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tl;dr - I'm often asked by startup cofounders three questions:

1. "What are the different marketing channels?"
2. "How do I get my first 10/100/1,000 customers?"
3. "There are sooo many marketing channels. What channels should I focus on first?"

I wrote this guide to explain the 12 major marketing channels. You'll find three strategies/case studies per channel to help you get your first few customers. I then talk about the two types of marketing channels.
Finally, I end by helping you know how to prioritize the channels using the "ICE framework." ICE is the prioritization method used in startups like Facebook, Uber, and Pinterest. I've used it for small startups (under 10 employees) and even a non-profit, so it should work for your startup.
This article was originally written on my website (which you can view here), so my apologizes if the formatting isn't perfect. Got questions? Feel free to drop a comment and I'll do my best to answer it!
Enjoy the read :).
Right now, your startup has one mission.
It isn’t to become the next $1 billion startup. (Though that may come in time). It isn’t to make a difference in the world. (Though you may make a meaningful impact). Nor is it to raise your next round of venture capital. (Though your team may need to do so to complete your mission).
Your mission right now, if you choose to accept, is to find a scalable business model.
As a part of finding a scalable business model, you need to tap the right marketing channels. That’s it.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. What works today may not work tomorrow.
Not too long ago, marketers were all raving about:

1. Use social media sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, and MySpace.
2. Writing articles daily on your blog.
3. Using QR codes to promote your business.

While specific trends and tactics come-and-go, marketing channels will always be around.
If you want to get more customers, it’s helpful to understand each marketing channel. And not only should you know how a marketing channel works, but why it works.
In this article, I’ll share with you the twelve major marketing channels. I’ll then provide a few case studies and strategies for you to test to grow your business.
Note: The book Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth shaped much of this article. If you want to become better at getting and retaining customers, I recommend reading both.

Here is a list of the 12 major marketing channels of mass distribution:

1. Business Development and Partnerships
2. Paid Advertisements
3. Sales
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
5. Virality and Network Effects
6. Community Marketing
7. Content Marketing
8. Email Marketing
9. Engineering as Marketing
10. Press
11. Social Media
12. Trade Shows and Offline Events

Warning: The following advice may lead to insane amounts of business growth. Please consult a lawyer, attorney, or doctor before attempting this at home. Each marketing channel has different pros and cons. Your mileage may vary.

1. Business Development and Partnerships

Business development is often a gray and ambiguous term. Some equate it to sales. Others simply say any partnership is business development.
Here’s how I define business development.
*Business development is creating long-term value for your startup by partnering with anyone in your market. *This includes other businesses, influencers, and media outlets.
The focus of this channel is on the exchange of value through the partnership. This channel also includes partnerships from influencer marketing and affiliate marketing.
The goal of each partnership is long-term value.
It should not be a one-and-done transaction. Sure, you might get some money from your first co-promotion. But the highest ROI comes from finding new opportunities from the same partnership.
As a result, partnerships often are a slower channel to scale.
The partnership may or may not include paid compensation.
Keep in mind the relationship will change if you pay the other person. Further, there may be certain expectations a person has about the partnership. This expectation may also change by industry.
For example, an influencer is more likely to promote a blog article for free. But I’ve had a few influencers request I pay them to promote my article. The same influencer who was willing to promote an article for free may expect payment for directly promoting your product.
Offering payment when the party does not expect it may be offensive. And in another scenario, it’s a delightful gift.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for partnerships:

1. Find similar companies and offer one product as an add-on bonus. Chris Gimmer shares his story on Snappa’s partnership with LeadPages here.
2. Find large companies that have app directories or marketplaces. First, integrate your tool with their tool. Then submit your application to directories. Examples include Shopify’s App Marketplace, Intercom’s App Store, and Zendesk’s App Directory. This was a core part of the early growth for CartHook and for BoldCommerce.
3. Put together a product bundle for news sites and conferences. Learn how Noah Kagan did this with AppSumo by partnering with Imgur and Reddit here.

2. Paid Advertisements

At the dawn of the Internet, people rallied around old marketing channels with new names:

1. Influencer marketing (celebrity endorsements began in the 1760s).
2. Content marketing (Ben Franklin printed Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1732).
3. Email Marketing (mail order catalogues began in 1498).

Then advertising began to move online. Old advertising channels like billboards, newspaper ads, and radio commercials are now a thing of the past.
Or are they outdated?
Believe it or not, according to the OAAA, out-of-home advertising reach a new record high of $8 billion in 2018:
Image
(Image Source)
I bet you didn't see that one coming.
Paid advertising has several mediums, which I’ll categorize by offline and online ads. Offline ads include TV ads, radio ads, billboards, magazine ads, newspaper ads, and bus ads.
Online ads are also called pay-per-click (PPC) ads. This includes:

1. Search engine ads (ads on Google, Bing, and other search engines)
2. Social media ads (ads on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, and other social media sites)
3. Display ads (banner ads you see displayed on websites).
4. Media ads (ads and product placements which are in video games, movies, and other media).
5. Email ads (ads you see when using your email, such as Gmail).
6. Newsletter ads (ads in email newsletters)

The benefit of paid advertising is if you have an unlimited budget, it’s easier to scale this channel. It’s an excellent channel to test your messaging, get feedback, and iterate quickly.
But as fast as advertising comes, so too it also disappears fast.
There’s a limited window of exposure because ads rent space. Marketing on other channels gives you an asset that stays up as long as you keep them up.
As your ad spend scales, it becomes more expensive and harder to track. In turn, paid ads can also cover up underlying problems.
Andrew Chen, an investor at Andreessen Horowitz, shared how a startup’s paid cost to acquire a customer can be off as much as 2-5 times what it should be. (Source)
Further, you often do not build a relationship with the customer.
As a result, advertising works best for impulse buys or products which offer fast value to the customer.
For SaaS startups, paid ads are often a secondary channel that supports content marketing.
But for eCommerce products, paid advertising is often the first scalable marketing channel. This is because eCommerce will likely sell products which bring delight faster.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for paid advertising:

1. Media outside the home often will not sell every available ad spot. If it’s not sold, it’s a lost opportunity. This allows you to negotiate for remnant advertising. Tim Ferriss has an excellent article on this here. I used this approach to get $10,000 in billboard space for $2,000. If you run other ads, use your successful campaigns to inspire your billboards.
2. Create a single keyword ad group (SKAG). [1] Run ads to a dedicated landing page on that topic, optimizing the landing page for SEO. This allows you to continue getting traffic after turning off ads and create a message match to improve conversions. I’ve seen click-through rates (CTR) between 1-9% on SKAGs. For one client, after removing the three worst campaigns, all SKAGs were over 3% CTR. Unbounce has an excellent resource on the importance of message match here.
3. Create a normal social media post and work with relevant influencers to promote your post. Then promote using an ad so you leverage the social proof from the influencer’s promotion. Learn how to work with influencers on my old marketing site here. And learn how to edit Facebook ads and keep your social proof here.

_[1] Unfamiliar with SKAGs? Let’s say you wanted to sell Ultimate Frisbee discs. In one ad keyword group, you would use three keywords: _

1. _+ultimate +frisbee _
2. _“ultimate frisbee” _
3. _[ultimate frisbee]. _

If an unrelated keyword pops up such as “ultimate frisbee rules,” you move it to your negative keyword list. And if a relevant but unrelated term pops up such as “best ultimate frisbee brands,” you can create a new SKAG and send traffic to a new landing page.

3. Sales

Effective marketing is nothing more than salesmanship in ink. While marketing sells on many-to-one, sales specialize in hand-holding customers one-on-one.
Sales is the process of generating leads, qualifying them, and turning them into paying customers.
Now perhaps you’re wondering, “If marketing is effective salesmanship at scale (many-to-one), why should I hire a salesman?”
Contrary to what most SaaS entrepreneurs believe, sales is a primary scalable channel.
First, sales can accelerate the process marketing starts. Without a proper nurture sequence in place, it can be slow moving a prospect down your funnel. A salesman or woman specializes in moving them faster through the funnel.
Second, big customers often need a sales process. When you’re selling a high-end or enterprise product, it’s common to have a salesman giving the customer the red carpet treatment.
*While sales will help speed up landing big customers, it’s not without a major cost. *
Most suggest hiring at least two sales reps. If they work on a team, one will generate and qualify leads while the other closes them. If you favor competition, you can put the two against each other. Two full-time salaries are more than what you’d pay for most marketing agencies.
How cheap can your product be and afford to have a sales team?
If you have a repeatable sales model, a sales rep has three limits:

1. The number of calls or demos in a day.
2. The demo-to-close ratio.
3. How much you’ll pay to keep the salesman.

Jason Lemkin of SaaStr, a SaaS founder, enthusiast, & investor offers this advice:

• Most inside sales reps can probably close 8-12 deals a month.
• Assuming a 20% close rate, that’s 60 demos a month, or 3-a-day.
• If the rep needs to make $80,000-$100,000 in OTE (on-target earnings), and you need to clear $300,000 in revenue to make the math work on your side, at 100 closed deals a year, to bring in $300,000 to the company, each deal has to have a $3,000 ACV (annual contract value) on average.
• So the straight math says it’s tough to have inside sales reps working on deals under $3,000 ACV or $299/month if there’s monthly churn.

(Source)
But that’s not all!
If you maximize your current leads and play your cards right, you can bring in a sales rep for a $99/month product.
Lemkin continues:
But, still, we dropped the price point (necessary) for inside sales to $99. And it worked. Why?

• First, if you don’t service those $1,000 ACV leads, you are wasting them. So maybe it’s better to close them that just lose them altogether if it’s not too expensive.
• Since you’d lose these prospective customers anyways, you can spend more of the ACV revenue received on the reps and not worry about the marketing costs. Because otherwise, the marketing costs would be a write-off. These reps don’t have to be as profitable.
• You can use this customer segment to train the new reps. It’s cheap training.
• And most importantly, the really really good reps can actually kill it. Even here. Because they’ll get really efficient, and close a lot more than 10 deals a month. Our best $99/month inside sales reps could triple that rate, so long as we gave them enough leads. You do need a high volume of leads to make this work.

I’m not saying you can build a whole inside sales team around a $1,000 ACV or $99 price point. You can’t. The lowest you can probably go on average is $3,000, based on the math above, and that’s if you are hyper-efficient.
If you aren’t, bump that up to a $5k ACV to account for overhead, waste, turn-over, etc.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for sales:

1. Find people who shared a how-to article related to your product on Twitter. You can use Buzzsumo or Ahrefs to do this. Find their email using a tool like VoilaNorbert. Send them an email and pitch your product. Bryan Harris and two of his students did this to pitch their services, which you can check out here.
2. Find a list of your competitors. Use a tool such as NerdyData or BuiltWith to find customers who use your competitor. [Send them an email](growthramp.io/articles/email-outreach-program) asking if they’ve experienced common problems with the product. If possible, leverage the names of similar customers you have to the prospect. Nathan Barry did this to take ConvertKit from $1,300 to $725,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Learn how he did that here. More on how to use NeryData here.
3. If you’ve pre-sold your product, create a customer persona for each person who bought your product. Then use LinkedIn search to find similar people and pitch your product. You can find their email on their profile when you click contact info. If you get real fancy, you can create a video pitch on how your product will benefit them. Learn how Devesh got over $13,000 in recurring revenue doing something similar here.

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you have a question on how to do something, where do you turn for an answer?
More than likely, you will turn to a search engine.

• Do you need help changing the oil in your car? You’ll likely search YouTube for a how-to video.
• Do you want to find how much SEO services should cost? You’ll likely search on Google unless you know a site that has done a pricing survey for you (hint, hint).
• Are you looking for a book to dive deep into a topic? You’ll likely search Amazon for the right author.

This channel includes traditional search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Most SEO agencies and consultants focus on Google’s search engine because it provides the most traffic.
It also includes popular, but niche search engines like Amazon and YouTube search optimization.
*Scaling SEO can be slower than other marketing channels. *
The key to getting faster results for SEO comes from mastering three areas:

1. Doing keyword research to find high volume, low difficulty keywords.
2. Creating the content on that topic which benefits both the customer and Google.
3. Getting enough links from authoritative websites to be an authoritative article on that topic.

Keyword research helps you learn how often people search for a phrase. It will also inform how competitive it is to get search traffic from that keyword phrase.
In my article, “No Keywords Easy to Rank For? I Call ‘Bullcrap,’” I outlined a simple process to find high volume, low difficulty keywords. Here’s a quick summary of the process:

1. Do a Google search for your keyword or topic.
2. Take the first 3-5 articles listed on Google.
3. Put these into an SEO tool that finds the keywords the page ranks for, such as Ahrefs.
4. Sort the keyword list by volume.
5. Filter out keywords not in the top 20 spots. You should also remove keywords with too high of a difficulty score. For Ahrefs, my recommendation is 30 or less for new websites.

When doing keyword research, it’s also important to understand a person’s intent when searching for a phrase. Understanding search intent will inform how long it will take to make a sale.
If someone searches “What is copywriting?” in Google, they are likely looking for basic information. But if that person looks up “copywriting services in Spokane”, they probably want to buy copywriting services from an agency in Spokane.
*Next, you’ll want to create in-depth content to answer people's questions and objections on that topic. *
To do this, content strategists often source ideas from other content. For example, you could:

1. Go to your customers and list out the questions they have.
2. Go to Quora and search for questions on your topic.
3. Go to Reddit and look for articles with a high number of upvotes and comments.
4. Go to relevant Facebook groups and look for questions people have.
5. Go to relevant Discord and Slack groups and look for questions people have.

Once done, share everything relevant to this topic. Articles on Growth Ramp often are between 1,500 and 3,000 words.
*After you’ve created your content, you may need some authoritative links. *
Why are links important to improve SEO?
I’ll answer this question with another question.
When you write a research paper, how do you know the information is accurate? You cite your sources. On the web, people cite sources by linking to different pages.
Google’s search engine puts pages with the most relevance to your search higher up. That’s why you want in-depth content. But Google also prioritizes relevant content with more links.
So if an authoritative site like Harvard University or Microsoft cites your article, Google will likely rank it high in their results.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for SEO:

1. After doing competitive research, create landing pages that compare you to your competitors. Potential customers will want to know how you are different from other products out there. It’s one of 10 questions we’ve found customers ask before buying a product. These pages will allow you to educate the customer and add your voice to the conversation.
2. Create a survey using a tool like Pollfish. Write an article on the original research and promote it. In a 2015 survey by BuzzSumo and Moz, the team found research-backed articles get a lot of traffic and links. This is how Orbit Media got over 430 links in six months.
3. Similar to what I wrote in “No Keywords Easy to Rank For? I Call ‘Bullcrap,’” you can find easy-to-rank keywords by analyzing your competitor’s content. Plug a competitor into an SEO tool like Ahrefs. Then filter any keywords with a keyword score of 30 or less. You may also want to search for a broad keyword in the results too. Organize the list by traffic, and voila! Instant fast ranking results.

5. Virality and Network Effects

Virality isn’t just when your cat video hits the front page of Reddit or Youtube. It’s about optimizing the time it takes a customer to invite or refer more friends to your product. This is known as a viral loop.
A viral loop happens in three ways:

1. A customer discovers your product and enjoys it.
2. This customer then shares your product with other people. Ideally, they share it with your potential customers.
3. A potential customer buys the product, enjoys it, and shares it with their friends and coworkers.

The more customers who share your product who become customers, the better the viral loop. To measure your viral loop’s effectiveness, you can use a viral coefficient.
David Skok, a venture capitalist at Matrix partners wrote an excellent article on understanding the key variables of viral marketing.
Viral loops are most common in referral systems and network effect products like Facebook and LinkedIn. Network effects occur when there is an increase in value with each new customer using your product.
Virality and network effects are not the same.
Many things can have viral effects without having network effects. Buzzfeed and Upworthy are relentless at improving virality. But that does not mean they have network effects.
And products with network effects don’t always have viral effects. Any of these marketing channels could bring people into the network effect. Facebook used community marketing to get an Ivy League college student to join in its early days. A B2B marketplace might use content marketing to attract their audience.
Unfortunately, while getting free users is valuable, it’s also hard to create viral loops and network effects.
It’s difficult to engineer a viral loop for any product. And virality is even more difficult for SaaS products.
Andrew Chen suggests a viral product should be:

1. Social in nature.
2. Has high retention with daily usage.
3. Applies to many job titles within an organization, so that anyone can use it.
4. Invites travel through a new channel with a compelling pitch.
5. Targets extroverts.

Network effect products must have certain features built into the product to create a network effect. At that point, you need to seed the network.
A network has almost no use when no one uses it. How valuable was the fax machine to the first person who bought it? And even with 100 fax machines, if these users do not send messages to each other, the machines were glorified paperweights.
Viral loops and network effects are valuable. The VC firm NFX argues that 70% of the value in tech comes from network effects. Both viral loops and network effects can bring in free customers. The challenge is getting those customers in the first place.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for virality and network effects:

1. Attract customers with a tool that works without a network effect, then keep them engaged with your network. Chris Dixon talks about the philosophy of this approach here.
2. There are many ways to solve the chicken-or-egg problem in marketplace network effect startups. Here are 19 tactics to try.
3. To improve your referral campaigns, provide a reward to both parties. Dropbox’s referral program is a famous example of two-sided rewards. Learn about their referral program here and here.

6. Community Marketing

Community building involves building direct relationships with your customers and potential customers. Developing deeper customer relationships can result in increased activation, retention, and referrals.
One challenge of community marketing is not having an existing audience to start your community.
If you don’t have an established audience, you can become a prominent member of another community. Then use relationships you build in other communities to start your community. Forums, Facebook groups, and Reddit communities (called subreddits) are some of the fastest ways to build relationships in your industry.
Building a community is difficult, but the rewards can be massive. Reddit, Wikipedia, and Stack Exchange are startups built on the community they created.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for community marketing:

1. What’s successful in one community will often be successful in another community. Find what top influencers share on social media and adjust it to fit your context. With the right message, you can promote the same message in other communities.
2. Use communities to promote your community. The Facebook group Client Science promotes its community by writing articles on Reddit. You can check out their articles posted by BenJackGill. This article received over 700 upvotes.
3. Create a community on a different type of channel for people already in a community. Reddit has many Discord and Slack groups. /startups has a startup Discord server. At the time of this writing, they promote this community at the top of their subreddit. /bigseo has an SEO Slack group. At the time of this writing, they promote this community in the sidebar of their subreddit. You can do the same by creating a community for a subreddit.

7. Content Marketing

When was the last time you read an article online? How about the last time you heard a podcast? Or perhaps watched a video?
Content marketing spans a wide range of mediums. It includes articles like the one you’re reading to infographics, videos, and podcasts.
When done right, content can help you:

1. Educate the market.
2. Build an email list of excited customers.
3. Land publicity.
4. Build relationships.
5. Build your brand.

And so much more. Popular venture capitalists like Mark Suster, Paul Graham, and James Currier are well-known because of their blogs.
Further, you always have the content. Once you spend on advertising, that’s it. But you can get customers from content for years to come.
Unfortunately, content marketing often requires knowledge of another channel to become successful. As such, it’s often slower than other acquisition channels. That is unless you have a solid content promotion system in place.
SEO and social media tend to be the two most common ways of getting traffic to your content. Email marketing is also common to get people to become repeat visitors to your content. But you can also create a paid content funnel using ads, an article, and premium content to get an email address.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for content marketing:

1. Want to find content practically guaranteed to go viral? Go to Reddit and search for your topic. Find articles with a ton of upvotes and comments (aim for at least 100 upvotes, or 250 for bigger subreddits). Write a similar topic on your blog, putting your spin on the topic. Then promote it on Reddit and other sites.
2. Search for “top X blogs” or “best X blogs,” where X is your industry. Offer to sponsor these bloggers money to review your product. Learn how Noah Kagan paid bloggers $500 to review Mint.com from 0 to 100,000 in six months here.
3. According to BuzzSumo, two types of content that get a ton of traffic and links are research-backed articles and opinionated journalism. If you can’t get enough survey responses, you can use sites like Pollfish for this information. Learn how Orbit Media got 430 links in six months here.

8. Email Marketing

Email marketing is often declared to have the highest ROI for marketing channels.
Image
(Image Source)
Not only can you use it to find new customers, but you can also use it to engage (activation), retain, upsell (revenue), and generate referrals.
Because messages from your company are right beside updates from friends and family, email often feels very personal. When done wrong, the email will also make people feel angry, damage your brand, and decrease future email deliverability rates.
Keep in mind it’s also difficult to get a large enough email list to acquire customers. By itself, email marketing cannot grow unless you have some mechanism for others to share and join your newsletter.
But it is possible to start just by emailing a few interested friends. Newsletters like The Hustle, Startup Digest, and Product Hunt all began as emails sent to friends. Each of these newsletters has several thousands, if not millions, of people.
Typically marketers pair email marketing with SEO or content marketing to build a list.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for email marketing:

1. Emails that tell your customers the value they get from your product often do well. Can you estimate the money earned or the time saved by using your product?
2. Consider running a giveaway to build your list. All you need to do is give away a product, tell people about the giveaway, and collect everyone’s email address. Bryan Harris used a giveaway to get 2,239 email subscribers in 10 days. Learn more about that here.
3. Advertise on newsletters that are complementary to your product. Chances are if someone subscribes to one newsletter, they would love to subscribe to another newsletter like it. Alternatively, you can do a shout-out for each other’s newsletter. This is ideal when the two newsletters are about the same size.

9. Engineering as Marketing

Do you have a team of engineers? You can leverage their skills by building free tools and products to reach your customers.
This a major competitive advantage because you’re giving something free that your competitors charge for.
Free tools are often easier to market than your paid products. As a result, you can get a ton of inexpensive leads. That said, this approach requires you to market the new tool too.
Some common tools include calculators, WordPress plugins, and educational microsites. You can then collect leads through these tools and get people to buy your product. Sometimes a side project becomes successful enough to be the main product.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for engineering as marketing:

1. From 2006 to 2011, HubSpot's Website Grader was used to grade more than 4 million websites. Learn more about this project here.
2. Look at your most popular articles. See if you can turn that article into a lead-gen product. Chris Gimmer did this with StockSnap, which he used to launch Snappa. Learn more about how he did that here.
3. Once you have a tool, don’t overlook other ways you can use it to promote other marketing campaigns. WP Engine has a speed test tool. After you opt-in, it takes you to a thank you page with other valuable resources. You can check it out here.

(Continued in comments below).

Imagine if there was one desk that all stories could cross so that, at 4am, a media plan could be decided upon and disseminated where all news outlets coordinated to set the goalposts of debate and hyper focused on specific issues to drive a narrative to control how you vote and how you spend money; where Internet shills were given marching orders in tandem to what was shown on television, printed in newspapers and spread throughout articles on the World Wide Web.
https://i.imgur.com/Elnci0M.png
In the past, we had Operation Mockingbird, where the program was supremely confident that it could control stories around the world, even in instructions to cover up any story about a possible “Yeti” sighting, should it turn out they were real.
https://i.imgur.com/121LXqy.png
If, in 1959, the government was confident in its ability to control a story about a Yeti, then what is their level of confidence in controlling stories, today?
https://i.imgur.com/jQFVYew.png
https://i.imgur.com/ZKMYGJj.png
In fact, we have a recent example of a situation similar to the Yeti. When Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch met on the TARMAC to spike the Hillary email investigation, the FBI was so confident it wasn’t them, that their entire focus was finding the leaker, starting with searching within the local PD. We have documentation that demonstrates the state of mind of the confidence the upper levels of the FBI have when dealing with the media.
https://i.imgur.com/IbjDOkI.png
https://i.imgur.com/NH86ozU.png
The marriage between mainstream media and government is a literal one and this arrangement is perfectly legal.
https://i.imgur.com/OAd4vpf.png
But, this problem extends far beyond politics; the private sector, the scientific community, even advice forums are shilled heavily. People are paid to cause anxiety, recommend people break up and otherwise sow depression and nervousness. This is due to a correlating force that employs “systems psychodynamics”, focusing on “tension centered” strategies to create “organizational paradoxes” by targeting people’s basic assumptions about the world around them to create division and provide distraction.
https://i.imgur.com/6OEWYFN.png
https://i.imgur.com/iG4sdD4.png
https://i.imgur.com/e89Rx6B.png
https://i.imgur.com/uotm9Cg.png
https://i.imgur.com/74wt9tD.png
In this day and age, it is even easier to manage these concepts and push a controlled narrative from a central figure than it has ever been. Allen & Co is a “boutique investment firm” that managed the merger between Disney and Fox and operates as an overseeing force for nearly all media and Internet shill armies, while having it’s fingers in sports, social media, video games, health insurance, etc.
https://i.imgur.com/zlpBh3c.png
https://i.imgur.com/e5ZvFFJ.png
Former director of the CIA and Paul Brennan’s former superior George Tenet, holds the reigns of Allen & Co. The cast of characters involves a lot of the usual suspects.
https://i.imgur.com/3OlrX7G.png

In 1973, Allen & Company bought a stake in Columbia Pictures. When the business was sold in 1982 to Coca-Cola, it netted a significant profit. Since then, Herbert Allen, Jr. has had a place on Coca-Cola's board of directors.
Since its founding in 1982, the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference has regularly drawn high-profile attendees such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Rupert Murdoch, Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, Oprah Winfrey, Robert Johnson, Andy Grove, Richard Parsons, and Donald Keough.
Allen & Co. was one of ten underwriters for the Google initial public offering in 2004. In 2007, Allen was sole advisor to Activision in its $18 billion merger with Vivendi Games. In 2011, the New York Mets hired Allen & Co. to sell a minority stake of the team. That deal later fell apart. In November 2013, Allen & Co. was one of seven underwriters on the initial public offering of Twitter. Allen & Co. was the adviser of Facebook in its $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp in February 2014.
In 2015, Allen & Co. was the advisor to Time Warner in its $80 billion 2015 merger with Charter Communications, AOL in its acquisition by Verizon, Centene Corporation in its $6.8 billion acquisition of Health Net, and eBay in its separation from PayPal.
In 2016, Allen & Co was the lead advisor to Time Warner in its $108 billion acquisition by AT&T, LinkedIn for its merger talks with Microsoft, Walmart in its $3.3 billion purchase of Jet.com, and Verizon in its $4.8 billion acquisition of Yahoo!. In 2017, Allen & Co. was the advisor to Chewy.com in PetSmart’s $3.35 billion purchase of the online retailer.

Allen & Co throws the Sun Valley Conference every year where you get a glimpse of who sows up. Harvey Weinstein, though a past visitor, was not invited last year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_%26_Company_Sun_Valley_Conference

Previous conference guests have included Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren and Susan Buffett, Tony Blair, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Allen alumnus and former Philippine Senator Mar Roxas, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, Quicken Loans Founder & Chairman Dan Gilbert, Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang, financier George Soros, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch, eBay CEO Meg Whitman, BET founder Robert Johnson, Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons, Nike founder and chairman Phil Knight, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, NBA player LeBron James, Professor and Entrepreneur Sebastian Thrun, Governor Chris Christie, entertainer Dan Chandler, Katharine Graham of The Washington Post, Diane Sawyer, InterActiveCorp Chairman Barry Diller, Linkedin co-founder Reid Hoffman, entrepreneur Wences Casares, EXOR and FCA Chairman John Elkann, Sandro Salsano from Salsano Group, and Washington Post CEO Donald E. Graham, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, and Oprah Winfrey.

https://i.imgur.com/VZ0OtFa.png
George Tenet, with the reigns of Allen & Co in his hands, is able to single-handedly steer the entire Mockingbird apparatus from cable television to video games to Internet shills from a singular location determining the spectrum of allowable debate. Not only are they able to target people’s conscious psychology, they can target people’s endocrine systems with food and pornography; where people are unaware, on a conscious level, of how their moods and behavior are being manipulated.
https://i.imgur.com/mA3MzTB.png

"The problem with George Tenet is that he doesn't seem to care to get his facts straight. He is not meticulous. He is willing to make up stories that suit his purposes and to suppress information that does not."
"Sadly but fittingly, 'At the Center of the Storm' is likely to remind us that sometimes what lies at the center of a storm is a deafening silence."

https://i.imgur.com/YHMJnnP.png
Tenet joined President-elect Bill Clinton's national security transition team in November 1992. Clinton appointed Tenet Senior Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council, where he served from 1993 to 1995. Tenet was appointed Deputy Director of Central Intelligence in July 1995. Tenet held the position as the DCI from July 1997 to July 2004. Citing "personal reasons," Tenet submitted his resignation to President Bush on June 3, 2004. Tenet said his resignation "was a personal decision and had only one basis—in fact, the well-being of my wonderful family—nothing more and nothing less. In February 2008, he became a managing director at investment bank Allen & Company.
https://i.imgur.com/JnGHqOS.png
We have the documentation that demonstrates what these people could possibly be doing with all of these tools of manipulation at their fingertips.
The term for it is “covert political action” for which all media put before your eyes is used to serve as a veneer… a reality TV show facade of a darker modus operandum.
https://i.imgur.com/vZC4D29.png
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol36no3/html/v36i3a05p_0001.htm

It is now clear that we are facing an implacable enemy whose avowed objective is world domination by whatever means and at whatever costs. There are no rules in such a game. Hitherto acceptable norms of human conduct do not apply. If the US is to survive, longstanding American concepts of "fair play" must be reconsidered. We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated means than those used against us. It may become necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3340677/t/cia-operatives-shadowy-war-force/

Intelligence historian Jeffrey T. Richelson says the S.A. has covered a variety of missions. The group, which recently was reorganized, has had about 200 officers, divided among several groups: the Special Operations Group; the Foreign Training Group, which trains foreign police and intelligence officers; the Propaganda and Political Action Group, which handles disinformation; the Computer Operations Group, which handles information warfare; and the Proprietary Management Staff, which manages whatever companies the CIA sets up as covers for the S.A.

Scientology as a CIA Political Action Group – “It is a continuing arrangement…”: https://mikemcclaughry.wordpress.com/2015/08/25/scientology-as-a-cia-political-action-group-it-is-a-continuing-arrangement/

…Those operations we inaugurated in the years 1955-7 are still secret, but, for present purposes, I can say all that’s worth saying about them in a few sentences – after, that is, I offer these few words of wisdom. The ‘perfect’ political action operation is, by definition, uneventful. Nothing ‘happens’ in it. It is a continuing arrangement, neither a process nor a series of actions proceeding at a starting point and ending with a conclusion.

CIA FBI NSA Personnel Active in Scientology: https://i.imgur.com/acu2Eti.png
When you consider the number of forces that can be contained within a single “political action group” in the form on a “boutique investment firm,” where all sides of political arguments are predetermined by a selected group of actors who have been planted, compromised or leveraged in some way in order to control the way they spin their message.
https://i.imgur.com/tU4MD4S.png
The evidence of this coordinated effort is overwhelming and the “consensus” that you see on TV, in sports, in Hollywood, in the news and on the Internet is fabricated.

Under the guise of a fake account a posting is made which looks legitimate and is towards the truth is made - but the critical point is that it has a VERY WEAK PREMISE without substantive proof to back the posting. Once this is done then under alternative fake accounts a very strong position in your favour is slowly introduced over the life of the posting. It is IMPERATIVE that both sides are initially presented, so the uninformed reader cannot determine which side is the truth. As postings and replies are made the stronger 'evidence' or disinformation in your favour is slowly 'seeded in.'
Thus the uninformed reader will most likely develop the same position as you, and if their position is against you their opposition to your posting will be most likely dropped. However in some cases where the forum members are highly educated and can counter your disinformation with real facts and linked postings, you can then 'abort' the consensus cracking by initiating a 'forum slide.'

When you find yourself feeling like common sense and common courtesy aren’t as common as they ought to be, it is because there is a massive psychological operation controlled from the top down to ensure that as many people as possible are caught in a “tension based” mental loop that is inflicted on them by people acting with purpose to achieve goals that are not in the interest of the general population, but a method of operating in secret and corrupt manner without consequences.
Notice that Jeffrey Katzenberg, of Disney, who is intertwined with Allen & Co funds the Young Turks. He is the perfect example of the relationship between media and politics.

Katzenberg has also been involved in politics. With his active support of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, he was called "one of Hollywood's premier political kingmakers and one of the Democratic Party's top national fundraisers."

With cash from Jeffrey Katzenberg, The Young Turks looks to grow paid subscribers:
https://digiday.com/media/with-cash-from-katzenberg-the-young-turks-look-to-grow-paid-subscribers/

Last week, former DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg’s new mobile entertainment company WndrCo was part of a $20 million funding round in TYT Network, which oversees 30 news and commentary shows covering politics, pop culture, sports and more. This includes the flagship “The Young Turks” program that streams live on YouTube every day. Other investors in the round included venture capital firms Greycroft Partners, E.ventures and 3L Capital, which led the round. This brings total funding for Young Turks to $24 million.

How Hollywood's Political Donors Are Changing Strategies for the Trump Era:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/hollywood-political-donors-are-changing-strategy-post-trump-1150545

Hollywood activism long has been depicted as a club controlled by a handful of powerful white men: Katzenberg, Spielberg, Lear, David Geffen, Haim Saban and Bob Iger are the names most often mentioned. But a new generation of power brokers is ascendant, including J.J. Abrams and his wife, Katie McGrath, cited for their personal donations and bundling skills; Shonda Rhimes, who held a get-out-the-vote rally at USC's Galen Center on Sept. 28 that drew 10,000 people; CAA's Darnell Strom, who has hosted events for Nevada congresswoman Jacky Rosen and Arizona congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema; and former Spotify executive Troy Carter, who held three fundraisers for Maryland gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous (Carter also was a fundraiser for President Obama).

Soros Group Buys Viacom's DreamWorks Film Library:
https://www.forbes.com/2006/03/17/soros-viacom-dreamworks-cx_gl_0317autofacescan11.html#541a895f1f22

Viacom, after splitting off from Les Moonves Les Moonves ' CBS , still holds Paramount Pictures, and that movie studio in December agreed to acquire DreamWorks SKG, the creative shop founded by the Hollywood triumvirate of Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg (a former exec at The Walt Disney Co.). DreamWorks Animation had been spun off into a separate company.
Now it's time for Freston to make back some money--and who better to do a little business with than George Soros? The billionaire financier leads a consortium of Soros Strategic Partners LP and Dune Entertainment II LLC, which together are buying the DreamWorks library--a collection of 59 flicks, including Saving Private Ryan, Gladiator, and American Beauty.

The money you spend on media and junk food and in taxes goes to these groups who then decide how best to market at you so that they decide how you vote by creating a fake consensus to trick into thinking that you want something other than what is best for you; but will inevitably result in more money being funneled to the top, creating further separation between the super rich and the average person. The goal will be to assert creeping authoritarianism by generating outrage against policies and issues they hate. Part of manipulating your basic assumptions is also to use schadenfreude (think canned laughter on TV) against characters who support the cause that might actually do you the most good (which reaffirms and strengthens your confirmation biased along predetermined political lines).
https://i.imgur.com/PW1cRtj.png
We have a population being taught to hate socialism and love capitalism when the truth is no country is practicing either. These terms are merely disguises for political oligarchies where the collection of wealth is less about getting themselves rich and more about keeping everyone else poor.
What can you guess about the world around you if it turned out that every consensus that was forced on you was fake?
How much money would it take to make it look like 51% of the Internet believed in completely idiotic ideas? Combine shill operations with automation and AI’s, and the cost becomes a good investment relative to the return when measured in political power.
Even the people who are well intentioned and very vocal do not have to consciously be aware that they are working for a political action group. A covert political group will always prefer an unwitting tool to help push their agenda, so that they can remain in the shadows.
FDA Admonishes Drug Maker Over Kim Kardashian Instagram Endorsement https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/2015/08/11/fda-spanks-drug-maker-over-kim-kardashian-instagram-endorsement/#25174a29587b
The OSS files offer details about other agents than famous chef, Julia Child; including Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, major league catcher Moe Berg, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and actor Sterling Hayden. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/26186498/ns/us_news-security/t/julia-child-cooked-double-life-spy/
USA Today: Businesses and organizations may refer to it as a tool for competitive advantage and marketing; but make no mistake http://archive.is/37tK3
Shareblue accounts caught in /politics posting links to Shareblue without disclosing their affiliation http://archive.is/7HAkr
Psy Group developed elaborate information operations for commercial clients and political candidates around the world http://archive.is/BBblQ
Top mod of /Mechanical_Gifs tries to sell subreddit on ebay for 999.00 dollars. http://archive.is/kU1Ly
Shill posts picture of a dog in a hammock with the brand clearly visible without indicating that it's an ad in the title of the post http://archive.is/Mfdk9
Arstechnica: GCHQs menu of tools spreads disinformation across Internet- “Effects capabilities” allow analysts to twist truth subtly or spam relentlessly. http://arstechnica.com/security/2014/07/ghcqs-chinese-menu-of-tools-spread-disinformation-across-internet/
Samsung Electronics Fined for Fake Online Comments http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/samsung-electronics-fined-for-fake-online-comments/?_r=0
Discover Magazine: Researchers Uncover Twitter Bot Army That’s 350 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2017/01/20/twitter-bot-army/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20DiscoverTechnology%20%28Discover%20Technology%29#.WIMl-oiLTnA
Times of Israel - The internet: Israel’s new PR battlefield http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-rise-of-digital-diplomacy-could-be-changing-israels-media-image/
Time: Social Media Manipulation? When “Indie” Bloggers and Businesses Get Cozy http://business.time.com/2013/04/22/social-media-manipulation-when-indie-bloggers-and-businesses-get-cozy/
Content-Driven Detection of Campaigns in Social Media [PDF] http://faculty.cs.tamu.edu/caverlee/pubs/lee11cikm.pdf
the law preventing them from using this in America was repealed http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/
Redditor who works for a potato mailing company admits to being a shill. He shows off his 27 thousand dollars he made in /pics
http://i.imgur.com/CcTHwdS.png
Screenshot of post since it was removed. http://i.imgur.com/k9g0WF8.png
Just thought I'd contribute to this thread http://imgur.com/OpSos4u
CNN: A PR firm has revealed that it is behind two blogs that previously appeared to be created by independent supporters of Wal-Mart. The blogs Working Families for Wal-mart and subsidiary site Paid Critics are written by 3 employees of PR firm Edelman http://money.cnn.com/2006/10/20/news/companies/walmart_blogs/index.htm
Vice: Your Government Wants to Militarize Social Media to Influence Your Beliefs http://motherboard.vice.com/read/your-government-wants-to-militarize-social-media-to-influence-your-beliefs
BBC News: China's Internet spin doctors http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7783640.stm
BBC News: US plans to 'fight the net' revealed http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4655196.stm
Wall Street Journal: Turkey's Government Forms 6 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323527004579079151479634742?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887323527004579079151479634742.html
Fake product reviews may be pervasive http://phys.org/news/2013-07-fake-product-pervasive.html#nRlv
USA Today: The co-owner of a major Pentagon propaganda contractor publicly admitted that he was behind a series of websites used in an attempt to discredit two USA TODAY journalists who had reported on the contractor. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/military/story/2012-05-24/Leonie-usa-today-propaganda-pentagon/55190450/1
ADWEEK: Marketing on Reddit Is Scary http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/marketing-reddit-scary-these-success-stories-show-big-potential-168278
BBC- How online chatbots are already tricking you- Intelligent machines that can pass for humans have long been dreamed of http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140609-how-online-bots-are-tricking-you
BBC news: Amazon targets 1 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34565631
BBC: More than four times as many tweets were made by automated accounts in favour of Donald Trump around the first US presidential debate as by those backing Hillary Clinton http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37684418
Fake five-star reviews being bought and sold online - Fake online reviews are being openly traded on the internet
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43907695
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20982985
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20982985
Bloomberg: How to Hack an Election [and influence voters with fake social media accounts] http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-to-hack-an-election/
"Internet Reputation Management http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-04-30/do-reputation-management-services-work-businessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice
Buzzfeed: Documents Show How Russia’s Troll Army Hit America http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/documents-show-how-russias-troll-army-hit-america#.ki8Mz97ly
The Rise of Social Bots http://www.cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204021-the-rise-of-social-bots/fulltext
CBC News- Canadian government monitors online forums http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/bureaucrats-monitor-online-forums-1.906351
Chicago Tribune: Nutrition for sale: How Kellogg worked with 'independent experts' to tout cereal http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-kellogg-independent-experts-cereal-20161121-story.html
DailyKos: HBGary: Automated social media management http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED-The-HB-Gary-Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All
Meme Warfare Center http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tfulltext/u2/a507172.pdf
Shilling on Reddit is openly admitted to in this Forbes article http://www.forbes.com/sites/julesschroede2016/03/10/the-magic-formula-behind-going-viral-on-reddit/#1d2485b05271
Forbes: From Tinder Bots To 'Cuban Twitter' http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/04/17/from-tinder-bots-to-covert-social-networks-welcome-to-cognitive-hacking/#4b78e2d92a7d
Hivemind http://www.hivemind.cc/rank/shills
Huffington Post- Exposing Cyber Shills and Social Media's Underworld http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-fiorella/cyber-shills_b_2803801.html
The Independent: Massive British PR firm caught on video: "We've got all sorts of dark arts...The ambition is to drown that negative content and make sure that you have positive content online." They discuss techniques for managing reputations online and creating/maintaining 3rd-party blogs that seem independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/caught-on-camera-top-lobbyists-boasting-how-they-influence-the-pm-6272760.html
New York Times: Lifestyle Lift http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/technology/internet/15lift.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
New York Times: Give Yourself 5 Stars? Online http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/technology/give-yourself-4-stars-online-it-might-cost-you.html?src=me&ref=general
NY Times- From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?_r=1
NY Times: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/31/world/europe/russia-finland-nato-trolls.html?_r=1
PBS Frontline Documentary - Generation Like http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/generation-like/
Gamers promote gaming-gambling site on youtube by pretending to hit jackpot without disclosing that they own the site. They tried to retroactively write a disclosure covering their tracks http://www.pcgamer.com/csgo-lotto-investigation-uncovers-colossal-conflict-of-interest/
Raw Story: CENTCOM engages bloggers http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Raw_obtains_CENTCOM_email_to_bloggers_1016.html
Raw Story: Air Force ordered software to manage army of fake virtual people http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/18/revealed-air-force-ordered-software-to-manage-army-of-fake-virtual-people/
Redective http://www.redective.com/?r=e&a=search&s=subreddit&t=redective&q=shills
Salon: Why Reddit moderators are censoring Glenn Greenwald’s latest news story on shills http://www.salon.com/2014/02/28/why_reddit_moderators_are_censoring_glenn_greenwalds_latest_bombshell_partne
The Atlantic: Kim Kardashian was paid to post a selfie on Instagram and Twitter advertising a pharmaceutical product. Sent to 42 million followers on Instagram and 32 million on Twitter http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/09/fda-drug-promotion-social-media/404563/
WAR.COM: THE INTERNET AND PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS http://www.theblackvault.com/documents/ADA389269.pdf
The Guardian: Internet Astroturfing http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/dec/13/astroturf-libertarians-internet-democracy
The Guardian: Israel ups the stakes in the propaganda war http://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/nov/20/mondaymediasection.israel
Operation Earnest Voice http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/ma17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
The Guardian: British army creates team of Facebook warriors http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/31/british-army-facebook-warriors-77th-brigade
The Guardian: US military studied how to influence Twitter [and Reddit] users in Darpa-funded research [2014] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/darpa-social-networks-research-twitter-influence-studies
The Guardian: Chinese officials flood the Chinese internet with positive social media posts to distract their population http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/20/chinese-officials-create-488m-social-media-posts-a-year-study-finds
Times of Israel: Israeli government paying bilingual students to spread propaganda online primarily to international communities without having to identify themselves as working for the government. "The [student] union will operate computer rooms for the project...it was decided to establish a permanent structure of activity on the Internet through the students at academic institutions in the country." http://www.timesofisrael.com/pmo-stealthily-recruiting-students-for-online-advocacy/
USA Today: Lord & Taylor settles FTC charges over paid Instagram posts http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/03/15/lord--taylor-settles-ftc-charges-over-paid-instagram-posts/81801972/
Researcher's algorithm weeds out people using multiple online accounts to spread propaganda - Based on word choice http://www.utsa.edu/today/2016/10/astroturfing.html
http://www.webinknow.com/2008/12/the-us-air-force-armed-with-social-media.html
Wired: Powered by rapid advances in artificial intelligence http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2015/06/wired-world-2015/robot-propaganda
Wired: Clinton Staff and Volunteers Busted for Astroturfing [in 2007] http://www.wired.com/2007/12/clinton-staff-a/
Wired: Pro-Government Twitter Bots Try to Hush Mexican Activists http://www.wired.com/2015/08/pro-government-twitter-bots-try-hush-mexican-activists/
Wired: Microsoft http://www.wired.com/2015/09/ftc-machinima-microsoft-youtube/
Wired: Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’ http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2008/03/report-recruit/
Wired: Air Force Releases ‘Counter-Blog’ Marching Orders http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/01/usaf-blog-respo/
Reddit Secrets https://archive.fo/NAwBx
Reddit Secrets https://archive.fo/SCWN7
Boostupvotes.com https://archive.fo/WdbYQ
"Once we isolate key people https://archive.is/PoUMo
GCHQ has their own internet shilling program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intelligence_Group
Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_Internet_sockpuppetry
US also operates in conjunction with the UK to collect and share intelligence data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement
Glenn Greenwald: How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
Glenn Greenwald: Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek to Control the Internet https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-online-polls-ways-british-spies-seek-control-internet/
Here is a direct link to your image for the benefit of mobile users https://imgur.com/OpSos4u.jpg
Reddit for iPhone https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/reddit-the-official-app/id1064216828?mt=8
Why Satoshi Nakamoto Has Gone https://medium.com/@ducktatosatoshi-nakamoto-has-gone-4cef923d7acd
What I learned selling my Reddit accounts https://medium.com/@Rob79/what-i-learned-selling-my-reddit-accounts-c5e9f6348005#.u5zt0mti3
Artificial intelligence chatbots will overwhelm human speech online; the rise of MADCOMs https://medium.com/artificial-intelligence-policy-laws-and-ethics/artificial-intelligence-chatbots-will-overwhelm-human-speech-online-the-rise-of-madcoms-e007818f31a1
How Reddit Got Huge: Tons of Fake Accounts - According to Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of-fake-accounts--2
Whistleblower and subsequent investigation: Paid trolls on /Bitcoin https://np.reddit.com/Bitcoin/comments/34m7yn/professional_bitcoin_trolls_exist/cqwjdlw
Confession of Hillary Shill from /SandersForPresident https://np.reddit.com/conspiracy/comments/3rncq9/confession_of_hillary_shill_from/
Why do I exist? https://np.reddit.com/DirectImageLinkerBot/wiki/index
Already a direct link? https://np.reddit.com/DirectImageLinkerBot/wiki/res_links
Here's the thread. https://np.reddit.com/HailCorporate/comments/3gl8zi/that_potato_mailing_company_is_at_it_again/
/netsec talks about gaming reddit via sockpuppets and how online discourse is (easily) manipulated. https://np.reddit.com/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock_puppets_in_rnetsec_last_year_and_are
Redditor comes clean about being paid to chat on Reddit. They work to promote a politician https://np.reddit.com/offmychest/comments/3gk56y/i_get_paid_to_chat_on_reddit/
Shill whistleblower https://np.reddit.com/politics/comments/rtr6b/a_very_interesting_insight_into_how_certain/
Russian bots were active on Reddit last year https://np.reddit.com/RussiaLago/comments/76cq4d/exclusive_we_can_now_definitively_state_that/?st=j8s7535j&sh=36805d5d
The Bush and Gore campaigns of 2000 used methods similar to the Chinese government for conducting “guided discussions” in chatrooms designed to influence citizens https://np.reddit.com/shills/comments/3xhoq8/til_the_advent_of_social_media_offers_new_routes/?st=j0o5xr9c&sh=3662f0dc
source paper. https://np.reddit.com/shills/comments/4d3l3s/government_agents_and_their_allies_might_ente
or Click Here. https://np.reddit.com/shills/comments/4kdq7n/astroturfing_information_megathread_revision_8/?st=iwlbcoon&sh=9e44591e Alleged paid shill leaks details of organization and actions.
https://np.reddit.com/shills/comments/4wl19alleged_paid_shill_leaks_details_of_organization/?st=irktcssh&sh=8713f4be
Shill Confessions and Additional Information https://np.reddit.com/shills/comments/5pzcnx/shill_confessions_and_additional_information/?st=izz0ga8r&sh=43621acd
Corporate and governmental manipulation of Wikipedia articles https://np.reddit.com/shills/comments/5sb7pi/new_york_times_corporate_editing_of_wikipedia/?st=iyteny9b&sh=b488263f
Ex -MMA fighter and ex-police officer exposes corrupt police practices https://np.reddit.com/shills/comments/6jn27s/ex_mma_fighter_and_expolice_officer_exposes/
User pushes InfoWars links on Reddit https://np.reddit.com/shills/comments/6uau99/chemicals_in_reddit_are_turning_memes_gay_take/?st=j6r0g2om&sh=96f3dbf4
Some websites use shill accounts to spam their competitor's articles https://np.reddit.com/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1ja4nf/lets_talk_about_those_playing_reddit_with/?st=iunay35w&sh=d841095d
User posts video using GoPro https://np.reddit.com/videos/comments/2ejpbb/yes_it_is_true_i_boiled_my_gopro_to_get_you_this/ck0btnb/?context=3&st=j0qt0xnf&sh=ef13ba81
Fracking shill whistleblower spills the beans on Fracking Internet PR https://np.reddit.com/worldnews/comments/31wo57/the_chevron_tapes_video_shows_oil_giant_allegedly/cq5uhse?context=3
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TOP SECRET SPECIAL HANDLING NOFORN
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Directorate of Operations
October 16, 1964
MEMORANDUM FOR THE DIRECTOR OF THE CIA
Subject: After action report of
Operation CUCKOO (TS)
INTRODUCTION
​
1) Operation CUCKOO was part of the overall operation CLEANSWEEP, aimed at eliminating domestic opposition to activities undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency's special activities division, in main regard to operation GUILLOTINE.
​
2) Operation CUCKOO was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of Defense and the office of The President of the United States as a covert domestic action to be under taken within the limits of Washington D.C as outlined by Secret Executive Order 37.
​
3) Following the publishing of the Warren Commission, former special agent Mary Pinchot Meyer (Operation MOCKINGBIRD, Operation SIREN) also was married to Cord Meyer (Operation MOCKINGBIRD, Operation GUILLOTINE) threatened to disclose the details of several Special Activities Divisions' operations, including but not limited to, Operation SIREN and GUILLOTENE.
​1
TOP SECRET SPECIAL HANDLING NOFORN
4) It was deemed necessary by senior Directorate of Operations members to initiate Operation CUCKOO as an extension of Operation CLEANSWEEP on November 30th. After Mary Pinchot Meyer threatened to report her knowledge of Operation GUILLOTENE and the details of her work in Operation SIREN from her affair with the former President.
​
5) Special Activities Division was given the green light after briefing president Johnson on the situation. The situation report was forwarded to the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of staff, who both approved of the parameters of the operation, as outlined under article C of secret executive order 37 (see attached copy of article).
​PLANNING STAGES
6) 8 members of the special activities division handpicked by operation lead William King Harvey began planning for the operation on October 3rd, with planned execution before October 16th.
​
7) The (?) of the operation was set as the neighborhood of Georgetown along the Potomac river, where the operators would observe, take note on routines, and eventually carry the operation.
​
8) After nothing Meyer's routines, Edward "Eddy" Reid was picked as the operation point man who would intersect Meyer on her walk on October 12th, with lead William King Harvey providing long range support if necessary from across the Chesapeake and Ohio canal (see illustration A for detailed map).
​
9) Edward Reid was planned to be dressed in the manner of a homeless black man, due to his resemblances to local trash collector (later found out to be Raymond Crump) who inhabits the AO and the path that Reid was planned to intersect Meyer.
2
TOP SECRET SPECIAL HANDLING NOFORN

To keep others privacy and keep things simple, I’ll be using (-) for OP and (—) for Lo.
—hi everyone :) swinging by to catch up on all things 2019 - dejavoom, reflective 4, and whatever else... live and direct! who wants to start? ready. set. go.

• Where’s the deja voom lo fi set at????

— yo! thats a good question :) there has been SO MUCH DEJA VOOM on the brain over here, we are working nonstop on all these nifty bells and whistles :) one remaining riddle is where the F can WCLF play? because that vibe is all about random, dark room, low ceiling, small crowd, random freestyle creativity DJ sets... lampshade on the dome, nobody trying to take photos or record things or have thir phone out... its like a dancers only...no watchers... so if it happens it will most likely be just a random moment in the tiniest room, or some broom closet with a boombox cranked up to max :)

• Will we ever see Naux Faux perform live?

Also, ATL misses you dearly.
— hey derek :) the naux faux concept was to create a sonic experience, and we'v never really thought about "performing it live" although someday if i found the time it would be fun to create a live band to play that stuff... but i dont know... for now its just a vibe to enjoy... SADLY we had hoped to finish EP2 for Valentine's Day, but i've been so busy with Reflective 4 and Deja and all the spring and summer plots, so ....aye! so many ideas, so little time

• Will everyone be able to see the west coast lo fi set?

— AJ: if it even happens, no, it will literally be a random moment and some dude with a lampshade on his head playing old hip hop records, or just random breakbeat or house records... likely in a small corner, in a dark room. that vibe is just a whole different thing... not a spectacle... nothing to see here... keep on moving, people, just keep on moving :)

• WHERE IS FREESTYLE? And BC?

— SLATER :) i am willing to bet you could guess kurrectlyyy about both of themmmmm :)

• Naux Faux pt2? Miss you Lo! Can’t wait for freestyles :)

— much love Ethan!!!! Naux Faux pt2 will hit either DEEEEEEP in the middle of summer vacation, or possibly even late fall as everyone starts to get cozy again.... we have some great ideas started, but there has just been so much added to the plate.... I'm starting to sign other artists to release on Amorphous... starting with Dorfex Bos, ill Gates, and Jantsen.... and i'm warpping up Reflective 4 [likely coming out mid spring], and honestly i'm about halfway through Reflective 5 [likely coming out summertime] and with Deja being SUCH A FUN creative project... zowie,....just been a busy bee

• When will the attendants who entered to perform find out whether or not they got accepted? Thanks! Cant wait for deja!

— Zak: u tockin about OPEN DECKS? i honestly thought that was already announced... let me check
— ok
— :)
— WE WILL ANNOUNCE OPEN DECK TODAY... just after we done here, will post up an announce :)

• Hey man!! So glad to hear from you! What should we expect from the End of the Rainbow fest?

— honestly, i am so fricken excited about that one.... The Gorge is such a beautiful venue, and having the opportunity to be a part of this first time festival has been amazing: i can tell you the concept is kind of like the old school Lollzpalooza vibes from the nineties... like a true DIVERSITY festival... celebrating all forms of music, all moods, all levels of the spectrum :) its really gonna be a special one

• Love ya! Any general idea when reflective 4 is coming?

/leprechauns 🤤
— yo! :) yup Leprechauns 2018 version will def be included on Reflective 4 :) i've been finishing that up all last month, and will have a few collabs to preview at Deja [ with Hailo, Peekaboo, and Jantsen] and the EP should be out early or mid April?

• Can we expect a new deja voom mix from you?

SUPER excited to experience this!
— hey sarah! DUDE NO DOUBT!!!! i have like 57,000 mixtapes i wanna release, its just... fuck. never enough time

• What are your favorite songs of the year so far?

— oooooh favorites are scary!!!!

• Can we expect freestyle in the same state and venue this year? 🙂

— quite possibly :)

• Will the west coast lo fi set be available for everyone to see?? DEJAVOOM

— Jake: the concept with West Coast Lo Fi is basically just "i give absolutely NO FUXKS AT ALL somebody hand me a lampshade, im gonna put it on my head and play a DJ set of some of my favorite tunes, and for all i know theres nobody even in the room, and its like a houseparty vibe... i would literally just play fuckin hip hop records, or old acid house or breakbeat stuff... i used to do that at BUrningman, literally with a lampshade on my head, for like 5 people on an art car... its more fun to just have it be zero pressure, no performance, no spectators, nobody watching... just dancing... i really woud never wanna do that and have anyone standing around with their phones or trying to record or film or take photos or anything but close their eyes and dance... what i think im gonna TRY and do is make it happen several times, but this isn't really a come on come all max capacity type thing... ts like SUPER random... i mean maybe ill wake up at 4am, and throw down for an hour in a broom closet i truly dont know :)
— BUT! one thing i want to add is that this is ABSOLUTELY NOT IN ANYWAY about being rude or mean or too cool....like this isnt about making something EXCLUSIVE happen, and shutting people out... its like, extremely chill, extremely LO FI, and just an earnest, authentic love for freestyle throwdowns, its in my blood... i love DJing and i love having zero pressure, and although i endure the stage and all that stuff with BN, when it comes to WCLF, i just wanna be chill as heck... so anyone who ever doesnt get to catch it, first of all:
—1. no worries :) —2. its LITERALLY not 'that good'! its LITERALLY me playing some old random records... i might play the same damn song three times in a row, or like leave the room to get a drink and come back... like... theres no quality control its just house party vibes 3. i honestly DEEPLY appreciate the enthusiasm and curiosity...if you do end up there with me, PLEASE just enjoy and dance and for LORD's sake.... i pray unto thee, no phones :)

• Do you have themes planned for each night of Deja?

— DEJAVOOOOOOM!!!!!!
— oh dude, TIM, there are literally like 89 themes per night... i keep changing the concepts... right now i know that i want Night One [for me, personally, im not sure exactly what everyone else will wanna do] i wanna make the theme for Night One Dejavoom all about the DEEP DIVE...
—so it will be quite similar to Okeechobee Night One set, in terms of musical style... kind of more downtempo, more leftfield... i will honestly probably incorporate a lot of West Coast Lo Fi vibes into Night one, and almost make it "a downtempo set", so yah it will be a deep dive pretty similar to Okee Night One or Freestyle/Dreamtempo....
—Night Two or Three i wanna rip the portal wide open and go full on mayhem vibes, but.....i havent crossed that bridge yet :)
—honestly one thing about Deja is that while im working NONSTOP on musical ideas, i'm really working on the entire event, so i have spent a TON of time getting creative for other artists, trying to dream up cool ways for them to display their imagination, and curating the lineupp andthe scheudle was super fun... when we were on the walkthrough we stumbled across the water park [its a small water park! like 3 slides and a pirate shiip] and right then and there in that moment i was like FUCK IT! lets put together a one off day party here, i wanna see Bukez or ill Gates throw down HERE.... and Kursa's wife FFiNN is gonna be on site with the Slug Wife crew so we wanted to get her on deck as well... where was i ?
— OH YES! so yah alot of my creativity has been focused on the event itself.... then seeing the FYRE FESTIVAL documentary was like the ultimate inspiration to do everything THE EXACT OPPOSITE :)))))
—So we have been focusing a lot on safety and just creating a very warm, gentle, fun atmosphere... its pretty cool how many people will be travelling to Mexico for their first time, and we want to help make it an incredible experience. We have been doing a lot of planning with security, and hoping everyone will be super kind and careful and gracious [I THINK IT IS SO AWESOME THAT WHILE DFT is tryna build a wall to keep mexicans out, WE are straight headed to mexico with open arms :]
—Also, part of the normal vacation resort package for all of these things is unlimited food and drink, including alcohol, and i believe the legal drinking age down there is 18 or 19, so we are working to keep this from being a big shit show... we hope everyone leaves their drugs elsewhere or nowhere, and comes down to just enjoy the beautiful area, and all the amazing music, enjoys themselves responsibly, takes care of each other, doesn't push anything too hard....etc
—so we been planning SO MUCH AMAZING FUN STUFF pretty much round the clock in part with the hopes that everyone has the most healthy, vibrant, radiant, safe & fun experience possible :)

• Any plans for basscenter?

— :)

• how excited are you for the first family vacation? 🤗 we love you and can’t wait!!

— i am truly, deeply excited.... i'm not sure it's the first, but i am sure it shant be the last :)

• Have you ever thought about bringing back your live streams? Will we be getting a mix anytime soon?:)

— Kenny :) i got mixxes comin outta my ears, i just havent found the time to focus. i took a massive leap off the edge and unplugged from the grid, i'm taking an ALMOST total break from social media [this is the first time i have been online since New Years :] and i ended up filling my time with a whole lot of normal behaviior: hiking in nature, chilling with friends and family, excercising, taking day trips, and just enjoying, but i also have been working on OVERDRIVE, and Reflective 4 turned into a full length album, so i had to split that up into 2 parts, and still havent got to wrap up Naux Faux part two... plus so many other collab projects and stuff.. so... mixtapes.... ahhh i really wanna drop one...i just need time

• Will there be a reflective tour?

— always :)

• What should we be expecting tempo wise for 4th addition? Why did you decide to name all of these reflective? Whats the possibility of you switching up the bass drop again? Is this a end of era? or the beginning of a new one?

— hi byron :) basically i just enjoy collaborating so much, and the concept of reflective is really about how we all influence each other when our mind's ricochet off each other's imagination, and so i just started loving that theme, and now it just doesnt feel natural to stop. i had like half of it be just all original tunes, and i pushed some of those off for part 5 to make room for more collaborative mashups...
— when i started getting into music i was 12 or 13, and i learned some basics on guitar, but then just started remixing shit... learning a Nirvana song or a Black Sabath song, and then learning how to play it in reverse, or like backwards, slow down to half time, and record that and then play on top of it, and just weird experimentation.... i started playing in a band right away [embarrasingly enough, freshmen year of high school we were called DECAY of HUMANITY and all were just urgently trying to grow our hair out haha]
— but yah, all my early experiences with music were playing with people, i learned rythmn that way, how to keep tempo or hold down a beat by keeping up with 4 or 5 other humans in real time....
— Drum Circles too... the chaos of a full moon drum circle with like 50 people out under the moonlight.... that taught me how to hold it down so that thefirst time i ever tried turntables it was instantaneous... beat matching was very simple at that point, and collaborative interaction was something which really was at the core of inspiration
— in the early days for me DJing was very collaborative because of course you are interacting with the crowd, but also i was very involved in the back end of each event or full moon party, in terms of making them happen, scouting out the land, helping park cars, set up sound systems, etc... so there was always heavy collaboration
— i also love film... i love how its the summary of such a HUGE team... it makes zero sense to me that music should be just ONE person... i mean, it CAN be, but its just way more fun to work with others, or at least to reflect :)
-Will you be driving your beach cart around the resort from afar or will you join the mother fucking party at deja? 😝🏖️😎
— probably a bit of both - i really want to hit up the open decks sessions.i honestly am looking forward to quality time with so many people heading down there, lots of old friends too. i had hoped to get some DJ workshops going also, but... at this point we are just flinging everything at the wall and seeing what sticks... i'm pretty sure we wanna do DEJAVOOM 2020, so this is almost like a testing ground for ideas for next year :)

• Please go back on tour at least one more time

— im never not on tour :)

• What is you're favorite hip hop acapella to twist live. To add to that, What is you're favorite 90s hip hop track of all time.

— oh GOOOOOODNESSS, there is one in particular which i was flipping for some WCLF bizness and jeses F christ its just so fuckin hot. AH :) so much goodness>...
— although ironically i have been working with a lot of MCs live the past few weeks, just literally finished a session with some grime MCs in london about an hour ago [RD from "Heavyweight Sound" who it turns out he is the son of 1 half of the Ragga Twins...i just found that out kind of trippin]
— i wanna tell you some of the jams i have been feeling most, but id rather save for a set..if i tell you now you'll just go listen, so i gotta keep it under wraps for now :)

• Thanks for all you do Lo. You make this world a little bit easier to exist in. I love you

— muchos amor :)

• What’s your favorite bassnectar song? Lo Fi

— i havent made it yet :)

• Some sort of Smashers and Mashers revival in Reflective IV would be dope

— jujuuuuuuuuu :)

• Eeeeee just swinging in to say I’m so totally stoked for Deja! I can’t believe it’s almost here/real.

— i know! travel safe :)

• Please do a tour again... please. I know you’re huge n need to be in big venues but I can’t swing festivals very often anymore. Love you either way and thanks for inspiring me always.

— hey chelsea :) yah, i hope someday somehow to get to throw down in small dark rooms with low ceilings, thats my faaaaaaave. well... or outside under the stars...or a house party... just small rooms and heavy systems :)

• Thank you for establishing a identity/brand/group of people that promotes nothing but positivity. i can’t wait to see you in the forest 🙂

— :))))

• So grateful for the community of kindness you’ve helped to create and all the amazing people who have become a part of my life through our shared love for your music! Do you plan to do any site seeing in Mexico?

— Abby i would love to....there is SO much to explore, but i will likely be on site the entire time and running around like a mad man :) i'm taking a roadtrip to the Grand Canyon in March so that will be some heavy duty exploration times :)

• So what made you remaster leprechauns arise? Strictly for reflective or was it the consistent want or possibly it was just time to blow the dust off the track?

— at this point i have a pretty steady schedule of "reinforcements" on deck...which is basically taking an old record and refurbishing it with new sounds and layers and elements, not only remastering, but kind of just amping it up or flexing it out ...sometimes it will really change the vibe to a whole new level, other times, it just makes things a bit warmer and wider and heavier, more stereophonic :)

• Another North east event maybe??? 😁likeee In AC or something ❣️

— AC was so live!!!!! we loved it! same with Chicago at the Spring Gathering... both of those rooms have been hard to route back to.... same with that smaller room in Atlanta where we did the "basslanta" thing in Sept 2016... i know we are trying to rock that secret location again this year... its in the works :)

• Remix competition for producers????

— would be really great! again, its on the list. its pretty wild how many cool things are on The List. its a fuckin cool list TBA, but lord its hard to keep up with everything :)

• Is Leprechauns arise still expected for Reflective part 4?

— yes indeedy :)

• Return to Chicago?

— notta moment too soon :) wish we could hit that room again from Spring Gathering this year but we couldnt route it... there's a concept for one night a-brewing in the windy citayyyy tho

• Hi Lo. Thank you for all you do. Been seeing you here or there since 2009 and I remember sometime around Bisco 2012 standing in the crowd and looking at all the people and thinking how much power we would have if we all put our efforts towards positive change in the world. Fast forward 6 years and I am so happy to see all the amazing things our community has done, from voter registration outreach to clothing and food drives. Warms my heart to see this. Loved NYE and that Carl Sagan passage was amazing. Can't wait for Deja Voom and everything else to come in 2019!❤️

— thanks Ross :) thats so sweet! warms my heart right back to read this :)

• Any more plans to remix/update more tracks from MTU or DSOT? It’s a dream of mine that you’d release an updated (and longer) version of Bursting 🙏🏻. Hope you’re having a great week!

— i actually had this unreleased version of it, but its REALLLLY dark, its all heavy guitars and live drums, it like finished as the normal version does, and then it sweeps into "in the wings we stay lurking searching for the right opening and then we burst in" and it was like this HELLA DARK turn, where i imagined bursting into Dick Cheney's mind while he slept and destroying him in the middle of his dream... and we were like bursting in and changing the world by basically planting Inception ideas of peace into his mind.. pretty weird... years before that movie inception.. anyways, i never released that version hhaahhaah it was too dark.

• Re release Mesmerizing the Ultra & Diverse System of Throb on ITunes or a CD 💿 in 2019 or 2020?????

— i have a bunch of CD's in my friend's garage, i wish i could just send you one :)

• What's in your earphones these days?

— been working nonstop so its basically ideas for deja, all the content for reflective 4 and reflective 5, a new collab with UFO!!!! and some other random sheeeeeeeeeeyat. this new Naux Faux stuff is DEEEEEP too :)

• Skin on the drum that is all Lo Fi

— ok so i am about 9999999% positive that i finally will have a remaster of that, or part of that, for Deja, its been the goal... taking forever because all the files were on an old PC so i have been having to recreate alot of it :)

• My post from earlier ... what’s your thoughts on this wild idea ....

“Alright so imagine this...
Nectar, ill gates, and jansten all collab on 3 new tracks for Deja. Each one of them gets to debut one song each during the Deja event...
By time night 3 happens on Saturday we’ve gotten to hear them all...
Night 3 comes around and nectar unleashes madness upon us and plays all 3 tracks...
But here’s the twist... the 3 tracks get layered together to create one mega nasty track to close out the final set 🤯🤔🤯”
— kyle! :) its a beautiful idea :) >>> as it happens im just having them each put together an EP for Amorphous :)

• Also how's ur day going

— :) green tea up in THA dome :)

• Out of curiosity.. if the lofi set at dejavoom is a secret set, why was it even on the lineup... people paid 2 grand+ to go but won’t even be able to see all the sets they want to that was on the lineup because of said “secret sets”

— heya Danielle - i made the executive decision to just not really play into that "people paid XXXX and deserve XXX" type thing. we are going so above and beyond to deliver such a wonderfully heartfelt experience, i have zero concerns nor worries that anyone who comes will have the time of their life :)
creating all the nooks and crannies has been so fun, and we are ammassing SO MANY state of the art creative minds to throw down on so many levels... i just truly could not be happier.
so if anyone wants to waste their time trying to find THE ONE THING WRONG and that's how they wanna spend their time, that's on them. in terms of artistic integrity, i am putting myself behind this one zillion percent, and we have things SO much cooler than a random WCLF set planned. :)
if i can pull it off as well, i will. By the way, i was only originally gonna play one 60 minute set, just like at Okee [we found some of the best festivals last year were just like that Okeechobee mainstage where its so deadly and an hour is perfecto] but now i'm playing three 90 minute sets, all completely unique and super distinct and customized, so im mixing in a lot of WCLF vibes into night one.... basically the theme for night one is pretty WCLF :)
but also, that whole concept isnt about "everyone getting to see".... there is no "everyone getting to see" at any festival i've ever been to.... look at a bonaroo lineup, theres zillions of artists who not everyone can see, and that's some of the magic too :) cuz if WCLF decides to show up and throw down it will only be chill and low pressure, as i already know we are going above and beyond to OVERDELIVER :)
so with the utmost graciousness, gratitude, and enthusiasm, i just decided not to take on any outside pressure for WCLF. if it happens it happens. If it happens and you're somewhere else having the time of your life that will be cool to.

• Thank you for dejavoom. Biggest vacation/event of my life thus far. What do you have in store for us that we might not know of yet?

— hi :) im most excited about all the various zones to explore...
The Haven is this super rad open air spot with free smoothie bar and yoga classes in the day, there is a lazer pool open late night, roaming the beach under the stars, we have a full on DOWNTEMPO ROOM called The Santuary with ambient sets and super deep throb-hop and leftfield stuff... the Lo Fi room is like this TINY nightclub, the Deja Room is a full on sick ass nightclub, the VOOM ROOM is gonna be super deadly and intense, theres a bowling alley, theres like 5 massive pools, its just all this epic adventure to explore :) so that's what im most excited about :)

• CAN YOU PLEASE MAKE SOME DRUM & BASS FOR US!

— yes! on Reflective 4 me and jantsen have this tune called "Hectic" or "Its about to get hectic" and the second drop is bananarnar d&b :)

• Celebrate 20 years anniversary Dreamtempo Mixtape Listen Party In 9/19/2019 ? Lo Fi

— wow....holy crap its 2019....holy crap 1999 was twentyyears ago?!??!?! dafucccccc

• If you could have been in the audience for one of your sets, which one would it be? I always feel bad that you never get to see a nectar set 😢 lol

— yah that would be so much fun :)

• Just wanted to say thank you for Greensboro. That was a very special show for my gf and I. Afterglow is our song and we have yet to hear it live together it’s like you somehow knew👽 so thank you 💚 Lo Fi

— thanks Griffin, that was truly one of our all time faves :)

• If you see Lorin walking around at Deja, please don’t mob the man. Let him enjoy his vacation too!!!!!!!!!!!

— that was literally me at Outside Lands like "um. dudes, your generator turned off" and some hooligan was like 'oh you blew the speakers' and we were like literally BUDDY NO. the generator is literally out of gas. that was ratchet :)

• Have you ever thought about doing a song with Lindsey Stirling? I feel her volin sound with your style would sound amazing. Thank you!

— yes i love her!!!!

• “Reflective pt.4 turned into a full length album so I had to split that up into 2 parts”

So are we getting pt. 4.1 and pt. 4.2 or is that why we’re getting a pt. 5?
— part four is like Lep2018, a collab with Hailo, a collab with Peekaboo, a collab with Jantsen, some other stuff.... Part 5 will MOST LIKELY have collab with Luzcid, a collab with Dorfex, a collab with Moody Good, hopefully me and Gnar Gnar finish up another....theres a ludicrous collab with Digital Ethos... more info soon

• When everything gets overwhelming, what’s the one thing that helps you get to peace?

For me whenever I get really overwhelmed or stressed I like to take long walks and just think about everything.
Lo Fi
I love what your message, your music and the people I’ve met through your music has done for me in my life — thank you for being so interactive ❤️
— just staying grateful. just allow mysefl to remember how lucky i am to be here, and POOF! you're back in a state of awe... life moves so fast, just make the most of each moment :)

• Thinking of doing any more underground Invite Only parties like the one in Brooklyn? 🤗 That was too fun ! Great to hear from you and can’t wait for Mexico🦑

— Yes! i really wanna do more of that, its so hard to navigate... the one thing about Brooklyn was being behind the screen, that was a bit weird, i prefer just a DARK room, no lights, tons of heat, big sound, but yah, the no phone thing, small intimate throwdowns... we wanna do some at Deja for sure, and will look for other opps to do them

tl;dr - I'm often asked by entrepreneurs three questions:

1. "What are the different marketing channels?"
2. "How do I get my first 10/100/1,000 customers?"
3. "There are sooo many marketing channels. What channels should I focus on first?"

I wrote this guide to explain the 12 major marketing channels. You'll find three strategies/case studies per channel to help you get your first few customers. I then talk about the two types of marketing channels.
Finally, I end by helping you know how to prioritize the channels using the "ICE framework." ICE is the prioritization method used in startups like Facebook, Uber, and Pinterest. I've used it for small startups (under 10 employees) and even a non-profit, so it should work for your startup.
This article was originally written on my website (which you can view here), so my apologizes if the formatting isn't perfect. Got questions? Feel free to drop a comment and I'll do my best to answer it!
Enjoy the read :).
Right now, your startup has one mission.
It isn’t to become the next $1 billion startup. (Though that may come in time). It isn’t to make a difference in the world. (Though you may make a meaningful impact). Nor is it to raise your next round of venture capital. (Though your team may need to do so to complete your mission).
Your mission right now, if you choose to accept, is to find a scalable business model.
As a part of finding a scalable business model, you need to tap the right marketing channels. That’s it.
Of course, that’s easier said than done. What works today may not work tomorrow.
Not too long ago, marketers were all raving about:

1. Use social media sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, and MySpace.
2. Writing articles daily on your blog.
3. Using QR codes to promote your business.

While specific trends and tactics come-and-go, marketing channels will always be around.
If you want to get more customers, it’s helpful to understand each marketing channel. And not only should you know how a marketing channel works, but why it works.
In this article, I’ll share with you the twelve major marketing channels. I’ll then provide a few case studies and strategies for you to test to grow your business.
Note: The book Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth shaped much of this article. If you want to become better at getting and retaining customers, I recommend reading both.

Here is a list of the 12 major marketing channels of mass distribution:

1. Business Development and Partnerships
2. Paid Advertisements
3. Sales
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
5. Virality and Network Effects
6. Community Marketing
7. Content Marketing
8. Email Marketing
9. Engineering as Marketing
10. Press
11. Social Media
12. Trade Shows and Offline Events

Warning: The following advice may lead to insane amounts of business growth. Please consult a lawyer, attorney, or doctor before attempting this at home. Each marketing channel has different pros and cons. Your mileage may vary.

1. Business Development and Partnerships

Business development is often a gray and ambiguous term. Some equate it to sales. Others simply say any partnership is business development.
Here’s how I define business development.
*Business development is creating long-term value for your startup by partnering with anyone in your market. *This includes other businesses, influencers, and media outlets.
The focus of this channel is on the exchange of value through the partnership. This channel also includes partnerships from influencer marketing and affiliate marketing.
The goal of each partnership is long-term value.
It should not be a one-and-done transaction. Sure, you might get some money from your first co-promotion. But the highest ROI comes from finding new opportunities from the same partnership.
As a result, partnerships often are a slower channel to scale.
The partnership may or may not include paid compensation.
Keep in mind the relationship will change if you pay the other person. Further, there may be certain expectations a person has about the partnership. This expectation may also change by industry.
For example, an influencer is more likely to promote a blog article for free. But I’ve had a few influencers request I pay them to promote my article. The same influencer who was willing to promote an article for free may expect payment for directly promoting your product.
Offering payment when the party does not expect it may be offensive. And in another scenario, it’s a delightful gift.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for partnerships:

1. Find similar companies and offer one product as an add-on bonus. Chris Gimmer shares his story on Snappa’s partnership with LeadPages here.
2. Find large companies that have app directories or marketplaces. First, integrate your tool with their tool. Then submit your application to directories. Examples include Shopify’s App Marketplace, Intercom’s App Store, and Zendesk’s App Directory. This was a core part of the early growth for CartHook and for BoldCommerce.
3. Put together a product bundle for news sites and conferences. Learn how Noah Kagan did this with AppSumo by partnering with Imgur and Reddit here.

2. Paid Advertisements

At the dawn of the Internet, people rallied around old marketing channels with new names:

1. Influencer marketing (celebrity endorsements began in the 1760s).
2. Content marketing (Ben Franklin printed Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1732).
3. Email Marketing (mail order catalogues began in 1498).

Then advertising began to move online. Old advertising channels like billboards, newspaper ads, and radio commercials are now a thing of the past.
Or are they outdated?
Believe it or not, according to the OAAA, out-of-home advertising reach a new record high of $8 billion in 2018:
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(Image Source)
I bet you didn't see that one coming.
Paid advertising has several mediums, which I’ll categorize by offline and online ads. Offline ads include TV ads, radio ads, billboards, magazine ads, newspaper ads, and bus ads.
Online ads are also called pay-per-click (PPC) ads. This includes:

1. Search engine ads (ads on Google, Bing, and other search engines)
2. Social media ads (ads on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, and other social media sites)
3. Display ads (banner ads you see displayed on websites).
4. Media ads (ads and product placements which are in video games, movies, and other media).
5. Email ads (ads you see when using your email, such as Gmail).
6. Newsletter ads (ads in email newsletters)

The benefit of paid advertising is if you have an unlimited budget, it’s easier to scale this channel. It’s an excellent channel to test your messaging, get feedback, and iterate quickly.
But as fast as advertising comes, so too it also disappears fast.
There’s a limited window of exposure because ads rent space. Marketing on other channels gives you an asset that stays up as long as you keep them up.
As your ad spend scales, it becomes more expensive and harder to track. In turn, paid ads can also cover up underlying problems.
Andrew Chen, an investor at Andreessen Horowitz, shared how a startup’s paid cost to acquire a customer can be off as much as 2-5 times what it should be. (Source)
Further, you often do not build a relationship with the customer.
As a result, advertising works best for impulse buys or products which offer fast value to the customer.
For SaaS startups, paid ads are often a secondary channel that supports content marketing.
But for eCommerce products, paid advertising is often the first scalable marketing channel. This is because eCommerce will likely sell products which bring delight faster.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for paid advertising:

1. Media outside the home often will not sell every available ad spot. If it’s not sold, it’s a lost opportunity. This allows you to negotiate for remnant advertising. Tim Ferriss has an excellent article on this here. I used this approach to get $10,000 in billboard space for $2,000. If you run other ads, use your successful campaigns to inspire your billboards.
2. Create a single keyword ad group (SKAG). [1] Run ads to a dedicated landing page on that topic, optimizing the landing page for SEO. This allows you to continue getting traffic after turning off ads and create a message match to improve conversions. I’ve seen click-through rates (CTR) between 1-9% on SKAGs. For one client, after removing the three worst campaigns, all SKAGs were over 3% CTR. Unbounce has an excellent resource on the importance of message match here.
3. Create a normal social media post and work with relevant influencers to promote your post. Then promote using an ad so you leverage the social proof from the influencer’s promotion. Learn how to work with influencers on my old marketing site here. And learn how to edit Facebook ads and keep your social proof here.

_[1] Unfamiliar with SKAGs? Let’s say you wanted to sell Ultimate Frisbee discs. In one ad keyword group, you would use three keywords: _

1. _+ultimate +frisbee _
2. _“ultimate frisbee” _
3. _[ultimate frisbee]. _

If an unrelated keyword pops up such as “ultimate frisbee rules,” you move it to your negative keyword list. And if a relevant but unrelated term pops up such as “best ultimate frisbee brands,” you can create a new SKAG and send traffic to a new landing page.

3. Sales

Effective marketing is nothing more than salesmanship in ink. While marketing sells on many-to-one, sales specialize in hand-holding customers one-on-one.
Sales is the process of generating leads, qualifying them, and turning them into paying customers.
Now perhaps you’re wondering, “If marketing is effective salesmanship at scale (many-to-one), why should I hire a salesman?”
Contrary to what most SaaS entrepreneurs believe, sales is a primary scalable channel.
First, sales can accelerate the process marketing starts. Without a proper nurture sequence in place, it can be slow moving a prospect down your funnel. A salesman or woman specializes in moving them faster through the funnel.
Second, big customers often need a sales process. When you’re selling a high-end or enterprise product, it’s common to have a salesman giving the customer the red carpet treatment.
*While sales will help speed up landing big customers, it’s not without a major cost. *
Most suggest hiring at least two sales reps. If they work on a team, one will generate and qualify leads while the other closes them. If you favor competition, you can put the two against each other. Two full-time salaries are more than what you’d pay for most marketing agencies.
How cheap can your product be and afford to have a sales team?
If you have a repeatable sales model, a sales rep has three limits:

1. The number of calls or demos in a day.
2. The demo-to-close ratio.
3. How much you’ll pay to keep the salesman.

Jason Lemkin of SaaStr, a SaaS founder, enthusiast, & investor offers this advice:

• Most inside sales reps can probably close 8-12 deals a month.
• Assuming a 20% close rate, that’s 60 demos a month, or 3-a-day.
• If the rep needs to make $80,000-$100,000 in OTE (on-target earnings), and you need to clear $300,000 in revenue to make the math work on your side, at 100 closed deals a year, to bring in $300,000 to the company, each deal has to have a $3,000 ACV (annual contract value) on average.
• So the straight math says it’s tough to have inside sales reps working on deals under $3,000 ACV or $299/month if there’s monthly churn.

(Source)
But that’s not all!
If you maximize your current leads and play your cards right, you can bring in a sales rep for a $99/month product.
Lemkin continues:
But, still, we dropped the price point (necessary) for inside sales to $99. And it worked. Why?

• First, if you don’t service those $1,000 ACV leads, you are wasting them. So maybe it’s better to close them that just lose them altogether if it’s not too expensive.
• Since you’d lose these prospective customers anyways, you can spend more of the ACV revenue received on the reps and not worry about the marketing costs. Because otherwise, the marketing costs would be a write-off. These reps don’t have to be as profitable.
• You can use this customer segment to train the new reps. It’s cheap training.
• And most importantly, the really really good reps can actually kill it. Even here. Because they’ll get really efficient, and close a lot more than 10 deals a month. Our best $99/month inside sales reps could triple that rate, so long as we gave them enough leads. You do need a high volume of leads to make this work.

I’m not saying you can build a whole inside sales team around a $1,000 ACV or $99 price point. You can’t. The lowest you can probably go on average is $3,000, based on the math above, and that’s if you are hyper-efficient.
If you aren’t, bump that up to a $5k ACV to account for overhead, waste, turn-over, etc.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for sales:

1. Find people who shared a how-to article related to your product on Twitter. You can use Buzzsumo or Ahrefs to do this. Find their email using a tool like VoilaNorbert. Send them an email and pitch your product. Bryan Harris and two of his students did this to pitch their services, which you can check out here.
2. Find a list of your competitors. Use a tool such as NerdyData or BuiltWith to find customers who use your competitor. [Send them an email](growthramp.io/articles/email-outreach-program) asking if they’ve experienced common problems with the product. If possible, leverage the names of similar customers you have to the prospect. Nathan Barry did this to take ConvertKit from $1,300 to $725,000 in monthly recurring revenue. Learn how he did that here. More on how to use NeryData here.
3. If you’ve pre-sold your product, create a customer persona for each person who bought your product. Then use LinkedIn search to find similar people and pitch your product. You can find their email on their profile when you click contact info. If you get real fancy, you can create a video pitch on how your product will benefit them. Learn how Devesh got over $13,000 in recurring revenue doing something similar here.

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you have a question on how to do something, where do you turn for an answer?
More than likely, you will turn to a search engine.

• Do you need help changing the oil in your car? You’ll likely search YouTube for a how-to video.
• Do you want to find how much SEO services should cost? You’ll likely search on Google unless you know a site that has done a pricing survey for you (hint, hint).
• Are you looking for a book to dive deep into a topic? You’ll likely search Amazon for the right author.

This channel includes traditional search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Most SEO agencies and consultants focus on Google’s search engine because it provides the most traffic.
It also includes popular, but niche search engines like Amazon and YouTube search optimization.
*Scaling SEO can be slower than other marketing channels. *
The key to getting faster results for SEO comes from mastering three areas:

1. Doing keyword research to find high volume, low difficulty keywords.
2. Creating the content on that topic which benefits both the customer and Google.
3. Getting enough links from authoritative websites to be an authoritative article on that topic.

Keyword research helps you learn how often people search for a phrase. It will also inform how competitive it is to get search traffic from that keyword phrase.
In my article, “No Keywords Easy to Rank For? I Call ‘Bullcrap,’” I outlined a simple process to find high volume, low difficulty keywords. Here’s a quick summary of the process:

1. Do a Google search for your keyword or topic.
2. Take the first 3-5 articles listed on Google.
3. Put these into an SEO tool that finds the keywords the page ranks for, such as Ahrefs.
4. Sort the keyword list by volume.
5. Filter out keywords not in the top 20 spots. You should also remove keywords with too high of a difficulty score. For Ahrefs, my recommendation is 30 or less for new websites.

When doing keyword research, it’s also important to understand a person’s intent when searching for a phrase. Understanding search intent will inform how long it will take to make a sale.
If someone searches “What is copywriting?” in Google, they are likely looking for basic information. But if that person looks up “copywriting services in Spokane”, they probably want to buy copywriting services from an agency in Spokane.
*Next, you’ll want to create in-depth content to answer people's questions and objections on that topic. *
To do this, content strategists often source ideas from other content. For example, you could:

1. Go to your customers and list out the questions they have.
2. Go to Quora and search for questions on your topic.
3. Go to Reddit and look for articles with a high number of upvotes and comments.
4. Go to relevant Facebook groups and look for questions people have.
5. Go to relevant Discord and Slack groups and look for questions people have.

Once done, share everything relevant to this topic. Articles on Growth Ramp often are between 1,500 and 3,000 words.
*After you’ve created your content, you may need some authoritative links. *
Why are links important to improve SEO?
I’ll answer this question with another question.
When you write a research paper, how do you know the information is accurate? You cite your sources. On the web, people cite sources by linking to different pages.
Google’s search engine puts pages with the most relevance to your search higher up. That’s why you want in-depth content. But Google also prioritizes relevant content with more links.
So if an authoritative site like Harvard University or Microsoft cites your article, Google will likely rank it high in their results.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for SEO:

1. After doing competitive research, create landing pages that compare you to your competitors. Potential customers will want to know how you are different from other products out there. It’s one of 10 questions we’ve found customers ask before buying a product. These pages will allow you to educate the customer and add your voice to the conversation.
2. Create a survey using a tool like Pollfish. Write an article on the original research and promote it. In a 2015 survey by BuzzSumo and Moz, the team found research-backed articles get a lot of traffic and links. This is how Orbit Media got over 430 links in six months.
3. Similar to what I wrote in “No Keywords Easy to Rank For? I Call ‘Bullcrap,’” you can find easy-to-rank keywords by analyzing your competitor’s content. Plug a competitor into an SEO tool like Ahrefs. Then filter any keywords with a keyword score of 30 or less. You may also want to search for a broad keyword in the results too. Organize the list by traffic, and voila! Instant fast ranking results.

5. Virality and Network Effects

Virality isn’t just when your cat video hits the front page of Reddit or Youtube. It’s about optimizing the time it takes a customer to invite or refer more friends to your product. This is known as a viral loop.
A viral loop happens in three ways:

1. A customer discovers your product and enjoys it.
2. This customer then shares your product with other people. Ideally, they share it with your potential customers.
3. A potential customer buys the product, enjoys it, and shares it with their friends and coworkers.

The more customers who share your product who become customers, the better the viral loop. To measure your viral loop’s effectiveness, you can use a viral coefficient.
David Skok, a venture capitalist at Matrix partners wrote an excellent article on understanding the key variables of viral marketing.
Viral loops are most common in referral systems and network effect products like Facebook and LinkedIn. Network effects occur when there is an increase in value with each new customer using your product.
Virality and network effects are not the same.
Many things can have viral effects without having network effects. Buzzfeed and Upworthy are relentless at improving virality. But that does not mean they have network effects.
And products with network effects don’t always have viral effects. Any of these marketing channels could bring people into the network effect. Facebook used community marketing to get an Ivy League college student to join in its early days. A B2B marketplace might use content marketing to attract their audience.
Unfortunately, while getting free users is valuable, it’s also hard to create viral loops and network effects.
It’s difficult to engineer a viral loop for any product. And virality is even more difficult for SaaS products.
Andrew Chen suggests a viral product should be:

1. Social in nature.
2. Has high retention with daily usage.
3. Applies to many job titles within an organization, so that anyone can use it.
4. Invites travel through a new channel with a compelling pitch.
5. Targets extroverts.

Network effect products must have certain features built into the product to create a network effect. At that point, you need to seed the network.
A network has almost no use when no one uses it. How valuable was the fax machine to the first person who bought it? And even with 100 fax machines, if these users do not send messages to each other, the machines were glorified paperweights.
Viral loops and network effects are valuable. The VC firm NFX argues that 70% of the value in tech comes from network effects. Both viral loops and network effects can bring in free customers. The challenge is getting those customers in the first place.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for virality and network effects:

1. Attract customers with a tool that works without a network effect, then keep them engaged with your network. Chris Dixon talks about the philosophy of this approach here.
2. There are many ways to solve the chicken-or-egg problem in marketplace network effect startups. Here are 19 tactics to try.
3. To improve your referral campaigns, provide a reward to both parties. Dropbox’s referral program is a famous example of two-sided rewards. Learn about their referral program here and here.

6. Community Marketing

Community building involves building direct relationships with your customers and potential customers. Developing deeper customer relationships can result in increased activation, retention, and referrals.
One challenge of community marketing is not having an existing audience to start your community.
If you don’t have an established audience, you can become a prominent member of another community. Then use relationships you build in other communities to start your community. Forums, Facebook groups, and Reddit communities (called subreddits) are some of the fastest ways to build relationships in your industry.
Building a community is difficult, but the rewards can be massive. Reddit, Wikipedia, and Stack Exchange are startups built on the community they created.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for community marketing:

1. What’s successful in one community will often be successful in another community. Find what top influencers share on social media and adjust it to fit your context. With the right message, you can promote the same message in other communities.
2. Use communities to promote your community. The Facebook group Client Science promotes its community by writing articles on Reddit. You can check out their articles posted by BenJackGill. This article received over 700 upvotes.
3. Create a community on a different type of channel for people already in a community. Reddit has many Discord and Slack groups. /startups has a startup Discord server. At the time of this writing, they promote this community at the top of their subreddit. /bigseo has an SEO Slack group. At the time of this writing, they promote this community in the sidebar of their subreddit. You can do the same by creating a community for a subreddit.

7. Content Marketing

When was the last time you read an article online? How about the last time you heard a podcast? Or perhaps watched a video?
Content marketing spans a wide range of mediums. It includes articles like the one you’re reading to infographics, videos, and podcasts.
When done right, content can help you:

1. Educate the market.
2. Build an email list of excited customers.
3. Land publicity.
4. Build relationships.
5. Build your brand.

And so much more. Popular venture capitalists like Mark Suster, Paul Graham, and James Currier are well-known because of their blogs.
Further, you always have the content. Once you spend on advertising, that’s it. But you can get customers from content for years to come.
Unfortunately, content marketing often requires knowledge of another channel to become successful. As such, it’s often slower than other acquisition channels. That is unless you have a solid content promotion system in place.
SEO and social media tend to be the two most common ways of getting traffic to your content. Email marketing is also common to get people to become repeat visitors to your content. But you can also create a paid content funnel using ads, an article, and premium content to get an email address.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for content marketing:

1. Want to find content practically guaranteed to go viral? Go to Reddit and search for your topic. Find articles with a ton of upvotes and comments (aim for at least 100 upvotes, or 250 for bigger subreddits). Write a similar topic on your blog, putting your spin on the topic. Then promote it on Reddit and other sites.
2. Search for “top X blogs” or “best X blogs,” where X is your industry. Offer to sponsor these bloggers money to review your product. Learn how Noah Kagan paid bloggers $500 to review Mint.com from 0 to 100,000 in six months here.
3. According to BuzzSumo, two types of content that get a ton of traffic and links are research-backed articles and opinionated journalism. If you can’t get enough survey responses, you can use sites like Pollfish for this information. Learn how Orbit Media got 430 links in six months here.

8. Email Marketing

Email marketing is often declared to have the highest ROI for marketing channels.
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(Image Source)
Not only can you use it to find new customers, but you can also use it to engage (activation), retain, upsell (revenue), and generate referrals.
Because messages from your company are right beside updates from friends and family, email often feels very personal. When done wrong, the email will also make people feel angry, damage your brand, and decrease future email deliverability rates.
Keep in mind it’s also difficult to get a large enough email list to acquire customers. By itself, email marketing cannot grow unless you have some mechanism for others to share and join your newsletter.
But it is possible to start just by emailing a few interested friends. Newsletters like The Hustle, Startup Digest, and Product Hunt all began as emails sent to friends. Each of these newsletters has several thousands, if not millions, of people.
Typically marketers pair email marketing with SEO or content marketing to build a list.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for email marketing:

1. Emails that tell your customers the value they get from your product often do well. Can you estimate the money earned or the time saved by using your product?
2. Consider running a giveaway to build your list. All you need to do is give away a product, tell people about the giveaway, and collect everyone’s email address. Bryan Harris used a giveaway to get 2,239 email subscribers in 10 days. Learn more about that here.
3. Advertise on newsletters that are complementary to your product. Chances are if someone subscribes to one newsletter, they would love to subscribe to another newsletter like it. Alternatively, you can do a shout-out for each other’s newsletter. This is ideal when the two newsletters are about the same size.

9. Engineering as Marketing

Do you have a team of engineers? You can leverage their skills by building free tools and products to reach your customers.
This a major competitive advantage because you’re giving something free that your competitors charge for.
Free tools are often easier to market than your paid products. As a result, you can get a ton of inexpensive leads. That said, this approach requires you to market the new tool too.
Some common tools include calculators, WordPress plugins, and educational microsites. You can then collect leads through these tools and get people to buy your product. Sometimes a side project becomes successful enough to be the main product.
Here are some strategies and case studies you can use for engineering as marketing:

1. From 2006 to 2011, HubSpot's Website Grader was used to grade more than 4 million websites. Learn more about this project here.
2. Look at your most popular articles. See if you can turn that article into a lead-gen product. Chris Gimmer did this with StockSnap, which he used to launch Snappa. Learn more about how he did that here.
3. Once you have a tool, don’t overlook other ways you can use it to promote other marketing campaigns. WP Engine has a speed test tool. After you opt-in, it takes you to a thank you page with other valuable resources. You can check it out here.

(Continued in comments below).