

Market to normals, seed with techies? - byjess
http://byjess.net/market-to-normals-seed-with-techies/

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intellegacy
I too have encountered the same problem of techies and startup marketers
overtaking communities and adding little to no value. It seems as if
everywhere I go in the startup world, the site is half filled with people only
trying to market themselves. Ie. it's not a real community.

I think it's a tough problem to solve. In the beginning stages of your
product, unless it goes viral, you'll be desperate and thankful for any users
you can get, although you'd prefer 'normal' users (i'll call them "normies").

The problem with getting normies is that they're incredibly hard to reach.
Outside of the tech sphere, few normies have heard of Quora, hacker news,
digg, even reddit. Think what % have heard of any other number of less known
startups. The answer is probably less than 1% for normies. They don't seek out
new experiences online; they'll sign up only if your site goes super-viral, as
facebook and twitter did. I think the problem is inherent in Normie behavior -
they simply don't have much time to invest in or thought to give to new online
startups.

The solution, I believe, is to target a niche community - either local or with
a group of people who already socialize with each other. This is a purely an
area of execution strategy and is quite fraught with difficulties, imo.

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aggronn
I agree--I was thinking of solutions to this, and the most immediate thing
that comes to mind is that you have to be extremely proactive in capturing
small groups of people who are already organized around each other. If you
have a start-up community in a college area, for instance, go out of your way
to facilitate student organizations (and don't _just_ send out a few emails to
potential users). If your community has the ability to organize events, and
and the salsa dancing club secretary doesn't want to have to deal with setting
stuff up, sponsor their club with money or do it yourself.

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drumdance
Back in the day I believe eBay spent a lot of money on sending emissaries to
yard sales and flea markets.

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bicknergseng
Relevant TED: <http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang/en//id/28>

My conclusion from the post and the TED: launch to trendsetters in whatever
demo you're hoping to target (always easier said than done).

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tjaerv
I call them "mundanes".

