This interview aired on April 12, 2017 with Laura Roeder of MeetEdgar. I listened to it in fall of 2017 and again in March of 2020. These are my notes and takeaways they apply to my current place in the journey.
Interviewee Background: Started working as a freenlance designer/web developer in 2006. Started social media consulting and training in 2009. Started MeetEdgar in 2013. By 2016, MeetEdgar had 7000 customers with $4M in ARR. Remote team. Enjoys public speaking - conference panels, podcast interviews and such. Also a parent. Deliberately designed work life that allows for ample time off.
💡 Recycle your content - articles and podcast interviews with how-to advice and philosophy are evergreen (i.e. still valuable 3 to 6 months later). So they can and should be re-shared in all of your social media accounts periodically. Because the first time you share them only a small percent of your followers actually see it. [I've seen something similar on twitter with ICYMI In-Case-You-Missed-It hashtag, clever insight. Though sometimes I do ignore these tweets if they person recycles too frequently]
Social media tips:
- Build a thought leader presence for yourself with consistent writing.
- On twitter you can send anyone a message with @ mention and they will see it. Easy/low stress way to reach out, no obligation to respond.
- Send influencers link to your content via a tweet.
- Follow community groups and connect with local people (she was in Austin at time of the interview).
- You can respond to tweets with even one or two words (vs. just 'liking' it).
- Thanking people works well, book recommendations do well.
- Eventually propose getting on a video call or meeting in person with potential partners, customers, employees for your business.
Growing an audience from zero - Laura acknowledged that it doesn't feel good when you're publishing to only 20 or 30 people. You feel silly. The secret to growing an audience is consistency. Not even frequency, it could be once a month but for a year. Things Laura has done:
- Webinars
- Guest blog posts
- Approach people and actually ask to do a panel or talk at a conference
- Deliberately schedule podcast interviews monthly in a batch
- Send out email newsletter every Wednesday since 2009, have not missed a Wednesday. 115K on the list.
- Have a body of work online that someone can review and get a sense of what she is about.
Consistency hacks - Batching and having frameworks. As an example, for inspirational quotes get 100 quotes ready in a file and send one every day. Interview people weekly so you always have something to email about.
👨 Noah Kagan - marketing, tips on capturing emails and such
🗒 Business of Software - conference to check out, I've never heard of it.
💎 Marketing copy - write from the customer's perspective and not from your perspective. What do people who have never heard of you need to know to care about your product/company?
Topics I ignored as not relevant for me yet:
- Launching MeetEdger - self funded by $200K, ideas and competitors, marketing copy.
- Growing a real company - more customers mean more edge cases. More employees mean doing real company stuff like benefits. Can depend more on word of mouth now.
- Hiring - give people ownership and autonomy vs. delegating and micromanaging.
- Leadership - take your self out of day-to-day, don't have deliverables or decisions that only you can make. Quarterly planning with team leads.
👀 An echo of exactly what I've said before - "...to know that I am making progress, I like to look back at what I was doing a years ago and if I think 'oh man that was so stupid, I can't believe I was doing it that way' then I've made progress" paraphrasing something the interviewer, Courtland, said.
Action: connect with local groups and influencers on twitter. look up the Business of Software conference.
Consistency wins. And consistency is shocking hard to do.
To hear the full story, listen to this episode on the IndieHackers Podcast. Packed with information, so may need multiple listens.