5 ms·

It’s very hard to build a following without a system and without copying content For LinkedIn, ideally you should be posting at least 5 times a week, reposting

by nico 3y ago

It’s very hard to build a following without a system and without copying content For LinkedIn, ideally you should be posting at least 5 times a week, reposting your best performing content, re-phrasing or straight up copying viral content, and adding as many people to your contacts as possible every day (there’s a weekly limit, and there’s also a 20k total limit, so you also need to figure out what type of contacts you want to be adding, the more focus, the better your content will perform). Additionally, on LinkedIn, commenting and liking posts related to your audience can go a long way Definitely use ChatGPT for drafts and to help you iterate, but don’t just post whatever it gives you on the first try. Also lean heavily on scheduling tools It takes a couple of months to get going, but if you can keep a consistent pace, you will definitely figure it out Follow (on LinkedIn) the creators of https://www.shieldapp.ai/ https://www.shieldapp.ai/ their whole thing is helping people build their personal brands on that platform Finally, make sure to build a newsletter and own your list, that’s one of the biggest moats you can build

4gotunameagain 3y ago
I'd rather be unemployed and live off charity kitchen soups than engage in these juvenile games. As a society we need to find a way to stop rewarding slyness and trickery (aka marketing)
- arek_nawo 3y ago
  I want to think of marketing as a way of providing valuable content and explaining why your product might be just what the consumer needs (potentially helping them with their problems). What's described above really doesn't fit into this view, but is definitely how I've seen people "play the game". ChatGPT-generated fluff, copied content, and the same tips & tricks, inspirational stories, etc. you see repurposed all the time on different platforms - especially LinkedIn. I hope marketing can be good and value-adding but, the way it's going right now, we're due for a change.
- nickfromseattle 3y ago
  >I'd rather be unemployed and live off charity kitchen soups than engage in these juvenile games. What if you replaced the word marketing with attention? Would you rather live of soup kitchens than have the attention of your ideal customers?
  - 4gotunameagain 3y ago
    The competition of legal entities for our attention seems to be one of the major reasons of chronic stress and mental illness in the west, so the answer is yes.
  - austinjp 3y ago
    This conflates the ends and the means. They're different and both deserve consideration. Some reading: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_end_justifies_the_means https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_end_justifies_the_mean... https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_the-business-ethics-workshop/s06-theories-of-duties-and-rights-.html https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_the-business-ethics-work...
  - latexr 3y ago
    > What if you replaced the word marketing with attention? Then you would be making a different argument. Marketing and attention are not the same thing: the former is one means to the latter. Marketing is grabbing attention by force, which could be considered unethical; attention by itself can be consensual and organic.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- skwee357 3y ago
  I’m with you my friend. I’d rather go back to be employed and post helpful stuff to my blog, than try to promote my products using click bait tactics on social media. It’s funny, but when you post an obvious click bait to Reddit/hn everybody is like “this is clickbait, the author is trying to sell you his coaching”, etc. But then, when you say you don’t want to participate in algorithm hunger games, everyone is like “no, you won’t succeed. You need to shove your products down the throat if your readers”. :puke:
  - skwee357 3y ago
    Here is a good example. About 2.5 months ago, I’ve shared a blog post I wrote, here on HN [1]. The blog post was authentic with a simple purpose: (1) I like to write, and (2) I believed writing is beneficial to everyone. I share all my blog posts here, none of them performed as well as this one (check my profile if you want). Seeing the success and the traffic this post generated, I crafted a quick form to offer FREE coaching session. Free as Linux free. I gave 2.5 hours of my time for free. In exchange, I asked my mentees for testimonials. A fair transaction I guess. It’s a great way to build my brand. I put a small, non intrusive banner on my blog, with a message of free coaching session (the same banner now promotes my book). It’s not a pop up that jumps when you scroll to the bottom, it’s not a JavaScript scripts that pops up when you close the tab. It’s a ~30px, non sticky bar at the top, the goes away with a little scroll. Top comment on HN? My post is cringy and I’m yet another “coaching bro” that promotes his stuff. :shrug: [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36659166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36659166
    - nico 3y ago
      So what? You need to grow a thicker skin Building an audience and selling a product is in large part about rejection. You will get tons of comments like that. Haters are going to hate, no matter what you do Yes, it hurts, but just keep going. If the top comment represented everyone’s sentiment, your post wouldn’t have gotten 200+ upvotes (congrats by the way, not an easy feat)
      - skwee357 3y ago
- nico 3y ago
  It’s not juvenile games, it’s hard work. If it was easy games everyone would be raking it in If anything, the juvenile thing to do is to look at reality the way it is and deny it because it doesn’t fit our personal world view I get it, we’d love a world in which we could just do our best work and everyone could see it and recognize it But reality is that people are thinking about themselves and are not searching for what we are building. How would they ever find out about what we do if we are not telling them? You have a serious misunderstanding of what marketing is if you think it’s slyness and trickery Of course I’m not going to convince you otherwise, but I think it might help you to actually do research, read a marketing book and talk to people in marketing to understand what it really is
  - 4gotunameagain 3y ago
    Nobody said that juvenile games cannot be hard work. And yes, I do believe that most smart people can "rake it in" if they decide to play this game. You mention deny reality. Reality is formed by our actions. Adherence to such systems and the playing of juvenile games ensures their perpetuation. I shall not contribute to what I think is the wrong way to go. And yes, marketing is slyness and trickery. 95% of marketing is A/B ad and layout testing. Or shall we consider the great, historical marketing successes such as promoting cigarettes as healthy, or breakfast cereal ?
    - nico 3y ago
      At this point you are either just trolling or being a hypocrite There isn’t a single organization that doesn’t do marketing one way or another (just putting a sign outside a restaurant is marketing, maybe you also consider that to be tricking people and playing games?) Pretty sure that without marketing you would either not have a job or not get paid So you are actually fine with marketing making you money, just as long as you are not the one doing it. Sounds like denying reality Btw, marketing != advertising, and 95% of people don’t even have the time, budget or large enough audience to do any kind of A/B testing
      - 4gotunameagain 3y ago
skwee357 3y ago
Not to be offensive, but you sound like the guy who I don’t want to be. Sitting there, figuring out the perfect number of posts to share at the perfect time. I don’t want to do that. I post a lot. On all platforms. But I don’t want to play games. Maybe I’m stupid, but I believe there is more than one way to succeed. Edit: I also feel like this entire industry is based on survivorship bias. You post into the void, than the algorithm picks up one of your tweets. And you are like “oh yeah! Now I know”. And then you come up with a bunch of random number such as “post 5 times a week”, “no more than 4 hashtags”, and “must have a cat picture”. Edit 2: I found mastodon, which does not have any algorithm games, to be far more authentic and helpful to me. I share pretty much the same content there and on Twitter, and my content performs better on Mastodon.
- robomartin 3y ago
  > Not to be offensive, but you sound like the guy who I don’t want to be. Interesting comments and perspective. A few decades ago I was faced with the challenge of selling a product I designed. I sold the way engineers do, which is to say I sucked at it. That launched me into an effort to learn. And, with friends and mentors, I did. I sold millions of dollars in products in the years that followed. Selling is art and science. If you think of it as an engineer, you are not going to succeed. If you think it is "dirty" or "manipulative", stop trying to be an entrepreneur and go find a job. You will fail. To be clear, there is such a thing as vomit-inducing sales and marketing schemes. Thankfully, that's the exception rather than the rule. Why? Because nobody wants to be sold this way. Here's what is important to understand in selling: You cannot force anyone to buy anything. Say you have a hotel. You can have beautiful gardens. Incredible rooms. Superior service. Great offers, activities and pricing. And yet, you cannot force someone to take a vacation (or where to go). You just cannot. What can you do then? Well, start from the perspective that nobody knows you exist. Which means that you are three standard deviations away from anyone --when they are ready to make the decision-- choosing to book a room at your hotel. You do not exist. Realizing this, if you believe in your product, you should want to make people far and wide aware of it. You want them to know you exist. You want them to know about your hotel when they are ready to take a vacation. If the people you want as customers life within a small radius from your hotel, you might be able to afford sending everyone a beautiful brochure once a year and maybe even inviting them to a brunch event every so often. That's great. Anything much beyond that requires a different approach. Still, if your audience is small and well defined it might be easier. Once you start getting much beyond that, it can become exponentially more difficult. The internet, like it or not, has created a situation where you have to rise above a certain threshold for you to even as much as exist in the minds of potential customers. Which means there's a way to do it and there are many ways to waste your time and money while doing nothing but remain below the visibility threshold. You don't have to like it. You do have to understand that there's a way to do it in order to succeed and a way to die trying. If you are not willing to understand the realities of selling today, again, with respect, find a job. If I were to drop you in the ocean five km from shore with nothing but your clothes, your survival depends on several things: - Accepting your reality - Wanting to survive - Knowing how to swim with minimal effort in open water - Start swimming As it applies to selling: Accepting your reality means that you have to understand you are not going to succeed at selling unless you stop being judgmental about how selling has to be done today. That doesn't mean becoming a scam artist. Reputable companies like Ford and Hewlett Packard have to adapt their sales strategy to market realities. Only then can you have a plan that will lead to survival. Wanting to survive should be obvious. Entrepreneurship is hard. If you are going to reject sales and marketing for ideological reasons that are not in alignment with reality, go find a job. You won't survive. Knowing how to swim. Most people would drown if they were dropped into the ocean far from shore. This is true even if they know how to swim in a swimming pool. If you are going to survive in that environment, the day I drop you into the ocean should not be the first time you experience it. You need to train. And fail. And train some more. And learn how to swim in open water. As someone who learned to swim long distance in open water, I can tell you it is very different from messing around in a swimming pool. Finally, start swimming. If you want to sell your product, you have to start. And you can't invent a new way to sell just because you don't know how or don't like how selling is done today. Don't invent a new open water swim stroke when you are 5 km from shore. You will not survive the experience. In short, I think you have a decision to make. If you want to be an entrepreneur, get with the program. Or not, and just find a job. Sorry for the tough love. I hate seeing people waste their time.

by nico 3y ago

4gotunameagain 3y ago

I'd rather be unemployed and live off charity kitchen soups than engage in these juvenile games. As a society we need to find a way to stop rewarding slyness and trickery (aka marketing)

arek_nawo 3y ago
I want to think of marketing as a way of providing valuable content and explaining why your product might be just what the consumer needs (potentially helping them with their problems). What's described above really doesn't fit into this view, but is definitely how I've seen people "play the game". ChatGPT-generated fluff, copied content, and the same tips & tricks, inspirational stories, etc. you see repurposed all the time on different platforms - especially LinkedIn. I hope marketing can be good and value-adding but, the way it's going right now, we're due for a change.
nickfromseattle 3y ago
>I'd rather be unemployed and live off charity kitchen soups than engage in these juvenile games. What if you replaced the word marketing with attention? Would you rather live of soup kitchens than have the attention of your ideal customers?
- 4gotunameagain 3y ago
  The competition of legal entities for our attention seems to be one of the major reasons of chronic stress and mental illness in the west, so the answer is yes.
- austinjp 3y ago
  This conflates the ends and the means. They're different and both deserve consideration. Some reading: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_end_justifies_the_means https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_end_justifies_the_mean... https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_the-business-ethics-workshop/s06-theories-of-duties-and-rights-.html https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_the-business-ethics-work...
- latexr 3y ago
  > What if you replaced the word marketing with attention? Then you would be making a different argument. Marketing and attention are not the same thing: the former is one means to the latter. Marketing is grabbing attention by force, which could be considered unethical; attention by itself can be consensual and organic.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
skwee357 3y ago
I’m with you my friend. I’d rather go back to be employed and post helpful stuff to my blog, than try to promote my products using click bait tactics on social media. It’s funny, but when you post an obvious click bait to Reddit/hn everybody is like “this is clickbait, the author is trying to sell you his coaching”, etc. But then, when you say you don’t want to participate in algorithm hunger games, everyone is like “no, you won’t succeed. You need to shove your products down the throat if your readers”. :puke:
- skwee357 3y ago
  Here is a good example. About 2.5 months ago, I’ve shared a blog post I wrote, here on HN [1]. The blog post was authentic with a simple purpose: (1) I like to write, and (2) I believed writing is beneficial to everyone. I share all my blog posts here, none of them performed as well as this one (check my profile if you want). Seeing the success and the traffic this post generated, I crafted a quick form to offer FREE coaching session. Free as Linux free. I gave 2.5 hours of my time for free. In exchange, I asked my mentees for testimonials. A fair transaction I guess. It’s a great way to build my brand. I put a small, non intrusive banner on my blog, with a message of free coaching session (the same banner now promotes my book). It’s not a pop up that jumps when you scroll to the bottom, it’s not a JavaScript scripts that pops up when you close the tab. It’s a ~30px, non sticky bar at the top, the goes away with a little scroll. Top comment on HN? My post is cringy and I’m yet another “coaching bro” that promotes his stuff. :shrug: [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36659166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36659166
  - nico 3y ago
    So what? You need to grow a thicker skin Building an audience and selling a product is in large part about rejection. You will get tons of comments like that. Haters are going to hate, no matter what you do Yes, it hurts, but just keep going. If the top comment represented everyone’s sentiment, your post wouldn’t have gotten 200+ upvotes (congrats by the way, not an easy feat)
    - skwee357 3y ago
nico 3y ago
It’s not juvenile games, it’s hard work. If it was easy games everyone would be raking it in If anything, the juvenile thing to do is to look at reality the way it is and deny it because it doesn’t fit our personal world view I get it, we’d love a world in which we could just do our best work and everyone could see it and recognize it But reality is that people are thinking about themselves and are not searching for what we are building. How would they ever find out about what we do if we are not telling them? You have a serious misunderstanding of what marketing is if you think it’s slyness and trickery Of course I’m not going to convince you otherwise, but I think it might help you to actually do research, read a marketing book and talk to people in marketing to understand what it really is
- 4gotunameagain 3y ago
  Nobody said that juvenile games cannot be hard work. And yes, I do believe that most smart people can "rake it in" if they decide to play this game. You mention deny reality. Reality is formed by our actions. Adherence to such systems and the playing of juvenile games ensures their perpetuation. I shall not contribute to what I think is the wrong way to go. And yes, marketing is slyness and trickery. 95% of marketing is A/B ad and layout testing. Or shall we consider the great, historical marketing successes such as promoting cigarettes as healthy, or breakfast cereal ?
  - nico 3y ago
    At this point you are either just trolling or being a hypocrite There isn’t a single organization that doesn’t do marketing one way or another (just putting a sign outside a restaurant is marketing, maybe you also consider that to be tricking people and playing games?) Pretty sure that without marketing you would either not have a job or not get paid So you are actually fine with marketing making you money, just as long as you are not the one doing it. Sounds like denying reality Btw, marketing != advertising, and 95% of people don’t even have the time, budget or large enough audience to do any kind of A/B testing
    - 4gotunameagain 3y ago

skwee357 3y ago

Not to be offensive, but you sound like the guy who I don’t want to be. Sitting there, figuring out the perfect number of posts to share at the perfect time. I don’t want to do that. I post a lot. On all platforms. But I don’t want to play games. Maybe I’m stupid, but I believe there is more than one way to succeed. Edit: I also feel like this entire industry is based on survivorship bias. You post into the void, than the algorithm picks up one of your tweets. And you are like “oh yeah! Now I know”. And then you come up with a bunch of random number such as “post 5 times a week”, “no more than 4 hashtags”, and “must have a cat picture”. Edit 2: I found mastodon, which does not have any algorithm games, to be far more authentic and helpful to me. I share pretty much the same content there and on Twitter, and my content performs better on Mastodon.

robomartin 3y ago
> Not to be offensive, but you sound like the guy who I don’t want to be. Interesting comments and perspective. A few decades ago I was faced with the challenge of selling a product I designed. I sold the way engineers do, which is to say I sucked at it. That launched me into an effort to learn. And, with friends and mentors, I did. I sold millions of dollars in products in the years that followed. Selling is art and science. If you think of it as an engineer, you are not going to succeed. If you think it is "dirty" or "manipulative", stop trying to be an entrepreneur and go find a job. You will fail. To be clear, there is such a thing as vomit-inducing sales and marketing schemes. Thankfully, that's the exception rather than the rule. Why? Because nobody wants to be sold this way. Here's what is important to understand in selling: You cannot force anyone to buy anything. Say you have a hotel. You can have beautiful gardens. Incredible rooms. Superior service. Great offers, activities and pricing. And yet, you cannot force someone to take a vacation (or where to go). You just cannot. What can you do then? Well, start from the perspective that nobody knows you exist. Which means that you are three standard deviations away from anyone --when they are ready to make the decision-- choosing to book a room at your hotel. You do not exist. Realizing this, if you believe in your product, you should want to make people far and wide aware of it. You want them to know you exist. You want them to know about your hotel when they are ready to take a vacation. If the people you want as customers life within a small radius from your hotel, you might be able to afford sending everyone a beautiful brochure once a year and maybe even inviting them to a brunch event every so often. That's great. Anything much beyond that requires a different approach. Still, if your audience is small and well defined it might be easier. Once you start getting much beyond that, it can become exponentially more difficult. The internet, like it or not, has created a situation where you have to rise above a certain threshold for you to even as much as exist in the minds of potential customers. Which means there's a way to do it and there are many ways to waste your time and money while doing nothing but remain below the visibility threshold. You don't have to like it. You do have to understand that there's a way to do it in order to succeed and a way to die trying. If you are not willing to understand the realities of selling today, again, with respect, find a job. If I were to drop you in the ocean five km from shore with nothing but your clothes, your survival depends on several things: - Accepting your reality - Wanting to survive - Knowing how to swim with minimal effort in open water - Start swimming As it applies to selling: Accepting your reality means that you have to understand you are not going to succeed at selling unless you stop being judgmental about how selling has to be done today. That doesn't mean becoming a scam artist. Reputable companies like Ford and Hewlett Packard have to adapt their sales strategy to market realities. Only then can you have a plan that will lead to survival. Wanting to survive should be obvious. Entrepreneurship is hard. If you are going to reject sales and marketing for ideological reasons that are not in alignment with reality, go find a job. You won't survive. Knowing how to swim. Most people would drown if they were dropped into the ocean far from shore. This is true even if they know how to swim in a swimming pool. If you are going to survive in that environment, the day I drop you into the ocean should not be the first time you experience it. You need to train. And fail. And train some more. And learn how to swim in open water. As someone who learned to swim long distance in open water, I can tell you it is very different from messing around in a swimming pool. Finally, start swimming. If you want to sell your product, you have to start. And you can't invent a new way to sell just because you don't know how or don't like how selling is done today. Don't invent a new open water swim stroke when you are 5 km from shore. You will not survive the experience. In short, I think you have a decision to make. If you want to be an entrepreneur, get with the program. Or not, and just find a job. Sorry for the tough love. I hate seeing people waste their time.