Comment by nicooo 5 days ago
I’ve had success twice using targeted social media outreach — specifically by joining relevant subreddit discussions and commenting on YouTube videos where my target audience was already active.
Instead of simply promoting your service right away (it often feels spammy), I recommend genuinely engaging in conversations until the right opportunity comes up.
I ended up turning that process into its own product: https://sparkflow.ai/
Sigh. This is yCombinator’s startup school or whatever it’s called where they teach you to launch a product and solicit engagement and feedback. This template is boilerplate for the last 3 or 4 I’ve seen. Then it gets posted to hacker news to solicit feedback from “real users”. Without fail the creators happen to haha stumble in and happily take your feedback. Absolutely nothing changes and you will return to the same product page as an old bookmark 2 years from now and realize nothing on the page has changed.
Instead, notice when this happens and then take away your own experience and use it to build your own product. Good luck!
> I ended up turning that process into its own product: https://sparkflow.ai/
That implies that the product is ready, which it does not seem to be? The product does seem interesting, what do you do to differentiate yourself from different offerings that do basically the same? E.g. you mention Discord on the website - are you finding all the relevant discord channels for me, or do I have to join them myself, and you just monitor my account?
Hi. I should have phrased it differently as I'm not totally ready yet (as you rightly pointed out).
Yes, I find the discussions, let you engage with them trough the app, and monitor replies.
Do you mind sharing the competition you're referring to? I've not found any similar solution so far. Thanks
Not sure if I'm allowed to link to stuff, but you can find a bunch of alternatives to offerings like these (the most basic being google alerts), both free and paid, if you look for them - especially on sites that exist to list alternatives.
Some let you link accounts, some give you lists of platforms they scan. I've specifically mentioned Discord because there's no easy way to discover communities without being invited, so if you can actually discover relevant Discord communities and monitor discussions (beyond the few sites that aggregate some popular communities), then you have a USP, since most products don't do that, at least in any capacity that people think is worth paying for.
I don't think it's a grift in the negative sense but this is absolutely a marketing comment. They're doing exactly what they say to do in the comment. They're on HN where at least some of their target market is. They have a product that is relevant (right down to the headline/CTA). They didn't just post the link but put it at the end of an informational comment.
10/10 meta-promotion IMO
Do you have numbers?
i.e. what the "success" was like in each of the outreaches?
This seems like that sort of marketing where the OP creates a question for himself to answer from another account.