So, as we've seen, this "social capital" is great if you're going after the tech-savvy early adopter market (balsamiq, 37s, stackoverflow all are).
My question is, is it useful/relevant if this crowd is not your target market? There's a lot of people here that are running successful startups that cater to people in the Real WorldTM so I'd love to hear your thoughts on marketing? (patio11, etc. :)
There have been more than a few overnight successes in tech. Unfortunately, therefore many people believe that's the only road to success. I'm not a big fan of praying for wildfire adoption since it is so uncontrollable and unpredictable.
At FreshBooks, we have slogged it out every day, day in an day out, trying to introduce FreshBooks to new people every day. The book that has inspired me the most is Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore. Building excellent word of mouth praise in a focused niche that will lead to following niches is a very repeatable path to success.
It takes a long time, but it does build year after year.
That's how you get from Step 7. TechCrunch to 8. Profit. It's important to recognize the value of TechCrunch is very limited in your overall success. I wrote about this earlier this year, actually:
TechCrunch coverage can even be counterproductive. Especially if you are doing a product aimed for a niche most people don't know about.
It paints a target on your back, since your early success is advertised to thousands of people with the startup spirit/coding skills who are looking for the next big idea to exploit.
You can make millions selling chairs, but only as long as noone else finds out that selling chairs is a license to print money.
There's a lot of people here that are running successful startups that cater to people in the Real WorldTM so I'd love to hear your thoughts on marketing? (patio11, etc. :)
This is worth a blog post, but I am swamped at the moment. I'll write it later this week. Short version: it is helpful to have a few good geeks in your corner even if you don't sell to them... with caveats.
Just look at Gary Vaynerchuk, wine people are by definition the last people to adopt new technology. Yet Gary is whoring out the whole social media thing to them, for all it's worth.
Although to be fair, its hardly the early adopter case for him.
I guess the basic principles from the article apply nonetheless. It's just the "media" are different, like using a telephone line for customer service, appearing at real-world events in person and so on.
My question is, is it useful/relevant if this crowd is not your target market? There's a lot of people here that are running successful startups that cater to people in the Real WorldTM so I'd love to hear your thoughts on marketing? (patio11, etc. :)