Last week we launched a three-part series on growth hacking with one of our favourite guests, Dan Siepen, Co-Founder of Growth Hackers Australia and the Coder Factory Academy.
In part 1, Dan took us through his top 5 growth hacking trends for 2017, which provided some insightful tips on driving growth for your business.
This week, Dan shares four new growth hacks to boost your startup this year.
1. How to use competitors to your advantage with dead links
Competitors are a really easy measure to see where we are placed in the same market, and there is nothing better than getting a nice boost by picking up dead links. Here is an easy for step process to picking up dead links from competitors:
- Visit AlternativeTo.net to find a huge list of your competitors
- Then go check dead links using browser plugins (my favourite is Domain Hunter). Or alternatively you can upload a list of URLs to screaming frog.
- Google “link:deadcompetitor.com”
- And then in the final step, contact every owner of the various sites to alert them of a broken link and suggest replacing it with your link.
2. “Hacking” your own PR
Don’t spend money on PR agencies. I’ve been burnt before and unless you have a big budget, hiring a PR agency most of the time doesn’t justify the cost. Having said that, if that's of the essence, then hiring a PR firm may be okay, but try to avoid it if possible.
If you have time and want to be in favour with the media in the long-term, focus on helping journalists be better at their job by emailing them resources for different stories and build a relationship. Or better yet, write an opinion piece on one of their articles related to your niche, so show you have some authority.
Journalism is all about relationships.
In order to find journalists in your niche, head to hey.press to find journalists. You do have to pay, but worth the $15 p/m price tag.
3. Storytelling done right
I have to admit, I still haven’t managed to get my story right when it comes to my day-to-day business, and even Growth Hackers Australia. It’s really important to get this done right and use to your advantage. Once you can create a good story, you can break it down into the right copy and keywords needed for advertising and various content formats.
Make your pitches and copy engaging with rules to keep in mind;
- Create a useful narrative - only relevant info
- Motivations for your team
- What does your brand stand for?
- Emotions
- Who are your “ideal” customers
Get these 5 right within your story, then you will be able to focus with confidence moving forward with your experiments.
4. White hat SEO: Be your own influencer
Guest posting is a great way for people to take your brand, and yourself more seriously. Believe it or not, I’ve managed to convert sponsors, partners and students because companies and people who want to pay know they deal with me. The only problem is, is it scalable? Nor in the long run it isn’t, but posting on authoritative or niche blog sites is scalable.
Do more guest posts on authoritative sites. Set goals in mind and be realistic. Fellow Recomazing influencer Sujan patel did a great video on the different publication tier levels of publications and how eventually you can post on sites such as Forbes and Wall St Journal.
A big thank you to Dan for taking the time to share his knowledge with the Recomazing community, he's pretty amazing right?
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