Q: How do I get on Techcrunch:
A: Ignore Techcrunch. Don't waste brain cycles on them. If they cover you on their own, great. It almost certainly won't do anything to improve your odds of success, but it probably can't hurt. A better question to ask is: how do I design and implement the right marketing strategy for my startup?
I just wanted people to know that getting some PR isn't the finish line, it's the start of the race.
At a previous startup I cofounded, we had an incredible launch. TechCrunch, NYTimes (online and print), Gizmodo, etc. -- it was incredible! We still pivoted a few months later. If anything, the press helped us justify holding on to something that wasn't working.
"Techcrunch != success, spend your time building value and engagement, not a story." - Me, Now
After working on one project for a protracted period of time, we become slightly delusional. We think we matter more than we do. We think people care a heckuva lot more than they do. That's perfectly fine, but you must recognize your own delusions and not base your hopes and dreams on 'em.
Drag in your target customers and adjust from there.
The problem is you want a lot of work and personal info from me up front. I have no idea who you are, but you expect me to give you my email right away? Nope sorry I don't trust you.
This is kind of like going to a restaurant you've never heard about, that has no yelp reviews, but is just a giant door. Then before you walk in a guy in a black suit says "There's a $10 cover charge". You ask "What kind of music do you play?" "what kind of food do you serve". You receive no answer. So you turn around, and go next door.
Your start up is special to you, and your mom. Not to me, don't expect me to put any effort into it or trust into you.
Once I love you, then i'll try you.
After deciding to abandon the process, I went back to the home page, which then redirected me to http://yipit.com/boston/categories/dining-nightlife/ ! This should be amongst the first things a user sees! This is what I was looking for!
There's also a video version of it somewhere else.
This is why Optimizely.com is so great, you can test drive their product without ever creating an account.
This is something I don't "get" about Twitter or the people who seem to care about it.
There's an awful lot of tweeting and re-tweeting of completely generic "news" like a new post on Techcrunch with nothing added in the way of context or even opinion.
It's pure noise.
Using the social buttons as an indicator, everything on TC gets tweeted hundreds of times while collecting at best a few dozen shares to other services and a small handful of direct comments.
Given that, I'd interpret the "tweet every 5 minutes" to be something like "three meaningful tweets in a day".
>Why didn’t more people sign-up? Why didn’t people complete the sign-up flow? Why weren’t people coming back?
I'd guess it's the same reason behind all the fake emails described in the sign-ups that were completed.
The landing page doesn't adequately or engagingly describe / demo the service and why it's worth a damn. Do that first, then make it trivial to sign-up honestly.
Side-note: This article is on the front page of HN now (congrats to the author, well played!) but there's no link to the company or TC article in the blog, that I can see.
There's a link to the company under the author's name on the top right, though. :)
When we announced our game we managed to get articles on a bunch of top tier gaming media. IGN, PC Gamer, G4TV, and a whole host of smaller sites.
And here is what it all amounted to: http://i.imgur.com/IqBcy.png
Sad isn't it.
Each time you get a new article you get a spike, and then a downturn, but each one leaves your baseline higher. Now we get many times the traffic we got in a spike at announcement every day.
Each time you get a new article you get a spike, and then
a downturn, but each one leaves your baseline higher. Now
we get many times the traffic we got in a spike at
announcement every day.
Why is the baseline higher? Is it link juice from SEO? Is it some mysterious equilibrium of new users and returning users but more of them find you through the article? Is it simply that X out of 1,000,000 people have heard of you, and X gets incremented by a small amount and therefore your daily base traffic increases?
To be honest our traffic has been very predictable, both in the weekly steady state and the year-over-year growth. I'm shocked the daily variance of visits isn't a lot more.
I think the answer though is a combination of all the little boosts each article gives (seo, returning visitors, links). Even old articles send visitors. As you collect more of them, the baseline increases.
That said there's a slightly more interesting effect to being featured on TechCrunch, and that's what I would call "rebounds": other media noticing your startup / project / whatever and talking about it.
For instance, one week after Moodstocks Notes (a kind of side project / experiment of our B2B image recognition company) was picked up by TC in 2010 (http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/10/moodstocks-notes-is-stickyb...) [1] it got featured in Mashable (http://mashable.com/2010/12/18/moodstocks/). It drove slightly less traffic, but retention was an order of magnitude higher. Smaller, more focused blogs are even better.
That being said, even taking all that into account, fighting to get on TC is probably not worth it. In our case we basically got featured because Michael Arrington noticed us at LeWeb and thought what we were doing was cool, so it did not cost us too much effort. The only negative effect it had was to delude us into thinking we could have unexpected B2C success at hand and divert part of our efforts away from our B2B product, but fortunately that didn't last very long ;)
[1] Yes, I know, this video is terrible. I still can't figure out what happened...
Those 8000+ visitors are presumably not your target demographic, and it's unlikely that you're solving a problem that they have.
I really recommend that you read the 1st CopyHackers book on identifying the motivations of the people most likely to be your paying customers. Many startups fail because they try to shoot for a general market. In reality, you will convert very well if you correctly anticipate the motivations of the top 20% vs trying to be all things to all people.
The reason is that no matter how great your landing page is, you cannot manufacture motivation in your visitors — even a brilliant product will fail if you market it to the wrong people. Everything in your public messaging should reinforce exactly one message:
We solve X problem for Y.
Resist the urge to add more X, and don't be so hard on yourself if you are ignored by Z, because your product is for Y.
The reason I ask this is because a lot of times, this can be overlooked. I have found myself spending time twiddling with projects that seem cool to me, then when I ask a few friends what they think about it--they are say things like "yeah that's cool, but..."
What comes after the "but" is what you need to listen to. If lots of regular people are raising issues with you're idea, you may want to rethink your idea. The internet is not the field of dreams so just because you build it, it doesn't mean people will come.
Also relying on TechCrunch as your marketing strategy is a poor business decision.
Edit: Also this video from StatupSchool.org by David Rusenko (Founder, Weebly) puts being on TechCrunch, Newsweek and Time into perspective.
http://www.startupschool.org/2012/rusenko/ - Click "Our Story"
we are planning on doing a big pr launch for matchist when this kind of exposure will serve us well (timing is everything with pr)
On the other hand, I think tech press can be useful if the goal is not solely user acquisition. For example, if you're simply trying to raise awareness of your brand and product within the tech community, especially amongst investors, I think tech press has some value. Other than that, YMMV.
Right, the traffic you will get from them surprisingly low, but they are a fantastic source of instant social proof - After all, you must be good, otherwise they would not cover you, would they? ... ;)
A TC logo/quote on your home page can improve conversion rates for years to come.
This social proof is especially useful if you are self-funded, and can not show off your "Received X millions from Sequoia/YC/Whatever..." badge of honor.
That shouldn't even be a part of your marketing strategy.
Asking for an email before showing me what you do is absolutely crazy.
There is no point even thinking about TechCrunch.