

Early Adopters: How To Get The First Users To Your New Site - barmstrong
http://www.startbreakingfree.com/1322/early-adopters-5-ways-to-get-users-to-your-new-website/

======
MicahWedemeyer
I think the 37Signals and Joel Spolsky examples are a little misleading. Maybe
this goes without saying, but when blogging to get traffic, be sure to
remember your desired audience. 37Signals and Spolsky's audience is web
developers, _like many HN readers_ , so they can promote their apps on a tech
blog. If your audience is grandmothers or tweens, don't expect to get much
traffic from your blog about Rails programming.

~~~
patio11
My blog is about 99% not relevant to the interests of my typical customers,
but it is still useful as a friendcatcher. There are a couple hundred people
who care about what my business is doing, as a consequence of blogging and
other social activities over the years. This gives me an automatic boost to
marketing of new sites/products/etc. For example, in 2010 when I get my new
site off the ground, I can with a high degree of confidence predict that it is
going to pick up a few dozen links in the first week from people who know me
and care about what I'm doing separately from their (lack of) desire for my
new site.

Nothing says you can't also have a customer-focused blog, too. I got around to
installing one on my site a few months ago but haven't found time to write for
it in a compelling manner yet. That will be another topic for 2010.

------
j_baker
I'm not sure I agree with #2 unless your competition is really truly
despicable. I think that if you use that method against something that's
really popular, it will come back to bite you.

~~~
electromagnetic
This is a lesson from Politics, if you focus all your energy into attacking
your opponents it doesn't mean people will choose you, it just means people
will choose not to choose.

This tactic _does not_ extend to business. You don't 'win' by having the most
users, you win by making the most money, and having a wide open market is
stupid and dangerous for a company. This is the _major_ failure with Apples
'PC and Mac' advertisements, it doesn't tell us why we should buy a Mac, just
why we shouldn't buy a PC. This tactic presently works for Apple because the
people who know the difference between a PC and a Mac are likely aware of the
pros for Apple, they just need to be overwhelmed by the cons of a PC.

For a new product, your consumers have no knowledge of your pros, and
slandering your opponents does nothing except clue them into their failures.
The prime example here is again in politics, slander is a tactic always taken
by the right-wing parties, however when your claims are hollow and see through
they can fail by record numbers. This happened in the UK when Labour gained
the majority with Tony Blair, the conservatives launched a slander campaign
that not only alienated voters from the conservative party but had no effect
on keeping liberal voters out of the polling booths, they essentially handed
parliament to Labour. The conservatives here in Canada keep playing the same
tactics and have yet to get a majority through their tactics. Again the same
could be seen with tactics used against Obama, but they were baseless claims
and liberal voters came out in force, conservative voters staid at relatively
the same levels but decreased vastly in percentage.

~~~
hugh_
_The prime example here is again in politics, slander is a tactic always taken
by the right-wing parties, however when your claims are hollow and see through
they can fail by record numbers. This happened in the UK when Labour gained
the majority with Tony Blair, the conservatives launched a slander campaign
that not only alienated voters from the conservative party but had no effect
on keeping liberal voters out of the polling booths, they essentially handed
parliament to Labour. The conservatives here in Canada keep playing the same
tactics and have yet to get a majority through their tactics. Again the same
could be seen with tactics used against Obama, but they were baseless claims
and liberal voters came out in force, conservative voters staid at relatively
the same levels but decreased vastly in percentage._

Oh come now, you can't think of any examples where left-wing parties have used
slander against right-wing folks? I do seem to recall some negative, and
frequently untrue, things being said about George W Bush, or Sarah Palin.

Attacking the opposition is a common tactic among all political parties in all
countries. If it goes too far it can turn off some moderate voters, but at
reasonable levels it seems to work reasonably well. It's far less common when
marketing products -- I'm not quite sure why this is, but possibly because
it's easier to come up with positive things to say about your own product ("It
has shiny new features X, Y and Z!") than to come up with positive things to
say about a politician ("... uhhhh.... hope!")

~~~
j_baker
I agree that the person you're responding to was a bit biased politically.
However, I don't feel that the comment was meant to be a discourse on politics
as much as it was to illustrate a point about business practices. Thus, I'm
willing to let it go.

~~~
electromagnetic
I have seen left-wingers pull similar tactics, it isn't an exclusively right-
wing tactic. I've likely only been through a fraction of the national
elections that others on here have, I was only stating cases where I've
exclusively _seen_ the tactics (two conservative campaigns in the UK that both
times helped plant Tony Blair in the PM seat, similarly I've seen the
conservative campaigns for Canada that have ineffectively gained Stephen
Harper seats by reducing opposition votes, but despite several elections
hasn't gained him a majority and he keeps with the same tactics, and I was in
Canada during the latest US elections and saw similar tactics being performed
on a national scale, I have however see democratic senators and governors
pulling similar tactics on channels broadcast in Ontario)

I didn't mean to say this was an exclusively right-wing tactic by any means, I
believe it's a moronic strategy and I've largely seen it performed by right-
wing candidates who have high voter-loyalty, but I'm sure left-wingers with
high voter-loyalty pull similar tactics when they can. I dislike bringing
politics to HN, and that wasn't my intent, it was meant as an allegory for
product marketing as essentially that's all politics is doing, advertising a
'candidate' product.

Insulting your opponent only goes so far, and I know here in Canada the
conservative campaign didn't drive up their votes (I believe on average they
lost votes over last year, but gained in percentages) it did however drive
down their opponents. Yet it actually delivered decisive control of government
to the smaller parties like the Bloc Quebecois and the NDP who can cause a
majority vote for anyone they side with.

For example, if Apple enters the netbook market it can't follow the same
advert campaign against Windows as Chrome OS will present a decisive third
party that, like the NDP were pulling in the recent vote in Canada, can play
the "well we don't suck, and we're not a complete ass" card of being 'the good
guy'.

I couldn't think of a better allegory for not insulting your opponent, I
suppose the simplest reasoning is this: It's childish, and you're allegedly an
adult.

------
rubyrescue
good suggestions. rank for long/medium tail keywords is incredibly important.
it just takes time and concerted effort to do the work to promote your site
and most people, particularly developers/hackers don't want to spend time on
'chores' like that.

~~~
vaksel
here is the question about the long tail words, do you need decent page rank
for just your main site's homepage, or do you need page rank for all those
other pages too?

~~~
barmstrong
They don't need page rank, even your home page doesn't if it's long tail
enough.

Once upon a time I was tutoring people in finance. I registered the domain
name HoustonFinanceTutor.com since that's where I lived. Within a few weeks I
was #1 in Google for the search "houston finance tutor". It was a brand new
website with zero page rank. It ranked there just because i had the keywords
in the domain name, and this on-page factor was enough. Play around with it...

------
bcl
Not a terribly useful article.

2\. Tell people your competition sucks - unethical.

4\. Seed your site using Mechanical Turk - unethical, depending on the type of
site you have.

5\. Have a blog - should be 'Have a Popular Blog'

He leaves out useful techniques like twittering about your new site using
popular hashtags associated with its subject. Or posting it on Facebook,
creating a fan site and encouraging your friends to spread the word.

~~~
david
Telling your people your competition sucks isn't unethical, you're just making
them aware that you can provide them with more value. If you can't live up to
your claims, you'll feel the backlash.

I can see that using Mechanical Turk could be unethical for certain sites
(e.g: dating sites), but it could also be pretty useful, and was something I
hadn't thought of at least.

Also, I don't see how your complaint about #5 applies to blogs but not twitter
or facebook sites.

~~~
bcl
Instead of saying the competition 'sucks' I would instead explain why my
product is superior to their. Accentuate the positives of your product, not
the negatives of the competition (which, if they have already used the
competitions they already know well enough).

As for #5, yes for a Facebook group it would need to be popular. But with
twitter you can attach relevant hashtags to your post, resulting in it showing
up in searches as well as for those that follow you.

------
mcantor
I think it's kind of funny that "needing good content" is listed as a "con" in
#3.

~~~
barmstrong
Valid point :) I guess I was saying that with your brand new site, you might
not have good content yet if it's supposed to be user generated. So it's a con
because it's a chicken/egg problem.

~~~
mcantor
That's a fair explanation. I think I understood the spirit in which that point
was intended; it just stood out to me because of how often people harp on
content being #1. I liked the post overall, for sure!

