
Growth Hacking Notes - nodemaker
http://tedna.sh/2013/07/26/growth-hacking-notes/
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6d0debc071
Okkaaayyy, I can see why this might seem like a good idea to you. But I don't
see how it's in anyone's interests, including your own, for you to talk about
it. If this becomes widely practised, you've killed the source of trust you
were exploiting - and if this becomes widely practised it makes it more
difficult for users to find out about things that are worthwhile.

Now you might say something to the effect of: "Oh what's the harm? I'm just
getting the word out." However, take the reviews strategy for instance: Your
reviews probably aren't going to be honest in-depth analyses of the faults and
benefits of a particular piece of software. There's such a strong incentive
there for you to lie that I know, even ahead of you saying yes or no, that
your word won't count as strong enough evidence for me to believe you don't.
(My perception of the average person's truthfulness just isn't high enough to
withstand that sort of incentive.) If you give someone a bad review, what are
the chances they're going to give you a good one? What's your percentage in
the truth?

So, you win in the short-term, as long as this is kept small. But my trust for
the network you're using is going to approach 0 fairly quickly if this becomes
practised on any significant scale. Tragedy of the commons, basically. The
easiest solution to that is just to quarantine my brain from the lot of you
and treat all similar coms from similar sources as noise.

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Leander_B
Usually the saying goes "Build a great product and users will come". Reading
this reminds me more of "Build whatever product and drag users to come". But
in the end, for a real business, it's all about being able to pay the bills,
stay alive and make some profit. And for that last one, I think some of the
points in the article can gain you some advantage against another average
product you compete with..

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jdmitch
_this piece about hacking should give you a good example of aggressive
networking._

'aggressive networking' is right, don't some of these tactics get you blocked
or reported?

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tednash
Hey JD,

Thanks so much for reading.

I've never been reported or blocked. With FB, a lot of what I did was in-
conjunction with a contact at FB. Twitter is the only slightly more dodgy one
but even then, I've never had any issues.

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figurify
The fact that you haven't been noticed yet doesn't make this an acceptable
method. Basically the article is all about gaming the social networks and
getting away with it in favor of publicity for your product or service. I
don't think anyone can go very far with such dodgy methods

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tednash
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions.

This has worked for me and it's down to the individual to decide how
aggressive you want to be.

I'll let you know how far I go...or when I fall.

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hsuresh
A lot of the techniques pointed out seem like plain spamming. Why/how does
that count for growth hacking?

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pyamparala
Excellent post Ted. Being the owner/moderator of the closed Facebook group
([https://www.facebook.com/groups/appentrepreneurs/](https://www.facebook.com/groups/appentrepreneurs/))
which you have mentioned and used as part of your growth hacks, I just wanted
to tell people who have been complaining in this thread , theat the amount of
value you have added to the group and its participants has been extraordinary.
I remember you joining the group about 3 months ago and already you are the
de-facto expert on App marketing for the group. Thanks for that

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lifeisstillgood
In SEO, the user makes an overt action (search) and the ranking of search then
can affects what the user sees. We've grown to accept that.

In social-graph-optimisation the overt act is much higher granularity - its to
follow / friend another person. So the game is to join as many graphs as
possible, or to find the graph of the person you want, and join that.

I think this granularity problem will severely limit the acceptance of SEO-
for-social-graphs. Seo right now works because it is possible to finesse at
the right granularity level as a function of a users action. Geo-location work
will also massively help - but social is effectively painting ads onto my
friends T-Shirts in the hope I will read them.

I struggle to see the next fine grained action

(*) We need a better term than social media, because this is all just
variations on an individual has their own webspace, and updates that space
regularly, plus a central scraping service to let others know. The important
bit is that Ts&Cs play less of a "real" part in this than might seem true -
essentially the Ts&Cs cover FB/Twitter business model, and less the privacy of
the user.

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chinmoy
Your techniques, as effective as they maybe, aren't really 'Growth Hacking'. I
think there is fine line between the good 'ol 'Internet Marketing'(read
spamming) and growth hacking. I'm not sure your's fall into the later.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the things you mentioned will not help
you to get more users and eventually make more money. Then again, if money is
the only thing you're after, you could as well be making crapware or promote
'Work From Home' guides. Trust me, they can make you a lot of money, I've been
there. There's a reason you're making iPhone apps instead of crapware. That
reason should be honored.

Anyways, I hope I delivered my message correctly. There's is nothing wrong
with what you're doing. Zynga did the same things you're doing with twists on
a large scale and made millions. But we don't want to be Zynga, do we?

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phpnode
it is basically crazy to "out" your methods like this, this is grey hat at
best and you're just asking to get banned. If you find an unethical tactic
that works for you, milk it, don't shout to the whole world about it, you just
expose how unethical you are.

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tednash
Thanks for this note. It's valid. Not sure I agree in being unethical. For me
the opportunity that arise from disclosing vs keeping secrets makes it
worthwhile.

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anu_gupta
Astroturfing from 25 fake twitter accounts is ethical, is it?

Who do you work for? What companies have employed you? If you think everything
you do is above board, I'm sure you won't mind naming some companies that have
benefitted from your ethical marketing services.

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tednash
Sure, I've had one employer who took me on at 19 and I left when I was 21,
(six months ago). I disclose my employer in other posts on my site.

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artagnon
Yes, this approach will probably earn you a quick buck and attract some
fleeting customers. Nobody with even a shred of integrity will want to be
associated with the brand you're creating; so yeah, you'll have a few thousand
cattle customers.

What is the point of all this, again?

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tednash
Appreciate this note and your views.

However, that's not been my experience in previous businesses. You can create
the worlds best product but if no one knows it exists, why build it.

I view the methods I use as a delivery medium to put information which adds
value to the individuals who read it.

If I do that, then I can start to develop a personal relationship with them.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, this post has certainly created
some interesting polarising views. I appreciate your comment.

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lukethomas
I had no idea you could scrape Facebook ids from groups and serve ads to them.
That's horrible, but brilliant.

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toisanji
Awesome notes, I've found [http://targetpattern.com](http://targetpattern.com)
to be the most effective for gaining targeted followers on twitter, I haven't
seen tweetadder before.

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tednash
Thanks for the share, I'll add this.

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butler14
Growth hacking. Also known as digital marketing.

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pidg
"Create and automate retweets and tweets from 25 fake accounts"?

This is definitely a hacky approach, not true digital marketing.

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butler14
People do a much, much worse in social media marketing (a well-defined
discipline within digital marketing).

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lovesgreen
Really enjoyed the article, thanks!

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tednash
Glad you enjoyed it!

