Ken Morico

The Instagram-ification of Facebook: Why the Blue App is Back

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 06:00:00 GMT

Admit it: You probably haven't thought about your Facebook strategy in years. While we were all chasing TikTok trends and Instagram aesthetics, Meta was quietly rebuilding Facebook into a powerhouse for creators. It’s not just for family updates anymore.

Facebook is now huge for personal branding, small biz, and networking. For the last 8 years or so Facebook has seemed dead. Meta and the crew at Facebook made Instagram a priority. Instagram works great and they’ve kept up with competing with TikTok. But now, Meta has Instagrammed Facebook and brought all the great aspects of Instagram while simplifying the Facebook interface and opening up the 3 billion people on the platform to your message.

We all know people who seem to master posting on Facebook - friends, family, and now influencers. Let’s capture their posting energy with new tools.

TIP: Many people don't realize they can keep their private life private while still having a public "Creator" persona on the same account. Professional Mode unlocks an analytics dashboard similar to what you’d see on a business page.

Here’s a few reasons why I’m making Facebook a priority NOW.

Personal profiles can now have a professional mode that allows unlimited followers and a clean profile interface... similar to Instagram.
The Network Effect: You aren't starting from zero. Your high school friends, former colleagues, and neighbors are already there—they are your first "seed" audience.
Algorithm Love: Facebook is leaning heavily into "Discovery." Your content is now being shown to people who don't follow you, much like the Instagram Explore page.
The "Human" Factor: Groups allow you to build trust. When you participate as a person (Professional Profile) rather than a brand (Page), people are 10x more likely to engage. Your personal profile can do the selling now.
You can leverage a Facebook Page for advertising to drive traffic to your personal posts - combining the power of pages and profiles.
Facebook supports content creators - it will draw more creators to the platform.
Facebook Reels are consumed a lot - breathing life into the platform.
No need to worry about crossposting - Facebook can automatically post to Instagram and vice versa. Easy peasy.

Here’s how my personal Facebook Profile looks now:

Ken's Facebook Profile in Creator Mode

Notice the "Follow" button instead of "Add Friend”, the "Digital Creator" category, and just a few sections like Reels
Check out my new Facebook profile →

Here’s a comparison of old and new Facebook:

Feature	Personal Profile (Legacy)	Professional Mode (New)	Facebook Page
Follower Limit	Capped at 5,000 Friends	Unlimited Followers	Unlimited Followers
Visibility	Mainly Friends & Family	Global Discovery Feed	Public / Search Engines
Analytics	None	Professional Dashboard	Meta Business Suite
Monetization	No	Reels Bonuses & Stars	Full Ad Revenue / Shops
Networking	Personal (Add Friend)	Creator-style (Follow)	Brand-style (Like/Follow)
Best For	Private use	Personal Brands & Coaches	Companies & Local Biz

Are you looking at using Facebook again? If you have marketing dollars for your personal brand or small business, let’s talk about optimizing your profiles and pages for this new Facebook Revival. Book a coaching session.

The Morico Letter - 12/20/2025

As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. Need digital marketing coaching? Schedule a coaching session w/me and let’s grow together.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

Blogging for Impact in the AI Era: Just Start Now

Sat, 31 May 2025 06:00:00 GMT

Your thoughts on life, business, health & spirituality matter. They matter to everyone more than ever because AI is here and it’s collecting all our thoughts while at the same time people are seeking real human perspectives.

The best way I know to get your thoughts out there is a newsletter or blog post, and then tweaking it for social media. One big idea -- distilled for the different mediums.

I’m still getting decent traffic to my blog after 16 years. It’s my personal perspectives that matter. Your personal perspectives will matter if you just put them out there.

Here’s some reasons to journal or blog your perspectives:

Contribute to the hive mind... literally AI is aggregating our thoughts... we literally have the power to influence the present and future... think of the butterfly effect. If you say nothing you won’t matter. If you do... you will. It’s that simple.
You can manifest your future. Some people believe in manifestation. Part of it’s power is writing down you goals, ambitions, and thoughts. Doing it publicly gives it a lot of weight.
Have written material to pass down to children / relatives. Here’s a thought way out there: you could literally live forever if a an AI bot collects all your written material and your great great great grandchildren could chat with you after your passing. There’s a project on X / Twitter that is doing this right now with John McAfee right now.
People will network with you. Maybe you’ll meet your heroes or at least find like-minded connections.
You might get business / notoriety / comments from friends.
It’s therapeutic. Think of it like meditation...

Blogging has been a core business strategy for content marketing for good reason. It connects on a personal level that corporate speak often misses. Getting cited as a source in ChatGPT / LLMs can also send you traffic and get you recognized as an authority.

So many ways to benefit from just writing your thoughts. Don’t forget, with video so popular now, you could just speak your blog post into the camera. Same content - different medium.

Want to nail your content marketing? Schedule a coaching session with me, and I’ll show you how to use blogging to market your business in the world of AI. Schedule a coaching session

I’ve updated my blog with some core topics.

ai
buildinpublic
business development
creator economy
entrepreneur
gear
linkedin
marketing
motivation
personal branding
personal development
productivity
seo
social media
wellness

Check it out at kenmorico.com/blog when you get a chance for some night time / weekend reading.

Now, go and speak your mind. I’m listening.

The Morico Letter - 5/31/2025

Want to share this issue of The Morico Letter via text, social media, or email? Just copy and paste this link:

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As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. Need digital marketing coaching? Schedule a coaching session w/me and let’s grow together.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

P.S. Have you tried using blogging to connect with your audience? Reply to this email and let me know what’s worked for you—or what’s holding you back!

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Proven Strategies to Master Organic Marketing with AI Engine Optimization (AEO)

Sun, 11 May 2025 06:00:00 GMT

AI Engine Optimization (AEO) is transforming how businesses approach organic marketing. Unlike traditional SEO, AEO focuses on optimizing content for AI-driven platforms like Copilot, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, which prioritize conversational, human-centric, and authoritative content. To dominate this new landscape, you need a fresh strategy. Here are proven tactics to crush organic marketing with AEO:

1. Craft Unique, Authentic Content

AEO thrives on originality. Write in your brand’s distinct voice, offering insights only you can provide. Avoid generic content—AI platforms like ChatGPT value expertise and human-to-human connection. Share personal anecdotes, case studies, or proprietary data to stand out.

Action Tip: Audit your content to ensure it reflects your unique perspective. Replace jargon-heavy phrases with conversational language that resonates with your audience.

2. Design Pages with a Single, Clear Purpose

Every page should answer one specific question or solve one problem. Ambiguity confuses both users and AI engines. State the page’s purpose upfront, delivering the solution within the first 100 words. For example, if your page answers “How to optimize for AEO,” lead with a concise definition and key benefits.

Action Tip: Map each page to a single user intent. Use tools like Google’s “People Also Ask” or Perplexity to identify relevant questions your audience is asking.

3. Be the Source or Cite Credible Ones

Establish authority by creating original research, surveys, or data-driven insights. If you lack proprietary data, reference high-quality, authoritative sources (e.g., academic journals, industry reports). Use proper HTML citation markup () and schema.org attributes to help AI engines understand and trust your references.

Action Tip: Embed links to primary sources and use structured data to mark citations. Tools like Schema Markup Generator can simplify this process.

4. Structure Content for Humans and AI

Well-organized content is easy for both readers and AI to digest. Use clear headings (H1, H2, H3), bullet points, block quotes, and bold or italic text to highlight key points. Short paragraphs (2-3 sentences) and scannable formats improve engagement. AI platforms prioritize content that’s logically structured and user-friendly.

Action Tip: Review your pages for readability. Use tools like Hemingway Editor to simplify complex sentences and ensure a grade-6 reading level.

5. Leverage Hidden Structured Markup

Structured data (e.g., schema.org) is invisible to users but critical for AI engines. Mark up your content as an article, recipe, or FAQ, and include attributes like author, publisher, or publication date. This helps AI platforms like Copilot accurately interpret and rank your content.

Action Tip: Implement schema markup using Google’s Structured Data Markup Helper. Test your markup with Google’s Rich Results Test to ensure it’s error-free.

6. Build Trust with Authoritative Author Bios

AI and users alike prioritize content from credible experts. Ensure every page links to an author’s “About” page featuring their photo, credentials, and expertise. For example, an author bio for an AEO expert might highlight their years in AI marketing and successful campaigns. Faceless content lacks trust and struggles to rank.

Action Tip: Create detailed “About” pages for all authors. Include social proof (e.g., certifications, media mentions) and link to their professional profiles (e.g., LinkedIn).

Conclusion: Stay Ahead with AEO

AI Engine Optimization (AEO) is the future of organic marketing. By crafting authentic content, structuring pages for clarity, and building trust with AI and users, you can dominate AI-driven platforms. Start implementing these strategies today to outrank competitors and capture your audience’s attention.

Ready to optimize? Audit your website for AEO readiness and experiment with tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity to see how your content performs in AI search results.

AEO Next Steps

Done-for-you AEO Consulting Services

Why RSS Feeds Are Still a Power Move for Blogs in 2025

Mon, 05 May 2025 06:00:00 GMT

Just optimized my RSS feed with full content for blog articles and newsletters. I still LOVE using RSS readers for reading blog content. I’m making RSS a first-class citizen on my Website. Here’s why you should too:

RSS feeds aren’t dead in 2025. They’re a secret weapon for bloggers and readers who want control over content. No algorithms, no noise—just updates straight from the source.
For readers, RSS is a dream for power users. Tools like Feedly or Reeder let you follow hundreds of blogs in one place. No social media clutter. Perfect for researchers, curators, or anyone who loves a clean feed. Are you using an RSS reader?
For bloggers, it’s low-effort, high-impact. Most platforms like WordPress or Ghost auto-generate RSS feeds. It’s a simple way to keep loyal readers hooked and syndicate content to podcast apps or aggregators. Why not give your audience options?
With the fediverse and indie web gaining steam, RSS is making a comeback. It’s decentralized, privacy-friendly, and lets you own your content flow. In a world of walled gardens, RSS is freedom.

RSS isn’t just for humans. In 2025, it’s a backbone for AI tools, chatbots, and curated newsletters. Feed your blog into summarizers or automation pipelines with zero hassle. It’s like plumbing for the internet.

The catch: mainstream users lean on X or newsletters for discovery. RSS is niche but powerful. About 30% of websites still offer feeds (W3Techs, 2024), especially tech and indie blogs. It’s a small investment for big loyalty.

If you’re a blogger / content creator, keep that RSS feed alive. It’s a future-proof way to reach dedicated fans and tap into new distribution channels.

Readers, try an RSS app—it’s a game-changer for staying informed.

What’s your favorite RSS tool? I use Reeder on Mac / iOS to power through feeds.

Don't forget to add my blog to your RSS Reader - kenmorico.com/subscribe — visit to see the feed URL.

Standing Out Among Competitors

Sat, 22 Mar 2025 06:00:00 GMT

If you’ve used social media lately you’ll see how many voices are out there... it’s hard to stand out. Part of human bonding is trust building. You can’t get your message out if “the public” doesn’t trust you. In this newsletter, I’ll let you know a secret I use to quickly build trust.

One of the reasons short-form video formats like TikTok and Instagram Reels are doing so well is that video creates instant relationships. It’s hard to do that with text or even photos. Especially now with AI so powerful, it’s getting almost impossible to tell what’s real and what isn’t, so we just assume it’s fake or a filter now. But video, and audio, seems more real to us.

Of course you need something to say, but if you pay attention you’ll notice everyone says pretty much the same thing... it’s your presentation and personality that drive interest. It’s the reason why remakes of movies are always so popular. If the “guts” of the story are good, it usually just requires a new presentation style to keep it interesting to a modern audience.

When I setup discovery calls with potential clients, I always use video meetings. I have a high success rate with the calls because it’s easier to sell when you see someone face-to-face. It creates what I like to call the, “we’re set” moment, where the trust is established and everything from that moment forward goes smooth.

Ready to stand out? Record a quick 30-second video introducing yourself or your business and share it with me. Reply to this email with a link or attachment and I’ll let you know my thoughts.

But to get discovery calls I need interest. And the most effective tool for interest, in my experience, has been video. How do I know it’s effective? Because clients tell me. “Ken, I saw your video online.”

Now, I know I don’t do a lot of online video, but what I have done in the past works. I’m in the process of streamlining how I create audio and video. Perhaps another newsletter on that process. Stay tuned.

Want to nail your next discovery call / video intro? Schedule a coaching session with me, and I’ll show you how to use video to seal the deal. Schedule a coaching session

In closing, I would encourage you to use video and audio to get your message across. I love text, but it’s now a secondary medium unfortunately and subject to corruption by AI.

Show yourself and let us see you shine... really!

The Morico Letter - 3/22/2025

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As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. Need digital marketing coaching? Schedule a coaching session w/me and let’s grow together.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

P.S. Have you tried using video or audio to connect with your audience? Reply to this email and let me know what’s worked for you—or what’s holding you back!

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Starting a Business is Easy. Running a Business is Hard.

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 06:00:00 GMT

When I was 21, working for a tech startup in Santa Monica in 2001, I befriended a coworker who seemed to everything going for him: money, new custom luxury car, and confidence. He wasn’t an employee -- he was a consultant.

Curious as to how he got his business together, I asked him about his operation. He said, "Starting a business is easy. Running a business is hard."

The day to day front I saw in the office went much deeper.

Over the years as I’ve consulted more and more it’s absolutely true: starting a business is easy, running a business is hard.

Starting a business just takes time with paperwork, marketing, office space, etc. but once you’re set up it doesn’t need much maintenance. It’s the constantly changing business environment that poses challenges.

It’s harder than ever now with so many obstacles: globalization, AI, population surge, stagflation, etc. But the difficulty is what gives it value. The value in the business is twofold: you genuinely help others succeed through consulting and as a consulting business owner you overcome challenges.

With consulting, you see people face to face. You see progress in real time. In most cases, business problems are marketing problems. That’s why I love offering marketing coaching to business owners and ambitious professionals. For instance, just last year I helped a client by creating a 277% increase in digital marketing KPIs and they received a 2000% ROI on my consulting & coaching fees. Consultants and coaches can REALLY move the needle when they leverage technology correctly.

The Morico Letter - 2/11/2025

Want to share this issue of The Morico Letter via text, social media, or email? Just copy and paste this link:

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As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. Need [digital marketing coaching] (https://kenmorico.com/coaching)? Schedule a coaching session w/me and let’s grow together.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

View Previous Letters

Books Not Noise

Sat, 12 Oct 2024 06:00:00 GMT

Do you feel like we are scrolling information but not really learning anything useful for our personal productivity or career? For the last several years I’ve been taking notes on deep books. The way I do it:

Highlight passages using the Amazon Kindle app or Apple Books app [The Libby app] is great for reading books for free on Kindle].
Export the highlights into 1 large text document.
Add the file to a folder with other book notes.
Reference the book notes over and over when stuck on something: personal or business.

Books are focused. The author of the book has a clear focus when creating, editing, and publishing the book. By focusing on one book at a time, WE become focused and truly harness the knowledge of the author.

When I revisit notes I’ve taken years ago, I notice things I didn’t when I was reading them. In essence, the book becomes new again and I receive more knowledge.

When I was taking a novel writing class at UCLA Extension in 2002, my professor told us students, “put the book you are writing away for 6 months, revisit it, and you’ll be a different person.”

In essence, we change over time and gain insights we didn’t when we first absorb information (or write it down).

So, I encourage you to read books that have gained a reputation, take notes, and revisit those notes regularly when you need inspiration and guidance.

The Morico Letter - 10/12/2024

Want to share this issue of The Morico Letter via text, social media, or email? Just copy and paste this link:

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As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. Need bespoke technical digital marketing services (SEO / growth marketing | website development | PPC/online ads)? Learn more and schedule a free consulting session w/me.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

View Previous Letters

Market Organically on LinkedIn w/ a Personal Profile

Mon, 16 Sep 2024 06:00:00 GMT

We know that trust is high when information comes from people instead of companies. That's why marketing using your personal profile on LinkedIn is so powerful. Not only is this marketing effective, it can be much cheaper than buying ads or spending years building up a reputable company profile on LinkedIn.

Beyond “Let’s Connect”: Create Meaningful Connections on LinkedIn

Your connection requests go in the LinkedIn shredder. Potential mentors, clients, and peers disregard your limp messages. LinkedIn dominates professional social media, but it's likely you're not using it correctly for networking.

For sure, I’ve sent personal messages most of the time, but my hit rate needed improvement, and when I started taking LinkedIn seriously a few months ago I knew I had to step up my connection and networking game.

Why are connections so important? They are the electricity of LinkedIn: they power the utility of LinkedIn... otherwise, why would you use the platform? Connections help you leverage: business outcomes, career mobility, influence, personal relationships and sense of community.

Commit to making high-quality connections.

Networking like a LinkedIn Pro

LinkedIn has changed over the years, and they now limit the number of personal connection requests you can use to 5 a month. That's nothing. Every connection request should have a personal note. You can only do that with LinkedIn's higher tiers like LinkedIn Premium and Sales Navigator. If you want to network, it's pretty much essential.

Plus, you get that LinkedIn badge on your profile when you subscribe.

Business leader Chris Haroun mentions when connecting with someone to use commonalities like ethnicity, school, area, etc. There needs to be some common ground to connect with someone, and of course you should offer some value in return, even if it's just your LinkedIn content (you publish deep content on LinkedIn regularly, right?).

If you think back on your professional life outside of the LinkedIn ecosystem, why were you hired / chosen / elected? I can think of exactly the reasons Haroun mentions: school, area, and maybe ethnicity. There are a lot more factors, but the point is that strong bonds can be formed over seemingly minor background attributes.

Luck Matters

Have you ever wondered why someone thinks fondly of you for some reason you just can’t understand? It happens. Sometimes we just get lucky. And sometimes we strike out. We can’t ignore luck. “I’d rather be lucky than good.”

What Works in Real-life Networking Works Online

The largest LinkedIn creators and thought leaders harness human psychology for maximum impact: large amounts of meaningful connections that engage with their content that powers their reach. We see this offline: word-of-mouth referrals are the most powerful form of influence. It’s an upward spiral.

Understand people and prosper.

Taking Action

So, next time you send a connection request on LinkedIn, find common ground, offer some value if you can, and engage where it makes sense.

Essential professionals score essential connections.

But why should we leverage LinkedIn NOW and go all in for organic marketing?

1 Billion+ Users (Harness LinkedIn's Power)

Now is the time for LinkedIn. Yes, I'm kicking and screaming. We've hit a tipping point; its utility and influence can't be ignored any longer.

It's over a billion users strong at this point and there is a confluence of factors why we need to take it more seriously now. I'll explain how we can harness it's power to strengthen our personal branding & SEO while making more connections / sales / customers.

Here's what's happening:

1+ Billion users
9 consecutive quarters of accelerating member growth in Q1 FY24
Google Helpful content update is giving priority to LinkedIn content in Google Search - something it hasn't done before
Macroeconomic turning point - still demand for jobs but layoffs and future layoffs mean the push/pull effects will draw more users and more engagement
More tools on platform - it's a much better content platform today than it was years ago

Here's some stats from LinkedIn:

LinkedIn Stats. — 985 million members 11/2023 (source: LinkedIn.com)

More Users, Fewer Problems

I've seen it turn into a real social network - with more users, content creators are taking it seriously and creating engaging content that's useful. I've seen Facebook posting decline in my network and to some extent, Twitter / X as well. Posts that are duplicated from Twitter / X to LinkedIn are getting more engagement on LinkedIn for media sites and industry sites I follow.

As with all social media networks, they are only really useful or worthy of your time if there are many users and they engage on the platform.

Content with Reach - LinkedIn for Personal Branding & SEO

With Google's Helpful Content update for search, it is now surfacing LinkedIn user content because of the site's authority. In the past, I've noticed some great content on LinkedIn, but it would never surface in Google Search. That's been fixed.

How can we leverage this? Post on LinkedIn and reference your own article on your own site. From that article, link to landing page where you sell a product or service.

Macroeconomic Turning Point

With some industries strong while others weaken, it creates a Goldilocks time for LinkedIn. People NEED LinkedIn - in fact, there was a 55% year-over-year increase in LinkedIn Premium sign-ups in Q1 FY24.

People will pay social media? Yes, especially when there's utility. People vote with their wallet. Take notice.

More Platform Tools

I'm really enjoying the Newsletter feature of LinkedIn. I can subscribe to influencers I follow and see their newsletters in one place or via email. I can comment and see other users' comments -- something not easy to do via a traditional newsletter.

Of course, LinkedIn supports vertical video and I suspect it will promote it even more as we move to a more video-first environment, but for now, LinkedIn is great for office professionals because text-posts can get great reach. Plus, you can blog an create articles with LinkedIn Articles.

Don’t Be Afraid to Post on LinkedIn - Why Posting Matters

Maybe you're scared to post or have imposter syndrome. Maybe you care too much about what your peers think or feel you can't reveal too much on a professional network. Know this: The Essential Professional speaks.

I've learned a few things over the years that might help you build up your profile and give you the courage to stand up and speak - something that's truly needed in this new world of AI and high competition. And of course, you don't need to publish on LinkedIn - you be quiet and irrelevant... others will gladly take your spot. But that's not how my followers roll: let's get into it.

The older you get the less you care what others think. Ask any person of experience and they will generally tell you the same. There's just something about getting older that makes you more resistant to criticism. Some special people get this courage earlier in life (especially New Yorkers). Maybe it's experience. Maybe it's building up a cash hoard. Maybe it's being more comfortable in the person you became.
Get in a position where you're not reliant on others. Some people can't "rock the boat" with content on LinkedIn because they are too highly paid. Think about that for a second. You are trading your ability to speak with large sums of money. Fear isn't a way to live in my world view. When you develop contingencies you can speak your mind. Some worry that recruiters or hiring managers will review their social accounts and disqualify them because of their views. Wow! What a blessing... it's great to work with people who share your world views or at least tolerate them.

So how do we make it happen on LinkedIn?

Showing Up on LinkedIn

First off, you need to let people know you exist. There are a lot of "lurkers" on LinkedIn. Only 1% of active users regularly post content. 1 PERCENT! We log into LinkedIn, scroll, see a few posts, and bounce. I think a lot of us feel like we have nothing to say, or just chime in with some hackneyed responses like "congrats", or "way to go." Just showing up in a meaningful way can make you win. The math says so.

People might feel like they can't really respond meaningfully or post LinkedIn Articles, Newsletters, Videos, or carousels because they are afraid what their peers or supervisors will think. Here's some real talk: people change jobs all the time and you are quickly forgotten by many of your coworkers after just a few years.

A Thought Leader?

Wouldn't you want to be thought of as a thought leader? You can build LinkedIn content that can demonstrate your knowledge to others in your industry and potential employers / clients. Yeah, it takes time to create deeper content that competes with pro content creators on LinkedIn, but you don't have a choice in 2024. There are 9 billion people on earth and AI is killing it right now. Make it happen.

A Flood of Ethical Content

Another reason you should post, and why the world needs you to post, is that there is so much garbage, unethically produced content. We need to drown that out. With only 1% of users producing content it leaves a vacuum for the worst people. Let's shine our light and fill the feed with true knowledge.

With 1 billion members on LinkedIn, what a great time to demonstrate knowledge and authority on LinkedIn.

The Belief

I believe in you and your ability to voice your thoughts. Always remember: you’re not a corporate cog -- you’re an essential professional.

Conclusion

All these factors can increase our personal brand on LinkedIn. Increased visibility in Google Search means our LinkedIn Profile will be prioritized when clients / customers / employers search for us by name, and when we write content on LinkedIn, people will find it beyond the LinkedIn platform.

I think now is the time curate our LinkedIn feed, add contacts from other social networks that have a LinkedIn presence, and subscribe to newsletters.

For help with your LinkedIn presence as well as a content strategy and bespoke tools to maximize your impact, reach out for LinkedIn consulting. The timing is perfect.

Be Original: 3 Ways to Personalize Your Content & Get Seen

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 06:00:00 GMT

As a digital marketer, I've learned that unoriginal content gets lost in the noise. Your content NEEDS to be "thumbstopping." Here's how to make your content get that coveted pause in the feed:

Share a Personal Story

Tell a story from your career that offers value. Maybe it's a lesson learned from a challenging campaign or a skill you developed. Make sure it's entertaining, informative, or useful. Ask yourself, "What's the point?" and "Why should someone care?"

Set the Scene

Describe the where, why, how, what, and when of your story. This makes it unique and memorable. For example, detail a specific project, the challenges you faced, and the creative solutions you implemented.

Use Visuals

Include a photo of yourself at work or an image that illustrates your story. Visuals create a stronger connection with your audience and showcase your environment, work, and workspace. We're all interested in how others work and we pause when we see familiar environments and settings.

Why Personal Content Works

Generic content is everywhere. Personal content highlights your thought process, location, and unique traits. People are interested in your experiences and perspectives. Personalized content builds trust and authenticity, leading to stronger connections and potential leads.

The main reason content should be personal NOW is because everyone's seen generic (AI-generated?) content and they can look up their problems via search / ChatGPT.

Proven Success

I've personally gained leads by sharing personalized content on LinkedIn. By showcasing my unique experiences, I've connected with a wider audience and built meaningful relationships.

Start personalizing your content today and watch your engagement grow!

Get Traffic with a Content Creator Home Base

Sat, 07 Sep 2024 06:00:00 GMT

AI and Generative Engines have drastically changed the way people get information. Generic content and step-by-step content has been commoditized... across all levels of media - web, social, and email. What matters now? Brands, people, and unique ideas, and research. Let's surface our uniqueness to people that matter.

I like having a content creator "Home Base" like a website, where you can aggregate all your content. You can embed YouTube Videos, Instagram Posts, LinkedIn Posts, and really any content / media. AI can understand the content and serve you organic traffic. You can then link out to your social networks where people can follow you once they are interested in your content. It's a positive flywheel effect.

If you don't have a website, creating a "Home Base" is harder to do on social media, but here are some ideas for creating a "Home Base" on other platforms:

Playlists on YouTube - an area where you can categorize your best content.
Articles on LinkedIn / Newsletters on LinkedIn. Create a "Best of" article and pin it to your LinkedIn profile.
Story Highlights on Instagram.
Pinned Threads on X / Twitter or Pinned Threads on Meta Threads. Create a Thread with links to your best categorized content.

Remember that content created on third-parties aren't owned by you, so that's why creating a Website is still so relevant.

Another reason I think a home base is useful is that information comes at us so fast that we like some categorization to help us get information we're looking for.

For my own Website, I've structured things a bit differently than in the past for AI search engines / generative engines.

An articles / guides section for deep-dive information on digital marketing. I try to add my personal experiences to make the articles and guides unique and real-world.
A consulting section for those looking for quick access to a digital marketing consultant.
A blog section where I get really personal and offer my unique perspectives on entrepreneurship, tech, and wellness.
An About page that lists my credentials and creates authority for the content on the site.
A homepage that's organized as a launching point for all areas for those new to the site or just searching for me directly.

I've already seen improvement in organic traffic since I modified my site structure. Generative Engines / AI really work differently than standard search engines and so I've created a guide to help marketers that I will update over time at kenmorico.com/geo/guide.

Going forward, I ask that any content you create has unique perspectives and any existing content be updated with unique value.

Always respect your audience when creating content and create using the WIIFT method - What's In It For Them? That's truly creating from a generous spirit.

The Morico Letter - 9/7/2024

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https://kenmorico.com/newsletters/content-creator-home-base

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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6 Strategies to Crush Organic Marketing with GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 06:00:00 GMT

Unique & Clear Language - GEO is not SEO. The page must be in your voice and offer unique expertise. Write human-to-human.
1 page = 1 purpose - What is the purpose of the page? What question are you answering? Don’t confuse the robots. Make a webpage with clear purpose & present a solution at the start of the content.
Be the Source or Refer to One - Create your own research if have unique data. Reference authoritative sources if you don’t. Use proper HTML markup so engines know the attributes of the citation and can properly reference it.
Structure for Readers & AI - Make it easy to read page content and digest information. Use bullets, block quotes, bold, italic, & meaningful organized headings. If it makes sense to users it will make sense to AI.
Use Hidden Markup - Use structured markup that is invisible to users. Utilize schema.org categories to declare attributes of a page: mark it as a recipe, article, reference the author and author’s webpage, publisher, etc. AI can make sense this since it’s true data.
Present as a Trusted Author - People need experts. Make sure the author of the page has an “About” page that you link to. The author should be an expert with a photo. The about page should list credentials. People won’t trust faceless content no one will stand behind.

GEO Next Steps

Done-for-you GEO Consulting Services

The Next Social Network for Creators: Threads

Sun, 28 Jul 2024 06:00:00 GMT

You may have noticed social media dying - more clickbait videos and TV-like content. Content from friends and your industry can get buried. Getting little exposure usually means you're late, or the algorithm radically changed. Luckily, there's usually a new spot where you can get heard, and right now, that place is Threads. It's the network I'm seeing the most engagement right now.

Threads has 175 million active users... it's growing a lot. I think Meta realizes Instagram changed so much from its original vision that it created a new space for ordinary creators - a Twitter / X like competitor.

Meta is pushing Instagram users to Threads in a big way - auto cross-posting and Threads promotions in Instagram. A social media network is only useful if there are large numbers of users creating content. I definitely see a change and think we are at a tipping point.

Here are some reasons Threads is hot right now:

Other networks are dying for regular users
Twitter / X has been getting a lot of attention and Zuckerberg wants to compete
Meta pushing Threads heavily
Threads users mentioning they like the new platform and saying it reminds them of the old Twitter and old-style social networking they loved
There are no ads yet
The algorithm seems to surface relevant content
Threads posts with 0 likes appear next to posts with hundreds - everyone can get a shot at attention right now

This creates a lot of opportunity for marketers and people with a message to spread.

The desktop site has a TweetDeck-style multiple column view. This is free. X / Twitter charges for this functionality.

I can see more tools built out around improving the experience for power users. There are also lower costs for using the API, so coders looking to build tools that interface with Threads can do so much cheaper than X / Twitter. This will create a flourishing ecosystem.

In summary, I see a lot of opportunity and I am pushing all clients and future clients to utilize the platform. Don't forget to follow me there - @KenMorico on Threads. Let's chat when you get there.

The Morico Letter - 7/28/2024

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Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Email List Segmentation - Why You Need It

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 06:00:00 GMT

Have a marketing email list? Unsubscribe From All is death. Don't lose members permanently because of just 1 segment. Remember to clarify your list segments:

Newsletter
Announcements
Products & Services
One-to-One

Explain what they get with each. Explain what they miss if they unsubscribe. Keep the flock together.

Need help with email lists, CRM integrations, or landing pages? Let's talk.

Be a Great Marketing Client and Lower Your Costs

Fri, 05 Jul 2024 06:00:00 GMT

Be a great CLIENT and score lower turnover, reduced costs, + bonus service. Here's my take after 2 decades of consulting:

Treat your vendor as a true partner
Care about your consultant's well-being and ask about personal life when appropriate
Pay the invoice early
Communicate quickly
Give a heads-up on upcoming work
Refer other people to your consultant

You'll be surprised how a little caring can benefit you and your business.

How I Write My Newsletter & Why YOU Need One

Sat, 25 May 2024 06:00:00 GMT

I've been writing my newsletter for about 11 years. Amazingly, I have some subscribers that have been reading for that entire time. Knowing that my audience is engaged and loyal gives me the encouragement to continue.

Newsletters are great for anyone because they are so easy to create and effective. People have also been more receptive to receiving them in recent years because of the improved platforms and independent journalist / creator movement.

Reasons You Need a Newsletter:

An audience. You don't want to lose people that interact with you in some way - via a website, LinkedIn, or social media. If you have an email list you own an asset.
You are helping people. How-tos, expert opinion, simple observations... it all provides value. We exist on earth to help others. Newsletters are a substantive, convenient way to help.
You can sell a product / service and/or raise your profile.
It's cheap marketing. Cost to create and distribute is near zero.
Create a journal - even if very few people read your newsletter, you have created a journal. It will matter to you.
You create a disciplined routine. Discipline improves all areas of your life.

We can see it's an essential digital marketing asset. Great.

How Do I Create My Newsletter?

I keep a journal of ideas. I update this anytime via my phone or computer. I write all my ideas in a text / markdown file using IA Writer.
I pick an idea I think will be helpful to my audience while bringing my personal experience to make the topic unique.
I establish a template / format for my newsletter. What's in my newsletter? Content, a call-to-action, a link for sharing, my photo, signature, and social media links.
I write the content in IA Writer. Time varies. Probably 2-3 hours.
I add the newsletter to my email platform. Right now, I'm using Hubspot to send my newsletter. In the past, I used ConvertKit and MailChimp.
I schedule the newsletter to send on a weekend. I tend to send on a weekend because people aren't busy working, they have time to read, and they are less likely to unsubscribe.

In addition, because a newsletter IS content, I also post it on my website. This helps with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and gives my website visitors something to read and hopefully get inspired to subscribe if they haven't yet. Of course, this is optional and not something you need to do.

Are you writing a newsletter? How has your experience been? Let me know.

The Morico Letter - 5/25/2024

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Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Grow Any Social Media Account (Without Ads)

Sat, 27 Apr 2024 06:00:00 GMT

Before you can scale a social account with ads, you need an organic growth strategy. In fact, if you want to grow on LinkedIn like I do, you can't even grow with ads, since personal profiles don't have ad products for them.

What's a simple strategy you can implement to grow a social account without dumping money into ads?

Invite other people you interact with on other platforms.

For example, once a month, I invite a few people I interact with on X / Twitter to join me on LinkedIn.

How Do I Grow a Social Following Organically?

Review my mentions and replies from an existing source social media network.
Find interesting people related to my niche that were eager to engage with me.
Verify they have a real name and search for them on LinkedIn (or other target social network).
Once I've found the account, I write a short connection request that is personalized mentioning our interactions on X / Twitter (or source social network).
Score a new connection / follower!

Bonus if you can strike a back-and-forth mail conversation. This will boost your views in their feed.

You can try this with other social networks, of course.

I have around an 80% success rate with this method. It's easy to do, the connections are usually eager to accept the request, and they are impressed that you took time to personally craft an intro message.

To make this work you must be active on social media. Tools can make this easier. I use X Pro as part of the X / Twitter Blue Subscription. Tools exist for practically any platform. Reviewing replies is usually easy without tools as well.

If you would like to explore how you can use bespoke technical methods to grow a social media account, just let me know.

The Morico Letter - 4/27/2024

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Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Authority On Google. Here's How You Get It.

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 06:00:00 GMT

You want authority on Google - you need it for career gains, business success, and respect from your peers. Let's see what it looks like. Here's what you see when you Google me on Desktop:

Google Knowledge Graph - Desktop Search Results

You'll see my name in large letters, a short description, and profile links. This is the Google Knowledge Graph. It's like an encyclopedia entry.

Things are a little different on mobile due to space:

Google Knowledge Graph - Mobile Search Results

In both versions, you'll notice Google knows I'm a person - not a business or entity.

Also notice I own the entire real estate in the browser. No one can hijack my message when I own all the top results.

I see so many capable professionals with no online real estate. If I Google their name, 10 other people with similar names show up first. Very sad.

I have a few things that can get you noticed and owning your own Google real estate.

How to Bend Google to Your Will

Create a Personal Website
Optimize the Personal Website for the Google Knowledge Graph
Have active social media accounts
Create content - articles, newsletters, blog posts, videos
Create an about page

These are some steps to get you imprinted in the digital encyclopedia. To get a full profile like mine would take the skills of a Web Developer and content strategist (like myself).

In addition to boosting your personal site content, the profile will help your other content like LinkedIn posts and YouTube videos rise in the page rankings.

Don't let others take your online space. Produce.

The Morico Letter - 2/17/2024

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As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. If you need 1:1 guidance for growth marketing | website development | PPC/online ads, let me know.

This newsletter is community-supported. Would you consider donating to help me empower others w/ important messages of life-changing productivity, business strategy, and self-development? Choose an amount to donate.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Being Selfish in 2024 & Why It's a Win

Sat, 20 Jan 2024 06:00:00 GMT

I've had a quote in my notes for a long time:

Being productive is largely about removing things (via automation, outsourcing, batching, efficiency gains, or just simply not doing them at all) and prioritization.

It had me thinking: the best productivity tip really is removing tasks.

This new year, I want you to be selfish. I want you to say no to tasks and people that aren't essential.

When you are in a perfect place in your life and able to give more, then you can share more of your time and energy.

By reducing tasks you'll be able to help even more people at a later time.

I'm sharing more business and productivity tips regularly on my LinkedIn account. I hope you'll follow me there. Remember, everyone needs a LinkedIn strategy for 2024.

The Morico Letter - 1/20/2024

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As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. If you need 1:1 guidance for growth marketing | website development | business coaching, let me know.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Prepare the Way: Manifest a Winning January

Sat, 16 Dec 2023 06:00:00 GMT

While I agree any meaningful change shouldn't wait until January 1st, I'll explain why January 1st does matter for certain professional changes. The most obvious one for me is that everyone is on vacation for most of December, and trying to create a professional change works best when you are "in the ring." Everyone wants to get something done in January.

For example, this year I'll be focusing on business development, and December isn't really the right time to do that. What I've done instead is prepare the way. I've done everything in preparation for January. So, in effect, I've started now, but my goal will be realized in January.

So many professional activities take real planning. With strong competition, we must be fast and thorough. If we are ethical it is especially hard since I see so many scam artists out there -- exploiting algorithm holes, exploiting human psychology, and just flat out lying.

Our personal brands matter a lot because trust is becoming more scarce. You need a strong personal brand for anything you want in life: a promotion, networking, new business, and respect from others. Technology has massively increased the need for personal brands because of the lack of trust with everything online... and AI has accelerated that even more.

I've overhauled my personal brand in preparation for January... here's some things I've done that maybe would benefit you professionally as well:

Overhauled my brand colors, graphics, social post templates to be more bold and clear
Improved my LinkedIn profile - headline, job experience, banner
Curated my LinkedIn feed to make it more useful and efficient
Added a LinkedIn Newsletter (The Essential Professional) to build authority
Started a new YouTube Channel (@KenMorico on YouTube) to enhance relationships
Re-coded all my Websites for extreme speed, mobile friendliness, and clarity in content
Learned new programming frameworks to build new future products (if I have the time... new baby 👶🏻 on the way!)

If you are lost on what to change for the new year, there is a fascinating Native American rite called a "vision quest" that may help. Of course, you have me in your corner, and I can be your guide for business coaching.

Are you preparing for the new year? What have you done so far?

The Morico Letter - 12/16/2023

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As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. If you need 1:1 guidance for growth marketing | website development | business coaching, let me know.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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LinkedIn Newsletters: A Rising Star for Professionals

Tue, 12 Dec 2023 06:00:00 GMT

As I’ve been using LinkedIn more and more, it’s evident that newsletters are the place to stay engaged with your followers and demonstrate your expertise.

I recently launched my own LinkedIn newsletter, "The Essential Professional," and think every professional should as well.
LinkedIn offers a unique platform for professional networking and content sharing, with over 1 billion users.
LinkedIn newsletters provide an opportunity to:
- Stay top-of-mind with connections. LinkedIn notifies users when their connections publish newsletters, promoting discovery.
- Position yourself as a thought leader. Sharing your insights and opinions can attract attention and lead to bigger opportunities.
- Deepen your knowledge and stay up-to-date with industry trends. Subscribing to relevant newsletters in your niche allows you to learn from others and stay competitive.
Compared to other social media platforms, LinkedIn has fewer "creators," giving you an advantage to build your audience.
Tips for using LinkedIn newsletters:
- Start with a clear, concise title.
- Use eye-catching visuals.
- Provide valuable content that resonates with your target audience.
- Promote your newsletter on other platforms.

Actionable takeaways:

Consider starting your own LinkedIn newsletter. You’ll notice your peers have already started.
Clean up your LinkedIn feed. Unfollow people who post irrelevant content and follow thought leaders and those who publish valuable newsletters.
Engage with the LinkedIn community. Comment on posts, share valuable content, and participate in discussions. Visibility on LinkedIn will help raise awareness for your newsletter.

LinkedIn newsletters can be a powerful tool for professional development and career advancement.

Next Steps

Subscribe to my LinkedIn Newsletter: The Essential Professional
Share this post with your network

1 Billion+ Users (Harness LinkedIn's Power)

Sat, 18 Nov 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Now is the time for LinkedIn. Yes, I'm kicking and screaming. It's "cringe" as the kids say. We've hit a tipping point; its utility and influence can't be ignored any longer.

Here's what's happening:

1+ Billion users
9 consecutive quarters of accelerating member growth in Q1 FY24
Google Helpful content update is giving priority to LinkedIn content in Google Search - something it hasn't done before
Macroeconomic turning point - still demand for jobs but layoffs and future layoffs mean the push/pull effects will draw more users and more engagement
More tools on platform - it's a much better content platform today than it was years ago

Here's some stats from LinkedIn:

LinkedIn User Stats — 985 million members 11/2023 (source: LinkedIn.com)

More Users, Fewer Problems

As with all social media networks, they are only really useful or worthy of your time if there are many users and they engage on the platform.

Content with Reach - LinkedIn for Personal Branding & SEO

How can we leverage this? Post on LinkedIn and reference your own article on your own site. From that article, link to landing page where you sell a product or service.

Macroeconomic Turning Point

People will pay social media? Yes, especially when there's utility. People vote with their wallet. Take notice.

More Platform Tools

Conclusion

I think now is the time curate our LinkedIn feed, add contacts from other social networks that have a LinkedIn presence, and subscribe to newsletters.

For help with your LinkedIn presence as well as a content strategy and bespoke tools to maximize your impact, reach out for LinkedIn consulting. The timing is perfect.

The Morico Letter - 11/18/2023

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As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. If you need 1:1 guidance for growth marketing | website development | business coaching, let me know.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Increasing Profits w/Speed & Content Essentials

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Clients and customers just want answers. Answers to their problems that respect their time. There's been advice over the years to go "over the top" with content (Web, social, newsletters). The tide has turned and so has Google's position.

No one needs to consume lengthy research content now when they can get perfectly-sized responses to their questions from ChatGPT and AI.

We and our content need to be better in this new AI age -- let's explore the issues and solve them now.

Content Essentials - This Time is Different

In the age of ChatGPT and AI tools, speed reigns supreme and our content should only include the most essential information for people to complete an intended action. Google recently stated:

Are you writing to a particular word count because you've heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don't).

source: developers.google.com

A few months ago, I had a person email me looking for content they couldn't find on my site. They had thought the content was good enough to come back, but mentioned there was too much "junk" on the site and couldn't quickly find it. I didn't think that was the case but it made me think. I went on a purge mission removing irrelevant content and non-essential navigational elements.

Google even states that extra unhelpful content can penalize ALL your site assets:

Removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.

source: developers.google.com

Give customers and clients what they need, and only what they need. And give it to them as fast as possible.

Why Speed of Content Delivery is Essential to Sales

When people complain online, you'll often hear them say, "this website is slow" or "this app is laggy." Friction in content delivery impacts customer experience and SALES.

For every second delay in mobile page load, conversions can fall by up to 20%. (SOASTA, The State of Online Retail Performance, April 2017.

source: Think With Google

mobile conversions - delay leads to drop — For every second delay in mobile page load, conversions can fall by up to 20%.

While increased purchases / sales are not guaranteed, the presumption is they will improve based on current levels when the site or app speed is improved. Depending on your revenue, increasing speed can have a massive impact. For example, with $1,000,000 in annual revenue, just decreasing load time by 1 second could result in $200,000 in additional sales. And you don't need to change anything else about the business. Amazing.

I've seen many businesses with load times in the 6 second mark. Huge room for improvement. That's why I totally rebuilt my Website platform from scratch using modern and bespoke coding solutions. Many times, no matter how optimized your site or app is, the platform you build it on will hinder its speed. For many websites, that platform is WordPress. I've gone from ranking 75/100 in speed rankings to 100/100. 5 second loading times to 2 seconds. For myself, I can do this because of my Web development background. Regular business owners or marketers can't achieve these results (unless they hire someone like Ken Morico).

Speed & Content Action Plan

Audit your current site or app with speed tests.
Review the site / app like you know nothing about it and think of it like a new user / customer / client.
For every item, ask yourself, "does this need to be here?" If not, remove it or redirect it to another property.
Review what is working for your competitors.
If your current platform is hindering your ability to reach speed thresholds, research new platforms and methods.
Make notes of performance before and after changes in your analytics platforms.
Revisit content regularly to determine if it's relevant anymore. Times are changing fast.

Speed is a Feature

Apple once marketed the Mac Operating System (Snow Leopard), in 2009, as having "zero new features." That version of MacOS was considered to be the fastest and most-loved version ever.

Could we do the same for our own content / products / services?

Conclusion

I think you'll agree that speed and content minimalism plays a large part in our perception of brands. Improving speed and reducing / removing content not only can have a large monetary impact, but it's usually very cheap to do.

Take action now.

The Morico Letter - 10/21/2023

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As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. If you need 1:1 guidance for growth marketing | website development | business coaching, let me know.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Google's Helpful Content Update - Don't Lose

Sat, 30 Sep 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Google is rolling out an earth-shattering search update that's affecting owners of all web sites. There is a lot of pain with this update... some people are reporting a 90% loss in traffic for their sites. I'll say, this is probably the largest update I've ever seen.

I've seen Reddit users posting that they are literally going to layoff workers because they've lost so much traffic.

Google Helpful Content Update - Effects

Let's explore the situation and find out how to solve for it and make our content anti-fragile.

What's going on? Google's "Helpful Content" Update launched.

Google Search's helpful content system generates a signal used by our automated ranking systems to better ensure people see original, helpful content created for people in search results. ... The helpful content system aims to better reward content where visitors feel they've had a satisfying experience, while content that doesn't meet a visitor's expectations won't perform as well. ...The system automatically identifies content that seems to have little value, low-added value or is otherwise not particularly helpful to people.

source: developers.google.com

So that seems in-line with Google's mission, but something else makes this a particularly insidious update.

Any content—not just unhelpful content—on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search...

source: developers.google.com

So you need to review all content on your site and trim the fat. This essentially means all content should probably relate to a niche and it should be high-quality... answering questions and being "helpful." I've recently done this myself, moving tech articles from my main site to a new site moricotech.com [after optimization, these were put back into my main site, kenmorico.com under different categories].

If you host third-party content on your main site or in your subdomains, understand that such content may be included in site-wide signals we generate, such as the helpfulness of content.

source: developers.google.com

Again, extra content should be removed. I've also done this by eliminating content or 308 redirecting it another niche site I control / own.

Google confirms the halo-effect of content trimming:

removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.

source: developers.google.com

So I think it's time for a review of all our content.

What are some action-items to compete in this new landscape?

Trim and remove weak, non-helpful content.
Move helpful content not related to your site's niche to another niche site.
Improve existing content with assistance from AI / research.
Improve site speed. I've overhauled my sites with a new content platform to achieve a page speed score of 100 (standard content management systems score 50-70 usually).
Examine third-party content on your site and remove it if it's not relevant. Third-party content requires regular review due to spam, irrelevance, and hacks.

Are you prepared for these new changes? Since many changes can't be implemented by non-technical site owners, you'll likely need a tech consultant and technical strategist like myself for this new environment.

No worries... just reach out and let's explore how I can help you. Website content is a true investment when done properly... other content methods like social media posts and Pay-Per-Click advertising come and go. Go with what lasts.

Owned content is worth the effort.

The Morico Letter - 9/30/2023

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Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Create Money & Attention - YOU All In

Sun, 10 Sep 2023 06:00:00 GMT

I’m sure you’ve noticed lately that social media use among average people is declining. It’s a problem for people with a business and people with a message / mission. But, it’s a fixable problem when we recognize the trends. Let’s explore.

What happened and why does it matter? Algorithms, “creators”, and people going back to old habits.

People known as “creators” have hacked human psychology and generated so much interest in the content they create that the social media algorithms constantly show their creations to keep users on platforms.

You used to see what your co-worker posted about what they had for lunch. No more. Your co-workers don’t post about their lunch anymore (or they are opting out due to privacy concerns, depression, social anxiety, ads, or data collection concerns by social media companies). And even if your coworkers did post about their lunch, you wouldn’t see it because the algorithms probably wouldn’t show it to you.

Social media companies bet on WINNERS. And it’s WINNER TAKE ALL. Not some. ALL.

There’s no room for mediocre posts. People have noticed this I think. Social media is morphing to video watching / TV with short form videos like TikToks and Instagram Reels. It’s a simple and lazy way for people to consume content. Short form video content is enjoyable… I love it. But we are turning into spectators and not participants. And with AI potentially taking the place of many average / lazy people, it’s not a time to sleep.

With the majority of people and businesses losing attention on social media platforms, it’s time to step up. Writing great content is now a complement to video. Video is FIRST.

Making Money with Video

Over the years, I’ve gained consulting work through my website and written content. As that starts to fade a bit, recent clients told me, “I saw your video on YouTube.” The connection they felt with me over video caused them to take action, reach out, and pay me. Think about how you’ve made money in the past? You’ve probably connected with people, live, in-person. Online video has gotten so good at mimicking reality that people see it as face-to-face communication.

Don’t believe me? Look at views of text content and compare it with video content. Video is exploding and taking over. With video critical now, you MUST find a way to get to good at creating video content (and creating it fast).

The Challenge of Video

In some instances, you can create video content without being on camera. A lot of people struggle with being on camera. I strongly believe that if you can be on camera, you should. Take being on camera as a challenge. Be the best version of yourself, right? Right!

Getting Attention Through Video

Be enthusiastic
Be fit
Present an interesting clothing style
Make a script / outline with clear, simple statements (chapter markers can help)
Show your world / environment
Tell stories
Highlight your expertise
Talk to the camera like a friend is right in front of you

Of course, once you have attention, you’ll need an online strategy and website to direct users to.

Creating engaging, personal video combats threats from AI, corporations with large ad budgets, and social media algorithms. It’s the perfect weapon for solopreneurs and corporate innovators.

I see you taking the whole attention pie. Action!

The Morico Letter – 9/10/2023

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As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. If you need 1:1 guidance for growth marketing | website development | business coaching, let me know.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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There’s No Journey in a 9-5

Sat, 26 Aug 2023 06:00:00 GMT

There’s been a confluence of factors recently that decidedly point to one direction for the future of work – solo business owner, freelancer, entrepreneur […and the many variations].

I’ll get into the many reasons… but perhaps the most important one – the journey: accomplishments, failures, learnings, and accountability. This is important to your soul.

To compete, you must be the best version of yourself… and corporate life doesn’t demand that requirement.

Hiding Out in a 9-5

Working a 9-5 job, even if it’s part of your intended career path, lets you hide. You can win awards that a team helped achieve. A division that you’re not a part of can massively boost profit. A marketing team you’re not in can improve public perception of your company — strangers and family think you’re special by association… not by what you’ve actually accomplished for that company. The company can make the news for its surging stock price… when in reality sales are declining and the stock price is rising because company executives authorized a stock buy back.

Of course, you can achieve a lot on your own at a company, but my point is sometimes you just can’t. You can’t make a needle move, or if one does, you probably didn’t trigger it. I think for most, working a corporate 9-5 is for one reason only – cash… lots of it. I can understand that, but I think we desire more… especially you reading this newsletter.

So, let’s assume you want to be independent, you already are independent, or you just want to have something on the side that provides satisfaction and could possibly turn into something more substantial in the future. What are the factors that are enabling this solo owner trend? Is it sustainable or just a fad?

Reasons for the Solopreneur Explosion

Post pandemic people want freedom. Many people were burned out pre-pandemic and didn’t realize how burned out they were. I’ve experienced burn out and post-corporate recovery. It seems there is no going back. I’ve seen other co-workers literally glow after leaving a stressful corporate position. There’s nothing quite like it – see for yourself… look in your network for people who took the plunge and see what they look like before/after. You will be shocked. I promise.
Tools. We can achieve so much now with remote tools. ZOOM remote meetings – remote digital whiteboards, no-delay face-to-face video, online file sharing, online project management systems, …the list goes on and on.
Social Media. There is a new job category… the “creator” and “creator economy” … in effect, mobile video and in-app advertising have enabled thousands of people to make a living using video, text, and photos.
Culture shift. Clients and managers KNOW you can deliver remotely. For years, I would say anytime before 2018, people in charge didn’t fully trust the remote workforce. They gradually accepted it pre-pandemic and when the pandemic hit they realized remote work absolutely does work.
Artificial Intelligence. New AI tools enable massive productivity gains. My observations from what people self-report using the tools is 2-10X productivity enhancements. Absolutely massive.
Society. We all know more and more people going out on their own. It’s becoming acceptable in society to be an independent worker.
Challenge. People need a challenge. Corporate life can be cushy and boring. Working on your own is one of the hardest things you can do.

The Future of Solopreneurship and Why it Matters to EVERYONE

AI tools will improve a lot and might cause you to lose your job. You might be forced to be a solopreneur. People in government are studying this and possibly preparing UBI – Universal Basic Income.
If you hire vendors or are a hiring manager, you might work with a solopreneur.
Traffic seems non-stop in cities these days – the typical “rush hour” traffic pattern is broken. People work at all hours now.
Tourist destinations are busier. With remote work, people work from everywhere… and that includes your favorite destinations.
The world is opening up and becoming more interesting – vloggers are everywhere… creating content on every where and every what.
For many, costs are going lower, changing life patterns. For example, many young people rent apartments in the cities and don’t even have or need cars. Electric scooters are new transportation options. As more people realize lower costs, they will become more open to solopreneurship. Maybe that leaves open more corporate jobs.
Solopreneurs are happier… you might want to befriend one. Check out the vibe in a co-working space vs. a standard corporate office to see first-hand.

Well, these are just my personal opinions formed from over 20 years of corporate and solopreneurship life. But what do I know… your viewpoint and circumstances might be different. I just ask you consider my perspective and pay attention to trends. Don’t go it solo… 😉

[P.S. I have solopreneurship articles if you want more on the topic.]

The Morico Letter – 8/26/2023

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Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Files and Notes a Mess- Clean Up w/PARA

Sat, 05 Aug 2023 06:00:00 GMT

I’m always looking to be more efficient with my time and as I work on projects and create content, finding assets started to crash my flow. I often need documents and checklists to refer to when I create content – where are they? Do I find myself digging and digging, wasting time? YES!

I’m not the only one with this problem. As projects get more complicated, we end up creating more and more folders. As we work on multiple projects at a time, folders expand.

Recently, I re-launched my consulting company’s website, ETHOS DIA, and I realized to get this project done and prepare for more projects I need a better system of organization.

PARA Method - Folder Structure

PARA stands for Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives. Its purpose is to prioritize your items. Projects come and go and should be completed, so initially they are stored in the Projects folder and then moved out. Ah, that feels good. Keep projects moving. It’s sort of a Kanban method. Areas are sort of the traditional folder structure we use – Marketing folder, Accounting Folder, etc. Resources folder – this is my favorite. I often refer back to checklists, motivational themes, book notes, article notes, and more. Archives folder is obvious – items that are no longer current but you still want to hang on to.

How did I implement the PARA method? I use Apple Notes for all my notes, and I created all the PARA folders within it. For my company files located on my computer, I created all the folders. PARA method can be adapted to notes platforms and other file systems like Google Drive. It’s a mind shift.

I didn’t invent PARA – it was created by Tiago Forte and you can get the full details of PARA Method at Forte Labs.

If you’ve found this resource helpful, you can checkout my other productivity resources at kenmorico.com/resources.

The Morico Letter – 8/5/2023

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Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Creating w/ Meta Threads – The Writing Method

Sat, 22 Jul 2023 06:00:00 GMT

So Threads, the new social media platform by Meta / Facebook launched and it may seem like a Twitter clone — but here’s what matters (bonus I’ll show you a time-tested writing method).

Text-focused Platform

500 Characters per post – more than the 280 of a typical tweet. When I write Tweets, I often find that 280 characters isn’t enough… I always seem to want just a few more.

Thread Creation

Like Twitter, you can create threads, or a series of posts connected through replies by you. They can be addictive to read and force you to think as a storyteller.

Beautiful Photos

I’ve noticed a few people comment how beautiful photos look on the platform. It’s not only the camera that matters when taking pictures, it’s how the social platform compresses the images and the number of colors they can display.

Simple

It’s super-easy to use Meta Threads because it’s a limited platform at this time. Honestly, it looks like something some hackers put together over a weekend, but it’s a little refreshing to use a tool with just a few options.

Since Meta Threads doesn’t really offer anything unique from a social media platform / tool perspective we can approach it with existing proven methods.

Key Meta Threads To-Dos

If you’re not signed up – do it now. You want to claim your username. Also, since it’s new, it’s easier to build a following since there are fewer users to compete with.
Use the app’s tool to import your Instagram bio. Your Instagram profile should be optimized, so just bring it over. You want your message to be clear and consistent across platforms – new or not.
You can’t post via desktop / laptop computer and there are no scheduling tools. Bummer. Prepare your posts via a Word Processor that syncs with your phone and copy/paste from the phone. I use IA Writer and the speedy Markdown writing method.
Unlike Instagram, you can include links. Provide value in your posts and then end them with a CTA to your Website.

Writing Methods

There are a few styles in text-based social media networks:

Punchy single idea standalone posts
Threads (multiple posts interconnected with replies)
Single or multi posts with an added intro image

I like threads because of how flexible they are. It’s easy to provide value and utilize the space to fill out an idea.

Here’s a thread template I like:

Start with a stat or enticing intro. Add hashtags if appropriate. Add a notice and an emoji down arrow indicating there is more in the thread.
Demonstrate your knowledge and provide value in post.
Demonstrate your knowledge and provide value in post.
Demonstrate your knowledge and provide value in post.
Demonstrate your knowledge and provide value in post.
Add the call to action… something like want more? Go to kenmorico.com or If you want me / us to do this for you, sign up at kenmorico.com

You can study writing hooks and open loop writing to further grasp how to entice readers and keep them reading the whole thread.

For marketing, one writing method is AIDA.

The AIDA model is a marketing model that describes the steps a customer takes in the buying process. The acronym AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action.

Attention: The first step is to get the customer’s attention. This can be done through a variety of means, such as using eye-catching visuals, creating a sense of urgency, or offering a free trial.
Interest: Once you have the customer’s attention, you need to generate interest in your product or service. This can be done by providing information about the benefits of your product, telling stories, or using humor.
Desire: Once the customer is interested, you need to create a desire for your product or service. This can be done by highlighting the features and benefits of your product, showing how it can solve the customer’s problems, or creating a sense of scarcity.
Action: The final step is to convince the customer to take action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a free trial, or downloading an app. This can be done by providing a clear call to action, making it easy for the customer to take action, or offering incentives.

The AIDA model is a simple but effective way to help you understand the buying process and create marketing messages that are more likely to convert customers.

Here are some examples of how the AIDA model can be used in marketing and therefore morphed into threads:

A clothing company might use a striking image of a model wearing their latest fashions to get attention.
A software company might offer a free trial of their product to generate interest in their solution.
A car dealership might highlight the features and benefits of their latest models to create desire.
A travel agency might offer a limited-time discount to encourage customers to book a vacation.

The AIDA model is a powerful tool that can help you to increase sales and conversions, and when combined with the effectiveness of threads, can make social media ROI positive.

Featured Images Still Work

Don’t downplay the importance of a featured image for a thread. It was revealed images do help boost posts for the Twitter algorithm and I suspect it’s the same for Meta Threads. I’m currently using Adobe Express for graphic creation and photo acquisition (along with unsplash.com).

I often don’t have time to integrate photos in my posts, but I do find tools like Adobe Express with AI image generation can create some stunning photos based on exactly what I describe. See this tweet thread with an AI-generated image I made.

Conclusion

I love the punchiness of threads and look forward to using Meta Threads. I feel threads combine bullet ideas that our short attention spans desire, but with volume that satisfies our deeper yearning for more substance.

I wrote more on Twitter Threads in this blog post… most of it is applicable to Meta Threads.

I’ll have more resources on threads in the future… stay subscribed!

The Morico Letter – 7/22/2023

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Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Reminder - You Still Need a Personal Website - Here's Why

Sat, 08 Jul 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Yes, it's 2023 and you still need a personal website. Your reach might be crashing without one. Recently, Twitter limited access to tweets for all accounts -- even paid ones (TechCrunch). There are huge financial costs associated with running social networks -- and your organic messages won't keep the lights on.

Are you reliant on external platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter that limit your reach at any time? Or do you have your own "Home Base"? I'll explore the benefits of having a personal site even today, in 2023 and beyond.

I've been creating personal homepages since 1998... they allowed me to stand out online since the online space was much, much smaller. Today, social media allows excellent reach -- at a cost. The cost is control. You don't have any. In every social media platform, if you direct users off platform with your own link, you'll see that post downplayed in the algorithm. Social media companies don't make money if you take THEIR USERS off platform.

In life, oftentimes the maximum benefits of assets flow to the owners - real estate, factories, services companies, etc. With a personal website, or "personal brand" site, you too can benefit from asset ownership.

Here are 5 reasons personal websites are a must have:

Showcase your skills - if you have a job your website can host content that demonstrates your expertise. What can this do for you? It can be leveraged for a new position with higher salary (I did). It can drive traffic from Google and provide an audience you can later monetize.
Provide a Platform to Sell Products & Services - it's hard to show all your products and services on social media. Fans can purchase right on your site... I have Apple Pay on my site - 1 click and 2 seconds later I have a sale.
You Can Display Ads or Sponsorships - yes, if you have content worth reading you can display ads on your site or sell sponsorships for your newsletter (audience signed up on your site -- YES!).
You Control the Messaging - no competitors can distract your audience once they are on your site. You control the flow, purchase funnels, and narrative. You are the best in your industry, right? Here's why...
Full Control Over Content - There are no limits to what you can place on a personal website. Video, audio, text, products, whatever. You can brand it any way you like - the colors, the copy, the resources - you get depth not possible anywhere else. It's literally your world, and YOUR platform.

Personal websites are great and not just for celebrities or Web developers. Every professional needs one in 2023 - now more than ever.

Get personal with your audience. That's my advice from me to you...

(P.S. I do offer coaching sessions for professionals that have or need a personal brand site - reach out if you're serious about being a player in your space.)

Personal Websites Still a Must for All Pros (5 Reasons)

Sat, 08 Jul 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Yes, it’s 2023 and you still need a personal website. Your reach might be crashing without one. Recently, Twitter limited access to tweets for all accounts — even paid ones (TechCrunch). There are huge financial costs associated with running social networks — and your organic messages won’t keep the lights on.

Are you reliant on external platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter that limit your reach at any time? Or do you have your own “Home Base”? I’ll explore the benefits of having a personal site even today, in 2023 and beyond.

I’ve been creating personal homepages since 1998… they allowed me to stand out online since the online space was much, much smaller. Today, social media allows excellent reach — at a cost. The cost is control. You don’t have any. In every social media platform, if you direct users off platform with your own link, you’ll see that post downplayed in the algorithm. Social media companies don’t make money if you take THEIR USERS off platform.

In life, oftentimes the maximum benefits of assets flow to the owners – real estate, factories, services companies, etc. With a personal website, or “personal brand” site, you too can benefit from asset ownership.

Here are 5 reasons personal websites are a must have:

Showcase your skills – if you have a job your website can host content that demonstrates your expertise. What can this do for you? It can be leveraged for a new position with higher salary (I did). It can drive traffic from Google and provide an audience you can later monetize.
Provide a Platform to Sell Products & Services – it’s hard to show all your products and services on social media. Fans can purchase right on your site… I have Apple Pay on my site – 1 click and 2 seconds later I have a sale.
You Can Display Ads or Sponsorships – yes, if you have content worth reading you can display ads on your site or sell sponsorships for your newsletter (audience signed up on your site — YES!).
You Control the Messaging – no competitors can distract your audience once they are on your site. You control the flow, purchase funnels, and narrative. You are the best in your industry, right? Here’s why…
Full Control Over Content – There are no limits to what you can place on a personal website. Video, audio, text, products, whatever. You can brand it any way you like – the colors, the copy, the resources – you get depth not possible anywhere else. It’s literally your world, and YOUR platform.

Personal websites are great and not just for celebrities or Web developers. Every professional needs one in 2023 – now more than ever.

Get personal with your audience. That’s my advice from me to you…

(P.S. I do offer coaching sessions for professionals that have or need a personal brand site – reach out if you’re serious about being a player in your space.)

The Morico Letter – 7/8/2023

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Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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We Are Soft. Get “Military Grade” in 5 Steps

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Are You & Your Business “Military Grade”? Can you thrive when shocks arrive? Can your business handle shutdowns like the Covid-19 pandemic? Later, I’ll outline 5 ways we can create hardness against crippling business and personal shocks.

As a group, Americans failed when Covid-19 sent a shock to our economy and personal health. Clearly, a pandemic shouldn’t have been a surprise, because they have always happened throughout history. Yet, many businesses didn’t have the cash resources to continue with even just 2 weeks of a shutdown and our obesity levels made many unnecessarily at risk.

People with poor immune systems were at risk. Yet some of the risk of a rough covid infection clearly could have been mitigated by healthy choices prior (obviously not for all of us). We could control our overall health and weight. Disease is a constant when your immune system is compromised. There are always new viruses without vaccines.

The question: can we be ready for shocks? Or at least as ready as we can be? Can we, and our businesses, be “Military Grade”? “Military grade” refers to tests developed by the U.S. Department of Defense to determine the “environmental worthiness and overall durability of material system design” of certain types of objects. Do WE demonstrate environmental worthiness? Are our systems durable?

It seems to me that people who bring a military work ethic and process to their work and personal schedules succeed where others fail. In a digital world we need to get back to basics and focus. I think so many are failing now because of digital distractions. More of us are losing grip on focus, and those that don’t are getting outsized reach / wealth / fame.

I know I’m guilty of getting distracted. That’s why I’ve spent a lot of time researching best practices to regain focus and solidify my work systems.

Here are some methods I’ve used to get “military grade”

Make focus a priority. Not just a priority. The number 1 priority. Without focus nothing else matters.
Become “Antifragile” – Nassim Taleb wrote a book called Antifragile that explains some things benefit from shocks, volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors. These things are called “antifragile.” They thrive and grow when exposed to these things, and they become stronger as a result. I do this with a secure financial position for my business, openness to do without, or move to better environments when times change.
Learn new skills or improve existing ones. In regards to military grade, our environments are changing. In my opinion, AI changes everything. You must learn aspects of AI that affect your job.
Develop a fitness / health routine – by putting workout time and meditation on my calendar I’ve been more likely to do it. If I do, I have much improved focusing abilities and achieve work objectives faster and with better quality.
Leverage digital tools to achieve a focused status – use Screen Time to limit time on social media apps, use timer apps to create 25-minute pomodoro timer sprint sessions, and use time-blocking techniques to create space for all important items on your calendar.

If I am “military grade” chances are my business will be too. If you work a corporate job, and you have reports, you can harden them into an antifragile state and inspire them to focus.

If I am “military grade,” my clients, business, family, and friends all benefit during difficult times. Mission accomplished.

The Morico Letter – 6/24/2023

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Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Nobody Knows You. Regain $+Ego in 5 mins

Sat, 10 Jun 2023 06:00:00 GMT

When I speak with clients about expanding their online reach, they often think they just need to spend money on advertising to fix their reach problem.

As someone who has managed millions of dollars in advertising budget, I can say this is a mistake. Not only is it extremely expensive in 2023, but it’s easy to completely mismanage and expose you or your brand to trust issues.

Since the number of users online is growing each year [5.2 Billion according to Statista or 65% of all people on earth], your message can easily get drowned out. With AI Tools like ChatGPT, search results and ads will become less effective over time and traffic to your landing pages will dwindle (I’ll bet it already has).

There is still a lot of attention on social media. I’ve been focusing a lot lately on social media listening. Why do some users get massive followings? Why did I follow someone?

I’ve found those 2 questions were key for me.

Why do some users get massive followings? – for me personally, I’ve noticed people that speak about certain topics have large followings. They are generally focused on a few topics and don’t veer off too far. Mostly I find this is because people are in a mood for knowledge that someone else has. People can be like mood boards and reminders.
Why did I follow someone? – this is the most important question. Think back about WHY you followed someone on social media (or a website / newsletter). What were the steps? Did you see that they talked about a topic you were interested in and then you immediately followed them? Were they interacting with someone you already follow?

Back-engineer why you follow others, and you will see patterns and secrets revealed. The one secret that I kept coming back to was that I followed people I kept seeing over and over. They showed up consistently. And then eventually, if I liked their message, I followed or added them to a watch list. I rarely followed someone the first time a saw a post or their profile. It’s like dating – there are warmups before next steps.

But their messaging must be on target. It must be clear why I should follow them. When your messaging is clear, you start to see some organic traction, then you can spend money on ads to gain leverage.

Also, I follow people that interact in a human fashion. They reply to others. They don’t post too often. They aren’t overly promotional. They show up in the channels I like to be in (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Email Newsletters, Etc.).

To recap:

Determine you message. You bio, landing pages, and ethos must be consistent and clear to new people.
Look at the people you follow on social media. Why are they popular?
Why did you follow someone? THINK about it. WHY did you click the follow button?
Post consistently until you see some organic growth.
Leverage with ads when everything works at a small, organic scale.

Once you get into a rhythm of consistent posting, replying, and optimize your profile and landing pages, you’ll start to see green shoots. Eventually those green shoots will turn into dollar green shoots and maybe some recognition from others.

The Morico Letter – 6/10/2023

As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. If you need 1:1 guidance for growth marketing | website development | business coaching, let me know.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Saving Time and Soul as a Solopreneur

Sat, 27 May 2023 06:00:00 GMT

I’ll explore the ways I saved my soul and list the time hacks I used to accomplish heightened self-worth and goal-achievement in my solopreneur journey. Anyone can use these tips, but first…

The self-employment challenge starts with YES. It starts with you gripping a torch, setting fire to the bridge behind you, and walking forward without a map in the wilderness.

…Self-employment isn’t even necessarily for you… it could be for your clients that need your particular skills or the way you implement your skills, the products you create for others, or the other vendors or people that count on your business.

One thing I know – self employment will change you as a person into the person you need to become to achieve a purpose. A mission. A calling.

I think the reason solopreneurship is so interesting right now is that we have amazing tools that make achieving more without employees possible. Even if you work for company, the new tools like AI can make you a better contributor, produce more impact, and get noticed. But no matter how great the tools have become, time management will always be key.

As the world becomes hyper-competitive, and everyone has access to similar tools, what’s left? Time management. Discipline. Self-development.

In fact, as I’ve been self employed 100% for a few years now, I’ve discovered:

Solopreneurship IS self development

When you are focused on a task or large goal you’ll realize there is only so much time in a day. You’ll need to tap into the focused version of yourself you’ve never seen before. You’ll need to develop into the person that CAN handle the difficult tasks.

Time Saving Tips & Handling Difficult Tasks

Minimize Distractions – create an empty desk, turn on focus mode on your phone, delete all apps on your phone that don’t need to be there. Distractions will derail your focus and cause you to lose time.
Get to a Space Where You Can Really Work – early morning at home (5-7am) or a Coworking space / office / quiet coffeeshop
Get Noise-Cancelling Headphones – even quiet places can have small noises that can distract you.
Figure Out Your Daily Tasks That Will Move the Needle for the Business – put them on your calendar and hold yourself accountable. If you can’t finish a task do a different task. No time is ever wasted. Have back-up tasks to complete when you can’t think straight.
Leverage the Simplest, Fastest Process to Accomplish Tasks. As a solopreneur, I don’t have time to flesh out every image, article, or email. I can create a system that will allow me to be consistent, and that matters more. I’m still working on my processes. I think refinement of processes should be a daily task.
Use Mindset Tactics – meditation and yoga. Walking. Prayer. These are easy to do and help to achieve difficult tasks. Have a clear mind enables you to complete tasks faster. For me, there is no task that can’t be finished if I ask God for help before starting. “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8.
CREATE Energy – you accomplish less if you don’t have the energy to finish tasks. Everyone is different, but I’ve noticed when fasting, eating less, and drinking smoothies I’ve had more energy to accomplish tasks. Find what works for you.
Trade Attention – remove entertainment and phone scrolling – replace with reading books or working. Kindle app works great to replace social media use with book reading.

I have more ideas on time management that I hope to integrate into a course, book, or guide. Stay tuned (and subscribed).

Expanding Capacity

Something that stood out to me when reading The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz is when he mentions a story about a woman who was forced to return to the workforce after her husband was permanently disabled after a serious accident.

“You know,” she said, “six months ago I never dreamed I could possibly manage the house and work full-time. But after the accident, I just made up my mind that I had to find the time. Believe me, my efficiency has gone up 100 percent. I discovered a lot of things I was doing didn’t need to be done at all. Then I discovered that the children could and wanted to help. I found dozens of ways to conserve time—fewer trips to the store, less TV, less telephoning, less of those time killers.” This experience teaches us a lesson: Capacity is a state of mind. How much we can do depends on how much we think we can do. When you really believe you can do more, your mind thinks creatively and shows you the way.

I think this is a lesson we can all learn. I’m always looking at ways to expand capacity. But first, you must recognize the need yourself. That’s when change happens.

The Morico Letter – 5/27/2023

As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. If you need 1:1 guidance for growth marketing | website development | business coaching, let me know.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

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Stand Out Online (and Beat the Robots)

Sat, 29 Apr 2023 06:00:00 GMT

With social media getting more saturated and AI tools enabling more people to create content faster than ever, it can seem like we are all swimming with attention sharks.

For many businesses and solopreneurs, attention equals money. More attention, more money. With more entrants and AI tools, our share of the attention pie is shrinking with every passing day and revenue generation will be increasingly difficult.

What can we do? How can we stand out online? Leverage our personal stories and experiences. For example, when I worked for a large ad agency, I would sometimes study old magazine advertisements for fun. I remember seeing one for a car from the 1960s. It was just a one-line copy block and a photo of the car. How simple. Those days are long gone. We need to work much harder to move product – either physical or intangible. We need personality and grit.

We’ve all heard the adages “There is no bad press” and “stay top of mind.” These resonate because your name takes space in your audience’s consciousness. The repetition of the name in effect becomes a positive brainwashing… creating familiarity and making the audience receptive when positive messages come forward. Showing up consistently is one way stand out. If you’re not seen you’re not moving product.

Get jealous of people with large followings. Some people will push back on social media follower counts, saying they are “vanity metrics”. Guy Kawasaki, Apple alum and startup founder, once said, “Who doesn’t want more followers? Everyone wants more followers.” Let jealousy lead you to action.

Follower counts (and even better high number of comments) demonstrate social proof. It shows your message finds a home with others and should find a home with new customers / followers.

So, what can I do to harness the attention I deserve (the attention I rightly deserve)?

The 4-Step Attention Shark Solution:

Create an awesome profile photo. Since people are much more trusted than brands / logos, WE need to launch our product and brand into awareness. Profile photos are used everywhere online. It’s the most important aspect of your online presence. You can even integrate your brand colors into your personal profile photo to ensure continuity. It’s important that the photo be cropped properly. Profile photos can get adjusted to many sizes and may distort. I personally like profile photos that look straight on at the camera. It makes me feel like the person is speaking directly to me and should create a more emotional connection.

Here are some profile photos that stood out to me and displayed accurately:

(Left to Right): Noah Kagan · Elon Musk · Andrew Chen · Emily Chang

2. Create consistency. Post everyday. This is really hard, but you can use tools like a pre-scheduler and by over-creating content when you sit down to create content. Usually, if you are in a mood to create content then you normally can create more than you intend to. This is because you are “in the zone”. Break larger content pieces into smaller pieces and trickle out your content. 3. Showcase your personality but leverage AI. A great way to showcase your personality is to create short-form videos. They prove you aren’t just a disembodied online entity, but a real person. It will put your new followers at ease that they aren’t being fooled by a bot. Think of AI and ChatGPT as an extra pair of hands. A writer. An editor. Ask it for ideas and edit the responses. Ask it to rewrite something you previously posted. You might be surprised by how intelligent you actually are! 4. Learn from others creators. See whom you want to model and get inspiration from their content. How long is it? Are they creating Twitter Threads? LinkedIn carousels? Short-form videos? Something is working. Study and test on your own content.

Using these solutions will help you stand out and keep up with fast content creators. Speed is the game. Set up a routine to succeed (more on that in future letters – stay subscribed).

Robots don’t tell personal stories because they don’t have your experiences. They are locked inside your brain. There is no computer API to snatch your thoughts. There isn’t a computer program to tell your_stories in _your voice.

I know I got discouraged several times when I saw competitors in my niche succeeding with higher follower counts. But I take comfort knowing there is always room for unique voices within the same niche. The audience on the Internet is ENORMOUS. There’s always a receptive place to land our content plane.

Now, let’s takeoff.

The Morico Letter – 4/29/2023

Tactical Quick Tips

Capcut — video editor for mobile and desktop makes creating short form videos a breeze. It’s the best and simplest video editor I’ve ever used. See the video I created using Capcut on Twitter.

Ken’s Reading List – Only Worthwhile Reads

New reports say business travel isn’t going back to normal – ever — (CNBC) Business travelers are younger and less affluent… client acquisition is still essential for business flights and other interesting facts.
How to Clean Your Apple Devices — For the clean freaks, Apple gives some instructions to get the grime safely off your expensive devices.

As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. If you need 1:1 guidance for growth marketing | website development | business coaching, let me know.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

View Previous Letters

Creating The BIG Idea (Content That Can’t Miss)

Sat, 04 Mar 2023 06:00:00 GMT

Executives were sweating — pressure to get and keep accounts made them resort to public outbursts. Staff sprawled out on floors – working through the night — some didn’t even leave the building. The pressure so intense, rumors emerged of staff fornicating in dark closets and basement crannies.

This year, 2009, the S&P 500 saw its lowest mark in years — the mark of the beast — 666. The HR director told me with his face on the floor, “My retirement account is down 70%.”

The financial meltdown ravaged the country’s economy — advertising agencies, once glorious employers, mostly became insolvent. I was an in-demand Web professional working for one of the largest ad agencies in Houston. A new business pitch for a large 8-figure account came through the door.

I was called in to a meeting.

“We are asking everyone to help with ideas for this pitch.” Why were people not a part of the creative process called in to get creative? What about the current projects I was working on? Was the company going under?

This was a war-time effort. But why?

The reason, the real reason — BIG ideas are key. BIG ideas arrest people. BIG ideas stir emotion. BIG ideas cause divorces and marriages. And BIG ideas MAKE MONEY.

BIG ideas are lifelines when the financial weather gets rough.

As individual creators we need BIG ideas too. We need fully-developed ideas for the business of US.

Content generation can be a never-ending time and mental suck – but it doesn’t have to be when really what’s lacking is a BIG idea. For content distribution, I see these BIG ideas as seasons or limited-time themes.

BIG idea lifecycle:

One BIG idea – BIG idea long form, top-to-bottom explanation – execution – many distilled pieces of the BIG idea – repetition – Replaced by a new BIG idea

Repetition of the BIG idea will resonate more with an audience. In a world dominated by speedy thumbscrollers, we need focus — a theme, a season, combined with repetition and different formats, to cement our BIG idea into the minds of our very special followers. They will judge our efforts.

Fewer Ideas. More Idea Depth & Idea Testing.

With fewer ideas / directions, your business and personal goals become more achievable. Suddenly your confusing analytics reports look like the answer to your business problems are staring you in the face instead of 10 levels deep — if there’s an answer at all.

“Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do.” – John Carmack

Fewer ideas are easier to manage and gauge success. Plus, when you put a lot of thought into one idea, you know you’ve put in the effort to make sure it was fully communicated. You’ll know if you need to pivot in the future.

Pivoting is Key to Success.

Often, it’s knowing something DOESN’T work that propels you to make the correct decisions in the future. Technology can change. That would require a pivot. The political landscape could change, requiring a pivot. Sometimes just growing older, or entering into a different life stage can require a pivot. With digital platforms, you’ll know right away. And this learning will make you nimble and WISE. You’ll also gain the attention of peers and competitors because your success will appear evident.

Your direction for future content is based on the success or failure of your last BIG idea.

Instead of writing several ideas a week, focus on just one BIG idea in a week. Or 2. Depending on how BIG the idea is. One deep core content is what you need – newsletter, video, or podcast. Once the core content is crafted, you release bits across social media and other mediums hyping the deep core content you created. You’ll need to parse it down into shorter form variants. Chat GPT might be able to help you with this – feed it your content and ask it to write a summary or bullet points.

You are your Deep Content

Deep content is what you (or your business) is known for. It’s the steak. For me personally, I know I’ve gone in too many directions at times. It’s harder to track if the path you are on is the correct path if it’s polluted with multiple, weaker ideas… and especially without repetition. So many social media networks do give us the option to express the full range of our personalities and interests. You can post 80% core messages and 20% random interests. I notice I do follow influencers for their full range of interests in addition to their core competency. But 80% core 20% random will keep you on the right path and make measurement and content generation easier.

Finding BIG Ideas

“Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant.” – David Ogilvy

Feed your mind to get the BIG idea. Take notes from inspiring books. Read compilations of great thinkers. Surround yourself with relevant books, articles, and podcasts.

Creating BIG ideas can be as easy as turning on a switch. When the switch activates, however, you’ll need to discover for yourself.

BIG ideas are easier to create when you know how and when to create them. Everyone is different. Find the hour of the day you are most creative. Play music that motivates and inspires you. Create an environment so conducive to ideation that you would need to be brain dead not to come up with BIG ideas.

Tracking BIG Idea Success

How can you track, empirically, if your deep idea resonates with people? Bounce rates / engagement rates (like in Google Analytics 4) for your Web content. Email unsubscribes for the email version of the newsletter. The number of Tweet impressions / likes versus your normal amount. And, of course, comments & questions from your audience.

It will be obvious if the idea works or not — just be sure you repeat it enough to know the audience saw it. Sometimes people are busy and you need to read them over and over on different platforms. Also in different medium forms… think the “Don’t do drugs” commercial… text is one way to persuade, but seeing eggs frying in a skillet representing your brain can ingrain the message for some people.

Twitter is an Idea Playground

Twitter is perfect for networking, business pitching, and creating your long-form, deep content, highlights. You can just create a hook, and add a list of nuggets to offer value. BIG ideas can thrive there. Make sure to repeat and tweet.

Re-create your Deep Content Natively for Other Platforms

You can even re-create your deep content into native-form content for social media platforms – threads for tweets (with the option to place a link at the end!), carousels for LinkedIn (LinkedIn Articles should work, but they don’t for some reason… maybe people don’t have patience), and for Instagram you could also do more detailed carousels or longer videos.

The great thing about content is that there is always another fight in the ring. You can always rephrase some of your social content if the first iterations of your highlights don’t work.

1 BIG idea. Many expressions.

This idea is done. I’ve got another BIG idea for my next letter…

Tactical Quick Tips

Twitter is making a huge comeback. So many great discussions and fascinating people to follow in your industry. TweetDeck is new and improved and has helped me immensely in participating in conversations and interacting with influencers. Follow @KenMorico on Twitter.

Ken’s Reading List – Only Worthwhile Reads

Writing for outlets isn’t worth it anymore – A professional writer’s experience leaving behind legacy media publishing and creating a new life with Substack & independent newsletters.
Build Your Own “Driving” Mode in iOS – For people like me that use their iPhone in the car a lot, you can create a “driving” mode to make it easier to use in the car.

The Morico Letter – 3/4/2023

As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. If you need 1:1 guidance for growth marketing | website development | business coaching, let me know.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

View Previous Letters

Revolutionizing Business with AI: A Consultant’s Insights

Thu, 12 Jan 2023 06:00:00 GMT

AI is here and it’s the greatest change for business since the dot-com era. There are many parallels with that time and now – the economy is in a bubble, there is technology that threatens to remove many people from the workforce, and yet, there is so much possibility – so many new and exciting businesses that will be formed and life will change for all of us.

The greatest immediate change I see is the ability for AI to give us turbo speed. AI will give us extra team members. We can have researchers, creative copywriters, and artists on staff 24/7/365. We can be better consultants, better manufacturers, better Real Estate agents, better everything.

A lot of the technology right now is free to preview, but the elephant in the room is how much it will cost. Maybe a high cost will be good… for people…

For me, I’ll experiment with AI \ Chat GPT and Dall-E 2 and use it to help my clients and produce MORE. Follow along on my socials and let’s experiment together. Strength in numbers!

Tactical Quick Tips

You can use Facebook like LinkedIn for professional networking. Create a Facebook Page with your name and follow other pages of people in your industry. You’ll have a new dedicated feed and won’t intermingle your personal and business Facebook Content.
Fear can ruin your drive and hinder your ability to accomplish tasks. “I Don’t negotiate with myself” Tony Robbins says. Listen to this podcast episode where Tony explains the secrets to focus and power through difficult situations. The best Tony Robbins episode I’ve listened to.

Ken’s Reading List – Only Worthwhile Reads

The Morico Letter – 1/12/2023

As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. If you need 1:1 guidance for growth marketing | website development | business coaching, let me know.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

View Previous Letters

LinkedIn Networking Template - Get the Connection!

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 06:00:00 GMT

A strategy I’ve successfully used to build my LinkedIn network is basically similar to a real life engagement.

Like a real-life networking event, you might have something in common at the start – a location, an industry, an age range, cultural affiliations, etc.

Just adding random connections on LinkedIn isn’t a strategy for growth. It’s a waste of time. You must have some common bond with the other person and you must eloquently describe what it is and why it’s important. I research all the people that follow me on my social networks and subscribers to my email list. I see if there is something in common with them or they have a business that could utilize my consulting services.

Since you are reaching out to people that already have some familiarity with you and your services, making the connection is easier. It’s not a certainty, however. Maybe 30% of the people you reach out to using this method will connect.

Most people that visit your blog or website or landing page won’t click your LinkedIn social icon and connect. But they might follow you on Twitter or Facebook or YouTube. Don’t let these people drop off… you want to connect with them where it matters most to your wallet — LinkedIn.

Having a popular blog that you update regularly is key… you want more chances to reach people. The more people visit your site the more qualified users you can reach out to on social media.

I don’t believe in true copy/paste templates. But something more or less that covers some areas.

LinkedIn Networking Connection Template

Hi [contact name]. I noticed you follow me on [social service / email newsletter] and thought I’d connect. It seems we have a lot in common. I’m in [shared or nearby city – if applicable]. I’m also a member / connected to [group, association, activity, etc.]. I’d love to read your thoughts on [anything you think the contact specializes in that you are also interested in] on LinkedIn. Regards, [my name]

What’s interesting here is that you are quickly establishing tribal relationships and giving the connection a little bit of an ego boost because you are letting them know that they have something of value to give to the world – their perspective on LinkedIn.

As an office worker for many years, I can tell you a lot of people don’t really care for our opinions. We show up to work and are a cog in a wheel. One supervisor once told me when I offered project direction, “this isn’t a democracy.” People want to be heard. Let them speak and let them know you are their audience. Be genuine about your interest in them. Your reputation is paramount.

Podcast Episode

Learn more techniques on LinkedIn networking in my podcast episode: Easy LinkedIn Network Expansion

TikTok, Reels, YT Shorts & SEO

Tue, 30 Aug 2022 06:00:00 GMT

Hello friend, it's been awhile since I've sent an email but I have some trends to discuss and tactical information to drop. I've recently become a father for the first time so my time has become scarcer and scarcer, but it's forced me to focus, think about the massive pivots happening in social media, SEO, and people's attention in general.

The world is moving to short-form videos like TikToks, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts. Video is grabbing all attention. Why is short-form video so effective and popular now? It's because the format is fantastic... it's like watching TV and flipping channels with full-screen video formatted for the device we are using - the smartphone.

If we have a lot of content to show our users but are limited to 1 or 2 minute videos, what can we do? Make more videos. Distill information to its essential core.

How do we approach SEO in this video-first world? Link out. If videos are catchy, create links to longer textual content in video descriptions and bio links. I've had success with this in my YouTube video description areas.

Pivot. Take action. See the needle move.

Tactical Quick Tips

When creating a call-to-action in an Instagram post, link to your bio in the description by writing your username - "...check out more details in my bio -> @KenMorico" The username will be hyperlinked to your profile and users can click the bio link
Store articles you want to share with others using Instapaper. Create a "social share" folder to separate them from personal articles. Being a curator is awesome too.

Ken's Reading List - Only Worthwhile Reads

The Morico Letter – 8/30/2022

As always, thank you for being a subscriber. Comments? Just reply to this email. If you need 1:1 guidance for growth marketing | website development | business coaching, let me know.

Stay strong and I wish you luck in your journey.

Regards,

Ken Morico

View Previous Letters

Twitter / X Threads for Marketing are AWESOME

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 06:00:00 GMT

Twitter can still be used to promote your blog posts, press releases, and news… and it’s ROI is better than ever. No longer do you have to post a link and see it wiz by your followers. Add it to a thread and let it live… FOREVER.

In this blog post, we’ll explore why Twitter Threads are useful, who they are for, and some templates and examples. Keep reading!

Why are Twitter Threads so Great?

Twitter threads are really great because they allow you tie together a series of Tweets and they can then be seen together when you ADD to the thread. So users can go back in time and see the previous Tweets. Nothing is lost. And the thread is always fresh because you can add to it at any time.

In fact, another great way to use Twitter threads is to make calls to action. Because there is more content than a single tweet you are offering more value, more content, and there’s enough space to list a proper call to action.

FYI – Twitter threads are sometimes called “Tweet storms” though tweet storms usually indicate some kind of rant, it’s not always the case. With tweet storms the formatting of tweets varied. Twitter now has a visual interface and preferred style for Twitter.com to display threads.

Using Twitter Threads for Marketing

For example, here’s a Twitter thread template calls to action:

Start with a stat or enticing intro. Add hashtags if appropriate. Add a notice and an emoji down arrow indicating there is more in the thread.
Demonstrate your knowledge and provide value in tweet.
Demonstrate your knowledge and provide value in tweet.
Demonstrate your knowledge and provide value in tweet.
Demonstrate your knowledge and provide value in tweet.
Add the call to action… something like want more? Go to kenmorico.com or If you want me / us to do this for you, sign up at kenmorico.com
If there are no more tweets to be added to the thread you can add / end or / end thread to let people know there is nothing more to this thread.

Using Twitter Threads for Blogging / Press Releases / News

The aggregation feature of Twitter Threads makes it perfect for compiling lists of assets like blog posts, press releases, and news.

Sometimes Tweets won’t make sense unless they are viewed as a whole. Compiling blog posts in a thread allows users to see all the blog posts… because we know some blog posts resonate with users but not others. Why not show them all so you have a greater chance for a follow, like, comment, or even a CLICK TO YOUR WEBSITE!

Twitter threads give you more “at bats” and that’s exactly what you need on Twitter given how fast content move on the platform.

Here’s a Twitter thread template for blog posts:

Recent blog posts – YOUR TOPIC [down finger emoji or thread emoji]
Blog Post Title / new line / three dots for separator … / new line / short description / new line / link to post
Repeat for each post
Add new posts when published to the existing thread

PRO TIP: Keep a document with all the Tweet threads for composition and reference. I like to use IA Writer and write the document using Markdown to make writing quick.

Here’s My Twitter thread for my blog posts:

You can also view the live blog post Twitter thread.

Tweet storms had different styles, but to mimic the preferred twitter style you need the following ingredients in this template:

Intro Tweet [optional position in the thread /1]
Next Tweet – a reply to the first tweet (remove @username handle… you are replying to yourself ) [optional position in the thread /2]
Next Tweet – a reply to the previous tweet (remove @username handle… you are replying to yourself ) [optional position in the thread /3]
Repeat for each tweet
End the thread with the final position 4/4

When using third-party tools this is the kind of style you can use.

PRO TIP: Capture More Attention for Your Twitter Thread

For even greater style and engagement, try adding a picture to the first tweet in the thread. Also, you can add bullets to three items the user will learn if they read the thread. Everyone’s time is valuable, so they need to know what’s in it for them. You can make bullets using line breaks and use * or > to mimic the look of bullets.

You see how powerful Twitter threads are? Questions? Comment below. Need help with your social media account or assistance with creating Twitter threads? Contact Ken Morico and get the help you need. Keep the good vibes threading…

Listen to the Podcast Episode

How I Separate Personal / Business w/ Facebook Pages

Mon, 06 Jun 2022 06:00:00 GMT

12/2025 update: I am now recommending using the personal profile for personal brands instead of a separate page. Facebook has improved personal profile functionality to reach unlimited users with no limitations along with tweaks to profile displays to work more like Instagram / X / LinkedIn accounts. You can view my updated personal Facebook Profile to see best practices for profile optimization.

For strategies to promote your personal Facebook profile with ads or if you have an organic marketing budget and need profile optimizations, please book a consulting session.

The Facebook strategies below still work for larger personal brands or businesses.

Facebook serves two audiences – individuals and businesses. In real life, individuals work at businesses. The employees are "attached" to businesses. Facebook works the same. Your individual Facebook profile must be attached to a Business page. But you (personal profile) don’t want to be associated with the public page. 🫣✋🏢

Facebook needs a live person with a business, but I’ll show you ways you can keep your private life away from your public business page and avoid costly mistakes like posting personal messages to your public Facebook (business) page or getting your account(s) BANNED. 😱

In this article you’ll learn:

Why Facebook needs a personal profile for business
How you can separate your business and personal Facebook life within the limits of the Facebook system
What makes a Facebook Business Page unique and it’s special abilities
Why the Meta Business manager makes some tasks easier and allows businesses to scale
Why you may not need a public Facebook Business Page for personal brands and may just use the Facebook Follow button instead
Some tools and resources to easily find and manage your accounts, even if you think you “lost” them

To be clear, here is an example of the difference between a Personal Facebook Profile and Facebook Business Page:

Can I have a business page without a personal profile? Pretty please?

For sure the answer in 2025 is no. HOWEVER, in July 2022 Facebook announced they tested a way for users to have up to four profiles tied to one account – one for business / work, one for friends, one for groups, etc.

The extra profiles won’t need real identities. This is great for Facebook Groups especially since Reddit is so popular based on the anonymity that the user account gives you. Personally, I love Reddit and this should be a huge boost for FB Groups and will be especially useful for business owners and marketing managers. Bookmark this post for updates.

Assuming you already set up a personal profile and business page, you might be wondering:

Can I separate my business page from my personal account on Facebook?

Facebook automatically separates your personal profile identity from public Facebook pages, but there are some gotchas. You want to be sure you are posting as the business and not confusing the status update text box with your personal status update box and vice-versa. Facebook has tools to help you do this.

Facebook says:

Business Accounts in Meta Business Suite
Meta Business Accounts make it easier to manage your Pages, Instagram accounts and the people who work on them.
Grow your business with advanced tools and insights
Securely collaborate with partners and manage their access
Separate your work and life for privacy and focus

source: business.facebook.com

Creating the Meta Business Account at business.facebook.com can enable the special admin area that will enable to visually distinguish your personal profile area from the business area.

Here’s an example of the Facebook Meta Business Suite area:

Meta Business Suite Example

You’ll notice an organizational structure:
An LLC business with Facebook properties (pages, instagram accounts, etc.) rolled up under it. This give flexibility when working with vendors and additional people.

Here’s a tip: Facebook needs a real person to manage a business page. That person DOES NOT need to be you. You can have a social media agency or friend post to the page while you maintain control of the Facebook business assets like the Ad Account. The Meta Business Suite can enable full management of people associated with the business.

I have lots of business pages and personal accounts but I don’t know how to access them or where they are. What can I do?

As a consultant that specializes in Facebook, I can tell you I hear this question a lot. Over the years I have clients that often set up personal accounts and business pages and lose track of them and can’t find them. Also what I will demonstrate is also helpful for locating business page assets.

Here’s what you can do:

Find your current personal profile information:

Visit this page to see your current personal profile:

https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=account

You will see your Facebook Username. This is important to differentiate between your personal and business assets because your personal username identifies you personally on the Facebook platform. You will also see the email address associated with your personal profile.

If you use your name as also a business name, like I do or some real estate agents, your Facebook name would probably be the same, but they can’t be. Usernames on Facebook are unique. What I do is I use a nickname for my personal Facebook Profile – Kennymorico. I use KenMorico for my business page.

To view all the page you manage with your currently logged-in personal profile, visit this page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/?category=your_pages

Now you can see all the pages you have access to. Once you see the page you are interested in, click it. You will see the main page. Note the @username at the top left. That is the page username. You can also see the username in the URL of the current page in your Web browser.

Once you know the username of the business page, you can now assign other people to manage the page for you or keep yourself as admin or just see the current admin status by visiting this URL, filling in your business username:

https://www.facebook.com/YOUR-BUSINESS-PAGE-USERNAME/settings/?tab=admin_roles

Facebook Business Pages Need an Authentic Person

You might be thinking, why don’t I just create a separate personal profile with another email address and phone number? You can, but you will violate Facebook terms.

Facebook is a community where people use their authentic identities. …
If you want to represent your business, organization, brand or product on Facebook, you can use your personal account to create and manage a Page. Keep in mind that a personal profile is for non-commercial use and represents an individual person.

source: facebook.com

Facebook doesn’t really have “customer service.” If your page and profile violate terms you risk losing everything you have created and NEVER getting your assets back. Too risky for me and probably you too.

To be cautious, you can download all the data for your personal profile to your local computer and you can also download all the data for your public Facebook Page.

What you can do though is pay to be verified. I've heard that can open doors to customer service.

Separate Personal and Business Facebook Video

In this video I outline how to use the Meta Business Suite App to easily separate your personal profile from your Business account.

Apps to separate Personal and Business on Facebook

Facebook Page / Facebook Profile - More Separation Tips

Think Facebook is just for friends? I did too until Facebook rolled out a massive structural change to Facebook Pages. Now businesses that setup “Pages” have more options to use Facebook like a regular user. How does this benefit a small business or professional person like a blogger?

With a few simple steps I’m going to outline how it’s easy to separate Facebook “friends” into two distinct groups – your personal friends with your regular Facebook profile, and business fans and people you would like your page to be a fan of. Now, Facebook pages have the ability to like other pages. This comes in handy in four ways.

You can get other pages to notice your page when you like them.
You can keep updated on the news feed of other pages – and not see the feed in your personal account.
By liking other pages you are now in the group of people with similar interests.
You can comment on other pages as a page and get people to view your profile with your business pitch or any content you want.

I’ve heard of people using Facebook to network before with their personal profile. To me, it just doesn’t make sense. I think people live in two worlds – a business world and a personal world. In my case, my name is my brand. Since my business / professional name is the same as my real name, it causes an obvious problem on Facebook. I used to think that there were better tools to use for networking like Twitter / X and LinkedIn. But these new Facebook Page capabilities make networking on Facebook easy. Plus, Facebook opens your personal brand / business to nearly a billion people.

NEW! Coaching Sessions

I offer affordable 1-on-1 coaching sessions tailored just for your needs. Facebook has constantly changed the user interface and methods to separate your business and personal matters. Get a review of your social account and solve your issues now.

HELP! I need a 1-on-1

You don’t want your messages exposed to people who are not interested in receiving them. That’s why it’s important to have a separate Facebook Page. We all know people who send business-related messages on their personal accounts. Nobody likes that! If you don’t have a Facebook Page, creating one is easy.

Facebook now has a Facebook Profile Follow Button to enable anyone to subscribe to your public updates. This may make sense for a personal brand, as long as your friends don’t mind seeing your topic-specific posts. You can create filters in Facebook for your posts, but this is kind of a hassle. Separate pages can make more sense. In all, it’s not easy to separate business and personal in Facebook without some work.

The Follow button language is inline with Twitter and now LinkedIn, so users are familiar with its functionality.

Can I Convert My Personal Facebook Profile to a Facebook Business Page?
How Do I Convert My Personal Facebook Profile to a Facebook Business Page?

Yes, you can, but this isn’t a great option. If you want to convert a personal profile to a business page it’s probably because it wasn’t setup properly. Business pages are for businesses. Before Facebook Pages, many business setup personal profiles for their businesses because that was the only option available to them. Now, you can convert the personal profile to a business page, but would your personal friends appreciate it? Do you want to lose your personal friends? I suggest creating a new, separate Facebook Page and let your friends know about it by posts in your personal feed and through page invitations.
Here is the official word from Facebook:

When you convert your personal account to a Facebook Page, a business account will be created to manage your Page. We’ll transfer your current profile picture and add all your friends and followers as people who like your Page. Your account’s username will become the username for your Page, and the name associated with your personal account will become your Page’s name. If you want your Page to have a different name, consider creating a new one.
No other content will be carried over to your new Page, so be sure to save any important content before beginning the conversion

source: facebook.com

What Benefits / Features do Facebook Pages Have Versus Facebook Profiles?

Facebook business pages are more capable than personal profiles. Useful Page features:

Tabs
Advertising
Like boxes
Multiple administrators
Categories – useful for the powerful Graph Search Facebook introduced
Instant followers – no one needs to accept the fan / follower request
Facebook Insights (analytics) – get useful information about your audience and posts. Personal profiles have NO analytics.
Peace of mind – know that with a page everything you post will be public – no need to worry about privacy or audience like with a personal profile

Like me, many people have a personal brand. I created a Facebook business page that included my real name. So, for example “Ken Morico.” I keep my personal account private using privacy settings so my business page doesn’t compete with my personal profile. It helps me separate my family and my professional contacts on Facebook and helps me target my status updates. Review your personal account privacy settings here: https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=privacy

Here’s what Facebook analytics look like:

Facebook Insights

I Want To Convert My Facebook Profile To A Facebook Page. What Do I Lose / Need To Watch Out For?

Some people report that you lose the ability to comment in Facebook Groups once you convert your Facebook Profile to a Facebook Page. If you want to participate in groups, you can instead comment as your page on the walls of other pages and get conversations going that way. Also, Reddit and LinkedIn have strong communities and groups, so you may want to check out those as well.

When you convert your personal profile your friends will become your fans/followers. Do they want to? My guess is no. Be careful.

I am a Consultant / Advertising Agency, How Can I Manage Many Facebook Business Accounts?

When I worked for an agency, I setup a new, dummy Facebook profile to connect all the Facebook Pages to that separate account. It’s a good way to fully separate many business accounts from your own personal account. You might name that separate Facebook profile “Ken at Work” or make up a name. Then you can create pages using that account. For most small business users and entrepreneurs with only a few pages, I would recommend just using your own personal Facebook profile to connect your pages plus you won’t violate Facebook’s community guidelines like I mentioned earlier.

Manage Accounts with HootSuite

HootSuite Tabs for business and personal separation

HootSuite can help you manage your social media accounts and help you separate your personal and professional social media lives. Basically, it uses tabs for each stream in a social media account. You can create custom tabs, for instance called “Personal” and “Professional” and keep track of feeds and special search feeds. For instance, I have a tab called “Monitoring” where I keep up to date on what people are saying in the blogging world, allowing me to enter the conversation at any time. With HootSuite’s posting abilities, you can choose which accounts you want to post from and schedule them in the future. Very handy. I’ve found monitoring works better with Twitter than Facebook primarily because I think people are better with using hashtags on Twitter.

I also created a “Me” tab where I gather mentions and searches for my name so I can monitor my personal brand. I suggest you do the same.

Updates

Facebook is constantly changing the user interface and methods for separating business and personal. I’ll be posting more articles on Facebook strategies and learnings as I go, so please subscribe to my newsletter to stay notified and schedule a Facebook consulting session with me to help with recent changes. Also, I periodically update this page with new information, so bookmark it for reference.

Resources

1-on-1 Coaching Session
The Morico Letter - stay up to date on social strategies and changes

You Need Discipline NOT Tools for Social Media Management

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 06:00:00 GMT

You spend a lot of time optimizing processes, discovering hacks & tools, and leveraging cheap, offshore labor to mass produce social media content. And despite trying every tactic to get reach, your wheels are spinning and your social accounts are getting no traction. You need discipline, NOT tools for social media management. Let me explain why.

Reduced Reach by Using Social Media Posting Tools

Not only will your reach be reduced when you use certain third-party social media tools, it’s obvious to your audience you aren’t putting in REAL effort. Your voice is compromised. Your content blends in with all the other mass-produced content with similar templates. Years ago there was a term called “banner blindness” that described the ability of users to automatically skip ads within Web content. They just knew what it looked like and skipped it — thus making the ad totally worthless, even though the advertiser would see that the ad “displayed” and “reached” their target audience.

Most social media content produced by brands and even personal brands have a “look” that causes us to skip over the post. In fact, with algorithms now hiding a lot of content because there is too much noise / content in the feeds it’s likely you will experience less and less reach over time. Social media takes effort. If you don’t bother to reply to comments people notice. It shows you don’t care. You don’t engage. You’re too special. And social media users might come to the conclusion you aren’t involved at all in the process.

The Simplest Solution is the Best

I advise clients on social media issues and social media planning. Almost always, they are confused by the tools, confused by the number of accounts they have or think they have, and don’t know if their information is public. Sometimes my clients want to keep some social posts private and some public. That adds a layer of complexity and confusion for many people, slowing them down and their posting.

Just login and post. Assume everything is public, because if the social media networks get hacked all your posts will be public. Plus, apps that connect to your social media account usually have a lot of access to your data.

Discipline

Since social media works best when you post regularly and authentically that’s what you need to do. You can’t do it in fits and starts. Do it or don’t do it at all. If you absolutely can only post irregularly and you have funds available, you can pay to have your posts boosted to your audience (seen by everyone that follows you & beyond).

What’s a realistic way to stick to a schedule? Plan your days and social media time using a calendar. If it’s on your calendar it will get done if you desire. Desire it!

A Tale of Two Entrepreneurs & Social Media

I follow people on social media for ideas, inspiration, motivation, and friendship. Recently, I’ve been following Tilman Fertita and Grant Cardone. They are roughly the same age, from the same region of the country, and have high net worths. What I noticed was how similar they were in drive and ethos. But when I look at their social media accounts, I see Grant Cardone absolutely killing it. He’s personal, off-the-cuff, and a frequent poster. His posts often come up in my feed. His videos are branded properly. You can see for yourself. Grant Cardone Instagram | Grant Cardone Twitter. For comparison: Tilman Fertitta Instagram | Tilman Fertitta Twitter. Grant definitely comes off as a friend. He leverages the selfie and selfie video. He is disciplined in leveraging technology to simulate in-person bonding. This is not to say Tilman is ineffective, just that his presence is more portrayed in an older PR-style. It is also much less frequent. He should really leverage my skills in social media strategy… 🙂 . The numbers speak to Grant’s success: 6,965 posts 3.7m followers vs. Tilman’s 474 posts 108k followers on Instagram.

If you need help telling your story using digital tools, contact Ken Morico with ETHOS DIA LLC and get the expert guidance you need to make your mark and find discipline.

Leverage Stoic Philosophy to Build Your Personal Brand

Tue, 05 Apr 2022 06:00:00 GMT

Our world is getting busier and noisier. It’s near impossible to stand out with Google and social media algorithms. A multitude of TV streaming services and social media rabbit holes seduce us and suck our time. How can we control our time and get our personal brand noticed?

Stoic Philosophy.

Stoic philosophy has become popular among the tech crowd and younger generations. It’s no wonder… the digital world can seem overwhelming and easily cause us to lose focus. Stoic philosophy focuses on the essential, the core, the here and now, and personal hardness. There is no pleasure or pain… there is restraint or indifference. There is a focus on virtue.

Modern Success is Stoic by Necessity

A big part of successful personal brands is the effort made showcasing success. People want to connect with others that appear successful, and we place more trust in influencers that seem to have “made it” in spite of insurmountable odds. We applaud their “grit” and focus. Often, successful people will talk of having laser focus to achieve their goals. They don’t get distracted. They put pleasures second and work first.

Everywhere Platforms for the Stoic Personal Brand

In marketing your personal brand, it makes sense to use tools like WordPress sites, where you control the messaging and capture interest by using email opt-ins, free ebooks, and link out to media sites like YouTube and your podcast platform. Since so many platforms are needed to tell your story and communicate your values, you must harness stoicism to keep your focus and find discipline throughout your day. Personal branding is a full-time job and there is no one more qualified to do it than you. You are the only company / brand you will have for your entire life. Focus on you and don’t forget the stoic tenet: “Memento Mori” (remember that you will die – live each day to the fullest).

If you need help telling your story using digital tools, contact Ken Morico and get the expert guidance you need to make your mark last for millennia.

Is Google Ignoring Your Site? 5 Steps to Get Back in the Index

Sat, 29 Jan 2022 06:00:00 GMT

Getting Indexed in Google is Now a Privilege.

Lately I've been noticing not all of my posts are getting indexed in Google. Posts aren't being included as fast as they used to, either. What gives? Well, there is so much content on the web that I believe Google doesn't want to waste resources including content that is opinion-based or non-comprehensive. Also, certain topics can raise flags with Google like cryptocurrency, health, and other topics often mired with con artists and online scammers. Google has always leaned heavily towards beefier Web content, but it would usually at least index lighter content. That seems to have changed.

5 Ways to Get Indexed on Google after Getting Ignored

Check Your Indexing Status: Use Google Search Console's Coverage report (https://search.google.com/search-console/about) to see which of your pages are not indexed but discovered by Google. Additionally, you can use the "site:yoursite.com" search operator on Google to see what gets listed.
Focus on Quality Content: Strive to create comprehensive and informative content that goes beyond mere opinions. Google seems to prioritize in-depth content over lighter pieces.
Beware Sensitive Topics: If your content heavily involves topics like cryptocurrency, health, or anything prone to scams, it might raise red flags for Google and hinder indexing.
Build Backlinks: Earning high-quality backlinks from reputable websites can signal to Google that your content is valuable, potentially influencing indexing decisions as mentioned by John Mu, a Google Search Advocate.
Improve Your Content: If Google hasn't indexed a page, consider revising it to be more informative and relevant. This might involve adding depth, addressing specific user needs, or incorporating better structure and organization.

The Backstory

We aren't getting an at-bat anymore just for producing content.

It's important to keep this in mind depending on your content strategy. It was easy to get indexed when the Web was smaller. Like every industry, with globalization and an increasing population, nearly every industry is getting harder to compete in. We need to be better and more productive.

So, you have a site. How can you see what's not indexed? Log into Google Search Console and then select Coverage. Then select Crawled - currently not indexed. This will list pages Google isn't indexing but knows about. You can also go to Google.com and type "site:yourdomain.com" and it will list all the pages for your domain / site.

Google may index the missing pages later, but you'll probably need to improve the pages in many ways and possibly get high-quality backlinks before Google reconsiders adding them to the index.

In fact, John Mu, Search Advocate at Google confirmed high quality backlinks can trigger an index.

[See the full no index tweet discussion.]

If you have a small business, this is something I can help with. Get a consulting session for bespoke solutions for your particular needs and industry.

Have you noticed your content not getting indexed? Contact me, Ken Morico, Digital Marketing Consultant and let me know.

Create Trusted Content: Forget Clickbait, Learn from Google

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 06:00:00 GMT

The online world is getting noisier. Consumer's attention is split between streaming services, blogs, YouTube special interest videos, video games, and social media. You might seem like your voice is getting drowned out. Every day, the world's population is growing. More people from underdeveloped countries are coming online adding their voice to the mix and potentially pushing down the ranking for your content.

Should we be concerned? What can we do? Do we resort to clickbait, the style of headline writing that shocks users or deceives them to get them to click on the headline for our content? I don't believe in unethical business practices, and I don't believe my clients should either. Luckily, Google has some good news for us.

The New Google Standard for Page Quality

The Google algorithm has changed over the years and it keeps evolving. The way users discover content also has changed. For example, users can now discover content on "Google Discover", the news feed of the Google Search app.

With Search, users enter a search term to find helpful information related to their query, but Discover takes a different approach. Instead of showing results in response to a query, Discover surfaces content primarily based on what Google's automated systems believe to be a good match with a user's interests

source: developers.google.com (Google Search Central Documentation)

Google Discover - Notice the articles near the top

Google says the criteria for content that appears there is the same as that for search in general. The new "rules" for good content on Google Discover sound like what a good newspaper Editor would consider for a print publication:

Ensure that you are posting outstanding and engaging content that you think users would find interesting. Especially consider the following:

Having page titles that capture the essence of the content, but in a non-clickbait fashion.

Avoiding tactics to artificially inflate engagement by using misleading or exaggerated details in preview content (title, snippets, images) to increase appeal, or by withholding crucial information required to understand what the content is about.

Avoiding tactics that manipulate appeal by catering to morbid curiosity, titillation, or outrage.

Having content that's timely for current interests, tells a story well, or provides unique insights.

Providing clear dates, bylines, information about authors, the publication, the publisher, company or network behind it, and contact information to better build trust and transparency with visitors.

Including compelling, high-quality images in your content, especially large images that are more likely to generate visits from Discover. Large images need to be at least 1200 px wide and enabled by the max-image-preview:large setting, or by using AMP. Avoid using a site logo as your image.

Our automated systems surface content in Discover from sites that have many individual pages that demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-A-T). Those looking to improve E-A-T can consider some of the same questions we encourage site owners to consider for Search.

source: developers.google.com (Google Search Central Documentation)

If you notice, the first item says "Having page titles that capture the essence of the content, but in a non-clickbait fashion." I think that says it all. Don't deceive users. Now, I will say Google still ranks some clickbait content high in search, and that's because sometimes the source of the content is very strong or there may not be enough content written on the topic by others in industry. Also, some good content might be old. In light of those issues, on balance, sometimes clickbait articles can win. However, as more ethical players generate content, Google prefers to present ethical headlines.

Google Discover - Notice no clickbait articles here - just simple facts

We need to present this focus on non-clickbait headlines and trusted sources in context of recent elections. It is believed foreign governments had an influence in recent U.S. elections through social media and flagrant headlines. Facebook has implemented transparency information on Facebook business / fan pages.

Facebook states:

We believe that when you visit a Page or see an ad on Facebook it should be clear who it’s coming from ... These (changes) are designed to increase transparency and accountability, as well as prevent election interference ... Pages with large numbers of followers will need to be verified. Those who manage large Pages that do not clear the process will no longer be able to post.

source: fb.com (Meta Newsroom)

The world is trending in a more transparent direction.

Besides the trust and transparency aspect of the content site, Google will measure user experience based on if users "bounce" from the site. Google can tell if users are sent to a site from its search engine and leave the site shortly after. One strong reason users would leave a site would be that they expected something when clicking on the title of the link and received totally different content from what the title represented.

If you would like an assessment of content for your business as well as well as a deeper, in-person discussion of tactics to expand your reach, contact me, Ken Morico, Digital Marketing Consultant. Trust me, that's not click bait.

YouTube Marketing: Strategy & Assets for No-Cost Reach

Tue, 23 Feb 2021 06:00:00 GMT

When I devise strategies for organic growth for my clients I have two core tactics that deliver consistently - blogging and YouTube. The shelf life for content created on blogs and YouTube is essentially eternal and represents the best investment in time and money. Videos that you put more effort into and are expected to stick around awhile are called "evergreen" videos... a throwback to television and radio days. Think of the Charlie Brown Halloween Special or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Certainly the media companies reaped more than their initial investment.

With hyperinflation and general economic uncertainty, it's prudent to bet only on sure things. If you spend time and / or money on content to help sell your product or service, you want a return. It's easy to overspend with ad platforms like Facebook and Google. And once your campaign ends because you stop spending money, the traffic dries up. Be the vulture. Not the meat.

I've gathered the best YouTube strategies from my experience and other industry leaders.

YouTube Tips for the Best Long-term Investment

Create a "home base" website to post your videos, blogs, and free resources to generate traffic. Embedded YouTube video views count as views on YouTube.com which can boost your ranking.
Embedding YouTube videos on your site can save you money on third-party video hosting while improving your reach.
Create longer videos.
Inconsistent posting can be an issue for the YouTube algorithm - try to post more consistently.
Add links in YouTube video descriptions to your Web site to increase site traffic.
Use chapter markers in YouTube description to help users navigate longer videos increase interaction rate.
Create related videos to keep people on your YouTube channel. Add videos to a theme playlist.
Create a niche so YouTube can understand your channel.
Try "behind the scenes" / commentary after short videos to increase length.
Collaborate with other people / businesses in your niche and have them introduce you and your YouTube Channel / Web site.
Re-create popular videos in your niche with your own voice, style, perspective, and research.
Add links to YouTube videos as comments in your Facebook posts.
Increase the quality of your production - work on getting a studio setup with studio lights and DSLR camera with tripod for commentary videos.
Shoot videos in 4K if you have the equipment. 4K videos will look higher quality when scaled down to lower resolutions as well.
If your camera equipment isn't great, consider de-saturating color videos.
If you have a budget, get a graphic designer to design video thumbnails and YouTube Channel art.
Provide raw video to video editor to create polished videos / videos with intros (leverage Fiverr and UpWork).
Use WordPress to create a Web site and host it at https://wordpress.com or WP Engine and pick a custom domain name if you don't already have one.
Once a website is setup, you can advertise to people who have already visited your website and shown interest using Google Tag Manager and AdWords remarketing / YouTube Advertising.
Explore YouTube third-party tools like TubeBuddy to help analyze your competition.
Subscribe and study your competition to understand how they "talk to" their audience.

Do you agree with these tips?

If you would like an assessment of content for your business as well as well as a deeper, in-person discussion of tactics to expand your reach, contact me, Ken Morico, Digital Marketing Consultant.

Using SEO to Demonstrate Authority and Beat Competitors

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 06:00:00 GMT

What comes up in search engines when people type in your name or company? Good results? Bad results? Truth? Lies? What if you could control it with SEO? Reputation management… you can do it!

Google Sitelinks

Google improved the sitelinks functionality for top results in a query. Up to twelve indented results under the main result with snippets. Gold! You can command nearly half a page of Google search results by building traffic to your site and creating quality content. As my traffic started to build I noticed one day that the sitelinks just magically appeared. I had gotten sitelinks for my clients before. Having traffic helps, and having certain pages in demand helps Google determine which pages are important and should be included.

It turns out that sitelinks are quite useful because they can help predict which sections of the site you want to visit. Even if you didn’t specify your task in the query, sitelinks help you quickly navigate to the most relevant part of the site, which is particularly handy for large and complex websites. Sitelinks can also give you a good overview of a website’s content, and let webmasters expose areas of the site that visitors may not know about.

source: Google Official Blog

Online Reputation

If your customers are searching for a product or service like yours, they are using Google to find it. I’m amazed at how many people have no online reputation… even people / companies in the digital space. How can you say you are an expert in anything and not get found online? Alas, some offline people can still get away without an online reputation… for now. But all it takes is for one disgruntled person to damage your online reputation before it even starts. This is really easy to do if you don’t have an online trail. No one can do this to me. Why? Because I own my name in the online space.

Ken Morico Google Search Results Page - Mobile

My content on the Web that I’ve developed for years…. in fact since 1999, gives me credibility with Google. When people type in my name in Google, I own half a page of content. Sites with lower credibility get buried, and with a little optimization I can bury even credible sites that seek to defame me. That’s power. And you can have it too.

Google SERP Results - Blog Site

Blog, Blog, Blog

The single best thing I can think of to get credibility with Google is to create great content. The best way to do this is to blog. Social media, to me, can be a real waste of time. The shelf life of postings tends to be around 20 minutes. When I write a blog post, that post is working for me 24/7 365 days a year. It’s an investment. Because I care about writing and helping people, I should get some credit. Right? When I wrote for print publications like The Los Angeles Times it was the byline that I cared about.

Google Ads (Formerly AdWords)

Google Ads can be sneaky. Your competition can trigger ads to display when users search for your company name. They can lure them with discounts and special offers, as well as write lies about your products or service. That’s why it’s so important to get the top spot for your name in organic search. You also might have to outbid your competition in Google Ads to control your reputation. Paid search is a shortcut. Remember that. A great example of this was BP buying search terms during their oil spill. They took ownership of their name and the event. They had the money to do so.

Like other parts of SEO, optimization goes very deep.

No-Nonsense Conversion Optimization Tips

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 06:00:00 GMT

There is a word that comes to mind when I think of conversion optimization.. pithy… the core. I have summarized some of the best tips I have acquired over the years.

How compelling are your meta descriptions?
Optimize your organic snippets like a paid ad.
Rich snippets boost CTR 20-30%
Use ratings and reviews | breadcrumbs rich snippets
Explainer videos (show how something works) boost conversion 20%
Caption images
Gather testimonials and proof
Google rich snippets can pull out of context information, perhaps to your benefit
One page, one purpose for user queries
Optimize font sizes for age – point size half your target’s age
Plan a clear path for goal completion
Prove you are the best solution for a problem

Video Tips for Conversion Optimization

4x engagement for video over text for brands
33% of marketers feel their videos are hindered because they lack strategy
"How To" videos increased 37% since 2012
Industry commentary video blogs
The shorter the video the less production value needed

Video strategy

Corporate overview
Executive interview series
Corporate culture video
Product launch video
Comedy gets 530% more views per video than videos that are only about the products
Keep videos short
CTAs after video finishes
Landing pages with video had 257% increase in conversions

Remarketing for Conversion Optimization

Consumers have higher expectations for relevancy
7 vs 4 convert out of 100 with remarketing
You should tag all parts of your website
Focus lists with remarketing. Target homepage viewers, shop abandoners, past converters, etc.
Pair remarketing with conversion optimizer
Use all display ad sizes and formats
Use dynamic remarketing – 2x conversion rate – use an ad related to the offer they saw
Move from conversion optimizer to return on ad spend eventually ROAS
Let algorithm optimize by itself – don’t use frequency caps
Expand to similar audiences – lookalike – increases conversions 40%

A/B test everything

And there you have it!

If you need bespoke assistance after reading these tips, reach out for conversion optimization help.

If you want more tips on conversion optimization and current trends, subscribe free to The Morico Letter

Maximize Storytelling for Online Profit: History & Examples

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 06:00:00 GMT

Is your audience dropping off? Do they read a few sentences of your post / content and BOUNCE? You haven’t adjusted to the new rules of storytelling. Let me show you how.

Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. If websites don’t load in as little as 3 seconds, chances are high users will bounce. TV dramas and YouTube Videos are filmed with multiple camera angles and cuts to keep our attention. How can we adjust the long story we need to tell to this new era of quick bites?

When I was young corporate professional I had a supervisor who was just amazing at telling stories in person. Everyone would gather around his desk to listen to him speak. There was a rhythm to his stories… an animation to his hand gestures and he projected explosive facial expressions. Everyone stayed until the end of his stories. All agreed he was a sublime storyteller.

How can we translate an incredible in-person storytelling experience to online? I’ll introduce some background, modern storytelling examples, ways to market your story in real time, and tools to help tell your story.

Dramatic Arc / Classic Storytelling
Realtime Storytelling in History (Journaling / Freestyle)
21st Century “On the Road” Storytelling Example
Realtime Marketing
Storytelling Tools

Dramatic Arc / Classic Storytelling

The Story Arc or 3-act format presents a story where a character or a situation moves from one state to another.

You present a scene and / or a character (who/what/where/when). The scene has some early elements of problems / conflict.
Your character changes in response to challenges. Tension rises to a climax.
Situation resolves and story concludes.

We’ve seen these stories over and over – rags to riches, guy gets the girl, etc. Your goal should be to use the elements of storytelling to tell your story in a modern way, using modern tools. Cut through the noise and content firehose of social media.

State your customer’s problem.
Explain what they are missing out on by not addressing the situation. Explain how competitors are addressing the problem and how they are falling behind.
Offer a solution. Your solution which addresses their problems. Provide a call to action to relieve their tension.

You must practice extreme editing. Remove any words that are not essential to communicate your story. There is too much competition to expect users to stay and read long exposition.

Now that we have core story elements and trimmed-down content, let’s think about ways we develop our character of hero product / service.

Character Development

When I think about what keeps me interested in a blog, it seems like it’s the same qualities that keep me interested in books and TV dramas. Plot and character development. (If you are brand and aren’t a “character,” it could be your product that you can focus on and the challenge it faces for market dominance. I think people can route for products and services if they have a good reason to.)

Having an interest in the topic is a given, but often we listen to people who tell the best stories, and tell them with vigor and theatrics.

Be Interesting

Be interesting. Share experiences that are different from the everyday experience. I like watching the show Mad Men – a TV series about the life of a creative director in 1960s New York advertising. As the show progresses you see life through this womanizing man who leads very different lives. In fact, he is not the person he says he is, and the series shows flashbacks that give the viewer glimpses of his past. Viewers want to see how the character develops. In a sense this is what The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald does. It’s what a lot of great literary works and scripts do. How can the average person be interesting?

Have a Backstory

Once you establish quality content on a blog or Web site, people interested in your content often go to the about page. Why? They want to connect with you. As a Web analyst for several large companies, I can tell you the about page is very important for individuals and companies. We all want to connect with people we admire, people we find interesting… people like us… or people we want to be.

Create your backstory:

How did you get interested in your blog topic? Explain personal stories… I was fishing with my grandfather when I was a boy…
Why do you continue to explore the topic? I find it interesting because these past experiences led me to…
What’s your experience? People want to get information from experts. If you’re not an expert, you can still create a great site by explaining that you are learning and documenting your experiences and learnings.

State Your Trajectory

Once people connect with you or your brand, they want to “follow” you. Online this is easy to do with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. But people are selfish too. We often friend people because they can DO something for us. In a sense online we can ride the coattails of people. If we follow people we think are on an upward trajectory we are likely to write comments and engage.

Everyone wants to get in early on a rising star and “discover” someone. In literature, we route for “heroes.” We also sympathize with them when things get tough. Let people know where you’re going and why they should ride along with you.

Find Your Voice and Tackle Your Challenges

Every good character needs challenges. In blogging, it’s interesting topics and ways of exploring the topic that haven’t been done before. Like photographers say, you can take 50 pictures of the same door, but different lighting conditions can make each photo unique.

The blogs I find most interesting right now are the ones including a mix of text, audio, video, and photos. What better way to document a challenge than with video and text? You get the visuals and the meat with the benefits of search engine optimization. Video increases shares as well. With text, it’s hard to relate to a person behind the words because you get see facial expressions, body language and voice tones. This is where showmanship comes in…

Showmanship

Showmanship can come in many forms. Especially online. When exploring a topic you can demonstrate showmanship through images, video, and audio. Like birdwatching? Maybe create a video of you walking through the jungle to get to the best spot. A lot of times it’s about the journey. Seeing experiences through a character gives perspective. Perspective invites conversation.

Character Development Examples (TV / Print / Blog)

In the past, stories were only passed down through word-of-mouth and books. We now have so many ways to communicate our story. But before delving into realtime marketing and storytelling tools, let’s examine the freestyle method of storytelling. Why is the freestyle method important when the story arc can be effective at telling your story? Creativity. Creativity and variety. It draws people into an adventure and communicates realism. Something that bland corporate brands of yesteryear lack.

Realtime Storytelling in History (Journaling / Freestyle)

The Original On the Road

Jack Kerouac - Storyteller — Jack Kerouac – Photo Credit

People who know me know I’m a big Jack Kerouac fan. I’ve read several of his novels and loved the idea of improvisational storytelling. In the 1940s, it was quite a new method of storytelling. Kerouac popularized it, but the idea came from letters written on-the-go by his friend Neal Cassidy. It was these letters that got me interested in Kerouac and the style of writing.

The freestyle writing was a flow-like state of writing with no editing. It’s as-it-happens writing. In fact, Kerouac used a scroll to type on… there were no individual sheets of paper. I tried my hand at this style using a camera phone and Twitter.

Armed with an iPhone and Twitter, I had the tools to bring Kerouac’s true vision of improvisational storytelling to life – in real time.

Where Kerouac and his motley crew of writers and adventurers only used words, Twitter empowers people today to use words, photos, audio, and even video in real time. And so, my evening started with just that – words and photos.

Modern / FreeStyle “On the Road” Storytelling Example

“Old” ways of storytelling are new again. Living in the city of Houston for several years, it occurred to me that I’ve never taken a city bus to go anywhere. I had this great idea of going “On the Road” with my buddy and ad man, Hal Werner. Well, for a short trip anyway. I planned to take the city bus into downtown Houston. My co-workers were perplexed that I would want to take a city bus, but I told them it would be awesome and agreed to document the short trip via Twitter.

Dispatches

I dashed out Tweets from my Twitter account @KenMorico. Since the iPhone has a built-in microphone, it makes an excellent digital voice recorder, and I was able to capture the city sounds from our bus stop along with our unedited, off-the-cuff commentary.

As the night progressed, I took more photos and wrote more Tweets. The iPhone 4 made a great travel camera… I was able to take photos without drawing too much attention to myself, and at 5 megapixels the photos came out fairly crisp. Using FourSquare (now Swarm App), I was able to check in to places and let people know exactly where I was… creating history in effect.

The Scene and Observations

The bus was a fun time. I thought the bus stop closest to where I lived would be what I needed. Hal explained different. Buses have certain routes, so even though one is closer, it may not take you exactly where you think it might go. Hal used the wonderful Google Maps with embedded bus routes to find our way. The Houston METRO Bus Schedules were horrible and confusing. METRO should really hire a company like [Ken Morico Consulting] to redesign their site. Anyways, the people on the bus were interesting. Old, one mentally handicapped, a few pimps, and some fairly normal people. You really notice your surroundings on the bus. With the slow speed of the bus, you see things that you would never notice on familiar routes driving in a fast car.

A man’s night on the town, we visited eateries and bars on a beautiful Friday night in springtime Houston. Downtown has a lot of unique bars and restaurants, like historic La Carafe, Flying Saucer, and Frank’s Pizza.

Kerouac may be dead, and the improvisational style forgotten by many, but I see a new generation of inspired “writers.” Improv is back!

Real-time Marketing

The concept of real-time marketing really blows my mind. It’s what happens when you combine the fast-indexing Googlebot with breaking news and large online audiences. Getting noticed with paid advertising only gets you so far. Injecting your company or yourself in the news in real-time gives you tremendous leverage. It gives you a chance to tell your story. But to play with the big boys and get noticed there’s a problem. You need to rank well in search.

Some large companies can do this because their Websites have been around for a long time and are usually updated by people in the organization who get paid to do it full-time. Successful individual bloggers with good page-rank will almost certainly outrank any small business. New blogs, even with some search engine optimization, will usually drop to the lower ranks in search pages.

Here’s a great video explaining real-time marketing and how it can be done featuring David Meerman Scott:

Having Trouble Coming up with New Story Ideas? Look to Your Past

Content Curation / Ideas

There’s a lot of chatter about content curation versus content creation. Some people say if you’re not good at content creation you should curate content and be active on social media. Content curation has its place — it’s what you should do when you’re not promoting your own content. Don’t be lazy – anyone can create / repurpose content. You might have a content chest you can tear open right now and get a jumpstart.

Be a Content Hoarder

Many people don’t realize they have content hidden away. Oftentimes if there was a presentation of piece of writing I was particularly proud of at work I would save it on my computer. I didn’t have a reason other that I thought at some point it might be useful to me in some way – not in the way it was used for work, but just a different way.

Have you ever written anything down and saved it? Have video, audio, or old school papers? There’s content right there. There’s opportunity to make money off of old content. Even if it doesn’t seem relevant right away. For example, I had a pizza recipe with a story that tied into my hometown and grandmother. It doesn’t directly relate to my blog, but it relates to me as a person, and sometimes people want to know who they are interacting with.

So take the time to archive content you think you have and, going forward, take every opportunity to archive content you create in any form. Curate softly and carry big content!

Learn How to Repurpose Content

There are many ways to repurpose content, but the easiest way would be to take existing textual content and edit it for the the Web and your particular audience. Once you have edited content, you can create a podcast based on that content, YouTube video, SlideShare, etc.

Photos are super easy to repurpose. Who doesn’t have old photos that can spark discussions? Just post and see what happens.

Distribute Your Content Infrequently – Don’t be Obnoxious

I think too many people aren’t social enough when using social media (including me). Instead of sharing links and over-promoting your own work, try setting up a tab in HootSuite to listen to chatter going on in your industry. It’s easy to filter through social media noise when you have power tools like HootSuite. Answer questions.

It’s easier to promote your own work when you help people. I follow some industry leaders that provide very little value on social media. It’s fine to be random at times on social media, but if you’re always off-topic you’ll lose followers… well at least in my book. Some people can get away with it…

Generally 5-15% of the time on social media you should promote your own content according to social media experts like Guy Kawasaki. Seems fair to me.

Help People with Problems – Let Them See Your Content is their Answer

Everyone is happy when there is a win-win. A great goal to set is to create really useful content and convince others that your content can solve their problem. In a sense this is advertising, but with really developed content it’s not advertising — it’s content marketing. I don’t feel sleazy promoting really developed content to anyone and you shouldn’t either. Listen to industry chatter with HootSuite or similar tool and offer to solve problems with your content. When people trust you, you can sell them things. Sell yourself first, then products.

Conclusion

Storytelling is key to getting your message heard. Don’t ignore key storytelling tactics and core structures of storytelling. Tell the story no one walks swipes out on.

If you would like an assessment of content for your business as well as well as a deeper, in-person discussion of tactics to expand your reach, contact me, Ken Morico, Digital Marketing Consultant.

Content Marketing with Video - Give Users What They Want

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 06:00:00 GMT

Some things in life are free, and so is this SEO gift from YouTube. Recently, just adding a YouTube video to your Web site or blog via the iFrame embed code available on YouTube.com can get you a thumbnail in search.

Embed Box on YouTube.com

YouTube embed box

Google Search

Here’s what it looks like:

YouTube thumbnail search

It even displays the time length… You used to need complex video sitemaps and schema.org markup to get this.

How Can YouTube Videos Be Helpful to My Web site?

YouTube videos are great because they can help out your site in a few ways:

Enhances page display on search engine pages
Exposes your video to the second largest search engine (YouTube)
You can make money with YouTube videos via AdSense and tie that to your main AdSense account
Users spend more time on a page
Users can more easily bond with a person in a video

Since it’s so easy it’s definitely worth adding a video to your content.

Produce (or Steal) Web Video and Juice SEO

It’s the 2020s and you need to live in a world where users expect video when they are searching for information. The bad news — you need video to help rank your page or site. The good news — you can “steal” it.

With the explosion of YouTube, social media, and smart mobile devices, users often don’t have patience to read through a lot of text sometimes. They want simple answers and a real person to deliver it to them. I’m not discounting text and images, but what’s the attention span of people now that thousands of tweets are blasting out in a second? Exactly.

Increase Your Odds for Ranking on the SERPs

Your chances of ranking for a video on YouTube versus text content are significantly higher. Domain age, authority, inbound links, and other common SEO practices don’t necessarily have to apply to video for Google to rank a video highly. There are 319,000,000 results in Google for “Video SEO.” How many video only results? 31,300. Your chances of ranking are 10,191x better. I like those odds much better. Plus, if your text content includes a video you’re likely to get boost in ranking. Plus, users tend to stay on your site longer because online videos are usually around 5 minutes. That’s 5 minutes they could be looking at ads, your Twitter handle, related posts, or anything you want them to see.

You can embed video from YouTube, Vimeo, and other video sharing sites. Smart video producers brand their videos with the producers name, Web address, and Twitter handle. Since YouTube embedded videos are served from Google servers, your site bandwidth isn’t affected and videos typically load in a snappy fashion.

Producing Web Video is a Lot of Work – “Steal” for Inbound Marketing

Producing good Web video is time consuming. That’s why your odds of ranking are 10,191x better. It’s not easy. People are picky when it comes to online video. They have no patience for cheap-sounding audio. Not everyone can afford expensive non-linear editing software. Not everyone has the editorial skills to make a fun and informative video. If you can produce a snazzy Web video, brand it with lower third information, and blast it out to the world using third-party video hosting services, you’ll make your site and content much more appealing to a broader audience.

Since many people don’t have the tools or skills to produce their own quality Web video, I recommend “stealing” quality, relevant, videos to sex up your site.

Produce Your Own Video – Get Extroverted or Get Irrelevant

Besides embedding third-party videos from YouTube, try creating your own videos relevant to your audience that can be shared on social media and other blogs. Embedded videos on blogs are very powerful because blog posts have staying power… social media shares are transient.

Say something. We all have unique perspectives. Today’s marketing and blogging is an extrovert’s game. People need to improve their public speaking, public writing, and video production skills while not caring if it’s perfect. The game is changing everyday. Attention is shifting so fast. Even blogging sites right now are just becoming essentially an SEO tactic due to the many conversations happening on social media. You can now even convert customers using just Facebook alone. But despite all the channels, you still need to show up. And show yourself.

Showing your personality and style through up-close video where you look directly at the camera can be very impactful. Having a basic script and outline for the video is great, but ultimately the video must offer value and be entertaining in some regard.

The Apple TV Gamechanger

Apple TV 3rd Generation

YouTube videos are no longer just for the Web. They are living room entertainment now! You need to start thinking of

I held off on getting a streaming device like Apple TV or a Roku for a long time. I mostly watch movies on my Playstation 3, and used it to watch Netflix using the built-in app. A few things dawned on me.

The amount of material on Netflix is fine, but limited.
There is a lot to watch on YouTube if you know where to look.
Streaming media devices use very little power.
The idea of watching “TV” has changed.

YouTube Growing in Importance

Apple TV is limited in the sense that it only has a few built-in apps and content choices. That’s why I’ve spent some time curating channels on my YouTube account. I didn’t find YouTube very useful in the last few years, but now it seems companies are paying more attention. It’s the #2 search engine behind Google. It seems that alone would coerce some to put content on the service.

YouTube isn’t just entertainment videos anymore. Google’s channels are very high quality and you see the progression of their videos over the last few years. Now they use studios and high-end cameras. When I look at some of the more popular bloggers out there, they tend to use YouTube and use it well. Also, for those like Seth Godin, Mitch Joel, and Avinash Kausik that don’t have their own channels, Google algorithmically creates a channel based on existing videos.

YouTube now has excellent video quality and 1080P resolution, which some media streaming servers support. It’s also more social with a newsfeed and icons for activity. The user interface has been cleaned up nicely. Like almost all Google products, eventually they get around to cleaning up the user interface.

Thinking Beyond Regular TV

The idea of YouTube Streaming to devices connected to TVs really is a dramatic shift from traditional push content to pull content. The variety of content opens up tremendously. It seems strange to think a few years ago that you could be able to pull up videos of pop-tart hamsters on your 42 inch TV whenever you want. Or watch videos lectures from Yale professors on your TV thousands of miles away. Smart people are adjusting to this new shift, and those that don’t will get annihilated by competitors.

I still think there’s still an opportunity to get a jump on your competitors by creating videos. Every business can benefit in some way by posting videos. I like tutorial type videos where you have a picture in picture setup with the main content in large screen and the person explaining the video in a small window. How do you use online video in your business?

If you would like an assessment of content for your business as well as well as a deeper, in-person discussion of tactics to expand your reach, contact me, Ken Morico, Digital Marketing Consultant.

Freemium is the Future of Business

Fri, 08 Jan 2021 06:00:00 GMT

With Coronavirus and the economic damage it’s caused very severe, people are going to be cautious with how they spend their money. Old ways of revenue generation won’t work as well. With the advent of the Internet, information is ubiquitous and the available workforce is infinite and global. Competition is extreme, and so are your competitors. Customers will need absolute certainty that what they purchase with their money will offer value to them. So, what is a viable solution to grow a business in 2020 where uncertainty is rampant and household budgets are tight? Enter freemium.

Lessons were learned during the dot com bust of 2000. You don’t sell things for less than they cost and you don’t give things away for free. Twenty years later, we’ve learned quite a bit. Monetizing any content on the Web has been a challenge. A small tweak to the dot com business model and we get “freemium.”

Freemium means offering a basic digital product / service for free while offering a premium product/service for some monetary amount.

Freemium can apply to all sorts of products: information, software, and even perfume. Offer 80% of the functionality of a service for free, and make users pay the rest of the 20%. I like freemium services that let users grow into a premium or business version of a product. For example, Mail Chimp lets you email 2,000 people on your list for free. Above that, and you pay — as you should… you’ve probably grown into a real business with real revenues. Social media tools like Buffer offer free social posting, but with only a few social accounts. If you need more accounts, you’ll need to pay. If you need advanced scheduling, you’ll need to pay. And pay you should if it saves you time, and that time saves you money. When it comes time to pay for a premium version of a freemium product, you’ll immediately recognize the value.

Chris Anderson wrote a lauded and criticized book on the subject and the accompanying economic model called _Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Asking people to pay for anything online can seem very challenging. Web surfers are used to getting things for free. Web surfers think advertising should pay for content. Most Web sites / blogs / podcasts simply don’t have a large enough audience to monetize using traditional advertising. Even if they did, it won’t solve the problem of overhead costs – just look at online newspapers. Fred Wilson, New York Venture Capitalist, disagrees somewhat:

Lambasting file sharers and entrepreneurs who rightly recognize that free is the right way to build market share on the Internet might be fun and make certain people feel good. But it’s ignorance of a fundamental fact. And that fact is that free, ad supported media works best on the Internet. We have seen it again and again. I’m not going to even give examples. Once you have built that audience, you can deliver upsells via freemium models, you can monetize it via advertising and you can branch out into other services which are easier to monetize.

source: Fred Wilson, Venture Capitalist - avc.com

There is a caveat worth mentioning when it comes to podcasting and the freemium model, however. The freemium economic model based on digital distribution relies on distribution costs that amount to near zero dollars. For normal Web content like text and images, this is true. But not for popular podcasts. Podcasts need bandwidth, and bandwidth costs money. This explains YouTube’s popularity – and its early monetary losses. So how can a small Web site / blog / podcast make money using the dichotomy of freemium?

Free: The Future of a Radical Price

At the Revenue Bootcamp Conference in Mountain View, Calif., Chris Anderson, author of “Free: The Future of a Radical Price,” discusses how different companies use the free-to-premium, or freemium model, to not only make money, but often keep customers at a higher rate than fully-paid services. There are many economies–ones of status, time, information and more–and the trick is to get people to trade their money for one of them.

You need to give people what they want. They want free. To put it in perspective, you need to be an online drug dealer. Give them a free sample, get them hooked, and then once they are hooked they will realize that they can’t live without your product or service. Then they will pay. This only works however, when you have something unique to offer online. In real life, you get drugs from your local drug dealer. Online, you can get drug dealers all over the world in an instant using Google. So, your product needs to unique and focused.

For example, I started The Morico Show (Podcast) because there weren’t any good Web sites that covered the topic of podcasting and audience building strategies. With my Web and journalism background, I thought I would be well suited to fill this online void. Not only that, but podcasting is a topic people really love and are passionate about. Online, you need to fill voids with your product or service. You need to build an audience. Having blogged for a few years, I can say that you can get a lot of traffic with random keywords in your blogs, but that traffic bounces once they get their “quick fix.” When you build an audience and fill a niche, users don’t bounce. Good drugs make sure of that.

Podcast Promo Codes and Freemium

Here’s a podcast episode where I discuss promo codes and freemium:

Another Freemium Approach: Free with a Service Model

Another option for freemium is offer a totally free product or content, with a paid service option. Red Hat Linux does this by offering a free Linux server product with paid service. I offer free content on my blog and offer paid consulting services to those who need it. Popular collaboration tools like Skype and Zoom offer an easy way to provide services remotely, while free, open-source e-commerce solutions like WordPress w/Woocommerce make setting up a shop relatively easy.

The Greatest Time – Covid19

I think we are the greatest time of business during Covid19 because assets and business services are not inflated anymore and we have the full power of advanced Internet tools. Make a freemium product. Be premium.

Podcasting Guide - Sound Awesome with Proven Techniques

Thu, 09 Jul 2020 06:00:00 GMT

Have you listened to top 10 podcasts and daydreamed about how you can create your own winning podcast but not sure if you have the skills, tools, platform or voice to be successful?

Podcasting has exploded in recent years. Why? People are busy. They want to multitask. They want to make efficient use of their time. They can listen any time of day: morning when walking their dog or commuting, afternoon at their computer, commuting in the evening, and in bed at night. There is no other medium that lets you be everywhere with someone.

Podcasting is personal. Your voice is in their ear. Written text doesn’t have nuances or timbre that make it unique. Content is everywhere – social media, blogs, news sites. Voice has character. Your point-of-view is the only one available on the Internet because no one has the life experiences that you have.

This complete guide outlines the essentials to making a great podcast:

What do I need to start podcasting?
Podcasting Benefits
Voice
Technique
Podcasting Equipment [for different budgets: $0,$65,$300,$1200]
Podcasting Software
Launching on a Platform
Free Content to Enhance a Podcast
Paid Podcast Subscriptions
Boost Your Marketing with Your Podcast
Use Your Audio Content for Other Purposes
Reason to Podcast
Community

How do I start a podcast using a platform I control?

If you are going to start a podcast, you want to own the platform. No one should be able to shut you down and you shouldn’t need to rely on a third-party service that may go away in the future.

Acquire podcasting equipment (microphone, digital interface, mixer)
Create a website on a domain and hosting platform you own
Software or plugin to add podcast functionality to your website
Submit your podcast feed to Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify
Promote your podcast on social media

You might think all this is too technical for the average person, but really it’s not at all. If you can use a word processor you can do this. And think of the sense of accomplishment you’ll have!

Podcasting Benefits

Podcasting is Low Cost Marketing

With podcasting, you can build long-term relationships with customers for free. Since there is no cost to re-market to your customers, the ROI is incredible. Google remarketing ads can be expensive.

Open Ocean

With the incredibly low cost of starting a web site in 2020, there is content firehose. It’s so hard to rank your text content on Google. Podcasting is competitive. It is a more “open” ocean. With fewer competitors, you can drive more traffic to your site by creating links in the podcast episode notes / description and mentioning your site on the episode.

Your Voice Matters

Are You Self-Conscious About Your Voice?

A lot of people who choose to podcast are concerned about how their voice sounds. Well, it’s a valid concern, but let me address how this can be easily solved: your voice can change. WHAT? Change? YES!

Here are the ways you can change your voice on your podcast:

Post production – aka EQ / Equalization. Play with the frequency settings. You can add and remove bass or high frequencies.
Change the tone of your voice by doing vocal exercises.
Add variety to your spoken word by changing cadence
Position your mouth closer or farther away from the microphone.

Once you experiment with these methods you’ll see that audio, much like television can be manipulated and shaped for effect.

We all have unique voices… we want to be unique when people hear our voice.

Listen to Julian Treasure as he explains vocal techniques:

Are you afraid that podcasting is “public speaking”? The reality is that you will be recording in your home or studio… no one will be in front of you, which is the primary reason for the fear. No diapers required!

Voice Technique and Magic

How can I improve my voice or audio quality with a limited budget? Don’t I need a lot of money to sound good on my podcast?

There are a few things you can do when faced with a limited budget for audio equipment.

Get close to the microphone
Speak louder than you normally would directly into the microphone
Learn to use a noise gate and compressor in your audio editing
Point the microphone away from noise sources in the room (point up, for example — experiment in your room)

Podcasting Equipment

So you want to reach an unlimited audience, have complete control of a broadcast, and get free promotion? Time to Podcast! Podcasts are a natural extension of blogs. They are just another medium to spout your commentary, music, and interviews. If you’re interested in podcasting, I’ll explain why now is the best time to get started.

Hardware has never been cheaper and software has never been more intuitive.

Studio-quality microphones are now just about $100. Apple has refined audio making software to the point where mere novices can produce professional-quality results via their GarageBand software.

Here are some equipment recommendations by budget:

$0 Podcasting Budget

No money? Bummer, but here’s what you can use:

Your Phone

Use your phone, but get close to the microphone when you record.

Microphone built into headset

Most people have a headphone / microphone combo like Apple EarPods or Apple AirPods Pro. Those can work. Experiment with what sounds better to you.

$65 Podcasting Budget

For $65 you can get portability and decent quality using a lav mic built for smartphones.

Rode SmartLav+

Note if you are using a newer iPhone you will need a lightning to 3.5mm adapter ($8).

$300 Podcasting Budget

The ZOOM H6 portable recorder is basically a tiny studio. You can use it as a microphone, computer / USB audio interface, and digital recorder. This one piece of equipment can do almost everything you need.

$1200 Podcasting Budget

This is a setup similar to what I use for the Ken Morico Podcast.

Recording Skype Interviews with Portable Recorder

Skype has a recording option built in to its software if you enable it, but it won’t leave you with the best quality. To ensure the best quality and have a backup recording for your interview session, be sure to record the session using a portable recorder if you have one.

This video explains:

The Portable Podcast Studio

If you want to spend a little more money on a full mobile solution with excellent audio quality you can look at a portable recorder like a Zoom H6 and newer models (which I also own). Recorders like the Zoom H6 have built-in high quality microphones and microphone pre-amps which record with low noise… much lower noise than the USB interfaces. They record to the same SD cards that cameras use. You can then move the audio file to your computer using the card. They also have USB interfaces, but I found they weren’t as clean as actually moving the file.

The portable recorders are great for the road and have XLR inputs so you can record from studio mixers and microphones when you are ready. Just realize that you need to be close to the microphone to capture the high quality audio since they are omni mics and will pick up room sounds if you are not close. The benefit of the omni-mic is that you may want that effect if you are trying to record several people in the room.

I remember in 2000 being awestruck when I interviewed Bill Rock in his studio space in his home. Bill Rock is an announcer and video producer. He announced for NBC and now for Sirius XM. His studio was crammed with mixers and video/audio equipment. I just have a desk — and now in 2020 I can record anywhere with a portable recorder & mixer. Pretty amazing.

Podcast Software

WordPress and Podcasting

powerpress - wordpress — Powerpress / WordPress

Blubrry released their PowerPress Plugin for self-hosted WordPress sites. The plugin makes it really easy to put together a podcast and make it work with browsers that support HTML5. When you post podcasts on your blog, they appear just like regular posts, but with attachments. When your visitors come to your site and view your post, they will see either a Flash-based audio / video player OR the native HTML5 browser player. This future-proofs your podcast. Also, the plugin makes it easy to syndicate your podcast to iTunes. iTunes syndication is complex and requires a lot of code without the use of an easy-to-use plugin. It supports audio and video podcasts.

I used to use the Blurry PowerPress plugin for my own site and podcast. Still a solid option if you are using WordPress.

Here is a video from Blubrry explaining how to set up the plugin:

Podcast Audio File Compression Settings

Audio / Video Authority Larry Jordan recommends these audio file settings for spoken word:

MP3 Podcast Compression Settings
For single speaker spoken word files, use:

Mono
Sample rate: 22,100 if your software supports it, otherwise 32,000
Bit rate: 64 kbps (22.1K) or 96 kbps (32K)
VBR encoding if possible, otherwise use CBR

MPEG4 / AAC Podcast Compression Settings
For single speaker spoken word files, use:

Mono
Sample rate: 22,100 if your software supports it, otherwise 32,000
Bit rate: 48 kbps (22.1K) or 56 kbps (32K)
VBR if possible, otherwise CBR

It should be noted that MP3 is the file format to use… for now. The reason is that Spotify, which is responsible for 20% of all podcast downloads, only allows MP3 at this time.

Podcast Resources

There are a lot of resources on the Web to help get you started with podcasting. Apple shows you how to make a podcast here. Of course, with all the help and easy-to-install hardware, there’s gotta be a rub. Here it is: posting a podcast to a platform you own / control takes work. You need your own Web host, you need a tool to create XML files, and there can, though not always be a lot of work that goes into producing a podcast.

Podcasting plugins for WordPress blogs and websites make it really easy to create an XML podcast feed compatible with iTunes.

You need intro music, outro music, topics to talk about, guests (or music), editing time, and you need to promote it. Apple does help you out here though. If your podcast is interesting and good enough, they will feature your podcast on iTunes – for FREE. This is how I found a lot of great podcasts including the DJ Cruze Podcast and Adam Carolla Podcast. Don’t forget that iPhones and other smartphones have built-in audio recorders. It’s great for podcasting on-the-go.

Launching a Podcast

Here’s how to get your podcast in the Apple Podcasts directory.

Create an RSS feed for your podcast. WordPress offers plugins to do this for you. Some services like Libsyn, Anchor, or Soundcloud, the feed creation is done for you.
Log in to Apple Podcasts Connect. Using your Apple ID, log in at podcastsconnect.apple.com
Enter your feed URL and then click “Validate.” Apple will pull your podcast’s feed details (Title, Artwork, Description, etc.)
Click submit.

Apple will give you a confirmation message, letting you know that there may be a review process for your podcast. This is typically within 24 to 48 hours, but can take as long as five days. You will receive an email letting you know if you’re approved. After that, people will be able to find your podcast in the Apple Podcasts app.

Create Audio Content For More Than Podcasts

Audio equipment isn’t just for podcasts. Use audio in personal and business Web sites. I recently used audio in the new version of KenMorico.com after reading in the Mediapedia book how powerful slideshows can be. Audio really does add another dimension to a traditional Web site. It certainly makes a “personal” site more personal. The Web is getting a little more personal than it used to. People are now using their real names and photos on Facebook. Many are using their real names on X / Twitter. (I use my own name on X / Twitter – I highly recommend it.)

Some of the most successful social media personalities use their real name and photo. We are more likely to trust them – giving them instant credibility.

Audio enables professionals looking to create a personal brand the opportunity to showcase their unique offering to the world. With all the people online, don’t you want to stand out? I know I do.

So why should this be a big deal now? HTML5 has been moving forward – allowing any device to play audio from standard Web pages without plugins / or additional software. Mobile phones and tablets can play audio from a Web page with one click and little effort from web page creators. Also, think of all the embedded media we can include on our web pages – SoundCloud, Anchor, YouTube, the list is endless.

Audio for Video Production

Utilizing audio production skills is not just useful for podcasting — it’s also useful for creating video podcasts and YouTube videos. If you can create an audio podcast, you should also create a video version if you are able.

One of the most popular podcasts, The Joe Rogan Experience, produces both a video version and audio version. DO video!

iPhone: the Hidden Digital Audio Recorder for Video

For the longest time, I never really knew how useful a clapperboard was in movie scenes. Turns out, it’s used to mark where audio and video should be synced in post editing. Audio and video are recorded separately for movie and TV production. If you’re an electronics nut like me, you might have used a camcorder that records audio and video together. The problem is camera microphones are usually awful. I thought syncing audio and video would be difficult and something only professionals could do. Not so.

In my video on street photography, I recorded my audio separately from the video in the opening scene. I used a lavaliere microphone for iPhone, made a clap noise with my hands (low-rent, I know!) and made sure the camera captured me clapping my hands. It’s important to have a visual so you know where to sync the audio and video.

I suggest trying this method with your iPhone. Be sure to use the built-in Voice Memos app, click the record button, and lock the phone so you don’t accidentally stop the recording.

Paid Podcast Subscriptions — Are They Feasible?

Having listened to podcasts for years, I always thought to myself that they should charge for the content. According to a Forrester Survey [PayWall], I am in a minority. Only 20% of Internet users would pay for news content. The findings also point to users accessing paid content through different channels – computer, mobile phones, and eReaders.

What is the perfect medium for a multitude of electronic channels? Audio podcasts.

Audio podcasts are a perfect candidate for news monetization. Unlike text, audio can be played on almost any electronic device nowadays. You can play an mp3 file on your tiny iPod when at the gym, listen to it on your laptop at a coffeeshop, listen to it in your car on your way to work, or even play it when in the shower from your desktop computer speakers. It’s just more comfortable and convenient to consume information when in audio format. Plus, audio transmits tones and emotions in voices you just can’t replicate in text.

Will People Pay for Podcasts?

It’s been noted in surveys that people are more likely to pay for finance news or sports news than other content. It makes sense. Finance news directly affects peoples’ wallets, and many people are fervent about sports. So it would seem monetizing content has a lot to do with the category of the content.

So how do you get people to subscribe and pay for content? Give them a free sample. Give them a free sample and make it the best sample they ever tasted. (Bloomberg used iamplify.com to monetize their podcasts.) People need to know or perceive value in order to pay for news.

So can audio podcasts save the news industry? Probably not, but it can help add additional revenue to at least keep them in business – and that would be good news for us all.

Use Podcast Audio for Other Content

The KCET Departures Web site highlights the history of various Los Angeles neighborhoods. The site is wonderfully art directed and deep. It uses “murals” to tell the history of neighborhoods. It combines audio, video, photos and text in an interactive experience.

The reason I mention the site is to demonstrate that audio podcasts can be more than just radio-like audio feeds. They can be combined into greater interactive experiences – as well as radio-like feeds.

Podcasts live a dual life – they live in an Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts feed away from the Web browser, and embedded in Web content like blogs and interactive experiences. Find a way to make your audio content work overtime.

Podcast Using Other People’s Content – Legally

Ever think your own content, while good, isn’t as interesting as watching a newscast with multiple angles and footage and editing that makes it gripping? Fret no more my friends. The Creative Commons Web site allows you to search for images, video, and more using multiple sources. You can then find content other sources have granted for commercial reuse, and add it to your audio or video podcast. You can even submit content of your own to get more exposure. Most content requires you to attribute the source, but this okay since good content providers should attribute sources for material that is not original.

People familiar with open source software will understand the concept of Creative Commons. They are very similar. For example, if you were doing a podcast commentary on Google Buzz, and you found a Creative Commons video of a professor speaking on the subject, you could edit the raw MPEG video file and include clips in your own podcast as reference material. This will certainly make your own podcast more interesting as well as more trustworthy. You could even find images that relate to the topic to include in your podcast cover or video thumbnail. Just find content that allows for commercial use and attribute. Try searching from their homepage and see what you find for your topic.

Of course, there are many levels of license restrictions, so pay attention to the icons for anything Creative Commons. I was explaining to a co-worker about open source software I used to enhance my custom built CRM software. She asked, “Why would anyone give out software for free?” A valid question. Why would anyone blog or podcast for free? To share and get exposure. Good things go around and come back. Besides, not sharing is very 80s.

If you have other suggestions for free content sites, please leave a comment.

Boost Your Marketing with Your Podcast

Audio is a channel just like video, text, Instagram Stories, and billboards. It’s another place to put your message. If your audience listens to podcasts, why wouldn’t you be in their space? Podcast directories allow you the chance to be omnichannel.

I think it’s a large boost to credibility when your podcast is listed in a podcast directory like Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts. Plus, links to your site come from apple.com and google.com.

Podcast directories often have listener comment areas. It’s a chance to further boost your message. The more ratings and comments you get, the higher position the algorithm will reward you with.

Marketing online is a links game. The more relevant links to your online property, the better.

Podcast Promo Codes

A discussion with Hal Werner about trends with podcast promo codes, freemium, and the “theater of the mind.”

Podcast for Your Soul

Speak your soul with a podcast and save yourself!

Everyone has opinions, and podcasting gives you a channel to express them. In fact, I argue that you are doing the world a disservice by NOT podcasting. The reason? People need great content, great opinions, facts, and personality. Content doesn’t reach anyone when it’s not public. You have something to say, right? You can say it better than others, right? Yeah, that’s right.

Podcasting can be a confessional for you. Studies often show that people feel better when they speak about what’s on their mind. You are more likely to build a podcast audience when you are honest about what’s on your mind. People form a relationship with people they trust. There’s nothing more intimate than just a voice and someone’s attention.

Did your mother ever tell you to eat vegetables because it was good for you? What if you ate vegetables and it was good for other people too? In a sense, when you podcast you are helping people in some way. They want to be informed, entertained, or enlightened. Provide that to your fellow man.

As a writer, I find many parallels between podcasting and blogging. Essentially they achieve the same effect – reaching an audience using a medium. Like writers, podcasters become famous because they have something interesting to say, and it’s the way they say it or presents themselves that gains them an audience. Many podcasters are radio personalities that just transitioned to podcasting. Same rules apply. Podcasting IS a form of radio.

Did you ever want to run your own show? Yeah, it’s possible with podcasting. In fact, as I writer, I was always frustrated with copyeditors. I had a great title for an article, but they always came up with something boring, inappropriate, or simply unrelated to the article content. My articles succeeded in spite of this, and were syndicated anyway because of their content. With podcasting, you can name your episodes anything you want. You decide the intro and outro music, your guests, and topics. That’s powerful. Oh, and NO ONE CAN CANCEL YOU OR YOUR SHOW.

Speak your soul and make your podcast happen. We’re all waiting to hear from you.

Produce Podcasts with the Help of the Community

Podcasting is a lot of fun. If you are interested in podcasting, join my LinkedIn group, Podcast Producers. It’s the largest and most popular podcasting group on LinkedIn.

Win Back Friends that Didn’t Like Your Facebook Page

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 06:00:00 GMT

What happened when I asked a few friends and blog readers to like my professional Facebook page? Crickets. 1 like after about 50 invites. I didn’t send requests to all my friends, but a few that I thought would be interested. I wasn’t disheartened, but I’m now starting to change my strategy.

There are two things to consider when getting people to like a Facebook page: understanding the psychological reasons people want to subscribe to a page and mastering the mechanics helping people to click the Like button.

Psychological Reasons Why People Like Facebook Pages

I lot of times we feel that we build a great page, site, or multimedia content and no one is paying attention. We feel there must be something with us. Is our content not good enough? Are we not likable? Did we show up too late and there are giants in the land?

You need to spend some time and think like a user – see the other person’s point of view. Why should they care? We are all bombarded with messages. We need to respect our fan’s time and make our messaging important and useful.

Why People “like” a Facebook Page:

Join a tribe
Stay up-to-date — fear of being irrelevant in an industry
Want to be first to know news
Group think: their friends liked the page so they like the page
Intellectual stimulation
Want to be entertained

Facebook has an entertainment bias, so posts need to be fun or presented in a fun way. Just about every post should have a photo or video. If you’re not good at creating graphics you can use Canva or Adobe Express to make graphics with ease.

Mechanical Ways to Help Users Like Your Facebook Page

Build a Facebook Audience By Inviting Users – I Have an Email Address List

Invite email contacts - Facebook

I used the Build Audience tool in the Facebook Page administration area and imported some email addresses. Pages with fewer than 5,000 likes can have email addresses imported to jumpstart the audience. The import process was simple. If you have an existing list to send to, there’s not really any harm in asking people to like the page as long your expectations are low. I think a better idea is to create an email marketing campaign and ask your real fans to like the page with a link in the email.

Permission Marketing – Filter Your True Fans

There are two ways to get people to like your Facebook Page – hound them, or make them want to like. There’s a form of marketing called permission marketing where users take actions to receive marketing. This is different from interruption marketing where people get messages they didn’t ask to receive or are totally irrelevant. A few ways to get Facebook Page likes: use the like plugin on your blog/website, ask for a like in an email campaign, or spread links on business cards, email signatures, and anywhere your name appears. Facebook Page posts are great, but I’m starting to see real benefits in outbound marketing – Email campaigns.

Email Campaign Difficulties

When I recently started my email campaigns there were some difficulties I didn’t expect:

It took me 6 hours to gather and organize my email lists
It took 3 hours to investigate the right email campaign provider for my needs
High bounce rates can disable your account
It took me 4 hours to create a campaign and create the right graphics

I’ve done email campaigns in the past for clients without difficulty, but spam laws have gotten tougher in recent years and email campaign providers are not taking any risks. They don’t want ISPs to block their emails from other users. Remember, you are on a shared server, so the bad practices of user can affect all users of the service.

ConvertKit – Free Email Marketing

I’m using ConvertKit and have been very impressed with the service. It’s free for basic emailing and reasonable amounts of subscribers (less than 2,000). The one important feature that requires a paid account is autoresponders, but that’s about it. Their drag-and-drop tools are great for non-technical users and the site is fun to use. They have a creator network and ecommerce abilities.

Converting a Personal Facebook Profile to a Facebook Page a Good Idea?

Many people that visit my viral post Separate Personal and Business with Facebook Pages want information on converting their personal Facebook profile to a business page. This is a bad idea. As you can see, the people that want to be your friend and the people that want to follow you are different. Forcing them to follow you through a profile conversion would leave a bad taste. The feature was a good idea when brands could only create Facebook profiles and pages didn’t exist. Now people should know better.

To keep updated on personal branding strategies including the use of social media, subscribe free to The Morico Letter.

Resources

The Morico Letter
Separate Personal and Business with Facebook Pages