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Ask HN: How do I spread the word of my project?

8 points by wereHamster ↗ HN
I finished a small tool and I'd like to present it to the broader developer community. Some may find it useful, and if not, I'd appreciate at least some feedback.

I submitted a Show HN story, it got lost without a single comment. I have a blog which nobody reads, a Twitter account which nobody follows. What other options do I have?

9 comments

[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 27.7 ms ] thread
johnmurch
One way to spread love http://sidekicking.com/1912/lesson-exceptional-customer-expe... - Cookies and Hand written notes

Also - watch http://startupschool.org/2012/rusenko/ - it takes time. Focus on hand reaching out to a few people. Doing searches for related posts/projects - checking users profile and reaching out by hand :)

Good Luck :)

wereHamster
It's not a tool for ordinary customers. It's for developers. There are fewer of those around, so it's harder to reach out to them.

Another way is to have a huge number of followers on GitHub. Sadly, I don't have that either.

johnmurch
Even easier - Focus on the community (github) - Look at how fast analytics.js spread. Making this simple, easy and elegant is what developers like.

Another angle would be to sponsor or be at as many hackathons as you can get too. http://www.localhackathons.com/

There are a TON of developers at them and most of the events get press anyway - get both!

negrodamus
Your app is targeted at a very specific audience. I have no clue what it does. I'm not even familiar with Heroku at all. Figure out exactly where those people look and deliver it to them.
samuellevy
Try reddit it r/shamelessplug, try other communities.

HN isn't the be-all and end-all of views. In fact, it's usually good for a server-crushing influx (if you manage to hit the magic sweet spot of "interest" and "timing"), but most of that traffic disappears after a day or so. If it's really cool, it will start getting shared around on twitter from HN, but that won't new you a huge amount of traffic.

Reddit will usually provide a smaller amount of traffic in one hit, but it'll keep coming for a week or so - the way stories move on there are just generally different. If your tool is relevant to a particular subreddit, then that's your best bet for getting consistent traffic.

Finally, put a link to your tool in the comments here - it's worth another shot.

sabalaba
It's not clear what your tool does or how it can help me now.
fduran
Some suggestions:

- populate the FAQ page

- create pages for specific platforms like Rails, Django etc, (right now it looks too generic), add a blurb for those in the front page

- reduce friction for the "contact me": add a "subscribe to newsletter" email field to start capturing people interested. Send a newsletter from time to time with relevant developments in the project

- promote your project in the (Rails etc) platform niches (forums etc), also in DevOps area

- Write blog articles with examples of how your project helps (starting out with a real problem is better) or even write about anything related (say deployments) and plug your project at the end. Good luck.

ismaelc
You can try hackathons. You'll meet tons of developers there, and you'd have fresh ideas to steer your small tool to a kickass tool! Feel free to message me if you're keen to be involved in hackathons