Launched on Product Hunt Today! (Quick guide on tools used to do it)

I'm super excited about this and did a ton of research to make sure I got this right. Below is a run down of what I did right and some of the mistakes I already made (only a few hours in haha). But first! If you're feeling the love, you can upvote/comment here: 30 Days of Startup Frameworks on Product Hunt

Ok, now on to the process:
After reading a ton of IH and other blog posts on Product Hunt tips, here is the checklist of highly recommended things:

Find a Hunter with a following if you don't have one: Big thanks to my buddy Pavan Sethi for agreeing to hunt for me. I was mostly a lurker on PH up to this point, so that was a huge help.
Best to post mid-week: That seems to be when PH is most active, but also the most competitive. I waited two days after the holiday in the US this week just in case.
Prep your friends/community ahead of time: Yes, I even helped my mom make an account last week. The early upvotes are crucial. I leveraged alumni groups, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, FB groups, Slack, all my friend group chats. Hell, I even asked the members of my fantasy football league to give me an upvote/comment.
Creating the post: it seems like animated icons do really well so I used a service called Pixteller to make mine. It looks pretty dope! For the images, I used screenshots of my product and used the social media post editor features in Canva to pretty them up and make some gifs. As for the first comment, always shout out your Hunter and make sure the story gives a little personal background. PH also really likes when users can play around with the product. I can't configure a free trial but I at least highlighted some of the juicy content in the curriculum of my product. Special offers for the day are also good.
What I did wrong: Make sure the first image of the product you upload is a solid one. This will be the preview that appears on Twitter and as you share it out. I made the mistake of using one of the gifs I made. It looked terrible when I shared out to Twitter and over text. I quickly updated it on PH but I think it takes some time to correct.

Let me know if you have any other feedback or tips to share so this thread can be useful to others looking to post.