Highlights from the ActiveGrowth Podcast Launch Webinar

As part of the launch of our new podcast, we held a live webinar on launch day. During the webinar, we discussed the content of the first episodes with our audience and everyone who attended could ask us questions.

We got questions about the Forget Traffic/Customer First topic form the podcast, as well as many other questions about business building and marketing.

For this post, we picked out some of the highlights for you.

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1) ActiveGrowth vs. Thrive Themes

If this isn't your first visit to ActiveGrowth, you're probably familiar with Thrive Themes, my current main business. On the Thrive Themes blog, we publish a lot of content about online marketing and in Thrive University, we have dozens of courses. This begs the question: what exactly is the difference between Thrive Themes and ActiveGrowth, from a content and learning perspective? Where should you go to learn what? And why have two brands in the first place?

These are the questions we answered here:

Also mentioned:

• Why we won't cover ecommerce, physical products or Amazon FBA on the site, despite how trendy these topics are.
  

2) Should you grow your business like a Silicon Valley startup?

Our customer first approach may seem like a slow grind. Especially compared to what you read about in the news: usually Silicon Valley startups that seem to explode onto the scene with millions of users and massive growth. So, isn't clever "Growth Hacking" to achieve this a better approach?

Here's why we don't advocate that and why the ActiveGrowth way is (seemingly) slower and with a different focus:

Also mentioned:

• The problems with the Silicon Valley approach.
• Why our philosophy is more in line with Kevin Kelly's 1,000 True Fans concept.
• Why in the reals world, a slow and steady approach is actually faster than the audience first approach.
• Is social media important for the way we grow and market a business?
  

3) Social media followers: business or addiction?

A few more questions about social media came up and in this part, we explain why we don't place a lot of importance in social media and why growing your followers feels a lot more important than it is, in reality:

Also mentioned:

• What you measure matters. That's why we measure revenue and customer numbers, but not social media followers.
• Why you can't just "also do some social media" to add to your business.
• For more, check out this post about automation tools (because if you do something on social, it's important to waste as little time as possible - and automation helps with that).
  

4) On content marketing & SEO

Is content marketing the best SEO strategy, these days? And how important is SEO to the way we build businesses, anyway?

Here are our thoughts about this:

Also mentioned:

• The "backwards SEO" approach that we use.
• Why everything we do is human-focused rather than machine-focused.
• The "engine" that you need to put in place before you should even start doing SEO.
  

5) What if my product is a book?

We talk a lot about creating and selling digital products. But what if your product is a book? Should you sell it on Amazon or your own website?

Here's our answer:

Also mentioned:

• Why you need to have your own website, your own brand and your own landing page - even if you're selling your book on Amazon.
• The problem with a hands-off, "passive" approach to selling online.
• If you can sell on Amazon and game the Amazon ranking system, does that makes for a good business?
• What to do if your product is a podcast.
  

6) Can I build a brand and online presence if I don't want to get on camera?

ActiveGrowth and Thrive Themes were built with a lot of personal branding and a lot of video. Clearly, this has worked for us. But what if you're just not comfortable with the idea of getting on camera? What if English isn't your first language? What if you just don't want to be front and center in your business, like that?

Here's our take:

Also mentioned:

• Why I personally love doing difficult things that most people would rather avoid.
• Why being personal and on video makes certain things so much easier.
• How you can have a personal feeling and build rapport with your audience, in ways that don't involve video.
• Mentioned: Andre Chaperon, Ramit Sethi, Neville Medhora.
  

More Questions?

What's your take on these questions and answers? Did the discussion spark even more questions? Let me know by leaving a comment!

Alternatively, you can use this to leave a voice message:

Looking forward to discuss this further!