What's the best way to get initial public feedback for a very early version of a product?
I'm currently working a simple app and looking to get some feedback.
The app is pretty rough in its current form, but it generally works and I'd like to get it in front of enough to understand potential customers (if any) a bit better.
There are probably lots of ways to do this, but I'm super curious as to what strategies or tactics IHs have successfully used to get feedback when a product is in it's very early stages.
Thoughts or ideas?
I'd agree Reddit is a great place.
By just being there and talking and engaging you'll run into folks and stumble across things that increase your understanding dramatically.
For example, I pitched a few brands direct on linkedin and didn't get much headway. On reddit I ran into some and could immediately engage with them. If I wasn't there I would have a hard time trying to reach them.
You can also float any idea and get reactions. For example, I had this idea about voting on results of warranty claims. If your claim was denied especially do others think you were right or wrong to be denied? The vote would be a way to provide closure and transparency. Talking about it on reddit got immediate indication that some folks are angry with their outcomes that are arbitrary so this may be a way to help...
So find a reddit for your topic and just start engaging and see what happens :) Don't be spammy though...
Find out where your audience hangs out, then reach out to them :D
For example, the audience I'm hoping to reach for Sitesauce is a tech-savy audience overpaying for their website or blog hosting, so I searched reddit for comments of people that showed a frustration on their hosting and reached out to some. I also asked some of my Twitter audience to help me share it with anyone they might know on their target audience (I highly encourage you to do this btw, ask the part of your audience you've already reached out to to help you continue sharing your site).
Just looked at Sitesauce - does it work for no code as well to convert to static?
I haven't personally tried it, but it should! If you have a site you'd like to try it on in mind you can email me at miguel+ih@sitesauce.app and I'll give you access to the private beta :D
Depending on what your app is:
Meetup, Reddit, Facebook groups, Twitter, LinkedIn
can all be great.
Meetup is great; very helpful people, tech-saavy, local.
Twitter; search for people that talk about the thing you are doing, be helpful to them where possible, reach out and ask for a convo if it makes sense. People are really helpful, and you get to talk to some really cool people.
You can make some real connections with people, which is really great. Highly recommend just putting yourself out there a bit more and just chat with people.
Visit communities relevant to your audience (reddit is always an easy place to start), ask if anyone would like to check it out or if they think it would help them.
You could run social ads to a landing page and capture emails, then talk to those people individually.
Thanks for your input! Some of the larger subreddits have strict policies on “thinly-veiled” promotional and feedback soliciting posts.
Are there any particularly good ways of engaging with some of these audiences without seeming spammy?
Either ask for help explicitly or provide value with your comment/post. Reddit doesn't like self-promotion but certain subreddits love to help and no one's gonna complain about a post that's giving them something :)