The complete list of actionable items to start building pre-launch buzz. The day you launch your startup is a monumental day. It’s sure to be something you have shed blood, sweat, and tears working towards. What people tend to overlook is the amount of effort it takes to start building buzz before your launch a product or company. In the beginning, all you are armed with is an idea, your creativity, and the internet. Depending on who is embarking on this journey, results may vary. You may have all the ideas in the world to start executing on, or you may be clueless. If you fall on the clueless end of the spectrum, take a look at some of these ideas. Everyone might no work for you, but hopefully you’ll be able to take some of these ideas and run with them! marketing 6 Months before Launch Goal: Work on the right product idea that excites your beta customers. Set up accounts on , , , , , , , , and . Facebook Twitter Instagram LinkedIn Pinterest Google+ YouTube Snapchat UNUM messenger Use a tool like or to make social media management easy. Buffer Hootsuite Get to know the influencers in your area and start to connect with them. Post content related to your industry and start building up a reputation in your space. Wherever you share it, just start getting the word out and establishing yourself as a thought leader. Sign up for a to easily start creating amazing custom graphics. Canva Start using a tool like to begin creating video content to get the word out about your product. Video is a very powerful tool. RendrFX Participate on sites like and in the discussions and earn karma points. This will help to build up your reputation for when you shamelessly plug yourself later on. Reddit hackernews Get active on forums like for topics related to your product. Answer questions and be a good samaritan. It’s alright to have a small plug at the bottom of your answers if it’s relevant. Quora also is a great place to see what popular questions people are answering in your industry. Quora Set up your blog and post interesting content related to your product. Post about the the problem you aim to solve. Include media to display the human side of your company such as photos of your team, office, videos of fun events, etc. Popular companies like and have began hosting their blogs on to make things easy. It’s a breeze to set up and it looks awesome! Slack UNUM messenger Medium Start trying to guest post on niche blogs in your space. Also try to start writing for bigger publications like , , , , , and other similar publications. Fast Company Inc Entrepreneur Huffington Post Mashables Get a good brand name and register your site. You could use to brainstorm on the brand name. Then scoop up the domain on a site like . nameninja GoDaddy Create a splash page. You can use a site like — with a signup form to begin collecting emails and other contact information. is how my splash page looked. launchrock Here Build a conceptual prototype of your product with . See how I build my prototype . InVision here Sign up for to start sending emails to the people who pre-register for your product and to keep them updated. See the introduction email I sent . Mail Chimp here From your small network created in the previous steps, get a few target users to sign up for the alpha/beta of your product. Choose the exact day you want to launch, so you can begin counting down. Make sure this is thought through and you give yourself enough time. The last thing you want is to have to push back the release date after you hyped it up in a big way. 3 Months Before Launch Goal: Build a kick-ass product that people will love. Step it up and build a more informative landing page that has a clear call to action (signup/phone number to contact/buy the product, etc.) You can easily use a theme to make it look great. See everything I did to build my website in this article . Wordpress here Make your logo and create branding for your product. You can use a site like to get something basic, or find someone amazing on a site like to do all of your branding. I found someone who did an amazing job on our branding named . Fiverr Dribbble Ramin Nasibov Keep producing great content and distributing it widely to get the word out about your product. Submit your content to sites like , , , and other submission sites (especially niche submission sites relevant to your product, content, and industry.) StumbleUpon Digg Zest Repurpose your content. Don’t let the things you make fizzle out. Change up and reuse content by altering up the way it’s delivered. You can repurpose your content for sites like , , and others. YouTube Slideshare Cultivate a relationship with bloggers and the media in your field. are some tips to cultivating the blogger relationships. If you can get bloggers like or interested, the idea could spread like wildfire. Here Robert Scoble Ryan Hoover Start attending startup related events — keep building your network and keep exchanging business cards. Make your brand known. is a lost of some startup related events. Here List your startup on and . Angel List CrunchBase 1 Month Before the Launch Goal: Start to get things polished up and lay the foundation for launch. Optimize your site for speed as new customers may not be patient enough for the site to load if it takes too long. are 21 tips to speed your site. Here Do basic SEO for your site to bring customers through search engines. If you have an app, start to think through your ASO strategies. are some basic SEO strategies and are some basic ASO strategies. Here here Setup in your site and monitor your site daily. Track visits, bounce rate, traffic sources, time spent on site, etc. Google Analytics Set up pixels on your website to start gathering information on your traffic using . This will help you retarget your traffic. Be sure to set up as well. Google Tag Manager Facebook Pixel Get involved in online groups like , , , and . Come say hello to me in the Slack community where I’m a moderator by joining ! Facebook groups LinkedIn groups Google+ communities Slack communities Buffer here Learn to use social monitoring tools like to track your brand across the social media. howsociable Start using more robust tools like to grow your social audience. Using automated processes and bots can help you crush social media with minimal ongoing effort. FollowLiker Make a pre-launch video like from Dollar Shave Club. this one 1 Week Before the Launch Goal: Time to button up. Make sure everything is perfect for launch day. Test your product over and over again. Really, do this as much as you can. People don’t typically give a second chance. After internal testing, you could use services like to find out critical bugs and scalability issues. 99tests Prepare a blog post for your launch. Talk about things like why your building the product, what problem it solves, what it was like making it, etc. People love to see the personal side of a product. See . How to write a product launch blog post Write a good press release. A press release is content that media outlets can use directly for a story on your product. It’s written in the third person and talks about your product, team, and advantages of your product. Learn to how to write a press release by reading . tips to write your press release Create viral content around your launch — emotion evoking stories, videos, and pictures that people could share in social media easily. Read more about how to create viral content . here Create interesting and on content related to your product (stats, benefits, user demographics, comparison to existing products) to post in your blog. infographics slides Tease your followers with posts that give them a preview of the product in a fun and entertaining way. Without going overboard, give a bikini –reveal (enough to keep it interesting without exposing everything.) Read to see how to create hype around your product. this article Create fun contests (quizzes, social games, etc.) for your social followers — throw in some freebies. Some of ’s most popular tweets have been . Buffer giveaway tweets Write personally to bloggers (give exclusives for the big ones) and give them a compelling story. Bloggers like to write interesting content, so make your story a coherent and a powerful one. Request them not to leak the story until your launch day. See how to get bloggers to write about you . here Collect a list of all email contacts you and your team knows. Keep these in your or at the least in a single CSV file if nothing else. CRM Prepare a video demo of your product and record interviews with the team and your initial customers — post them on your . Keep it short and fun. is a great tool for these videos. YouTube channel RendrFX Consider adding something like to your website to be able to live chat with early customers and get conversations flowing. Intercom Create a kick-ass presentation of your product covering the problem, your solution, benefits, etc. Post them on your blog and send it over to any blogger who shows interest in your product. Consider using to add some flair to your presentation. Prezi Launch Day Goal: Get your product in front of as many people as possible. Also, make sure to keep listening, responding to feedback, and tracking the results. Submit your product to . If people love your idea, you will see some major traction from this channel. is a necessity for launches. Product Hunt Product Hunt Post the how-to’s, presentation, videos, any testimonial you received from your beta users on your blog. Make your blog the central repository of everything related to your product. This is how you can start to establish yourself as an industry leader through content. Schedule two dozen tweets to go every hour — each covering a facet of your product — with an appropriate URL in your site. are 31 Tweet Ideas For Your Startup’s First Month on Twitter. Here Submit links in and . hackernews Reddit Get your team tuned into social media and have everyone readily alert to receive feedback. Monitor your site metrics — traffic, load, etc. Respond to email queries as fast as possible. If all your hard work is paying off, you should be getting flooded! Or you could just not launch. See Eric Reis’s post on why you shouldn’t launch . Post Launch Thank any blogger who has covered your event. Send them an email and give them a call if you are able to. Be active on social media and engage customers who mention your product and collect their feedback. Take their negative feedback without being defensive. Fix the bugs and work on feature requests if they make sense. Start to prioritize feature requests in a backlog. Write tutorials to help your customer use your features better. Continue to keep your training material current as your product evolves. As your product continues to grow, ensure you are educating people on your product. Consider adopting a like to educate your . learning management system Northpass customers and users Summary It’s a lot of work to build buzz around your product. Not to mention, the time you have to spend actually making the product itself. It all can seem overwhelming, but you just need to craft a plan and then start chipping away. Be realistic and list out the things you want to do. Make a rough road map of what you want to get done and when. You may not get everything done, but you need the plan to stay efficient. Hopefully this list helps! If you have any suggestions to add, let me know in the comments below and I will be sure to keep adding tools and tips to this article. If you enjoyed this article, I would really appreciate it if you shared it, recommended it, or let me know in the comments! Also, if you’re interested in hearing more about what were working on, sign up to hear all about it ! here
