Early Adopters: How To Get The First Users To Your New Site • Hacker News Board

Re: Early Adopters: How To Get The First Users To Your New Site

#21

Post by barmstrong » Fri, Dec 18, 2009, 1:36 AM UTC

vaksel wrote: post #14

rubyrescue wrote: post #2

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.

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?

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...

Re: Early Adopters: How To Get The First Users To Your New Site

#22

Post by barmstrong » Fri, Dec 18, 2009, 1:39 AM UTC

mcantor wrote: post #18

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

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.

Re: Early Adopters: How To Get The First Users To Your New Site

#23

Post by electromagnetic » Fri, Dec 18, 2009, 5:02 AM UTC

j_baker wrote: post #12

hugh_ wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

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.

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.

Re: Early Adopters: How To Get The First Users To Your New Site

#24

Post by david » Fri, Dec 18, 2009, 7:01 AM UTC

bcl wrote: post #19

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…

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.

Re: Early Adopters: How To Get The First Users To Your New Site

#25

Post by mcantor » Fri, Dec 18, 2009, 6:52 PM UTC

barmstrong wrote: post #22

mcantor wrote: post #18

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

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.

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!

Re: Early Adopters: How To Get The First Users To Your New Site

#26

Post by bcl » Sat, Dec 19, 2009, 5:23 PM UTC

david wrote: post #24

bcl wrote: post #19

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…

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…

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.