Failing to hit your goals as the next big money internet celebrity blogger? Don't worry, you aren't alone… but we might just have a few resources to help you get there a bit faster!
If you want to turn your online marketing and blogging efforts into a real money making business, you are going to need to know how to scale with time.
One of the most important and effective ways to scale your growth and reach online is to implement outsourcing and automation wherever possible.
Your content is probably great… but without the necessary marketing and promotion, you are sharing your message with no one.
In this article, I'm going to highlight some of the best resources for site owners to focus on their bottom line, long-term growth, while also outsourcing and automating the rest.
Automation is Key to Longterm Growth
With over 300 million blogs in the world today and over 3 billion people online… trying to run a successful site of your own with no outside tools or resources is quite a feat.
This is where software and automation comes into play.
We all know how WordPress has revolutionized the world of content creation and blogging, so here's a few more tools to help you along the way.
WishPond – No matter what type of site owner or blogger you are, at the end of the day you are going to need to drive some type of leads and grow your following. WishPond is one of the best solutions out there for gaining access to automation tools that help your site grow on social media through contest giveaways, email collection on your own site and even landing pages for outreach and lead generation.
MeetEdgar – Social media marketing and management can be a huge pain in the butt and very time consuming. MeetEdgar eliminates the needs for daily social media management as they have full scheduling in place, which can be setup across all social platforms. Sync up your social profiles, add your content and you are good to go.
MonitorBacklinks – Knowing where your site ranks in the search results is important. Keeping an eye on where your competition is ranking is even more important. If you wanted to monitor all of this activity manually, it would be a huge task and take up plenty of time. Through MonitorBacklinks you can monitor both your own sites and your competition within one platform. Full stats and keyword tracking make creeping up on your competition in the search results easier than ever before.
Aweber / MailChimp – Roughly 70% of the people who visit your site for the first time are never going to come back! This doesn't have so much to do with your site content, but simply that there are way too many distractions in the world today. The best way to get your audience coming back time and time again is through the use of a mailing list and autoresponder series. AWeber and MailChimp are two of the most well-known and trusted mailing providers in the world today. If you want to increase your signup rate and conversions even more, follow my OptinMonster guide to setup a popup with an incentivized gift!
99Designs / Designhill – As bloggers, most of us are really good at creating content but not so much at site design, graphics, logos or branding. For times like these we can look at outsourcing this type of design work to another person. However, going with a small agency will usually cost you a lot of money and time. One of the better options to go with is a freelance design marketplace like 99designs.com or designhill — both offering design work for sites, social media, branding and more, all at a fraction of the price normal design agencies would charge.
TextBroker / iWriter – Blogging isn't just for individuals who enjoy writing, it's for anyone that wants to build a platform online and provide value in the process. Writing is actually just one facet of it. If you can't write well, you can simply outsource the process or hire writers online. Two of the best places to hire freelance writers online are textbroker and iwriter — each giving you access to thousands of writers who can create original content for your site based on your needs, word count and price per word.
Focus on Your Content Promotion… Not Just Creation
I hope you've found a lot of value from the hand selected automation and outsourcing tools and services mentioned above. I use all of them myself and each an important component to my mini-blogging empire.
At the end of the day, having a successful website or blog comes down to creating high-quality content and focusing on the promotion of that content. Way too many people are focusing simply on the ‘creation' part and not the ‘promotion'. Trust me… with 300 million blogs in the world, there is already way too much content out there.
If you want to rank higher in the search results and grow your authority, focus on the promotion by using any of the tools above and you will see massive results this year.
Awesome tips for us content marketers Zac.
For a long time I was making the mistake of not knowing my audience. When I finally took the time to do the research and figure out who they were, my growth sky rocketed.
It’s easy to get sidetracked and just think about creating content, but once you really zone in on that target audience and know exactly what they want — it’s that much easier.
Awesome share and you’ve shared awesome automation tools in a single post and I guess I’m gonna have to check them all though I’m using few of them.
Thanks
Thanks, lots of great tools here. Many of which I still use today!
Nice collection of tools. I personally use Mailchimp and MoniterBacklinks. Both the tools have proved to be good for me. You can also add one good Social media engagement tools for maintaining a social media engagement.
Excellent! If you have the time and focus, Monitor Backlinks is a great way to gain some high value links by examining your competition.
Great list – It’s crazy how much everyone is concentrating on automation – in the past year there’s been loads of automation tools produced – don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a great (and needed) & it’s going to make the next few years a lot easier!
Yea, it’s quite crazy! It’s also a huge business for anyone looking to get into as well. Find a tedious task and a way to automate it — and you’re set!
Hi Zac,
Blogging is a business, and unless we treat it as such, making progress might come too slow. This is because like any real life business, for it grow it needs investment of various kinds.
Not willing to invest in their online business, tools that saves time….. is part of the reason I see so many people failed in internet marketing.
These sets of people consider blogging has a hobby, though for them, it is so. But for we, it is a serious business. This is why we need to invest in tools that saves time and boost productivity.
Thanks for sharing, nice collections.
Nice post .
Such a nice tools.Some of these tools are new for me. I am excited to use these new tools.
Mailchimp and Aweber are equally good with minor feature and pricing updates.
If you need high-end integration of your service or app with an email marketing solution, then, I would prefer to use Mailchimp. If you need only email marketing, then, Aweber is a great option.
Meanwhile, you can also try new alternatives like Critical, EasySendy and so on .
I will use Wish pond and Meetedgar.
This is an awesome post, thanks. I love to play with mailchimp as with this I can get back to my visitors again and again.
Thanks for this list Zac. I use MonitorBacklinks and I think I just added a few more to the list. For mailing list and autoresponder, I use INinbox and I’m quite satisfied with results now.
Do have a wonderful holiday season buddy 😉
Hey Zac Johnson!
Thank you for these tips, I guess now I can implement this technique in my marketing strategy and promote my blogs as I was just concentrating on the Linkedin as an ideal platform.
Hi Zac,
Thank you so much for the list you have mentioned!
I personally using Mailchimp for my list building and it is really awesome!
Thanks for the nice article!
I have been using iwriter science 2014.Yap! ,I’m satisfied. textbroker service price is high for me.I use most of the tool for my content promotion purpose.content promotion is very important for us.using promotion strategy we can increase our leads.thanks for your useful list 🙂
I’m glad that I found your article!!! I like use these tools, some of them are completely new for me. I have been using feedburner for a long time but this month I switched to mailchimp. Thank You.
Hey zac ,
Great tools you have listed in this post. I have used only a few like aweber , mailchimp for email marketing automation purpose and iwriter . Wishpond seems to be great tool for bloggers. Will try them out.
I love wishpond and Aweber,
They are the smartest tool