According to the Content Marketing Institute, Content is one of the fastest growing segments in Marketing and an increasing number of marketers are relying more and more on their strategies to achieve success online.

Is this a surprise to you? Because if it is, you have probably been living under a rock for the last couple of years.

With the amount of content that goes left and right in front of you, on your screen, there are content creators, curators, users that share and consume on a minute to minute basis. Now, that doesn’t mean all that content is successful in reaching its goals or has even been put out there with a business goal.

In my case here at SocialMouths for example, I basically rely a good 90% on pure content marketing. Basically, I connect with people that arrive to my blog because they followed a tweet or a share with an interesting headline, liked what they found, some of them became regulars and some of them I even ended up having a relationship that in time turned into a client agreement.

You can understand that I am interested in everything regarding Content. Today, the cool team at BlueGlass Interactive sent me their new Infographic called “The Content Marketing Explosion”. It includes lots of data and I recommend you bookmark it and take some time to chew on it. I will leave you alone now so you can enjoy it, before that I’ll just point to these two facts I want you to remember:

• 90% of marketers are doing some form of Content Marketing, even if they don’t know it (Have you been doing some content marketing without realizing it?)
• 60% of B2B marketers plan on increasing their efforts this year
• 26% of budgets are allocated to content (obviously is much higher in small business)

Have fun going through it and express your thoughts about how your doing or planning your content marketing.

Infographic courtesy of BlueGlass Interactive.

This is a guest post by Hector Cuevas from HectorJCuevas.com

Mediocrity is often the result of taking the road of least resistance. You agree?…

I’m sure you do. Building successful blogs, strong brands and huge audiences is no walk in the park. This process slaps you in the face with resistance ever step of the way.

But it gets worse. Even though you’ve decided to take on this monster of a task; even though you’ve decided to take the road less traveled by building your internet empire, you may still be getting mediocre results. But why? – Are other successful bloggers smarter than you? That’s highly unlikely…

So, what keeps other successful bloggers from building “just another wordpress blog?” What makes their blogs better? I’ve been thinking about this for months now and I’ve compiled a list of 6 things successful blogs have.

My hopes with this post is to share with you the changes I’ve made and how you can use them, too. Let’s get started.

Solve Problems and Meet Needs

The questions I’ve been getting via email, Facebook and Twitter I’ve tried to address on my blog in one form or another. When I was getting questions about post frequency, I created a video. When my audience asked about creating products, I recorded a podcast episode. And when I started getting questions about podcasting, I created a product (Podcasting For Bloggers) to fill that need and answer those questions.

The lesson here is to create the content that your audience wants. Francisco knew that some of you were interested in keeping your blogs safe, Facebook landing pages and getting twitter followers, that’s why he wrote those articles. If you do that, we promise you’ll be fine.

Enjoy the Process

This is probably the hardest thing I’m going to suggest you do – detach yourself from results. In order to build a successful blog, with a loyal audience, you have to think about this as a long term project. The thing about long term projects is that they take awhile to get results, and people often give up and stop making progress.

But, if you try to enjoy it every step of the way, you might stick with it long enough to reap the benefits of business blogging.

Time is The Missing Piece of The Puzzle

You can buy every blogging course, and talk to every single pro blogger for an hour but they’ll never be able to give you the one thing that is essential to a blog’s success. – Time. It takes time to get noticed, it takes time to build a loyal following, and it takes time to start getting good search engine traffic.

The methods, ideas and strategies that we talk about can speed up your success but time will always be the missing piece of the puzzle. I noticed that the more patient I was, the faster I grew.

If it’s Not Personal – Make it Personal

First, my only focus was educating my readers. Then I added my experiences. Then I added personality, then humor and a bit of entertainment. The slight changes in my writing style took place when I started to get comfortable with myself and the things I was sharing.

This process of finding your voice might come natural to you, but for others it might take some time and practice. Work on making your blog a bit more personable, and your readers will find it easier to connect with you.

Never Be Satisfied

Too many people give up way too early. Often times it’s because the results aren’t coming fast enough, other times it’s because they’re satisfied with the results they are getting. The best part about building a blog is that with consistent effort comes consistent growth. The more you do and give, the more you get back in return.

The key is to continue to write, publish and promote content so that your blog passes the mediocre stage and lands on the popular stage.

Sometimes it’s who you know

I’ve learned that building relationships with other bloggers is not only a smart thing to do, but it’s also a critical part of your success. Just like in “real” life I’ll help out a friend much faser than I would help a complete stranger.

Thinking that you can do this on your own will slow you down. So, I suggest you swallow you pride, kick that ego to the side, and avoid mediocrity by collaborating with other bloggers.

On To You…

What are you doing to build a blog worth visiting over and over again? How does your site measure up to the popular blogs in your niche? Leave your comments below and let’s chat…

This is a guest post by Hector Cuevas from HectorJCuevas.com, where he writes about lessons learned through blogging, taking fearless action and successfully building a blogging audience. He is also the host of the Business Blogging Podcast podcast. You can check out his latest project at PodcastingForBloggers.com – where he’ll teach you how to start a podcast of your own.

This is a guest post by Srini Rao from The Skool of Life

If you know anything about me you know that I have a tendency to look for people with interesting stories. I think social media fame is ridiculous and I could care less how many followers you have on twitter. I never even check how many followers I have on twitter. It’s no secret that I believe metrics and measurements limit your potential.

I believe there’s a tremendous power in reaching out to people because you have a genuine interest in them. The problem is we approach too many things with a “what am I going to gain from this mind set?” What I’ve realized that every single conversation you have with a person whether it be via tweets, emails, facebook comments or anything else creates new possibilities and opportunities in your life.

About a month back I started hanging out at a bar here in Tamarindo, Costa Rica that had a really interesting vibe unlike anything else I’d ever seen. It was a sense of community that no other place seemed to have. As I made some new friends and got to know the patrons I learned that many had made over 15 visits to Costa Rica and always stayed there at the hotel that was attached to the bar. The place was called Witch’s Rock Surf Camp and was owned by a guy named Joe Walsh. My natural tendency these days is to go and check out what people are up to online because I’m a blogger and I live and breathe content creation on a daily basis. It turned out the owner Joe Walsh had a blog called the The Joe Walsh Project. I figured if there was another blogger here in Tamarindo I should meet him because it would be somebody else I could talk about blogging with. It didn’t hurt that his passion for surfing was what brought him to Costa Rica in the first place. Needless to say we had a few things in common. We finally met up for drinks to talk about his blog and I shared a bunch of things I knew about blogging with him while we threw back a few beers.

A few weeks went by, and I went to NYC for my Blogworld speech. When I got back I ran into Joe at his bar and when we sat down to talk he asked me if I’d be interested in helping him with social media. It’s funny because I used to joke with friends that an ideal job would be to work on social media strategy for a surf travel company. But what’s interesting about this is that our conversations didn’t start with the intention of doing business together. They started because of an interest in his story and his blog. I also want to encourage you to become a fan on Facebook because I’m in the process of putting together an all expenses paid trip to surf camp in Costa Rica contest for two bloggers.

We live in a world today where relationships are more important than anytime in history. We’re also fortunate that amazing and interesting people are accessible to us like never before. Stop trying to work the room when it comes to social media and you’ll realize quickly that what social media has done is given us access to a global network of inspiring people. Embrace them, connect with them, take an interest in them and you’ll find that social media will do far more for you than just grow your business.

As some of you may know already, a few days ago I launched my Relationship Marketing Ebook where I go into explicit detail about how I’ve built incredible relationships online. I’ve shared just a few of the amazing things that have happened to me because of relationship marketing:

• How another Blogger Bought me a Brand new Suit for Blogworld
• The Free Place to Live in Costa Rica because of a relationship with a reader
• How Relationship Marketing Can Drive High Quality Traffic to Your Blog and Much More

Relationships are the most valuable asset you can build because they extend beyond the life of your blog.

Editor’s Note: I was very lucky to get a review copy of Srini’s new ebook Relationship Marketing a couple of weeks ago. I loved it, and the reason I did is because while this is not at all a technical book it still gives you the insights that you can implement in a more human way. Great job Srini!

[The link for the Relationship Marketing ebook is an affiliate link]

Photo Credit: Guilherme & dmitri_66

This is a guest post by Srini Rao – Srini blogs at The Skool Of Life and is the Co-Founder of BlogcastFM, one of today’s most recognized Blogging podcasts where he interviews some of the biggest names in the blogosphere. If he’s not surfing you can find him hanging out onTwitter and Facebook.

Last April was a crazy month for me. I was in Antigua Guatemala for a week, came back to Los Angeles for 3 days, flew to Santiago Chile for 10 days (that’s a 12-hour flight in case you didn’t know), came back to Los Angeles again for a week to finish rushing to Miami for a couple of days.

But that wasn’t all, I did all this in the middle of clients projects and, except for Guatemala, the rest of the traveling was strictly business (when I say business that includes drinks and cigars in the middle… I didn’t say I was complaining). On top of that, my blog has been experiencing some serious issues that required some special attention. Just so you get an idea, every time I publish a post, the entire site goes down, sometimes it will disconnect from the database or it will go completely blank.

Long story short, I decided to let it go even tough I’m kind of paranoid about my blog. I don’t post tons of content every week but the one thing I have is consistency, so stepping out of it will obviously have some impact. The second half of April SocialMouths had very little content published, had technical issues and very little promotion. I was also very inactive on Twitter for about a week. I expected to hit a dip but then try to get back to usual.

The Numbers

The impact this inconsistency had in the numbers:

Blog Traffic

• It dropped 6,000 pageviews comparing with the previous month (March)
• Pages per Visit dropped from 1.50 to 1.39
• And Bounce Rate went up 10% (This is the only digit you hope will go down…)

Community Growth

Outside my blog, I focus on 2 networks: Twitter and my Facebook Page. Growth is pretty steady even tough is 100% organic. Twitter grows at about 100 Followers per week and the Fb Page is also around the same figure.

During the month of April that solid growth dropped 75%.

Another number that has no importance other than some level of social proof is the AdAge ranking, I think I went down about 20 positions. Again, not important but it helps you visualize the kind of impact you have.

Will People Notice?

I was certain about taking a hit in traffic, it was obvious. The other thing I was sure about was that people will not notice. How important can your blog be for people to say “Hey, where is my weekly dose of SocialMouths?”

But people do notice when you’re not there. They do.

On one hand, it felt great to realize that people will notice you, that they are aware of you and your content. On the other hand, realize that you have to be more responsible towards your brand, your audience DO pay attention.

In this case people are more important, numbers are just numbers, they can represent social proof or some meaningless traffic but your audience, tribe, community or whatever you like to call it will sense that inconsistency.

Now, imagine if you disappear for a few weeks or a couple of months. People say frequency builds traction and that gets you more traffic, I’m not sure that works in every case. I have proven to get more traffic publishing less but one thing I can tell you is that your audience gets used to that frequency, whatever it is and when you break it, your brand has an impact on that people.

Put A Strategy Together

In this case I made the decision to observe what the impact was, I was aware. But you can plan your absence to at least keep publishing content. You could schedule everything in WordPress or you could invite guests/contributors to cover your butt during that time. The technology is in place and a little planning will put you on auto-pilot as much as possible.

Business As Usual

So what happens to SocialMouths? Well, there was a lot of testing, backing up, code reviewing and cleaning up. We now live on a dedicated server at Hostway that costs $100/month. There is a new design (hope you like), nothing too crazy but took the opportunity to spike things up a notch. And hopefully the technical issues are behind us, in fact…

Comparing loading times with @HectorCuevas a few weeks ago I got my ass kicked, his site was 2.2x faster than mine. But as I walked away in embarrassment I promised to come back. So last night after conducting 4 runs, I’m happy to report my site was 45% faster than his…

Hey Hector, chew on that baby!

There are still a couple of things being tweaked on the site so excuse the dust for now but there is a lot of cool stuff in the oven too. There is more content this week, one post from Martina Iring and some stuff from me.

Thank you all for the patience and I hope you keep enjoying SocialMouths!

You probably already read a thousand posts about how to promote your blog.

Every blog about blogging has published one and, hell, I probably have written something about it too. And yet, how to put my blog on the map is one of the most frequent questions I get from clients and friends. I don’t blame you, blogging is one of the hottest marketing vehicles nowadays (I heard).

Commenting, guest posting, free gifts, you name it. If you ask me, all good advice. I’m not about to tell you not to do those things because I truly believe they help get some visibility back to your blog. Allow me a couple of minutes to make my point.

I’m writing this considering the following concept…

If you blog you are a publisher and you do need to put that content you create in front of an audience. Hopefully the right audience. The only way to do that is by promoting your blog. We have discussed the topic of self-promotion here and how you shouldn’t feel weird about it. Content is not king if nobody can find it.

What I Didn’t Do To Put SocialMouths On The Map (Or… A Little Confession)

Before I continue, I wanna say that I don’t think SocialMouths is the ultimate blog or even one of the most popular ones in the niche, I don’t even think it has reached its full potential for several reasons. As a matter of fact, I’m one of those guys that are always thinking the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. But it does get 60k monthly pageviews, its email list gets about 10 new subscribers a day, Twitter followers are growing at about 100 per week and the Facebook Page grows at about the same rate. So will say that it is on the freakin’ map. =)

The following are some of the things I never did to promote the blog, some of them I still don’t do. After this I’ll tell you why, which is not relevant to my point…

Commenting on Other Blogs

I rarely, almost never comment on other blogs. I do have a list of must-read bloggers that I consume every week and I also take the time to discover new ones on a regular basis. I share a good amount of this content on Twitter and Facebook and sometimes I even say something to the author on Twitter but I almost never comment even if I love the post.

Guest Posting

I have never, not once, written a post for another blog. I have contributed with small pieces when they feature several bloggers and I have done a couple of interviews but never a guestpost of my own. Okay I have written a couple for my wife’s blog which is not at all related, but that’s it. I had a couple of offers in the past from well-known blogs but I had to declined.

The Social Media Elite

I don’t chase the so-called “social media elite” to see if an influencer retweets my crap or maybe I can establish a conversation with them. I don’t even read their blogs with the exception of CopyBlogger, which I happen to think kicks some serious ass and I have tons to learn from. An ocasional tweet from an influencer could give you a little spark in your traffic and that’s it.

I don’t think there is anything wrong if you wanna talk to the human being but I’m uncomfortable with the thought of “talking to the social media elite”.

Social Media Automation

I do not use any social media automation tools. I have used them to learn from them but it is not a practice of mine. I don’t use TwitterFeed to send my posts or other people’s posts, when you see me share a post from somebody else I’m actually there and I use Hootlet. I don’t even schedule tweets. I do tweet about my own posts 2 or 3 times in the day they go live but I do it manually.

A lot of people say scheduling tweets saves you time, no it doesn’t, you’re just allocating that time at another time.

SEO

I pay no attention to content optimization when I’m writing, if you see me doing a couple of things in a post I’m usually playing by ear, like making some important lines bold or writing a meta description behind the scenes.

I don’t do any keyword analysis before or after writing the post.

Free eBook

I really feel bad about this one but I’ve never written an eBook that I can give away for an email opt-in. As a matter of fact, and this is one of the biggest mistakes I made, I started building my email list a year after I launched the blog. This should be in place even before the launch. Even today, there is no shiny eBook at the top of my sidebar.

Video

I don’t do video because I’m troubled with my strong accent. Period. << Reminder: I should delete this line.

Pop-Ups

This is by choice, I have put it together for clients that ask for it and it’s funny but I don’t even mind when I go to my favorite blogs and I get a pop-up. I just don’t wanna have one at the moment even when other bloggers say they have increased their lists by 1,000%. Sorry!

I think you get the picture…

Why?

Glad you ask. Besides wanting to share those things with you, the reason is not the point of this post, actually, it’s pretty stupid and in most cases not valid. I don’t have enough time.

I’d love to guestpost or comment a lot and I know I will but the reality behind this blog is that I’m not a full-time blogger, I wanna get there but today I’m not. I have to run the behind-the-scenes of it which is providing services for my clients and I’m also a partner at a digital agency. Sometimes I barely have time to write a post and, on top of that, it takes me forever to write one…

Some of these things I didn’t do at the beginning out of ignorance and others are just choices I made. I’m not in any way suggesting that you do or don’t do any of these, in fact, some of them are really good advice and you should at least test them.

But like I said, that’s not the point.

But Francisco, What’s the Point?

The point is that you do not have to take all that advice you find online and make it yours, we all have different needs, different goals and different schedules. I always tell people to design a blogging strategy but, design your own. A realistic one.

Quick Story

I usually publish posts on Wednesday, I got this idea in my head that it’s the best day to do so but, last week I wasn’t ready. I had my post ready on Friday. So I decided to ask other bloggers on Twitter if they had other days or insights about the topic. To my surprise some of them said Tuesday, others said Thursday but most of them said they didn’t care. These are bloggers I respect, and they don’t care! They obviously have success posting whenever they want.

Erika Napoletano even told me that she gets an idea, writes the post right there and she publishes on the spot. Dude, this girl thinks of something and she starts throwing up beautiful words! I wish I had those mad skills.

Sorry. Got a little carried away… So what happened? Well, I went live on Friday and I didn’t get the response I usually get on Wednesday. From now on, I’ll do my best to post on WEDNESDAYS! That works for me.

I went to Google and turns out there are posts about when to publish, when to send an email campaign, when to tweet. That works for them but something completely different will work for you.

I know you’ve read hundreds of words on the topic of blog promotion in order to make that learning curve a little easier on yourself. Awesome. Now I want you to open your mind, forget all that and get ready to break all the rules. There is no one-size-fits-all here and there is no rule that says that if you don’t comment on other blogs you won’t make it.

There is one thing that got stuck with me a while back, it was @garyvee being bombarded with Twitter questions on a CNN interview, he answered “just follow your heart and you’ll be ok.”

Don’t think that if you don’t guest post or do video you won’t be able to put your blog on the map.

How About You?

Okay, I think I over shared here so… you go now and share what you don’t do to promote your own blog. Or, share your unique ideas on how to promote it.

I hope you all have a nice Wednesday, because this post is going out next Wednesday (you didn’t see that coming, did ‘ya?)

This is a guest post by Hector Cuevas from HectorJCuevas.com

There are a lot of reasons why your blog might not be growing, but I don’t have enough time or space in this article to get into all of them.

What I am going to do is give you the one thing that changed it all for me. This idea, although simple in nature, is very powerful.

I don’t know where I first heard it, but I owe the success I’ve had with my blog to this one single sentence. OK. I’m done building anticipation; here it is. The best way to grow you blog is to leave it. Right about now you’re either having an “Aha” moment or you’re confused as hell.

Either way, let me explain why most people aren’t practicing this idea and how it helps you specifically.

You’re Programmed To Work On Your Blog

Yes. You are being programmed to keep your blog where it’s at right now. Most of what you see online about building a blog talks about on-page search engine optimization, writing better content, getting a nicer looking theme, and posting longer articles more frequently.

Here’s why doing this alone won’t grow your blog; everything I just mentioned happens ON your blog and no one sees it. I’m not implying that doing SEO, and writing better content aren’t important, but that advice alone gets you nowhere fast.

The best content is not going to get spread across the web if no one reads it. The nicest theme in the world is not gonna get compliments if no one sees it, and all your search engine optimization tricks is not going to start bringing in loads of free traffic if Google doesn’t see you as an authority yet.

Unfortunately, this is all we see online; with the exception of some really talented and experienced people that are putting out the right information. Francisco and I try our best to reverse this bad programming by giving people the advice they need to take their blogs to the next level.

They Won’t Find You Until You Find Them

You can’t grow your blog by tweaking your blog, the same way you can’t make new friends by staying home. If you want to grow your network of friends you have to get out there and mingle, right?. What’s the first place that popped into your head when you read that last line?

A lounge?

A bar?

your neighborhood starbucks?

maybe you thought about that supermarket around the corner from your place.

Whatever and wherever you were thinking about, I bet it wasn’t your house. New friends are made when you leave your home and socialize, and it works the same way online. The only thing that changes are the places you meet your potential audience.

Social media can take many different forms; blogs, video, podcasts, microblogging, forums and social bookmarketing are just a few of them. So how do you leverage these forms of social media to grow your blogging audience? Simple, spend more time on the most popular sites that represent these forms.

How To Reach An Entirely New Audience

You can leverage other people’s audience through guest blogging. You can get into video marketing on YouTube, and you can build a large following on Twitter that will follow you to your blog.

But the single greatest decision I’ve ever made to grow my blogging audience in the last 10 months of blogging was starting my business blogging podcast.

There are many benefits to starting a podcast to grow your blog, here are just a few:

• It sets you apart from your competition
• It gives you a direct line of communication with your audience
• It creates networking opportunities with other bloggers
• It increases your blog’s reach – and this is the most important of all.

iTunes has a thriving marketplace with over 100 million active users and growing. If you’ve been paying close attention to everything I’ve said in this article, you know why this is important. Getting your podcast in the iTunes marketplace allows you to get found by hundreds and even thousands of people.

These are people that you would’ve normally never reached if it wasn’t for your podcast. This entirely new audience is waiting for your advice. They’re waiting for your content and your value. The best (and smartest) thing you can do right now is to give it to them.

If the benefit of getting more traffic doesn’t excite you enough, maybe more subscribers and brand recognition will; and podcasting helps you do that, too.

On To You…

Are you leaving your blog or are you still in the tweaking phase? What forms of social media are you using right now? Have you considered adding a podcast to your blogging strategy? If so, I’m releasing Podcasting For Bloggers on March 1st that will teach you all about that.

See you in the comments section…

Disclaimer: some of the links included in this post are affiliate links.

This is a guest post by Hector Cuevas – Hector blogs at HectorJCuevas.com, where he writes about lessons learned through blogging, taking fearless action and successfully building a blogging audience. He is also the host of the weekly podcast Business Blogging Podcast. You can check out his latest project at PodcastingForBloggers.com – where he’s going to teach you how to start a podcast of your own.

This is a guest post by Jonathan Wondrusch from ByBloggers

I’ve known from the day I first hit “Publish” on a blog that I had a lot to learn, so I spend a lot of time looking up as a blogger. Besides sometimes being a pain in the neck, I end up asking questions such as: what separates the folks like of Brian Clark, Sonia Simone, Darren Rowse, and Chris Brogan from the rest of the mere mortals that aspire to achieve what they have?

What I’ve realized is that these supposed, “A-List Bloggers”, aren’t bloggers at all, they are really A-List business people. Sure, they run blogs. They write and produce incredible content constantly. That’s what we get to see on a day to day basis because we don’t get to peek behind the curtain of their operations.

If we had the opportunity to see what their operations really looked like, here’s what we would see:

• Smart, long-term strategies for products, content and community building.
• Coordinated efforts across all areas of the business and content creation, marketing, product development, networking and the rest.
• And chances are, you’d see a team of passionate people working together to turn their visions into reality through a business.

That’s a hell of a lot more going on than what I normally think of when I picture a blog in my mind. When we think of the A-Listers, we don’t often think of everything else that they are doing. Blogging is a single facet and an important one, no doubt ñ of the entire operation.

Get Paid to Do What You Love To Do

Before you sigh at the cliché of the thought of, “Get paid to do what you love” hear me out.

If you are serving an audience through your blog or social media, I’d put money on the fact that you do it day in and day out because you love it. The fact that you get to help people – to solve challenges by sharing your experience and know-how in the niche that you can’t stop thinking about – probably excites the hell out of you.

Why else would you consistently produce content about a topic that you weren’t passionate about?

Pause.

Let yourself Dream for a moment.

What if you could get paid to do that? Screw the “American Dream” ñ this is The Dream: supporting the life you want by doing the work you love, and maybe, from wherever you want to do it.

If you can find that in a job, you need to thank whatever lucky stars are in your life, because those opportunities are one in a million. The rest of us have to consciously create that dream for ourselves.

Making the Leap from Blog to Business

Every blogger that I have had the opportunity to connect with has an entrepreneurial drive. In some, it is less pronounced, and in others, it is bright and sizzling – but it is always there.

And we can use that drive to create whatever we dream our lives to be.

The entrepreneurial spirit is what inspires us to create something incredible, and then share it with an audience. The difference between a blog and a business is that a business leverages (yes, that does translate as “sells”) the best of those creations to enable you to serve your audience even more.

Bridging that gap is 100% mental. You have to realize that to sustain the work that you are passionate about doing and to bring more of that into your life, you need to build a business around your passion that serves others.a

Once you’ve cleared that hurdle, you can begin the process of launching products and offering services to build a business around. It doesn’t have to be business as usual though.

The Customer Love Factor

Three months ago, I stumbled upon a movement in it’s infancy: Customer Love. Inspired by a post by Naomi Dunford on IttyBiz, a few enthusiastic bloggers created a Challenge: spend 28 days loving and serving their customers, and then launch a product so that they can keep doing the work that they are inspired by.

The concept clicked with people.

Bloggers united and devoted themselves to delivering as much value to their potential customers as humanly possible in 28 days. Where business had previously been foreign and inhuman, the concept of focusing on loving your audience and your customers inspired people to take action that they had been holding off on for months (or years).

What could be better than doing what you love, surrounded by an astounding group of peers, serving people you cared about and at the end of it, getting paid to deliver value that people desired, so that you could keep doing it?

Customer Love was the spark that lit the fire and intensified the entrepreneurial drive within. It gave people the permission to really do what they loved doing and start to think about doing business in a way that was authentic and personally meaningful.

On Day 29 of the first challenge, the stage was set and only a few people launched.

Yet still passionate about serving their audiences, many of the participants came back for a second challenge ñ more interaction, more customer love, more personal growth and transformation.

Challenge #2, Day 29 rolled around, and again a surprisingly small number of the participants launched.

Hurdles & Missing Pieces

When I was invited to help co-lead the third Customer Love Challenge, I knew that there was so much potential in the concept of customer love.† Imagine ñ an ecosystem of artists and entrepreneurs that operate their businesses based on the principle of loving and serving their customers to the best of their abilities.

Call me a Utopian, but it’s hard not to make that leap when you see so many people excited about the movement.

And there’s another part to all of this: it works. There have been participants that did launch, and were able to make their mortgage payment. Other participants have completely shifted their online presence around the principle of customer love. One community at a time, it is changing lives.

My burning question became: how can I help more people take the steps to evolve from a blog into a thriving customer-love oriented entrepreneur?

What kept people from launching a product, even though they were so dedicated to loving their customers? It came down to a few extremely common factors:

• Fear of failure No one wants launch a product that flops or to fail publicly.
• Lack of know-how Many people don’t know where to start when creating a product.
• Fear of selling There are many prejudices and misconceptions regarding what online marketing and selling looks like.

The more I thought about it, the more I knew there was a way to genuinely help people.

The Customer Love Machine

I pitched an idea to LaVonne Ellis, my co-leader for the next Customer Love Challenge:

What if we can create a course for people that will teach them exactly how to create a product that their customers will love and that will allow them to take the first steps toward building an online business?

The idea stuck, and we began working in earnest. This week, to coincide with the beginning of the next Customer Love Challenge on February 1^st, LaVonne and I are launching The Customer Love Machine, a 29 day course that teaches everything you need to know to create and launch a product that your customers will love. It’s got:

• 29 Daily Emails filled with Product Creation guidance and tasks
• An exclusive membership forum where you can collaborate, get feedback, and network with other participants.
• Weekly Webinars where you get to ask questions, receive guidance and discuss the lessons of that week’s module.
• Weekly action worksheets that help you map out exactly what you need to do to move forward with your product creation and launch process
• Over 10 interviews with successful entrepreneurs that are living the lives they want, doing the work they love and loving their customers.
• And for a few more people (there are only 15 slots in the premium offering of the course, and they’re already selling pretty quick) one-on-one coaching with LaVonne and I to really kickstart the process.

And it comes with a pretty insane guarantee: it pays for itself. If you do the work, launch a product and the product doesn’t pay for the course, then we work with you one-on-one to improve your product, help you re-launch it, and if it still doesn’t pay for the course, then you get your money back. No risk, all reward.

LaVonne and I are passionate about this new business paradigm of building a business around loving your customers. We know that if you can build a business around doing what you love, you’re more than a few steps closer to living the life you want.

That process begins by having a product to launch, and we want to help you take that first step successfully.

Are you ready to take that first step? Then join the Customer Love Machine, and let us teach you the best way to do it.

What do you think?

What business would you build around loving your customers? If you haven’t already, what’s the hurdle that is keeping you from making the mental jump from blogger to entrepreneur?

* Disclaimer: Some of the links on this posts are affiliate links.

This is a guest post by Jonathan Wondrusch – Jonathan is the Head of Awesome at ByBloggers.net, author of Epic E-Book Creation and the brain and soul behind the ByBloggers Bootstrapper program. You can also find him hanging out on Twitter or Facebook.

Mike Stelzner and the Social Media Examiner team are at it again. Raising the bar yet one more time. 2010 was already super successful with two of the most recognized events of the year “Facebook Success Summit” and “Social Media Success Summit”, which were attended by more than 4,400 people.

But in 2011 SME is planning to start early with their new Blogging Success Summit opening on February 1st and running through the 22nd.

Look At All This Value

Here is some of the value delivered in the summit:

• Discover the best ways to market your business with a blog
• Find out how to build an engaging blog presence
• Discover innovative ways to generate quality leads and increase sales with your blog
• Learn how to drive traffic to your blog with Facebook and other social media platforms
• Discover how to grow a loyal blog readership
• See how successful businesses built their blogs
• Gain a leg up on your competitors

Interact live with blogging marketers from recognized businesses, including Ford, Sony, McDonald’s, Cisco, Southwest Airlines, and Procter & Gamble.

Give Me The Lineup

Obviously one of the reasons these events are so popular is the list of key individuals they bring in to present. The Blogging Success Summit is definitely not the exception, there is a list of 23 Blogging Pros, here are some of them:

• Brian Clark from CopyBlogger
• Darren Rowse from ProBlogger
• Mari Smith, author of Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day
• Jay Baer, author of The Now Revolution and his blog Convince & Convert
• Chris Garret, co-author of the book ProBlogger
• Joe Pulizzi from Junta42
• Mike Stelzner from Social Media Examiner

And other like Denise Wakeman, Mike Volpe from HubSpot, David Siteman Garland, Richard Jalichandra and Scott Monty.

50% Discount to Act NOW!

Yep, right now and through mid January you can get in for only $297 (50% of the regular price). If you are considering attending the summit, this is the moment.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP TODAY!

You Want More?

You should also consider that

• No travel expenses – This is all happening in front of you. Yes, right there, your browser (This is why I love these events)
• Don’t Miss anything – One thing I hate about events is missing stuff. In this case you have access to all the material recorded.
• Free Gift – “Building Community with Facebook and Blogs” (valued at $59) is your when

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP TODAY!

Disclaimer: The links included in this post are affiliate links. If you sign up through them, I get a couple of bucks. Most likely to pay for caffeine or sushi. Thank you!

Yep, it’s that time of the year when we publish and consume an unusual amount of best of and top 10 list. And who am I to change the tradition?

So today I’m delivering a compilation of the Top 10 posts of 2010 right here at SocialMouths. In case you missed something…

Also, there are a couple of things I want you to read at the end of this post =)

But before I start with that I have a quick…

A Thank You Note For My Readers

I want to do this now because I know the last week of December is very slow as many of us disconnect to be with our families.

I can’t deny that this has been a great year for SocialMouths in terms of the things you can measure. I’m at about 50k monthly pageviews, bounce rate is insanely low, the subscriptions are at a growth rate that I didn’t expect and I could keep going… I’m thankful for that because it means some of you like what I’m putting out there.

But I’m mostly thankful for the great connections I have been able to establish as clients, fellow bloggers, readers or just friends. The focus for 2010 was to try to deliver as much as possible without asking for anything in exchange but I was definitely able to also receive so much awesome sauce from you guys that I feel I need to come back in 2011 with much more. So that is the intention!

I don’t wanna put you to sleep so… Thank You. Thank You. Thank you!

The Top 10 Posts Of 2010

Instead of building this list based on traffic only I took some of the engagement measurements from PostRank, which provides me with a better understanding of how you guys interact with the content, inside and outside the blog. Let’s see what came up:

1. How To Build Your Facebook Landing Page (If You’re Not A Programmer)

Building a Facebook Landing Page is easier than you think, even if you are not a programmer.

This week we’ll look at a topic that might seem basic for some. For other people, specially new visitors, this might feel like “been there done that”. Yes, there are too many blog posts out there that have discussed the topic but I’ll promise you this: In the usual SocialMouths style, we’ll go over the why, the what and the hows of building a landing page for your Facebook Page. Why is it important? What do we need to consider? and…

A guide to building a basic Facebook landing page. Yes, step-by-step, with screenshots and everything! You already know how I love to be very visual.

Read The Post…

2. 15 Blogs To Follow If You Want To Kick Ass Online

Being successful online requires that you beat a pretty long learning curve and while I try to contribute with my 2 cents, there are amazing bloggers out there that you should be reading on a regular basis.

These people put their amazing talent and knowledge into blog content and deliver it to their online communities week after week.

I have to advise you that if you see that I’m not going with the obvious is for 2 reasons, one because I like helping you discover stuff that you might have missed (there is just too much content out there…) and two, not that I don’t occasionally read the usual suspects, but this is the stuff I visit frequently. Also let me say that this is not a ranking so don’t pay attention to the order.

Read The Post…

3. 7 Examples Of Kick-Ass Personal Branding

Can I be a brand? I’m sure it has crossed your mind at least a couple of times in the last year, specially witnessing so many people turning themselves into true web superstars in their niches.

The answer is simple: Hell Yes

But before the photography, the name, the design and all the cool stuff that goes on the front-end, there has to be a solid foundation. As Seth Godin calls it in his last book, you need to become a Linchpin. I wanted to say that because the 7 people I’m showcasing in this post are the real deal, they are not just a cool image.

The outside perception meets the inside reality. I like setting expectations straight, you do not become a brand by looking good online. The web is an amplifier, be careful with what comes up to the surface.

Read The Post…

4. 10 Tips To Drive Twitter Traffic To Your Blog

Do you wanna drive Twitter traffic to your blog like it’s 5pm in Los Angeles?

Okay, I understand this post is not for everybody. I wanted to write it anyway because I’ve had a few people ask about my own experience, so I decided to share some of the things I do.

Twitter can become your blog’s best friend when it comes to traffic. I’m not suggesting that you use it for that purpose only but, if you run a blog and feel like you could be getting a little more love from it, perhaps you should adjust your strategy and integrate some of these tips.

There are some basics that we are going to skip, like having a good descriptive bio, link to your blog, take advantage of the real estate on the background, etc.

Read The Post…

5. 20 Social Media Divas You Should Be Following

To finish the week, we wanted to spread some love and create a list of the most influential women in social media today.

These women are either providing great content online or leading the industry into new concepts or technologies. The truth is that they are leaders worth following online.

Two things to mention before going on the list:

First, There is no specific order, this is not a ranking, I just listed 20. And…

Second, of course there are many more that I probably left out but it’s your turn to add your favorite divas in the comments section of this post.

Read This Post…

6. 13 Quick Tips To Write A Successful Post

Writing content is not easy, no doubt about it.

Then we usually go and start worrying about how to make that content easy to share, how to provide valuable information, how to engage readers and so on to make it even harder.

How do you write your content? There are just too many things to consider…

In the last couple of weeks I was asked a few times on what are the things I consider when writing a post, so I thought of putting a list or items together which then turned into this post. I hope it can of help to you.

I will also ask you to participate by adding to the list or simply discuss the recommendations I’m posting.

Read This Post…

7. How To Set Social Media Goals

The point of setting goals and tracking results is to become aware of how your actions impact the outcome.

If you take conscious steps and then observe the reactions, you become responsible and completely aware of how you control those results.

Awareness = Control

If you think you can’t control what happens in social media, perhaps you should try taking a look from a different angle. Just looking at the pretty charts on Google Analytics or the number of Retweets on your posts won’t be enough to actually gain control over the results.

One of the things I love about blogs like ThinkTraffic is how they publish monthly reports, mostly on how they grow blog traffic. They turn themselves into a case study as a way of teaching people with their own experience.

Read This Post…

8. Why Is Social Media Not Working For You

Are you feeling like you are the only one that doesn’t get any results from social media? Are you getting nothing but frustration while everybody else and their grandmas are talking about monetizing, getting prospects and all kinds of success stories?

Questioning your strategy is a good start. Here is a list of items that might be damaging your personal brand or preventing you from achieving those hard to get goals…

Your Content Is Self Centered

I said it before and it doesn’t sound very nice but nobody cares about you or your product. People care about how your product can provide a benefit or cover their needs. Turn it around and think about others. How you can be of help and provide value to your potential prospect. A good exercise to get started is to not allow yourself to write in first person.

Read This Post…

9. Social Media: So, Are Numbers Important Or Not?

Followers, Likes, Retweets, Subscribers… Is any of this stuff important? I’m sure you’ve listened to both sides, “get more followers” and “numbers are not important”.

There is a lot of noise on both sides, people telling you that numbers are important are usually trying to sell you some kind of software and people telling you they’re not, have 50k followers and get retweeted like crazy. So which one is it?

I’m going to tell you when and why numbers are important, or not.

Let’s take it step by step…

Read This Post…

10. How To Promote Your Blog Before Its Launch

One of the toughest parts of starting a new blog is getting some visibility.

The problem with doing your initial promotion post-launch is that at that point you have already develop a new series of activities such as content management or front-end interaction. These tasks will considerably reduce your time and resources.

What if you could instead create buzz around your blog even before its launch and before you drop a line of content in it? In this post I’ll share with you a few ways you can build hype about your launch and go live with traffic already coming in your door.

Read This Post…

Elsewhere…

Top 10 Social Media Blogs

It is also time to vote for your favorite social media blog at the Social Media Examiner “Top 10 Social Media Blogs” contest. If you enjoy reading SocialMouths head over there and nominate it (it takes a couple of minutes, really). Go VOTE. Thank you!

In Tree Houses Magazine

It was a great week for me in terms of exposure, I was featured in two different venues that not only are kick-ass but I also consume religiously. The first one is the In Tree Houses magazine by Thom Chambers that went live and is now available for download. If you’re not familiar with it I strongly recommend it. It focuses on how to reach your 1,000 true fans and it always features great individuals. The magazine is loaded with freakin’ awesomeness and it is completely free.

BlogCastFM Interview

The second one is the interview I did with Srinivas Rao for BlogCastFM in which we discussed the creation of compelling personal brands, building small communities and spending less but more meaningful time on your Google Analytics among other things. This is another one of those sources of great content I never miss and what I love about it is that it is based on audio interviews with the most relevant bloggers, online marketers and digital entrepreneurs around.

So thank you both Thom and Sniri, you guys inspire me.

Over To You

One more thing, so I’m able to deliver more in 2011, I wanna ask you to tell me what topics you would like to read about on SocialMouths. What kind of questions do you have that I can hopefully help you with. Use the comment section below, go crazy!

I’m not done this year but, like I said at the beginning, the last couple of weeks of December are slower so I wanted to do this now.

Hope you enjoy the posts!

Yes, I said “Less Followers”. It’s not a typo. I’m not crazy and it’s not a clever headline for a post that will turn into the opposite in the third paragraph.

Let me first do a formal introduction, this is the second installment of the “Striking Six” Blog Series that involves 6 online mavericks sharing knowledge on how to craft an inspirational and powerful online presence. Each one of these awesome and mystery bloggers are revealed on each post when it’s published so you have to keep up with the series. Exciting isn’t it?

The first installment of the series was revealed a couple of days ago by Mars Dorian with his edgy style and message to change the world. Here is the link to The Guerrilla’s Guide To Attracting Your “Right” Audience.

Back to our topic in hand… and why “Less Followers” is the new “More Followers”. I’m inviting you today to disregard all those posts you’ve read about how to build huge communities, get more followers and likes, including mine. This has nothing to do with administration of all those Twitter followers and how hard it can be if you have too many because it’s clear that with the appropriate tools we can easily manage and filter information however we need.

Influence doesn’t spread by getting huge numbers. Audiences are built by truly connecting with individuals, one at a time, getting your message across and making people fall in love with it.

Community Growth

Community growth is usually part of a social media strategy for brands. Metrics and tools are setup in order to measure, benchmark and do projections. This should NOT be your case. As an entrepreneur/blogger you should put your focus elsewhere and with patience, communicate with individuals on a regular basis.

If you are able to craft remarkable content and products, and promote them, your audience and online community will grow organically. There is nothing healthier than that. But I hear you say “there is nothing new about that”, let me explain…

We are used to getting mixed messages, we’ve talked about this at SocialMouths. The people that tells you to stop worrying about numbers lists every single counter on their blogs and on the other side of the fence, people telling you to get more followers. We create pressure to be seen as successful, we worry about social proof. Those mixed messages only deliver more confusion.

So what happens now? The difference is that we are starting to embrace those small audiences. Now building tiny communities is cool, it’s appreciated. Today “Less Followers” is the new “More Followers.”

Following People Does Nothing

Let’s be honest, following people on Twitter is a vicious circle that ends at “you follow me, I follow you back”, we’re happy to have a mutual connection but there is never an exchange of words between the two.

What do you think would happen if you stop taking the initiative of following people? do you think people would follow you because what you put out there is plain awesome and they’re interested, or do you think your growth will suddenly dry?

Let me share a story with you. Earlier in my life I was lucky to get some extensive sales training that, at the moment I thought it sucked and I did it just to earn more money. Most of it is just a blur now but among the things I still retain is this: If you want to close a solid sale, try to unsell it at the end, give your client the opportunity to change his/her mind before processing the order.

At the time it sounded like I was gonna make less money and probably get fired. See, most people buy on an impulse and by doing this I was taking that out of the equation. It’s like trying to only make meaningful sales. Crazy, right?

Later in life I had the opportunity to have a business with a great product and service that allowed me to be confident enough to run a call center without written scripts and shady selling techniques and made a killing for 7 years. It happened organically. I didn’t have to go knock on doors or try to push something that people didn’t want.

The point is that if you focus on connecting with the right audience, as Mars says, your tribe will be solid and open to receive more of that magic you deliver week after week.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should hide or make it hard for people to find you. You should connect with people and you should promote your content and services. Regularly.

A New Breed Of Fearless Bloggers And Digital Entrepreneurs

Do you think you will still be able to be build an audience by just delivering who you are? Without having community growth be a task? It sounds to me like a good exercise to see if you are actually dropping pure awesomeness on a regular basis, because that spreads out on its own.

I’m a big observer of the internet and, let me tell you what I see today. Besides the bloggosphere growing like there’s no tomorrow, there is a new breed of bloggers and digital entrepreneurs that not only spread awesome shit but are also willing to take creativity to new levels, are ready to break all the rules and are not afraid to build one relationship at a time.

I’m not afraid of mentioning people and recognizing when they kick ass. Here are a few people you should pay attention to if you wanna know what I mean, you probably already know them but just in case: Srinivas Rao from The Skool Of Life, Jonathan Wondrusch from By Bloggers, Fabian Kruse from The Friendly Anarchist, Ashley Ambirge from The Middle Finger Project and Thom Chambers from In Tree Houses among others. These people don’t sit down in front of their computers to randomly follow people, they are building amazing audiences one relationship at a time and focusing on crafting epic shit to put in front of those communities. It seems to me like they even keep those audiences small on purpose.

Nothing Is ASAP

Building an audience doesn’t happen overnight, even if you go out there and take the initiative to follow people massively. No matter what social media “gurus” tell you. Sure, you get social proof when you display massive numbers on your blog or social profiles, I’m not gonna deny that but I think it has been proven that there is a lot more to it. People out there are able to create awesome without it.

Do yourself a favor and forget ASAP. Let your tribe grow organically.

The New Social Media To Do List

Wanna play the real game? Change your social media strategy, focus on creating epic stuff and let people follow you because they can’t get enough of YOU. The following To Do List will help you:

• Stop following people on Twitter
• Stop worrying about followers/following ratio
• Stop sending Facebook Page suggestions
• Stop using email opt-in popups on your blog

So how do you connect with like-minded individuals and start meaningful relationships that will eventually turn into raving fans? Good question. Let me see if I’m able to illustrate this and answer that with another question. Would you walk down the street passing out business cards? sure, why not (stupid question). Now, would you expect a meaningful relationship to be born out of that approach?

What happens if you introduce yourself as you would in real life? or if you complement somebody for his/her work? what if you turn your Facebook Page into a Q&A forum to help your audience?

The formula to play a bigger game is to:

• Be human
• Be creative
• Drop the random following

What Do You Think?

Thanks for reading, now it’s your turn. I know this is a topic with many different opinions, what’s yours? express your thoughts freely in the comments sections, disagreements are always welcome!

The Next Secret Member In The Series

I’m sooo tempted to tell you who’s next in the series, I’m excited myself but, I agreed to keep my mouth closed. All I can say is that…

The next member in the “Striking Six” series can be considered dynamite with lipstick. She’s got a passion that burns bright and is on a mission to shatter the status quo. Within a few months, she created a raving community that digs every single word she drops. She’s creating marvelous content that turns readers into true fans, and she’s ready to blow you away!

Stay tuned for the secret member number 3 in the Series. She will publish her post on Monday, December 6th