How to Prep if Your Startup Gets on TV | Hacker News Reader

How to Prep if Your Startup Gets on TV

thedailymuse.com

26 pointsacav8 comments

As someone who used to work in the web hosting industry, this article completely ignores the technical side of things of handling _THAT_ much attention.

I've seen startups be hosted on shared hosting plans, get a boat load of traffic, the site gets suspended, and they are dumbfounded as to why it happened!

If you spend the amount of money to launch a start up, get a beefy server, load balance it with at least Varnish, and do some load testing before going on mainstream media. Nothing is more embarrassing as when your site tanks after being advertised on National television.

Fair - It's helpful to ask around, if you can, re: what to expect ahead of time. I've seen Techcrunch posts cause a bigger spike than a Fox national TV appearance (3000-4000 visits, 1-2000 simultaneous) depending on the time of day, and how much the segment is about your company vs about a trend or a topic that your company is commenting on

Well, my advice would kind of be the opposite: don't expect a TV appearance to send your traffic skyrocketing. TV is just not a traffic generator. One major reason: they probably won't give out your URL. Even if you get them to agree to drop the URL in, they will probably forget, or not have time, or they'll get it wrong. Even if they do, it's not going to get you much type-in traffic.

Unless you're going on something like Colbert, just don't expect a boost. And even if you do go on Colbert, most of your traffic will still probably come from /r/colbert.

Well if you're going on Colbert you are most likely Tumblr (like earlier this week).

Well, my advice would kind of be the opposite: don't expect a TV appearance to send your traffic skyrocketing. TV is just not a traffic generator.

This.

Even major print publications. Doesn't even come close to the big online traffic drivers.

Very true so far for us. Our iPad game got a really nice review on the Canadian show 'Reviews on the Run', and that day I think we had only a handful of Canadian downloads (and American). Nothing out of the norm heh.

Another piece of advice (equally for live or non-live TV): Keep mentioning your company name in your answers, even if in a normal conversation you wouldn't. This means if your conversation gets edited heavily (which it will if it's recorded TV) you'll make sure to get your company name in there at least once.

As a former producer: This is a sure way to never get called back again.

Just be yourself. Act natural. TV needs you, not you doing an impression of someone who you've seen on TV.

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