Human-Grape-8319•This week
How I got 1000 users on day one.
This might sound like a small number, depending on who you ask, but you know it’s a start. I’ll just share my learnings so far.
Introduction:
The product is simple: you type what you want to build, like, let's say, a SaaS idea, and it generates the code using a framework of your choice (like NextJS). Currently, it only generates front-end code.
The marketing strategy was mainly focused on social media. My social media stats are as follows: I have a whopping 14 followers on Twitter, and 10 of them are bot accounts, and on LinkedIn, it’s about 400 or so.
Launching on LinkedIn:
LinkedIn is unique in two different ways:
The algorithm is friendly to the little guy.
Your network (the people) aren’t always friendly to the little guy.
Let me elaborate. This is something I learned today, actually. When I posted for the first time and asked about three of my friends to repost it, within the first hour there were about 200 views, and the click-through rate was around 40%. This was really good, given that it was in the morning. I don’t know the exact factors, but I did have a video in my post, and those three reposts probably amplified it.
However, people don’t seem to like or comment on it as much as you would think. Most of my connections are CS students because I am a recent grad, so it seems like most people can relate to this product, but none of them would even put a comment or a like. At the same time, I see people liking posts from big brands like OpenAI, Microsoft, etc. I am really confused, to be honest.
However, throughout the day, the view count was going up, and people were coming.
Launching on Twitter:
Twitter didn’t really work for me at all. I think you need a decent audience. But there are tweets like “What startup are you working on?” type questions, and from that, I find you get a couple of views on your profile.
Even though Twitter didn’t really help with the views, one guy tweeted, “Keep posting on Twitter and one day this might become something like Notion.” That really made my day, to be honest.
Launching on Discord:
This worked really well, to be honest, especially given that I was in a lot of Discord servers where there are software devs. If you use the right language that resonates with them, it’s a home run. Not much to say, but don’t use marketing lingo; people don’t like it there.
Instagram and TikTok didn’t really work. Mainly, I think my video didn’t really resonate much.
Finally, Facebook Launch:
The Facebook reels didn’t really do the trick. Then I posted in a bunch of groups, and still, it didn’t really do anything. But then I sent cold DMs on Facebook, and that had a pretty high open rate because I sent them to people who I saw commented on posts related to what my product was solving. Obviously, after a while, Facebook blocks the ability to send DMs.
That’s all for now. Thanks
I’ll post my promo video in the comment section just so that you know the video and why it might have resonated with some platforms. Also this is the first time I made a video and I’m actually proud of making that more than the product itself.
To summarize, for this idea LinkedIn worked really well, because of the algorithm not the ppl commenting and liking which is what I thought should be the way. Followed by Discord groups and Facebook DMs. The video I made seemed to resonate really well with the LinkedIn audience (the engagement was around 60%) despite falling in TikTok and other video sharing platforms.
