How does a guy with no marketing background promote their social media startup? | Hacker News Reader

How does a guy with no marketing background promote their social media startup?

2 pointshelloluis8 comments

I'm currently the cofounder, architect and one-man marketing dept of my startup based in the Philippines and am at a loss about how to go about promoting it.

View on HN

My first guess would be to get on the social media site(Facebook, twitter, etc...) and promote the hell out of your company. Next, I would start up a blog and explain some of the merits and technical innovations of your company. Sites like Reddit and Hacker News can be great for driving traffic plus you may receive useful tips about running a startup.

Ok, so we've got a blog (it's at http://blog.infinite.ly) that I'm currently using as a kind of weekly changelog. I've been maintaining that for a couple months now, but I'm not really getting the kind of interest that I was hoping for. I assume this means I'm not doing it properly.

1.Send your project to friends. 2.Give your project to someone to review. 3.Right a column related to your project 4.Right a column related to an area in which your project may help

I assume you mean "write a column." But where? We're a startup in a developing country, so the interest for that kind of thing over here is pretty thin.

If the company is specific to the Philipines, like "The best clubs in Manila". 1. The approach in the US would be to write a column in a newspaper, but this is quite hard to do. To do this you might want to try to hold a marketing event if its possible, this would allow you to send a press release to a newspaper. Look up "how to write a press release". I am assuming everything is the same as it is here in the US as far as media contact. 2. You could try University, because students are more likely to try new things 3. Marketing in-person at a University. 4. Remember, University students almost everywhere are the same. I think this might be your market even though I don't know what your idea is.

What is your idea?

Well, we're providing small business owners with a toolkit for building what we call "universal fan pages" which are one-page, mobile-friendly websites that contain your branding, your media and the social buzz about your company. Like this one: http://almostgourmet.infinite.ly

I'm not entirely sure if a uni kid would appreciate something like that, although I suppose it's possible to use Infinite.ly for their student organizations and such.

helloluis, in this case you have to have a success story or get a friend to try it out.

In business and life, people ask "How can it benefit me?" before they accept anything.

Put together 3 good selling points. I would hold off on the marketing, Work on getting someone to try it. You don't have to make a profit on the first use, just make sure you show it works. Getting it to work, gives your product value.

University students might indeed be a good test case, because they are more social and more likely to build a good word-of-mouth network for your ideas.

You may want to go to companies and ask them what are their favorite services (e.g. catering services, bands to book, entertainers).

I liked the baked salmon with lemon capers, didnt know salmon was popular in the phillipines...

Interesting. I'll definitely work on trying to get specific people to use the app for their business. It sounds like I'm going to be knocking on a lot of doors.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com