Growth hacking refers to unconventional means that can skyrocket a business. The term was first coined in 2010 by Qualaroo Founder and CEO Sean Ellis. Today, everyone wants to hack their way to growth. To serve as possible inspirations, here are the 5 most game-changing growth hacks of all time.
Facebook is the king of growth hacking. It has employed numerous growth hacks that contributed significantly to why the social platform had 1.94 billion active users in 2016. Let’s talk about two of them.
- Embeddable Badges and Profile Widgets – Facebook achieved greater visibility and improved search rankings by making it easy for its users to create badges and widgets that they can embed on their websites and blogs.
- Service Provider Acquisitions – Facebook bought entire service providers in third world countries to get its hands on their email collection technology so it can get more email subscribers in countries where it is still unpopular.
It took years before Twitter became a household name. In its early years, new users mostly got bored after a few days and loyal users only used it a few times each day. To remedy the situation, Twitter modified its sign-up process and required new users to select five to ten accounts to follow before they can complete their registration. The time and energy those new users invested in selecting those five to ten accounts compelled to come back and use the site. Today, Twitter has 328 million monthly active users.
LinkedIn increased its user count of 2 million a hundred fold with an ingenious growth hack. It gave users the ability to create highly detailed public profiles. The sheer amount of information a typical LinkedIn profile contains made it show up in search results whenever someone searches for the user’s name on a search engine. This made Linked in the go-to platform for career profiles. If you are a job seeker, you need to have a LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn currently has 500 million users.
- YouTube
YouTube hacked its way to becoming a household name by allowing site users to embed its videos on their blogs and websites. By simply clicking “Share” then “Embed”, the site generates a small HTML code the user can copy and paste wherever he wants the video to appear. The video can be viewed wherever the HTML code was pasted, with the option of going to YouTube to view it there instead. This revolutionary feature is the primary reason why the site currently has 1 billion monthly users.
- Hotmail
In the 1990s, Hotmail used to be just one of those small email service providers. Then, with a growth hack that used only four words, it turned things around. It attached the words “PS – I love you” which contained a link to the Hotmail homepage to the end of every email sent by its users. Many recipients clicked on the link and signed up for a Hotmail email account and the service provider’s user base grew to 12 million shortly after. Hotmail was later acquired by Microsoft for $400 million and currently has 360 million users.
Conclusion
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Hotmail are 5 of the most used websites today and all of them used growth hacks to reach their current popularity. You might be just one growth hack away from elevating your business to the next level. For more tips and tricks to achieving online success, follow AwesomeMarky.
