After months of hard work the day has come to launch your new product. Hopefully your marketing team has been working around the clock in the weeks leading up to the launch with guest blogging, social media campaigns, and creating a working plan for the actual “money-time”. No matter if your pre-launch marketing was a hit or a dud, when it comes to launch day it’s a whole different ball game. Seriously, there are hundreds of things to do on product launch day. We’ve got you covered with a list of 8 platforms to get noticed on product launch day.
Note: there are probably more than 100 different sites/outlets to notify. When time is money, this is what looks to be the most efficient way to get a high ROI on your PR time.
Hacker News
The site was created and is maintained by Y Combinator and acts as an aggregator for all topics related to tech, and not just startups. Instead of subscribing to your favorite tech site, you could probably visit Hacker News everyday and get everything you were getting before and more.
Now, why should you list your startup here? First of all, although we don’t have exact figures, this is one of the most popular aggregators on the web with a global Alexa Rank of just a bit more than 1,400 and in the 500 range in the United States. The second reason, and maybe even the more important one, is the quality of the users. As a tech aggregator its users know what to expect, what they want, and what is high quality. The result, is that not only are hundreds of dozens of tech-savvy people visiting as possible future users, but some of the users are pretty influential – investors, startup CEOs, and more.
In a few short hours Wagtail CMS was able to get attention from high-end users and are probably agreeing with “quality beats quantity”, even though they’re getting both. Product Hunt got tons of love on Hacker News.
Product Hunt
This is the new kid on the block that everyone is talking about. As the FirstRound Review put it, “Product Hunt is now the place to discover the“next big things” in tech”. So how does it work? On a daily basis, a list of the top, unheard of products and startups is curated and then a select group of members can choose to upvote, or comment on the product/startup which at the end of the day, literally, results in a top 10 list of what people should be keeping an eye one
Why spend time listing your startup or product on Product Hunt? The answer should be obvious and if you check out any of their social media profiles the answer will be even more obvious. You’ve got everything from investors, fellow entrepreneurs, and tech-loving consumers in one place.
Betalist
We’ll be honest, getting featured here is probably a bit of a step-down from the likes of Product Hunt and Hacker News, but it is still one of the top platforms on the web to list your startup – we would not hesitate to take the time to add a startup to Betalist. Unlike the aforementioned platforms, Betalist does not act as a voting-aggregator, rather it just lists out the startups in a grid-like layout after they’ve approved the startup.
First of all it is a fun and clean layout that makes spending time on the site enjoyable (instead of writing this, spent 30 minutes browsing apps). Why should you list on BetaList? Other than the 200 plus active tags/markets available to describe your product, you can also select a region if you are only available in one place. With 30,000 connected to their social media profiles, it’s well worth your time to work on your BetaList. Fab, Pinterest, about.me, and IFTTT were all discovered on this platform.
StartupList
This is the little brother of BetaList. It works on a similar premises, and is also, at least it appears, a bit less popular than BetaList. With that in mind, you don’t need to double the amount of work you are doing on PR to get noticed here. Just take your outlines and what you are uploading to BetaList and then use them on StartupLi.st because there is hope to pick up a handful of new users here too.
Let’s get right to the point – you should be on Reddit regardless of your entrepreneurial goals, as it’s got something for everyone on more than one topic. Now, for an entrepreneur, using Reddit is a given. You’ve got plenty of Subreddits (groups) to choose from: startups (monthly thread to share your startup), entrepreneurs, sideprojects, hardware, gadgets, and more (depending on your product). More than likely, you won’t be getting tens of thousands of users from taking time to share your work on Reddit (do it wisely), however the quality of users, like the rest, is quite high (early adapters) and the feedback can sometimes be quite the game changer. This is what one entrepreneur shared on TheNextWeb:
If feedback is an important part of the launch process then hitting Reddit is a must.
Startup Videos
We all love videos, and we at BizzVenue even have a weekly series of “Startup Video of the Week” (on our Facebook page). At Startup-Videos all you do is upload the video that you’ve worked hard to create. Not only is it more entertaining for potential users to learn about your product, but it is also extremely popular with videos from startups like Mailchimp and Yik Yak to name a couple.
If you’ve got a video, there is absolutely no reason as to why you should not share your video on the site. This is one of our favorites (featured as a “Startup Video of the Week” with us, and we are looking to purchase one for the office).
SpringWise
Share your startup or product with Springwise via a very simple contact form. Unlike the major tech-players in media, such as TechCrunch or VentureBeat, once you’ve submitted your startup getting the word out via their editorial team is actually possible – it’s not all about sponsored content. This is quite different than the platforms/sites that we listed above, however we still think it is worth your time on launch day.
Why? With 700,000 impressions on their home page and a high quality audience (claim that over 20,000 of their active readers are directors, CEOs, and/or other leaders), taking the time to share your startup somewhere that you have a legitimate chance of getting noticed is a given.
HARO
Last, but certainly not least, is HARO – Help A Reporter Out. This is a win-win for both sides – you get PR and the publisher gets credit for creating yet another spot-on story with new content. According to the site, on any given day, HARO brings nearly 30,000 reporters and bloggers over 100,000 news sources in order to allow new and old businesses/projects to tell their stories, promote their brands and sell what they have.
The downside is the cost, but even for that there is a solution: if you are in a coworking space then work on dividing pay among the members, or work with your PR firm to get the story to even more sources than they are capable of attaining alone.
Why would you use it? The better questions is why wouldn’t you? Since it was founded in 2008, the site has helped to publish more than 75,000 journalist queries, facilitated nearly 7,500,000 media pitches, and marketed and promoted close to 1,500 brands to the world.
Honorable Mention: LaunchMonkey
Like HARO this one comes at a cost and at this time we just don’t have enough information in order to say if it worth the dollars or not, but if you are launching in a month or two, consider coming back and checking them out then (it’s a relatively new service).
Edit (19:26 PM): Just after publishing we discovered Wibble Waggle. It’s fairly new, so we expect it’s worth for startups to grow with it. Clean layout and features a “Top 10” which obviously stands as bragging rights for any new product. Keep an eye on this dark horse (free!).
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Are there other alternatives? Of course. Although the odds are against you, definitely reach out to TechCrunch, VentureBeat, HuffingtonPost, and more. Contact BizzVenue. Also, you can find with a quick “Google search” lists of dozens of different platforms to share your startup. One problem – a lot of them are trafficless sites, outdated, not upheld, and pretty much a waste of your time that could be better spent emailing mentors or hitting the streets to pitch to people.
