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Hey there,

A tool that I've been using obsessively to help gather traction for the Side Project Marketing Checklist as well as some of my other projects is F5Bot. This week on the blog, we have a feature on how to use F5bot to track conversations on Hacker News and Reddit.

This is especially useful if your side project is marketable to the tech-forward crowd, but I'm guessing there are a number of novel ways you can use it.
Recommended Reading*
Dan Lyons (now a writer for HBO's Silicon Valley) rails on former employer Hubspot in this hilarious and culturally telling account. I found myself laughing at times and nodding my head sadly in recognition at others.

Around the Web
"On average, keywords with lower volumes are typically the terms that target the middle or bottom of the funnel – they have fewer people searching for them but higher purchase intent."

The 1-Page Marketing Plan is one of my favorite marketing books for non-marketers. Check out these related books as well.

"While college tuition more than tripled over the past 30 years, the value of a college degree gradually fell due to credential inflation. As more people get degrees, what used to be a unique achievement becomes trivial."

"Your first marketing hire should probably be a director-level person who can be made accountable for generating a sales pipelines, with experience at a company 2-5x your size."

"Quora and Medium are built specifically for sharing long-form written content. And unlike their social platform competitors, still allow users to reach large audiences organically."

"Steve McLeod is Founder and Chairman of Fire and Safety Australia, Australia’s leading safety training company. The company is built on an unwavering passion for safety education and a determination to make a change in the world."

"Top content creator and SlideShare investor Dave McLure hasn't posted to the channel in over 11 months. HubSpot, the content marketing powerhouse, has posted only once in 2018..."

"Dynamic Ads help you build deeper relationships with your audience by automatically customizing your ad creative with the publicly available information from LinkedIn"

In short: Relax your face muscles, drop your shoulders, breathe out, and clear your mind.

"How two partners quit their jobs in London, failed their first startup, learned from it, and found real success"

"If you want more consistent Facebook traffic each and every month, focus on 'how to' articles...over time they produce more consistent Facebook traffic."

Great Reddit post on using an 'Involvement Device' to turn prospects into customers.

Sponsor*
I wear the same thing every day: t-shirt and jeans. Wohven reminds me every month to rotate an ugly old shirt out for the fresh new one they sent me. It might not seem like a huge life hack, but micro-optimizations like this add up.

Tools
Four very simple, modern landing pages to help you get started. Great if you're using something like Github pages to host your landing page.

"A team of US-based assistants at your fingertips. Use any device, at any time of day, and our assistants will tackle anything on your to-do list."

Keep tabs on your competitors' RSS, Twitter, and Youtube feeds. Don't miss a thing when they publish new content.

Get $1,000+/month of software for just $49/month, brought to you by AppSumo.

This is another great list of tools and services for small companies looking to save time and money on great software.

Many of the chart types and templates are free, so if you need to add compelling visuals to your data, check this out.

With great power comes great responsibility...

Find a slack group for just about any topic imaginable. I may be wrong here, but it seems like Slack groups are the new Twitter chat?

A series of snack-sized videos — which you can watch all together, or mix-and-match for your particular questions and needs — that distills the fundamentals that every founder should know about sales.

This is a huge list and includes helpful context like pricing and Twitter accounts.

Recurring meetings are great, but keeping them useful every week is a serious chore. I maintain a handful of recurring meetings, and can't wait to give Tadum a try.

Thanks for reading,

Karl Hughes, Portable CTO