Posts

  • Posts

    2012 Blogging Year in Review & 2013 Goals

    For those of you who might be visiting this blog for the first time, welcome. I’m a unpaid blogger (read: not a professional writer) living in San Francisco. I am cofounder and CEO of Referly alongside my husband Kevin. I write about whatever interests me. Usual topics include marketing tactics, personal productivity, things I’m learning as a first time CEO.

    This year I published on my personal blog, the Twilio company blog, as a guest writer on TechCrunch Europe, and launched DistributionHacks.com where I focused exclusively on tactics for marketing and growth. I also took a very active role doing content marketing through the Referly company blog and on my Referly profile (I am counting collections as blog posts… I think we might be slowly be morphing into a blogging platform – more on that soon).

    Blogging, by the Numbers

    • 41 posts with 200 or more pageviews
    • Averaged 3.5 posts per month
    • Just over 200,000 total pageviews
    • Averaged 3,760 pageviews per post

    Traffic on DanielleMorrill.com Since It Started

    My Top 10 Posts of 2012

    #10 – Introducing the Distribution Hacks Blog

    #9 – Who Owns the Website, and Why

    #8 – Why Advertising on Mobile Sucks, From the Marketer’s Perspective

    #7 – Got 99 Competitors and Bit.ly is One

    #6 – Starting Referly Took Me Three Years

    #5 – Post Startup Launch Checklist

    #4 – Accidental Startup Office Manager: Ordering Food

    #3 – How to Hustle SXSW for Fun and Profit

    #2 – The Best Advice My Dad Ever Gave Me (for Demo Day)

    #1 – Don’t Waste a Single Moment

    These ten posts generated 75% of my pageviews in 2012. The top 3 generated 37%. Here is the distribution curve for traffic.

    Goals for 2013

    Write About Amazing Startups Not Getting Press Coverage

    I know I’m not alone in my complaint that I wish tech publications covered a broader range of startups with interesting stories beyond funding and product launches. For those blogs it might not make sense, as long think or column pieces don’t always hit their mark and result in traffic. But since I don’t have to care much about traffic, I’m free to write whatever I want and take as long as I please.

    Consistently Publish at Least 2 Times a Week

    In 2012 I definitely published at least once a week on average, but my activity was spikey and inconsistent leaving readers wonder when the next piece would come out on Distribution Hacks for months (thanks for being patient with me). Accomplishing this goal might mean I actually need to make myself an editorial calendar, which I’ve been avoiding because it makes blogging feel like a job. But that might just be what it takes.

    Do More Funny Video Projects Like This With My Friends

    Experiment with Having Guest Authors Post on *My* Blogs

    I think it would be awesome to feature guest writers on Distribution Hacks, so I need to figure out how I want to approach people and get a bit more specific about the type of content the audience there expects. Guest posts are great because I can probably bring visibility to some awesome growth people who are just getting started with blogging. Are you one of them reading this? Contact me!

    Figure Out a Syndication Strategy

    Publishing across multiple sites it awesome because it let’s me segment audiences, reach new people, and explore different styles and topics. I expect I’ll be doing quite a bit more guest blogging in 2013, so figuring out a central place where people can subscribe to get everything is probably something I should work on. This is likely to be that site. This is the breakdown of where I’m generating pageviews this year:

    Finish Some of My 216 Draft Posts

    One good habit I’ve developed with blogging is to write whenever an idea strikes, even if I’m not sure if/when/whether I’ll ever publish. Now I’ve got 216 stub posts in various stages of completeness on this blog alone, with plenty of Google docs and other notes that might be worth finishing.

    Rankings for My Remaining Blog Posts

    Curious how my other posts did this year? Here are the other posts I made this year in order of pageviews:

    #11 – Must Read Blogs for Entrepreneurs

    #12 – Creating an Unfair Advantage

    #13 – The Little Signup Page That Could – A/B Testing Results Are In

    #14 – Growth Hacking Referly: New User Onboarding Workflow

    #15 – Go Ahead, Feed the Trolls

    #16 – Introducing Customer Acquisition as a Service: Referly API & Shopping by Categories

    #17 – Announcing “Recommend It” – The iPhone App for Product Photo Sharing

    #18 – Startup Office Snacks

    #19 – Why We Buy: Redesigning Referly to Focus on Experiences

    #20 – Referly Friends & Family Emails (aka Early Stage Investor Relations)

    #21 – Books for Entrepreneurs

    #22 – Finding a New Voice

    #23 – Import Your Pinterest Boards as Referly Collections

    #24 – Startup Metrics to Obsess Over

    #25 – Saying No

    #26 – 500 Details: The Process of Mentoring Startups

    #27 – Don’t Break the Chain

    #28 – YC Demo Day Prep Resources

    #29 – Angry Birds Halloween Costumes

    #30 – Referly + InternMatch Office Furniture

    #31 – How I Earned $34.91 with Referly

    #32 – Close the Loop on Your SXSW Campaign & Leads in 5 Steps

    #33 – Referly Goes Social – You Can Now Follow Profiles

    #34 – Introducing Referly Reviews: Hands-On Video Reviews of Products We Love

    #35 – Halloween Decor

    #36 – New and Improved Referly Website (Signup, Onboarding, Friending)

    #37 – Click Metrics: What Referly Reporting Looks Like

    #38 – Turning Recommendations from the Reddit Community Into a Store

    #39 – So Meta: My Startup is a Tool for Distribution Hackers

    #40 – Geek Girl Haul: The Corner Store

    #41 – My Favorite Drink: The Kir Imperial

  • Posts

    Call the Shots & Stop Being So Nice

    I gave a long rambling talk at Thinc Iowa.  So rambly in fact, that I was scared to watch it on video for a few months.

    Here’s the short version:

    • Stop being so nice
    • Gather the facts and judge people
    • Don’t be the no in your own life
    • If you don’t make decisions no one will
    • Inertia is death

    Don’t miss the part where I tell people to STOP DOING ALL THE THINGS and also the part (around 17:20) where I’m really honest about how women having the biggest problem with being too nice.

  • Posts

    Come Schlep with Me! Seeking Paid Content Intern at Referly

    Referly enables anyone to share links to products and earn rewards when the link they share results in a purchase.

    We are building out rich content pages that need a lot of curation. We’re eagerly looking for someone non-technical with a sense of style and visual composition, passion for browsing the Internet for unique and interesting products, efficient and self-directed work style, and passion for learning about working in a startup. You are the kind of person who loves Gilt Groupe, used Pinterest before it was hot, and snags the best stuff on Fab.com on a regular basis.

    You’ll be showcasing the best content from our community, and coming up with creative concepts of your own for various promotions and new landing pages. You’ll build tons of public-facing content that you will be able to point to at the end of your internship and say “I made that”. You’ll be blogging, talking to customers, learning about the things people love, and creating content that will help them be successful with Referly.

    The ideal candidate is open to becoming more technical but doesn’t need to be technical at all to start with. You will probably have to complete repetitive tasks and we will be happy to show you how to quickly automate them. You will learn to browse files and run scripts from the command line, write formulas in spreadsheets, pull data from databases with mySQL, tweak HTML/CSS, and argue for your awesome product improvement ideas with the team.

    There will also be a lot of schlepping, not because you are an intern but because that is what startups do – you’ll be cranking 24/7 alongside the team at our office in San Francisco. Between the 5 of us we’ve worked on over a dozen startups, so we’ve got lots of war stories to share.

    Bonus points if you: know how SEO works, know how HTTP works, know how the fashion industry works, can fix an air conditioner with a Leatherman

    Interested?

    Please send your resume, Referly profile (sign up at http://refer.ly) with some links and descriptions (we’re testing your ability to write interesting short content), and a draft blog post of how you’d introduce yourself to our community on our blog (http://blog.refer.ly) if you were a member of our team to danielle (at) refer.ly — please do more than just copy the job description, we can tell when people do that. Add your own unique flavor!

    Location: San Francisco, CA

    Pay: Hourly, $15-$25 depending on experience

    Term: 3 months – but could become full time role with the right person

     

  • Posts

    Post Launch Checklist: 10 Tasks Your Should Complete

    Over the past week or so YC companies in my batch have begun launching in anticipation of Demo Day. Congratulations, your startup is in the news! Now what?

    I’ve done 3 company launches and more than a dozen product launches, and contributed to many more. Through those experiences one of the most important things I’ve discovered is that what you do in the hours after launch is crucially important to maximizing the impact and total reach of your news coverage.

    Not only did you spend an incredible amount of effort building the product you just launched, but preparing the news coverage from pitch to publish probably cost the equivalent of $10,000 to $15,000 in time (or money if you used a PR agency). Don’t go to bed. Don’t leave your desk. You’re on a mission – for this one day everyone on your team is either part of marketing or part of customer support. As far as “talk to customers” goes this is the ULTIMATE DAY for that.

    Your Mission on Launch Day

    Keep the website up, which really shouldn’t be hard anymore for 99% of companies, and get every possible eyeball you can back on your website.

    What You Should Be Doing (TLDR version)

    • Monitor traffic with Google Analytics realtime
    • Get it on Hacker News and get the comments flowing
    • Make your own company blog post
    • Send out an email to any existing users
    • Send out an email to friends, family, and existing/potential investors
    • Customer support emails
    • engage with people on Twitter
    • share on your personal Facebook
    • Update/make a Facebook page
    • Comment Section on the news coverage

    Not having a professional marketer is no excuse – this is a simple checklist of items and anyone can do them by simply taking it step by step. No professional marketing title or skills are required, just some writing chops and a passionate love for your customer.

    Not sure how to start, what to do, or how much time they should take? This detailed guide will give you some answers to get you started.

    Launch Timeline from T-0 minutes til Coverage

    Monitor traffic (Immediately)

    I highly recommend Google Analytics realtime because you should already have Google Analytics running on your website and its easy for everyone on your team to use. Project it on the wall or have it take over a monitor if you can. Keep an eye on traffic sources to see new places where people might be discussing the news and driving traffic back to you.

    Get it on Hacker News (Launch +10 Minutes)

    There are many ways to do this and I could dedicate an entire post to how to leverage Hacker News – but the most important thing is that you should not have your entire team vote from the same IP address or you will trigger the voting ring detector. The lowest effort highest reward tactic for this first news story is to ask for votes via Facebook chat and Instant Messenger, and get the comments flowing.

    Share on your personal Facebook (Launch +30 Minutes)

    Get the entire team to share on their personal FB pages, this improves the edgerank of the link when it gets shared on your Facebook page.

    Make your own company blog post (Launch +45 Minutes)

    Don’t have a company blog? Now you do. Get one on WordPress, Tumblr, Posterous, etc. and get a post out. You’ll need to switch over to something more permanent on your own domain but this is fine for now. Don’t forget to hook up Google Analytics to your blog. Your post should be unique from the news, not a sales pitch, and offer unique insight into your company and vision. Give it an eye-catching title and post it to Hacker News as soon as traffic starts to die off for the original news story.

    Bonus points: share pictures of the team, screenshots of early iterations that have never been seen before, and mention if you are hiring.

    Engage with people on Twitter (Launch +1 Hour)

    Make sure to retweet the official tweet from the publications who cover you, in the order in which their stories go out if there are multiple. After that check out who retweets it and try to engage them. A simple “Thanks for helping spread the word about our launch!” tweet is fine, although you should try to make each tweet unique. Also engage in any more substantive conversations about your launch/product/company taking place.

    If you see people with very large follower counts tweeting about you, make sure to pay special attention to them – they could be your next whale customer and can drive hundreds of additional visits per tweet.

    Send out an email to any existing users (Launch +2 Hours)

    Whether you have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of existing users make sure they get to share in the fun and thank them for helping you get to where you are. This is also a great time to focus the email on a single call to action: “come back and kick the tires, we want your feedback”.

    Haven’t sent any email marketing out? You can use MailChimp or Campaign Monitor to make beautiful email templates in minutes, without any HTML/CSS.

    Update/make a Facebook Page (Launch +2.5 Hours)

    Its time. List your company as a business, upload your logo and invite all your friends to like the page. Add a Facebook like button to your website if you can. Post links to all the news cover, screenshots, and anything else you think they’ll find interesting.

    Send out an email to friends, family, and existing/potential investors (Launch +3 Hours)

    Keep a list of people who are supporting you and your cofounders and helping your startup. This list should include your parents, family members who still don’t believe this is a real job, other press who didn’t cover the story but who are friendly to you in general, existing and potential investors, advisors, high value customers and anyone whose influence could help you build this into a much bigger business. These are your VIP insiders – make them feel special by providing your own color commentary on the launch and letting them know how their support has played a role in getting the company this far.

    Customer support emails (Launch +4 Hours)

    Hopefully you’ve already got support@ or help@ your domain set up. If not, get it and hook it up to Zendesk or some other dead simple email support tool you can use to manage the influx of support requests. You’ll probably need to divvy up the requests across the entire team and respond to them fast and furious if you want to keep up.

    This is some of the best customer development there is. After launch is over be sure to go back and read through all the tickets.

    Monitor Comment Section on the news coverage (Whenever, Maybe Never)

    No one reads comments except for people who love you and want to support you, and haters. Like and thank people for positive comments, and ignore the trolls.

    After Its All Over

    Usually your news will break between 6am and 9am Pacific Time, and resonate with readers throughout the day. You will see a lot of traffic during lunch hour on the East Coast and again on the West Coast. It will begin to taper off around 6pm Pacific Time.

    Doing Support in Shifts

    The best case scenario is that your launch is so huge that support tickets are coming in so fast and furious that you aren’t sure when it will end. You may not have slept for days, and you can feel your tact and grammar slipping and its been 10-12 hours since launch. Assess your team and the volume, and depending on size and exhaustion level you have to FORCE someone to go to sleep (in the same building, do NOT let them go home you will not get them back).

    You will have to force them because everyone will be running on adrenaline. You will really really regret it if you don’t do this. Sleep in 3-4 hour shifts throughout the day if you have to, but get sleep or you will hit a wall as a team and if something breaks you might be mentally incapable of fixing it.

    Recovery Day

    Clean up bugs, the office, and your face. Encourage everyone to sleep and not get burned out. Gather the team together and thank them for a job well done – mean it and make sure to sell the vision to your teammates at this crucial moment.

    Team dinner and post mortem

    Spend time together, raise some glasses and eat some seriously nourishing food. Talk about the fun, the highs, the lows, and get ready to do it all again.

    —

    This post originally appeared on my old Svbtle blog: DistributionHacks.com

  • Posts

    The First 100,000 Visits

    I’ve been blogging for a long time, longer than I’ve owned this domain or had Google Analytics.  Beyond public blogging I also keep a paper journal, and in fact cart an entire box of my old journals with me whenever I move (which has been often).  I also wrote more than 500 blog posts on the Twilio blog, and have guest posted for TechCrunch.

    Recently this blog has been enjoying some popularity but I hadn’t looked very closely at the stats.  I fired up Google Analytics and it looks like I very recently crossed 100,000 all time visitors — from August 2008 to present — which is a bit of a milestone.  My blog archives go back to September 2007, when I started working for the first tech startup of my life: Pelago.  It was also a month after I married Kevin.

    Some stats:

    • 236 RSS subscribers (according to Feedburner)
    • 222 published posts
    • 197 drafts
    • 100,875 visits – more than half of which were in the past 6 months
    • 16.48% of visits are from returning visitors
    • 3 minutes average time on page across all posts
    • Average page load time 13.68 seconds (WTF!!!)
    • 21.6% of visitors via mobile

    Top Content by Pageviews

    1. Don’t Waste a Single Moment (June 2012)
    2. How to Hustle SXSW for Fun & Profit (February 2012)
    3. How I Built a Multi-User Door Buzzer for Our Apartment (June 2010)
    4. Got 99 Competitors & Bit.ly is One (June 2012)
    5. Starting Referly Took Me Three Years (May 2012)

    Traffic Breakdown

    • 16.7% Search
    • 57% Referral
    • 25.5% Direct

    Top Referral Traffic Sources

    • Hacker News
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • Google.com
    • Referly
    • Twilio
    • LinkedIn
    • Seattle20.com
  • Posts

    Geek Girl Haul: The Corner Store

    I’ve been thinking about how people make product placements online, and probably have watched over 100 “haul” videos trying to understand why they get hundreds of thousands of views.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t make my own, and on a startup budget I don’t have that many purchases I can recommend. Fortunately, Alexandra and I took a walk to the corner store today so I was able to find somethings I love around the house. I wanted to do something a little different, so I tried “Daria Style” in honor of the beloved Nickelodeon cartoon. Enjoy.

    And because you won’t read the video description…

    Would you like to buy the products featured on this video? YOU CAN!

    “Its really a good option for if you’re having a down day”
    Mango Melon Laffy Taffy: http://refer.ly/abUg

    “specifically caffeine free because, you know, my hands can’t be shaking when I’m tearing massive holes in the universe with my incredible code”
    Caffeine Free Diet Coke: http://refer.ly/abU2

    “any beverage that is pre-mixed is the best choice”
    Skinny Girl Sangria: http://refer.ly/abUi

    “this is usually a good after-dinner drink, or maybe with dinner, if it’s pizza”
    Hidden Valley Ranch dressing: http://refer.ly/abUh

    Compare it to:

  • Playlist,  Posts

    “Faking the Books” by Lali Puna

    We’ve been done before
    And now we try to forge ourselves
    We’ve been done before
    And now we try to forge ourselves

    I’ll be true again
    But until then i fake the books
    ‘cause everybody knows
    This ain’t heaven
    Until everybody knows

    We’ve been wrong before
    There is a lot that we survived
    We’ve been wrong before
    There is a lot that we survived

    I’ll be true again
    But until then i fake the books
    ‘cause everybody knows
    This ain’t heaven
    Until everybody knows

  • Playlist,  Posts

    “Gold Guns Girls” by Metric

    All the gold and the guns in the world couldn’t get you off
    All the gold and the guns and the girls couldn’t get you off
    All the boys, All the choices in the world

    I remember when we were gambling to win
    Everybody else said better luck next time
    I don’t wanna bend, Let the bad girls bend
    I just wanna be your friend
    Is it ever gonna be enough

    Is it ever gonna be enough
    Is it ever gonna be enough
    Is it ever gonna be enough

    Is it ever gonna be enough
    Is it ever gonna be enough
    Is it ever gonna be enough

    All the lace and the skin in the shop couldn’t get you off
    All the toys and the tools in the box couldn’t get you off
    All the noise, all the voices never stop

    I remember when we were gambling to win
    Everybody else said better luck next time
    I don’t wanna bend, Let the bad girls bend
    I just wanna be your friend
    Why you givin’ me a hard time
    I remember when we were gambling to win
    Everybody else said HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

    Is it ever gonna be enough
    Is it ever gonna be enough
    Is it ever gonna be enough

    Is it ever gonna be enough
    Is it ever gonna be enough
    Is it ever gonna be enough

    More and more, more and more, more and more,
    More and more and more and more, more and more,

  • Posts

    Homesick

    I realized on my last trip back to Seattle, that I’m not really homesick for being there anymore. But I’m kind of homesick everywhere, always missing a place I’m not. So I’ve stopped traveling for awhile, and maybe that will make me feel better. This song captures it.

    I’ll lose some sales and my boss won’t be happy,
    but I can’t stop listening to the sound
    of two soft voices
    blended in perfection
    from the reels of this record that I’ve found.

    Every day there’s a boy in the mirror asking me…
    What are you doing here?
    Finding all my previous motives
    growing increasingly unclear.

    I’ve traveled far and I’ve burned all the bridges
    I believed as soon as I hit land
    all the other options held before me,
    would wither in the light of my plan.

    So I’ll lose some sales and my boss won’t be happy,
    but there’s only one thing on my mind
    searching boxes underneath the counter,
    on a chance that on a tape I’d find…
    a song for someone who needs somewhere to long for.

    Homesick.
    Because I no longer know where home is.

  • London,  Posts,  Startup Index,  Startups,  The Future

    Will Milo Yiannopoulos Shake Up European Startup Press?

     

    I can’t wait to see what this produces.

    The saucy and often controversial Milo Yiannopoulos, who I’ve heard some call Europe’s one-man Gawker media, just penned an a post declaring its time to fix European tech journalism, and also noted he will retire from writing the fluffy stuff he’s been producing lately in favor of more substantive pieces in the future.

    This echoes the sentiment of conversations ever since Michael Arrington left TechCrunch, and I think this emerging trend is about more than European media.  The conversation is about what changes need to happen when it comes to startups storytelling as a whole, particularly in places like London where the trend for company creation is currently up and to the right.  I think Milo puts it quite well when he says:

    Start-ups have become conditioned to this cult of the mediocre, but it’s time to snap them out of it. Entrepreneurs who aspire to refashion the world around them deserve writing just as audacious and thought-provoking as their own ambitions. Unfortunately, as the technology sector in Europe has expanded, the quality of commentary around it has failed to keep up.

    While Milo can’t save startups from their own PR, I hope we will see more compelling untold stories unearthed with this new project.  Maybe I’ll even contribute, and help startups discover how to make meaningful connections with the press.  What will you contribute?

    More discussion of this topic from:

    What Europe really needs is startup reviews. And good startup reviews, not rehashed press releases. Frequent ones: three or more per day. Tell me about the team, the tech, the traction. Make me understand market size, competitive landscape, go-to-market strategy, unit economics, capital intensity, and the strategic importance of this widget in a likely future stack.

    Crunchbase is probably the most undervalued of Techcrunch’s assets. It’s the go-to database for startup financing information in the entire industry. It’s more complete and fresher than VentureSource or Capital IQ. I am glad it has been getting some love lately.

    I’d like to see a blog really getting into the soul of the space and people behind it, with real insights into how things work. “teardowns”, case studies, documenting specific points in a startup’s life, summarising where vc’s and entrepreneurs think the opportunities are, successes, failures, learnings.. What’s going on with MyDeco, Keynoir, MoshiMonsters, Kopi, Unbound, BookingBug, Moo, Skimlinks, huddle etc.. where are the real interesting pieces?

    Oh, and can we PLEASE stop going on about Silicon Roundabout – it’s NOT going to be the mecca where everyone wants to go and work. If I wanted to work by a tacky roundabout full of rubbish and kebab vans then I would have looked for an office in Basingstoke!