fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
1 Thing about Headline on Medium That You Should Know to Grow Audience
By: Li Enze
Tags: Growth Hacking

This is my first day on Medium, and I am noticing on my homepage, 4 out of 5 titles are in the format of Number of Things followed by a succinct description of its striking importance: 20 Things Most people Learn Too Late in Life, 7 Magic Phrases that Make You Instantly Likable, 7 Things You Should Never Do in the Morning. And I think this is very interesting.

When I browsed, those headlines successfully captured my attention, and I become curious to click into those articles, even if I didn’t have a concern with my way of dialing video calls, or live a happy life one minute ago!

Those headlines use small numbers— The largest is 20, suggesting it’s an easy and fast read, but the following description emphasizes and exaggerates the appealing reward, and this is how those titles are alluring users to click into them.

Who will refuse a couple easy bullet points that can improve life significantly?

But unfortunately, there’s no such easy way. As readers, we should be mindful, and keep in mind it takes hard work to improve life for the better and we shouldn’t be addictive to finding a short and quick solution. Most of the time, you might find yourself waste an hour browsing those short answers, without getting too much out of it. (Just as you are being tricked into reading this random article I am writing. :) It’s probably a waste of your time as well. I would be very happy if you find any value from it though. )
15 post-purchase emails you should be sending (infographic)
By: Mayank Batavia
Tags: Customer Engagement, Black Friday, Email Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Growth Hacking

Now that we’re almost past Black Friday / Cyber Monday, marketers need to ask an important question: What next?

All the resources and energy you put into Black Friday / Cyber Monday marketing — how do you ensure the momentum continues?

Obviously you can’t continue for the rest of the year all the deals, discounts and offers you offered during Black Friday / Cyber Monday.

So what do you do?

The answer, at least partly, lies in what you do after the sales.

Post-purchase emails is the one of the best things you’ll be doing after the marketing frenzy cools down.

Well-structured post-purchase emails can go a long way in improve customer experience, improving brand loyalty, encouraging repeat purchase and increases the chances of cross-sell and upsell.

Here’s an infographic that briefly shows what all post-purchase emails you should send out to customers.

Full blog available here.

Infographic courtesy QuickEmailVerification.
A framework to escape burn and churn growth
By: Ken Tabuki
Tags: Growth Hacking, Product Management, Capital Raise, Startup Lessons, Data Analysis

With the cohort table (how to) you discover that your startup is going through burn and churn growth (how to). Not so great news, but what do you do now?

The first step is to move away from using averages when looking at your startup. Averages make your users anonymous behind one number.

Dangers of using high-level analysis revenue = avg$/user x # of users

Deep dive into smaller segments to identify returning users no matter how small. Then speak to those users directly. Bring your users out of the anonymous average — uncover unique stories behind them through a series of probing questions

What problem does our product solve for you? You may find out what you charge for does not align with what your users want to pay for

for you? You may find out what you charge for does not align with what your users want to pay for Why are you paying for our product? Find alternative products your users said no to

for our product? Find alternative products your users said no to Who are these users? You may find out your product addresses a niche within your intended addressable market

How did they find your product? Find the user journey to discovering your product. Identify a particular marketing channel, keywords or behaviours that can be replicated and tapped into

An example — from working on a marketplace for local services (eg cleaning, pet grooming, electricians). Despite a considerable market share in demand for cleaners (consumers wanting a cleaner), the paying user base was not growing (in our case cleaning businesses).

The first step was to move away from averages and look into which cleaning businesses were sticking around. After probing questions we discovered that cleaning businesses specialising in frequent apartment cleans outside of CBD stayed because

CBD does not have ample parking — paying and looking for street parking in CBD eats up time, one fine can wipe out earning for the day

frequent cleans — cleaners want to set rosters, switching and changing clients create gaps in the day

apartment cleans — cleaners want certainty on how long clean takes, uncertainty with large home cleans

Unsuprisingly we discovered cleaners like any rational business wanted to maximise their profits. Our product had to align with their needs.

With a clearer user need in mind, we were able to focus marketing to urban (not CBD) dense residential areas. Cutting out campaigns and doubling down led to lower churn and lower marketing costs.
Decoding Growth Hacking
By: Abishek Babu
Tags: Hacking, Growth, Startup, Product, Growth Hacking

Ultimate tactics your organisation missing out.

Decoding Growth Hacking

Growth Hacking is a jugaad solution to delivery problem made possible by the internet.

What is Growth Hack?

Let’s assume you run a small book shop in your street making Rs.10,000 MRR month over month and your MRR seems to be stable and there isn’t much progress.

So what you do is try to increase your shop discoverability to reach new market and get more customers, you try hard but still there isn’t much growth.

Now you try different ideas and finally you plan to make your store online that it can reach anyone and your discoverability is high, now that is Growth Hacking.

You increased your market size and reachability over a night using internet(tool) and somehow if you tweak your operation cost efficiently, now that’s a perfect Growth HACK.

Growth hacking is all about executing strategies that focus on growth. Once we find them, rinse and repeat to deliver iterative gains across your business and distribution channel.
Marketing in the 22nd century
By: Jt Of We Are Day One
Tags: Online Marketing, Small Business, Startup, Business, Growth Hacking

The #1 Crushing Mistake Businesses Make When Marketing Products or Services

Today, Marketing & Advertising is no longer isolated from your product development.

Having created hundreds of ads for myself, partners and clients over the years I can surely and confidently tell you this — great advertisements (the most visible thing you place on the frontend of your marketing campaign) can no longer be crafted in isolation of product.

Well that’s if you want your ads to convert audiences most effectively with the lowest cost incurred and while having the greatest reach of audience on every platform it’s placed on.

image from https://www.eventbrite.com/blog/your-guide-to-audience-engagement-ds00/

You see in most major corporations even today, initial market testing is first done, followed by the first rounds of product-development, and then pilot-testing of the now developed product.

Finally, marketing campaigns & advertising are the last 2 events stamped onto this process like the final cherry on the top of an already finished cake.

The guys and gals over in these departments look at the product, analyze its use-cases and create ads and campaigns that best display the usability, worth and value of the more-or-less finalized product.

This means that the people who are launching the marketing campaigns and creating ads for these products are already confined, from the get-go, to feature the best selling points of an already finished product.

When campaigns don’t seem to convert well and uptake is slow, it’s not actually a marketing or advertising problem… It’s actually a product and features problem.
This week’s must-reads: Why Facts Alone Can’t Fight False Beliefs
By: Nir Eyal
Tags: Psychology, Tech, Happiness, Productivity, Growth Hacking

In my work as a behavioral designer, I come across important stories on how psychology influences our behavior. Every week, I share my round-up of the most important stories at the intersection of psychology, technology and business. I hope you enjoy them!

Are You a Wage Slave? (Medium) Can we create a future where people no longer have to work at jobs they hate?

Online Distribution Effect: Why We Express More Online (Cognition Today) The internet offers anonymity and psychological distance that allows us to lower our filters, increase impulsivity, and aggression, and drop inhibitions.

This Article Won’t Change Your Mind (Pocket Worthy) The facts on why facts alone can’t fight false beliefs.

An age-by-age guide to kids and smartphones (Today’s Parent) How should kids use cellphones? And at what age are they emotionally ready to have their own?

Principles for the Application of Human Intelligence (Behavioral Scientist) Before humans become the standard way in which we make decisions, we need to consider the risks and ensure implementation of human decision-making systems doesn’t cause widespread harm.

Time spent on smartphones not linked to mental health problems — new research (The Conversation) Our team conducted two studies that directly measured the time people spent on their smartphones each for a week to understand the relationship with mental health.

Happy reading!

- Nir
What the f*ck is Growth Marketing?!
By: Evan Daniels
Tags: Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Writing, Growth Hacking

Around 2011 (back when the world was sane), some genius by the name of Sean Ellis introduced the phrase “growth hacking.”

To keep you from googling too deep, growth hacking is a concept of marketing that uses limited resources to, well, grow. In general, the idea is to be as efficient as possible while being as effective as possible. Gaining as many followers, users, etc. in as few days as possible while using as little money as possible. Growth hacking is more popular in startups because they are usually on a faster track to see results since their funding depends on it.

Makes sense? I hope it does.

The perfect image for growth marketing

Years later, growth hacking evolved like a weird Pokémon into growth marketing.

And I have problems with the whole thing. Just like a kid who got the weirdest Pokémon evolution he never asked for (looking at you, Slowpoke), I feel cheated, upset, and a little insulted all at the same time. Mainly around the growth marketing thing (but I have plenty to throw out about growth hacking too).

Here’s the thing: growth marketing is just marketing.

We don’t need a separate word for marketing that focuses on effectiveness while being efficient. That’s what marketing people do! We have a goal and we work to spend as little money as possible while making the biggest impact. That’s why we brag about CPIs or CPCs. That’s why we try to get our numbers as low as possible. This isn’t growth marketing, this is just marketing for growth.

And the funny thing? Everyone needs growth. Name a single brand that looks at the possibility of growth and says, “Nah. I’m good.”

Once again, lose the term. You’re not a growth marketer.

You’re good at marketing.
Front page of Hacker News [HN]
By: Klim Yadrintsev
Tags: Social Media, Growth, Hacker News, Traffic, Growth Hacking

What did I do?

Yesterday I decided to write an actual article on a topic I was very passionate about. It was non-technical and was completely out of the target audience of hacker news.

Benefits of Walking

After checking that, as usual, the post didn’t get more than 3 upvotes before it reached the second page of new, I went on with my life. I have sprinkled a lot of keywords into the text, so I was hoping that SEO would eventually help me reach a decent ranking.

I have later decided to rename it to Benefits of Walking [For Anyone] as I have read that it boosts CTR. Guess what, it most definitely does.

I was about to go to sleep. Then I decided to check my analytics tab to make sure that everything was working correctly(not sure what I was expecting to see there). I saw that instead of a 0, number of current users on the website, there were around 30.

At first, I didn’t know what to think. Hacker News never gives me more than 20 views per day. How are people finding my website?

I check, and there it was, only with 10 upvotes, but at the front page nonetheless(I will explain how and why it matters).

The blog post, as you can imagine, is just about walking and what my tips and tricks to make walking into a habit. I also mentioned that running is not the best thing in the world, and that really captured peoples attention.

So what is the main reason that I got to the front page?

In retrospect, there are a couple of reasons.

I posted to HN at around 16:00 UTC, the best time to get the most upvotes.

I made the title very clickable with adding the square brackets.

I made the content very technical and with too much research and data to argue with.

I optimised and edited the content as much as I could to have it in the best format.

I created both visual and contextual content, such as a table with average walking speeds.

How can you repeat this and also get to the front page? Post for 2 months and get no results to get lucky on the 61st day.

Just joking… 🙃

Make sure to make the title stand out and maybe even write an article that is optimised for people to click on. As long as you get the initial upvotes, at around 4 you can already be on the front page where if people like your content it will stick.

When you are at your lowest, keep on struggling

If you have a system that must work, don’t give up on it halfway. You will regret it for the rest of your life.

Persevere, keep on grinding for a bit longer and all of your efforts will be rewarded.

If you want to create a blog do it now! Here is why you should.

If you want to create a product, do it now!

Do you want to learn programming? Do it now.

Start now. Get perfect later.

Klim Y

If you like this or any other of my posts you should follow me on Twitter!
Never Underestimate The Power of a Good Network
By: Artist Replete
Tags: Art, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Ecommerce, Growth Hacking

Taken from the E-book From Bricks to Clicks

It’s been said that it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. In all honesty, both are important building blocks. My first few years in the art business I knew little to no one in the industry. Both galleries and artists alike ruled the AR brand out as a viable business. To this day, I look at that as a very exciting challenge that I welcome it with open arms. That mentality has lead me to pinnacle moments in my career thus far.

In February 2020 the NBA All Star game came to Chicago. Along with it was the branding partnership: NBA on TNT. The company placed billboards throughout the city, but they were also interested in branding using the power of art. They had full access to every gallery in Chicago, they also could have individually selected any artist to work with but they didn’t… they chose us. Did I get lucky? Maybe so, but did I have a network in place to help gain the attention for this massive franchise? YES. While staying in our lane with foresight past the brick and mortar model, we began to create a network of creatives that supported our vision.

Not everyone you meet will have a readable sign that serves your purpose. It’s important to show appreciation and interest to anyone within the creative industry. Even those that don’t appear creative often know people who are. Once the appreciative energy is in the air, the potential for it come back becomes possible. The more interactions you bring to the table, the more possibilities you open.

Being an artist to any degree can come with antisocial side effects. So if you feel you’re not in a position to network on a semi-regular basis but are interested in growing your contact list, then you’ll need to appoint someone to help you with the process. This goes back to the fundamental ideology that an artist is a company. Like any other company, you’ll need employees. The business side of selling art isn’t rooted in hourly, so having the right commission based network in place can be a game changer.

Often times you’ll hear an established artist say things like “My Team and I.” Team building is the evolution of an artists’ independence and the career goals that follow. It goes without saying, dedication and perseverance are needed to build a valuable team but as mentioned above, it’s not as financially draining as it may appear. Before a nest egg is built, your surrounding network can be selected and given the ability to earn what what they put in, not earn from a clock ticking.

This is where the conversation starts, among friends that can help navigate you to prosperity.

A network is an infinite web you can weave to capture all of your leads.
挑選正確的增長賽道 — — C端初創企業如何獲得新用戶（4/4）
By: Jessie Yu
Tags: Startup, Growth, Growth Hacking

Drive Growth by Picking the Right Lane — A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups (4/4)

前陣子看到了知名 VC First Round 的這篇文章，覺得質量很高，反反覆覆看了好幾次，對於思考新創企業的獲客增長非常受用，因此翻譯成了中文版本分享給大家（简体中文版请点此）。
挑選正確的增長賽道— — C端初創企業如何獲得新用戶（2/4）. Drive Growth by Picking the Right Lane…
By: Jessie Yu
Tags: Startup, Growth, Growth Hacking

Drive Growth by Picking the Right Lane — A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups (2/4)

前陣子看到了知名 VC First Round 的這篇文章，覺得質量很高，反反覆覆看了好幾次，對於思考新創企業的獲客增長非常受用，因此翻譯成了中文版本分享給大家（简体中文版请点此）。
挑選正確的增長賽道 — — C端初創企業如何獲得新用戶（3/4）
By: Jessie Yu
Tags: Startup, Growth, Growth Hacking

Drive Growth by Picking the Right Lane — A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups (3/4)

前陣子看到了知名 VC First Round 的這篇文章，覺得質量很高，反反覆覆看了好幾次，對於思考新創企業的獲客增長非常受用，因此翻譯成了中文版本分享給大家（简体中文版请点此）。
Growth Marketing Hack: Do a Hyper-Targeted Geo Product Rollout to Look Bigger Than You Are
By: Elena Velikova
Tags: Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Growth Marketing, Growth Hacking

You are expanding your presence online or planning to launch a new product. How best to spend your ad money to look 10x bigger than you are?

Tactic

A good tactic to make your business look like the biggest, hottest and trendiest thing in town is to do a hyper-targeted geo spread-out. The key is to concentrate your ad spend in just a single location to create buzz.

Partner with several relevant influencers in the same geographic area. Have them all share your product within the same month. This gives your target market the impression that everyone is talking about your product. That will make them check your product out of curiosity to see for themselves what the hype is all about.

Implement in 3 simple steps

#1. Prepare a video for your product.

Videos have a much higher engagement rate than any other form of content on social media. You can make a video yourself or ask the influencer to make a short video using your product. The latter is the better option.

#2. Find the influencers

Use marketing platforms that can help you identify influencers by geography:

Or go out and find these influencers for free:

Search on Instagram for free

The least expensive but potentially most time-consuming way to find Instagram influencers is to search on Instagram. The tricky thing is sorting through those millions of users.

Do they seem jazzed about your brand? Do they have a good number of followers? What do they post about, and how often do they post? You’re looking for someone who posts about things relevant to your brand and who doesn’t have anything offensive on their feed.

Make a list of potential influencers

You’ve found a few Instagram influencers who seem like they’d be a great match for your brand. You’ve scrolled through their feeds, checked out their followers, and evaluated their engagement rates.

Make a list. Some influencers include email addresses or contact information in their bios, which is good for you. Others don’t, which means you’ll have to connect with them through a direct message or do a bit more digging on the web.

Approach your influencers, be as professional as possible

When you send the Instagram influencer a message, you want to give them as much information as possible about your brand and clearly outline your offer and idea. If you are on a limited budget, you must clarify that in the initial message.

#3. Do retargeting

Send messages to all people who have engaged with your brand during the influencer campaign. This could include remarketing to people who have visited your store, made a purchase, or followed your brand on social.

Go try this out and let me know how it goes in our great business community on Facebook
Become a More Thoughtful Person with this One Word
By: Austin Mcanena
Tags: Intentional Living, Personal Growth, Habit Building, Personal Development, Growth Hacking

Photo by Simon Migaj on Unsplash

Have you ever forgot to wish a family member a happy birthday? Do you check in on your loved ones on a regular basis? Do you show appreciation for your work colleagues?

I’ve fallen short in these areas of my life, and I’m sure we all have at some point. As humans we are inherently good, but can benefit from increased awareness to redirect our thinking outwardly — towards others. Easier said than done, especially when our brains can only process so much information at one time. So how do we become more thoughtful and loving?

It all starts with one word; Intentionality

“When you live each day with intentionality, there’s almost no limit to what you can do. You can transform yourself, your family, your community, and your nation. When enough people do that, they can change the world. When you intentionally use your everyday life to bring about positive change in the lives of others, you begin to live a life that matters.” ― John C. Maxwell

Being intentional with everything allows us to dictate the outcome of our lives. Intentionality allows us to be proactive, not reactive. Understanding the concept of intentionality is not just helpful; it’s transformational. But how do we apply it practically in our daily lives?

Create Reminders for Everything of Importance

Since the human brain can only process a finite amount of information at one time, creating reminders or prompts are crucial to growing into a more thoughtful person.

1. Create a reminder in your digital calendar for the birthdays of friends, family, and colleagues

2. Create reminders or a favorites list on your phone for people you want to check in with weekly/monthly

3. Create a weekly reminder to say thank you to co-workers and how much you appreciate them

These small acts of kindness go a long way, and create a ripple effect for those around us.

Reminders Turn to Habits

Over time, you will start to realize these reminders are no longer necessary, because your emotions create habits. Behavior scientist BJ Fogg teaches us the stronger the emotion, the more deeply your brain rewires and wants to repeat the same action.

When you do a behavior and feel a positive emotion about it, your brain pays attention. It essentially thinks, “Wow, that felt good. I want to do that behavior again!” (Learn more about this concept here).

These thoughtful acts prompted by reminders will produce strong positive emotions, which over time lead to the desired result of thoughtful habits.

Photo by Jacqueline Munguía on Unsplash

Habits Create Lasting Change

Over time, these thoughtful & intentional actions for others will become habitual, leading you to become a more caring person.

Here are some other practical ways you can make a difference in someone’s life:

1. Give a compliment

2. Pay for a stranger’s meal

3. Call a friend, actively listen and have no agenda

4. Cook dessert for a loved one

5. Send cards

6. Tell someone how much you appreciate them

7. Smile
The Nobility of Failure — Matthew Scarfo
By: Matthew Scarfo
Tags: David Goggins, Adversity, Motivation, Mindset, Growth Hacking

The greatest miscarriage of our potential is deeply rooted within our ability to excuse ourselves from the commitments that we make, not to other people, but to ourselves.

Matt Scarfo Goggins Challenge #7 of #12

Even those among us who appear super human battle impulses to quit, stop short, or never start. This internal conflict has always been a huge part of Human Condition, and regretfully contributes to so much angst and anxiety.

A cheap and easy example are the temptations that cause us to stray from a diet or other productive habit. Cheating in a game is yet another example. For fitness enthusiasts it could be sandbagging the last few reps of a set, cutting a few miles off of our run, or phoning it in for the last few sets of our workout. If you exercise or compete then it’s likely that you can contribute to this list in some way. Isn’t it the case that we always have a good excuse to look for the easy way out of something?

Broken feet and missing toenails

“Good excuse” is oxymoronic, there is no such thing as a good excuse. An excuse might be sufficient in thatit sufficiently appeals to a vulnerability and that’s never good.

Whatever the excuse is that we end up using will necessarily contain enough bullshit to make it the useful.
Find out how the Coronavirus taught us that genuine influence cant be bought
By: Jeremy D'Cruz
Tags: Covid 19, Writer, Influence, Copywriting, Growth Hacking

Find out how the Coronavirus taught us that genuine influence cant be bought

Influence is a demonstrable chain of persuasion.

Influence — true influence — must be earned. The coronavirus pandemic is a world-shattering phenomenon that has changed modern society forever.

Not only has it infected hundreds of thousands of people across the planet; it also brought the global economy to a virtual stand standstill.

In the past, disasters of this proportion have toppled empires, triggered mass rebellions, and caused widespread famine and starvation.

In comparison, our society has been able to; manage the pandemic to the best of its ability. Now we are not debating a political standpoint, however, we are looking at it from global humanity, as a species we did what we could.

To reaffirm our standpoint, we are looking at a unifier here. The virus has made us reconsider the fact that as a species, we are biologically similar, genetically we humans share 99.9% of our DNA with each other!

But unlike the flow of capitalism, corona sought proliferation, not profit, and has, therefore, inadvertently, to some extent, reversed the direction of the flow.

On March 11 the World Health Organization declared that #Covid-19 was a pandemic. Two days later, on March 13, the health ministry said that corona “is not a health emergency”.

Whatever it is, coronavirus has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt as nothing else could.

It also has made us rethink our lives; take into consideration what is important and what can be put on the backburner. Influence is a demonstrable chain of persuasion from person to person leading to new attitudes and behavior.

Having a large audience does not necessarily mean wielding influence.

Organizations the world over have been made to reconsider their business approaches and more importantly are concerned about its #employees more than ever.

Central to a strong leadership response is communication and decisive action. Those experts who understand that will outlive any social tsunamis of hot money skateboarders.

P.s: Inspired by Christopher Graves “Genuine Influence Can’t Be Bought”
挑選正確的增長路徑 — — C端新創企業如何獲得新用戶（1/4）. Drive Growth by Picking the Right Lane
By: Jessie Yu
Tags: Startup, Growth, Growth Hacking

Drive Growth by Picking the Right Lane — A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups (1/4)

前陣子看到了知名 VC First Round 的這篇文章，覺得質量很高，反反覆覆看了好幾次，對於思考新創企業的獲客增長非常受用，因此翻譯成了中文版本分享給大家（简体中文版请点此）。
How To Arm Your Teams With Superpowers
By: Rob Leon
Tags: Get Your Tech Right, Small Business, Automation, Startup, Growth Hacking

How To Arm Your Teams With Superpowers

EMPOWERING TEAMS

I was reading an article the other day that used the term “arm your team with superpowers”.

It struck a chord and so here we are.

So how do you arm your team with superpowers?

To me, it comes down to 4 things.

Apps, Automation, & Tools, Training.

Let’s take a quick look at these.

APPS

The apps we use in our business can make or break us.

We take things for granted.

QuickBooks is a great example.

Need an accounting package?

Buy QuickBooks.

But it’s a one-stop-shop.

It’s not designed to run a business.

It’s designed for typically a couple of people to handle basic bookkeeping.

Taking this into consideration, think about this and other apps that run your business.

Maybe you should be looking at something like NetSuite, Sage Intacct, or Microsoft Business Central?

AUTOMATION

The next way to give your team some superpowers is through automation.

So what is automation?

Automation is the process of removing manual steps in your business workflows.

Are you still taking paper checks?

Consider switching to auto debiting via ACH or credit card.

Are still communicating via emails?

Consider using a ticketing system or template system with canned responses for your clients.

Are you still scanning in documents?

Consider moving to online forms and/or an eFax solution that can save time.

Automation doesn’t have to be a fancy script you pay a programmer to write for you.

If basically just the process of making something electronic that was once manual.

TOOLS

Now, apps and automation can equal tools.

But humor me for a few more lines.

Think of tools as the glue that holds apps and automation together.

Think of things like calendar scheduling.

It can be as simple as a chatbot to help clients and prospects start an engagement with you.

There are all sorts of tools out there that can streamline your business internally as well as externally.

TRAINING

Last but not least is training.

If you’re not training your team you missing out on the greatest superpower of all — knowledge.

Whether it’s improving technical literacy.

Product and service depth.

Or just how to have and show empathy.

Training is key for any business.

Sure you want to equip your team with the best apps, automation, and tools.

But if you don’t train them, you’ll never realize a full return on your investment.

I think with the right mix of apps, automation, and tools that you’ll be able to run your business with less overhead and staff.

But you’ll still need to develop and train your teams.

HOW TO GET THERE FROM HERE

If you’re looking for a way to grow your business consider adding a technologist to your team.

In tech-speak, this can be a Managed Service Provider or Technical Professional.

The key is to have someone on your team that knows your business, your process, and how to effectively help get your business to the next level.

So grab some capes and get your staff some superpowers!

🌴
5 easy steps to grow your online presence even as an offline business
By: Jt Of We Are Day One
Tags: Online Marketing, Small Business, Startup, Business, Growth Hacking

2. Identify which part of the customer journey you’re building an online presence for

The key difference for offline businesses today is that your whole “sales process” now begins even before your customer walks into your store.

What are the key questions at the top of their head? What level of intent for buying are they at when they enter your store?

In a nutshell, there are customers online who are either:

a) In scrolling mode b) In researching mode c) In buying mode

Similar to how, traditionally, there are customers entering your store who are either:

a) Just window shopping and there to browse your items b) In your store to source for potential products that could solve a need they have c) In your store to purchase a specific product that they’re certainly looking for

Whichever platform you choose to grow your online presence on — be it on Facebook, Medium, Youtube or Instagram — will expose your business to different concentrations of potential customers in the varying groups above.

You always want a high volume of people coming into your store with high intent to buy (people in group C), and you do this by beginning the whole customer journey online; even before they step into your store.
How to build a no-code viral-referral system using Webflow & Airtable
By: Théo Voglimacci
Tags: Viral Marketing, No Code, Startup Launch, Referral Marketing, Growth Hacking

Set up Airtable

The first thing to do is setting up Airtable. We’re gonna use Airtable as our no-code database. It’s really powerful.

First, go to airtable.com and create an account if you don’t already have one.

Then, let’s start and create our base! Click on the Add a base button and select start from scratch. Give it the name you want! I chose “Referral System Tutorial”.

You’re presented with your newly created base.

Open your newly created base. Every Airtable base contains tables (like a Google Sheets) and Table 1 is your first one. Let’s rename it to USERS.

Every table contains fields. Let’s delete all default fields except Name. Rename it email and give it the type Email.

Then, create a new field of type Formula and name it Referral URL. In the formula, enter “domain.fr?ref=”&Email as in the screenshot below. To do so, you’ll need to know what’s your website domain. If you don’t know it yet, just choose domain.fr for now and change it later.

This formula field creates a unique URL for every user in our database. We’ll use the ref parameter to track who referred to who. Pretty easy huh ?

Ready to test this? Let’s enter an e-mail in the first row and see what happens.

As you can see, a referral URL is created.

Now, create a new empty table. Rename it REFERRALS. Delete all default fields except the first one and rename it email as on the first table USERS (don’t forget to choose the email type).

Create a new field and name it referred. Select link to another record as the type and then USERS. Click Save. Don’t add a lookup field.

Create a new field and name it number of people referred. The type needs to be Count. Make sure referred is selected and click Save.

To finish with, let’s create the last field. Name it emails referred of type Lookup and look up to referred email. Save.

Alright. All done setting up Airtable.

Let’s move on to Webflow (the quickest part by far!).

Setting up Webflow

If you don’t have a Webflow account, let’s create one.

Then, create your landing page by creating a new project from scratch.

To speed up the tutorial, I’m going to use the landing page of my startup Moko. If you need help building your landing page with Webflow, feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn.

Quickly, what you can do is add a section, add a container, and add a form. When you add your form, you’ll have two inputs by default. You need to add one more text field which we’ll hide to store the ref parameter from the URL.

To quickly add a new text field, select the email field, and copy-paste.

Select your new field, and give it the id ref in the right panel.
Growth hacks
Tags: Startup, Growth Hacking

Just a guy on twitter. Comments are not financial guidance.
The Platform of .NET
Tags: Dotnet

The central part of the .NET platform is the .NET Framework.. It consists of a runtime called CLR and a set of supporting libraries. The runtime controls the installation loading and executing .NET applications. Libraries provide code for common programming tasks so increasing developer productivity. Libraries also provide a layer on top of many OS APIs, providing isolation from OS Dependencies.

Most enterprise applications and web services require internal servers to perform operations such as storing data, e-mail messaging and so on. Microsoft .NET family of servers such as SQL Server, Exchange Server and so on, you can use it to get this functionality. The family also includes several dedicated servers that provide larger level of integration and aggregation of web services. BizTalk Server Application and Commerce Server Ecommerce frameworks fall into this category…

Read More
Building a product — pt 2
By: Nathan Joseph Alard
Tags: Dot Net Framework, Dotnet Development, Dotnet, Ngo, South Africa

Continuing on the Building a product — pt 1, I’ve created a phase 1 wire frame to get started on building a simple UI.

Built using Miro

Current

So lets get that logo changed. Navigate to Pages > Shared > NavMenu.razor, change the inner text of the anchor tag <a class=”navbar-brand”>.

Logo changed

Removed the counter and fetch data example tabs <li>’s from the unsorted list <ul class=”nav …”> and cleared the index.razor

Removed fetchdata.razor and counter.razor from the pages directory, also removed the data directory and files therein, this requred removal of references to this files in the startup file. Lastly changed the page title.
Server side pagination using ngx-pagination in Angular and Dot Net Core
By: Pratik Pokharel
Tags: Angular, Dotnet, Linq, Angular8, Dotnet Core

In this post i am going to demonstrate a simple example on how to use ngx-pagination for server side paging using Dot Net core as back end and angular.

ngx-pagination is a third party npm library which we can use instead of writing bulk of code for paging operations.Instead of writing messy and repetitive code it helps developers to preserve development time and helps in code reusability.

While developing application with large data set is very important to load only specified data which boosts the overall performance of our application.

To demonstrate the example i am going to create a simple Dot Net Core and Angular application.

At First I created a simple Dot Net Core project using Visual Studio 2019 and added an Employee class.
Business WhatsApp Sender Source Code
By: Ravi Kumar
Tags: Software, Dotnet, Business

Business WhatsApp Sender is the next level of Bulk WhatsApp Sender Software. It an ultimate messaging solution with Bot Auto Reply, a High-Speed Filter that gives the user more flexibility when they are sending their campaigns. You can watch the video demo of New Business Whatsapp Sender, Auto Reply Bot, Sending Campaign, and Number Filtering.
Background Job with Quartz.Net in C# and .NET Core
By: Christ Kho
Tags: Programming, Dotnet, Csharp, Aspnetcore, Dotnet Core

There are processes you want to run frequently and automatically in the background of your main application. There are many libraries dedicated to this problem, and Quartz.Net is one of the known ones out there.

In this post, I’m going to create a .NET Core console app that will generate a random number on the console output, every 15 seconds.

The first step will be installing the latest stable Quartz NuGet package on your project

Create the Job Class

I’m going to create a job that will generate a 4 digit random number and print it on the console. The class needs to implement IJob interface which lives in Quartz namespace

NumberGeneratorJob.cs

using Quartz;

using System;

using System.Threading.Tasks;



namespace QuartzSample

{

public class NumberGeneratorJob : IJob

{

public async Task Execute(IJobExecutionContext context)

{

Console.WriteLine($"Your # is: {RandomNumber(1000,9999)}");

await Task.CompletedTask;

}



private int RandomNumber(int min, int max)

{

var random = new Random();

return random.Next(min, max);

}

}

}

Quartz.Net Setup and Job Schedule

After creating the job class , we are going to code the rest of this example in the Main method of Program.cs file. Since we are going to call async methods and await them inside the Main . I will convert the Main to an async method.

There are 5 small steps that you need to consider to make this code work.

Create a scheduler Factory Get and start a scheduler Create a job Create a trigger Schedule the job

using Quartz;

using Quartz.Impl;

using System;

using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace QuartzSample

{

class Program

{

static async Task Main(string[] args)

{

// 1. Create a scheduler Factory

ISchedulerFactory schedulerFactory = new StdSchedulerFactory(); // 2. Get and start a scheduler

IScheduler scheduler = await schedulerFactory.GetScheduler();

await scheduler.Start(); // 3. Create a job

IJobDetail job = JobBuilder.Create<NumberGeneratorJob>()

.WithIdentity("number generator job", "number generator group")

.Build(); // 4. Create a trigger

ITrigger trigger = TriggerBuilder.Create()

.WithIdentity("number generator trigger", "number generator group")

.WithSimpleSchedule(x => x.WithIntervalInSeconds(15).RepeatForever())

.Build(); // 5. Schedule the job using the job and trigger

await scheduler.ScheduleJob(job, trigger); Console.ReadLine();

}

}

}
Validaciones en Xamarin Forms
By: Charlin Agramonte
Tags: Xamarin, Xamarinforms, Dotnet, Xaml

Co-Founder of CrossGeeks. Currently Xamarin Certified Developer and Microsoft MVP.
HOW .NET PROGRAM EXECUTION WORKS. In order to understand .net program…
By: Sankha Sumadhura
Tags: Programming, Dotnet

In order to understand .net program execution and benefits of it, it is better to take a look in to how pre .net execution worked before .net comes into play.

Before .net introduced programmers developed programs with many programming languages like VB6 ,C++ etc. Lets see how they worked before .net introduced.

Execution flow of a pre .net application

When we developed an application with VB without .net framework we need to compile that application using a programming language specific compiler and then it will create a assembly. We called it also as machine code or native code which is the code machine can understand. According to the type of application we developed the assembly can be a dll or an exe. This machine code can be understand by the operating system which the compiler belongs to. That means if we compiled this application in a windows operating system it will runs successfully in a windows OS but not in a Linux OS.So this is the main problem we see when we program with pre .net and because of that reason those applications are not portable.

Lets see how .net addresses above problem

With .net framework you can use several programming languages like c#,VB,C++,J# and etc.That means if .net included relevant compiler for a programming language we can program with that programming language under .net. Lets see how .net programming execution works.

Execution flow of a .net application

When we developed a program under .net framework as shows in the above diagram we can program with many programming languages which are supported by .net. When we compile the solution it will compile by different compilers which are relevant to the programming language and it will create assembly that could be .dll or .exe according to the type of program we created.But the important thing happens here is this assembly can’t be understand by the operating system as this compiling process does not generate machine /native code like we discussed in pre .net execution. Instead of that it will generate assembly which are formatted in to intermediate langue we called it as (IL). If we try to run this IL formatted assembly directly on top of the OS it will fail.

So then there should be some mechanism in between these assemblies with IL and operating system in order to make those assemblies can be run(understand by OS).The guy how is doing this job is called as CLR (Common Language Runtime).When .net installed on a machine it will install CLR on that machine that’s how it comes.

By CLR it will compile IL formatted assemblies in to machine code by the JIT compiler called as (Just In Time compiler) and those machine codes can be understand by the OS and the app will run.The advantage of JIT is it will generate machine code from IL according to the OS.Because of that we can make an application in windows OS and run it top on a Linux OS.
EXPLORING MORE INTO .NET ASSEMBLY
By: Sankha Sumadhura
Tags: Programming, Basics, Compilers, Dotnet

In this post lets look into more about .net assembly and look how they actually generated. If you need to understand about how .net execution works read previous post.

From the previous post we saw that by compiling any .net application it will generate assembly(.dll/.exe) which is Intermediate Language(IL) formatted.

Whether an assembly is a .dll or .exe it contains two parts.

Manifest

IL

What usually happens when compiling a .net application is it will generate IL according to the instructions you programmed and also it generate Manifest which has meta data(version no,app name ,dependencies & etc.) about your application and those two will package in to an assembly.

Lets take a look into an example-

Simple Console Application

The above code snippet is of a simple console application it prints “Hello World” on console.

When we compile this app it will generate an assembly of type .exe as this is a console application.If we compile a class library it will generate an assembly of type .dll .

We can found that assembly inside bin folder of the application.

Assembly inside bin folder

Lets see what is inside DempProject.exe assembly

Structure of an assembly

Structure of an assembly

As I mentioned in the beginning an assembly contains two parts.We can see it by looking into the above picture.The manifestation contains metadata about the application and the directory named with application name , here ‘DempProject’ contains the converted IL formatted code for our c# code converted by the .net compiler.

IL formatted code of Main method

Here we can see the IL formatted instructions for our c# code.Which is not still native code/machine code .Therefore a particular OS can’t run the assembly directly without the help of CLR(Common Language Runtime).

The name of the assembly and the version of the assembly is very important to solve DLL HELL problem.
Building a product — pt 1. So I’ve been drawn to building…
By: Nathan Joseph Alard
Tags: Blazor, Building A Product, Dotnet, Ngo, South Africa

So I’ve been drawn to building something greater than the ask of an employer or for the sake of social norms aka a salary…

This is the beginning of that force, and the start of me learning to blog.

There’s so many things I’d like to build, but I have to pick 1 for now, build it, learn as much as possible, and apply.

My ultimate goal is to build things of value, and purpose.

Now lets begin…

This first product is going to be a NGO platform.

There are loads of languages, frameworks, and tools available….

I’m choosing C#, because I like it, .Net 5 over .Net Core because its the latest and I’d like to learn about and use all the new features that’s available.

I’d like to leverage Blazor server-side, and attempt reusing components in a Blazor bindings mobile app.

So enough said, lets begin:

Lets use the dotnet cli, and run dotnet new in a new project folder

Lets choose blazorserver and run dotnet new blazorserver in a folder ending with ‘.web’

Now to build, run and view the app in the browser

Ok so nothing fancy, but its running and its a start!

I’ll pick this up again tomorrow night….