How To Create Professional Quality Videos For Online Marketing

I’m a big fan of online videos, and so is the rest of the world.

Youtube is the second most used search engine in the world, and in a big way, responsible for the success of my Biology blog.

Within the past two years, the emphasis of video on Facebook has increased dramatically.

As a blogger, videos are powerful tools for gaining exposure and getting your message out to the world. If you want to use online video effectively, however, you want to put your best foot forward. You want your videos to look AWESOME.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through the steps of creating professional videos. My focus will be on videos created with cameras. If you’re interested in recording your screen (screencasts), then check out this post.

Please note: Throughout this post, I will recommend specific types of equipment, but will not specify specific models. If you read this article (even just) a few months after I make the recommendations, technology will most likely have evolved.

I will include links (for specific model) that can be changed as technology evolves and better recommendations surface. However, I do give specific models I’m currently using in the podcast episode above, plus a few extra tidbits.

The Camera and Your Options

When it comes to cameras, technology has changed significantly over the last few years; keeping up can sometimes feel like an effort in futility. But, there’s a way to keep things simple and still produce professional videos. Let’s start with some basic and easy-to-access options.

Your smartphone

Yes, that device that’s sitting in your pocket, or next to your keyboard, can likely shoot quality video. Based on my experience, the smartphone that features some of the best video quality has been the iPhones (although I am an Android fan, I have to give props where props are due).

However, Android devices have come a long way and are starting to produce high-quality video. I won’t name any particular device here; there are many that do a pretty good job. Make sure to do your research and choose the one that suits your needs best.

If you’re interested in using your smartphone to create high-quality online video, you should listen to my interview with Monique Johnson and Crystal Collins on how to use Mobile Video to grow your blogging business.

A Webcam

For those of you on a budget, you can still get a pretty decent recording from your computer’s built-in webcam. Lighting, however, can be a concern; webcams are not traditionally the best quality video recording devices.

If you want to step up your game using webcams, I recommend getting a high-quality USB HD Webcam. This is what I do for my webinars, and the video quality is great. The price isn’t bad either.

Click Here For Recommended HD Webcam

A Digital Single-Lens Reflex Camera (DSLR)

When it comes to online video, DSLRs are my cameras of choice. Unfortunately, they can be bulky, but when it comes to video, they do an awesome job (especially if your settings are correct).

What I love about DSLRs is that you’re able to have a shallow depth of field, which results in an image that focuses on the subject while allowing for a blurred background. The blurring effect gives your videos that extra look of professionalism.

The key thing with DSLRs is that you want to make sure to get one that has a microphone input.

Click Here for Recommended DSLR

To achieve that shallow depth of field look, you will need a decent lens. Unfortunately, lenses can be pricey. There is one exception – a fixed 50mm lens. These lenses don’t have a zoom but are the secret weapons for many videographers because of the quality image that can be achieved at a relatively low cost.

Click Here For Recommended 50mm Lens

Lighting

While your camera plays a big role in the quality of your video, your lighting plays an even bigger role. If you take video in a dark room, it wouldn’t matter if you’re using a $10,000 camera, the quality will still be bad.

On many occasions, you can take advantage of natural lighting or the lighting in your room to produce videos of decent quality, but if you want to step things up a notch, you will want a lighting kit.

Even in my decently lit office, I depend on a lighting kit because it takes the image quality to the next level. When you depend on your camera to amplify your lighting (by increasing the exposure), you end up increasing the “visual noise” of your videos; resulting in poor image quality.

Take that load off the camera and let your lighting do the heavy lifting. You’ll find yourself pleased with the final product.

Click Here For An Affordable Lighting Kit

Microphone Options

Here’s a fact. You can create an awesome video, with all kinds of cool illustrations, and clever editing, but if you combine your effort with crappy audio, then all you have is a crappy video.

On the other hand, I’ve seen many sucky videos (in terms of visual quality) with decent audio that people absolutely love.

Audio is IMPORTANT.

Fortunately, you have some options that center around one important principle – if you want good audio, get your microphone close to the sound source. This is the reason radio DJ’s, whose businesses are built around audio, sit with their mouths within inches from their microphones.

This also means that you NEVER EVER want to use the camera’s built-in microphone. Not only is it far away from the sound source, but it tends to pick up the sound of the camera itself.

So what are your options?

Option 1: A lapel microphone.

This is one of the most common options we see for online videos. With a lapel mic, you clip the microphone onto your shirt collar or another type of clothing close to your face. The beauty of this type of microphone is that you are free to move around (unless you’re using a wired one) without altering the quality of your sound.

Recommended Lapel Mics: Inexpensive option | High-Quality option

If you are using a smartphone for your videos, you want to make sure to get a lapel mic that will work with your smartphone.

Option 2: A shotgun microphone.

This type of microphone is usually placed on a stand above and slightly in front of a person, with the microphone pointing at that person’s mouth. This setup is ideal because there’s no visible mic in the frame and the quality is great. Unfortunately, this option is usually on the more expensive end of the spectrum.

Click Here For My Recommended Shotgun Mic

Alternatively, you can go with a compact shotgun microphone that sits on top of your camera and does a pretty good job when it comes to audio quality.

Click Here For The Compact Shotgun Mic Pro

Important note: If you’re using a microphone that plugs into a camera, you want to make sure your camera has a microphone input jack.

Option 3: A digital recorder.

These are actually very neat devices that can be used for video, interviews, and a bunch of other audio-related activities. For example, I use my digital recorder to record my podcast episodes. Here’s the cool thing, most of us have digital recorders already. They’re called smartphones and are a great option for recording high-quality audio without additional spending. Here’s an example of a video where Crystal, Monique and I recorded audio on an iPhone.

Click Here For My Recommended Digital Recorder

A Few “On-Camera” Tips for Professional Videos

We’ve covered the equipment you’ll need creating awesome videos, but we’re missing an important element – YOU!

People often struggle with appearing natural on camera. So here are some tips that can help you make a good impression.

Tip 1: Relax Before Recording Your Videos.

The last thing you want to do is appear uptight on camera. Listen to that song that calms you down, hang out with your family, or just do something relaxing. Then, get to it.

Tip 2: Smile during your videos.

This makes a HUGE difference. Having a pleasant, smiling, disposition will make people enjoy your videos that much more.

Tip 3: Create another video.

Practice makes perfect. Keep recording more videos and you’ll improve over time.

Tip 4: Don’t worry about who’s watching.

When you’re recording your video, nobody’s in the room with you (unless someone’s actually recording for you). Don’t think about the people who may or may not watch the video online. Just focus on what you’re doing.

Tip 5: Look DIRECTLY into the camera.

Avoid looking unprofessional by paying attention to this element of your video. Looking into the camera (specifically the lens), helps your audience create a connection with you (and as a result, with your content).

Tip 6: Watch yourself and watch others.

When I watch myself on video, I often walk away with ideas for improvement. This was how I learned of my tendency to look away from the camera; so I’ve worked on fixing that. Also, when I look at other people’s videos I pick up great “do’s and dont’s”.

Infographic

Infographic

 

What about you?

Are you making online videos? If so, share a link to one of your videos in the comments below. Is there a tip that I didn’t mention that can help us all make better videos? Leave that in the comments too. I’ll see you down there.

Listen In

The post How To Create Professional Quality Videos For Online Marketing appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.

from Become A Blogger | RSS Feed http://ift.tt/1OQBUCA
via IFTTT

How To Create And Sell An Ebook

Learning with Leslie: | Download MP3 | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Raw RSS | More |

Creating an eBook is a great way to dive into selling digital products. And, it doesn’t take as much technical expertise as building a course.

If you’re a blogger who creates written content, think of it as creating a little more of that content and putting it together as a nicely packaged PDF.

By creating and selling my Physiology Study Guide, I’ve been able to add a nice source of revenue to my blog.

But how do you create a high-quality eBook? Keep reading.

Ebook Creation: The Content

The content of your eBook is the most important part. This is where you deliver the value.

If you’re trying to teach your audience something with your eBook (like I’m doing with my study guide), you want to start off by asking the following questions:

• Who is my ideal target person?
• What EXACTLY is my audience trying to accomplish and how is the content of my eBook related to their goals?
• What struggles will they encounter as they try to reach their goal(s)?
• How can you best create content that helps your ideal target people accomplish their goals and overcome their struggles?

Once you’re very clear on the answers to the above questions, start writing.

The Software

When it comes to creating an eBook, the software part is very simple. You can use WHICHEVER Word Processing program you are familiar using.

Some options are:

• Microsoft Word (PC/Mac)
• Microsoft Word Online (PC/Mac. FREE)
• Pages (Mac only)
• Open Office (PC/Mac. FREE)
• Google Docs (PC/Mac. FREE)

The programs listed above have similar functions that allow for the basic Word Processing tools necessary to create an awesome eBook.

I’m partial to Pages on the Mac because I think it’s the sexiest Word Processor in existence. It makes me look like an expert when it comes to design.

The Formatting

Formatting is important when it comes to your eBook; it can help you deliver your message in a clearer way.

If you were to lump the entire eBook together as one long continuous paragraph (one extreme), it would be absolutely ridiculous to read.

On the other hand, if every sentence has bolded, italicized and underlined words (another extreme), this too is a bit much.

Finding the perfect balance of bold, italics, and callouts can lead the reader to important concepts, making your eBook easier to read.

Here are some tips to help make your eBook more of a joy to read:

• Keep your paragraphs relatively short.
• Use bold and italics strategically to emphasize key phrases and words that will help portray your message well.
• If there’s a certain statement or quote that you REALLY want the reader to focus on, use a callout (shown in the image below) to highlight that statement/quote.

 

When it comes to formatting, remember to KISS your book: Keep It Super Simple. When looking at an entire page, consider whether your choice of elements helps deliver a clear picture of your message, be mindful of distracting elements.

Linking To Content

One of the great features of eBooks is that you can insert links to relevant content. In my case, I have over 100 videos on my biology blog, most of which relate directly to content in the eBook.

In fact, my eBook is basically the content that’s available for free on my blog, packaged into an eBook that makes it more convenient for readers to consume.

So to enhance my eBook, I have links throughout the entire document pointing to relevant videos on my site. It’s my way of going above and beyond what you can do with a regular book.

The Images

The beauty of an eBook is that you aren’t limited by the use of images. Paper texts are a financial challenge because of the cost of printing color photos. With eBooks, you can use images to enhance your eBook without the added financial burden.

Colorful images were EXTREMELY useful for me since my eBook covers complex topics like the function of the brain, and it’s individual neurons, how muscle contractions happen and how blood flows through the heart.

It’s much easier to understand these concepts if you can actually see pictures illustrating the topics I cover.

When choosing images, you want to make sure you have appropriate permissions to use each photo. The last thing you want is a lawsuit for copyright infringement.

The best way to make sure you are getting high-quality images and have the rights needed to use those pictures is to invest in, and purchase, Royalty-Free Images from a trusted Royalty-free image site.

The site that I currently recommend is 123rf.com, this site offers awesome images for $1. However, if budget is an issue, you can always use some Free Image Sites.

The Format

Your eBook should be delivered as a PDF file; PDFs are great ways to keep the formatting consistent, regardless of the device used to consume content because the file type is universally accepted.

Most Word Processing programs can convert a file to PDF by going to “File” > “Export” (please note: the wording may be slightly different depending on which program you’re using) and then select that you want to export as a PDF.

Save the file to your hard drive and you are good to go.

Selling The eBook

There are MANY ways to sell your eBook, and I won’t cover them all here. However, I will talk about the one that I use, and, which in my opinion, is one of the EASIEST ways to sell an eBook.

The site that I use is Gumroad. I use it because it takes the headache out of EVERY step.

You simply upload the file to the site, give it a title and description, set a price and upload a cover image. Gumroad then takes care of EVERYTHING else and gives you a URL that you can use to sell the eBook.

Once you link your bank account, it will direct deposit the money from all sales to your bank within two days.

It’s a beautiful thing.

 

Your eBook

So there you have it. With these instructions, you can go ahead and create an awesome eBook. Questions for you: Have you ever created an eBook? If so, what’s it about (feel free to link it below). And if you haven’t, do you plan on creating one?

Let me know in the comments below.

Learning with Leslie: | Download MP3 | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Raw RSS | More |

Infographic

 

 

The post How To Create And Sell An Ebook appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.

from Become A Blogger | RSS Feed http://ift.tt/1QAZ4eJ
via IFTTT

239 How to Use Facebook Groups to Build a Massive Audience – with Pauline Stockhausen

Learning with Leslie: | Download MP3 | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Raw RSS | More |

Use Facebook Groups to Build a Massive Audience

Who: Pauline Stockhausen
Blog: paulinestockhausen.com
Course: Build Your Influence Online

Are you using Facebook groups to market your blog?

If not, have you wondered

Facebook groups are powerful tools for bringing people together and engaging with a community online.

In today’s interview, Pauline shares strategies for growing your audience using these underutilized tools – Facebook groups.

Who is Pauline Stockhausen

Pauline is passionate about everything Social media. She is the leader of a number of online communities and spends her days building them for businesses.

With nearly 20 years experience in the online space, she has become influential in the social media space and has helped many other New Zealanders do the same.

Pauline currently runs 14 different Facebook groups that reach a total of 500,000 people. She has been focusing on Facebook groups for the last seven years.

Some of her groups are location-based groups like her New Zealand group. She also has groups lion topics she’s passionate about, like her International Business group.

Because of this, I knew she would be great for sharing on the topic of Facebook groups.

How Effective are Facebook Groups?

Facebook groups can be effective in many different scenarios. Pauline shares an example where she used a location group to help a political campaign in New Zealand.

The group was used to make sure that the politician was heard within the community.

As a result, it got that individual a lot of exposure, and he ended up winning the election.

Can you see how this can be effective in marketing your blog?

How Pauline Got Started with Facebook Groups

Pauline works part-time at a local newspaper in New Zealand. When she started working there, she worked on their Facebook group to connect local community groups and people.

That was her first real experience managing a Facebook group, but she managed to grow it to around 17,000 members.

When she started working with the group, she started learning how to deal with the members in a way that contributed to its growth.

It was important for her to observe the ongoing communication and try to understand how people engage within the community.

After seeing how well it worked, she started creating other location-based groups.

Then she started looking at her other passions. She was growing her business and wanted to start a group for business people to engage. This lead to her forming other groups around her many passions.

Her company then started getting hired to build communities for other brands.

Setting up Your Group

There are a few things that you want to keep in mind when setting up your Facebook Group. You want to make sure to include the following before promoting your group:

• Add a banner for your group (your group photo)
• Think about (and post) your rules
• Post a few items (i.e. photos) before you start sharing. She usually posts ten posts before sharing the group.

Define Your Target Audience

How to Grow a Facebook Group

It’s one thing to have a Facebook group and another to have a vibrant group that is growing. I wanted to get Pauline to dig deep into what it takes to grow a Facebook group.

Here’s what Pauline had to say.

Define who you are trying to attract

Having a well-defined avatar for who you want to cater to will help you talk directly to the right kind of person.

When Pauline got clear on her avatar (or as I like to say – ideal target person), that’s when her groups started growing quickly, and her business started taking off.

Be strategic about posting content regularly

Consistent content is essential for keeping your group members engaged. At a minimum, you want to post daily, especially when you are just getting the group going. She recommends posting a few times per day.

Encourage members to post

Encourage Members to Post

Getting members to post can be challenging, but is the key to growing your groups. Eventually, you will get to the place where you don’t have to start as many conversations because your members will be doing that for you.

Here are some of Pauline’s tips for encouraging members to post:

• Private message every new member and set expectations. In that message, provide the rules – show them the right and wrong ways to post. If they don’t receive the message because you aren’t friends with them, you can tag them in the group and let them know that you sent them a private message.
• Build relationships with the members. Pauline encourages us to connect with members as friends on Facebook. Doing so will help you take your relationship to the next level. Since starting to connect with people outside of the group, it has helped her groups and business grow much faster than before.
• When you find people with good content, reach out to them and ask them to share. Identifying key engagers can help get conversations going much quicker.

She NEVER recommends adding people to your group unless they have explicitly requested to join. PLEASE listen to her. Here’s my rant on the topic.

If you want your friends to join your group, send them a private message and give THEM the option.

How to Manage Larger Groups

FB Admins

As your group grows, you will want to bring on more admins to help manage the group. Pauline’s largest group has seven admins.

Everyone has their job, and the jobs are swapped every so often so that everyone gets familiar with everything that needs to be done in the group.

To facilitate effective communication among her admins, she created a separate Facebook group for them to be able to work together and even share ideas.

Approving Members and Moderating Spam

Spammers

When someone requests to join a group, you should have guidelines for who to accept and who not to accept. Here are some best practices from Pauline’s recommendations:

• If they are already friends with multiple people in the group, they can usually be let in.
• Check to see how long they have been on Facebook. If the account is new, they are usually spammers and shouldn’t be accepted.
• Check out their profile. You can usually tell if it’s a fake profile by looking at what they post, their pictures and their names.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be spam-free. However, having an early filter will lessen the chances of accepting the wrong kinds of people and getting spam.

When members join her groups and leave spam, the first thing they try to do is educate that person. Remind them of the rules of the group.

If they continue to leave spam, they should be removed from the group.

Taking advantage of Pinned Posts

Pinned Posts

Pinned posts are the greatest assets in your group. Pauline recommends using them to increase the engagement in your group. She gives examples of different things she has done with pinned posts:

• Pin themes for photos that the members should take and post (she did this in her photography group).
• Pin a post to function as a live chat.
• Your upcoming events.
• Competitions hosted by the group
• Feature your members (i.e. member of the month)
• If someone has won an award, pin that.
• Giveaways for members. If they want to get in the drawing, they can comment below.
• Strategically pin promotions of your product(s) or service(s).

It’s a good idea to rotate these pins and to use them to engage the community. The frequency of rotating your pins will depend on the group.

In some groups, you can do it once/week. In others, it can be daily. It all comes down to trial and error. Pick a frequency, try it and see how it works for your group.

Group Files

Group Files

You have the option to upload files in groups. These files be a good way to store resources for your members.

Pauline has used this file feature as a place for a member directory and recommendations.

Most people don’t understand how to use them, so if you use this feature, you need to explain to your members.

In the groups where she uses files, Pauline reminds her members once/month that the resources are available.

In Conclusion

When it comes to increasing engagement among your audience and connecting with other like-minded people, Facebook groups are a force to be reckoned with.

Pauline shared a ton of tips on how to use groups to grow your audience.

If you’re considering using Facebook groups to connect with your audience, use the tips mentioned in this interview and then let me know how it goes.

Are You Using Facebook Groups

I’m curious. Are you already using Facebook groups to market your blogging business or to engage your audience? If so, how are you using them?

Let us know in the comments below.

Listen to the episode

Learning with Leslie: | Download MP3 | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Raw RSS | More |

Infographic

Facebook Groups Infographic

The post 239 How to Use Facebook Groups to Build a Massive Audience – with Pauline Stockhausen appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.

from Become A Blogger | RSS Feed http://ift.tt/1MR7b3n
via IFTTT

238 How to Build a Membership Site: a Comprehensive Guide

Learning with Leslie: | Download MP3 | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Raw RSS | More |

How to Build a Membership Site: a Comprehensive Guide

I’ve heard it said that membership sites are the “holy grail” of online business.

Imagine having a product where a bunch of people pay you every month. It’s a beautiful thing – right?

But here’s the thing – they can be challenging to build and maintain.

On one hand, you can end up with an awesome community. One that’s getting so much value from your site that they long to send you money over and over and over.

On the other end, you can end up with a bunch of annoying members. You know – the pain in your you know what where you would rather poke out your eye than continue.

In this post, we will explore how to build a membership site in great detail. I’m going to share what I believe to be the best practices so that if you do decide to go all in, you do it right.

Why Build a Membership Site

I love membership sites for three simple reasons:

• You can provide consistent value to your members. If you are building a business where the bulk of what you do is teach, being able to provide ongoing value is a plus. The truth is – building a blog is a process.If someone decides to go on this journey, they will need help. A membership site allows you to offer in-depth training and guidance.
• You can build a strong community of like-minded individuals. There’s something powerful about connecting with people with similar goals. This is especially true when there is a financial commitment.
• Recurring income. With a membership site, members are paying every month (or whatever time interval you choose). There’s security in having a recurring revenue model – your income becomes more predictable.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well – yes. But it doesn’t come without significant challenges.

The Challenges of Building a Membership Site

Building a good membership site isn’t easy. In fact, it’s FAR FROM easy. Think about it:

• You have to provide consistent value. I know, I said that was a reason to consider starting a membership site. With that said, it can be quite a challenge to keep coming up with new content.
• You have to master retention. The biggest issue for most membership site is one question – How do I keep members from canceling? I’ve heard it said that the average membership site keeps members for 3 to 4 months. That SUCKS. But retention is a tricky thing, and it can be difficult to get it right.
• With paying members come customer service issues. Yes, in a perfect world, everyone loves everything you do and technology always works. Unfortunately, this world ain’t anywhere close to perfect. Also, we live in a world where many people want everything to be perfect and immediate.

But don’t worry. I’m not going to leave you there. By the end of this massive post, you will be a membership site NINJA. Yes, I said NINJA.

The Technology

Before I get into how to make your membership site successful, let’s deal with the technology. Here are the tools that I recommend for building your membership site:

• WordPress – This is the content management system I recommend for every purpose. It works for blogs, websites and yes – even membership sites.
• Amember – This software handles registration, member accounts, protecting your members area and much more. It is the best I’ve found for managing membership sites, and I’ve explored MANY options.
• Stripe – This service allows you to accept payments on your site. It integrates with Amember and is quite easy to setup.
• GetResponse – This is the email marketing service I use and recommend. It also integrates with Amember. When someone purchases a membership, the system adds them to an email list. You can then use GetResponse for your general communications.
• SendGrid – This is a transactional email service that integrates with Amember. It deals with emails generated within Amember (i.e. invoices, password reset, etc.) and increases deliverability. The technology behind sending emails and getting them delivered is tricky. SendGrid reduces emails going to spam.
• Facebook Group – I’ve tried forums for building community. Unfortunately, people don’t like using forums in 2015. Social media has changed the game. Facebook groups are great because most of your members are already on Facebook. I HIGHLY recommend using Facebook groups for building community rather than forums (or something else).
• Vimeo Pro – Up until recently, I used to recommend Wistia for hosting videos. Then my membership site started growing faster. Along with that, my bill also started growing faster than I would’ve liked. I now recommend Vimeo Pro for hosting your membership videos. You’re able to customize the look of the video player and protect your videos.

Here are some miscellaneous plugins that I recommend for various purposes:

• EventOn – If you have a schedule of events for your members, this is the plugin I recommend.
• Frontend Checklist – This plugin allows you to create checklists for your members. The great thing about it is that it stores the items that members checked. This way, they can always see what’s left for them to do.
• Swiftype search – This allows you to create a customizable search engine for your site. When members type in a certain search query, it autosuggests related posts or pages.

Before you Build your Membership Site

There are a few important questions you have to ask BEFORE building your membership site:

What value will you provide?

Nobody (besides your mother) will sign up to pay you every month just to support you. There needs to be a compelling reason.

What pain are you solving? What are the benefits for your potential customers? Being clear on this will help you create the right kind of membership site.

How will you provide that value?

Once you understand the value you will be providing, you need to look at the “how”. How will you be providing that value?

Will it do monthly webinars?

Will you do live coaching calls?

Will you drip feed weekly video lessons?

Will you have a Facebook group?

These details are essential to grapple with before building your membership site.

Some of the details will evolve over time, but it’s a good idea to think through as much of it as possible beforehand.

Who is your ideal customer?

Having the right customers is the difference between loving or hating what you do.

You know the saying – “The customer is always right.” Well, that’s wrong – especially if you have the wrong customer.

Having a picture of who your ideal customer is, will help you create the right membership site to target that person.

What struggles will your customers encounter?

Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer. Think through what they are trying to do.

What struggles will they encounter in the process. Doing this will help you in the next step.

How can you help them overcome those struggles?

Once you understand the struggles, you can then create resources to help them.

Conduct a survey

One of the best ways to find out the answer to the questions listed above is to ask your potential customers.

Conducting a survey is an excellent way of gathering this info. I spoke about how to do this in this post.

The Member Resources

When I first launched my Coaching Club, I offered it as a series of webinars that were coming in the future.

It was important for me to start with a core set of resources that were available immediately.

The last thing you want is for someone to sign up for membership and then have nothing to do.

Getting members to take action will play a big part in the success of your membership site. It’s important to have resources available immediately.

These resources generally fit in one of two categories:

• The core training – If your membership site teaches how to start a blog, have at least one module covering the basics. That way, they can get started as soon as they sign up.
• The core resources – Training videos are great and helpful. But there are also resources that can help your members beyond training. Create some of those resources and have them available in the members area.

The Onboarding Process

One of the most important factors that affect member satisfaction is the onboarding process.

This is the orientation that happens immediately after sign up. If your new members are confused, they will be unsatisfied. Unsatisfied members cancel their membership.

This process is critical for member retention. Here’s what you need to do:

• Get new members to take action immediately. Give them simple tasks to do. Here are some examples from my onboarding process:
  • Have them join your Facebook group and introduce themselves.
  • Have them whitelist your email address to ensure that they receive your emails.
  • Have them sign up for SMS notification (I use Call Loop for this).
  • Have them explore the membership area
• Front-load value in the first month
  • Providing a little something extra during the first month. That will go a long way in keeping members engaged.
  • This extra value should help to simplify the process for your members.
  • Example: I include a four-week jump start in my coaching club.

Communication – the Essential Ingredient

When it comes to building a successful membership site, communication is important.

It helps you to nurture relationships with your members as well as keeps them informed.

Email is a powerful tool for doing this. Here’s what I recommend:

• Send weekly updates. In these updates, keep members informed about what’s happening in the membership site. Also, let them know what’s coming up. Lastly, it’s a great idea to highlight and congratulate member successes.
• Send event reminders. Whenever you have events coming up, it’s a good idea to send out reminders. My coaching calls are usually on Thursdays. While my weekly updates go out on Mondays, I still send out a reminder on Wednesday.

Engaging your Members

The best membership sites have members who are engaged. The question is – how do you engage your members?

The answer is simple:

---

To engage others, you must be both engaging and engaged
Click To Tweet

---

Here are some simple tips that can help you do just that:

• Check in regularly. Yes, it would be great to have an active membership community where you didn’t have to do anything. But the world doesn’t work like that (and neither do membership sites). It’s not a “set it and forget it” situation. Be engaged, and check in regularly.
• Ask questions. How do you get members to interact and contribute to the ongoing discussion? Simple: Ask questions. You will find that these can be great springboards for awesome conversations.
• Get members involved in a process. This is my top tip for engagement. Think of ways to get your members actively involved in a process together. This will make them feel as if they are a part of something bigger than themselves. That helps to keep them going.

Conduct Surveys

Conducting surveys is a great way to get feedback from your members. This feedback can help you make the right improvements. I do this at two points:

• A few days after they enter. The goal of this survey is to get an understanding of what they are struggling with. I’ve built this into my autoresponder sequence to collect this info over time.
• After one month. Once they have had time to go through the material, I ask for feedback on the program.

Let’s bring this home

That’s it. I hope that you see the power of membership sites. And I hope that you now have a solid action plan for building your membership site.

But I’m sure there are some tips I’ve missed.

Have you ever built a membership site? If so, what tips would you add to this list?

If not, is this something you plan on doing in the future?

Let’s discuss in the comments below.

Listen to the Episode

Learning with Leslie: | Download MP3 | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Raw RSS | More |

Build a Membership Site

Resources mentioned

• The Become a Blogger Coaching Club – My membership site where I teach how to build a business with a blog
• WordPress – Content management system
• Amember – Membership site software
• Stripe – For accepting payments
• GetResponse – The email marketing service I use and recommend
• SendGrid – The transactional email service that integrates with Amember
• Facebook Groups – For building your community
• Vimeo Pro – For hosting your videos
• EventOn – For creating a calendar in your members area
• Frontend Checklist – For creating checklists in your members area.
• Swiftype search – Customizable search engine.
• Call Loop – For SMS communication

The post 238 How to Build a Membership Site: a Comprehensive Guide appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.

from Become A Blogger | RSS Feed http://ift.tt/1Quocq1
via IFTTT

237 How to Use a Webinar to Launch Your Digital Product

Using Webinars to Launch

Two weeks ago, I had a very successful re-launch of my Become a Blogger Coaching Club.

During the launch, I surpassed my goal by 258%. Needless to say, this made me happy.

How did I do it? I used a combination of a carefully crafted webinar and email sequence.

In this post, I’m going to share all of the details with you, so that you can go out and do the same to launch your digital product.

Why You Should Use Webinars

I love webinars, but not only because I find them to be a lot of fun. They are extremely effective when it comes to selling products.

Here are three reasons:

You are able to demonstrate value upfront

For someone to decide to buy your product, you have to establish some level of trust. Think about it . . .

You are asking them to go to a web page, pull out their credit cards and buy from you.

How do they know that your purchase process can be trusted?

Best Value Delivered

How do they know that they will get what they pay for?

How do they know that the quality of your digital product warrants the price you are charging?

Some of this uncertainty can be eliminated (or at least reduced) by demonstrating the value before the purchase.

Teaching your potential customer something useful in a webinar can help them understand the real value of what you provide.

With Live Events comes Energy

How do you feel when you get together with a group of friends to watch a movie? You probably get more excited than when watching a movie alone.

That’s the same thing that happens during a live webinar. It’s not simply someone going to your sales pages and reading.

It’s them having a shared experience with others, and that brings a lot of energy to the experience.

The Sense of Urgency is a Great Motivator

If you do a webinar in the way I outline in this post, there will be a sense of urgency.

This is a great motivator to action.

How to Launch Your Product with a Webinar

To launch a product successfully using a webinar, you’re going to have to go through several steps.

I’m going to share the exact steps that I used that resulted in my successful launch. I hope you can take these steps, tweak them (as needed) and apply them to your next launch.

Create a High-Quality Product

Yes, I know that this is not an episode on creating products. But this part is so crucial that I need to cover this part in some detail.

Here’s the thing – if you sell a mediocre product, you’re going to have mediocre results.

Creating a high-quality product doesn’t mean that it will sell itself, but it will make the sales process easier.

The goal is to create a product that solves a specific problem for your potential customers.

This can be a course or (as in my case) even a membership site.

You want to make sure that the value is so good that you can give away a lot of valuable content during the webinar and still have LOTS to share in the product.

Regarding the technology for my membership site, here are the tools I use:

• WordPress: Do I even need to explain this one? All of my sites are based on WordPress because WordPress ROCKS!

WordPress Hosted Blogs

• Amember: This is the membership site software I use to handle member registration and protect my pages.
• Stripe: This is the payment processor I currently used. I go rid of PayPal because of technical issues that always seem to arise. Stripe makes it SUPER easy to accept payments and integrates with Amember well.

Stripe

• Facebook Group: After trying forums for previous launches, I’m so glad to be using a Facebook group now. Fewer problems and more interaction. A win-win situation for everyone.

Planning your webinar

It’s time to plan your webinar – the big event. This is where you will be providing your attendees with a ton of value and then announcing the launch of your product. Here are the things you must do:

Set a Schedule

Set a date

The first thing you want to do is set a date. When will you be launching your product? That will be the day of the webinar.

Once you set that date, you can take a step back and set the milestones you need to reach to be ready on time.

Create an Outline

All of my content starts as an outline (even this post). By creating an outline first, you’re able to get a birds-eye view of your project.

It allows you to get a good idea of the flow of your content and make decisions about what should be removed or added.

Get Feedback

Once your outline is complete, it’s a good idea to get feedback from someone else. Did you miss anything? Does your flow make sense?

Getting an outside perspective can often go a long way and help you spot mistakes, refine concepts and make your content more effective.

Revise your outline

Once you’ve collected feedback, take some time to revise your outline. The more work you do on the outline, the less work you’ll have to do when you create your slides.

The Structure of Your Presentation

Webinar Structure

What makes a great presentation? One that engages your audience, delivers value, and gets the desired result.

Of course, in the case of launching a product, the desired result is to sell your product.

I’ve toyed around with the structure of my webinars and here’s what works well for me:

The Pre-Webinar Banter

Around 5 or 10 minutes before the designated time for the start of the webinar, I start the broadcast and chat with the attendees who are on early.

During that time, I ask them simple questions like who they are and where they are tuning in from.

I might also ask another question that’s related to the topic of the webinar. For example, in my last webinar, I asked for them to let me know if they already have a blog.

When they answer in the chat, I read their responses out loud for them to get a sense of who’s in the room. This helps to warm them up for the main event and gets them excited.

The “What” Section

This section contains the title slide and the slide that outlines what we’re going to cover. The goal here is to set expectations and to hook their attention.

This section shouldn’t take more than 2 or 3 minutes.

The “Why” Section

Audience Interactions

This is where you really sell the value of what you’re teaching by explaining why it’s such an important topic? What pain will it help your audience solve by the end of the webinar?

If they resonate with your “why”, they will be excited to watch the entire presentation.

I find that this is best accomplished by sharing a story. For example, In my most recent webinar, I shared the story of how I went from being an unsatisfied high school science and math teacher to a university professor by leveraging my blog.

I then showed how I was able to leave that job to be a full-time blogger. By sharing that story, I was able to connect with people on the webinar who wanted more from life than they were currently getting.

This clearly showed why they needed to pay keen attention to what I was teaching.

The “Who” Section

This next section is where you let them know a little bit about who you are (as it pertains to the content). For some people, this might be their first interaction with you.

You never want to assume that everyone on the call knows you.

This also allows you to demonstrate why you are qualified to speak on the topic you are presenting on.

Side note: The “Why” and “Who” sections can be reversed – whatever makes the flow of the presentation better. Also, everything up to this point shouldn’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes.

The “How” Section

Webinar

This is the most important part of the entire webinar because this is where you deliver on your promise. Whatever you said you would cover in the “what” section should be covered in great detail here.

The goal here is to give so much value that the webinar could serve as a standalone product because of how much value you packed into it.

Attendees should be able to walk away, take action and achieve results.

This should also be the longest section. If everything before the “how” section took 10 to 15 minutes, this section should take around 30 minutes.

A key thing to keep in mind is that while this webinar should be very actionable, you should leave room for “more”. And that more will come in your offer.

The Offer (including the “when”)

Once you’ve over-delivered with some awesome actionable content, it’s time to make the pitch.

Your attendees have seen the value and can walk away and take action. However, for those that want to take things further and get even more guidance, they can get even more value by buying your product.

In this offer, you should include the following details (and a lot of this will sound familiar):

• What pain your product is solving
• What are the benefits to choosing your product
• What your product includes
• Testimonials from others who have had success with your product
• The price of your product

The Offer

Once you’ve gone through all of that, there’s one more important thing that’s needed – a time-sensitive special offer.

By having a sense of urgency, you will increase your number of signups significantly. This can be a reduced price for those who are on the webinar or for those who take action quickly.

I did my webinar on a Thursday and offered a $1 trial for those who signed up by Tuesday at midnight.

Prepare your Marketing Assets

So you’ve got your slides created and you are ready to go. But in order for your promotion to be successful, you will need to create some marketing assets:

Your Sales Page

This one should be fairly obvious. When you give your call to action at the end of your webinar, you will need a place to send them to in order for the to buy.

Elements of an Effective Sales Page (P.A.S.T.O.R.)

That’s where your sales page comes into play. Here are the elements of an effective sales page as described by Ray Edwards‘ P.A.S.T.O.R acronym:

• Problem: State the problem in a way that your audience can identify with it.
• Amplify: Amplify the problem.
• Story/Solution: Tell a story that shares the solution
• Testimony: How has your product worked for others?
• Offer: What exactly are you selling?
• Response: This is where they respond to your offer and take action.

For more on this, check out Ray’s Episode on P.A.S.T.O.R.

Your Email Sequence

When launching a product, your email sequence plays a vital role. As great as your product will be, subscribers often need to go through a nurture sequence before making the decision to buy. Here’s the exact sequence I used to launch my Coaching Club.

Before the webinar, I sent out three emails:

1. The first email announced the webinar and gave them the link to register. This email went out on the Monday before the webinar, which was done on Thursday.
2. I sent a second email on the day before the webinar.
3. I sent a third email to let my subscribers know that we’d be starting in one hour.

The result was a well-attended webinar. Yipee

After the webinar is where the real marketing began. Here are the emails that were sent out then:

1. The Replay Email: I sent this email out on the day after the webinar (Friday). In this email, I sent the link to the replay page and I let them know about the $1 trial offer that would be expiring on Tuesday.
2. Two Days Remaining: In this email, I decided to share a success story from one of the members of the coaching club. I also reminded them that there were only 2 days left to claim the special offer.
3. 24 Hours Remaining: In this email, I answered 2 questions that addressed concerns that some of my subscribers might have had. The two questions I chose were:
   • Is the Coaching Club right for me?
   • Is the Coaching Club worth the cost?
4. On the day of: On the day of, I decided to send out 2 emails:
   • First email (12 hours remaining): I shared one benefit of membership. For this promotion, the benefit was the hot seats that I just implemented at the beginning of our coaching calls.
   • Final email (6 hours remaining): This was the “last call” for the $1 trial offer. This one was more direct and focused on the fact that the offer would be ending soon.

In the past, I’ve hesitated to send out that many emails. Then I realized that by really promoting the Coaching club, I’m actually helping my audience out.

Because I created a quality program, I knew that members would get a tremendous amount of value from it, so I was more confident in my promotions than ever before.

It’s also important to note that 56% of my sales came in during the last 24 hours. Yes, by doing that final promotional push, it more than doubled my sales. This emphasizes the importance of sending those email reminders.

Bonus Tip: Use Countdown timers

I’ve already mentioned the importance of creating a sense of urgency and how that results in increased sales. Using countdown timers are very effective for emphasizing the time-sensitive nature of your offer.

Knowing that the sale is ending in approximately 6 hours is not as effective as knowing that it’s ending in 6 hours, 15 minutes and 4, 3, 2 seconds

Whether you use LeadPages or OptimizePress, they both give you the ability to use countdown timers on your landing pages. However, with LeadPages, you have to specifically choose a page that has the countdown timer feature. With OptimizePress, you can add it to any of your pages.

For your emails, I recommend using Motion Mail. It allows you to create countdown timers and add them directly to your emails. It’s a beautiful thing. Urgency even before they leave the inbox

In Conclusion

Webinars are powerful. When you combine a carefully crafted webinar with a well thought out email sequence, you are setting your product up for success.

Feel free to take the steps I shared in this post and modify them to suit your needs. If you plan on launching a product, use this as a guide and then come back and let me know how it worked for you.

Your Turn

Have you launched any products of your own? If so, what tips did you learn that could help us all. Go ahead and share in the comments below.

The post 237 How to Use a Webinar to Launch Your Digital Product appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.

from Become A Blogger | RSS Feed http://ift.tt/1SiJ0y8
via IFTTT

236 The Honor of Your Presence Is Requested

I started my blog in September of 2008.

Since then, my business has evolved significantly. When I started, the purpose of my blog was to teach people about an industry called Freebie Trading.

Then I started my Biology Blog. This blog led to me landing my dream job as a University professor in 2011.

Last year July, I left that job to be a full-time blogger and entrepreneur.

When I left that job, I launched the Become a Blogger coaching club, which has been such a great experience.

A lot has happened over the last year and I’m excited about the future.

I’m mostly excited about helping people like you realize that you don’t have to settle for the status quo.

Because of the power of technology, you and I have the ability to bypass the gatekeepers.

We don’t need to wait for someone else to give us permission to excel.

We can take our own success into our own hands.

We can create something HUGE and write our own tickets.

And as a result, people like you and I are doing things that we’ve never been able to do using the power of blogging.

I’m getting tremendous clarity on the direction I’m heading. Not just because I’m accomplishing my own goals, but because my business is evolving in a way that enables me to help you more.

So I’m requesting the honor of your presence at a very special event. Tomorrow, Thursday October 29th, I’m holding a very special webinar on “How to Build a Blog That Can Help You Land Your Dream Job (or Quit the Job You Hate)“.

In this webinar, I’m going to walk you through the exact steps I took to build a platform that landed me my dream job and then enabled me to quit that job.

But I’m not only going to share what I did. I’m also going to share what I’ve learned and how I would do things different if I were starting over in 2015.

So, if you are tired of the status quo and want to create a solid blogging business, then I’m requesting the honor of your presence.

Click here to register for the webinar

– Leslie Samuel

P.S. If you are reading (or listening) to this after Thursday, October 29th, you can still visit the page. I will be doing webinars on a regular basis, so check out the registration page to see when the next available date will be.

The post 236 The Honor of Your Presence Is Requested appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.

from Become A Blogger | RSS Feed http://ift.tt/1P4Qdm9
via IFTTT

235 How to Create Surveys to Read Your Audience’s Minds

Creating Surveys

Have you ever wanted to read your audience’s mind and figure out exactly what they are thinking?

Want to know if you’re heading in the right direction?

Don’t want to waste time creating a product that your subscribers just aren’t interested in?

Surveys are an excellent way to make this happen, and that’s what we’re going to be chatting about in this episode.

Why You Should Survey Your Audience

Using surveys is a powerful way to do the kind of research that can help take your business to the next level.

No longer do you have to guess what you should be doing next. One of the best ways to figure out exactly what someone else wants is by asking them.

Unfortunately, most people do surveys in a way that doesn’t give them the actionable information they need to make business decisions. Of course, that’s most people who don’t listen to this episode.

You, on the other hand, ARE going to listen to this episode and as a result, your next survey is going to be a pile of awesomesauce.

In this episode, I walk you through a strategic process for making your survey as effective as humanly possible.

Determine What Your Goal Is

Determine what your goal is

Before you can create a survey, it’s good to look at the big picture. What EXACTLY are you trying to accomplish with the survey?

Are you trying to:

• Find out more about your audience so that you can know what content to create?
• Determine if your idea for a product is one that your audience will buy?
• Find out if your email autoresponder sequence is effective?

Whatever your goal is, it’s important to be absolutely clear, so that when you create your survey, it accomplishes your goal.

I’m currently working on a survey to figure out which direction I want to go with my email list, from the lead magnet I’m using to get people on my list, to the emails I send them after they sign up.

My goal is to revamp my email list so that it delivers Massive value. It does already, but I want it to deliver MUCH MORE. In the episode, I use that survey as an example to walk you through the process.

Start With A List Of Assumptions

Start With A List Of Assumptions

This is the step that’s most often overlooked. Most people just start by creating their questions. However, by starting with a list of assumptions about your audience, you can make sure to create the right kinds of questions to test your assumptions.

Listen to the episode to get an example of the assumptions one of my clients made when we created her survey.

Get Feedback About Your Assumptions

This step isn’t absolutely necessary. However, I find that whenever I get input on things like this from someone who either understands my target audience or is my target audience, I get interesting ideas I wouldn’t have thought of on my own.

Reach out to one or two individuals and see whether they think your assumptions are appropriate for helping you accomplish the goal you set out. Also, they might have some suggestions for great assumptions that better help you understand your audience to help you accomplish your goal.

Create Your Survey Questions

Once you’ve created your list of assumptions, you should then create a list of questions that directly test your assumptions. Getting answers to these questions should let you know if your assumptions are correct.

There are multiple options for services to use for creating surveys. If you use GetResponse for email marketing, you can use their built-in survey feature at no additional cost.

However, if you want to do an in-depth analysis of your responses, I would recommend a service like Survey Monkey.

Survey Monkey allows you to segment your responses and dig deep into what a specific subset of your respondents REALLY wants, and that can be powerful.

Include Relevant Demographic Questions

If one of your goals is to get to know your audience better, you should include some basic demographic questions. These may include questions about male, age, ethnicity, education, income, employment status etc.

These kinds of questions really help you cater your content to the specific individual.

Include a Magic Wand Question

In creating your survey, there will be things that you never thought of that could be very useful. For that reason, it’s a good idea to have a magic wand question at the end of your survey.

Include a Magic Wand Survey

That question goes like this – “If you could wave a magic wand and change . . . What would it be?”

Another way of asking this question is – “What is your biggest struggle when it comes to . . . ?”

Your goal here is to find out about something your audience is struggling with that may or not be addressed in your survey.

Send Out Your Survey

Once your survey is completed, it’s time to get people to take it. You can do this by:

• Posting it on your blog
• Sending it to your email list
• Including it in your autoresponder
• Sharing it on social media

Do whatever you need to do to get as many people to complete it as possible, as long as they are a part of your target audience.

Analyze the Results

Analyse the Results

Now it’s time to analyse your results. Do they validate your assumptions? Come up with a list of conclusions that you can draw based on the data you received. This will be very important for the next step.

TAKE ACTION

At the beginning of this process, you determined your goal. You then went through a process of creating a survey to test your assumptions and have drawn conclusions based on actual data.

Now, it’s time to take action based on the data you received. Did the survey validate a product idea? Go and CREATE that product. Did you get ideas for how to revamp your email list? REVAMP your email list.

This process is only over when you’ve taken the appropriate action to accomplish your goal.

Your Turn

Which of these tips did you find most useful? Let me know in the comments below.

Infographic

How to Create Surveys

The post 235 How to Create Surveys to Read Your Audience’s Minds appeared first on Become A Blogger by Leslie Samuel.

from Become A Blogger | RSS Feed http://ift.tt/1LErMYh
via IFTTT