About Sorry, I was On Mute
Hi there! I’m Aakash Gupta, a seasoned marketing consultant, and the guy who decided to use an oft-uttered phrase as a name for my website. I started Sorry, I was on Mute in April 2020 with the intent to write content that benefits those who work remotely, whether you’re experienced, or completely new to it.
The transition from collocated to virtual offices hasn’t been easy. Most remote teams were managed by managers who themselves had little to no guidance to keep their team productive, accountable and above all, engaged. This gap necessitated a repository of content to help remote managers lead and guide their now-officeless team to success.
The challenges
When you start something, you expect to see immediate results. If you’re a marketer and content creator, you imagine a piece blowing up, gaining traction and going viral overnight. You’ll invite your colleagues, friends and family to share your work so that it draws in the crowd and increases footfall to your newly-launched website.
Reality, however, is very different.
You can have great topics to write about, and you’ll do everything by the SEO book. The anxiety to see your blog rank makes you compulsively check if everything’s going according to the plan. This is why the initial few months were hard for us because the numbers we hit fell short of what we estimated we would, despite a careful selection of topics, posting content and publicizing our work on social networks.
What We did to Grow Our Readership
A year later, Sorry I was on Mute has grown drastically. The team comprises a fantastic set of writers, editors, market researchers and analysts, who follow a stringent content creation framework. We believe in iterative improvement, with 50% of the battle being won just by selecting the right topic and keywords cluster. A competitor analysis follows shortly afterwards. The team uses both comparative and absolute metrics to determine what others have to say about the topic chosen.
The competitor analysis tells us how top performing posts structure their articles, which helps us draft outlines that offer a unique, unbiased take on the subject. The quality and quantity of content is also taken into consideration, with 95% of our blogs running beyond 1500 words.
And finally, performing well in SEO and being a thought leader in the space is about hard, gritty consistency. Our publishing schedule runs like clockwork, with posts released thrice-weekly.
The Results
Backstage is where the real action is, so here are the numbers that explain how we’ve done over the last 12 months;
- Growth in sessions from 0 to 250 sessions per day- Nearly all of our growth was seen in the last 6-months (the first six saw little action since we were a new domain). While these numbers have a long way to go, it’s only just the beginning.
- A 61% month-on-month growth over the last 3 months with an 80% jump between April to May 2021. 40% of our traffic came from creative blogs authored during the last 90 days.
- 95% of traffic is pure organic with not a single dollar spent on promotion or backlinks, with some articles ranking better than the same topics by Forbes and HubSpot Individual contributors.
What the Future Holds
Based on the current growth trajectory, we are targeting 2.5k sessions per day when 2021 ends, without paid promotion or backlinking strategies.
I’d like to conclude by saying that perseverance and patience are key when you launch something of your own.
The one person who needs to believe in you, is yourself. Armed with this self-assurance, real-world experience and actionable data, I’m excited for the heights Sorry I was On mute will scale from here onwards!
About Us
Growth Ganik is a rapidly evolving digital marketing agency in Sydney, Australia that specializes in SEO, content marketing, marketing strategy and lead generation.
We work with clients from leading brands and industries such as B2B SaaS, nonprofits and more to develop profitable digital marketing solutions that are data-driven to support all kinds of business goals from widening user bases, gaining more traction for online engagement, to increasing conversion and helping businesses scale up.
For creative tailor-made digital solutions and sustainable growth insights, get in touch with us!
