let's be honest
With approximately 20 billion page views a month and 30% page view growth year-over-year, Tumblr is growing and vibrant content community (this blog is hosted on Tumblr). Tumblr has invested heavily in its mobile product to drive this growth.
In the following post, I will be detailing Tumblr’s mobile registration strategy which is at the heart of its recent page view growth.
Facebook is one of the best at turning new users into active users. With 1/6th of the world a Facebook user, Facebook has set a high bar for activation and its team is rapidly spreading the gospel of growth (here are some notes on Facebook’s overall growth strategy from the Growth Hacker’s Conference).
Every good activation strategy optimizes the new user experience (“NUX”) to reach the “magic moment” as fast as possible. The “magic moment” is a point in the NUX when a user surpasses a metric and is far more likely to be retained. This metric varies from product to product. For Facebook, the magic moment is seven friends in ten days for a new user.
In the following paragraphs, I will break out Facebook’s on-boarding and activation strategy to see how they motivate new users to reach the magic moment as fast as possible.
“Iterative” is a regularly used term for those that follow the agile and lean development philosophy. The base meaning of iterative is to simply do repeatedly, over and over. Though iterative is a colloquial word in the Valley, the tactical application is often forgotten. Iterative tactically means to efficiently learn and make better decisions with a low cost when mistakes are made.
To iterate means to learn faster.
The buzz on “growth hacking” has spread all across the world. Classes on growth hacking are being taught in Singapore. Companies from San Francisco to London are recruiting growth hackers. The first Growth Hacking Conference popped up a few weeks ago. This rapid craze beseeches an explanation. Why has growth hacking so strongly resonated with the startup community?
One explanation is that “growth hacking” is just a catchy way to rebrand marketers, but this begs the question as to why “growth hacking” went viral in the first place. The real answer is that the phrase “growth hacking” caught fire because of its particular emphasis on growth, which determines the life and death of every startup.
Startups are facing growth challenges that were not apparent a few years ago. The platitude “build it and they will come”—made popular by the movie Field of Dreams—has since died and is now an antique of the dot-com era. Growth hacking has resonated in the startup community due to today’s growth challenges: new channel creation, channel saturation, the “best product” fallacy and “product-growth” fit.
This post was originally answered by myself on Quora. I have edited it for this post.
Path is different from other social networking products in that Path is designed for specific individuals in your network, aka those closest to you. Most social networks focus on broad access and wide distribution in a user’s circles. Path takes a different approach and focuses on depth over breath.
The growth hacking mafia comes to life via KISSmetrics.
This post originally appeared on TechCrunch
In this series titled “Defining a growth hacker”, I will be exploring the meaning and practical application of growth hacking through a number of interviews with prominent growth hackers. This is the first post the series and will outline the common characteristics of a growth hacker.
Growth hackers are making their mark in technology. Job postings are popping up all over the web looking for a growth hacker. Companies at all stages are itching to find these professors of growth and often recruiting as aggressively as UX and CS candidates. Sean Ellis was right when he first coined the title growth hacker in 2010 when he wrote, “Where are all of the growth hackers?” The demand for growth hackers became widespread when Andrew Chen wrote “How to be a growth hacker” that went viral.
Despite the buzz and increasing commercialization, most companies are unaware of the true meaning of growth hacking other than the simplistic acknowledgement that “they grow stuff” or “get users”. Unlike most professions in technology, a growth hacker isn’t a set of skills or a stock of knowledge. Dan Martell, founder of Clarity, says, “Growth hacking is a mindset more than a toolset.” It is a set of disciplines learned through doing and out of necessity. Growth hackers have a common attitude, internal investigation process, and mentality unique among technologists and marketers. This mindset of data, creativity, and curiosity allows a growth hacker to accomplish the feet of growing a user base into the millions.
What a hacker learns after a year of marketing - by Rob Spectre
Why you should read this - A hacker becomes a marketer for a year and learns the challenges of adoption and engagement. A great post for hackers to understand marketing and appreciate the skill-set. Build it and they will come is dead.
Lean Startup - by Steve Blank and Eric Ries
Why you should read this - Back to the basics. Blank and Ries walk through lean development and lean marketing. If you don’t practice lean, your startup is wasting time and money.
How moving fast doubled our engagement - by KISSMetrics Team
Why you should read this - KISSMetrics walks through a step-by-step of a redesign of a new release. KISS provides great tips on how to take in data and customer feedback to improve a product.
Zynga’s fall and Facebook as a viral platform - by Sangeet Choudary
Why you should read this - Sangeet outlines why he thinks Zynga and similar Facebook apps are falling out a flavor on Facebook. Basically, he postulates that these apps seek to interrupt the core social value of Facebook.
New blogs to follow
Dan Ariely - Dan is a well-known behavioral economist who specializes in applying human motivation and thought processes to technology. In his blog, he discusses subjective rationality and user engagement tactics.
“People think that I have a book of magic tricks. Often, it is quite basic and simple to begin with.” - Jesse Farmer
Today, its cool to be a growth hacker. Startups are wide-eyed and mystified at any opportunity to chat with a growth hacker (hopefully, to add them to their ranks). Founders expect growth hackers to bring a bag of tricks and disclose a secret black book of hacks to make them rich. While well intentioned, I have to burst this illusion. Growth hackers don’t have secret tricks or hidden mystic knowledge for growth. Growth hackers aren’t magicians.
10 reasons why your content doesn’t attract links - Copypress
Why you should read it - Easy to do tips to make your content more attractive (thus viral) to readers.
Lessons learnt viral marketing - For Entreprenuers
Why you should read it - A simple viral model for starting growth hackers. The best viral loops are engineered and forecasted using excel models. This article is a great place to start.
How much are eyeballs work - CNN Money 2000
Why you should read it - A simple viral model for starting growth hackers. The best viral loops are engineered and forecasted using excel models. This article is a great place to start.
Using surveys and viral marketing - Sean Ellis
Why you should read it - Sean Ellis outlines how to determine if your product is ready to scale. Through the use of surveys, Sean outlines how to discover if your product is a must-have or a nice-to- have.
