Growth Hacking Friends in Poland

I think I take, I take for granted how much I know about digital marketing and go to market and this sounds conceited, but I want to share a story. This is also a really funny finesse that I've done in this city. War in Poland to make new friends. So when I first got here, I was just so crunched on time. Me and my friends who I came here with, we were spending every day trying to find an apartment. We thought it would take us two days to find an apartment here. It's, it's a lot different than in the United States. In Poland, you know, you don't have to really give crazy documents. You give a one month security deposit, no broker's fee, there's no background checks. You just come, you say, I want this place and then you get that place. Or at least that's what we thought. And the thing about the documents is correct, but. And in other cities in Poland it's a lot faster, but in Warsw, in this city, it was very slow. It took us a week and a half and we were staying in this hotel and living in a hotel. I've talked about this before on the show when I was actually doing this. I don't know how musicians traveling do it, living in a hotel. I don't like it. I had lost my routines, my habits, and I was so eager to not live in this hotel anymore, have another, have an apartment again. And so me and my friends were just spending all day looking for apartments, messaging brokers, messaging landlords, going and looking at places. And while we were doing that, or while I was doing that, I was also making this daily podcast and my daily TikToks, my daily videos and my weekly newsletter. Because it took more than a week to find an apartment, which I did not expect. And it was a really funny time. You can listen to some of the podcasts that I made were quite good. And actually several of the videos that I made surprisingly did very well. And that's what I want to talk about because I made this one video as I was walking home from dinner and I really did not have a lot of time on this evening. I had stuff to do when I got back home, as in the hotel. I had stuff to do when I got back to the hotel. I needed to make my video, I needed to make it now. So as I walked, I made just such for me, what I thought was such a lazy video. I started with a shot of the really huge cathedral in the center of the city. And then I said, you know, you can launch A tech startup from anywhere in the world. You don't have to be in the west to, to reach Western users and Western customers if you use these platforms. And I shared for what for me are very obvious platforms. If you are in startups and technology, you have heard of Product Hunt and beta list, or at least that's what I thought. That's what I thought. And those are the platforms that I shared. I went, then after that shot, I went to a square and I'm like, you can sit in any square, in any city and launch on these two platforms to reach people in the west, to reach people in the United States. And you can be anywhere in the world and do this. And I showed a screen of beta list and I showed a screen of Product Hunt. I took this recording, I put it into descript, Descript basically edited it for me. Descript I've talked about. So amazing. For editing, I just clicked remove all the gaps between words. And it was a long clip because I walked from the cathedral to the square while still recording and then I was sitting there thinking of what to say. So it was maybe a 10 minute clip that came down to 30 seconds of words. But Descript just removed all the gaps between words automatically. I put in transcriptions. The, the transcriptions are automatic. I just copied a style from an existing video. It was just, you know, copy paste. And I made the video and I put it up without thinking about it, like, without thinking about it, I'm just like, oh man, I feel so bad about putting out such a bad video today. Tomorrow it's going to be better. And then the video got 66,000 views on TikTok. And a few days ago I had this idea. So that was shocking. First of all, that was shocking because I spent so little, I was crunched for time. I spent so little time on that video. I thought the video was not good. And it did pretty well. And I guess it's because I share very valuable information that to me seems common knowledge. And that's why I think I'm taking, I sometimes take what I know for granted. But so this is pretty funny that. And I did this a few days ago. Every. All the polls that I know, all the Polish people that I know agree with me when I say this at the introduction. Polish people are not the most warm people. They're in fact Polish people when you meet them, are quite cold when you get to know them, very warm and welcoming. But at the beginning very cold and dismissive. And, and I don't feel bad making this generalization because literally every Polish person I have said this to, and it's been, at this point, dozens, and they've all agreed with me. Yeah, we are. We are different. And I'm like, you know, because I've lived in Spain and I've lived in Rome, and I've lived in Berlin, and I'm. I'm from New York, and. And we're so much warmer, and. And they're like, yep, in Poland, we are not. We are not like that. And so I have some friends here, but I don't have many friends, which is mostly okay because I also came here to not be distracted. But I don't have enough friends that when I want to hang out, I can hang out with all these people. I have this one friend that I came here with. The other friend that I came here with went back to New York, and so I have this other friend who I came here with, and we hang out almost every day. But I don't have that many other. I don't have that many Polish friends here to hang out with. And it's hard to find technology events and marketing events to go to where people speak English. So let me share the idea that I had that ended up working really well. I've talked on the show in the past how I can do a trick to make videos that have gone viral on TikTok go viral again on Instagram reels. Basically, that trick is you have to post to reels only. You have to clear the metadata using Google Drive, so you have the video exported from TikTok. I use reuse video. Com, which makes it so every video that I publish on TikTok comes out without the TikTok watermark directly to Google Drive. In addition to many other places I download that video from Google Drive, I actually have to delete my Instagram app because the ability to post to reels only is very finicky. And if you don't have it, the best way to get it is to delete the app and reinstall the app. So I delete the app, I reinstall the app, then I can post to reels only. You still have to do some other things. You. You have to. Before you even try to upload a reel, you have to allow location permissions and permission to access your photos to Instagram. You do that, and then you upload this video to Instagram, you save it as a draft. You go back into the draft through the reels section. I'm telling you, it's crazy, but it's worth it. Go back into the draft and then you have this ability to toggle off share to profile grid and you toggle that off. And by toggling that off, it makes it so that your video does not show to your existing followers, or primarily not to your existing followers, but to new people. And it gets pushed out to the real section of Instagram, much like the TikTok algorithm will push out videos on TikTok so all these new people get to see. And what I have discovered, what I have experienced is if a video goes viral on TikTok, it will also go viral on Instagram. So I do this and I put up this video which I spent a. Which I spent a few minutes on, which I made so thoughtlessly thinking it was not going to perform well. And it performed well. And I do this thing and I put it into Instagram reels, only using the trick that I just described. And it goes viral again. But this is what I did. I wrote a comment, I set the location. You also have to set the location to someplace and change the COVID photo. So I did that and add like a new description, new hashtags, whatever. So I set the location as V, the city that I am in. I start the opening image, starts with the castle in the center, very recognizable. And then I write a comment and I say, if anybody is in V and would like to hang out, send me a DM. The video is up to almost 140,000 views now. And I have gotten lots of DMs from super legitimate people in this area who have done cool, very cool marketing and technology things, who want to hang out. And now I have friends, so many friends, more friends than I know what to do with in this city. And it's so funny. And I'm growing my followers so fast and which makes other people want to hang out with me more. And it's. It's so funny how it works. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's great if you're in V and you are listening to this. Yolitzing. I know I said I have enough friends, but I'll take more. I actually, I'm getting so. I'm getting so many people hitting me up that I'm thinking about just doing a meetup, an Ed. An Edward Stir meetup for everyone who DM me because everyone's doing similar things. Everyone works in. In marketing or technology. And I think a meetup would probably be fire because so many people have hit me up. I don't know if I can meet with this many people. So that was the finesse. That's a finesse that I, that I pulled off. I think the video is going to get a lot more views. It's really exciting for me what it like and anyone can do this. Anyone can make viral content on TikTok and then use a trick that I just described to have it go viral again on Instagram, put in a comment while it's going viral and pin that comment. But what I did is I wrote that comment and I pinned it. You gotta pin the comment too. So that's the first comment on the video that everyone sees when they hit, when they hit comments. Basically, when you have any video going viral, you should be putting a comment and pinning it. That's prime real estate. Because so many people go and look at the comments for popular videos. Maybe I'll make a TikTok about that today. That is like something that I just really had not been thinking enough about. And I think a lot of people don't think about that too. When you have a video going viral, pin a comment. That's prime real estate. I wonder if I can pin comments on TikTok too. I think I can. Let me see. No, doesn't look like you can pin a comment on TikTok. Only on Instagram, but that's okay. But anyway, pin comments and so that's what I did. It's working well. Really exciting.

It's, it's, it's funny. I think it's funny. I think it's funny. It's cool. To all the new friends who I have, thank you for sending me a dm. To all the future friends that I make, I'm excited to meet you. This is episode 187 of the Edward Show. This is my daily growth hacking, growth marketing, everything marketing podcast that I do. Haven't missed a day in 187 days. I am a crazy man sitting out here in cold war swift Poland recording to you with the snow outside. And I am loving life. I will talk to all of you again. I want to talk to all of you again on beautiful tomorrow. Bye now.