Applying SaaS growth techniques to my blog

I'm applying all the lessons I learned from building timestamps.me to growing my blog.

• I'm treating readers like customers.
• I'm doing "direct sales". For everyone that expresses interest in a post of mine, I get in touch with them directly. I try to learn about them, what their interests and community are, and where they hang out online.
• I'm creating a list in my CRM of all my "supporters", and when I release a new post, I DM everyone in the list.
• I'm focusing my efforts on people that are friendly to me, and not wasting my time with people that are cold or unfriendly.
• I'm cold-emailing my idols to ask for advice and make connections.

I haven't done any customer interviews yet, but if I were to, I'd use "Mom Test" type questions.

• "Where do you usually find blog posts online?"
• "How often do you read blog posts?"
• "What kind of blog posts do you read?"
• "How often do you subscribe to mailing lists?"
• "How often do you share blog posts with friends?"

Anything else I should be doing? What am I missing?