Gitroom

Let’s face it: hiring developers is easier. Not because there are so many talented developers - mainly because:

There are many processes to test developers and see their level
You can hire directly from the community
If they are good developers, most tasks are getting from A to B, and, rarely, this is not possible (maybe in research is a different story)

But marketing is a different story:

It’s hard to ask the right questions
Just because “A” did good marketing for company “X” doesn’t mean that the same marketing will work for “Y”
Nobody can predict if the marketing move will work or not

I have been talking with many open-source founders who hire non-opensource marketers, and the results have been mediocre.

So what to do?

Marketing in a company is usually built on 2 main things:

Innovative way to get a lot of good traffic
Being consistent (more robust in execution than tactics/strategies)

Here are some of the tips I give to founders who are trying to get from 0 to 1, not for larger companies that are after product-market-fit:

Don’t hire decision-makers - leave the decisions, tactics, and strategies to the founders; hire executioners: people who are not great at coming up with the type of content or the type of influencers but can get it done once they have the task. I have seen some really bright marketers who become very slow when dealing with the execution.
Hire for dumber job - The roles I usually use for marketing are Video editors, pure frontend development (Figma to HTML), and designers. Because those are generally very technical jobs - as long as I send a very good description and loom, I get what I paid for.
Don’t expect tons of content writers - 90% of content writers won’t know how to create good content, what good SEO keywords are, or how to make an article viral. Again, that’s your responsibility.
You should decide everything yourself - the type of articles you need, influencers, the right social media content, how the websites look, and what projects are in the pipeline.
Pay consultants - Try to find consultants (Like me 🙈) that have already done the job before and usually now work as freelancers or in more prominent companies. You see, once somebody gets to a very high level, they usually won’t work for smaller companies as employees.
The companies I am working with usually meet 2 times a week, conduct the entire tactic for the week, and then the executioners implement it.
Keep on learning - Marketing is the founder's responsibility; the faster you get that, the more you will keep growing. Make sure you read many books (both for startups and marketing, in general, such as direct marketing or how to build irresistible offers), diverse your learning to be stuck on “Tech startup marketing.”

Building systems

Marketing should be consistent. Without having a system, you won’t be able to stay consistent. Here are the things I used to do in Novu and today.

Use content with Notion

Articles - I usually create a database with all the content pieces I want. And add three boards to it:
1. Kanban board - status of the task: not started, in progress, ready to be published, published.
2. List - list of all the subjects of all the articles.
3. Calendar - I mark when each content piece should be published.
Then, I send each content writer the page where they should write the article. I don’t expect them to do any marketing work. Once they are finished, I will put in the title, intro, and cover picture.
YouTube - I make two YouTube videos every week and send them to an editor (around $70) on Fiverr. Please be advised that super technical videos with a “loom” style can be more challenging for an editor to edit (I do “talking head” videos). I advise recording a video for the editor instead of repurposing an interview or a workshop, which is very hard. I record two videos every Monday at one time and send them to the editor.
Social Media - You can schedule all your social media posts for the week. Always plan ahead, and don’t post “just in time” because building a system like that is hard. You can use the Gitroom platform to schedule everything.

Get some buffering

I know it’s hard because we are constantly learning and implementing stuff. If some article worked this week, I probably want to keep pushing more of that. But we have life and can work stressfully 24/7 in publishing content.
Before you start posting, ensure you have a 3-4 week buffer and try to increase it over time.

Stop doing the things that don’t work

“Slow and steady wins the race” is an old phrase; keep on posting all the time, and eventually, you will blow up. IT DOESN’T WORK ANYMORE. If you keep posting on your social media and get 1-2 likes with no views. It will not change if you don’t change your tactic. 90% of people hired to handle social media care only about consistency and not performance. If things don’t work, change them.

I am consistently thinking about new stuff to do.

See you next week 🫡

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