~2 months ago, I started working @bolt_travel’s funnel more systematically, with friendly email+ text reminders in days after folks applied to join.

We’ve seen a 40% lift in conversion.

Your product is very important to you. It’s priority #201 for everyone else. (1/3)

🔥 Marketing tools are damaging your SEO. And how to fix it.

THREAD...

1/ It's no secret that a site's “performance” is a ranking factor for search.

But how does Google actually measure it?

Well, open up Chrome DevTools, click the ”Audits” tab, then ”Run Audits” and you'll see that “Performance” is made up from 6 metrics.

2/ Most casuals assume that performance is all about how fast a site displays on the screen — “First Meaningful Paint”.

But if you look at Google's weights you'll see that “Time to Interactive” — how long it takes for a site to become interactive — is far more important.

3/ Essentially, Google prioritises “interactivity” over “visibility”.

Even if your page appears fast, 3rd party scripts loading in the background (delaying user interaction) will see you penalised.

4/ One example of this is @ToDesktop.

Their site content loads in < 1s, but run it through a Google Audit and its “Time to Interactive” is 8.8s.

Paid user acquisition is a curse. Later stage consumer startups that depend on it are the walking dead.

• After launch, ROI declines consistently across every advertising channel
• Early metrics are misleading because traffic is front-loaded due to the way ad algos work

Digital ad metrics have decayed every year since the industry was created.
• CPMs on major ad networks are now increasing at ~40%/yr.
• In 1997, CTR on HotWired was 78%. In 2019, Facebook’s average CTR is about 0.9%.
(H/t @andrewchen)

Facebook/Google algorithms are so good at targeting people that paid acquisition traffic tends to be highly front-loaded.

Founders and investors are often shocked when numbers rapidly decay — because the ad population has been saturated.

So, what’s the answer for these startups? I think a few things:
1. Optimize ad spend as the userbase saturates
2. Build a distribution moat to re-target customers later
3. Focus the core business on things that spread organically
4. Explore emerging advertising channels quickly

How I auto-share ~120 blog posts to Reddit every month, reached 35k karma, and gotten millions of views.

And why I love building automation so much!

A thread!

I have hit the top of Reddit hundreds of times.

Through all of the love and hate that I get on the platform, I think I've found that it's here to stay.

After years of posting on Reddit, I've slowly built an automated system that is now 100% hands off.

This is my Starter Story backend, where I save the content of my stories in a markdown format.

This is great for Reddit because Reddit is also in a markdown format!

While I edit and publish starter stories, I set the "reddit title" in advance.

This is so I don't really ever have to think about it again. Once that's set, the system knows it should post this one to reddit, and that should be the title.

I also create a "Reddit intro" and "outro"

Although the content of the blog post is stored in my database, I still should introduce myself in the Reddit post.

I use other variables in my database to construct this.

🔥 7 practical ways to write copy that converts:

1/ Get specific

Landing page copy is full of unfalsifiable, blanket claims: “more, easier, faster ...”

If you want to stand out get specific. You can’t bullshit specifics:

2/ Call out the type of customer you serve

People pay attention when they know something is specifically for them:

“What? Loads of authors are using this. I’m an author. Maybe I should be too ...”

3/ Use value-based messaging

Talk less about your product and more about the value your product brings.

People don’t want a better toothbrush. They want a brighter smile:

4/ Write for one reader

You're not talking to 1000 people. You're talking to the single person reading your page. So write like it.

An informal tone and addressing your users personally (“you”) makes a big difference:

Want to grow your Twitter audience around a niche subject?

Here's how 16-year-old @PrasoonPratham attracted 40,000+ followers wanting to learn about machine learning over a few months, from scratch! 👇🧵

2. Pratham joined Twitter June 2019 to learn more about his life passion, programming.

In May 2020 he got curious about machine learning and started tweeting about it.

But, he was just a beginner! 🙃

No matter.

By the end of the year he reached circa 40k followers.

3. So, how can someone with no prior experience on a subject become an influencer in such a short period of time?

Particularly on a platform that counts numerous—highly followed—machine learning experts amongst its ranks of users from the likes of Google and Amazon. 🤔

4. Pratham says he found a "gap in the community."

Before Pratham came along most of the machine learning content tweeted by 'big' subject matter accounts was by experts for experts.

He catered to beginners.💡

5. A lot of tweeters trying to build a Twitter audience make the mistake of choosing a topic that is already popular and simply emulate the top voices within it. 🗣️

Unless you have overwhelming domain authority, there’s simply too much noise to compete effectively with them.