This resonated with me. Particularly during my university years. Friends would go out all the time. Mainly parties, get drunk, discos ...
"Do you wanna come Harry!?"
"Err, I'm going to give this one a miss"(x300)
Then they'd leave and it was bliss. Peace and quiet. Just me. And whatever the hell I wanted to do.
I could never really put my emotion into thoughts. But the joy of missing out was pretty much it.
"Missing out" is now the status quo. And I'm not sure that's a good thing. Sometimes I feel like a should try more stuff, but do it on my own terms. I'm sure I'll get there.
Thanks for writing. I intend on checking out Svend's book.
Discovered recently that The Tour De France started as a small cycling race put together by the newspaper L’Auto as a way to raise awareness and increase circulation.
Six years after the launch of Le Tour, Italian sports paper, Gazzetta dello Sport organises the first Giro D’Italia and following their success Spanish paper Informaciones organises La Vuelta Ciclista a España.
The three largest cycling stage races in the world today all began as “side projects” aimed at increasing circulation. Decided to write about it
I think it's odd how simply changing the format of your product, i.e. eBook, online course, webinar etc ... has such a bearing on the price you can charge.
Been doing marketing for a while and only just discovered that "Time to Interactive" is a more important metric than "First Meaningful Paint” in Google's eyes.
I see a lot of sites loading in 3rd party scripts such as Intercom, Hotjar, Segment etc ... (killing their Time to Interactive metric)
Once I found such an elegant solution (waiting for a scroll event before loading) I thought it was worth sharing.
ALways been interested by how Product Hunt works. Have launched there half a dozen times in the past and never got anywhere. Last week I launched my new startup [1] and was voted Product of the Day. Here's a summary of what I learnt:
1. Don't launch straight away. Having a small following of “fans” on launch day goes a long way. Product Hunt multiplies current momentum.
2. The goal of a Product Hunt launch is not upvotes. 100 upvotes and 100 email sign-ups is more valuable than 1000 upvotes and a site which can’t convert anyone.
3. Schedule launch for 12:01 AM PST. Make gif. Write good first comment.
4. Product Hunt launch is the day your karma comes full circle. The support you get is proportional to the support you've given throughout the year.
5. Don't overshare. Don't ask for upvotes. I can assure, you this stuff does more harm than good.
Hi Dang. I do think we're arguing from the same side more than you might think.
Contrary to what you're saying one of the main lessons in the case study is NOT to use a clever title. To quote, "bleed out all the superfluousness".
Regards to the Nike story I never extrapolate back from this or generalise from this title. To quote, "In spite of this success, I’ll be the first to admit that I am pretty clueless when it comes to Hacker News."
And regards to your final paragraph, again, I couldn't agree with you more. And that is in fact the whole point of the conclusion. To quote,
"But to call him a great marketer I think misses the point. Adriaan is a great Hacker News user. He understands the intricacies of the forum, offers thoughtful insight, and is never pushy with his business. The naked eye doesn’t see self-promotion. It sees someone passionate about privacy. He isn't a marketer on Hacker News, he's a Hacker News user on Hacker News.
Once you start hanging with your perfect audience, you don't have to try so hard."
The reason why Adriaan is so successful is because he is intellectually curious. And that he isn't writing articles drummed up by a group of content marketers trying to game the system.
My own experience certainly backs this up. The two case studies I've submitted that reached the front page of Hacker News both took were purely done out of my own interest.
Good points and I do agree. I honestly think we're arguing from the same side. One of the points the case study makes is to not overthink and think about "marketing".
To quote the last line of the case study: "He isn't a marketer on Hacker News, he's a Hacker News user on Hacker News."
Author here. Ever since I knew of Hacker News, I've always been interested in the massive leverage it provide to both startups and individuals.
Choose the correct title and your startup can be projected to thousands. Write a thoughtful comment and you can make 20 sales. Ask the right question and you can end up with a Silicon Valley job (that actually happened)!
I came across Simple Analytics [1] a privacy-focused startup which pulls in huge traffic from HN. Fortunately all their traffic was all "/open" so I could compare traffic spikes with their founders [2] Hacker News activity and understand what really does works on Hacker News.