How To Grow Without Tacky Hacks

You can get some easy views and even grow quickly on a platform if you chase growth hacks or rely on short-term tactics. But what do you do when the trick stops working? Because it WILL stop working.

It always does.

I've seen different tricks come and go on every platform.

The big hack on Instagram for a while was the follow/unfollow method. That's where you intentionally follow as many people as possible, often using a bot, only to unfollow them a few days later. Pure shenanigans.

Here's some of the ones I've noticed on LinkedIn over the years:

1. Making "let's connect and grow" posts where you encourage random strangers to comment and connect with everyone on the thread. This died off when the platform started hiding those pesky posts.

2. Using bots to send 1000 connections per week. Then LinkedIn drastically cut down the connection sending limit to 100 a week to slow the spam.

3. Posting polls about ANYTHING, no matter how random the topic (I once got 250K views on a poll post about coffee). This came to a halt when LinkedIn stopped giving polls massive reach.

That's why you'll see people on LinkedIn with tens of thousands of followers but practically no engagement on their posts. They grew quickly, with some passing tactic, but there's no depth to the relationships with those they're connected with.

Be Intentional About Improving Your Writing

Instead of chasing shallow fixes and short-term solutions, one of the best things you can do is intentionally work on improving your writing.

Whether it's your posts, your landing pages, or an outline for a video: you're using words all the time. Your ability to distill and convey ideas greatly impacts how well you're able to connect with people.

The most obvious advice? Intentionally write more.

Make writing a habit. I write for a minimum of 20 minutes every single morning. It's often longer, but my current commitment is that I can't eat breakfast until I've written for at least 20 minutes.

What will help you beyond simply writing more words is practicing your ability to edit.

In a world where everyone feels short on time and is overwheled in information, your ability to be concise has never been more important.

Once you've dumped out all your thoughts onto a page, edit it down.

Ask yourself:

• Is there any fluff, like adverbs?
• Any shorter words that mean the same thing?
• How could you convey the idea in fewer words?

An easy online tool to help you with this is Hemingway. https://hemingwayapp.com/

If you're using content to attract clients, build relationships, and help more people, a great first place to focus your editing skills is on your headlines. Those first few words will make or break whether someone opens your email, reads the rest of your post, or clicks through on your video.

You want your headline to create curiosity, challenge reality, or capture attention. The best headlines create an open loop where the person wants to know more.

This is the headline from one of my best performing posts:

Can you see how it would be hard to read that and not click "read more"? 

It's common to hear copywriters say that you should spend 50% of your time on your headline. That means if you spent 20 minutes writing something, you should spend an equal 20 minutes writing its headline. If that seems too crazy to you, I'd recommend creating at least three alternative headlines as part of your process before you publish anything.

There's magic in iteration.

Improving your ability to write is a skill that will pay dividends long after the easy views of the latest trend are dead.

Now go be intentional about improving your writing so you can help more people.

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When you're ready, here's three ways I can help you:  

1. Inquire to work with me 1:1, here.

3. Get my best-selling book, Die Before They Do, here.