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I want to learn about growth hacking
3 points by jamesbrewr 4893 days ago
I want to learn about "growth hacking". I like the idea of studying analytics and making a plan of attack focused on converting one-time users to active community members and growth hacking seems to fit that bill.

Where can I learn more about this field? What blogs, books, etc do you recommend? Where can I find sample data for things like Google Analytics and Mixpanel?

Also, is there a less buzz-wordy term for what I am interested in?

4 comments

I like the idea of studying analytics and making a plan of attack focused on converting one-time users to active community members and growth hacking seems to fit that bill.

That is not growth hacking. GH is socially engineering a positive response from a given marketplace. It focuses on getting conversion rates from the average 10% to the tipping point of 15-18%. GH is not for the faint of heart because it requires you to develop systems that are not very socially acceptable. Not immoral, or illegal though.

How do you learn GH?

It requires a lot of time, money, and guts. Plus testing. And lots of it. Is there way straightforward way of learning it? Not really. It does require that you study a lot of different subjects and master each of them. Negotiations, sales, copywriting, closes, pitches, writing, body language, inflection, general psychology, behavioural psychology, deception, the art of war, and a lot more.

You can, however, learn how to create marketing campaigns that proof to be profitable and might look like a "hack". That is the easy part. The hard part is making sure that the growth stays. Few can manage that, and nobody is telling.

I would highly suggest following this quora board:

https://www.quora.com/Growth-Hacking

and then read this blog post by Andrew Chen on becoming a growth hacker:

http://andrewchen.co/2012/05/11/how-do-i-learn-to-be-a-growt...

I have to head off to work soon, but I have bookmarked those pages and I will be sure to read them later. Thanks :)
Where are you located? There's a Growth Hacking meetup in SF that's good.

http://www.meetup.com/SF-Growth-Hackers/

I am in Jacksonville, FL right now, but I will be moving to SF towards the end of June.
I would join the Growth Hacker Hub on LinkedIn...