Maybe you are one of our contributors! You help us publish hundreds of quality articles each month that drive thousands of visitors to our ever-growing network of sites.

If you’ve been paying close attention, you’ve noticed that we’ve recently started calling our contributors “Guest Bloggers”.

Why “Guest Bloggers”?

First, since deciding on our elevator pitch (FizzNiche is a Premium Guest Blogging Service) we decided that it made sense that the people contributing the content for the premium blog posts should be called what they are – guest bloggers.

Plus, the term “guest blogger” carries a lot of weight these days. And, well, we want to throw as much weight behind our “guest bloggers” as we can!

Now What?

We’re not quite ready to announce the “what’s next”… but we can give you a little hint…

Soon, We’re going to have a way for our Guest Bloggers to line up more guest blogging gigs.

To get ready for that – we want you to start thinking about what your Guest Blogger Resume may look like. So, we’ve put together an outline for you to use.

An Outline for Your Guest Blogger Resume

Intro – this should be a one paragraph overview (no more than 5 sentences) that describes your niche expertise and your writing experience.

Examples of Previous Work – create a list of your works that have appeared on other sites (remember – if you’ve been highlighted on our client’s sites – those are great examples!)

Credentials, Awards, Certifications – list any credentials you’ve received through training, awards you’ve been given and any certifications you have earned.

Requirements – describe the types of opportunities you’re looking for. This could be the niches you want to work in, the types of businesses you do or don’t want to associate with or the criteria a site or an opportunity must meet in order for you to work with them.

Available Frequency – list how often you’re available to post. It’s common for guest bloggers to have a weekly spot, but you can offer more or less depending on your availability.

Fee – now, be careful here! You can set a fee for your guest blogging services. But, take some time to decide whether or not charging is worth it. Offering free content will open you up to more opportunities and more chances to build your reputation and back links.

Consider setting a fee for sites that may be good – but fall short of your exact criteria. For example, you could offer, “Content provided free to sites with a PageRank of 1 or more, content may be provided for sites under a 1 for $25 per post.”

Distribution – in addition to the content that you’ll be providing and the credibility that your credentials will lend to the site – you have one more benefit to add as a guest blogger: distribution. You’ll want to let others know about your guest blog posts, so list the methods that you’ll use to share the posts that you create for them (like your own site/blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email list, etc) and let them know how many followers, fans and contacts you have.

Get Drafting – More Info Coming Soon!

Start drafting your guest blogger resume – we’re going to have an announcement soon, and you’ll want to be ready to act right away!

Well, even if you didn’t spend any time there – thousands of people around the world did. Shareholic (the company that provides the awesome little sharing buttons at the bottom of this post) announced today that shares on Pinterest are driving more traffic than shares on Twitter. Check out the Shareholic study on TechCrunch.

We’ve been testing Pinterest with our FizzNiche clients – and yesterday we had a huge breakthrough that is causing us to focus more attention on pinning as part of the overall Social Media strategy we use.

Here’s a quick video to show you what we found:

Like I mentioned in the video – be sure to let us know what you think! We’re going to be following Pinterest closely for all of our FizzNiche clients!

What Is FizzNiche?

Our product “FizzNiche” has been driving thousands of visitors each month for our clients over the past year and has helped us build a list of over 1,000 “Contributors” over the past few months.

Yet, any time I was asked, “What is FizzNiche?” I stumbled over the answer.

“It’s complex…”, I’d start, “We have these contributors…”, I’d add and then throw in, “of course, there’s distribution…”

“Huh?” Yeah – that is pretty much the reaction I got from most people. Even my close friends (most of them are pretty smart people !) were commenting, “I still don’t know what you do.”

That was true until last week – when in a Eureka! moment, I figured it out…

FizzNiche is a Premium Blog Writing Service

It was right in front of me all along. Creating daily content and posting it to our client’s websites is the core of what we do… “blog writing”.

But, we do some other unique stuff with each post which sets us apart from the $10 article writers… hence the “premium”.

I tried it out on one of my most skeptical friends this past weekend. Here’s how the conversation went:

Me: I finally figured it out  - FizzNiche is a premium blog writing service.

Him: Oh, alright… so, what makes it “premium”?

Me: Two things – the way we create the content and the way that we distribute it in order to drive traffic to the blog.

Him: [Eyebrow raise as if to say, "Interesting. Tell me more."]

Me: We use a network of contributors – over 1,000 at this point – to create the content instead of having writers on staff. We ask the contributors a question like, “What are some examples of how moms can earn money by working from home?” and they offer up some amazing tips that are full of search-engine-friendly keywords. We compile these tips into articles – giving the contributors credit for their tip and a link back to their site – and we post the finished product to your site.

Then, on to distribution – we share the post across our social networks, your social networks and a variety of link building networks. Plus, the contributors also spread the word about the post, announcing that they’ve been mentioned in a post on your site.

Him: Okay, I see. So, if you were to do this for my website – how often do you post, what kind of traffic would I get, what do I have to do to support the strategy and how much do you charge?

 … and I’ll stop there because he got it!

Without showing him charts of traffic and breaking down monthly costs he understood what the service was, the types of results he should expect from the service and had moved into budgeting his time and funds for it.

Key Elements of an Elevator Pitch

I’ve known the long list of dos and don’ts for elevator pitches – keep it short, just an “elevator ride long”, keep it simple and don’t seem too eager!

But actually going through the process myself, I learned that the key elements are these:

• Start with a frame of reference. Writing blog posts is just one small piece of the pie when it comes to FizzNiche. So, saying it’s a “blog writing service” didn’t seem like enough at first. But – it gives the person I’m talking to a frame of reference. Most people know what a blog is and can at least surmise the process of keeping up a blog and the reasons/benefits of doing so.
• Offer a tease to prompt a question. In my case, I used the word “premium”. My friend did exactly what I hoped he would when he heard the pitch. He asked, “What makes it premium?” That gave me the chance to summarize my unique value proposition and flesh out the product using the “blog writing” frame.
• Lead them to wonder, “How will this work for me?”. Almost everyone you talk to will imagine themselves as your customer as you talk to them. So, try using examples that relate to their business, and use the word “you” instead of “our customers” to help them picture themselves as your customer.

I hope my year-long struggle is something that you can learn from – and that it takes you much less time to come up with your own pitch!

Would You Leave the Elevator with My Card?

If a Premium Blog Writing Service sounds like something that would help your business… let me know! Or, if you know of someone that could benefit from a service like FizzNiche, we’d love to get your referrals (and pay you $100/month for them!).

And… to answer my friend’s questions (that may also be on your mind!):

• We post daily.
• Our clients average 1,500 (new) visitors by the end of their first month and 3,000 by their 3rd (50% or more from search traffic).
• We strive for a hands-free service so you can go about your every day work while we handle your content marketing, SEO and social media.
• The cost is $1,499 – $2,499/month.

All of the details are at FizzNiche.com.

Wondering what that “#” is all about?

Well, so was our own Amy Powell and her friends on Facebook. So, she asked me to put together a quick post to explain what it is and how you can use it productively.

The “#” (aka, the “Hashtag”)

Simply put, the hashtag is a keyword. Placing a “#” at the front of a word in your tweet denotes that word as a “tag” or “keyword”.

It tells the world, “Hey, I’m talking about THIS specific thing...”

Here’s an example of a tweet using hashtags that you may have seen a few weeks ago:

Getting the #chili ready for our #superbowl party

In this example, the tweet is letting readers know that it is about chili and the Super Bowl.

Why? The Community Effect

Okay – so duh! Right? Of course the tweet was about chili and the Super Bowl. Did the person really need to put the “#” in front of those two words?

Well – they did if they wanted their tweet to be noticed by others following news about chili and the Super Bowl. There are a few ways that their hashtags could be found:

• Search – on Twitter, you can search through the millions of tweets out there looking for specific hashtags. It’s built right into the toolbar at the top of the page (#Discover). So, let’s say someone was doing a story on chili consumption on Super Bowl Sunday. They could search for #chili to see how many people were talking about chili that day.
• In-Tweet Links – Twitter links all hashtags to a search for that hashtag. From the example above,  #chili would’ve appeared: #chili - go ahead and click to see where it goes!
• Trending – Twitter displays hashtags that are trending (meaning growing in popularity). On Super Bowl Sunday, as you might expect, the hashtags that were trending were #superbowl, #patriots, #jets, etc

So, these hashtags take updates from your little world of followers and bring them out into the larger community of Twitter users.

Why? The Marketing Effect

The hashtag has some power when it comes to marketing. Here are a few examples:

• Building Your Base of Followers - People often look for new users to follow by using a hashtag search. So, if you have a site about recipes and you’re tweeting your new blog posts about recipes, include #recipe (read: the recipe hashtag) in your tweets. Users who want news on recipes can find you this way and follow you.Give it a try now – go to Twitter, click the “#Discover” link and search for “#recipe” to see all of the users that come up! If you’re into recipes, you’ll find loads of people to follow this way.
• Marketing an Event- Hashtags are popular with events. Organizers usually decide on a hashtag and let all of their attendees know about it. They then encourage attendees, sponsors, speakers and others to use the hashtag whenever they are tweeting about anything related to the event.Do a search for “#ase12″. Here you’ll see the buzz that’s already generating for Affiliate Summit East 2012 – an event that doesn’t even happen until August.

Why? The Publishing Effect

Whether it’s for a specific topic or an event (or anything else you can think of!) – these hashtags can be used to pull news from Twitter and publish it on your site.

Since it’s an election year here in the US, let’s use an example of a political website.

These sites are working hard to find and publish all the news they can about the political race. But, news moves FAST and sometimes it breaks and explodes before small sites can react.

But, by using the # – publishers can fuel RSS Feeds (this is just a fancy way of saying “automatically publish the latest headlines from another site on my site”) on their sites from Twitter.

So, they could create “boxes” on their site that say something like “Latest GOP News” to display #gop tweets, “Romney News” to display the latest tweets about #romney or “Election Coverage” to list all of the tweets about the #election.

(These “boxes” are easy to create using plugins for WordPress. There are general plugins for RSS feeds, and plugins designed specifically for Twitter. These will even ask you which hashtags you want to display.)

If you are tweeting your blog posts about the political races – your tweet and link to your site could end up on these sites if you implement the right hashtag.

Why? The (Nerdy) Comedic Effect

Okay – so despite all of the useful reasons behind the hashtag – they are also a great platform for super nerdy jokes!

Even though they aren’t intending on being followed or searched, people will use a silly mash up of words to disguise their joke as a hashtag.

For example, here’s a tweet with a hashtag joke:

3 meetings and 2 reports due today – #ineedmorecoffeetomakeitthroughthisday

The hashtag here is just for comedic effect.

Best Practices for Hashtags

Okay – so if you’re ready to start using hashtags (and really, there’s no reason NOT to), here are some tips:

• Do some searches to see what shows up for a hashtag before you start using it. Doing this will help you determine if you’re on the right track. This is especially important if you’re going to come up with a code (like the event example above) – check to be sure it’s not already in use.
• Use no more than 3 # in each post. Otherwise it looks like spam.
• Mash your words together. The # does not recognize a space. So if you have a two or more word phrase, push it together – like #socialmedia
• Search for other users to follow by doing a # search.
• Know when to use @ and when to use #. The @ is all about users – and a little more personal. So if you want to mention a specific Twitter user, use the @ and the tweet will show up in his/her/their feed and they will get a notice about it. But, if you just want to talk about a topic, use the #.

Good luck!

It’s not about quantity – it’s about quality.

Quality in the Numbers You Are Counting

This has been a long-time value held by successful affiliate marketers. It doesn’t matter if you have millions of affiliates – only the few that you can motivate to produce really matter.

The same holds true for fans, followers, members and users.

I continue to be un-impressed by Google’s growing number of Google+ users/members. You get an instant Google+ account when you signup for any Google property… their social network user numbers will continue to rise because of the success and adoption of their other platforms.

But, how many of those “members” are logging in and chronicling their lives like they do on Facebook?

So, having affiliates, followers, fans, users, members or followers doesn’t mean a thing. Having active affiliates, followers and fans who respond to your call to action, users who login and members who participate is what really counts.

Quality in How You Count Them

So, that means you have to have a measurement that accounts for quality.

Here’s an example:

We started working with a new FizzNiche client in December. At that time, they had over 300 fans for their Facebook page.

That’s a good number – right?

NO! But it’s not a bad number either. That number doesn’t matter – at all!

One thing that does matter, however, is how many visitors our client was getting from these Facebook fans and their networks of friends.

Turns out – they weren’t getting very much. Here’s a look at their Facebook-Referred Traffic by month for October 2011 – January 2012:

Over the months of October and November, they only received 50 visits from Facebook. Those 300+ fans weren’t really doing a whole lot for them.

But, in December – their first month with us – we kick-started their content marketing efforts and began driving their social media strategy. With proper engagement, those 300+ fans finally gained true value.

They brought more than 10 times November’s traffic in December and added about 50% to that in January.

Now… to be fair… the page did get some new fans in December and January. 25 in December and 32 in January… which obviously doesn’t account for the big jump in traffic each month.

So, simply having 300+ fans in November meant nothing. Adding the extra 58 over December and January didn’t really mean anything either.

But, engaging the fans and getting them to click through to the client’s site… that is worth something!

Numbers Measured for Quality

So, before you start obsessing about numbers or (God forbid) start paying to get to specific number (ie, paying for fans, subscribers, etc) – think about where the real value lies.

Does it really matter if you have hundreds or thousands of fans if they do nothing? Do millions of users that never login have any value?

Focus on engaging your fans, members and users – maximize the value potential you have with them – and then determine how to get more.

Kick-Starting Your Fan Base

The results shown above are typical for FizzNiche clients. Let us know if you’d like to have your content marketing plan kicked off. We can re-energize your fan base and get your traffic on a perpetually-upward trend! Visit FizzNiche.com for more details, pricing and to get started.

Getting inspiration from other blog posts is a great way to start your wheels turning on what else to write about. So, where do you start in finding these inspirational posts?

Stretching Your PR When You Are Mentioned in a Post

This tip is directed specifically at our FizzNiche contributors:

If you’re mentioned in a post on someone else’s site – write about it!

This will expand the effects of branding, PR and recognition that the mention can bring you.

I do this all the time! Check out my post from yesterday - Entrepreneurial Pitfalls. I wrote this post because my tip was used on another website.

Within minutes, my post about a post  was indexed by Google, it received over 50 visits , some “likes” on FaceBook, some retweets on Twitter, some views on StumbleUpon, some shares on LinkedIn and more!

It took me no more than 10 minutes to create that little wave.

Finding Posts That Prove Your Point

I use iGoogle as my homepage. I have it loaded up with RSS feeds from loads of blogs for startups, entrepreneurs, content marketers, affiliate marketers and other nerdy stuff!

Each day, I take a look to see if anyone is “singing my tune”. If they are, I create a post that responds to what the other post is saying.

Again, these posts – like this one about Creating and monetizing a “Free” product - are easy little traffic nets to create. In just 10 minutes, you can rattle off your thoughts about the post, add your comments and share it across your social networks.

Find Posts You Disagree With

This may be even easier than finding posts you agree with!

There are a lot of opinions out there – don’t be afraid to throw your’s into the ring. If you’ve read something that you don’t believe, write about it.

(Just don’t be a jerk about it!)

Get Writing!

I know you’ve got at least one of these opportunities at your fingertips – so get writing! (Disagree with me? Hmm… is that a blog post??)

In just a few minutes you can create a wave of traffic to your site and social media channels.

Good luck!

I think that today’s post on the TPE blog is a MUST READ for entreprenuers (and not just because one of my tips is included!).

Are You a Danger – to Yourself?

Yes! All entreprenuers are!

In most cases, the biggest thing standing between us and our success is ourselves.

It can be a hard pill to swallow, but identifying self-destructive traits and characteristics we have can be incredibly helpful in reaching our success potential.

What’s Your Kryptonite?

Today’s TPE blog post includes over 80 detrimental traits, behaviors and characteristics that are common in entrepreneurial types.

Take a look and see which of the traits look familiar to you.

• Are you a procrastinator?
• Do “shiny objects” grab your attention and draw you from your path?
• Are you allowing little decisions to stand in your way?
• Do you have a hard time making big decisions because you don’t want to deal with unpleasant situations?

See what the experts suggest and get back on track!

Click here to read Traits That Kill Entrepreneurs on the TPE blog.

Sure, there are a TON of people online… but they are shopping for toys, gifts and decorations – not looking for articles to read.

No Sweat – We Had More Than Twice the Traffic

So, I was incredibly happy when December’s numbers on our FizzNiche case study website came in as high as they did. Compared to November, 2011 – we saw a 2x increase in traffic.

Search Traffic is Still Rising

As I expected, we did see some impact on the search traffic. It still rose (because we were still publishing posts every single day – including Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day), but not at the aggressive rates we had seen in previous months.

Still, a 29% month-over-month increase and 2,053 visitors from search traffic are nothing to sneeze at:

Visitors Who Stumbled Upon the Site

As I eluded to in my post a month back, StumbleUpon is a HUGE reason for the HUGE growth that we had on this FizzNiche client website this last month.

Referral traffic to the site catapulted from 894 visits in November, 2011 to 3,280 visitors in December, 2011.

As you can see in the table above, most of that came from StumbleUpon.com. Now, we know that the bulk of the traffic is from one stumbler who shared one of the posts on this site.

But, it keyed us into the potential that lies in StumbleUpon. This site now receives about 50-60 visitors a day just from StumbleUpon.

So, it’s become a big part of our distribution strategy for all of our FizzNiche clients now.

What’s January Shaping Up to Be?

The website that we’re reporting on for this ongoing case study is doing great in January!

So are our other clients.

The two new sites that we started in December (DigThisDesign.net and YouCantOutsourceWeightLoss.com) are picking up steam and a slew of followers as we work with our contributors to create compelling daily content for them.

 By the end of the month, we should have one more new site (a local-community based jobs website) added to the mix!

Share in the Success!

• Register as a Contributor (free!) - If you haven’t already, be sure to register as a FizzNiche contributor. We’ll let you know what stories we’re working on and give you a chance to be featured on one (or more!) of our clients’ websites.
• Become a Client – What would you do with the 6,500 visitors that our case study site received last month? Let us work on a plan to drive those kinds of results to your site.
• Refer a Client – Know someone else who could use the FizzNiche service? We’re paying $100/month for any client you send our way. Just have them include your name and email address when they contact us and we’ll send you a check for $100 each and every month that they stick with us!

That’s exactly what just happened on Piers Morgan Tonight (I’m watching a repeat episode, for the record).

Piers is interviewing Morgan Freeman. They were talking about the name of one of Freeman’s most well-known movies, Shawshank Redemption, and joking that if it were an easier name to say and remember, it may have done better in the box office.

Freeman… an actor, not a marketer… explained the marketing behind it SO perfectly:

“The thing that sells anything is word of mouth. I don’t care how you promote it, ultimately it’s going to be word of mouth that sells it…” — Morgan Freeman

Promotion vs. Word of Mouth

I mean, seriously - so simple and so right.

Think about your marketing plan – how are you promoting your business? What do you want your customers to hear?

Now, consider what they actually are hearing.

What are customers actually telling each other? What is actually being said about your brand, your products and your service?

Make 2012 the Year to Create Raving Fans

Now’s a great time to take stock of your reputation. Find out where you stand and make 2012 the year to elevate your brand and polish your name to a sparkly shine!

If a 74-year old actor “gets it” – all of you young startup marketers don’t have an excuse!

I love it when something that I’ve considered “old” or even “no longer relevant” pops back up again.

That happened a few weeks back with StumbleUpon.com.

Stumbling Upon an Old Strategy

Amy and I were looking into a traffic uptick for one of our FizzNiche.com clients. “There are a ton of referrals from StumbleUpon.com,” she said, “have you ever heard of that site?”

“Yeah,” I answered, “but I didn’t think it was really relevant anymore.”

Boy was I wrong!

(As I’ll reveal in the next installment of our ongoing FizzNiche (fka Spin-Niche) Case Study - one StumbleUpon user doubled the traffic to one of our client’s sites – in just a week!)

Almost Instant Results

We started testing it – and started seeing results almost instantly.

And – it’s really easy to use.

So, I want to give you a few quick pointers on using it – and I want you to go and test it (today!) on your own sites.

Stumbling Upon Results For Your Site

Okay… StumbleUpon.com works for your site in two ways:

First, you can StumbleUpon your own pages…

In this case, you’ll need an account (signup free at: http://stumbleupon.com). Much like “liking” on Facebook, you add links to your profile, include a comment and – this is where it’s a little different – tag the link with keywords and place it in a designated category (more on “why” below).

Signup for an account, add a link. The next day – check your Google Analytics stats. I can almost guarantee that you’ll have at least 2 visitors referred by StumbleUpon.com. Or, if you’re like one of our clients – it could send you 500 new visitors.

Second, you can add a StumbleUpon button to your social sharing options…

We use a plugin called SexyBookmarks by Shareholic to handle the social sharing on our and our clients’ sites. It’s one of my favorite WordPress plugins. It has an option for StumbleUpon.

We’ve now added it to all of our sites (you can see it below). It makes it really easy for our visitors to “stumble” our pages. With a quick click of that button, they add the page to their profile along with the category and comments for all of their followers to see.

What Makes StumbleUpon Different

So… why is this different? How is this not just another “thing” to have to do each day?

Well, like I mentioned above – it drives traffic and it does it fast.

Why? Because it doesn’t rely on your followers. It introduces your stumbles to the entire network.

Cool – right? Even without a single follower on the social network, your links still get viewed.

How? Users not only ADD links, they also choose to VIEW categories, people and channels and start “Stumbling”. In this process, they are presented with link after link that have been added to the category/channel/etc.

So… if you add a page about “Weight Loss”, it will be added into the rotation of everyone looking at “Weight Loss” articles. Stumblers can then give links a “thumbs up” which makes it appear more in results and they can even re-stumble it, adding it to their own “likes” – giving it even more weight in the topic.

Give it a try. Go to: http://www.stumbleupon.com/explore and type in a keyword that fits your site. You’ll be given site after site that fits the keyword.

While you’re doing it, you’ll hit a point where you think, “Hey – MY site should be in this mix…”

And you’re right – it SHOULD BE. So – add it!

Don’t Wait for Monday!

Take two minutes and give this strategy a try. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised!