Blake Emal

I'm Blake. I took Float to $14k before launch & gained 49k Twitter followers in 10 months. AMA!

In September, I had a few hundred followers on Twitter. Now, I'm about to reach 50k. In February, my personal brand and content helped me land my dream job as CMO at Copy.ai. In March, I started building Float to help creators turn their docs in Notion into fully operational online courses. We made $14k on lifetime deals before ever launching! Now, I'm launching a cohort-based course called Launchables to help you launch a digital product in 15 days (and make money on it!) I'd love to tackle questions about marketing, writing, social media, online learning, and productivity! AMA πŸ’₯
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Marc - @magarrent
Hi Blake! Awesome job. How do you sell a digital product, with no ads and no social media followers? Just calling your possible leads?
Blake Emal
@magarrent It's definitely a lot harder to do without any audience or community. I would definitely focus on building that up so you can understand what topics and ideas people ACTUALLY care about in your audience, before putting time into building a product blindly. I will say that your audience does not need to be as big as you think to sell digital products. I've seen small accounts do tens of thousands in sales quickly because the product was amazing. I've seen big accounts (myself included) put out products that completely flop and make no sales. The audience is a leverage point, but the quality of the product is everything. A lot of folks on Twitter actually grow their audience BECAUSE of the product, not vice versa. If you build in the open and create great things, people will take notice.
El Fated
Marc Garcia
@blakebemal but what about b2b sales. You can't build a community of companies, or am I wrong? Thanks!!
Sachin Sinha
Hey Blake how did you get to 49k Twitter followers in 10 months?
Sharfunnisa Quadri
Yes. How do I do this?
Blake Emal
@sacin13 Hey Sachin! Here is my best advice for you: - Post an insane amount of content - Don't take it personally when a tweet doesn't work - Analyze what works and doesn't for every tweet - Build genuine relationships with other tweeters - Do NOT rely on being a "reply guy" - Make your account about THEM, not yourself - Start with short-form content to find what topics interest your audience, then expand them into long threads - Give away 99.99% of what you know for free with no expectations
Mary James
@sharfunnisa_quadriDM Me on WhatsApp +1 2073609375 if you are interested in turn your $150 into $7100 in just 24hours
Gabe Perez
It seems like a lot of success came after you built your digital brand on Twitter. Would you say this is true and what advice would you give to someone who would want to follow in similar footsteps?
Blake Emal
@gabe__perez Yes and no. I had been posting on LinkedIn for years before diving into Twitter, so I actually owe a lot of my success to LI. It all ties back to content creation, though. When I consistently create content that is helpful for other people, I see cool opportunities come my way. I try to give 99.99% of everything I know away for free. Twitter growth has accelerated my ability to sell digital products and it is a huge benefit in getting opps like podcast interviews, AMAs (hint hint), conference invites, public speaking gigs, etc. The process is pretty simple: - Start posting content on a topic you could speak about for days on end - Analyze if your audience cares at all about this - Create even more (insane amounts) of content - Analyze what works and what doesn't without ego or hurt feelings - Double down on what works, scrap the bad stuff
Marcos Ortiz
Gabe Perez
@blakebemal Awesome Blake, thanks for sharing with the community! The formula is much like content planning for Social and it makes 100% sense. Thanks for the great tip!
Miss Max
@gabe__perez @blakebemal i post a lot for years on LI but i get nothing.. i wonder what method did you use there
Andrew Baisden
Hey Blake nice to see you doing so well. Question what tools and methodologies are you using for managing your social media presence and work projects? How much scheduling and automation do you currently have and how do you decide which projects get higher priority?
Blake Emal
@andrewbaisden Howdy Andrew! I use Typefully to schedule my tweets. I use Buffer to schedule LinkedIn posts. I don't automate at all outside of this. I've tried that a bit before, and found it to actually be harder and more time-consuming than manually doing what I do. I don't automate idea generation or engagement at all. A couple of tools I use for my social game include: - Typefully for tweet scheduling - Buffer for other platform scheduling - Brandbird for graphics - Tella.tv for screen recordings - Notion for thread compiling - Command browser for highlighting interesting things on the web
Kunal Mishra
Hey Blake! How did you do marketing for Float. I see you aren't active very much on @sayfloat. So I'm guessing you're "doing things that don't scale" aka going to course creators and convincing them personally to use Float. I'm building a product that doesn't have a very big market. So I don't know if I should invest time in building a follower base for that product's account. For now, I'm just engaging with people who could possibly in future be my customers (after I launch). Thanks already :)
Blake Emal
@kunalmishra We haven't used the account much on Twitter because it's really hard to create brand content that is helpful. I tend to rely on my personal account to drive awareness to Float instead, and it has worked better for us. I also focus more on unscalable things like DMs and engaging with others for Float to form partnerships.
Fitz Maro
Edit! Update: Confusion abound! But I follow you on twitter and have stolen some great ideas from your tweet threads about landing pages :)
Blake Emal
@fitzmaro Hey Fitz! Thanks for hopping in here. That actually wasn't me, but I super appreciate you taking some time from your day to post here!
Fitz Maro
@blakebemal my bad hah! Edited and updated :)
Blake Emal
@fitzmaro Haha no worries! Appreciate your kind words!
Mary James
@fitzmaroDM Me on WhatsApp +1 2073609375 if you are interested in turn your $150 into $7100 in just 24hours
Eddie Shleyner
Hey Blake, great to see you here and congrats on the new arrival! I'm about to be a dad, too. Wondering how you manage to stay so productive while on newborn duty? :) Cheers, man -- and congrats again!
Blake Emal
@verygoodcopy Congrats Eddie! That's awesome. Truth of the matter is the the word "productivity" changes when you become a parent. You'll have to decide on a few things professionally that you are willing to let die to make time for your new, better responsibility. Thankfully, newborns can't really do that much except eat and sleep and poop. So you have a little bit of time to adjust and get into a good spot before they really start requiring a lot more from you. Take more breaks. Time block religiously so you can stick to an agenda and move on when it's done. Don't feel bad if productivity looks different for you going forward. Your life is about to change for the better, but there will be some bumps and bruises along the way.
Eddie Shleyner
@blakebemal, cheers, man -- I love this. Thank you :)
Simon Barker
This looks great! It took me a solid month of work to create and ship Career Switch To Coding, I can't imagine the intensity of doing it in 2 weeks. Would have loved this at the start of July. Bit late for me now! Best of luck
Blake Emal
@simon_barker1 Some things may take a bit longer, and if you have a full time job (like me) it can be super tough to ship quickly. The cohort is all about pushing and challenging, as well as mentoring. You tend to complete things in a shorter timeframe if you just set a shorter timeframe.
Simon Barker
@blakebemal Good point, I had forgotten about Parkinson's law πŸ˜€
Mayank Mishra
Hey @Blake , what was your Zero to One thought before you went into this game!! I'm building b2b productivity tools and would love to be building in public with some groove!
Blake Emal
@blake @mishra_mayank I had tried Twitter a bunch of times before, but just never stayed consistent. So my 0 to 1 was just committing to tweeting at least 5 times per day for 6 months. I far exceeded the amount of tweets AND time streak, but this is what I needed. You don't need perfect ideas in order to publish. Share what you're learning, where you've failed, where you've succeeded, and provide helpful tips along the way.
Mayank Mishra
@blake @blakebemal wow, I have always been wondering if spending time on Twitter is productive or counter productive as a founder, seems like you've done a really good job with Twitter!!
Anshul Sojatia
Hi Blake, awesome feat. How do you plan your content generation strategy? Do you go to competitors and try to write better/or something that they don't have? Also, how did you get that leap in your twitter following?
Blake Emal
@anshulsojatia Content Ideas: A lot of what I generate as ideas comes from personal experience and spontaneous thought. I'm pretty good about writing ideas down right when I have them. I've definitely done competitive research at times, but actually my favorite way of discovering new formats to post in is by searching viral tweets in completely different niches. Maybe I search for real estate, design, or gardening tweets that went viral and dissect WHY and what format they used. This usually works out pretty well. Twitter growth: - I posted an insane amount of content - I didn't take it personally when a tweet didn't work, I just analyzed WHY and tried to make it better next time - I built genuine relationships with other tweeters - I did NOT rely on being a "reply guy" - I tweeted in ways that people weren't used to seeing - I tried not to make my account about ME, but about THEM - I started with short-form content to find what topics interested my audience, then I took what really worked and expanded them into long threads - I gave away 99.99% of what I know for free and with no expectations
Anshul Sojatia
@blakebemal Cool. Thanks for detailing your approach. I will try to think how can I incorporate those points into my way of working. Cheers.
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