In this 11-minute interview we ask Kevin Rose, founder of digg and WeFollow five questions about web entrepreneurship. In case you don’t have time to watch the interview, we’ve summarized Kevin’s answers below.
Feel free to share your answers to these questions in the comments below. We’d love to hear your perspective.
What advice can you give new web entrepreneurs?
A great way to gain traction and get coverage for a new web app is approach a well known person and offer them something valuable in return for trying out your service.Example: Tumblr asked Gary Vaynerchuk if he would use their service if they gave him a spot on their home page.
Have your 30-second pitch perfected so when you get a chance to meet an influential blogger or member of the press, you can communicate the purpose of your app succinctly.
Attend conferences and throw little parties around the conference. Do it on the cheap and just get people mentioning your app like: “Hey, I’m heading to the YourAmazingApp party. Are you going?” This is much easier because of Twitter as news of small ‘lighting-parties’ can spread quickly.
You’ve managed to raise your profile in the industry. How did you do this?
At digg we didn’t focus on getting press coverage. We just focussed on making an amazing product and believing people would talk about it if it was truly great.
When we started getting press enquiries, we focused on telling a bigger ‘human-interest’ story to the publications, which were much more likely to get front-page coverage, instead of a simple mention in a small column.
The lesson is this: figure out what makes your app interesting as a news story.
Should start-ups create a videocast like you’ve done with diggnation?
Absolutely. Every company needs a spokesperson who is willing to be the public face of the company and participate in the community.
As the diggnation podcast started to grow, digg fans began to make it their goal to get a story mentioned in the podcast. This increased the prestige of the site and also fan loyalty.
How do you balance marketing with working on the product?
That’s an interesting question. Earlier today I was running off to another interview and Daniel Burka (the lead designer at digg) showed me a couple designs as I was walking out of the door. I didn’t have time to properly sit down to discuss them and Daniel said “Kevin, can we please just get you in the office a bit more to discuss these kind of things?”
It’s a tough problem and I still battle with it at digg. I’m not sure I’ve gotten the balance 100% right yet.
What do you want to be remembered for when you die?
I want to be remembered for being a part of the web revolution that really changed the way that humans consume media and news.
I’m also hoping to launch my own tea range and be known as a connoisseur :)
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There’s a worryingly high web app mortality rate right now. I think the primary cause is the lack of marketing knowledge and how to apply it to web apps.
I spoke at FOWA Tour Leeds on this subject so I’m going to summarize the major points below for you. You can also watch the complete video which is synced with my slides.
Marketing has Changed Forever
As recently as one year ago, everyone worked hard at making sure their brand was portrayed in a positive light. The message was tightly controlled and as a customer, you had very little power to express your love or hatred of a product.
As you all know, that’s impossible now. You could spend $10,000 on banner advertising for your new web app, proclaiming it to be “The World’s Best Solution for XXXX”, only to be ripped apart on Facebook, Twitter and the blogs.
It’s not about advertising anymore. It’s all about Conversation and Empowerment.
Get the Conversation Started
All of us are cynical and disloyal. To be honest, I don’t really care what you tell me about your product. Let me try it out and I’ll decide what I think. Then I’ll probably Tweet about it. It’s what happens then, that really matters.
Are you there, ready and excited to enter into conversation with those folks? If they hate your product, it’s even more important you get in touch. If they love it, say hello and that you appreciate them spending their valuable time and effort using your app.
Here’s the key: Be a real, accessible, honest person. Don’t spin the truth or try to trick people.
We’re trying out CoTweet right now, and I really like it. Essentially, it allows everyone in the company to log in and see mentions of Carsonified or our products on Twitter, and respond accordingly. Everyone else in the company can see when tweets have been responded to and what was said. You can also ‘assign’ tweets to others on the team and see who’s ‘on duty’ and should be responding to tweets.
The important thing to remember is this: No one cares about your company. They’re into their journey. Let me quote Kathy Sierra on this topic (it’s lengthy, but definitely worth the read):
… building community is both tricky and time-consuming. But if you’ll forgive me for using lolcatspeak– if it takes two years, “ur doin it wrong”. The painful, least-effective way to ‘build community’ is to hire a Community Manager who tries to connect users with the company. Far quicker/better to hire a “Director of Kicking Ass” whose sole job is to help users get better and better at whatever it is you can help them do, and to connect users to other users who share that passion and can help.
A look through Gary’s WineLibraryTV comments shows why he is so successful… it’s not because Gary is the guy everyone wants at their dinner party–it’s because he helps his *viewers* become the guy everyone wants at a dinner party.
Some community managers appear to have a strategy modeled after: “Get users to want to party with you.” More sustainable (and do-able) might be: “Give users a reason to party… *without you*”
Meetups and beer are awesome — especially when they’re about connecting users with other users. Our job as community builders is to not so much to connect with our users, but to give them more and more compelling reasons to connect with one another. And the best way to do that is through helping them learn and grow and ultimately–kick ass. The “at what?” doesn’t matter nearly as much.
I agree that the marketing budget could be far better spent on community–especially when community means putting the user–not the company–at the center of a passion-fueled ecosystem. Even things like openness/transparency matter *only* to the extent that they dramatically support (or potentially harm) our users’ ability to do whatever it is we’re helping them do.
Think about some of the things that truly make your life more interesting, engaging, productive, etc. — and most of us can find things where the product, service, support, user community is so damn useful that we really don’t even notice (let alone care) that the company isn’t “engaged”. In the end, we’re just not that into The Company. And a community manager that tries to change that is in for a long, painful, ultimately disappointing journey.
We are “into” our own journey, and any company that helps us do it–either directly through products/services that help us kick ass — or indirectly through sponsored community efforts that help us learn/grow/kick ass at something (even entirely unrelated)– will win our hearts. Excitement for a company/product is simply a wonderful side-effect of a company/product that helps us do something amazing. When a community manager makes passion for the company as a goal, two years or even ten will likely never be enough.
God I love this topic, Ryan. Thanks.
The Basics
There are number of analytics basics (we use Google Analytics) that you need to be doing when it comes to marketing your web app. If you’re not doing this stuff, then you’re just asking to fail:
Use words like ‘View prices & plans’ instead of ‘Free trial’.
Visits should be increasing by 10% per month.
Spend at least two hours a week on your analytics.
Building Social capital
We’re big fans of The Whuffie Factor here at Carsonified. Tara’s primary point is that the most powerful way to do marketing in this day and age is to build ’social capital’. It’s a lot like Karma: do good and help others and it will come back to you.
Three amazing examples of this are Stack Overflow, Baby Centre and Wiggly Wiggler’s Wiggly Podcast (try to say that three times fast).
Stack Overflow is a site where programmers can ask a question and other people answer it. The answers are voted on and the person who asks the question picks a ‘winner’.
Here’s the crazy thing: StackOverflow.com is getting 3.5 million unique visitors per month … and it only launched nine months ago. That’s right, nine measly months ago.
So what’s the catch, and what can we all learn from it?
Facilitating Ass Kicking
The simple reason why Stack Overflow is growing at an astronomical rate is this: It helps programmers kick ass – and they love the site for it. Here are just a few of the literally hundreds of Tweets declaring undying love for the site:
And it goes on and on …
So what does Joel Spolsky, one of the founders of Stack Overflow, do with all of the social capital he’s building with the site? He’s using it to launch Stack Overflow DevDays, a one-day conference for developers (which we’re helping him with). He’s going to be speaking at every one, and he’s going to mention that they’ve just launched a new version of FogBugz, their bug-tracking web app.
All five cities quickly sold out (at the original 300 seats – we’ve since found bigger venues) and we’ve launched five more cities. It’s insane. The Stack Overflow audience is passionate, opinionated and most of all, powerful. I can guarantee you that the audience will be more than happy to hear about FogBugz because Joel has earned their respect and loyalty.
Baby Centre & Wiggly Wigglers Podcast
Two other great examples of sites that are building a huge amount of social capital are Baby Centre and Wiggly Wigglers.
Baby Centre is an amazing resource for Mothers and Fathers. It’s like the Stack Overflow for babies. So why are they putting so much time and effort into the site? Well, it’s owned by Johnson & Johson who sell baby-care products. I can guarantee that readers of Baby Centre are definitely going to check out J&J products next time they’re at the grocery store.
Wiggly Wigglers sell gardening products and they have a fabulous free podcast. It’s packed with tips, hints and opinion on gardening. It’s won several awards and is respected by a huge number of gardeners. Again, they’re building social capital, which will be cashed in next time you’re looking to order gardening products online.
So Now What?
I hope we’ve inspired you to think about how you can build social capital to market your web app. Please share your methods and ideas in the comments below!
I think we have a serious problem in our industry.
I believe it generally started when Basecamp became quite successful and 37signals started to talk about their theories on the subject. Their basic mantra was “Don’t quit your day job to build a web app. Build it in your free time and use your day job to pay the bills until your new app brings in enough money to quit your day job.”
I used to agree with this, but now I think I’ve come full circle.
I’ve seen a lot of web apps launched recently which haven’t succeeded. They’re not failing miserably, and they’re not wild successes. They’re just kind of puttering along, sapping just enough resources to be a problem, but not succeeding enough to really take off.
The majority of these apps were built by small web design firms or freelancers who bought into the dream without really understanding how much time it takes to make an app succeed. I speak from experience as this is exactly what happened with Amigo (which we sold in a firesale a few months ago).
Who Died, Who Survived?
There’s a really interesting post over at Meish.org with a great graphical example of the various web apps that have gone under. Here’s the graphic Meg put together:
It’s a sobering reminder of how tough it is to launch a successful app.
So what’s going on here?
I believe there’s a general misconception that goes like this:
Identifity a niche need that you have that’s currently under-served
Bang out somewireframes (or better yet, just start HTML’ing)
Ask a designer or developer to help out, in return for a bit of equity
Tweet about an invite-only beta
Listen to beta feedback and make tweaks
Launch
Get TechCrunched
Build recurring revenue till you can quit your day job
Live the good life
The major problem occurs between step #7 and #8. Most apps will fail here, not because there’s a problem with the idea, but because they don’t know how to market it. The reason for this is that it takes significant passion and time to properly market an idea. Sure, you may get lucky and the app magically spreads itself, but the cold hard truth is that most apps need serious time and effort in order to make them a success.
We need to consider that 37signals and the success of their apps are probably outliers – anomolies that aren’t easily repeatable.
So now what?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of 37signals, but I think that unfortunately a lot of folks are getting the false impression that it’s easy to build a successful web app.
It takes time, passion and more time in order to make something succeed.
With that in mind, here are my suggestions for avoiding the web app Deathly Hallows:
Make time for marketing
Plan for the fact that marketing the app is going to take at least two days a week. I’m talking about about 16 solid hours of work, at a minimum.
How will you do this if you’ve got clients banging down your doors for changes or updates every day of the week? I’d highly recommend saving up enough cash so that you can take at least two months off from normal client work in order to make your app a success. This is two months after you launch. Keep in mind you might not be making a single $0.01 during this time, so you’ll need plenty of reserve cash.
If it’s impossible to make time for marketing, you’ll have to get investment in order to hire someone who can do it for you. This is pretty dangerous though, as this new recruit isn’t going to have your passion or understanding of the app.
Create a resource that helps your customers kick ass
One of the reasons why 37signals has been so successful is because they have built a large blog that’s aimed at their potential customers. Signal vs Noise has around 90,000 RSS subscribers and it does one thing really well: offers great advice, opinion and tips for people who might subscribe to their products.
If you read one thing about building a community around your products, read this comment by Kathy Sierra. It sums up this idea in a couple paragraphs.
Spend money on advertising
I think a lot of us are lulled into believing that if you tweet enough about your new app then it’ll surely succeed. Wrong. It’s very likely that the only way you’ll be able to get the word out to the masses about your new idea is by spending cold-hard-advertising-dollars.
Now, if you’re going to go down this route, it’s vital that you can track the effectiveness of your ads. You need to know:
Conversion rates on clickthroughs
Percentage of clickthroughs
What keywords are converting well for you
Where people are dropping out of the conversion process
Which ads are working (always test different copy and designs)
A/B Testing from the Start
One of the keys to increasing conversion rates on your site is to test the hell out of it. Plan on doing A/B testing from Day One, and never stop. If it’s a bit overwhelming, just tackle one page at a time, starting with your home page. Google Website Opimizer is the way to go on this.
To wrap it up
The most important piece of advice I’m trying to communicate is that you need to prepare for the huge amount of time it’s going to take after you launch to make your app succeed. Of course you need to believe it’s going to kick ass, but make sure you’ve got a plan for making that happen. It might take several years of work to really make your web app a success, so be prepared.
Plan on building a business, not just a side project.
I’d love to hear if you agree or disagree, or if you have tips of your own.
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