How we promote our project without any experience
Admittedly, no one in our small team has any significant marketing experience. Everything we try brings new knowledge to us. This article describes ways to tell about your project that worked for the Cupcamp. Under the cat you will find a description of the pros and cons of several resources and many links.
We started by submitting an application for the Tribune , where the editorial board of the CPU publishes one story of the creators about their products every day. We were surprisingly quickly added, the next day we saw traffic from siliconrus.com. The post about the Cupcamp was released on Friday, which in my opinion was a plus - until Monday we hung on the main page and were the first on the page of the Tribune.
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The positive effect was about 400+ visits, useful feedback, and, most importantly, a number of active authors .
From the minuses of the publication it can be noted that this is still a one-time effect, there will be no second post on the Tribune.
We created a profile for the Cupcamp a long time ago, before we changed the concept from a single digest to a platform where everyone can become an author. Spark pretty specific place. In fact, the news and questions especially nobody reads, however, articles collect enough views. If you manage to write a good article, you can get into the weekly newsletter or get a tweet from spark .
Until recently, Spark was almost the only platform for free communication of startups. Despite the discussions about its benefits, active projects that write quality articles receive an influx of visitors and feedback from users. For us, this site has become a kind of “takeoff” - we released our first articles right here, got our first subscribers and learned about similar projects to Cupcamp.
As minuses for product creators, it is possible to point out not so high attendance and a certain “homogeneity” of the audience - basically they are the same as you start-up entrepreneurs, who are not particularly interested in your project.
The other day it was argued with a friend that often the tape Hiktayms and Megamind contain more interesting materials than Habrahabr. And although this is a purely subjective opinion, it already says that there is still a certain sense in the separation of projects. Personally, I get a lot of benefits from articles on the Megamind, and with the advent of a free opportunity to create a blog for the project, MM has become an absolutely indispensable resource.
The audience of Megamind is very large. Moreover, the best articles are shown on Habrahabr and Hiktimez, which gives even more views. Having written a good article, you can count on a significant flow of visits. Unlike Spark, news of a project or discussion is easier to convey to readers, because all articles appear at least in thematic hubs.
However, since Megamind is still quite young, it is rather difficult to get feedback from users. As an example, there was only one comment on the topic to our previous article , which collected more than four thousand views.
I can not attribute the next item to the pros or to the cons. The audience of Megamind is very versatile. You can get hundreds of views and almost no registration, and maybe vice versa. Karma is not a constant thing.
Reddit
For those who want to attract an English-speaking audience, the easiest way is to write posts on Reddit. Subreddits / r / Startup and / r / Entrepreneur have a total of under two hundred thousand subscribers and are willing to respond to requests for help with evaluating the service.
Both beginners and more or less experienced startups are sitting on both sabreddits, therefore, having an idea of ​​specific goals, you can get a good conversion. The shortened version of the article on combining the main work and the side project attracted a comparable number of visits to Megamind and excellent comments from users.
The obvious minus is the agglomeration audience. Someone just does not need it, someone may have difficulty with the language.
We ourselves started with something similar - we found interesting projects and published a daily digest with their list. Now there are an insane number of sites where you can add your project. In addition, there are paid services that will add a project to most of these resources for you. As a rule, all these projects are aimed at the Western market, there are not so many of them on the RuNet. Offhand I will call, perhaps, rusbase.vc .
Most of these projects are useless. In the best case, you will receive several visitors. On the other hand, adding a project takes a little time, and an extra link to your site never hurts. Plus, practice in the description of your project.
Those who have not read Paul Graham's notorious essay "Do Things That Don't Scale" - I recommend. The basic idea is simple, but many people ignore it - in the initial stages nothing works better than an individual approach to the user. It is difficult, time consuming, but it is the best way to make a product better. We write letters to strangers, ask for help from friends and use every opportunity to find out the opinion of a particular person about the work of the service.
Yes, you can not keep the same care and the user, when they become too much. However, by that time everything will be fine with you already.
If I nominated the resources described above for usefulness to the Cupcamp, I think they would be distributed as follows:
I probably repeat, but everything described is a description of our experience. Depending on your capabilities, goals and the specifics of the product, the results may vary significantly. However, it is safe to say - we must use every opportunity to let know about yourself and your project.
In the second part of the article I plan to describe the unsuccessful experience of promotion, as well as plans for the future - that we still want to try.
Tribune on Zuckerman Call
We started by submitting an application for the Tribune , where the editorial board of the CPU publishes one story of the creators about their products every day. We were surprisingly quickly added, the next day we saw traffic from siliconrus.com. The post about the Cupcamp was released on Friday, which in my opinion was a plus - until Monday we hung on the main page and were the first on the page of the Tribune.
')
The positive effect was about 400+ visits, useful feedback, and, most importantly, a number of active authors .
From the minuses of the publication it can be noted that this is still a one-time effect, there will be no second post on the Tribune.
Profile on Spark
We created a profile for the Cupcamp a long time ago, before we changed the concept from a single digest to a platform where everyone can become an author. Spark pretty specific place. In fact, the news and questions especially nobody reads, however, articles collect enough views. If you manage to write a good article, you can get into the weekly newsletter or get a tweet from spark .
Until recently, Spark was almost the only platform for free communication of startups. Despite the discussions about its benefits, active projects that write quality articles receive an influx of visitors and feedback from users. For us, this site has become a kind of “takeoff” - we released our first articles right here, got our first subscribers and learned about similar projects to Cupcamp.
As minuses for product creators, it is possible to point out not so high attendance and a certain “homogeneity” of the audience - basically they are the same as you start-up entrepreneurs, who are not particularly interested in your project.
Blog on Megamind
The other day it was argued with a friend that often the tape Hiktayms and Megamind contain more interesting materials than Habrahabr. And although this is a purely subjective opinion, it already says that there is still a certain sense in the separation of projects. Personally, I get a lot of benefits from articles on the Megamind, and with the advent of a free opportunity to create a blog for the project, MM has become an absolutely indispensable resource.
The audience of Megamind is very large. Moreover, the best articles are shown on Habrahabr and Hiktimez, which gives even more views. Having written a good article, you can count on a significant flow of visits. Unlike Spark, news of a project or discussion is easier to convey to readers, because all articles appear at least in thematic hubs.
However, since Megamind is still quite young, it is rather difficult to get feedback from users. As an example, there was only one comment on the topic to our previous article , which collected more than four thousand views.
I can not attribute the next item to the pros or to the cons. The audience of Megamind is very versatile. You can get hundreds of views and almost no registration, and maybe vice versa. Karma is not a constant thing.
For those who want to attract an English-speaking audience, the easiest way is to write posts on Reddit. Subreddits / r / Startup and / r / Entrepreneur have a total of under two hundred thousand subscribers and are willing to respond to requests for help with evaluating the service.
Both beginners and more or less experienced startups are sitting on both sabreddits, therefore, having an idea of ​​specific goals, you can get a good conversion. The shortened version of the article on combining the main work and the side project attracted a comparable number of visits to Megamind and excellent comments from users.
The obvious minus is the agglomeration audience. Someone just does not need it, someone may have difficulty with the language.
Various sites that publish links to startups
We ourselves started with something similar - we found interesting projects and published a daily digest with their list. Now there are an insane number of sites where you can add your project. In addition, there are paid services that will add a project to most of these resources for you. As a rule, all these projects are aimed at the Western market, there are not so many of them on the RuNet. Offhand I will call, perhaps, rusbase.vc .
Most of these projects are useless. In the best case, you will receive several visitors. On the other hand, adding a project takes a little time, and an extra link to your site never hurts. Plus, practice in the description of your project.
Personal contact with the authors
Those who have not read Paul Graham's notorious essay "Do Things That Don't Scale" - I recommend. The basic idea is simple, but many people ignore it - in the initial stages nothing works better than an individual approach to the user. It is difficult, time consuming, but it is the best way to make a product better. We write letters to strangers, ask for help from friends and use every opportunity to find out the opinion of a particular person about the work of the service.
Yes, you can not keep the same care and the user, when they become too much. However, by that time everything will be fine with you already.
Conclusion
If I nominated the resources described above for usefulness to the Cupcamp, I think they would be distributed as follows:
- Best Audience - Zuckerman Call
- Ease of use - Spark
- Greatest reach and potential - Megamind
- Accessibility English-speaking audience - Reddit
I probably repeat, but everything described is a description of our experience. Depending on your capabilities, goals and the specifics of the product, the results may vary significantly. However, it is safe to say - we must use every opportunity to let know about yourself and your project.
In the second part of the article I plan to describe the unsuccessful experience of promotion, as well as plans for the future - that we still want to try.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/290014/
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