What kind of virality strategies you use?
Hey Everyone,
I was wondering what kind of virality and growth strategies you use ,or build into your product?
We're doing this curation platform where you can find a curated library of articles, videos and more to learn new subjects.
We are trying couple things. What kind of things, you are trying?
I've just watched this video from Revoult and it opened my eyes to a lot! He also speaks about curation so it may play to your product more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYvGDCqtmf0
Woah... that video is really helpful, thank you for sharing, Louis.
Just saw "9 Ways to Build Virality into your Product" on IndieHackers the other day. I think @gordon actually posted it?
But I agree with @gordon, referral virality loops only work once you have real value on your site. A great book that does a post-analysis for this is "The Science of Growth: How Facebook Beat Friendster--and How Nine Other Startups Left the Rest in the Dust" by Sean Ammirati.
In the book it's called the "double-tap event". They say you want 1 smaller growth loop to get to about 50k users. Then once you're able to get 80% retention with new users by iterating with those 50k users, you want to try to do an explosive 2nd loop since you'll certainly be retaining a lot of people.
I read this post before, it's a great piece. I absolutely agree with you guys about the retention and sustainable growth. I did agree most of the growth strategies without having a sustainable product is just waste of energy.
But my problem is we have some sort of social product which without having enough people(or enough content created from users) our platform has nearly no value.
We have tried couple of single player modes but they didn't end up well. So, I though vitality might help. Since our growth is nearly stopped.
Anyways, thanks for advice and post, really appreciate it.
Sorry for nerding out with the theory stuff! Have you read this too?
How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 users
Your website looks pretty great. I'm probably exactly your target audience. Here's more practical & specific feedback:
I have to Request Access to use it. Are you trying to make it feel exclusive? I think that virality technique is extremely difficult to pull off.
It's a consumer product, I'm probably going to forget about it unless I get my first dopamine hit.
I can't get the dopamine hit unless I see some incredible content, which I can't do because I have to "wait for access". That means I'm not even going to try. You need to sell me way harder with your landing page. Show me the goods!
Alternatively, just let people log in. If you're worried about low quality content then don't let me post any until I meet some criteria just like how Stack Overflow or Quora do. But please don't keep me from your value!
Right, so you have to seed your own content at first.
Courtland ran a newsletter before he started Indie Hackers. He would create 10-20 bot accounts on Indie Hackers and have them have conversations between themselves. He would then send his favorite tidbits to his newsletter as examples of the types of conversations going on at the platform.
You probably know of some good places to see your platform with content. Here's how a bunch of startups you know seeded their platform with content before they had users:
hey, awesome thanks for your advice. I really appreciate it.
Actually let me give you some context; first we had an open platform, then it was semi-private and then we went to this.
Most likely flow of sign-up is like this,
We share collections that we create, user comes and like what they see and then either went to home page or sign up from collection page. So, normally most of the users first land collection page.
Those are awesome sources and advices probably we'll try couple of them on 100%, it'll take some brain storm to decide which one to try. Thanks again, it means a lot to us :))
Yes absolutely @philipp_cannons. I think it makes most sense to begin implementing these virality tactics into your product once you have gained a small bit of traction. Until that point it is a manual slog to continue building an initial user base and over delivering on value and quality!
I believe there is no better growth strategy than through word of mouth when the value is provided to your customers.
You can try some of these growth strategies:
Further, I would like to know if you have used any of these:
We have been hosting some live sessions to educate startups and it helped. It allowed us to promote our product and at the same time provide value to our existing customers.
It might not be the answer that you want but its the truth. Your ultimate virality instrument is your product. If you ultimately struggle to convince customers about your product, its not good enough or maybe there is no demand for it. Some products are inherently more viral than others, for instance B2C social networks are by design this way. For B2B it gets harder since you would not really share an enterprise tool. Only a few companies achieved that like stripe or slack.
We have a somewhat similar challenge - i.e. value creation is driven by count of users. In such a case, we are experimenting to manually acquire the 1st base (i.e. 100 users). Then optimize for retention of those 100 users. And then design the next acquisition based on what we learn.
Good question @NoFunnyMan. I think it is better to think in terms of sustainable growth rather than "virality". Virality can sometimes imply being a 'one hit wonder'. It is probably better for you or your brand to grow organically and sustainably over time.
One way I am trying to do this with Startup Sanctuary is by creating a robust content strategy.
The sooner you can start sharing and posting content, the quicker you will be able to refine what suits your brand voice and the best type of content to share.
Think of it as a long term strategy, but don’t underestimate the role it plays in kickstarting the growth of your business / personal brand.
Thanks Gordon, nice product. What type of content strategy you use?