In this video you will discover three critical mistakes that most people make when launching on Product Hunt and the first one drives me insane!
Transcript:
What is up app nation? It is Steve P. Young founder of AppMasters.co and in this video I’m going to share with you three critical mistakes that most people make when launching on Product Hunt.
The first one is using a company Twitter profile. Product Hunt is a community of makers, people who are actually out there building things and highlighting the things that they build. And anytime people say “Steve can you submit my product on Product Hunt, I’m like share your Twitter profile let me know what it is and make sure it’s a personal one because they’re trying to highlight the community.
Let me give you an example. Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and CTO of HubSpot, a huge company he posted on Product Hunt his website grader and instead of using Hubspot’s Twitter profile he actually used his personal Twitter profile.
He is one of the people that made the first version of website grader so if Dharmesh Shah of a very well known company can use his own Twitter profile when launching on Product Hunt then you and me we can use our own personal Twitter account. Even if you have no followers and no activity happening on it at least it shows the person behind the product.
Number 2, do not publicly asked for upvotes. On Product Hunt there is an algorithm that is partly upvotes, comments, shares, person who hunted it and a lot of different elements that go into how Product Hunt ranks its products on their homepage, so make sure you don’t publicly asked for an upvote. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t share it, in fact you should actually shared across all your social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and wherever you can. But try to be sly about it.
Hey my ap is doing pretty well on Product Hunt and we have a hundred votes. Oh my goodness we have two hundred votes, oh my goodness with three hundred votes. Those types of shares are ok and the thing that you want to do is when you share these things on Facebook groups.
I’m a part of these Facebook groups and I’m sure you are as well if you’re launching your app, share it. You probably might be even watching this video from that Facebook group. Share that the fact that you launched on Product Hunt and that you’re trending and would love for you guys to check it out.
I tend to put wink wink in there but you can’t publicly asked for an upvote. I actually had a client who posted on Facebook “hey guys I’m on Product Hunt can you vote for me there. I think this was on his personal Facebook but they found out they emailed him and said hey you can’t do that that’s a no-no and so they
have their own ways of finding out. So don’t do it. Don’t publicly ask for it.
If you have some close friends you can always email and let them know that you are launching on Product Hunt and would love their support but don’t publicly do it.
And number three. So you launch on Product Hunt and you get hundreds of votes. I had a friend recently tell me “Steve, we launched on Product Hunt and received 400 votes, but we didn’t see any downloads.”
Well the number three mistake that people make is they don’t leverage Product Hunt for even more press. There’s a coolness factor that comes with launching on Product Hunt that comes with having traction and votes on Product Hunt.
For one of my clients who had three hundred votes on Product Hunt, I pitched a reporter at Mashable to take a look at this app. We are number one on Product Hunt right now with this many votes and I included a screenshot and I pitched
her for her Saturday roundup. She ended up covering it and she loved the app so much that she actually made it the app of the day on the Mashable Snapchat channel. That resulted in six times the daily download.
I also pitched somebody from iOS Today, a popular podcast and show on YouTube, and I said hey Megan this app is doing well on Product Hunt we would love to see it on iOS Today and she ended up covering it. I actually pitched her for the iFive show.
Make sure you leverage your Product Hunt success for even more press. I’ve actually gotten pretty good traction when launching on Product Hunt but if you don’t get any download but you have the votes and you have the social proof from being number one use it as leverage for more press and more opportunities.
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