7 ms·
Marketing hacks to boost your startup
- Peroni 14y agoPoint 4: 'Hacker News' Get to #1 spot on HN & you'll get tons of page views. Reminiscent of 'How to draw an Owl' - http://i.imgur.com/Z1oTC.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Z1oTC.jpg In all seriousness, Point 7: Share Buttons - are these actually effective? It's a genuine question as I've seen such a mixed response to them. We've chosen not to include any obvious share buttons on hackerjobs.co.uk as I figured no-one would want to share a job on their facebook account so lets not ruin the minimalism of the page. Thoughts?
- JonLim 14y agoMight be a personal bias here, but I would never use those buttons to share your website/product/blog with my friends. I'd just copy and paste the URL into Facebook/Twitter/whatever and go from there. Judging by its usage rate in previous projects I've been a part of, many other people operate the same way or simply ignore any sort of sharing aspect.
- pestaa 14y agoI'm glad to hear that I'm not alone. Can you reveal more about the usage rates you've seen?
- JonLim 14y agoI can't give you solid numbers (as it's almost been a year since I touched those projects) but they were far below 5%, typically bordering 1-2%. That's off the top of my head, so take it with a grain of salt. :)
- benjlang 14y agoPoint 4 - well in person I went over how Hacker News works etc (these are people that have never heard of Hacker News) Share buttons - yes they're effective, I've measured the conversion rate on different sites and it's proved worthy to have them. Here's a good article about share buttons - http://socialmouths.com/blog/2012/05/08/social-media-buttons/ http://socialmouths.com/blog/2012/05/08/social-media-buttons...
- jacques_chester 14y ago> these are people that have never heard of Hacker News Then I feel that you are contributing to the dilution of the value of the site.
- adambenayoun 14y agoYou could argue that if that said presentation was clearly stating to use hacker news as a marketing tool. (Which would attract the wrong people from the get go anyway). On the flip side, bringing hacker news to the attention of the mass could have also a positive effect especially if these people can contribute relevant and good content. Additionally I feel that HN has a good algorithm to stop most of the people who wouldn't be a good fit anyway. Posting a post on HN and then getting people to vote won't get you to the front page (and if it does, getting dropped off it is pretty easy if the content you posted is not relevant).
- jacques_chester 14y ago> Additionally I feel that HN has a good algorithm to stop most of the people who wouldn't be a good fit anyway. > Posting a post on HN and then getting people to vote won't get you to the front page (and if it does, getting dropped off it is pretty easy if the content you posted is not relevant). If there's too much spam, those brave netizens who patrol the windswept frontier of /newest don't get time to look at what is actually good. They start upvoting on headlines.
- TeMPOraL 14y ago> those brave netizens who patrol the windswept frontier of /newest I don't know how they feel about it, but I sometimes feel that visiting /newest to vote / flag stuff is a kind of civic duty. For the good of all of us (except the ones who are dead).
- benjlang 14y agoMost of them will simply use Hacker News to find interesting content, not sure how that's diluting the site.
- greendestiny 14y agoMy experience is that share buttons are pretty useless. I included share buttons in a free app I released about 6 months ago: http://scottvallanceapps.com/app/what-animal-are-you/ http://scottvallanceapps.com/app/what-animal-are-you/ I've had about 30 clicks on the links included in the twitter posts, from about 2 or 3 twitter posts. Not a bad number of clicks per posting, but the app itself still gets over a hundred downloads a week from App Store searches.
- paraschopra 14y agoWe actually have an article on our blog 'Debunking the social proof myth' that presents a case study about these sharing buttons: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/social-proof-decreases-conversions/ http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/social-...
- benjlang 14y agoVery interesting, definitely going to do more research about these buttons.
- jacques_chester 14y agoTip number one: tips are no longer popular. Call them "hacks" instead.
- davidw 14y agoBonus points if they are "curated".
- gerhardi 14y ago"How I Hacked My Way Through Harvard With Top Grades: Hack 1: Choose major that interests you Hack 2: Read and memorize all the course literature ..."
- ssharp 14y agoIt may be semantics but I definitely wouldn't call these "hacks". "Tips" or "Advice" seems much more appropriate, although with less curb-appeal to this crowd.
- hknozcan 14y ago+1
- carbocation 14y agoI agree with you. It is particularly crass that we see this trend occurring on Hacker News. I would encourage PG to add a temporary rule discouraging the misuse of the term hacker, and the mods to rewrite titles that likewise misuse the term.
- jacques_chester 14y agoIt's marketing. Hear about a horse. Flog horse to death. Continue flogging.
- jasonkolb 14y agoI think it's because "hack" connotates cheating in some way, and people are always interested in finding ways to beat the system. Can you think of another word that has the same effect?
- miriamyoung 14y agoReally really great. Thanks for posting!
- benjlang 14y agoAppreciate it.
- pc86 14y agoYou know what @jacques_chester said further up the page? This is what he was talking about.
- talmand 14y agoYes, especially since there appears to be a set of almost new accounts with little or no karma and no comment history being positive in response. This is an old marketing trick and is also a serious dilution problem. Your favorite deity of choice forbid HN turns into a marketing gimmick that plagued Digg.
- benjlang 14y agoSorry that I recommended a few people at the presentation to sign up for Hacker News and they saw that I posted this here and commented. Didn't realized Hacker News was closed for registration in your opinion.
- talmand 14y agoI don't think I said anything about registration being closed and that new people shouldn't get involved. What I pointed out was that there were a few fairly new accounts with little or no history here at all with positive responses to your article. This is a known marketing gimmick to, I shall use your word, "hack" a site in an attempt to game the system. Considering the subject of your "hacking" article then I don't find it wrong to consider that possibility. If this is not the case and it is as you say, then I will gladly apologize and say good for you. But you are the one that suggested spamming sites in an effort to boost visitation numbers.
- patrickk 14y agoAny video of the presentation available?
- alanweinkrantz 14y agogreat, practical advise.
- benjlang 14y agoThanks Alan.
- igalp 14y agoGreat work Ben!
- benologist 14y agoI hate the way HN is emphasized every time I see something about growth hacking. If the only way you can get your startup on HN's front page is by writing about something else then this obviously is not your market and you are doing a terrible job even if you "win".
- talGX 14y agoGreat presentation Ben, thanks for sharing
- Charlesmigli 14y agoVery interesting and actionable. One thing I disagree is point #5 because your previous users could feel screwed. Here are the 10 hacks 1. Guest post (send editor email with post and short intro) 2. Offer premium giveaways 3. Use Rapportive to find and connect with anyone 4. Use Hacker News (~10k to 50k visitors for #1) 5. Drop the app to free after a regular pricing 6. Create one day viral projects to promote your brand 7. Use share buttons 8. Distribute on AppSumo (+730k subscribers) 9. Reach out bloggers (provide value before asking for something) 10. Use Dropbox style to incentive and gamify signups Accessible on this link http://tldr.io/tldrs/50c74e31babbb5f813000b32 http://tldr.io/tldrs/50c74e31babbb5f813000b32
- zefhous 14y agoHow about focusing on making the internet a better place? These tips generally do the opposite. Funny that notification control's goal is to prevent web services from spamming you, but all of this advise is about how to spam other people on the internet. The focus of all these things seem to be entirely self-serving, without any focus on really providing value to people. Instead, figure out how to help others so they actually want to share your content. If you can't do that, the work you are doing is not worth doing — and indeed harmful.
- talmand 14y agoI fail to see how much of this is that useful to most startups. It seemed more about how to create and push mass amounts of spam in the hopes of hitting it big. I didn't see much in the way of actually increasing your interaction with potential customers. It's just a numbers game about how many eyes can I get in front of hoping something works. I'm sorry, but I just cannot possibly take someone who uses the term "growth hacking" serious. Much like job postings using "ninja" or "rockstar"; it's just a blatant attempt to appear cool or hip in a strange way.
- reuvenlivn 14y agovery good tips!!!
- interg12 14y agoCan we stop calling everything that worked for someone a "hack" ?
- Ellahn 14y agoYes, please.
- knes 14y agoPointless slides with no real tips or hacks. These are here just to promote Ben "Branding". for example Guest blogging: The tip is "Guest blogging is great, write stuff and send a small email to important people so they publish it on their blog". Social proof inside, " Look how i wrote an article for TC" ... Woopidioh! Everybody know it is important to do guest posts. That is not rocket science. What would have been great is actually tips on how to write awesome guest blog post? The process, the research, etc . Leo Widrich of Buffer wrote a great "Guest Post" on Guest blogging ( I know, so meta ^^ ) somewhere but I can't find it anymore. The only thing I agree with the slide is the last comment. "In the end none of this matters if you have a crappy product."
- benjlang 14y agoThanks for the kind words. Guess what, this is a presentation not a blog post. Maybe in your presentation you write blog posts but I don't. When I talked about guest posts I went over mostly how to write a good guest post and how to get it to the editor of the blog. Same for every other slide....
- octaveguin 14y agoThe parent's complaint is valid. You may have given a talk with more detail but the slides are what you submitted. Honestly, I'm a little tired of these marketing posts that have no new information and only serve to market the author's product. How are they getting upvoted?