Il manuale definitivo per far esplodere il lancio del vostro Product Hunt

WTF is Product Hunt? 😳

If you’ve never heard of Product Hunt, I’m gonna guess you’ve been exploring Mars in search of alternative fuels. In that case: could you slip me Elon’s number real quick? 🙃 Don’t worry about the Product Hunt thing, I got you covered 👐.

Product Hunt is the little baby of Ryan Hoover. Ryan is one of those guys that just friggin’ loves everything that’s new and cool. Not just for fun. For Ryan, new products are an opportunity to learn and, most of all, a way of connecting with like-minded people.

Back in 2013, Ryan was looking for a one-stop-shop to discover the hottest new tech products. As he didn’t find anything, he did the entrepreneurial thing and started it himself. In its cute early days as an MVP, Product Hunt was a mailing list, build on this one question:

Quali sono i prodotti più belli che utilizzate?

It’s a question we all ask and it turned out to be one hell of a community builder. Within two weeks, Ryan’s little mailing list had 170 subscribers devouring discoveries from 30 hand-picked contributors, consisting of startup founders, VCs, and prominent bloggers. Ryan was on to something.

Today, Product Hunt is Silicon Valley’s favourite little playground on the web. A tightly-knit community of like-minded geeks who bond over anything hot 🔥 and the new ✨. Not just tech, but also books, podcasts and games — you name it. The site kind of works like reddit, with users posting products and the community making or breaking them with comments and upvotes.

More upvotes will get your product higher on Product Hunt’s frontpage, getting you some solid street cred with a community packed with early adopters, curious investors and avid entrepreneurs. It is the ultimate startup launchpad 🚀.

TL;DR

• Product Hunt è stata fondata da Ryan Hoover.
• come un unico punto vendita per scoprire le novità più interessanti.
• it’s a tightly-knit community of early adopters, investors and entrepreneurs
• facendone il punto di lancio definitivo per le startup.

OK… And why should I care again? 🙄

Avete mai sentito parlare della curva di adozione dei prodotti?

It’s one of those gazillion frameworks they show you in marketing class you then instantly forget about. I did anyway.

Il motivo per cui dovreste preoccuparvi è che volete che le persone inizino a usare il vostro prodotto. Lo volete perché, beh, tutti quelli che costruiscono un prodotto lo vogliono.

Per arrivarci, è necessario capire come un nuovo prodotto si fa strada nel mercato e raggiunge nuovi utenti.

The Product Adoption Curve is something all new kids on the block have to go through. Facebook, Slack, Uber and DVDs (still ring a bell?) — heck, even underwear at some point must have gone through it (hope those do ring a bell?). Some go faster, some go slower. Others just die along the way because they fail to understand how it works.

Le persone che dovete coinvolgere per prime sono innovatori.

Why? Because these are the ones willing to take your product for a spin when it’s still a baby. They‘re okay with it still shitting the bed from time to time 💩. They look beyond the bugs and spartan features to see if your product deserves to exist. They’ll share their findings with the world and, if they like what they see, may even end up promoting your product.

Innovators will get you across the chasm, which is the big wide gap sitting between you and your target masses. Or push you in. Whatever happens, you’ll be smarter than you were yesterday. It’s make or break. Sink or swim.

È così che Facebook, Uber e Slack sono diventati grandi. Pensateci. Tutti e tre hanno iniziato rivolgendosi a un piccolo gruppo di utenti e sono diventati leader nei loro mercati. Facebook è nato da Harvard, affamata di popolarità, Uber da San Francisco, dalla mentalità aperta, e Slack da aziende esperte di tecnologia che volevano fare un beta-testing.

Innovators are like the first pin on a bowling alley. Knock it down and the other pins will fall along. Strike! 🎳

Now for the good part ☝

👉 Product Hunt is one big club of innovators and early adopters.

It’s a rocketship waiting to take your product to the stars ✨. If you want to launch a tech product or service, launch it on Product Hunt. All aboard! 👨‍🚀

Oh, did I mention Product Hunt was acquired by AngelList back in december 2016? You know, the world’s biggest network of angel investors 👼. Doesn’t hurt to get into their attention space.

TL;DR

• Product Hunt è ricco di innovatori e early adopters.
• queste sono le persone che volete che diano un'occhiata al vostro prodotto.
• they’ll give you invaluable feedback
• e probabilmente utilizzeranno e promuoveranno il vostro prodotto se gli piace.
• oh, PH is also owned by the world’s largest network of angel investors

YOLO 🤞 You Only Launch Once

Il vostro prodotto può essere inviato una sola volta. Una volta. Avete una sola possibilità di farlo bene. Fatela fruttare.

Look. If you had one shot. One opportunity.
To seize everything you ever wanted. In one moment.
Would you capture it? Or just let it slip?
(Eminem — Lose Yourself)

I’m your man on the inside. I’ve been to the Product Hunt. I’ve seen things. I survived and I thrived. And now I’m here to help you do the same and better.

Do you remember when Luke Skywalker and his rebels had one shot at destroying the Death Star? This is exactly like that. With the difference that Product Hunt doesn’t do sequels like Star Wars does. You don’t get to destroy the Death Star twice like Luke did.

Questo fa di me il tuo Maestro Yoda? Sì, esattamente quello che significa.

Now, Product Hunt doesn’t do sequels. But it does do spin-offs. You can in fact launch a new feature of your product if it’s cool enough to be marketed on its own and provides real value to the early adopters. In the end, it all comes down to how you sell it (as always).

A full-blown launch of your product is more complicated. You can’t launch your product twice unless its essence is so new and/or improved that it can be considered a new product. Think of it as a reboot of a franchise.

Dopo tutto, giovane Jedi, potresti avere una seconda possibilità di distruggere la Morte Nera.

TL;DR

• si ha solo una possibilità di lancio su Product Hunt (più o meno).
• do or do not — there is no try
• Sono Yoda

1. Get in the tribe. Act as if you belong 😏

Conoscere il proprio pubblico. Prima di pensare a un lancio su Product Hunt, dovreste sperimentare in prima persona di cosa si tratta. Cosa spinge questi early adopter?

Iscrivetevi, immergetevi e giocate. Tuffatevi a capofitto. Imparate a conoscere i dettagli della comunità e diventate parte di essa.

Let’s cover some basics first 📋

• La caccia quotidiana 👀
  Product Hunt’s frontpage showcases products according to the number of upvotes they got (and more — there’s un algoritmo segreto). Il prodotto che finisce in cima alla classifica alla fine della giornata è il vincitore. Alle 12:00 PST la pagina si aggiorna e la caccia ricomincia.
• Voti in su 👍
  Upvotes are Product Hunt’s equivalent of Facebook’s likes. If you like a product, you can vote it up and push it up the page. The more votes, the higher on the page it will end up at the end of the day.
• Hunters 🕵
  Gli Hunter sono membri con diritti speciali a caccia e pubblicarli su Product Hunt. I loro poteri speciali sono stati conferiti loro da altri cacciatori, rendendoli così il scelti della comunità.
• Creatori 👨‍🔬
  Questi sono i membri che hanno creato il prodotto.

Once you got the basics figured out, have your curiosity take the lead. Lurk around, check out similar products to yours and learn about their launch strategies. Spy on titles, taglines, logos, screenshots, comments and general wording. Steal with your eyes 👀.

TL;DR

• immerse yourself in the PH — community
• conoscere le basi: upvotes, hunters e makers
• fruga e ruba con gli occhi.

2. Hunt down your Hunter 🏹

Niente Hunter = niente lancio di Product Hunt. L'avete già capito.

There’s hunters and there’s hunters. What you want is one of the Cacciatori di cavalli. Questi sono i migliori del gruppo. Il crème de la crème. Il scelti tra i scelti.

Cose da tenere in considerazione per trovare il Frodo che porterà il vostro One Product To Rule The All fino alla montagna di Product Hunt:

• Numero di follower 👥
  Quando un Hunter invia un prodotto, tutti i suoi follower riceveranno una notifica. Più follower ci sono, più visibilità c'è, più è probabile che si arrivi in cima alla pagina.
• Storia dei messaggi di successo🏅
  Quindi si sa che ha un buon gioco.
• Affinità con il vostro tipo di prodotto 🤓
  Quindi sai che riceve perché il vostro prodotto è fantastico.
  (we’re going to assume yours is, in fact, awesome)

Having a good hunter on your side is like being in pole position on the starting grid of a Formula 1 race. Your chances of finishing first are significantly higher 🏁.

Nail your pitch 🔨

You choosing a hunter doesn’t mean the hunter chooses you. You may be madly in love with your product, your hunter probably isn’t (yet). It’s up to you to make him/her fall for it.

Top hunters get pitched multiple times a day. Don’t waste their time. Make sure yours is on point. Pitching is an art: it takes time to perfect.

Good thing you’ve been doing it ever since you got started with your idea, right?

Still, I guess it doesn’t hurt to refresh your memory with these 6 golden pointers from top hunter Bram Kanstein ✌:

• Prima di tutto: mostratevi entusiasti e rendete il vostro discorso personale!
• Tell about the problem you’re solving 🎯
• Essere voilà 👉 mostrate la vostra soluzione
• Show early results if you have them 📈
• Why are you the man/woman/team that’s going to take this to the moon? 🌝
• How can the person you pitch to help you? Asking for specific feedback is also good. It’s difficult to help when your question is simply: “what do you think?”

These are from Bram’s killer article 5 ways not to pitch your product — a must-read if you’re looking to get your pitch right.

Bram is not just any hunter, he is the hunter who launched the #1 most upvoted product of all time on Product Hunt. This product, Startup Stash — a carefully curated directory of startup tools and resources — also happened to be his own product.

Bram era #1 nella mia lista di caccia Salesflare e leggere i suoi articoli faceva parte della mia strategia per arrivare a lui.

Rules like this don’t mean you can’t get creative with your pitch. My idea to hook him was to pitch Salesflare in the exact ways Bram tells you not to in his article. Something like this:

Ciao Bram,

You’ll be amazed by this. We built the Uber of Sales! It’s a unique CRM that is going to change the way sales is being done. We’ve been working our asses off for more than 2 years but now our baby has finally been born. Everyone we showed it to loved it! It’s going to be yuge!

Questo era solo per attirare la sua attenzione. Credo che sia importante distinguersi. Tendo anche a fare l'opposto di ciò che la gente mi dice di fare. Avrei continuato a lanciare l'Salesflare nel modo giusto.

Il fatto è che non ne ho mai avuto bisogno. Vedete, Bram aveva appena appuntato questo messaggio sulla sua bacheca di Twitter:

Credo che fosse un po' stufo di e-mail come quella che stavo per inviargli. I tweet sono un'altra cosa. Abbiamo deciso di inviargli il nostro video.

He went for it! 🙌

Remember to show your solution and be voilà? 👆

Well, nothing is more voilà than a video.

We had a video in the making for about 2 months and it was one of the crucial factors in deciding when to go full-in on our Product Hunt Launch. Not only does it help you pitch to hunters — it’s also kind of a must for your Product Hunt page once you actually get hunted.

TL;DR

• segnalati come miglior cacciatore.
• lui/lei vi darà un vantaggio nella vostra corsa al vertice.
• guardare (1) il numero di follower (2) la storia dei post di successo (3) l'affinità con il vostro prodotto.
• segnalare il proprio progetto.
• fai un video al tuo prodotto

3. Cook up your Product Hunt Starter Pack 👨‍🍳

Now that you’ve found yourself an experienced general, it’s time to gear up for battle.

Elementi essenziali da preparare:

• Nome del prodotto 💁
  Piuttosto semplice. Ma qui si può ancora fare la differenza. L'abbiamo fatto Salesflare CRM per assicurarci che le persone possano trovarci facilmente quando cercano un CRM su Product Hunt.
• URL del sito web corretto (+ URL di App/Play Store) 🔗
  Throw them all in there. If you don’t have a website yet, you can just create a landing page with general information on your product and a download link if possible.
• Tagline ☝
  Accattivante e chiaro. Siamo andati per Un CRM intelligente per le vendite per le startup che si affidano alla tecnologia. CRM vendite per definire chiaramente la nostra posizione nello spazio CRM, intelligente come nostro principale elemento di differenziazione e le startup che si basano sulla tecnologia to indicate who we built it for. Resist the urge to be overly creative here, you don’t want to confuse people.
• Logo 👁‍🗨
  Sure, you can just put your logo. But this won’t exactly get you points with the Product Hunt cool kids. Make it move. Like Jagger. We had a Salesflare Product Hunt cat pop up in our logo and combined this with some conceptual animations. It doesn’t have to the next Star Wars movie, just make it move. People are attracted by moving things. Especially when they’re quickly scanning a front page filled with all kinds of stuff.

• URL del profilo di Maker Product Hunt 👨‍🔬
  Assicuratevi che i membri del team considerati creatori del prodotto siano tutti su Product Hunt prima del lancio, in modo che il vostro Hunter possa elencare tutti come creatori. Questo non serve solo a farvi fare bella figura. L'inserimento nell'elenco dei Maker vi darà il diritto di commentare, fondamentale per avviare una conversazione con la comunità.
• Video/Screenshot 🖼
  La vostra possibilità di essere voilà. Don’t just stop at the video (yes, it autoplays) — your screenshots should be equally engaging. We put up animated GIFs showcasing different Salesflare features. You don’t have to put GIFs. I’ve seen great Product Hunt pages with static screenshots. Thing is GIFs just provide more value because… well, because they move and people love stuff that moves.

• Preparate il vostro commento introduttivo 💬
  It’s up to you to kick off the conversation on your product once it’s live. You don’t want to be putting something together in a rush at the very last minute, so make sure you write something beforehand you can just copy-paste when the time is right. Start off with why you built the product and lay out some of its core functionalities. Specify what kind of feedback you’re looking for. Mention the special promotion you have in store for the community (more on that later) and don’t forget to give your hunter a shootout for hunting you. Here’s ours:

• Tags 🔖
  Rendete il vostro prodotto facile da trovare aggiungendo tag pertinenti. Alcuni esempi di tag che abbiamo scelto per Salesflare includono tecnologia, vendite, comunicazione con i clienti, estensione chrome e web. Don’t worry if you don’t get them right from the start, you can make changes afterwards. Product Hunt does closely watch these tags and may remove them they don’t agree. Feel free to chat with them if you think they made a mistake. We had a few tags removed and then put back again after we explained why we thought they were relevant for Salesflare.
• Data di avvio della caccia 📅
  As a rule of thumb, Product Hunt’s busiest days of the week range from Tuesday until Thursday (I guess early adopters in California party from Friday till Sunday and then die on Monday — fair enough). Busy means more competition, but busy also means more people to upvote, try your product and leave you with valuable feedback. Ending up on top may be very exciting, the quantity of users getting in touch with you is probably more valuable for your business on the long-term. Tuesday is arguably better than Wednesday because you’ll have 24 hours more to be upvoted and make it into Product Hunt’s weekly digest. With all this in mind, we chose Tuesday and took about one and a half week to prepare our launch as soon as we got the green light from our hunter. You could easily do with less, but gathering support pre-launch while continuing to attend to every-day business stuff is no walk in the park. You don’t want to skip any of your shuteye time prior to your launch either— it’ll get kind of crazy once you’re live.
• Tempo di lancio della caccia 🕒
  A new hunt is launched every day at 12am PST. People typically say to post immediately after midnight, but this is probably not the best way to go. Product Hunt’s secret algorithm is said to penalize age in ranking products, so you’re probably better off waiting a few hours as the US’ awakening comes closer. This is if you’re confident your own network can help you get initial traction in the first hours, so you’ll be pretty high as soon as first New York and then San Francisco crawls out of bed. For Salesflare we initially proposed to be posted around midnight to our hunter but he said he found posting around 3–4am PST (12–1pm local time here in Antwerp) to be the most effective. This gives you enough time to push yourself up in the first hour and be right where you should be as Product Hunt’s core members start checking their smartphones hanging over their morning coffees.

Once you’re done, send everything over to your hunter in a nice email, well in time before D-Day. Use a Google Drive folder to share your screenshots and other media so you can still make last-minute changes if needed. We sent a Google Calendar Invite to set date and time to avoid any confusion for everyone involved.

TL;DR

• preparare gli elementi essenziali per il lancio.
• name — clear & easy searchable
• tagline — catch & clear
• logo — make it move
• video — just have a video
• screenshots — make them stand out (by making them move)
• prepare your intro comment — why, what, thank hunter, promotion
• set a day — (1) somewhere between Tuesday and Thursday (2) take your time to prepare
• set a time —(1) after midnight PST (2) before the US wakes up
• porta tutto al tuo cacciatore, su un piatto d'argento.

4. Gather your fans 🤗

La formula segreta per un lancio di successo di Product Hunt è costituita da due elementi:

• un ottimo prodotto (ovvio)
• trazione iniziale

Both things you can control. If your product is not great, stop reading now and come back once it is. Don’t worry too much about some features not being entirely on point yet. Remember, these are early adopters — they’re okay with your product still being an infant and will happily help you find and kill early bugs as long as they see some real value.

Getting initial traction on Product Hunt is a little bit like getting your startup its first 100 customers. You may have the greatest product the world has ever seen— if people don’t have it in front of them, they won’t upvote it. Don’t make yourself any illusions: even early adopters won’t scroll endlessly to find your product. It has to be right there as soon as the site or app loads. Slap ‘m in the face with it.

This means you’ll need a fair amount of upvotes as soon as Product Hunt rush hour kicks in.

Avere un cacciatore di prim'ordine al vostro fianco vi porterà già molto lontano, ma ricordate che le battaglie vengono vinte dai soldati, non dai generali.

Now, you cannot just ask all of your friends and family to upvote you. Product Hunt was built to make it easy to discover the world’s greatest new products, not to force-feed your own stuff to whoever. It is precisely this that makes Product Hunt so great at showcasing the best things out there. Not only should you respect that, Product Hunt’s algorithm will also increasingly push down your product if too many votes from brand new accounts come rolling in. So, what can you do? Here’s a few ideas:

1) Trovate i vostri amici su Product Hunt 👫

È probabile che abbiate già alcuni amici su Product Hunt. Product Hunt sincronizza le persone che seguite su Twitter, quindi la vostra prima mossa dovrebbe essere quella di verificare chi di loro potrebbe essere disposto a mostrare un po' di supporto e a notificare loro il vostro imminente lancio.

2) Chiedete comunque agli altri amici 🙈

You’d be surprised how many people know about Product Hunt without having an account. Maybe they’ve been peeking from time to time without really getting into upvoting. Or maybe they know about it but didn’t take the time to take a proper look yet. Your launch may very well be the perfect occasion for these people to sign up.

I know it says friends but what I really mean is network: friends, family, customers, business contacts, your dog,… Anyone you have a direct line with. We went through our contact lists and started asking people we thought of as early adopters if they had a Product Hunt account. If they did, we told them about our launch. If they didn’t, we told them about the community and how awesome it is. If it’s their jam, they’ll make an account and you have them onboard. If it’s not, you’ll leave them be.

Sebbene Product Hunt non sia solo un canale di marketing da sfruttare, potete comunque parlarne alle persone. In effetti, Product Hunt ha bisogno di questo tipo di visibilità per continuare a crescere. Molti dei miei amici sono utenti attivi da quando li abbiamo introdotti nella community. Assicuratevi di farlo prima del lancio e non il giorno stesso.

3) Creare un foglio di Google e seguire i lavori 📈

Now you’ll have tens or even hundreds of people lined up to support your launch and it’s your responsibility to make sure they come through. Keep track of the people you contacted so you can effectively follow up on the big day. Include name, channel (Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter,…) and status (did they vote already?).

4) Entrare nel radar di persone che hanno votato prodotti simili 💡

Cercate le persone che hanno votato prodotti simili ai vostri e assicuratevi che vi conoscano.

You can actually scrape upvoters of products posted on PH by using this little tool. Just put in the URL of the product and your Developer Token (head over to API Dashboard under your Product Hunt profile to get this) and you’ll get the Twitter handles of all the upvoters for that given products.

There’s tons of things you can do with this. For starters, you can follow them on both Product Hunt and Twitter. You can also tweet them or even target them with emails or Facebook Ads (you’ll need to do some data enriching first though).

5) Cercare i social gatekeeper 🌪

Prestate particolare attenzione alle persone con molti follower e cercate di convincerle a condividere il lancio di Product Hunt con la loro rete.

6) Chat is king 💬

The magical word at this stage is chatting. Remember you need these people to commit twice: you need them to sign up beforehand and you need them to upvote you on the big day. This is why a channel like email will be far less effective here: it doesn’t allow for an engaging dialogue. Sure, you can send an email a week beforehand and another one on launch day but you’ll have zero control over people really making accounts and being active on Product Hunt prior to your launch. This may negatively affect your page ranking. We chose not to take that chance.

You can think of Product Hunt’s frontpage as a Google Search Results page — only the top gets clicked and visibility goes downhill fast as you go down the page. It’s like a snowball effect — make sure you have a big ball already once the heavy snow starts falling down. If your product really is great, the community will take over and make sure you stay on top.

BONUS: Thunderclap — it⚡👏

Don’t know what Thunderclap is?

Thunderclap is a platform you can use to create social media campaigns built on the strength of your network. You’ll basically have your friends and followers support a purpose of your choosing by means of Facebook or Twitter posts. Write up a message, set a date and invite your friends.

As soon as the campaign starts (once you’re live on PH) — tweets or Facebook status updates will go out from all the people who joined your campaign. At the same time. Needless to say, this will seriously amplify your reach.

I’m going to be straight with you guys here: we didn’t do Thunderclap.
Why not? We forgot. We just forgot.

TL;DR

• grande prodotto + trazione iniziale = grande successo su PH.
• trovare amici su PH
• ask your other friends if they’re on PH — if they’re not, tell them about it ask if they want to be
• creare un foglio Google per il follow-up.
• scrape upvoters di prodotti simili su PH => target
• trovatevi degli influencer.
• chiamate tutti quelli che conoscete per informarli del lancio del vostro PH.
• impostare una campagna Thunderclap
• !! don’t forget to set up a Thunderclap campaign (like we did)

5. Butter up the community 💆

Fate sentire speciale il Prodotto Hunters.

Perché?

We’ve been over this.

Because they’re innovators and because you need their help to cross the chasm. Besides, as you are in the early stages of your product, their feedback will be invaluable. The more, the merrier.

It’s common courtesy to offer Product Hunt members special deals. If done right, Product Hunt will be a gift that keeps on giving. It’s only right you give something back. For Salesflare, we gave the club a very steep discount (very steep… of the likes we don’t give out anymore, but, hey, it was early days!).

TL;DR

• fanno sentire il Prodotto Hunter speciale e amato.
• dando loro un supercalifragilistiche accordo

6. Become a cat person 😼

In case you haven’t noticed: Product Hunt loves cats.

Un giorno il fan di Product Hunt Jesse Thomas si è offerto di disegnare una maglietta. Il gattino Glasshole è stata una delle idee che ha inviato. Al team di Product Hunt è piaciuta così tanto che ha ordinato una serie di magliette e adesivi e ha iniziato a inviarli ai primi membri della comunità. Questi ultimi, a loro volta, hanno condiviso i loro regali Kitty sui social media, facendo nascere l'idea della mascotte Kitty.

While Product Hunt never really changed their logo, the kitty is everywhere. It’s big in social media posts and has been adapted to launch several Product Hunt projects like books, podcasts and their Snapchat account.

So if you’re looking to get that meowntain of upvotes from the community, you’ll better put turn into a crazy cat lady for the day.

TL;DR

• Al prodotto Hunt piacciono i gatti.
• per qualche motivo

7. Dress up your website for the big day💄

Your Product Hunt launch is a day of celebration so it’s only right your website looks all nice and pretty for the occasion, don’t you think?

It’s also a great chance to once again highlight that special Product Hunt deal you prepared for your fans. Shine bright like a diamond! 💎

È possibile utilizzare IntroBar (yes, it’s free) to put up a nice-looking welcome bar on top of your website when people click through via your PH-link (this will end in /?ref=product hunt). Here’s what Salesflare’s website looked like on her big day.

TL;DR

• Fate brillare il vostro sito web per il suo grande giorno.

8. Set the internet on fire 🔥

OK.

You’re live on Product Hunt. Showtime! 💥👊

Spargere la voce. Tirate fuori le armi più grosse. Liberate il Kraken!

The goal is simple: to make sure the whole world knows you’re on Product Hunt. Now remember: Product Hunt frowns upon asking for upvotes. So don’t. Instead, say things like ‘come say hi’ or ‘join the conversation’. Just let people know you’re on Product Hunt but spare no effort.

There’s this rumour that Product Hunt’s algorithm penalizes you if you send people directly to your PH — page. To this day, I have not found compelling evidence of this being true. We were careful about it though, sending people to the search results page for the the query ‘Salesflare’.

Segue un elenco di tattiche di guerriglia del PH che farebbero invidia anche a Rambo.

Let’s hustle ✌

1) Go through your list 📄

Follow up on the people you know have a Product Hunt account following your pre-launch efforts and give them a quick reminder. Make sure you miss no one and be thorough. Just because people say they will take a look, doesn’t mean they will. Check if their vote is already there and follow up again if needed. They may have just forgotten — it’s your big day, not theirs. Be careful not to spam though. We called it quits after two reminders.

2) Avvisare i clienti con e-mail e/o livechat 🗣

I vostri clienti hanno già acquistato/abbonato al vostro prodotto, quindi deve piacergli. Seguite quelli già presenti nella vostra lista seguendo la vostra strategia di pre-lancio. Gli altri possono essere contattati tramite e-mail e livechat sul vostro sito web (se lo avete). Abbiamo fatto comparire un Intercom messaggio che notificava agli utenti la nostra campagna non appena si erano iscritti a Salesflare. Anche in questo caso, la chat ha una marcia in più rispetto all'e-mail quando si tratta di istruire il destinatario su cosa sia Product Hunt e su cosa debba fare se vuole aiutarvi.

3) Inondare Twitter 🌊

Most of Product Hunt’s core audience is on Twitter so it would be great if you get people to talk about your launch on there. Go for both quality and quantity. It’s a good idea to prepare some tweets the day before so you don’t lose time coming up with something funny in the middle of the storm. Tweet as soon as you’re live and keep it up as you reach several milestones (every 100 upvotes for example).

Rendete i vostri tweet divertenti e simpatici con GIF e meme, in modo che i vostri follower siano più propensi a condividerli. Poi, continuate la conversazione. La gente inizierà a twittare e a retwittare. Date una mano, restate umili, ringraziate, mettete like e retwittate. Ripetete.

Ringrazia il tuo cacciatore, i tuoi upvoter e Product Hunt stesso. Abbiamo ringraziato ogni upvoter con un tweet personalizzato in cui abbiamo taggato Product Hunt per aumentare le possibilità di essere apprezzati e ritwittati.

Suggerimento professionale – you can automate these tweets by hooking up Zapier to a Google Sheet you fill up with Twitter handles. Beware of the fact that both your DMs and Tweets per day are limited. We sent our tweets out by hand on launch day — this makes it more personal too— and had final automated thank you’s go out the day after.

4) Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest,… 🎈

Oltre a Twitter, utilizzate tutti i canali che avete un certo seguito per diffondere la notizia.

Facebook is obvious. We posted the same kind of stuff as we did on Twitter — just a little less because it’s somewhat harder to make something go viral there using hashtags and mentions. Also have team members post from personal accounts.

Apply the same strategy to LinkedIn. Although you might want to put up a small blog post there while you’re at it — those get great visibility these days. Be sure to have it prepared though.

Anche Instagram, Snapchat e Pinterest possono essere ottimi. Tutto dipende dal tipo di prodotto. Rilasciate palloncini ovunque, ma ricordate di adattare sempre il vostro messaggio di conseguenza.

5) Facebook Groups and Slack Chats 😏

Where do people on the internet hang out these days? Nowadays, you’re probably best off looking at Facebook Groups and Slack Chats.

A lot of geographical regions have their own dedicated Product Hunt community. Just ask for access to as many as possible prior to your launch and keep track of which ones they allow you to. Examples of Groups we posted in include Product Hunt France, Product Hunt Berlin and Product Hunt London. Make sure to be active before your launch so you’re not a total stranger when you post about your launch.

You can also post in other Groups on stuff like startups, entrepreneurship and growth hacking but it’s not as easy. Increase your chances by being a valuable member and preferably having a good relation with the group admin. You can try to post about your launch with a post that provides actual value to the community. For example, we put together a post on some of our pre-launch marketing tactics — then referring to our launch in the first comment. This worked for some groups, not all of them.

Gli early adopter e gli imprenditori si ritrovano sempre più spesso nelle comunità di chat Slack dedicate. Le regole sono le stesse: esplorare in anticipo e impegnarsi con la comunità prima di chiedere qualcosa. Potete iniziare a cercare le comunità Slack pertinenti qui e qui.

6) reddit and Hacker News 💣

Reddit and HackerNews can be equally powerful channels to get the word out on your PH launch. But, again, you’ll need to prepare this beforehand. Write a post that brings value and isn’t too spammy. It’s probably also a good idea to build up some karma on your account beforehand as well. Make sure you have some guys/girls ready to upvote your post so people actually get to see it. The share your startup thread over at the /startups subreddit is a great place to start.

7) A yuuuuuuge email campaign 📫

“Stick a fork in email, because it’s D-O-N-E.”

It’s not.

Email is still one of the backbones of the Internet. I’m sure you agree and have a big fat email list all ready to fire the news about Product Hunt launch at. If you don’t, start right now.

Your email doesn’t have to be too fancy. Just put the word out: explain a little about what Product Hunt is all about and include a call-to-action to join the conversation.

8) Make friends. Help out & create value 👬

By now it will probably have hit you that a lot of this stuff has to do with network and preparation. Sure, you can try to pull off some last-minute hustle and hope for the best but it won’t get you very far if no one knows about you.

The single best piece of advice I can give you is to make friends online. This is not too different from making friends in real life. Just start talking, ask about projects, help out where you can, show support, throw in a joke or two… You know how to be a human being, right?

This will all take quite some time, but if you’re real about it, it won’t feel like work. Before you know it you’ll have a whole army ready to die for you and your Product Hunt glory. Time to light sh!t up!

TL;DR

• make sure the whole world knows you’re on PH using guerrilla tactics
• seguire la lista.
• continuate a chiacchierare.
• Assicuratevi che ogni tweet su Twitter riguardi il lancio del vostro PH.
• repeat for other channels — consider blog post on LinkedIn
• fare bella figura nei gruppi di Facebook e nelle chat di Slack.
• ottenere un serio karma su reddit e HackerNews.
• una campagna e-mail enorme.
• make friends — be a human being

9. Fly high on comments and caffeine ✈

Leggendo questo articolo fino a qui, potreste pensare che Product Hunt sia tutto incentrato sugli upvotes. It’s not.

Upvotes are easy. A lot of people on Product Hunt will give you one just because you have a nice logo or because your screenshot moves. Maybe it’s because you look pretty in your profile picture ☺ who knows.

It’s all about sparking a conversation about your product and upvotes will make it easier to get that going. These are early adopters — product enthusiasts who will show a genuine interest in why and how you built your product. They have tons of value to give you, make it easy for them to do that. It’s up to you to take the lead, help people out and demonstrate your appreciation for constructive criticism.

If handled well, your PH page will become a treasure of ideas and connections. From the second you’re live, gear up to quickly answer any question that pops up. Always stay positive, even if people are grilling you for no reason. Thank people for their feedback. Lead by example.

Assicuratevi di avere la vostra pagina PH presidiata 24 ore su 24. Avete sempre a disposizione una persona per le domande tecniche. Anche queste arriveranno.

Your Product Hunt launch is going to be one of those SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK kind of days. And after it’s going to be one of those SLEEP FOR A WEEK kind of weeks. Which of course you won’t be able to do since your traffic, signups and requests will be going through the roof and you won’t know where to look first.

We’re loving it. I’m sure you will too.

TL;DR

• i voti sono sopravvalutati.
• it’s about getting people to talk about your product
• la tua occasione per brillare
• lead the conversation — always stay positive
• assicurarsi di avere nel team persone sveglie 24 ore su 24.
• preparatevi alla privazione del sonno.

10. The Aftermath 💥

Se fatto bene, Product Hunt è un regalo che continua a dare.

Fatto bene means finishing in the top 5 of the day. This will have you highlighted in PH’s newsletter the next day, which will be sent out to (hundreds of) thousands of people. You will also be picked up and featured on sites like http://thetopfives.net/ e http://thenews.im/ oltre a vari account Twitter. A due giorni dal lancio avevamo ancora un sacco di nuovi upvotes.

Una settimana dopo, eravamo ancora tutti impegnati a seguire gli effetti della nostra campagna Product Hunt.

• 878 voti positivi
• 2° prodotto più votato del giorno
• #1 CRM su Product Hunt
• 250+ nuove prove Salesflare
• Oltre 150 menzioni su Twitter
• Oltre 500 nuovi follower su Twitter
• Oltre 4000 visitatori del sito web
• Chattare su Intercom è diventato un lavoro a tempo pieno

Effects weren’t just short-term.

A parte la mania quotidiana, Product Hunt sta rapidamente guadagnando popolarità come fonte di grandi applicazioni. Il sito sta riuscendo a rendere pubblico uno spazio tradizionalmente dominato da directory come Capterra e GetApp a pagamento.

It’s more than just a launch vehicle for some early-morning traction — it’s also a directory of great products people trust more than alternatives.

In fact, several startups (including ourselves) have seen their Product Hunt feature generating high quality leads long after they were featured: more than 3 years after we still get about 10 signups per month from it. This is why becoming the most upvoted CRM was such a big deal for us. Salesflare is right there when people search for CRM on Product Hunt. Another strategy we’ve worked on is to target resourceful PH collections we feel are close to our space and customers and try to get included.

This comes to show there’s more to Product Hunt than just a day of madness. It’s a one-time opportunity that, if seized well, will bear fruits far beyond early traction and feedback.

TL;DR

• PH is a gift that keeps on giving — if done right
• mirate alla top 5.
• Il PH può essere una fonte sostenibile di lead.

Your move 👊

Ecco, giovane padawan.

Non ho più nulla da insegnarvi. Rendimi orgoglioso.

If you’re not so sure about that, feel free to hit me up on on Twitter @gillesdc. Ask me anything or tell me about your project. I love to chat — you probably got that already.

Oh, and come say hi on Product Hunt 😸