I would play the latest and greatest shooting game here and there, but sports games is where I spent majority of my video game time. I grew up before the internet was everywhere, so I didn’t start playing online until around my senior year of high school.

At that time, I played a lot of Madden. Something a lot of people may not know is that at one point, I was ranked in the Top 100 of online Madden Players in the world. I played a lot of Madden…A LOT!

There were not many ways to make money off of video games back then. Maybe a few bets here and there with friends, but nothing online.

Fast forward another 10 years and eSports started to become a thing, but people were still laughing at it. People were saying it’s just a dream, it’s not sustainable, it’s just an excuse to want to play video games.

Told My Wife it’s Time to Quit

I can remember sitting down and explaining to my wife why I need to quit my job and just start playing video games full-time online and how I could make so much more money than I could running a business.

She laughed at me.

Let’s look at life earlier this year.

eSports were now on TV. People are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year playing video games online and at in-person competitions and events.

Now, let’s look at life during the COVID-19 pandemic.

eSports are the ONLY thing that we have.

iRacing from NASCAR is huge.

The NBA is running a players tournament that is being played on ESPN.

People are watching others play video games for hours. You can even watch eLeague sports on TNT and TBS in primetime.

People are streaming Madden simulated games (and also betting on them).

Just go check out Twitch and you will see what I’m talking about.

eSports are not a joke. It is not going anywhere. In fact, it is only going to grow from this.

The post Remember When People Were Laughing at eSports? appeared first on Chris Stocker Inc.

As I got into high school, I started to fall in love with the house flipping tv shows. If I wasn’t watching sports, I was watching some sort of flipping show on either HGTV or A&E at the time.

I also loved finance. That was my ultimate, dream job. To be a Financial Analyst in some high-rise in the middle of Manhattan.

So, when I went to Florida Atlantic University, I decided that I was going to major in Business Administration and Real Estate Finance. I was going to combine my two passions.

Well, I ended up graduating with a double major and a degree in both, so that part of the plan worked……the rest of it?

Not so much.

2008 Real Estate Market Crash

While I was in college, I started an internship working for a medical, mail order supply company. I started out stuffing envelopes and worked my way up to Affiliate Manager pretty quickly, and about 10 other roles in the small business.

This was in 2008.

I was beginning to study to take my real estate licensing exam when my manager at the time told me how bad of an idea that would be to get my real estate license during 2008.

I agreed with him and never pursued getting my license.

I also went on to self-teach myself SEO and other forms of digital marketing and that is how I started my own digital marketing consulting business, which I have been doing since 2009.

Making the Decision to Get My Real Estate License

Fast-forward to January 2019.

I had a discussion with my wife about how it’s been over 10 years since I first wanted to get my real estate license and it’s something I always wanted to do, so why not just do it?

So, that’s exactly what I did.

Online Real Estate Courses

I signed up for online courses at Real Estate Express.

I knew that I wanted to do online classes because I wanted to be able to learn at my own pace, as well, whenever I wanted to. There were nights that I was doing classes until 2-3 in the morning, just so I could get my license that much faster.

I would have completed all the courses in under 45 days, however, in the middle of the classes, my daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes…..just like me.

That definitely threw a big bump into the journey of getting my license, but we worked through it. In April, 2019 I took my PA real estate salesperson licensing exam and passed on my first try…..I actually only got 3 questions wrong on the entire test!

License to Sell!

I started working immediately. I drove to the state capitol in Harrisburg and picked up my license directly from them and went home later that day and started hitting the phones and prospecting.

It’s been almost a year and it’s been a crazy ride. It’s been even more fun that I was expecting and it’s been a lot of crazy hours.

Things are definitely different than just working from home all day, every day, as I did for 10 years as a digital marketing consultant. I wouldn’t change a thing.

If you have ever thought about getting your real estate license, or doing anything that you are passionate about, then just go do it. Stop with all of the excuses and just do it.

The post Why I Became a Realtor appeared first on Chris Stocker Inc.

So, to say that I am super excited about Snapchat’s latest feature, is a complete understatement.

If you haven’t heard yet, Snapchat is now allowing you to add links to your Snaps!

This is a game-changer.

Game-changer, I hate that word, but I’m using it anyway.

Instagram has slowly been rolling out allowing users to add links and let viewers “Swipe Up” to go to a link. That feature is great for Instagram because currently you have to leave a Story or post and go to the user’s profile and “Click the Link in Bio”

In Snapchat, it was even more difficult to drive traffic to a website.

You would have to ask your viewers to take a screenshot of your Snap with the URL in it and then they would have to leave Snap to open up a browser on their phone and type in that URL.

Not many people were doing that.

That does not mean that Snapchat wasn’t building value for brands, but let’s not get into that discussion just yet.

Now with links included in the Snap, the sky is the limit. Let’s say you just wrote a new article on your site, or you have a new video up on YouTube. You can now use Snap to give a little preview with a link to the full article or video.

Want to have a coupon code specifically for people that follow you on Snap? Perfect, now, not only can you include the coupon code, but also a link directly to your sales landing page.

As a digital marketer, I have been waiting for Snapchat to release this.

I have been slowly winning the battles with clients to just try Snapchat, and now this is just going to make it so much easier.

This is a short article because I’m not going to repeat myself on why you should use Snapchat for business. You can just read that article to find out.

Happy Snapping.

The post Snapchat’s Latest Feature is a Game Changer appeared first on Chris Stocker Inc.

I had been hesitant in the past to use LeadPages because I didn’t know how much I would actually utilize it. But then I tried it and there’s no going back.

Before I even get into why I love LeadPages so much I want to provide the link for their 14 day FREE trial. Just sign up for free and you can see why I love it so much.

Remember, the link above is an affiliate link, full disclosure.

But I wouldn’t be sharing it if I didn’t love the product and service.

Here’s why I love LeadPages so much.

Ease of Use

There’s not many things in love easier than a drag and drop model. In some instances, drag and drop models are not the best options. Sometimes it’s best to hand code something from scratch and design from the bottom up. But that can get expensive.

The pre-built themes can be used as is without even needing to add anything. Just simply change out the text and images to reflect what you are selling or promoting and bam that’s it.

Of course you can add or change anything that is in the pre-built themes if you need to.

No Designers Needed

Coming from someone who owns a digital marketing agency that sells web design as a service, this hurts me to say, but these pre-built landing pages can be used by anyone, even without a design / developer background.

LeadPages has a team of designers who create these templates and they work!

Paying a designer for every single landing page that you want to create can cost thousands of dollars (and trust me, if you want to do that, go right ahead, contact me first to help you with it), but if you want to be able to create landing pages yourself, then this is your tool.

Hiring designers to create landing pages is definitely not in the budget for most people.

Try the 14 free trial and design as much as you want to see how you well you like it before you move to the paid version.

WordPress Integration

First let me know say LeadPages integrates with just about anything out there, but I’m a huge WordPress fan, so that’s why I’m mentioning it. I use WordPress for all my sites that I own. I also recommend WordPress to just about anyone.

All you have to do is create your landing page in LeadPages, install a plugin for WordPress and the page will automatically sync. You can choose a custom URL for this landing page for SEO purposes and create meta data and everything!

AWeber Integration

Like I mentioned above, I use AWeber so that’s why this is important to me, but they do offer integration to other email services as well. MailChimp, Constant Contact, Drip, etc.

Majority of my landing pages are set up as lead pages and when a user submits their email, it goes right into AWeber and starts the auto responder series from there.

Everything working together just makes everything so much easier.

Another thing you would need to have hard coded by a designer and developer if you wanted to do this all from scratch.

Professional Designs

I mentioned this briefly above as part of the ease of use section, but the professional pre-made designs that LeadPages offer is incredible. Here are a few screenshots of their pre-built landing pages that you can just simply edit.

These designs are also responsive, so you don’t have to worry about mobile users not converting.

For Any Profession

These landing pages can be adapted for any one in any profession. Some of them are already custom made towards specific industries. For example, webinar sign up landing pages with a count down clock. This same time of design can be used for anyone who is launching a product on a specific date and you want to keep people excited.

Templates for realtors who have a new home going on the market or promoting an upcoming open house.

Other pre-made templates for lead generation that help you get people to sign up for a course, a white-paper, you name it, it’s there.

New book coming out? You guessed it, there’s a pre-built theme for that.

Not sure if they have something for you, then sign up for the 14 day free trial. What do you have to lose for just signing up and seeing what they have?

Now that you see why I love LeadPages so much, go ahead and check it out for yourself and form your own opinion.

I already know you’re going to love it.

LeadPages will cause one problem however.

It’s going to call you out on not acting on your ideas. With being able to make landing pages so easily now, you have NO excuses to not do it and start selling more.

What can you expect to pay after the 14 day free trial? Their monthly offers start at $25/mo. For most users you can get away with the Standard account unless you want to set up A/B split testing, then you’re looking at closer to $50/mo.

$25/mo after the free trial.

That’s it.

That’s 5 less trips to Starbucks (maybe even less than that) to help grow your business.

The post Why I Love LeadPages – LeadPages Review appeared first on Chris Stocker Inc.

Social media is actually really easy. Just like anything in life that is easy, people must try to make it more difficult than it really is.

With that being said, does that mean that everyone can be a successful social media manager, community manager, etc.?

No.

Let me explain why.

Like the title of this post states, social media is easy, really easy. Let’s just take the first word of the phrase “social media”, which is ‘social’. Being social can mean a lot of different things, in this case, it just means being social on the internet. Let’s think about being social in person to give this example.

Going to a party

You are going to a party with a friend and it’s a new crowd of people, some you may have seen before, but majority of them you’ve never met before. When you walk into that party and you get introduced to people how does the conversation go?

Do you say – “Hi, my name is Tom and I sell widgets. Here’s 5 reasons why my widgets are better than the widget competitor. Also, if you want to buy some widgets right now, then you can use this code. Here’s another 5 reasons why you need widgets in your life.”

If you answered “yes” to that being how you would introduce yourself to a new group of people at party, well, you’re most likely failing at life as well.

You would never do that at a party. So, why would you do that on social media?

Take a look at your Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram profile. Is it filled with only your own articles, products, coupon codes, you, you, you, you, you?

If it is, do you think people want to interact with you?

Absolutely not!

Once again, social media is really easy!

Happy Birthday at a Wedding

Here’s another example.

If you’re attending a wedding, would you show up to the wedding with balloons and a card that says, “Happy Birthday!”

If you do, then you may be the clown of the group, but you most likely wouldn’t.

What does that have to do with social media?

Simple.

Each platform is different.

Facebook images are different sizes than Twitter images. People react to different types of images and videos on Instagram than they do on Twitter. So, why would you just automatically share the same post to all your social media outlets at the same time? Why post something for Facebook onto Twitter?

Why bring a Happy Birthday card to a Wedding?

It’s simple. It really is.

What’s that, another example of how people make social media more difficult than it needs to be?

OK.

Party at Your Place…..Or Maybe Not

We’re going back to a party, in fact, we’re throwing the party this time. And we invite everyone over to our new house for this great announcement and information we want to share with everyone.

Except, when they get to the house, we tell them, never mind, you have to go down the street to the neighbors house to get it. But, then make sure to come back here for more.

Ever see this happen on social media?

I have.

A lot.

Here’s how: You have your Facebook account linked to your Twitter, so every time you post to Facebook it tweets out a message with a link to send people to Facebook. So, people who are on Twitter have to leave Twitter, to go over to Facebook to see what you have to say, then come back to Twitter to continue browsing……wait, no they didn’t.

Instead, they just didn’t click on the link to Facebook because, well, they aren’t on Facebook right now, they are on Twitter.

Why would you force people who are on one social media platform to go to another?

Why not talk to them where they are at already?

That would be the simple thing to do.

Is it the quickest and fastest way to do it?

No.

But it’s a lot more effective.

Social Media User vs. Social Media Marketer

But, that’s the difference between someone who truly understand social media strategy and how humans work and interact and someone who just knows how to upload a message to Hootsuite and blast out to one post to 10 different networks. Sounds like a great idea, until you see the engagement levels.

Here’s what you can do to help increase those engagement levels and make your social media efforts really easy. It’s going to require you to put in some work, but as long as you’re not afraid to outwork your competition, then you should be OK.

Monitor Your Social Media Analytics

Time

Take a look at your Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, Instagram data and find out when your followers are most active. Just scheduling a post every morning at 9:00 am is not going to get the job done. Test different times, days, multiple times a day, etc. You may find that you need to post in the morning for Facebook, afternoon for Twitter and night time for Instagram.

Type of Content

More than likely an image is going to do better than just text and a video with sub-titles may do better than the image. But you don’t know until you test and look at the data. The video may do great on Facebook, but an image may do better on Twitter. This is why it’s so important to know your data and figure out what receives the most engagement from your audience.

Long Form vs Short Form

This is an area of debate amongst social media “experts”. Which is better on Facebook and Instagram, long form or short form content? Well, the answer is. It depends. It depends on what works best for you.

However, I have seen short form and I have seen long form and I will take the long form majority of the time.

A lot of the time, people are afraid to write more than a sentence or two plus a link in a Facebook update or Instagram post.

Why?

Why not write an entire 500 word blog post in an Instagram post with an attention grabbing image?

Why not write an entire article as your Facebook status with a link to your call-to-action?

Here’s the usual answer:

You don’t want to put in the work. You won’t to be the status quo. You just want to do what you think everyone else is doing.

Try Long Form Content

Just do yourself a favor and try it.

Your next Facebook update, write 2 paragraphs, then double it the next time. Test the engagement.

You must keep this in mind though:

If your content sucks, it doesn’t matter if it’s short form or long form, it’s going to suck and people are not going to engage.

Use these analytics tips to help make your social media management easy again.

Think about the real life social examples before you post your next social media message.

It is OK to talk about yourself. But you don’t want to be the one in the room that is constantly talking about themselves and not engaging with others and asking about them.

Make social media easy again.

The post Social Media is Really Easy appeared first on Chris Stocker Inc.

Top 10 Business Tools

Hey, what’s going on everybody? Chris Stocker here. Today, I’m talking about the 10 tools that I use on a daily basis to help manage my business. If you own a business, whether you’re a freelancer or you own a business with multiple employees like a digital-marketing agency, you probably use a lot of tools. There are so many tools out there for everything you could possibly need. There’s thousands of tools for everything whether it’s a task management, project management, accounting, cloud storage, whatever it is there’s a lot of tools. I’ve used a lot of them. I’ve tried a lot of them. I just want to share what I use every single day. These are my top 10 tools that I use. They work for me. They work for my business. These are in no particular order of importance or how often I use them or anything like that.

Asana

The first one is Asana. I’ve used a lot of different project management apps, Asana is by far my favorite. I love that I can schedule a task for other people. I can see where they are at in the process of that and we can keep our communication all together within Asana. I know a lot of these other tools do it as well but Asana is just the one that I prefer. I really do like Asana. I use that every single day to track what I need to do, what my employees are working on, or what my other contractors are working on, and it just keeps everything in one place.

Google Drive

Number two is Google Drive. I use Google Drive for everything, not just for storing documents but also using Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides. It’s just so much easier for me. I’m traveling a lot, so I can do things whether it’s on my iMac, or on the iPad Pro, whatever it is, the phone, I can do it within the Google Drive platform.

Hootsuite

Number three is Hootsuite. I use Hootsuite for my social media management. I like it because it does have a pretty decent team collaboration effort that you can use within that. I have team members that can upload social media statuses and then I can approve them before they go live or a client can approve them before they go live. I do use the paid version, obviously, just because there’s so many accounts that we are managing but that’s what I personally like at this time.

AWeber

Number four is for email list. Now, I just switched over to AWeber. I haven’t been using it for a very long time. It’s only been less than 30 days but so far, I absolutely love it. That’s what I use for sending out email blasts, email newsletters.

Freshbooks

Number five is Freshbooks and that is my accounting software. I absolutely love Freshbooks. It’s just so clean. It makes you feel like you’re not doing accounting work. It’s so simple to invoice, to track hours, everything. I absolutely love Freshbooks.

LeadPages

Number six is Leadpages. Again, this is something else that I just recently started using. So far, I absolutely love it. It’s so easy with their drag and drop model. It’s just so easy to create compelling landing pages that actually convert and that’s all that matters. It is paid but it pays for itself, trust me. I mean it is absolutely amazing.

iMovie

Number seven is iMovie. Currently, I’m using iMovie to edit these videos. I don’t need anything else at this time. I know that there are a lot more powerful software in order to do movie editing but right now iMovie works for me and does what I needed to do so at this point that’s what I’m using.

Feedly

Number eight is Feedly. I use Feedly for all my news to stay up-to-date. In this industry, it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest trends, especially in the SEO world, there’s always something new coming out from Google about their algorithm or this or that and there’s so many Instagram updates you know like stories, live, and now folders. Once again, a lot of other RSS feeders, readers, whatever you call them, this is just one that I choose. It’s simple, I like it. It allows me to save things, to save for later reading. I definitely recommend Feedly.

Moz

Number nine is Moz. As somebody that does a lot of SEO work for clients, I prefer Moz. Moz is my go-to SEO tool. I love their reporting. I love everything about Moz. I think they are the industry leader and I love their products and what they put out.

Native Apps

Finally, number ten. Number ten is just the social media sites themselves so Facebook Instagram, Snap, Twitter. Even though I use Hootsuite for a lot of management, I also like to get into the native apps as well, especially with Snap obviously, I can’t do anything with that through Hootsuite so I live in Snapchat, go follow me right over here. Take a screenshot of this snap code right here. Go follow me there. You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, obviously YouTube.

So there are my ten tools that I use every single day in order to help run my business. A lot of these tools I used when I was just a solo freelancer that was just doing work myself. I use Freshbooks for billing hours, invoicing. I use Asana to just track my own tasks. I always use Moz. So, a lot of these tools can be used for freelancing or large businesses.

Down in the comments let me know what tools you’re using. I’m always open to new tools you know. It’s just how you use the tools is what’s really important so I’m curious to know what you’re using so go ahead comment below, down here. Please like, share this video. If you want to see more, let me know what your questions are. I’d love to answer your actual questions. That’s it. So, subscribe, have a good day. See you!

The post Top 10 Business Tools Video appeared first on Chris Stocker Inc.

Please like, share and subscribe.

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I have owned several different iPads throughout the years, but when my Macbook Pro was starting to run a bit slower and was becoming a problem in running my business, I had to decide if the latest iPad Pro was going to be something that I could use to manage my business.

I do use a 27″ iMac at my desk, but since I work outside of the office so often, I need something that is reliable and powerful enough to handle everything that I need to do without skipping a beat from the iMac. Well, the iPad Pro has been that solution.

I’ve been using an iPad Pro to run my digital marketing agency for a few months now, and I couldn’t be happier.

Here are a few of the apps that I use to help manage my business:

Asana

There are a lot of different apps out there for project management and team collaboration, but this has been the one that works best for me and my team. I’ve used Trello in the past, but have found that Asana has cut down on a lot of email communication and can easily track conversations a lot easier. I can do everything on this app that I can from a desktop.

Google Drive

This is a no-brainer. Our team utilizes Google Docs / Sheets (etc.) for pretty much everything. This app can easily be used on an iPad Pro just as easily as it can be on a desktop.

Hootsuite

What would a digital marketing agency be without a social media service to schedule posts? Like project management apps, there are a lot out there and it’s important to use what works for you and your team. For us, that is Hootsuite when it comes to social media management.

Mailchimp

Clients need newsletters created, reviewed, scheduled, and analyzed? No problem, I use the Mailchimp app directly on the iPad Pro to accomplish all of this.

Canva

I have been using Canva since it basically was released. Canva has saved our team hours upon hours of time by not having to create custom graphics from scratch. The Canva app for the iPad Pro is amazing. Especially with the Apple Pencil. I am able to create custom graphics with ease within the Canva app, just like I could from my iMac.

iMovie

There were two main things that I never could do on my previous iPads. One was web development (which I can easily do on the iPad Pro now) and movie editing. Well, with the iPad Pro and the iMovie app, I can edit just as well as I can on the iMac.

Freshbooks

We have to invoice and bill for all of this work we’re doing right? The Freshbooks app is just as easy as the desktop version and can be done on the iPad Pro with zero issues.

The post How I Run a Digital Marketing Agency from an iPad Pro appeared first on Chris Stocker Inc.

One of the most frequently asked questions is simply, how do I start my own business?

This is a loaded question obviously, and it definitely has a loaded answer.

The very first answer is, you have to want it. You can’t question whether or not you want to own your own a business, because as soon as you start to question it, you’re going to fail.

Why do I say that?

You never know when you are actually ready to do something until you actually do it. You can plan and plan and plan for days, months, years and then first day of operations something happen that you didn’t plan for and all of your planning meant nothing.

You have to be willing to just take the risk of losing everything and just do. You want to start a web design company, just start designing websites. You want to start a fishing supply dropship site, just do it.

The longer you think about whether or not you should do it, and start asking yourself all of the what-if’s the longer it is that you’re going to NOT act on your plan. This is what a want-trepreneur does. Talks about their amazing business, but doesn’t actually do it. “Man, if I had a fishing business I’d be so happy and have so much money, blah blah blah.”

Then why don’t you just go do it?

Are you waiting for your second life and second  trip on this earth?

Stop talking about starting a business and go do it.

Now.

The post Stop Talking About Starting a Business and Go Do It appeared first on Chris Stocker Inc.

I will be focusing less on the “How-To’s” of WordPress and Google Analytics and SEO, etc. and will be writing more about entrepreneurship, leadership, freelancing, and a much higher level strategy based look at SEO and Social.

The How-To’s and step-by-step posts will continue over at my digital marketing agency site.

If you have any specific questions about entrepreneurship, freelancing, Snapchat, Facebook ads, Instagram stories, then please leave a comment or contact me with your question and I will answer in a post.

The post The All New Chris Stocker Inc appeared first on Chris Stocker Inc.