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Show HN: Crowd² - A viral marketing campaign creator I wrote in 72 hours

crowdsquared.com

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Re: Show HN: Crowd² - A viral marketing campaign creator I wrote in 72 hours

#61

Post by dwynings »

nhangen wrote: post #34
zobzu wrote: post #30

here's the issue: to checkout crowd2 you need to share it on your social network. unless you have a dummy social network that you use for SPAM, you're going to share it to your friends. but hey, I don't know if I wanna share it yet. i wanna test it first. And, crowd2 is share first, test second. And that's just wrong. It's easy to make the parallel to another form of spam, as you'd have to have a spam account to view…

This sounds remarkably similar to the Imview story, which Eric Ries shared in the opening chapters of his book. It's the same way I felt after viewing what looks to be a neat product, but something I want to play with before implementing. Edit: I'm not sure why I was downvoted, but the point was that after Imview received this feedback from their demo set, they implemented a way for people to play before sharing, whi…

The passage about IMVU from Ries' book, The Lean Startup:

"She downloads the product, and then we say 'Okay, invite one of your friends to chat.' And she says, 'No way!' We say, 'Why not?' And she says, 'Well, I don't know if this thing is cool yet. You want me to risk inviting one of my friends? What are they going to think of me? If it sucks, they're going to think I suck, right?' And we say, 'No, no it's going to be so much fun once you get the person in there; it's a social product.' She looks at us, her face filled with doubt; you can see that this is a deal breaker."

Re: Show HN: Crowd² - A viral marketing campaign creator I wrote in 72 hours

#63

Post by switch »

fitztrev wrote: post #31
nicpottier wrote: post #19

Nice concept. If it doesn't work out maybe you should start a demo video service of some kind. Totally impressed that you could put that video together so quick, looks really nice.

Thank you. Fortunately, I really enjoy video production so it was a lot of fun to work on.

If you really enjoy video production and the video was fun to work on - why not do that full-time. Or make a tool related to it.

Re: Show HN: Crowd² - A viral marketing campaign creator I wrote in 72 hours

#64

Post by marcamillion »

fitztrev wrote: post #22
donw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any good recommendations for stock art?

Most sites will have some good choices of illustrations. It doesn't have to be anything special. I really think you could get away with glorified stick figures and still make a great video. The script and storyline is important. The big takeaway that I've gotten so far has been to make it "story-based". So instead of just a screencast saying "Crowd2 helps you create a marketing campaign to advertise your products", t…

Brilliant. Very true. Thanks for framing it like this.

Re: Show HN: Crowd² - A viral marketing campaign creator I wrote in 72 hours

#66

Post by donw »

fitztrev wrote: post #20
donw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the same boat -- a sharewall is almost guaranteed to bounce me. Then again, I'm probably not the target for a viral marketer, so perhaps this is an effective solution.

I think it might depend on the offer as well. I'm probably the same on most things. But AppSumo has a similar "Free Deal" on their site where you get access to the video/product after tweeting about it. Since I may actually be interested in the offer most times, I'm usually pretty happy to do it. I know that I'm going to get value out of it and, by helping advertise the site, I'm helping them continue these offers in…

Perhaps the difference is that AppSumo has proven value to you in the past, so the 'risk' of promoting them is lower?

Re: Show HN: Crowd² - A viral marketing campaign creator I wrote in 72 hours

#67

Post by nhangen »

dwynings wrote: post #61
nhangen wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds remarkably similar to the Imview story, which Eric Ries shared in the opening chapters of his book. It's the same way I felt after viewing what looks to be a neat product, but something I want to play with before implementing. Edit: I'm not sure why I was downvoted, but the point was that after Imview received this feedback from their demo set, they implemented a way for people to play before sharing, whi…

The passage about IMVU from Ries' book, The Lean Startup: "She downloads the product, and then we say 'Okay, invite one of your friends to chat.' And she says, 'No way!' We say, 'Why not?' And she says, 'Well, I don't know if this thing is cool yet. You want me to risk inviting one of my friends? What are they going to think of me? If it sucks, they're going to think I suck, right?' And we say, 'No, no it's going to…

Thanks for posting that, and correcting me on the name. I knew it didn't look right.

Re: Show HN: Crowd² - A viral marketing campaign creator I wrote in 72 hours

#68

Post by encoderer »

petenixey wrote: post #36
encoderer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consult a niche daily deal site that implemented something similar. In that case, it had a standard "email subscribe" nag screen (think Groupon or Living Social). There was a "No Thanks" link at the bottom. Of course most people clicked that. We decided to give them a Like button option, too. We made the lightbox modal, and required that they either "Like" or fill-in their email address. An email address would supp…

These are pretty interesting figures. If I've understood what you wrote correctly your conclusion would be that the screens that we love to hate really do work. Do you have any thoughts on situations that are particularly suited to such an ultimatum approach?

I don't think I'm enough of an expert in the technique to give that kind of guidance.

If somebody that was paying me asked that question, I'd try to figure out which of these "social cues" would work best for a sites demographic/customer base.

Then, define test cases. Think them through. Make them meaningful because if your site isn't VERY popular, you have to run these tests for a while to gather statistically meaningful data.

Then, TEST the heck out of these implementations. Use a service like BrowserShots. Make sure that whatever social mixins you've created work flawlessly. This will take more hardening than I'd usually do, past what I'd normally call "production ready." Remember, if there's a bug here, your site is just down for that user.

Finally, just test, test, test. And only trust the data.

Re: Show HN: Crowd² - A viral marketing campaign creator I wrote in 72 hours

#69

Post by skeptical »

You might have done this with good intentions in mind, but I don't think this is a good idea. A pyramid scheme is NOT something positive. Only less than half the people that get informed about some product will actually have access to it if this method is used to pass the word. That's not a good strategy, and will push reasonable people off. You know, those who understand pyramid schemes. If I get informed about something that tells me that I have to share it with three more people (or accomplish any kind of assignment for that matter) in order to actually access it, I will immediately press ctrl+w and forever forget about it.

Re: Show HN: Crowd² - A viral marketing campaign creator I wrote in 72 hours

#70

Post by vitomd »

fitztrev wrote: post #51
swalkergibson wrote: post #50

Looks great! One thing, Firefox 3.6 on Ubuntu 9.10 the "Download for Free" button has an outline, I presume that was not intended :)

Ah, yes. Cross-browser testing is one thing I was not able to do yet. If anybody is using IE, I apologize. Although the Bootstrap framework should do alright rendering in IE.

to fix that just add to the img, style="border: 0pt none;"

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