Fantasize on this for a second…
What if you hired a seasoned growth marketer, tech startup founder, entrepreneur, and current head of marketing for a Fintech startup…
…to help grow your blog?
What would they say? Well, that’s essentially today’s podcast.
Erica is the Head of Marketing at Rize, a blossoming Fintech company due to fully launch in early 2018.
We met at FinCon, where we chatted blogging, tech, startup culture, growth marketing…and she was an incredible networker (and super bright person).
I’m beyond thrilled to bring you this sit down with her.
We chat about…
- Her early startup life (living with her entire team in a NYC apartment, getting funding, getting acquired, etc)
- What many bloggers are currently wrong…that is limiting their growth.
- How Erica would approach the first 6 months of a new blog
- (this chat is amammmmaaaaazing)
Below you can find the audio links, as well as key takeaways from the episode!
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Show notes and referenced links
- General Assembly
- PT Money (founder of FinCon! He was on the podcast here. It was awesome)
- Neil Patel (Also on the podcast here) – guru marketer.
- Hubspot – meh. Good blog though.
- Kissmetrics blog – Great blog for growth
- Seth Godin (one of my idols, author of Purple Cow, Tribes, and Permission Marketing)
- Product Hunt
- Canva (boooooo) and Snappa (yayyy!!)
- Growth Supply (AMAZING list of free resources)
Key takeaways from today’s episode with Erica
Ok, so…
There was a ton of really good information, practical strategies for growth marketing, etc, in the episode…most of which I’m not going to re-hash here.
(Mainly because I like to keep these takeaways on the shorter side…and because you can get way better information on growth marketing at the blogs listed above)
That said, there were two huge sentiments you should dwell on (and hopefully take action on too?)
1 – Please dream bigger
Ok, so you don’t have $30,000 to pour into Facebook ads.
That’s not necessarily what “dreaming big” means in this context. Here’s what it does mean:
Do not allow limiting beliefs to take hold, and adapt a mindset of growth and enormous potential.
Let yourself think and plan for the future in a world that COMPLETELY has enough room for your blog/business to be huge.
- The world is a huge place.
- 2B+ human beings will be coming online in the next 10 years
- Bloggers make 7-figures a year. They’re out there. People you’ve never even heard of.
- Anything actually *is* possible, it’s just a game of figuring out.
Furthermore, there are two additional benefits from thinking bigger…
One, if you aim for big goals and fail, you will likely still have accomplished more than if you aimed for small goals and succeeded.
Ex: If you aim to make $5,000 from your blog next year…the tactics you employ to hit that goal will only result in $5k, 10k, or maybe 15-20k.
Conversely, let’s say you aim to make $500,000. The tactics you employ will be vastly different, and even if you only hit twenty-stinkin-percent of your goal, you’ll have far more than your small goal.
Can you hit 20% of your big goal?
The second huge benefit to thinking big…
There’s far less competition.
How many people go through life JUMPING at the chance for a 3% raise? 5%? How many of us are constantly exploring new work opportunities that will net us $7,500 more a year!
How many of us are looking for $200-300 here and there from our side hustles?
Essentially everyone.
How many of us are like Erica…starting a brand new blog, and not writing a single word until we have 10k-15k email subscribers?
Nobody. Because it’s insane.
That’s the magic of thinking big. Erica is playing an entirely different game than we are, and there are far, far fewer people playing that game.
2 – Dream big, the simple thought exercise
Here’s something a little less abstract, and a little more concrete.
If nothing else, this makes a fantastic thought exercise.
- Identify your goals (hopefully you already have these on paper)
- 10x them
- Ask yourself the following: “What would I have do to in order to achieve these 10x goals in the same timeframe?”
The strategies, planning, and daily actions you perform for your blog will look drastically different if your objective is 10x more.
“Pete this is a bit dumb. The stuff I came up with doing isn’t realistic at all.”
Good. That’s A-ok.
The point is to get you thinking differently, more aggressively, bigger. You might brainstorm 25 ideas for how you’d 10x your blog growth over the next year, and if only half of ONE of those is useful, you’re on the right path.
Think big
3 – Treat your blog like a business (what does that actually look like?)
It’s funny, the bloggers that do not like to “think of their blog as a business” usually still look up to the bloggers that do.
Here’s the key thing: it’s not about making money, it’s about strategic thinking.
Don’t want to be a millionaire blogger? Fine.
But you still want to reach people? Have impact? Get your lovely voice heard?
You’d be lying if you say “no” 🙂
What does “treating my blog like a business even mean?”
Strategic and purposeful thinking, planning, and executing.
Somebody put that on a bumper sticker.
It does NOT mean pursuing profits above all else. It does mean pursing growth in an active manner.
That’s all.
Want a quick peek at my 2018 goals for Do You Even Blog?
Grab the 2 minute bonus video below.