With A Little Help From Your Fans or How To Successfully Launch Your Service
How to rise above the noise? When to launch? How to approach media? What digital platforms and devices to launch on? What features to include?
The list can be made long, eventually ending up causing sleepless nights and same confusion when first acquainted with a Japanese toilet, i.e. pure and simple trial and error. After being exposed to flushing in various ways you didn't even think was possible, you wish you'd known better and had someone kind enough to have informed you in beforehand. What if you'd had someone to ask? Welcome your fans.
Build, Test And Launch Together
Earlier this year I wrote an appreciated post about Why Fans Are Invaluable When Launching Your Service In The Nordics with advice on launch strategies and why creating relationships with your users and turning them into your fans early is the one thing you'll be grateful for when launching your product.
Not Just Flavour of The Month
Today it's fairly easy to get started, so not only do you struggle to get your product out as fast as possible, but fight for attention from users, market and media to show your uniqueness among all the other cool services being launched. Welcome your fans. They give you solid platform to stand on, spread your message, and keep you on track when the world is coming at you, and you're no longer the flavour of the month in the media (if you ever made that far). Jeff Bezos of Amazon hits the core with his advice (Please, watch the whole clip! I never get tired of it.)
"Pay attention to your competitors, obsess over customers"
I was once again happy to join Geek Girl Meetup, and share my tips and advice on the subject, found both on Prezi, embedded below, and on Slideshare. My session (in Swedish) was caught on Bambuser.
Examples of how 23 Video executed its international launch, how Foursquare works with eyeballs, what makes Robert Scoble tickle, and the cruel harsh reality of reaching out to media by Steve O'Hear of TechCrunch Europe.
The Press Release: Whatever you do, don't send PDF. Huge #FAIL. Trust me, I don't open PDF's, nobody does. Your product information and press release should be online, just one click away. Really.
And one final rule that seems quite impossible to follow in the world of tech: Never launch on Fridays! :)
Bonus: Great advice on customer acquisition by Jason Putorti: How Mint.com acquired 1,5M users.
Love right back at You
Thank you all smart and savvy ladies for awesome weekend and all the great feedback, discussions and questions!
More reading on Geek Girl Meetup:
(EN) Henriette Weber
(EN) Monica Svenmarck
(SE) Charlotte Björk
(SE) Therese Göterheim
Pictures by Miriam Olsson & Maria Hagglöf
Presentations (Don't forget to add yours!)
Sessions streamed on Bambuser
Find out more About Me. Ways to make sure You don't miss anything: Subscribe to my Feed, follow my Swedish Startups Twitter list, Startup Advice, connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, Facebook. Or just drop me a line.
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