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Ask HN: What is the best way to promote your startup?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the best way to promote your startup?

#11

Post by patio11 »

mping wrote: post #7
goochtek wrote: post #2

Short answer: Blogs. Long answer: Blogging. Seriously. Write about interesting topics related to your startup. Start to pique people's interest in your product. That's where the best (and free) traffic comes from.

I tried to reach several bloggers, most of them don't respond. I'm having a hard time finding the good blogg(ers) that would write about my app. Maybe I suck at marketing...

This post will raise your hit rate substantially: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/08/05/startup-marketi...

Re: Ask HN: What is the best way to promote your startup?

#13

Post by promptcloud »

A very valid question for Enterprise start-ups. There might be multiple ways but what's the best way depends on what you did best and are good at.

Email-marketing might sound great for enterprise startups to reach out to businesses directly, but ofcourse there's a limit to it. In my opinion, its the brand and visibility you create for yourself (via blogs, media coverage, backlinks,sensible website) which carries long-term paybacks. If people know about you, they'll come to you when that specific need arises.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best way to promote your startup?

#15

Post by alexobenauer »

People always say "blogging" and I always hated that response. I didn't see the direct benefit; it seemed like a waste of time doing the wrong thing.

But in my experience over the past year, it's surprisingly beneficial. Blog about related topics, helpful resources, etc. That's where a majority of our links pour in from on a typical day.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best way to promote your startup?

#16

Post by antidaily »

far33d wrote: post #8

It depends! Options: * Paid: Ads, other pay marketing. * Inbound: Blog. SEO. Etc. * Viral: generate incentives and reasons for users to invite and refer people they know via social networks, email, etc. * Other "organic" channels: hack your way to the top of the app leaderboard, for instance.

And most are terrible at items 1-3. It's a problem.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best way to promote your startup?

#17

Post by kolinko »

alexobenauer wrote: post #15

People always say "blogging" and I always hated that response. I didn't see the direct benefit; it seemed like a waste of time doing the wrong thing. But in my experience over the past year, it's surprisingly beneficial. Blog about related topics, helpful resources, etc. That's where a majority of our links pour in from on a typical day.

+1. Blogging is an excellent SEO technique.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best way to promote your startup?

#18

Post by ahmedaly »

I am going to target home and small businesses in particular for my startup: http://www.ecompucloud.com

I am still confused about how to promote and how much should I spend.. but thinking that maybe facebook ads are much cheaper than google and can be longer in term if promoting the facebook page.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best way to promote your startup?

#19

Post by alttab »

ahmedaly wrote: post #18

I am going to target home and small businesses in particular for my startup: http://www.ecompucloud.com I am still confused about how to promote and how much should I spend.. but thinking that maybe facebook ads are much cheaper than google and can be longer in term if promoting the facebook page.

Facebook does not seem like the right place for your ads. Grandma doesn't care about your service.

That said, I could be your target audience but I have no idea what your service is, even after I visited your web page.

My advice is to promote your service, get in front of your customers.

First though, make sure your customers can actually tell what you are offering from your web page. I know you have a cloud-thing, and that you dont need 'technical knowledge'.

I work on cloud platforms every day, and all I could glean is you have a non-technical cloud-thing. That's probably your biggest problem right now.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best way to promote your startup?

#20

Post by Concours »

Let me share my experience,

I've read this blog post: http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/08/05/startup-marketi... and will strongly recommend it. After reading it, I went to the google, spotted a couple of competitors, entered their urls respectively in Bing Link explorer for webmasters to discover who wrote about them, I then went to create a list and retrieve some bloggers names and emails in a spreadsheet , wrote a short pitch template inspired from the balsamiq pitch, and got the got the software http://www.bulkmailapp.com and a Lite sendgrid account (a Free account is enought if you send ~200 emails per day or less) , I then proceed to send a personalized batch email to all the prospects on my list. The response rate is over 25% so far, when they don't cover me, they at least reply and ask a couple of questions.

The second approach: set a blog and go to http://www.fiverr.com , have some descents writers (look for journalists) write blog entries about keywords you actively researched and somehow relevant to your startup, set your blog at www.yourdomain/yourblog/ and publish the stories on a regular basis, start blogging on a regular basis.

For your main webpage: Do your SEO Abc... create a twitter account and search queries relevant to your startup and start tracking/monitoring them and engage in the conversation when it's possible.

That's what I've been doing so far, I will write a blog entry about it. I hope this could help for a start.

P.S.Sorry for my english, not a native speaker.

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