#What is Product Hunt?
Product Hunt is THE place for product-loving enthusiasts to discover the “next big tech creations”. Every day, it curates a list of the top products and startups that tech folks across the globe haven’t heard before. It lets a wide yet selective group of members to upvote, comment and discuss. At the end of the day it curates a daily top 10 list of what people should be paying attention to across the industry.
Founders have been using it as a launch platform, investors as a hunting ground, and many other tech-savy folks just to stay informed.
#CanvasFlip gets hunted on Product Hunt
Having devoted countless days and nights in creating our dream - CanvasFlip; and getting the much expected love from the design community; we took the next big step to become a universal milestone in the tech world - Getting hunted on PRODUCT HUNT.
Sessions at Microsoft Ventures on “Growth Hacks with Product Hunt” helped a long way in getting a great response at Product Hunt.
#Preparing for your Product Hunt submission
Does a product go viral accidentally?? Not really! It’s very very rare that you get so lucky. For all the other cases, the launch on Product Hunt has to be well planned. Let’s talk about a step wise process to a PH success -
- Inform well-wishers that you are being hunted
Make sure you draft an individual e-mail to all your existing customers and well-wishers, letting them know that the day had come when together you’ll can make the PH a success.
- Secure the privilege to comment
Participating in a Product Hunt discussion is only open for “invited” users and the recognized makers of the concerned product. It takes only a direct message or an e-mail to get the “Maker badge”. Be sure that you have secured the privilege to comment on your product as a maker.
- Prepare a list of Influencers
This would be a great distribution channel post your product submission. When influencers upvote or comment, a huge crowd follows to check what these influencers liked and why. This list is a must prior to being hunted.
- The PERFECT time to launch
Timing is a crucial part of PH as it heavily affects your ranking. Each “Product Hunt day” starts at midnight PST, which is 8 AM in London and 9 AM in Berlin. Aim to post your product in the early hours of the Product Hunt Day. The hack is - it’s comparatively easier to get to the top position in the morning - which translates to more organic search and drives more traffic and upvotes for the product.
- Getting the right person to hunt
It’s highly recommended to spot the right guy to hunt your product. The more number of followers the hunter has, the better will be the results for you. Once the hunter submits the product on PH, his/her followers get an instant email notifying them about the product submitted.
The number of hunters on PH are increasing day by day. Checkout this list of hunters.
- Choose images wisely
Product Hunt allows you to upload images and GIFs along with the launch. Although GIFs have a good response, self-explanatory images work wonders as well. Have a good collection of such images. Browse through the kind of images your competitors have used. To built the fastest car, you do not have to reinvent the wheel!
#Post submission -
The CRAZY DAY just arrived for which you have been planning the complete week. STAY AWAKE and get the product hunted at the scheduled time. Now what?
- Go beyond Product Hunt
Speak about the product submission on every communication channel at your disposal - blogs, social media channels, social media groups (LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter), emails, slack groups, and online community boards, such as Reddit and Hacker News. Make sure DO NOT ask for upvotes. It might be very painful for the product if the PH algorithm traces it. Be humble on social media and a simple and sober shout-out works miracles - “We are on product hunt. Do check us out!”
- Utilize the ‘Influencer list” prepared prior to launch
Get their Twitter Handles and start engaging and informing them about the submission on PH. And of-course it goes without saying, do not go behind them. It should not turn out to be utterly uncomfortable for the Influencers. A humble initiative is good enough.Make it honest and you will have a lot of fun while they talk about your product!
#Some bonus tips -
Shhhhhhh!!! We promised some hacks about Product Hunt. Didn’t we? So here are few super hacks that help you get better conversion metrics from Product Hunt -
- Tweet wisely like a pro
Curate the list of Twitter handles very wisely. Focus on the most influential users on Twitter. This list might be of great help to you - Who hunt.
- Build a community around the product
Reply to each and every comment on your product and try to build a conversation around that. Learn about their expectation and why they love your product. Share the love of these users - I am sure you would aware about the feature of tweeting their comments. This in-turn encourages others with a similar mindset to comment/upvote your product. Initiate questions and follow it up with discussions helping you explain your product and its ROI wisely.
- Plan a PR around the date of the PH launch
Speaking about getting launched on PH would not only establish a fidelity about your product, but would give a call-to-action in the PR to check out the product.
- Make an PH based offer on your website
Banners on website saying, “Are you a product hunters? Get such-an-such offer” works miracles in conversion of these visitors to customers.
#Our performance on Product Hunt
We were hunted by Emmanuel Amberber (@EmmanuelAmber) on 23rd March 2016. A big heartfelt thanks to him.
Here’s a CanvasFlip chronicle on the Product Hunt day:
By 2.00 PM IST in office: The marketing team was super busy finalizing all the images, gifs, tagline and all other pre-requisites. Loads of email exchange and excitement running in the Microsoft Ventures office!
3:00 PM IST : The time to be hunted on Product Hunt. Vipul, co-founder and CEO of CanvasFlip shouts out in excitement, “We’re there guys!” And the journey begins..
6.00 PM IST : We had over 90 upvotes in just 3 hours. But much to our surprise, some our users from enterprises were actively leaving comments on the Product Hunt post about there experience on the tool. It’s always great to hear your us
9:00 PM IST : 6 hours lapsed and we bagged 150 upvotes and around 2000+ visitors ( around 270+ signed up ). Most of the users at this time were from US. The time suggests why!
9:00 AM IST (next day) : Got up early morning to check the upvotes, comments and obviously Google Analytics! We had 190 upvotes and around 5000+ visitors ( 430+ sing ups).
Something that we learnt from the experience on Product Hunt was that upvotes do not speak everything. The traffic and sign ups you get on your website are much more.
Hope you liked reading about CanvasFlip’s experience on Product Hunt, please leave a comment if you did! Show us your love on Twitter at @CanvasFlip. I’ll be happy to talk in person ,explore the design process at your end and definitely always up for a coffee! Mail me at monika[at]canvasflip.com