What's New: Using GIFs for brand awareness

(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)

Looking to spread the word about your business, but strapped for cash?

• GIF Engine Optimization (GEO) is a trending strategy where founders use brand-related GIFs to hit the top search results. Here's how it can help increase brand awareness without you having to spend any money.
• Cold email outreach doesn't have to send you into a panic. This simple, step-by-step approach can have you reaching potential new users in no time!
• Founder Vintually made a "Coming Soon!" page in 2 days, and hit 100 visitors in the first week. Below, he shares how he got the idea for Brandesaurus, a brand thesaurus, and breaks down his goals for the second week.

Want to share something with over 110,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing

🤩 Using GIFs for Brand Awareness

by Tom Orbach

Billions of GIFs are sent every day, but few founders are aware of how GIFs can significantly boost your company's exposure. Even better, you don't have to spend any money!

Here's everything you need to know!

Meet the new growth hack

I recently created a simple GIF and put the logo of the company I worked for (Jolt) in the corner. I uploaded it to GIPHY, and it's been seen 25M times!

GIF Engine Optimization (GEO) is a trending strategy where people use brand-related GIFs to hit the top search results. Many refer to the field as "SEO’s little sister," and not for nothing: Success in GEO can have a positive effect on brand awareness. A GIF can quite effortlessly draw many eyes to a company’s logo or product.

Your first steps with GIFs

1. Create a business account on GIPHY:

You will need a business account. Search results on Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. solely include GIFs from businesses. It's easy: Open a regular account with a company domain email (not a Gmail), post five GIFs of your choice, then apply for a business account when you are signed in. It is important to note that one company can open more than one business account using different email addresses.

Approval usually doesn't take longer than a couple of days. In the meantime, make sure that the GIPHY profile page has a link to the company's homepage. If possible, also include a analytics system to measure the traffic that came from there.

2\. Choose a topic:

Once you are recognized as a business user, the GIFs will be indexed by the search engine, and you can start uploading. Exactly what kind of GIFs should you create and publish?

To choose a topic for your GIF, I recommend checking out the total views on GIPHY, and the number of results. If there are more than 100 results and more than 100M views in total, you are likely to have a very hard time making it to the top, since many are scrambling to get there. If there's less, that’s better; it means that you've found a smaller niche to take over!

3\. Design the GIF:

The graphics themselves can include a mini-guide to using the product, the result of using the product, a metaphor for the success you provide for customers, animated information, or just about anything else. Be sure to embed your logo in the corner of the GIF. I also suggest creating some GIFs with no background, as they can serve as stickers in Instagram Stories.

It is important to remember that, if the GIF is not good, there is nothing that can promote it to the top. The foundation for GEO is having a great GIF. I recommend working with a relatively wide range of colors, and minimizing the text on the GIF as much as possible.

You can easily create GIFs with Canva!

4\. Tagging, tagging, tagging:

When publishing a GIF, attach up to 20 tags. Those will help people find it. In most cases, people are looking for GIFs to express an emotion, so your tags should focus on emotions and experiences. I suggest taking advantage of all 20 tags allowed, and looking at the search results for all chosen tags. This will help you learn about your competitors and determine how to stand out from the crowd.

5\. Play the waiting game:

Once published, the best practice is to simply wait. Even if a particular GIF barely gets exposure at first, it can explode later (without any further action from you). Therefore, it's advisable to post branded GIFs as early as possible to reap the rewards down the road. Check your number of views once in a while to predict trends.

Success is not guaranteed, but if you try enough GIFs and improve your tag game after measuring the performance of each GIF, at least one will most likely break out and be exposed to millions. Don't pin all of your hopes on just one GIF, because there is no limit to the number that you can publish.

Leverage psychology

GIFs are noisy products. When people are looking for a GIF, they are exposed to lots of moving pictures at the same time, each trying to grab their attention. So, how do you beat the noise?

In my case, I used a trick that probably led to the immediate success of the GIF: Since multiple business accounts can be created for the same company, I posted the exact same GIF from different accounts. This meant that, amidst all the noise of the search results, there was one GIF that popped up repeatedly. This grabbed people’s attention!

The move is in line with a cognitive bias called "the mere exposure effect," which says that, the more exposed, the more loved (up to a point, where said pattern is reversed). If the assumption is correct, then the initial exposure to the GIF results in viewers liking the next exposures more as they continue to scroll.

I'm currently building Marketing Ideas, a large library of powerful marketing ideas for organic growth, just like this one. You can join the waitlist by clicking here!

Will you try GEO? Let's chat more in the comments below!

Discuss this story.

📰 In the News

from the Growth Trends newsletter by Darko

⏰ Twitter has limited tweet frequency, impacting both user and business accounts.

🙅‍♀️ The rise of the anti-influencers.

🐝 The BeReal buzz is dead.

🤖 174 AI tools to try.

💸 Entertainment has become increasingly difficult to monetize.

Check out Growth Trends for more curated news items focused on user acquisition and new product ideas.

📧 A Simple Cold Email Outreach Strategy

by Oliver Han

Today, I'm cutting through the fluff and giving you a simple, step-by-step approach to email outreach. If you haven't tried it, give it a whirl. It works!

The steps

1. Get a secondary domain similar to your current one, but slightly different. This is just in case your main domain gets blacklisted. The best option is to use an alternate extension: Instead of .com, consider .net or .org.

2. Create an email address on that domain. It's best to use your name. Next, warm up your inbox. There are several services that do this; they automatically send emails and reply from your inbox, "warming it up" naturally for around $10 per month. Warm for at least 15 days.

3. For our software, we use Apollo (we're not affiliated with this product in any way). It's an email automation tool with its own database of 64M verified email addresses. You can access 10K of those for $79 per month. Use the email automation tool that you're most comfortable with. Remember to use the filter: Search > People > Email status > Verified. Select target industry, location, persona, etc., and add to a list.

4. Create a sequence in Apollo. I've found that a three step sequence works best, sending on day one, day six, and day 13. Here's a short template:

Hello X!

Had a quick question. I work at A, we do X.

If I were to put together a quick presentation on how you can X, would you be interested in taking a look?

5\. Connect everything:

• Connect your new inbox to Apollo.
• Set your inbox to send 120 emails per day.
• Connect your inbox to a free HubSpot account. This makes managing replies super easy.
• Add your target lists to the sequence in Apollo.
• Activate your sequence.

6\. Replies will appear in your HubSpot conversations.

If people reply, the email will automatically be removed from the sequence. If the reply is positive, send them your Calendly link. If they don't book a call, follow up in a few days.

It's really that simple!

Have you had success with cold email outreach? Share your experience below!

Discuss this story.

🧠 Harry's Growth Tip

from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry

1. What you do: “Design principles...”
2. For whom: “...for developers...”
3. Why you're different: “...non-pretentious...”

Go here for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.

Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.

💻 Vintually's "Coming Soon!" Page Hit 100 Visitors

by Vintually

Hi, founders! Vintually here, and earlier this week, I had an idea for a micro-tool that would accent my main startup. Brandesaurus is the internet's first brand thesaurus!

My team liked the idea so much that, after a few hours of talking with people in my main startup, I decided to get started and not look back!

Day one: Zero visitors

• Validated idea internally by asking founders, managers, and interns in my main startup.
• Researched the best platform to get started on for me, and decided to use Webflow.
• Signed up for Webflow's free trial, and started messing around.
• Researched how to structure a programmatic SEO website or product.

Day two: 31 visitors

• Launched "Coming Soon!" page.
• Began sharing the idea on Indie Hackers, Reddit, Twitter, and Mastodon.
• Got the first email submission, which made me want to push harder.
• Started putting together a marketing strategy.

Day three: Eight visitors

• My primary startup had a major client event that needed my full attention.
• I was able to squeeze in an interview with a potential user. They were excited, but wanted more visuals.

Day four: 31 visitors

• Asked for feedback on Indie Hackers and Reddit.
• Signed up for Polywork, created an account, and added a post.

Day five: 28 visitors

• Shared link where relevant on Indie Hackers and Reddit.
• Posted on Twitter and Mastodon with appropriate hashtags.

Day six: Eight visitors

• Checked analytics.
• Started writing this post!

Plans for this week

• Right now, the goal is to get 250 visitors and five emails before soft-launching the site.
• Based on the traffic, sharing analytics on Indie Hackers, Reddit, and Polywork is working, so we'll continue with this.
• Since communities are working, we will probably also try Discord and larger forum-like platforms.
• We have 100 visitors, but only two emails. This could mean that the base idea interests people, but the page itself needs to build more trust and value to grow the conversion rate.

Goals for next week

• 150+ visitors.
• Three emails.
• Update the design for the "Coming Soon!" page.

Our analytics are also publicly available on Plausible, if you want to check them out!

Discuss this story.

🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick

by Tweetmaster Flex

I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:

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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Tom Orbach, Darko, Oliver Han, Harry Dry, and Vintually for contributing posts. —Channing