Everything I did to grow my app from 8200 to 9800 users in the last 16 days

I built a Canva app and last month I started a growth sprint to intentionally grow it to 10K. I was already at 8200 organically (took 10 months) through the App Marketplace.

Here's everything I've done so far and how well it worked:

(Didn't work) Reached out to Tiktokers: I literally sat down on my phone for hours and copy-pasted the same message to a ton of Tiktokers to get them to collaborate with me and make content with my app. The awesome thing I learned was Tiktok lets you send 3 messages to anyone, even if you are not connected with them. Got 0 replies back though, not sure why. Once you DM people, Tiktok literally starts showing you similar kinds of videos/creators so you don't really need a long lead list. Just start and they will served up to you.

The message I used - "Hey, love your Canva tutorials, especially the one where the photo pops out of the IG post frame. I'm building a free Canva app that helps you create social media carousels with Al. I think your audience will find a lot of value. Open to taking a look?"

(Worked) Posting in Founder / GTM Slack communities: I've found Slack communities to have the highest signal-to-noise ratio. Since I've been in a few of them for years, I know the general vibe, what the group cares about and try to tailor my pitch to that. One rule I have and it's worked really is never just say - try my tool. The language always has to be either:- This is why this tool would be great for people here- Or that I'm looking for feedback. For feedback by the way, one thing that I do that really makes me stand out is I do a lot of pre-work. So instead of just saying I'm looking for feedback, I actually will list out the bugs/improvements I'm already considering. The reader can then see that I'm actually putting thought into the product and not just randomly copy pasting, which is what 99.9% of people do.
(Worked) Leaving comments on Reddit: This is one of the underrated growth tactics I've tried in the past as well. I just googled "{query} reddit" for all the type of questions my target audience could search for and left valuable comments with the link to the app itself. By doing the googling first, you get the biggest ROI. You see the top 10 links that are getting traffic and don't have to bother with the other 90 that might be relevant but not get any traffic.
(Worked well) Paying for newsletters: This is a tough one because it's paid and you don't really know what you're paying for. I sponsored newsletters with 5K readers and those with 300K readers, the conversion rates (people clicking on the links) is around 1-2% which is ~reasonable. the rates of the newsletters are all over the map going from $100-$1000. I've just sprayed and prayed on this and so far it's worked.
(Worked extremely well) Product Hunt: I launched on PH and got #3 product of the day which resulted in good traffic but then something even bigger happened. Turns out, as long you're in the top 5 spots, other newsletters will pick you and feature the next day. I ended up getting 2x the original traffic from PH with the newsletters - TheNeuronDaily (500K) being the most notable.
(Horrible) LinkedIn Ads: People told me that LinkedIn ads are expensive and I didn't believe them. I ran $150 worth of ads and the CPC was like $8. Never doing this again.
(Worked well) Building in public: I wrote posts on LinkedIn and X documenting my growth journey everyday - what is working and what's not. I've had so many people offer to help me spread the word about the app organically. It does take balls to be extremely open but it works.
(Decent) Auto LinkedIn outreach automation: I have a LinkedIn automation tool that auto-connects with a list of people I give it. For me, it's ghostwriters. Once it connects, it will wait a day and send them a message with a link to the tool. Most people don't like this pitchslapping but it's worth giving a shot. I've had some people immediately unfollow me but most just say nothing.

This is the message I send: "Hey, I saw that you do some ghostwriting. I had this tool I'm building that you can upcharge your clients with. It creates LinkedIn carousels from blog posts in <2 mins. It's 100% free btw. (Link)"

(Didn't work) Tiktok videos: I spent 2 days researching, prepping, recording and editing a Tiktok video that showed how to use the tool. I had to scrap 3 versions before I got to the one that made the most sense. It didn't really work out. I also put the same version out on Youtube Shorts.