If you want to level up your writing, here are 7 tips that preview @ShaanVP's 🔥 course on:

1. Cold emails that work
2. Viral writing secrets
3. Pitches that resonate
4. Amazing headlines
5. Landing pages that convert
6. Writing inside a company
7. Habits of power writers Image
1/ Cold emails that work

Grab the reader's attention by creating a curiosity gap and aim to get a one line reply.

More details here:
2/ Viral writing secrets

Start with the emotion that you want readers to have:

LOL: That’s so funny
WTF: That pisses me off
AWW: That’s so cute
WOW: That’s amazing
NSFW: That’s crazy
FINALLY: Someone said it!

Shaan provides many great examples in his course.
3/ Pitches that resonate

The bottom line:

People don't care about you, they care about how you can help them.

Start with their "hair on fire" problem before pitching your solution.
4/ Amazing headlines

Spend 30% of your writing time on the headline - it's that important.

Draft 50+ headlines before picking your top one.

Shaan has a doc with 53 sample headlines that makes this process easier.
5/ Landing pages that convert

Your landing page needs to explain to someone in 3 seconds:

"What's in it for me?"

Don't talk about your product first, talk about how you'll solve your customer's problem using simple words.
6/ Writing inside a company

Write a regular internal memo to skip the hierarchy and show relevant people your thinking.

Keep your memos short and make sure you highlight the "so what".
7/ Habits of power writers

When you find great writing online, stash it in a doc.

When you need inspiration, try writing out the same words for yourself to understand the author's style.
8/ Ok here's my brutally honest review of @ShaanVP's course:

I learned writing at Amazon and published a book, so I came in pretty confident.

Shaan wildly exceeded my expectations. This course is the real deal.

Sign up for the next cohort: maven.com/generalist/wri…
9/ Follow me to see how I'll put what I learned from the course into practice.

Get more writing advice here:
creatoreconomy.so/p/the-secret-t…

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More from @petergyang

14 Jul
"Social media" actually refers to two different types of apps:

Social:
I want to connect with others

Media:
I want to be entertained

I spoke to @prestonattebery about what the difference is and how to succeed in each category:
1/ Preston has researched the founding story of every major social app to better understand what works.

His key insight is that these apps either solve for entertainment or connection:
creatoreconomy.so/p/two-types-of…
2/ Media apps are about entertainment.

There's usually one dominant media app per format:

Twitter for text
Instagram for photo
TikTok for short video

Media apps compete for creators to make the most immersive content for their format. Image
Read 10 tweets
17 Jun
Loving @ShaanVP's course on writing to get results.

First lecture was on cold outreach:

1. Attention
2. Personal touch
3. Benefits
4. Credibility
5. Simple ask

Here are some do's and don't from real messages (mostly from recruiters) that I've received:
1/ Attention

Don't: "Startup/Lead PM opportunity"

Do: "Peter, come lead our chat product team at (X)"

Don't be generic, do be specific about the opportunity.
2/ Personal touch

Don't: "I came across your profile on LinkedIn and had to reach out."

Do: "Loved your article about the creator hierarchy of needs. We want to help creators..."

Don't do fake personalization, do show that you've done your research.
Read 6 tweets
16 Jun
I return to Instagram's original product principles often when building products:

1. Community first
2. Do the simple thing first
3. Do fewer things better
4. Ride the wave

You can apply them by asking these questions:
1/ Community first

1. What job are customers hiring my product for?

2. Does this product help my customers or just my company?

3. How are customers hacking my product to do a job?
2/ For example:

In 2013, Instagram's fraud detection algorithm flagged an account for uploading and deleting hundreds of photos.

It turns out that this account was a store that was using photos to sell products.

Commerce is now a big bet for the platform.
Read 10 tweets
4 Jun
I'm often asked how a big company might crush a startup.

Well it's quite simple really, but few know the process:
1/ The bottoms-up

While waiting for a latte at a BigCo cafe, a PM reads a @JoshConstine post of how a startup just raised $2B in a hot space.

The PM writes a 6-pager on why this is a $10B opportunity and has coffee with other product teams to get buy-in.

This leads to...
2/ The OKR

3 months and 100 coffees later, it's finally time for quarterly planning.

Everyone reads the 6-pager and asks:

"How will this move my metric?"

"Sorry, I have 5 A/B tests to run this quarter."

"This is XXXL, have you seen our tech debt?"

This leads to...
Read 9 tweets
2 Jun
How do you build an online community from scratch? Is it similar to growing a product?

I interviewed Jen (@BackseatVC) to find out:
1/ Jen manages Means of Creation fans, a fast-growing community about the creator economy (inspired by @ljin18 and @nbashaw's show): discord.com/invite/b6bSGCQ…

She also helped @justinkan grow his YouTube channel to 100K+ subs in 5 months while serving full time as a PM.
2/ Jen grew the MoC community by doing things that don't scale:

1. Give new members great onboarding

2. Seed the community with great content

3. Focus conversations on a few channels
Read 8 tweets
30 May
Very rarely do I come across advice that changes how I approach everyday life.

Here are six pieces of advice that has stuck with me:
1/ Play long-term games with long-term people

All returns in life come from compound interest:

1. Eat well to stay healthy
2. Invest early to grow wealth
3. Give selflessly to build trust

Inspired by @naval
2/ Discipline equals freedom

Working consistently on something over a long time gives you more freedom.

1. Fitness discipline
-> Freedom from illness

2. Financial discipline
-> Freedom from money problems

Inspired by @jockowillink
Read 8 tweets

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