Growth hack

Content marketing must be approached like a scientist. There are no mistakes, just feedback. You correct your course based on that. This is a process that can be applied to just about every single business. Several posts ago, we looked at the idea of revisiting old content for new ideas. Today I want to talk about planting seeds for bigger content projects. Rather than go through the labor of putting together something massive, start small. Share an Idea Use a Facebook status update or paragraph on Google+ to bounce something off a group of people. Maybe you’ve given a speech at a conference that really resonated with the audience. Tweets: The beauty of Twitter is that you’re limited. You have to express the essence of an idea in 140 characters. But you also to get to learn how people react to it. If your 140 character sound byte gets shared 100’s of times, it might be time to dig deeper into it. Maybe there’s a book there. Alex Franzen wasn’t quite sure … [Read more...] about Applying Principles of Growth Hacking to Content Marketing

When starting a business, it is pretty easy to become overwhelmed. The digital age of the Internet has changed the marketing landscape tenfold, and even longtime seasoned marketers are being forced to adapt to the new technological advances in order to remain competitive. Nowadays, the key difference between a good startup and a great startup is whether or not the business has mastered a set of tactics called “growth hacking” — namely, strategies such as search engine optimization, social media integration, and more. A relatively new term, “growth hacking” refers primarily to innovation in online businesses. Because of its low cost, growth hacking is especially useful for startups with a low budget. The term was coined in 2010 by entrepreneur Sean Ellis, who recognized a void in the startup industry. Traditional marketing skills are successful at pushing products and services in established businesses, but the skill set may or may not be technologically … [Read more...] about 10 Growth Hacking Concepts and Best Practices

Brands are growth hacking their Twitter followers via popular and highly engaging tweets that come from other brands or people i.e. “Twitterjacking”. A great example of Twitterjacking was during the #GRAMMYS, where other brands latched on to one tweet and harnessed it to take advantage of massive interaction. Twitterjacking, and Hashtag Hijacking, can be a bad thing and sometimes even controversial. Brands must be very careful or risk making themselves look bad. At the #SuperBowl #AdBowl we witnessed every brand pulling out all the stops, some giving away cold hard cash! Using events to grab customer attention and Twitter momentum will continue to be a focus and is one of the more sophisticated ways to drive engagement. In the age of data, brands are using engagement science and applying visual intelligence around content types to continue to reap higher content marketing rewards. As the competitive landscape expands, more brands will push the boundaries to stand out in a … [Read more...] about How Growth Hacking Drives Twitter Followers via Twitterjacking

I recently launched my first SaaS product after four months of planning and design and another eight months of development. That gave me a LOT of time to start planning for growth and in particular, customer acquisition. I read everything I could from Sean Ellis, Liam Gooding, Ryan Holliday, Andrew Chen, and many others. In fact, I spent over 100 hours preparing one hundred different growth hacks to implement for my startup and I have prepared them for you to review below. These growth hacks can be used by startups and established businesses as well. Take what you can and apply them, but remember, they won’t work for every business or strategy. I broke these down into different stages, which Dave McClure came up with and appropriately named “pirate metrics” (due to the AARRR acronym). They are: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue Most of the growth hacks listed here are in the “Acquisition” stage. Almost ALL websites see a dip in traffic … [Read more...] about An Epic List of 100 Growth Hacks for Startups