you can get, the better for your traffic.
Chelsea wants to create her own content and create her own weekly emails. Those are the 2 areas she doesn’t outsource.
But having someone for upkeep on social media is very helpful.
Your biggest expense is your time. If you feel like you need more time, outsource things that allow you to have more time to create content and focus on what’s important to you.
Chelsea has four tools that she cannot live without:
If you want to know more about Chelsea and the free resources she offers, go to HerPaperRoute.
Are you serious about growing your online business (advanced beginner and above)? Have you got some traffic but you know you need more?
Let your MiloTree pop-ups help you get to that next level by turn your visitors into email subscribers and social media followers on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and YouTube.
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If you aren’t familiar with affiliate marketing, Episode #79 of this podcast featured my conversation with Angela Davis of Frugal Living NW. That episode takes you deep inside affiliate marketing and how to get good at it.