I never thought of YouTube as a customer acquisition platform.

I’d uploaded many videos in the past with little-to-no effort in optimizing them.

I didn’t want to waste my effort.

Because I always thought of YouTube as a place to watch sports and TV highlights. Yet, I was proven wrong by the simple fact that a few entrepreneurs were crushing it like Gary Vaynerchuk and Neil Patel.

Curious to understand what they did differently, I analyzed their channels and hired a YouTube expert. In less than an hour, we optimized one of my videos with 100 views which enabled it to get 400 more views over the next two days. I became a believer.

As a believer in YouTube marketing, I want to break down all the tactics people are using to optimize their videos to get more views, subscribers, and customers. Best yet, how I copied them 🙂

1. Create a Compelling Video Thumbnail

Let’s start with the obvious. It has to look good to get clicked.

Have you ever created a Facebook ad that popped? It got tons of click-throughs, engagement, and even drove sales? Well, the chances are it would make for a great YouTube thumbnail.

Take a look at Neil Patel’s thumbnail for his video. It could easily be a Facebook ad if it didn’t have so much text. Neil is smiling which makes it engaging and the text clearly states the benefit. Moreover, the headline is just as good. I’m interested and ready to learn.

2. Update the Date

On Neil’s video, notice how it was uploaded in 2017, but it says 2019 on the video title and thumbnail. Neil’s YouTube video on SEO is evergreen so he doesn’t need to change the content. Instead, he edits the title, thumbnail, and description. Now it’s ranking for the word 2019 because no one searches for 2017 SEO tactics anymore.

By doing this, Neil doesn’t have to come out with a new video every year. Instead, he can simply make a few changes and he’s ready to go.

3. Get People to Subscribe on the Video

Did you know you can have a watermark on your video? You can put your company logo on it, then when people click it – it asks them to subscribe. The problem? Who would want to click your company logo? Instead of uploading your company logo as a watermark, use a YouTube subscribe image as Neil has done.

To upload the watermark, go to your Creator Studio, click channel, then select Branding. Here you can upload a subscribe watermark that will appear on all your videos just like Neil.

Congrats! It’s now easier to get subscribers.

4. Keyword Your Profile

Before you go all in on optimizing your videos, ensure you add keywords to your profile. The keywords should coincide with the content you upload. Once again, go to your Creator Studio, click channel, then select Advanced. Here you can put in relevant keywords next to “Channel keywords.” I recommend putting in branded keywords like your company and personal name. Then add the other keywords you wish to become a thought leader in.

Another keyword secret?

When you upload your video on YouTube, you should use your keyword in the filename of the video.

5. How to Optimize Keywords for Your Video

In the example below, notice that our recently uploaded video of our interview with the Webflow co-founder is ranking near the top when you search “Webflow.”

To do this, we had to do a deep dive into keyword research. That starts with a couple of free Chrome extensions. The first one: “Keywords everywhere” which shows the number of searches/month below the search bar like in the example above. The second one: “vidIQ” which shows the numbers of searches every month for different keywords, keywords a YouTube video is optimizing for, and the keywords a channel is optimizing for.

Using these tools, we conduct our research using search.

First, I type in Webflow as an obvious choice because that’s what my video is about. However, I want to know if it’s hard to rank for this keyword. By taking a look at the videos on the first page, I notice a high view to subscriber ratio. This often signifies a high search volume and low supply of video content relative to this demand.

That means this keyword is perfect to rank for. Now that I know this keyword does relatively well, I can make a couple of hypotheses to test.

#1: Webflow ranks well because they have many users (over one million) which drives search, especially as a software product that requires – to an extent – tutorials to understand.

#2: Because Webflow is probably searched via YouTube for tutorials, my video interviewing the founder won’t be relevant to most related keywords for their product.

Simply by typing in Webflow to the search bar, this proves to be right. Notice that most of the searches are tutorial related. That’s means I’ll need to find other keywords to use. 

Because Webflow is a Y Combinator company, I hypothesize there will be valuable keywords there. One reason, in particular, is Y Combinator is known for founder interviews, so this could be a perfect match. Doing some basic research on Y Combinator related keywords, I noticed two of the top three results for my “Y Combinator Interview” search don’t even include the word “interview” anywhere. Yet, they’re still ranking for this search.

If non-optimized videos can rank for this search, then I can sure beat these videos by making mine a little better. I don’t even have to do much besides add “YC Interview” to the keywords I want to rank for or in my title and description of the video.

We don’t stop there. Next, we play around with a few more searches like “Founders stories.” I notice this search gets 260 visits/month. That may not seem like a lot to most people, but over two years that could drive another one thousand visits to my video. If the visitors are of high quality and they enjoy the content, then YouTube will push my video out to even more viewers.

When I take a look at the first video, I notice a high view count compared to the subscriber number. Again, this means this keyword search is high quality because there’s not a lot of competing content. The downside? The video at the top “Founders’ Stories: Basecamp’s Jason Fried” is of strong quality having the keywords in the title.

It also has the video included in the ones it’s optimizing for. In this case, it doesn’t hurt to take second place. With that said, because YouTube ranks newer content better than older content (similar to Google with blog posts), I have a strong chance of outranking this video in the future.

With this knowledge, I put together a powerful optimization plan for my video. First, I include the keywords I want to rank for in the title. I have to be careful because I can’t make the title too long; otherwise, it won’t show up well on mobile.

Then I include the relevant keywords in the ones I want to optimize for when I’m editing my video. I add as many keywords as it will allow me to do.

After several days, vidIQ will show you the ones you’re ranking for with their blue outline. I’m currently #2 for “Webflow Founders.”

The result?

A 60.2 SEO score according to vidIQ. I recommend aiming for a score above 40 for all your videos. It’s not easy, but well worth it – to say the least.

6. Optimize Your Headline and Description

This one is simple.

You get an SEO boost by adding the keywords to the beginning of the title. Find your favorite keywords you want to rank for – then put them there.

For example, if you want to rank for “Webflow Tutorial,” then have it at the beginning of your headline – “Webflow Tutorial: How to Design Beautiful Landing Pages”

Next are your video descriptions. The more optimized your description, the higher you’ll rank. To optimize your video, include keywords in the first 25 words, make the description at least 250 words, and include your keywords 2-4 times. As a result, this SEO-optimized description helps tell Google and YouTube what your video is about making them more likely to rank you better.

Lastly, include timestamps (i.e. “11:15 How viral loops work”) to guide the viewer and increase audience retention. Here’s an example below:

It’s as easy as typing in the numbers and YouTube will automatically link the sections for you.

7. Create a Compelling Outro

This is rather easy to do, but so important for getting subscribers. When someone gets to the end of your video, they’re at their pique point of becoming a subscriber. After all, they just consumed an entire video of your content. This is where you want to add a subscribe image which is often just your YouTube profile picture and another annotation that leads people into another relevant video of yours.

To do this, go to your Video Manager section, then click videos. Here, select the relevant video you want to edit, then click End screen & Annotations. I recommend adding annotations to the last 15 – 30 seconds of your video. That way it’s not intrusive to them completing it.

To get these elements on the video, click “Add element.”

From here, select either “Subscribe” to get your channel image on the video and “Video or Playlist” to get your “Most recent upload” or “Best for viewer” video uploaded.

And that’s it!

8. Ask Your Current Fans to Subscribe

There are two ways to do this:

#1: In your video, when you’ve given a lot of value to the audience, simply ask them “Hey, if you’ve received a lot of value from this video, please hit subscribe.” You’d be surprised at how many people will do this in return.

#2: The second one is to send out your channel link to your current fan base whether through email, Messenger, or social media.

Except don’t use the regular channel URL. Instead, add a ?sub_confirmation=1 to the end so it looks like this:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC84KURVo9eUQo7lwGP8N7-Q?sub_confirmation=1

Now when people click through, they’ll see the pop-up to Subscribe.

This is an easy way to transfer your audience from other platforms to YouTube.

9. Optimize for Google Search

Google likes to rank videos on top of its search results.

Here’s an example:

For the most part, Google uses video results for these types of keywords:

-How-to keywords (“how to shave a cat”)
-Reviews (“beats by Dre review”)
-Tutorials (“Setting up WordPress”)
-Anything fitness or sports related (“Cardio kickboxing”)
-Funny videos (“Cute animals”)

So if you optimize your video around keywords that don’t have video results, you’ll only get organic traffic from YouTube. However, if you optimize for a Google video keyword, then you’ll also attract traffic from Google’s first page of search results.

To find these keywords, start with what works on YouTube, then plug those keywords and phrases into Google. You’ll see which ones have videos.

Once you’ve found a Video Keyword, it’s time to see if there’s any search volume for that keyword. Otherwise, you might rank in Google for a keyword that only gets 20 searches per month. That’s not worth it.

Dive into your AdWords account, click on Tools, then Keyword Planner.

Here, you want to identify a video keyword phrase that gets between 500-1k searches per month in Google depending on your niche.

If you can get the corresponding video to rank in Google, then a lot of those searchers will click on your video in the results. This will ultimately lead to a better ranking for your video on YouTube and, ideally, traffic to your site.

10. Say Your Keywords

YouTube has an advanced transcription for videos. This means they know whether your video’s content is related to the subject you put in your video’s headline, description, and keywords.

So if you don’t say your keywords, then guess what?

You won’t get ranked.

I recommend saying your keywords as often as possible without diluting the quality of the video. The reason is even though YouTube’s transcription is advanced, it’s not perfect.

I’d also open your video with the keywords to make it easier. To do this, remind people of why they clicked on the video. For example, let’s use the backflip video from earlier. Here’s how I would open it:

“Hi, my name is Josh. I’m here to teach you how to do a backflip.”

That was easy.

11. Promote Your Videos via Quora and Your Blog

The days of sharing your YouTube videos to Facebook and LinkedIn to drive traffic…those days are dead. Facebook and LinkedIn don’t want you promoting other platforms on theirs. So they’ll penalize your content’s reach. Ouch.

The good news is there are a couple of sites that encourage you to upload content. The first site is Quora.com. Here’s an example from Brian Dean, founder of Backlinko.com where he uploads a YouTube video that answers a question.

Now, I recommend taking this one step further by answering related questions. For example, if I want to better rank my interview about growth hacking with Sean Ellis, then I’ll link to it in answers for relevant questions.

One of the biggest problems in writing on Quora is finding good questions to answer. By “good,” I mean questions that will bring you views and send you traffic.

A tip, I got from Si Quan Ong is if you set up an Ad account, select “Targeting by Questions.”

It will prompt you to enter a relevant keyword. When you do so, it will show you questions with the number of weekly views/week (you don’t even have to run ads).

To take advantage of this, you want to either link or embed a video in your answers similar to how Brian Dean does it.

For example, for the top question, “What is the best way to learn Growth Hacking?”

I embed my Sean Ellis interview:

Now I have a consist 20 – 60 impression every week seeing this video. If I can include it in another 4 – 5 answers with relevant traffic, this video will receive enough views to tell YouTube whether it’s worth ranking or not.

12. Optimize for How People Consume Your Video

I don’t expect people to watch my 30-minute plus video interviews.

I expect them to listen to it.

I expect them to hit play, move the tab to the side and work on their projects. The reason for this is nobody wants to put in a lot of effort to consume content. They want it to be easy.

Ask yourself, “Where do they get the value?”

For my interviews, it’s not in looking at me and the interviewee.

It’s in what we say.

If you’re learning to do a backflip, then you’d rather watch.

Because it’s not enough for someone to say “do this one step” and you have the confidence to jump in the air backward and land on your feet. Context matters.

Knowing these facts, I can better optimize my video. I’ll put in less attention into my video cuts for the interview to keep the viewer’s eyeballs on it and more attention into the quality of sound to keep them listening.

It’s easy to see what works. By diving into your YouTube Studio, you can click on any of your videos. From there, you can see an overview of the analytics. Audience retention is by far the most important.

Here you want to test what videos work for you to retain eyeballs and listeners. If you’re uploading music, then you can expect a lot of people to switch tabs.

The video example below is of me writing a viral post. It’s very visual which means it will be harder to rank if it’s bad content.

Notice that you can see which videos contribute to your subscriber growth. In this case, this video provided 32 new subscribers. For a new channel that’s quite a lot.

Looking at the numbers, people really liked this YouTube video. With that said, it’d be hard to reproduce just by the nature of the content.

13. Hook the Audience for Retention

“To know how to rank #1 on Google you must watch this whole video. The last two tips are the most important.”

This hook gets the audience curious enough to stay through the entire video. As a result, your audience retention increases and YouTube ranks your video better.

For a great example, watch the first ten seconds of this video and listen to what Neil Patel says: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmB_TC92I8w

Another way to do this is to put a snippet of the best clip from the video in the beginning or use an image of it as the thumbnail. Here’s an example:

The Yes Theory team also does an excellent job of this:

All these are super clickable images.

14. How to Growth Hack Interview Questions

If you’re uploading an interview video, an easy hack is to ask the right questions. To do this, conduct your research beforehand on what questions would make sense.

Let’s say I’m interviewing the founder of Webflow, I can ask “Why Webflow vs WordPress?,” “How would you review Webflow?,” “What makes Webflow a great CMS?,” and “Where do I find the best Webflow tutorials?”

It’s easy to find these questions – I just pulled them from the initial search drop-down.

By asking a YouTube optimized question, I can edit out the relevant cut to that question and make it it’s own YouTube video. Then I can tag the video accordingly for the keywords I’m ranking it for.

16. Run Ads to Your Videos

TrueView ads are a great way to reach your target market.

Firstly, they’re low-risk.

Remember, you’re only charged when viewers opt to watch your entire ad, view it for at least 30 seconds, or interact with the ad in some way.

This is awesome.

Because although 76% of consumers reflexively skip these ads, you can at least be sure your budget is being spent on interested viewers.

Secondly, because TrueView ads are opt-in, you aren’t restricted by time limits.

This means that you can experiment with different creative formats such as product demos, testimonials, or how-to videos.

For example, Grammarly has used testimonials and product demos in their TrueView ads to great effect. In fact, a massive 54.4% of their social media traffic comes from the site.

What’s more, according to Google, when brands use TrueView, they can see views of existing content increase by up to 500%.

However, TrueView ads often lead to low retention rates on your video if not optimized properly. This can hurt your SEO score. It’s important to use YouTube Search ads as well because they have stronger intent which leads to more retention.

The downside is they tend to be a bit more expensive. Go figure.

17. Engage, Engage, Engage

YouTube recognizes whether you engage with your commenters or not. If you do, they rank your videos better. I recommend engaging with them not just liking their comments, but responding to as many as you can.

Try to be clever because it can escalate into many more comments.

Yes Theory does this well:

Yes, that’s 500+ more comments because of a simple question.

18. Optimize Your Video Cuts

To keep viewers engaged, it’s important you cut your videos for subtle surprises. I recommend having a couple of cuts in every minute of your video to keep your viewers’ attention.

Here are some example cuts below –

The side cut:

The introing-a-subject-matter cut:

The presenting-a-subject-matter cut:

The zoom-in cut:

The show-what-you’re-working-on cut:

The speed-up-slow-down cut:

The magically-appear cut:

The change-up cut:

19. Check Your Analytics for Actionable Insights

The secret behind optimizing YouTube videos for SEO is focusing on growing your subscriber number and retention rate analytics. To analyze retention, go to your YouTube Creator Studio Classic, then click on Analytics.

Here, you can dive into Audience Retention to see if you’re improving over time. This is the primary determinant of if your YouTube channel is on a successful track.

You can track the retention by individual video as well. Best yet, you can see if you’re running effective ads. Here, you can see that ads actually negatively affected my video by hurting my watch retention rate.

The idea is to test many different types of content for getting subscribers.

When you find something that works, then double down on it. But don’t double down on content because it has a large number of shares, likes, and views. It’s a distraction from building your number of subscribers.

Watch time has the highest correlation to more subscribers so we want to double down there.

To see where this watch time is coming from, you want to analyze the traffic sources: Suggest Videos, Channel pages, and YouTube Search. If you can find out how people found you through YouTube, then you can optimize for it. Analyze the number of views compared to average watch time. Then, look at how many subscribers those videos attract.

Next, we want to understand what keywords are pushing traffic through the highest performing channel. Now, we want to optimize for those keywords. Ensure to pick the keywords that lead to subscribers and a long video watch time.

How do we optimize for these keywords?

Put the best keywords in the title of your video and descriptions.

To take it one step further, I like to include an email address with an autoresponder thanking them for their inquiry and asking them to sign up on my list. Lastly, I include a link straight to a landing page to collect emails. Sometimes I use the link to my Facebook Group instead.

Next, find out what videos are referring you traffic and subscribers (maybe your own), then optimize for the keywords in the video title names and channel names. For example, if Justin Bieber’s channel is sending me a lot of traffic along with one particular video of his, then I’ll insert his channel name and video title name into my keyword list when optimizing for traffic.

If you’re looking to optimize your videos for SEO, remember subscribers and retention rate are your two most important metrics. Always optimize your videos for these metrics when uploading them and later when you have data on where your video’s traffic is coming from.

20. Record Your Screen for Tutorials

If you’re making tutorials, an easy way to set them up is to use QuickTime Player. With QuickTime Player, click File, then New Movie Recording.

From there, drag and shrink the video to the top right corner of your screen.

Now, click File again and select New Screen Recording. Here, you want to record the appropriate area of your screen. Then click the button in the middle “Start Recording.”

Now you have a tutorial video with a picture of yourself in the top right.

And… that’s everything folks 😉

Product Hunt is where MVPs and startups go to die or thrive.

Which one are you?

If you launch successfully on Product Hunt, you can get thousands of subscribers and customers.

If done wrong, you’ll realize you never had a product people wanted or took the time to build an audience.

We did it the right way when launching the book, THE BAMF BIBLE which led to over 4,000 new subscribers and thirty high-quality leads for my agency – all within nine days.

Before reading on, ask yourself:

“Should I launch on Product Hunt?”

If you check off these requirements, then yes:

1. You have a product targeted at early adopter market in the tech startup scene
2. You have a product people are willing to pay for
3. You’re not pitching a pure enterprise product
4. You have consistent value once they opt-in
5. You have an audience ready to engage

THE BAMF BIBLE is a book with 25+ growth hacking case studies from 2017. It fits the early adopter demographic because growth hacking implies you have a new secret sauce to grow startups. Moreover, people expressed over and again that they’d be willing to pay us for the book. And, most importantly, we had #4 and #5 covered.

This is where most Product Hunt launches fail.

They gather thousands of subscribers.

Then what?

They get a generic thank-you email, then there’s no follow-up.

If you don’t have an email or Messenger update that consistently provides value every week – don’t launch.

Otherwise, you’ll lose the people who visit your website and opt-in. Most people who launch on Product Hunt don’t have a valuable follow-up – that’s why most fail even with a thousand plus upvotes on their product. Ouch.

You can’t guarantee upvotes either.

You need momentum and that comes from a community who will engage with your launch.

“I launched my super awesome AI-driven GIF creator on Product Hunt. I’m guaranteed to go viral.” – Said no one ever.

You need to post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and send out email and Messenger blasts. If you’re not active on social or run an engaged subscriber list, then your chances of success are almost zero.

You can always spam many Facebook Groups and Facebook friends, then ask people to promote you for free, but this will make you look like an asshole and you won’t get results 🙂

Rather than rely on bad marketing, let’s rely on what works – systems with proven results.

I’ll take you step-by-step of how to create an audience, have a successful launch, and take care of your subscribers afterward:

Step 1: Assemble Your Team & Create Trust

One of the main factors that contributed to my book’s success was the people involved. I had many high-level entrepreneurs, marketers, and founders who contributed. As a result, upon release, they’d share it with their communities.

Who’s involved in the making of your product?

Whether it’s beta testers or a huge community, ensure they’re the right people for when you launch. You don’t want them pretending to love what you do, then dropping out right before the finish line.

To highlight our contributors, we gave them a dedicated section at the beginning (NOT THE END) of our book. We wanted them to know we genuinely cared about their contribution. Then we used that page as one of the first pictures on Product Hunt.

Did it work?

Each one of them shared.

Plus, it better reflected the vision of those who wanted to engage – a product that represents the communal aspect of Badass Marketers & Founders .

The second half, I needed people to trust that this would be an epic book of growth hacks. People don’t have a reason to upvote unless you’ve given them tons of value beforehand. Imagine you’re on Product Hunt and never heard of Badass Marketers & Founders.

Would you upvote the book right away?

Of course not.

You haven’t even read it.

And we can’t expect people to upvote the book a month later once they’ve finished reading.

We needed people who trusted the value we were providing, so they’d upvote us before reading. This was a critical piece to our success.

By publishing growth hacks over the previous year, we had built that trust. It takes time – there’s no way around it.

Step 2: Collect Emails & Subscribers

I took a different approach than many Product Hunt launches. Rather than building my email list beforehand, I built my Messenger list.

Why?

A small two-hundred person sample size on Messenger gave me ridiculously-awesome results:

An eight-times higher click-through rate and three-times higher open rate than email.

Looking at the data, my 1,000-person Messenger list before launch engaged as powerfully as a 10,000-person email list. To build my Messenger list, I used ManyChat because they have many landing page features that enable me to catch subscribers.

Not ready to jump one hundred percent into using Messenger, I promoted both my email and Messenger list. First, I promoted my Messenger list on my email list. This got me an initial several hundred subscribers.

Then I turned the home page of my website into a Messenger opt-in. I also created a Messenger opt-in specifically for my Quora following.

Within a month, I had seven hundred subscribers.

Next stop: LinkedIn.

For four months, I’d been publishing many engaging statuses on LinkedIn to build a following. Then I began to promote my upcoming book with teasers. For instance, I took a screenshot of possible book covers and posted it on LinkedIn asking which one they liked the most.

I kept a low barrier to entry to comment and made sure my audience knew I valued their opinion. All they had to do was type  “1,” “2,” or “3” to select a book cover.

As predicted, the post took off.

I ended up not using any of these covers, but I did get several hundred subscribers interested in keeping up with the launch. (A huge thank-you to Patrick Lyver for the final book cover).

Then I promoted my Messenger list in my Facebook Group by giving away viral LinkedIn outlines. This gave me three-hundred-and-fifty Messenger subscribers. A nice jolt to get my list above a thousand people.

Step 3: Start the Hype-Train Announcements

The book had been planned for a year, but I wanted the extra push to finish it. I also wanted to gauge the demand for the book.

After the announcement, it was clear people wanted it – and they wanted it now. Many were excited to pay for it and didn’t realize I was releasing it for free.

I got a lot of engagement on the announcement because I’d been documenting my growth hacks online for an entire year while connecting to people in the industry. People knew, liked, and trusted me.

Many times I had talked about publishing a growth hacking book, but it never happened. Growth hacks get outdated fast. I had enormous pressure to keep the book current which meant replacing thirty-page chapters with up-to-date growth hacks. A four-month hype-train writing process turned into an entire year.

Step 4: Find a Hunter

Having an invested Hunter will help drive more engagement.

If you’re new to Product Hunt, know that Hunter is someone who uploads your product to the site with images, a link to your website, and tags the Makers (creators of the product). Once he hits publish, the product is officially live.

Jack Smith, one of the top hunters on Product Hunt, had been a part of my community for awhile. As a result, he had an incentive to spread the launch via word-of-mouth or sharing online. I’m not sure how much of a difference this made, but anyone who has a loyal startup following and loves what you do will help make a dent in engagement.

When I reached out to ask him if he would hunt our book, he gave the okay. We did change the date several times, but he stuck with us. Thanks, Jack!

Step 5: Oil the Hype Train with Pre-Announcements

The day before the launch, I wanted everyone to know when the launch would go live.

We didn’t have the book entirely finished. It took us until 7 a.m. in the morning – an hour before launch.

Still, we decided to go all in and put pressure on ourselves to perform. With that said, it’s better to launch right after midnight because you only get one day on the front page. At midnight – every night – the front page of Product Hunt refreshes with new launches. By waiting until 8 a.m. to post, we lost eight hours of being live on the front page.

The good news: We still kicked ass.

We had the first pre-announcement in our Facebook Group. We tagged all the book contributors and I used a live stream to make sure I hit as many people in my community as possible with the message.

Ten minutes later, I announced it on my Facebook profile. This drove an insane amount of engagement.

And, of course, I posted on LinkedIn to keep the hype wheels moving.

Then came the Messenger blast which had a glaring typo (see if you can find it):

“Hey [First Name],

Tomorrow @ 8 a.m. PT we’re launching our free eBook on Product Hunt with 25+ growth hacking case studies from the best marketers and founders.

It took us an entire year to create!

Please share the book upon its release. We’ll notify you via Messenger. Let’s make the world a better place for marketers and founders.”

Four months ago, I had 1,500 LinkedIn followers.

Today, I have 26,000 followers (10K connections).

I used a systematic process for making this happen. This system allows me to create viral LinkedIn statuses every week and engage with thousands of prospects at scale.

In this piece, I’ll be covering the entire system for you.

This way you can get these type of stats in a matter of months:

Are you ready?

Let’s go.

Step 1: Optimize Your Profile

When people look at your profile, they decide whether you’re worth connecting with in several seconds.

These are the questions that go through their head when making this decision:

Do they look like a domain expert?

Do they look like a leader?

Can they help me?

If you can trigger a “yes” to each one, then you can connect with venture capitalists, Fortune 500 founders, and thought leaders – at scale.

It starts with the headshot because people mentally digest pictures before they read.

You don’t need anything over the top. As long as the viewer believes you put in the effort to take a professional headshot, then you’ve increased your add-back percentage.

What’s an add-back percentage?

It’s the percentage of the connection requests you send out that get accepted.

To take it up a couple of notches, ideally, you should have a picture of you smiling. The next step is optimizing your cover photo. There are three photos that will increase your add-back rate:

1. You with a relevant influencer in your industry
2. You speaking in front of prospects
3. You at a local landmark (only works if you’re connecting with people in your city)

Once your viewers finish judging your headshot and cover photo, they’ll read your headline.

The more thought leadership you can portray here, the higher increase you’ll see in your add-back rate. This doesn’t mean writing “Thought Leader” in your headline. You need to list tangible accomplishments or awards, preferably with numbers; otherwise, people won’t believe you.

If you’re lucky, they’ve given a check mark to your headshot, cover photo, and headline.

Now they’re reading your bio.

This is your opportunity to get them to click-through to your landing page. The biggest mistake I see from almost everyone on LinkedIn is lack of specificity. I don’t know what they do and how they can help me. If you can’t state your business proposition in two sentences, then you don’t have a business.

For example, take a look at my bio:

“We drive ROI for growing companies using cutting-edge growth marketing and growth hacking tactics. We’ve worked with companies like TEDx, Mixmax, Voo, LawTrades, Book in a Box, Deputy, and Autopilot.

Services include: B2B growth hacking, PR hacking, chatbots, FB ads, SEM, growth strategy, personal brand management, and marketing automation.

We also manage a community, Badass Marketers & Founders, which has over 15,000 members. You can request access here: http://growth.chat/fbcommunity

Want to work with us? Shoot me an email at josh@bamf.media

For all speaking inquiries, please visit: http://growth.chat/speaking

For more information about me, please visit: http://growth.chat/me

On my free time, I pursue my passion for understanding psychology and neuroscience, especially with how they play into creation, innovation, and social media.”

If the copy works, then why change it?

I have the same copy under my first job title.

It doesn’t end here. You need to optimize every part of your profile.

Make sure you have a logo for each company you’ve worked at. If there’s no logo, viewers will assume the company didn’t exist.

Logos are nice, but recommendations are more tangible. You should have, at least, five. If you don’t, then ask your coworkers and peers for a minute of their time to write something for you.

Don’t be shy. It’s worth the ask.

If you’ve done everything listed, then your profile is optimized.

You’re now ready to expand your network.

Step 2: Auto-Connect to Thousands of Prospects at Scale

With several clicks, you can connect to hundreds of targeted prospects at scale.

Founders of 500+ employee companies in the software space?

Done.

Directors of Innovation of 250+ employee companies in the marketing and advertising space?

Done.

And they’ll accept your connection request because your profile is optimized.

To make this magic happen, you need to buy the Chrome extension, Linked Helper ($15/month). To use the tool for expanding your network, write an invitation message. You’ll see the option in the middle drop-down. Write an intro message that’s NON-SALESY.

Focus on establishing a common bond. For example, in the message below I’m reaching out to founders in Los Angeles. I ensure to include both keywords (e.g. founders, Los Angeles) in my message. This message will go out to everyone you auto-connect with – possibly thousands of individuals.

Next, I plug-in a relevant search query into LinkedIn Sales Navigator. If you don’t have Sales Navigator, then don’t bother to run automation. You’ll get your profile banned.

Now I click “Connect all 2nd contact in Search.” The tool will automatically start connecting with personalized messages to everyone in the search query. Don’t connect with more than 150 people in a 24 hour period; otherwise, you risk the potential of getting banned.

If you send out 150 requests every other day, you can expand your connection base by a couple of thousand targeted prospects every month. Powerful.

Now that you have a strong connection base let’s ramp up engagement.

Step 3: Publish Viral LinkedIn Posts Every Week

You have many prospects in your network.

Do you immediately follow-up with a sales message?

No.

You need to nurture them with value – every day.

Don’t bother with LinkedIn’s Publishing platform – it’s comparable to Facebook Notes. You need to leverage statuses to get seen and heard. An excellent status takes less time to create and will get far more eyeballs than your published post.

Look at this status I created – over 8 million views.

Before you jump in trying to repeat my success, you need to know how to write to drive engagement. It starts with the first two sentences. If those don’t pull your reader’s attention, then you’ve lost them.

Every quality piece begins with a problem, significant change, announcement, or credibility:

Problem:

Significant change:

Announcement:

Credibility:

The last two sentences are almost as important as the first two. If people don’t walk away feeling a strong emotion, then don’t expect them to like, comment, or share your post.

Provide them an “aha” moment:

Here’s another example:

You’re almost a pro. However, you’re missing everything in the middle.

Here you want to tell a story with tangible examples.

Without a story, no one will care.

To tell a gripping story, you need to pull out every adjective from your dictionary, including amazing, super, nice, great, wonderful, and best. Instead, you need to write with TANGIBLE examples.

Here’s the difference:

“Josh is our best salesperson.”

vs.

“Josh closes every prospect on the phone.”

The latter example you can imagine, the first one you can’t.

You know you’re a pro when you can re-enact conversation. A conversation is more tangible than any description.

Here’s an example piece:

If you can writing engaging content like this, then you’ll have no problem nurturing your connections.

Step 4: Use Engagement Posts to Drive Subscribers

To turn your engagement into email subscribers, you can offer a relevant download or ask them for their opinion on a content release. For example, I asked my LinkedIn connections for their opinion on my book cover while providing a link to get notified when the book comes out.

Because LinkedIn decreases engagement for posts with links, I’ll put the link in the first comment. When I hit thirty comments on the piece, I’ll move it to the text area because garnering the initial engagement is the hardest.

Here’s an example piece I used to drive close to two hundred email subscribers:

Here’s another post that has a direct download. I asked people to comment “I’m in” if they wanted it. Then I went ahead and added a direct download after one hundred comments.

Engagement pieces are powerful, but you can’t overdo them. Release only a couple of every month; otherwise, you’ll look hungry for email address rather than someone who wants to build genuine relationships.

Step 5: Use Appreciation Posts to Develop Key Relationships

LinkedIn loves when you appreciate people in your network.

They go crazy over it.

The formula:

1. Introduce the problem you had before your meeting
2. Explain the credibility of the person you’re meeting using a tangible example
3. Dive into the key learning lessons from the conversation using bullet points

Here’s an example post: 

Here’s another example post:

Publicly acknowledging how people help you is one of the best ways to create valuable relationships. It shows you’re willing to vouch for a friend not only to one person but your entire network.

Step 6: Prep Your Statuses Using Quora

All my best LinkedIn statuses were written months before I began posting them.

How?

They were my answers to questions on Quora. In fact, 8/10 my most viewed statuses were initially written on Quora. I use Quora to validate my content before I post it on LinkedIn. This means that if my content gets high engagement on Quora, then I’ll repost it on LinkedIn.

There’s a slight mismatch. LinkedIn statuses only allow for 1,300 characters, unlike Quora which has no limit. As a result, when answering questions on Quora, it’s best to keep the 1,300 character limit in mind.

This piece was copied almost word for word to LinkedIn:

Quora:

LinkedIn:

I knew the piece would perform well on LinkedIn because it had already given me the validation on Quora.

It’s a nervous feeling guessing at how well your content will do.

It’s a powerful feeling already knowing.

Start writing on Quora.

Step 7: Retarget LinkedIn Connections on Facebook

You’ve learned a few masterful tactics, but there are still more.

This one can drive many leads and engagement for you. All you need to do is export your LinkedIn connections to retarget them on Facebook with engaging content. You can find the option to do so in your LinkedIn Settings – Getting an archive of your data.

Once you export your connections, LinkedIn will send you a list of their emails. Upload them to Facebook as a custom audience, then start running ads. I run video ads because the cost-per-view is less than several cents while still keeping an option for them to click-through to my website with a “Learn more” button.

Here are a couple of example video ads I’ve run to my LinkedIn audience resulting in a 10/10 relevance score (highest score for a Facebook ad performance):

In this page post I used as a Facebook ad, I’m giving value that’s directly related to LinkedIn – perfect for my connections who’ve seen my high engagement.

And again, a 10/10 relevance score.

If you publish engaging statuses, your LinkedIn connections will already know, like, and trust you. In turn, this will often be your best-performing audience.

Step 8: Interview High-Value Prospects at Scale

If you implemented the content tactics outlined above every day for a month, then people are starting to follow every post you publish. Your network knows of you and people in their network know of you.

It’s time to make sales. We sell in a genuine way – by focusing on relationship building using content marketing. This tactic is more useful if you have high-value prospects. This means your average deal size should, at least, be one thousand dollars.

Because almost every conversation leads into “What do you do?,” our angle is to get high-value prospects on the phone with you before they even receive a sales pitch.

How does this work?

We offer to include them in blog posts, podcasts, case studies, live stream videos, or even online magazines where you can highlight them. We’re playing to their ego – and it works.

Here’s an example message:

This message has over a thirty percent reply rate. Here’s why:

1. Appreciation

“I love the work you’ve done for [X company]”

2. Credibility

“Podcast that gets 2,000 listens an episode”

3. Community first

“As an entrepreneur building a vibrant community of founders”

4. More appreciation

“Knowledgeable speakers and people crushing it in tech such as yourself”

5. Example of a previous episode (not in the picture)

“Here’s an example of a previous interview with [insert credible name]: [link here]”

6. Straightforward call-to-action (not in the picture)

“Do you have fifteen minutes to talk this Wednesday @ 2 P.M. PST?”

With this template, I’ve had the founder of Zapier and Zoom respond to me. It’s that good.

Step 9: Turn Your LinkedIn Connections into a Vibrant Tribe

Once you’ve connected with and nurtured many of your target LinkedIn prospects, you have the leverage to build a tribe. This happens in a Facebook Group, not a Slack community or a LinkedIn Group – those are dead zones.

To get people into your community, there are two ways:

1. Email
2. LinkedIn messaging (more painful, but still works)

1. Email

Here’s the email template I’ll send out to all my LinkedIn connections:

“Hey [first name]

As a LinkedIn connections and fellow founder, I wanted to personally invite you to a founder Facebook Group I organize that’s very active, Marketers & Founders.

I happen to run one of the largest marketing communities in Silicon Valley (3000+ members) and the Facebook Group (6000+ members).

The Marketers & Founders Facebook Group is moderated by a few of the best, so it’s invite-only.

Our moderators:

1. Aj Cartas; 1.2 million social media fans and is an influencer lead @TopBuzz

2. Taylor Pipes; content strategist @Evernote

3. Me 🙂 Past head of growth for @22Social, @UpOut, and @GrowthX. 

You can join the Marketers and Founders Facebook Group here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/growthmarketers/

If you want to know more info, feel free to reply.

Cheers,

Josh Fechter”

To email them at scale, you need to have a few warmed up email accounts tied to a domain you don’t use for your website or primary business but sounds relevant to your brand. For example, I used “marketersfounders.com”

Here are the two tools you need to send emails at scale:

Tool #1: Google Apps 

A Google Apps account will enable you to create many email addresses tied to your “temporary” domain. I recommend sticking below 300/day per an email address and starting off at 20/day for the first three weeks.

Tool #2: Mailshake

This tool will enable you to send thousands of emails/day if you have many emails attached. It’s the best tool for sending emails at scale with the shortest learning curve. It took me around twenty minutes to understand the entire tool and another twenty to begin sending emails.

2. LinkedIn Messaging

Andrei posted on LinkedIn whether people were interested in joining his B2B SaaS community. As a result, he received almost over 1,000 responses. That’s 1,000 new members from one post. He only had 2,000 connections when he posted this.

The next step is paying a VA to use your profile to connect with all these people and send them a message with your community link. After emailing and posting on LinkedIn, you should have a couple of thousand members in your community. Well done.

Step 10: Encourage them to Subscribe on Messenger

The first step is to pick a messenger tool.

I use ManyChat because of its feature versatility to capture leads with dedicated landing pages or people commenting on a Facebook post. If you’ve ever used an opt-in tool on a blog, then you’ll have a similar experience when setting up ManyChat. The learning curve is only a couple of minutes.

To get the initial subscriber base, I ran a giveaway encouraging people to jump on. This gave me three-hundred-and-fifty Messenger subscribers.

When I had enough traction for the Facebook Group, I required members to opt-in via Messenger to gain access. As of writing, this approach has led to over five hundred more subscribers in the last month.

After a month of using ManyChat, I leveraged my base to bring in another several thousand subscribers by having the most successful book launch on Product Hunt.

Soon after, I ran another giveaway. If people commented on my Facebook Fan Page post, I’d send them my viral LinkedIn templates. I received over one hundred comments.

Per ManyChat, if someone comments on your post, they immediately become a subscriber.

Play ball where they play ball. It’s easier to get someone to subscribe via Messenger if they’re already on Facebook. The stats prove it: I average a 93% open rate and a 44% click-through rate.

Ready to join me?

Step 11: Follow-Up with Quality Inbound Opportunities

I have a problem.

Too many messages. I get hundreds every day across LinkedIn, Facebook, and email. To sort them out, I hired an assistant. If you’re looking to stay lean, then you can hire a virtual assistant, too.

I’d check out Upwork; it’s one of the best resources to hire virtual assistants.

If you’re publishing content, building your list, and driving engagement, then you’ll get flooded with inbound opportunities. I don’t have the time to look through them all, so I hire people to do that for me.

I pay more to hire people who have experience in my industry. They’re far better at identifying valuable opportunities. Here’s an example of an opportunity I didn’t see for a month because I didn’t have an assistant.

Never again.

Only one of these opportunities can make it all worth it.

Create a Powerful Ecosystem

To excel at one social platform, it often requires the help of others because excellent marketing is an ecosystem. You’re competing for attention. To drive millions of views on LinkedIn, you need to combine the forces of Facebook and Quora.

Wherever your prospects go, they’ll see your engaging content. And by the time they hop on a call with you, they’ll already trust you. Say goodbye to your normal sales cycle by mastering LinkedIn.

I had submitted my portfolio to Facebook and heard nothing back after several weeks just like ninety-nine percent of people who apply.

I’ve wanted to work at Facebook for awhile. I had worked at a Facebook marketing software company for a year, written a two-hundred and fifty-page book about Facebook, helped create the first paid subscription Facebook group, and developed the first digital course on Facebook. Why wouldn’t Facebook like me?

There was a huge obstacle I had to overcome. I excel at problem solving, but I only learn technical skills when needed.

Facebook is all about technical skills. Plus, they want to see that fancy Ivy League school on your resume.

Well, I had opted out of Ivy League, and went to the school of hard knocks — young startups, and most of them failed.

So, I needed a way to stand out.

As a growth marketer, I thought to myself, Josh, you can do better. Be creative. Solve your problem. After all, it’s your job!

Then an epiphany happened. I was thinking of this Hustle article, The LinkedIn Hack That Made Me $120,000, where Jack Smith, co-founder of Vungle, used LinkedIn ad targeting to land an incubator spot in AngelPad along with $120k of funding.

Inspired, I thought to myself why not target Facebook employees in Menlo Park? If I were to target all Facebook employees, the chances are it would target too many people who say they work for Facebook, but actually don’t – there’s a surprising number of them. I realized that by using geo-location and a work demographic, my advertisement would be hyper-relevant and hyper-local increasing my odds of getting in front of the right people.

Here’s what my targeting looked like:

Next, I needed to be creative with my ad. Luckily for me, I’d taken a few pictures with Facebook employees about a year ago. This reminds me — never throw away your pictures! They may become useful at random times in your career.

The ad took the Facebook employees to a landing page I created on a Facebook Fan Page. I knew they would appreciate a landing page on Facebook over a website.

The landing page included a video I made at 5 a.m. that morning explaining why I wanted to work at Facebook. I only did one take. I was still sitting in bed when I made the video.

I also included a slideshow of me hanging out at marketing events, a messaging app to get in touch with me, copy outlining past accomplishments, Facebook comment section, and a download button for my resume.

The reason I included different mediums of content is that people prefer to consume in different ways whether video, images, or text. So, it’s best to have all three; moreover, it shows creativity.

In less than an hour, Facebook employees were sharing my portfolio around the company as an example of creativity and hustle. These were the comments I received from them.

You can check out the entire landing page here (it was hacked together in less than an hour): www.22s.com/joshuafechter/facebookresume

Within two hours I had several employees contact me through my messaging app, comment on my landing page, a Facebook employee Tweet at me, and a recruiter contact me requesting an immediate interview.

This story may be about hacking Facebook to get into Facebook, but it’s really about getting in through a door when the more obvious ones are closed. Similar, hustling is getting results when a predetermined system doesn’t do it for you. It’s important you see life as more of a game where the only rules you have to obey are only the ones you choose to follow.

The best part of this story is that you can do it for the job you want. The landing page took me about an hour to set up, and the ad took about fifteen minutes. It doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be creative and implemented with some hustle.

Here I am growth hacking 🙂

You can tell I’m a growth hacker by how many logos I have on my laptop (just kidding).

So, what is a growth hacker?

Here’s – what I believe – to be the best answer.

When you create a new product, you’ll probably need to build product/market fit (PMF) into it.

When products hit the market, few instantly have customers.

Without customers or trial users, you don’t have the data to back your decisions when trying to build product/market fit. You’re simply guessing, and that’s not good.

The problem is no customers want to buy or trial your product if it doesn’t have PMF.

You’re stuck. It’s the classic which came first the chicken or the egg?

Who do you call when you need data points to create product/market fit?

A growth hacker.

They help build a better know, like, and trust factor around your product.

They create an excellent blog, engaged Facebook Group, awesome newsletter, high-level copy, and more, all to distract prospects and customers from a product that doesn’t have PMF.

While the customers and prospects are distracted, the growth hacker dives into resources such as Optimizely, Hotjar, and Google Analytics to figure out how to improve the offering using better design and copy.

They then use tripwires, and surveys such as Google Forms and Jotform to gain an understanding of what prospects would want from their product.

Once the prospects become customers, they use Excel, SQL, and maybe a software like Mixpanel to collect data on how to better their product.

All this time, the product still hasn’t been improved.

But that’s okay.

There are finally data points to analyze to make the necessary changes to the product.

Now, you can implement the right behavioral trigger points to increase retention.

You can rely less on distracting customers.

You can pool more resources into actually improving your product.

This doesn’t just happen with new products, but new features as well (each feature is like a mini-product).

Once the product has PMF, then the company hires a growth analyst (not to be confused with a growth hacker) to spend most of their day in Excel and SQL.