Comments on post “The Growtheme”
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
a website theme to make your site "GrowthHacker" approved... annoying popups for email capture and the like...
I'd much rather products that just helped people develop more interesting sites than just using marketing techniques to get them to 'convert'
I'm a big believer in if you have engaging content then you should be able to appeal to your target audience. 'Hacking' your way to get 'conversions' are rarely going to be that valuable in the long run.
Also find it weird how people don't just see through all the techniques... If I see these things on a site it makes me even less likely to want to hang around now.
Good story-telling, I'd be intrigued to spend time
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Jascha Brinkmann
@jaschaio · Entrepreneur, jascha.io
@bentossell Hey Ben, thanks for your comment.
What you say is completely true, you need great, engaging, high quality content to build your audience.
There is no value in an email list of readers that only got "tricked" into following you.
It's as well the right way to go about building a real relationship with your followers.
The theme itself is not enough, as it just makes sure that your visitors don't leave your site and forget about you.
But in the end you will need both. One without the other one doesn't work. I would love if everyone would take the time to search for an opportunity to stay in contact with content producers after reading an awesome article, but the real world just doesn't work that way.
Most people just close the tab and go on with their live and forget about you. Even if they take the time to add your blog to "favorites", if you have no opportunity to build the relationship they won't come back. Popups are not the only way to get people to follow you, but its a working way. If done right they can as well be used very ethical.
This theme wasn't build for marketers or sleazy "sales man" that only try to build their email list to immediately sell something.
It's for bloggers that have been struggling to get consistent traffic and don't know how to turn visitors into subscribers.
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Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@jaschaio yeah I get that of course... unfortunately it will be bought and used by people trying to build an email list for the sake of it and selling shitty things.
I just wonder if there is a better way to provide the knowledge/education/tools to bloggers in a different way
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Jascha Brinkmann
@jaschaio · Entrepreneur, jascha.io
@bentossell You may know the infamous article that you only need 1000 true fans to live well as an artist (http://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-t...)
Out of our own experience I actually think the same is true for Bloggers. Once you've reached one thousand true fans and loyal readers, everything else gets easier. Because even if you produce the most valuable content you can think of in the beginning, if there is nobody to listen it won't get noticed.
I have been wondering about the same question and build recently a free email course on the same topic (http://www.driveblogtraffic.com). The goal is to help bloggers to learn how to build an audience from scratch, in an ethical way, building real relationships with people.
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Alice Thwaite
@alicelthwaite · Founder, Hattusia & Echo Chamber Club
@bentossell Hi Ben - thought I'd add my own 2 cents to this.
Most people don't actually know where they read interesting content anymore. I speak to people about this every day and quite often they don't know what their favourite blogs, newspapers or magazines are. They simply wait for content to be delivered to them. This could be via social news feeds but quite frequently, the easiest way to do this is via newsletter.
I appreciate this may be annoying for some users - but the way users are searching for content at the moment, there can be no other way. And if you don't let people know the option is available, then they won't ask off their own bat.
I don't know if you agree @jascaio ?
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Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@alicelthwaite @jascaio hey! Thanks for chiming in :)
It's not that I have anything against people not knowing where to find content for them etc but just the pop ups of "Yes show more people my blog" or "No I dont want any visitors" that often comes up when you go to exit a site are now a bit annoying (personally)... there was a time where it was quite intriguing and clever but unfortunately I think marketers and 'growth hackers' have run it into the ground where it now is just too in your face and puts me off a site if I see things like that.
That being said, perhaps the blogging world is still to be tapped with techniques like this so it could convert really well! Perhaps its just the volume of sites I see that are using this and have low quality content that has pushed me to annoyance haha
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Jascha Brinkmann
@jaschaio · Entrepreneur, jascha.io
@alicelthwaite @bentossell It's true. As a hardcore internet user we often forget how "normal" people consume and use the internet. And most of them use it through modern gatekeepers. Apps like facebook, twitter and instagram or even google. But as well through their email clients. I don't think we would have seen any meaningful traffic growth, without building our email list from the beginning using these techniques.
It's the best way to drive consistently traffic back to your own site. We actually have a quite active Facebook page, that we have been building organically with high engagement rates. But it will never work as well as email. The same is true for twitter click through rates. I got tweets from people with 200k+ followers and only a couple of visitors out of it. If the same person sends an email to a list with just one tenth of the size, it would probably break any shared host immediately.
And there is actually something else to the equation. At some point bloggers have to make money. It breaks my heart if I see people giving their blogs a real try and than they have to give up after a year. Just building the blog itself is really hard. Earning a living from it even more. Building an email list makes all this a lot easier.
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