Joe Anderson

Hi Sean, huge fan of your blog posts! Thanks for doing this. In one of them you mentioned that for early stage products pre product/market fit you like to target wide then narrow down. Could you explain that further? For example I have a product that lets people place text over images , we provide from Flickr, and share them out to their social networks. We feel that social media managers, women who like quotes, teens, and business coaches are good demographics to target. Would you from the start just target them all then narrow down? Or focus on one group for an extended period of time? How would you go about either method as a bootstrapped startup? Is tech press better after product/market fit or a way to target wide to start?

Hi Paul, thanks for connecting with me! Sometimes I feel like I need to watch what marketers do in their day to day, I feel very new to all of this even though I have some ideas. I saw Matt's question right after I posted so I have been reading through that post and your blog since then. Thanks again it has been helpful already :)

Hey Olga! That is a very common situation for most entrepreneurs. The main thing it comes down to is having goals and understanding your audience as best as you can. I was in your shoes (and still am) but found these series of posts to be extremely helpful on figuring this out http://moz.com/blog/how-to-build-an-online-community-for-your-business

Hey Neeshu, here is a good resource on starting communities http://www.feverbee.com/2010/10/startinganonlinecommunity.html. Not sure where you struggled the most, but it takes a lot of work and time. I think one of the best ways to start a community is to think small. Think about what topics/questions would be interesting to your community, and reaching out to them personally to get them to ask questions or answer can be huge.

Thanks for the explanation that clears things up quite a bit!

I should add the main use case we are seeing is creating inspirational/emotional quotes

A lot of the pages ranked in my niche look like unmaintained and outdated sites. Are there some tools/resources on "sizing up" the competition to better understand our chances of ranking against them?

Nope the list is judged based off the most influential people they follow

I should mention that a huge use case has been inspirational quotes/thoughts

Hey Paul, thanks for doing this!

I am working on a 2 person startup that lets people turn text into images and share their creations to their social networks. We have been seeing a lot of interest/usage from social media instructors, business coaches, and motivational speakers during our beta. So that has been our primary target focus. A majority of my time is spent doing customer acquisition. Given the vast amount of channels/ways to acquire users, if you were in my shoes how would you spend your days/weeks and energy? Would you spend a week on different platforms trying them out, then devoting all of your energy to the most effective one? Time is the biggest limiting factor so any advice you have on how to handle this and stay organized would be great!

Hey Christy, FB likes don't really show up in the newsfeed, FB shares are much more valuable. As far as seo or anything else goes I am not sure how FB likes do.