Steps

Truck Driving Career: How to Become a Truck Driver in 7 Easy Steps

49.3 million tons – that’s how much freight the U.S. transportation system moved every day in 2015. These shipments, packages, and parcels were worth around $52.5 billion.

Of all methods of transportation used, trucks come out on top. The trucking industry takes care of about 70% of all freight in the U.S. every year.

No wonder then, that the country is seeing a shortage on truck drivers. Experts estimate that within the next 10 years, the U.S. would need at least 890,000 truckers. Especially with the continuous rise in e-commerce and online shoppers.

All this has opened many truck driving career options to interested truckers.

So… Are you one of those who’ve always wanted to know what it feels to be behind the wheels of these massive machines? If so, then check out this guide we’ve made that’ll help you do exactly that!

1. Figure Out if a Truck Driving Career Is Really for You

As with any other career, you first want to answer the question, “Is truck driving a good career?” You want to make sure it fits you and your income goals.

Speaking of income, truck driver salary in 2017 averaged $44,500 across all states. Keep in mind that’s only the average, as salaries vary based on many factors, such as experience. There’s also the specific type of trucking and of course, the employer.

Experience is a huge determiner in the trucking industry. Those with about five years of trucking experience under their belt can earn around $55,000 a year. Working for the same company also increases the chance of seeing a salary increase.

Some trucking jobs, like those who drive for performers and artists, also earn more. The same is true for truckers who transport hazardous chemicals or fuels.

That said, once you’re sure you want truck driving as a career, choose which industry you want to work in. Especially since some sectors, like hazardous chemical transport, require a specific license.

2. Determine if You Have the Personal Qualifications

Next up, be sure you have what it takes to be a trucker. One of the most important is the ability to work independently, most of the time even alone. Also, keep in mind that many jobs may involve up to 11 hours of “daily driving”.

Since you can expect long hours of daily driving, you should have the physical stamina for it. You also need power and energy for loading and unloading the freight you move.

You should also have a sense of responsibility and a squeaky-clean driving record. Timeliness and stress management skills are also important to become a good trucker.

Plus, it’s important to have in-depth know-how of truck mechanics. You need to know when to change tires and have at least a basic understanding of truck maintenance.

3. Meet the Minimum Requirements

You should be at least 21 years old before you can drive a commercial truck. Also, most employers need their applicants to have finished high school. Some accept a GED equivalent though, so be sure to check with your potential employers.

A commercial’s driver license (CDL) is also mandatory. But before you can get a CDL, you first need to pass your state’s regular driver’s license examination.

4. Decide on the Type of CDL to Get

CDL drivers can only drive what their license allows them to. That’s because there are several CDL classifications, from A to C.

The type of license dictates the maximum size vehicle you can operate. It also dictates the specific type of vehicles you can drive. It even specifies what kind of freight and load you can legally move and transport.

The license with the least restrictions is the Class A CDL. With this license, you can drive any size vehicle, including tractor-trailer combinations. It also lets you move loads weighing more than 26,001 pounds.

Having a Class B license lets you drive single vehicles with a total weight of more than 26,001 pounds.

A Class C license gives you the authority to drive any vehicle outside of the A and B Classes. But it’s reserved for carrying and moving hazardous materials. Class C CDL drivers may also carry and move sixteen or more occupants (including the driver).

5. Get Your CDL Training

Once you’ve decided which type of CDL you want, next is to get the training for it! There are institutions that provide exactly that, such as the Truck Driver Institute.

Depending on the CDL classification you want, program lengths vary. If you’re interested in becoming a HAZMAT driver, then expect more training.

Consider getting the highest level of CDL qualification. This way, you’ll have more job opportunities even if your first job only needs a Class B or C license.

6. Pass the CDL Exam

CDL exam procedures vary from state to state, although most consist of both a written and a road skills exam. You need to pass both so you can get your license.

In general, the written test analyzes your knowledge of truck driving and road laws. It’ll also test you about other essential trucking safety regulations.

As for the road skills test, a state-licensed examiner will ask you to drive a commercial vehicle. You need to show them your actual driving skills in this test.

7. Seek Help from a Job Placement Service

Most reputable CDL training schools offer their students job placement services. That’s why you’d want to choose an institution that also provides this kind of assistance.

Aside from your school, truck driving associations can also help you find your first job. Make sure you also check reputable websites for job openings, such as Indeed or Monster.

Get Started with Your Career as a Pro Trucker

You can get started on your commercial truck driving career as soon as you hold a license! But since the entire process takes quite some time, it’s best you start Step 1 as soon as possible. The sooner you do, the sooner you can get behind the wheel.

As soon as you’re ready for your first truck driving job, accessorize! Check out this list of best truck accessories every trucker should have.

How to Write an Advertisement: Essential Steps for Pawn Shop Owners

Owning a pawn shop means you need to wear many hats. Not only are you running a business, but you’re also a bit of a banker in that you sometimes provide temporary loans to customers.

And you need to be a bit of a historian to help you determine the value of the varied items that people sell to you. While it’s never a dull moment, you also have to figure out how to drive new customers in through your doors.

For most business owners, advertising is the hardest part of running a business. Keep reading to learn how to write an advertisement that captures the attention of those most likely to visit a pawn shop.

If You Want to Know How to Write an Advertisement, Know Who Your Niche Customers Are

Not everyone is going to be your customers. Part of advertisement writing is determining who is most likely to visit your pawn shop and make a purchase. These people are your niche or core customers.

Make a list of the common traits you see in your customers. Their age groups, financial situation, and even their hobbies will help you determine the best sources to place your advertisement so they’re most likely to see it.

Help Them Solve Their Problems

If you want to know how to prepare an advertisement, take a look at what keywords other pawn shops are using in their advertisements. In most cases, you’ll find that the keywords most often used are helping people solve their problems.

Helping someone solve their problems not only appeals to their logical side, it appeals to their emotional side as well. And when you can do that, you’ll find customers start to flock to your pawn shop.

Look at Other Written Advertisement Examples

Take a look at advertisement writing examples. The examples that capture your attention the most are the ones you should try to emulate.

Use words that help answer common questions customers ask you. Use a headline that can’t help but capture and hold their attention.

But good advertising is more than just words. Use images that hold their attention and make them take notice. Everything you place in your advertisement counts whether it’s a word, image, or headline.

Tell a Story That Connects With Your Customers

When you’re learning how to prepare an advertisement, you need to learn how to tell a compelling story. Content is king, no matter if it’s a blog or an advertisement.

Tell a story that grabs their attention right away. People are bombarded with advertising all the time and have become immune to paying attention to anything that doesn’t immediately grab their attention.

Start off by sharing a story they can’t help but relate to and you’ve got a captive audience.

Include a Call to Action

If you really want to know how to write an advertisement example that captures people’s attention, don’t forget to include a call to action. People need to know exactly what their next steps should be.

Great examples for pawn shops are phrases like, “come in and see our latest inventory before its gone” and “stop by soon”. You want to include a sense of urgency in the message so they take action as soon as possible.

Keep Learning

Learning how to write an advertisement isn’t a one-time lesson. There’s always something you can learn to help capture the attention of new customers.

Our blog articles can help. Keep coming back to learn the latest tips in content marketing to make your business the success story it deserves to be.

How to Grow Your Blog in 5 Simple Steps

You’ve come up with the perfect subject for your blog, you’ve taken a few beautiful photographs, and you’ve even brainstormed your overall site design.

But after you write and publish your first post, you realize that no one is reading it. Your blog traffic is consistent — but it’s consistently at zero.

You need to learn how to grow your blog — before you give up on it altogether.

Keep on reading this post to find out how to make it happen in as few as five simple steps.

1. Conduct Keyword Research

The first step in learning how to increase traffic to your blog?

Make sure that you’re taking the time to conduct thorough and relevant keyword research.

You can use tools like this one to help you to figure out exactly what people are typing into search engines in order to connect with the products and services you offer. You’ll also better understand the most popular keywords relating to your industry as a whole.

For example, if you’re a bridesmaids dress shop, keywords might be things like “bridesmaids dress trends,” “best bridesmaid dresses,” or even “affordable bridesmaid gowns.”

When it comes to the placement of those keywords?

You won’t get the traffic generation that you want by just peppering them randomly in your content. You’ll also need to put them in image file names, titles, video descriptions, and even image captions.

Also, ensure that you’re properly optimizing your keywords for local searchers. This means you should include a few longtail phrases that contain your main keyword followed by the city, state, or general service area that your business operates within.

2. Share on Social Media

As you’ve likely already expected, you can’t write a post on how to get blog followers without discussing just how much of an influence social media has on your overall traffic.

After you finish a blog post, share it on your social media accounts, like your Facebook Business page or link it in the bio of your Instagram account. Be sure that you select a captivating and relevant thumbnail image to accompany the posts.

This will encourage more people to click on it.

Keep in mind that social media is an especially effective way to learn how to grow your blog because it allows your followers and friends to share the content you create.

This leads to a cost-effective advertising strategy that allows you to broaden your target market and get serious mileage out of every post you write.

3. Don’t Forget the Comments Section

So far in this post, we’ve discussed blogging techniques that will help you to learn how to build an audience.

However, if you want to continue to generate traffic and ensure that you have loyal readers, you’ll also need to focus on engagement.

That’s where the comments section comes into play. Here, we mean both the comments section in your own blog, and how you utilize comments sections of popular industry blogs to your advantage.

First of all, always respond to comments that people leave on your blog. This will help your readers to feel like you don’t just post and walk away, and will let them feel like they’re getting to know you as a person.

This promotes a sense of transparency, which is especially essential within the millennial market.

Additionally, when you read industry blogs, you should always include a link back to your own blog in your comments signature.

After all, if people are already reading a blog that’s in some way related to your industry, chances are, they’ll want to read yours, too.

This will help you to grow your traffic organically.

4. Increase your Linkbuilding Strategy

If you want to compound your traffic growth, make sure that you’re linking internally and externally on your blog.

This means that you should link back to your previous content in your posts. You should also link out to other authoritative sites. This means that, soon, those sites you love to read will also link back to your own blog.

If you feel like you can’t manage authority link placements on your own, this company can help to do it for you.

Outreach Base works to build high-quality links on and to your blog, while also ensuring that you can land guest posts on competitive sites.

Guest blogging can expand your audience and help you grow your traffic.  It can be a time consuming process, which is why sometimes it’s best to go with a guest post service to take care of the hard work.

5. Keep a Consistent Posting Schedule

Above all, mastering how to grow your blog means ensuring that, once you decide to create one, you can keep your overall posting schedule consistent.

You should aim to put up a minimum of one post every week, though three to four a week will allow you to grow traffic more quickly.

If you sense that you’ll struggle with this, we recommend writing a content calendar. Generate your ideas for the month in one sitting, and dedicate a weekend to writing as many posts as you can.

Then, use an automatic posting schedule to put up your posts on a regular basis, while you go on to write the next month’s topics.

How to Grow Your Blog: Wrapping Up

As you can see from this post, understanding how to grow your blog isn’t as complicated as you might have initially thought.

It just takes consistency, proper keyword research and linking, and engagement with your readers on social media and in the comments section.

On the hunt for more ways to generate traffic for both your blog and your brand’s overall website?

We can help.

Check back with us for more of the digital marketing strategies you can’t afford to miss.

4 Tips for Creating a Viral Facebook Post

So you want to go viral. It could be for future fame, financial gain, or because you really believe in your message.

All three desires are worth their own merit and can be the driving force behind your viral Facebook post. And all three can be a reality for you if you follow these tips!

Read on to figure out how to use Facebook to your advantage and get your name or message out to the masses.

1. Creating a Viral Facebook Post: The Hook

You can’t have a viral Facebook post without a topic. The topic and how it’s worded is going to be the “hook” that catches your readers. If the information is not of interest to them, they will keep on scrolling, looking for something better.

The title of your post, or the linked image, will be the first thing your audience sees and notices. Creativity, humor, or shock value matter.

The reader’s first taste of the article or post should be relevant to them and give them a taste of what they may be in for when they begin to read. Many people are not going to become engaged in an article that doesn’t interest them in some way. This means they likely won’t share it, hindering the likelihood of a viral post.

2. Images Are Your Friend

Images and infographics are also another great tool. Something visually pleasing and related to your article will entice the reader to share this great article or piece of information they’ve found.

Using visually pleasing components in your post will allow for the reader to remember what you say and take away some cool statistics or information. When information is paired with memorable images, the likelihood of the reader retaining the facts increases.

When posting to your own page, Facebook covers are equally important. These photos will draw the eye into your page and make people curious as to what you have to say.

3. Be Clear and Concise

Regardless of what age your main audience is, it’s no secret that the age of computers and smartphones has shortened the attention span of most readers.

When composing a post that you want to be shared over and over again, keep this in mind. Unless doing in-depth research, people are not going to be engaged in an extremely lengthy article.

They want facts and bullet points, and easy to read information. Don’t dumb it down too much, but keep in mind the vocabulary you use, as well as the topic at hand.

4. Ask and You’ll Receive

If you find that you’re still having a hard time getting your information or post out there to the masses, it might be time too take a look at social media influencers.

There are a couple ways to go about using these accounts that have tons of followers, but the easiest two are going to be joining in relevant conversations, or flat out asking for a mention of a quote.

Just being able to associate your post with this type of account should drive traffic and shares.

The Line & Sinker

Overall, creating a viral Facebook post isn’t incredibly hard. But it does require a good bit of thought and effort.

The other component is somewhat luck of the draw, but if you include these tips in your next attempt to go viral, you may just have some of that good luck.

If you need ideas on creating content that is strategically shareable, check out a few posts on content marketing.