Hacker News Reader

Comment by conesus | Hacker News Reader

Marketing is hard for me because I've hired a few folks to do targeted ads and it ended up being a big cost sink. Beyond that, I try to blog regularly and use big screenshots for new features, which helps a bit with SEO and discoverability. But getting NB onto lists? I'm not sure what that requires.

View on HN

I'm a subscriber so I have self-interest in you being successful and I've paid money to help support that. If there's one thing I would encourage/plead you to do, it's to hire one person who will do "advocacy marketing". You said "Marketing is hard" and there's no doubt. But you'll know the right person, because they'll be __more__ excited about talking about your product and how it can be used, and who can use it ... than even you are. Most importantly, they'll just do that one thing. RSS/Newsletters is an area of content that geeks love - so finding someone who wants to __regularly__ talk about that in content, video, <forums that count> would be massive. I'll stop there ;-)

Set up a referral scheme. Anyone who refers a new paid user to NewsBlur gets a month free. Anyone who refers 10 people gets a tshirt. Anyone who refers 100 paid users gets actual cash...

Make sure you run the messaging past a bunch of existing users to make sure you pique their interest but don't alienate them in the process.

@conesus You found your advocacy marketeer :)

More seriously, if you follow this advice, your own users might be the best place to find someone like this.

Nothing much to add. Roy-less? Seriously, why not follow this great advice?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com