Everything But the Posts

Tips, Advice, and Templates from a Blogger Who Has Been in Your Shoes

25 Blogging And Social Media Tips From Jon Acuff’s #5Club

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As I mentioned last week, a few months ago I was able to attend one of Jon Acuff’s #5Club sessions, which was actually a #3club for me (since it was held at 3am Tucson time). The pages of notes I took at his hour long meeting of the minds outnumbered the notes I took during the conference I attended that weekend. I left with a lot of life lessons and a bunch of blogging and social media tips that I’m going to share with you today.

These are not life-changing snippets of information.

To be honest, you probably know most of this already.

Why are they so fantastic then?

If you’re anything like me, you conveniently push these bits of knowledge into the back of your brain and need some reminding every once in a while. Or (also if you’re like me), you know bits and pieces of this information and it’s helpful when someone puts it all together for you.

Need some quick Blogging and Social Media Tips? These are great reminders of how to be the best "you" that you can be–straight from Jon Acuff.

1. Never waste multiple posts in one. Attention spans are short, so keep each post to the point–one point.

2. Nobody wants super long blog posts. See #1.

3. Tweet each post three times. Each tweet should be at a different time of day with a different title.

4. Don’t be the boy who cried retweet. If you retweet everything in your stream, people won’t pay attention to you anymore. Share your favorites, nothing more or less.

5. Do not use unfollow services or tweet unfollows. People follow and unfollow for many different reasons–that’s ok. No need to be alerted every time someone decides to unfollow you.

Number6

7. Keep Google Analytics at arm’s length. Check it , but not too often. Like #5, you’ll drive yourself crazy monitoring clicks.

8. Use 9 point lists. Ask readers to add a 10th item.

Number9

10. Along those lines… Your time is expensive. Don’t share it with haters.

11. To grow your community, extend your networks. Leave blog comments on similar blogs once a day, everyday. It’s a conversation!

12. Do you have a great seasonal post? Plan to share it next season. Set up calendar alerts or a spreadsheet to keep track of your seasonal posts–holidays, back to school, winter blues…

13. Re-share your old posts. Maybe current readers weren’t around back when you originally posted. I’m also a fan of category buttons and favorite post buttons on sidebars!

Number9

15. Put your phone down. You’ve never heard someone say, “Enough about me. Why don’t you check twitter?”

16. Pay your kids $1 every time you tweet. When you’re with them, it’s their time.

17. Pinterest Tip: Start broad, then specialize your boards.

18. The hardest part of blogging is… you have to blog.

19. Have writer’s block? That’s why the list was invented.

Number20

21. If 3-4 people said it, 40 people thought it. Remember that when you get a suggestion.

22. Write about issues, not individuals. Period. Nobody likes to be the subject of someone’s blog post.

23. Give a “how/wow” disclaimer to your spouse. Sometimes when you share a thought with your spouse you need a “Wow, that’s awesome!” and not a “How are you going to do that?” Especially if your spouse isn’t a blogger, this gives them a way to respond when you pitch them your latest and greatest idea (after thinking about it all day and not being able to share with anyone).

24. The most powerful marketing/blogging tool is honesty. When you blog, you go first. Be honest and tell it like it is. You’re giving your readers the gift of going second. It’s always easy to go second, right?

25. Booty God Booty. Yes, you read that right. I even Instagrammed it from the #5club.

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I’ll let Jon tell you about that:

For bloggers, I think that means to keep it real.

Don’t let your review blogger self look different than your mom blogger self.

Don’t tell your readers how great a product is and then turn around and tell your neighbor how much it stinks.

Don’t represent yourself to your readers differently than you represent yourself to your friends.

What would you add to Jon’s list of blogging and social media tips?

Dang it. I didn’t listen to #8.

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Comments

  2. I didn’t even know they had a service that notifies you when people unfollow on Twitter! I have no idea how anyone could keep up with that. I do have an unsubscription notifier for my email newsletter, just so that if there’s some kind of technical issues or something that comes up and inspires mass unsubscriptions, I would be aware of it. Fortunately that’s never happened, LOL! Thanks for sharing your tips, these are good reminders and many are things I have on my “To-do” list and never have time for. Isn’t it funny how running the business of blogging is so time consuming that we end up with no time to blog? LOL!

    • Oh yes! It’s not a nice service–really, who needs to keep up with every unfollow?

      I feel the same way. The business part takes way more time than the writing part!

  3. Thank you SO much for sharing these! I need to print them out an keep them on my desk. I always feel silly tweeting links to a blog post more than once in a day but I have to remember that often times I don’t take the time to scroll through twitter so if it wasn’t tweeted in the last few hours I would have missed it!

    • Twitter moves so much faster than other social media networks. Don’t feel bad–tweet away!

  6. I love this list! And you’re right, even the things you’ve heard before are valuable enough to be repeated. Thanks for sharing this!

  10. Look! I’m doing number 11 already! I really enjoyed the post. Some of the things I do already but I got some great new ideas as well. Thanks!

  11. This is awesome! I just moved my blog to my own domain and have been wondering what to do about driving traffic and how to use social media. I’m not very good at promoting myself. Thanks for posting this!

  12. Thanks for sharing this list, Becca. You’re right, these are all things we SHOULD know but most of us never do. I’m going to benefit from this post (and hopefully my readers will as well!).

  14. Thank you for this – I am pretty new to Twitter [@LifeGuidance] and Blogging so this is so helpful – and has clarified other stuff I’ve heard like same tweet x 3 times etc. And my daughter is going to love No. 16 :)

    Will also be passing this link on to others – I know it will help them too.

    Thank you again.

    Stephanie

  18. Thanks for sharing these Becca! You are right, it’s hard to keep all of these things in mind all of the time. A few really struck out at me that I could be more attentive to. I particularly liked #8 (heehee) and it got my mind going on how I could creatively use this. Have a “happi” week! :):)

  21. I sort of find myself scratching my head with number 5. Others have made good points that the multiple tweets on the same topic are okay, as if the roles were reversed they’d have missed it. I suppose I wonder how many people use twitter for semi rss feed subscription? Would that even be a reason for people to follow on twitter, to get notification of your blog posts?

  22. Thanks for posting this list from Jon Acuff. I am reading his book Quitter now and searched for his work shops and found your blog.