How to launch on Product Hunt with Flo Merian

0:00
I feel that the more you give, the more you receive. It's, it's reciprocity, right? It's, it's just a psychology principle. And so if you want people to reciprocate and give back, you have to give first, that's a good principle you can apply when you when you start engaging in communities.

0:17
Hi, everyone, you're listening to Scaling DevTools. I am joined today by my friend, Flo Merian, who is one of the maintainers of developer marketing community, which of course, you should all be in, put in the, in the notes, and is also someone who's just done a tonne of product launches, works with loads of startups and product launches. So I wanted to get flow along today to share about how to launch on products on flow. Thanks so much for joining

0:44
us, thank you very much for having me in this show deck. Really looking forward

0:48
to this. So the way I thought I could do this is I have not launched getting dev tools on product. So I thought that I'll be a kind of live case study and ask you all the questions that I have. And hopefully those listening will find these useful as well. So first of all, what kind of stuff can we launch on products on? That's one of the questions I have, because I've kind of made scanning dev tools into a website, and there's some tools and stuff, but it was like primarily the podcast. So like, is this? How do we think about what we could launch? On products on?

1:23
That's a very good question. And to be in France? No, no, you can't launch a podcast, you can't launch a a Brook, or just a list of tools on protons. That's the short answer. However, you know, it's really the angle you give to was your examples, Game Dev Tools. Game Dev Tools isn't just a podcast, also a a collections of lessons learned from the first founders. And this is very valuable. And this is the kind of products that that the private and community needs. And so that would be out. If I were you, I would take that angle. You're not? You're not just a broadcast, it's going beyond right. So I think that's that's point number one is to to share the vision, the mission. So it really fits also with was the product and community.

2:30
Okay, that makes sense. So I'll push it more like the website tools like filters, be able to like find lessons from founders. So what kind of things do well on Product Hunt? Like? How do how do I think about it doing well?

2:48
So, again, very good question. Right now, what's really trendy, obviously, is everything once you've shown intelligence. Although you always have counter examples, and I think that's the story of protons, most of the time you read here, and they are very different stories, successful ones, and also failures. I think that's one of the biggest lessons I learned at Elton proton is that there is no secret sauce. So if you have a good product, no matter what's your topic, if you have an existing audience, have engaged brightens users launching a product and would probably work anyway. So what's working ultimately, I'd say, as, as far as you had a good product, and as far as you have it in an engaged community are launching on private and could work.

3:58
So do you would you say most of the attention comes from your existing community for most launches?

4:05
At least that's the starting point. Yes. So just to to have a quick idea of how it works on private hands. I consider it as a 24 hour marathon. So you have to make sure to maximise exposure during the first roughly four hours and you strew manage to get in the top five during this first flowers. There's a high chance that you'll get an organic growth in terms of number of votes and comments because the way it works on profound is that most of the time, people go to product.com. And we'll see those first five products of the day. And most of them will avert or if they attract By the tagline they will go and check the details and maybe post the comments. So yes, it's definitely the starting point at least is to have an audience that will give you the right kick you need in order to to perform well, on launch day.

5:20
Okay, and it launches like It's like 8am like GMT. Right? So 8am speci at

5:28
midnight PST.

5:30
Okay, so midnight appears to European tonight like

5:33
so. Jimmy? Yes. Gente it's, it's 8am you kind

5:37
of rely on europeans and asians and in because Americans are asleep?

5:45
Yes, that's a that's that's a first for our suddenly gives us an edge for here again, found there is and also Indian and Asian founders at least because during the this first for this first four hours? Well, this is where European people and Asian people are the most active. So. So yes.

6:12
So we are irrelevant. Absolutely. Irrelevant.

6:16
Absolutely. And that's also that's also what's really exciting about launching and proton on launch day, you know, that you are doing your best to, to be in this top five, until, until the American people eat the American audience. Raise up and that moment is key, because because then you can feel this organic growth. Cool.

6:46
And is there like any thing that tends to get people to like, like, is it just like, I guess this combination of just messaging every single person, you know, and asking them to, to, like, support you right? On products.

7:08
Please don't do that. That's my advice. Okay. I personally feel that the you, you have some people in products that that push their brands way too hard. And I think that it might damage your brand in the long term rather than the opposite. So I think the the main objective really is to be helpful and intentional, and thoughtful the way you you approach your, your launch and promotion. So the objective isn't to, isn't to try to message every single person directly on or worth outreaching to people on LinkedIn and Twitter. It's really about, you know, warming up your own audience, jurors, maybe you can share publicly what you're working on, you can share behind the scene emojis and fun facts. And that will help also will make your audience ready for the launch day and really feel excited about your launch too. And if you manage to create this, there's a high chance you're you you succeed there on your launch day.

8:34
So what would be like kind of tangible examples of that.

8:38
So just to give you concrete examples, I had the opportunity to collaborate with the document. So our team to for the for the first Triton launch, and the second one too. And so the commensal is a opensource dot DocuSign alternative and when the team first launched what they did was a the Ramsey has a name a session on protons, so the week before the launch and and that was a starting point to start engaging first with the Brighton community and also because they leverage it on on socials and especially on Twitter. That was the starting point to raising awareness for their audience. And so yeah, well I remember the when they launched it was on a Sunday people and Me included were like super excited about the launch. And in looking at at how people we asked was that launch and so on that was that was a fantastic shooting and basically that's how you can start were wearing of your your Your product launch?

10:00
What is like an AMA? Like, like? Because if I was like, I don't know, like, What would people want to ask me? I don't know.

10:10
Yeah, it's it's really simple. You know, you're you're Jack, you're hosting skating dev tools, you interviewed dozens of awesome. Founders of their first companies has me anything. That's, that's a great topic, I am pretty sure that people will be curious enough to, to ask, well, literally anything.

10:38
Okay. And is it free to do the AMA?

10:40
Absolutely. It's the part of, it's just really part of the being part of the community. So there's even a section dedicated for this. So literally, anyone can, can can join the community for free and can submit discussions. And this if you mix it with your engagement on socials like Twitter, this this kind of works in a very fantastic way. Okay,

11:12
so maybe I should do like an AMA on the day that this episode comes up, and then please come and ask me something.

11:20
Other well, so two things the day you launch, you will have dozens of comments people who would be really supportive and also enthusiasts think about your launch so I would say because you're a solopreneur I would say that's hosting an AMA session that they you launch might not be the best person I

11:47
could I could I do like an AMA on the day that this episode comes out and then do like my launch like a week later.

11:55
These are you can submit you know you can submit your you can start your ma session and say okay, this is me Jack, I launch in a week and I will reply drop your drop your questions here and I will reply to them on launch day which is January February XY that's

12:20
why would why would I do that? Would it be like that it creates more bugs you know, maybe you

12:25
just don't have the time to spend time on the on protons you just drop the disk you stop the discussion and fill it in in reply to answer the questions. The moment you will feel the more it is. So if you're not super active on product, and that's totally fine. You can just start this discussion share it on Twitter, maybe share it on on communities like developer marketing community line and say hey, I'm about to launch I started this MA session you guys have any question during the discussion. So that could be a tactic and also a way to begin to raise awareness and to make sure that everyone save the dates and mark their calendar so they can support you on launch day.

13:21
Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, and then on the launch day, like I see a lot of people post that like in Slack channels and stuff like that and like Twitter and people like you know, DM you know, that sort of stuff what other places are good to like promote your launch?

13:41
Again that's a really good question and I honestly my feeling again it's not to push your brand too hard because that could be damage your brand and obviously that's not something you you want there is one quote that I really enjoyed from Harry dry from marketing

14:04
is in London very nice guy.

14:07
He says that your launch day is the day you come comes full circle. So if you if you drop a link to your product launch on a community or place it could be already some slack discord you name it a place where you have little to no karma you probably won't have any against engagement from from from these actions. Why if you're fully engaged in committee to to other places if you're highly engaged on on Twitter if your audiences in these developer marketing community then it makes much more sense to really just focus on the in the chat Animals, the places where you already are in any out, that makes much more sense than, you know, just stumbling upon places where you could share at least that experience I had when, when we launched alien paternity. When I worked at specify an API company. This is basically what we did. And the highest results we had was when we engage with his friends with communities, when we were engaged. We tried Reddit, although we weren't ready to user active Reddit users. And and delivery, we had the best results was visited people we regularly engage. So that's, that's why I feel that if you have a node, a node audience, Hertie everywhere else.

15:55
Yeah, that's actually I think, a really good point that gets overlooked a lot of the time. It's like everyone says, like, post, like, share your content and stuff, but it's like, you need to. Yeah, I really like that, quote, The Karma comes back. And sometimes like, it's like he, sometimes you under share, and then sometimes like, you kind of over overshare, and you don't give enough and like, it's that, that kind of, you know, you want to do both, I guess you want to share you also want to give and just be prolific, I guess and giving and taking.

16:36
Certainly that's the it's true. We that's that's what I see in the in our community, US people that that just, you know, connects and the login just to boast and promote their own stuff. I don't, I don't feel it works this way. I feel that the more you give, the more you receive. It's, it's reciprocity, right? It's, it's one, it's just a psychology principle. And so if you want people to reciprocate and give back, you have to give first, that's, that's a good principle you can apply when you when you start engaging in communities, if you you know, if you want to, to, to have something from communities, you have to eat first.

17:28
I don't want to say anything, because I thought I would just need to let that sit in I'm internalising that, how can I be more mindful about reciprocity and like giving, before expecting that anyone would like, you know, wanna like read my staff on or like, share my staff? How can I give more is huge.

17:52
Maybe we can. Also, if we talk, launch prep, there's also something that is very important. So because, you know, we're in this dev to space, it's something that it's quite specific and abusively. breakdown is a global place with people not jests, Dev oriented. And so, one point is that you really want to make sure that your tagline, especially the tagline and also the description, are quite easy to understand digests are clickable enough, but not in a bullish way. And you really want to make it you know, I feel that when you work on the contents and the copy for for brightens, so both the tagline in description, one best practice to make it plain English, as simple as straightforward as possible. I think that's one thing. And the other thing also is what's really important and it happened to through communication and very, very simply. Make sure to to anticipate you have to realise that the product and team reviews hundreds of products every day. And they have to select them. If you submit if you submit your products and plan it for the late the next day, there's a high chance you won't get featured. So make sure to really anticipate, maybe schedule it in advance. So the production team has the time to review it to process it and that's the height the best way to get featured At minor one, AMC t. So it happened to our to one of our community member he prepped everything, scheduled the launch for the next day and the next day he had to wait like eight hours to get featured. And it was usually hate hours later. Well, you was down the rain? Yes, it was all down the the the the the the ranking and so that basically killed it is lower the Air Force and not the an advocate of being highly connected and highly engaged with the product and community. But at least if you want to do a promo lounge, do it well. So it makes making sure that you have a copy that sounds relevant for the broader audience that and make sure also to NC anticipates your, your submission. And, and prep as much content as possible. So when you're on launch day, you can you can fully fully enjoy it because my perception my experience with with launch days is that it's a fantastic feeling this there are so much adrenaline, the launch the day you launch that you don't want to waste yet trying to to write a tweet or a LinkedIn posts. At the last minute, you want to grab this as soon as possible to free fully enjoy the day. It's really important. Yeah,

21:57
I think that's an amazing, amazing tip. And I haven't heard that anywhere. And I've read quite a lot of like products on guides. So thank you, Flo. I actually have way more questions, but we just reached time. And I know you've got a hard stop. So thank you very much flow those really, really helpful. I think some people are going to have more questions for you. So I know that where can they find you if they've got if they want to talk about this more.

22:25
So there are two main ways is probably reach out on Twitter, I have my direct messages open and also usually on LinkedIn

22:36
is F Maryann S M E R I A n absolutely

22:41
and and then if you're into the dev tool space, feel free to join also the developer marketing community where I'm also quite active. And people can reach out anytime I'm more than happy to talk of things, product marketing products, and product marketing.

23:03
Amazing. And I know that you're potentially at the time of this recording, at least open to opportunities. So if there's any really good dev tools, I think they should reach out to flow as soon as they can. Before before the opportunity is gone. So yeah, thank you very much flow. Thanks, everyone for listening, and we'll be back very soon.

23:33
Thank you