I plan to promote the Telegram bot over 4 weeks from scratch to publication on ProductHunt
Tags: promotion, startup, product
Published: 2023-12-05 15:16:15

In the world of modern technologies and digital entrepreneurship, creating any product, be it a Telegram bot, website, or even a small library, is just the first step. To attract the audience’s attention and achieve successful promotion, an effective and systematic promotion plan is necessary, and I have one.

In this article, I will share my four-week plan, essentially starting from scratch and culminating in the publication of the product on the popular platform ProductHunt. I will take this plan through the lens of my own [pet-project](https://t.me/your_domain_bot), a Telegram bot for domain monitoring.

The continuation of this article will feature the results that I will document and publish after four weeks.

## For whom and for what?

I’m confident that everyone has a “pet project” tucked away, perhaps even several, and most likely, they will remain dormant without an audience and development. Among the millions of such pet projects, there are probably very worthy and useful ones, but we will never know about them. After all, for us to learn about them, someone needs to read or hear about them somewhere. It’s necessary to constantly talk about your project everywhere.

So, what prevents us from talking about our projects? The fear that someone will judge or express negativity about your project? The constant thought in your head that you’ll finish just a little more here and there and then publish? Lack of skill and understanding of what and how to write? Unfamiliarity with platforms where you can publish your articles?

I hope my plan will help others and me talk about their projects, find their audience, and start growing.

## Input data

Initial data and resources are required at the time of launch.

- Personal project website: In my case, a website must explain to the user what the Telegram bot can do and why it is needed. The primary goal, of course, is SEO traffic. A piece of advice I would give to myself in the future is to create a website for SEO first before developing a new product. During the project development, SEO will already start working and bring in the first users.
- Product blog: Articles for SEO will be published in the blog, serving as an excellent source of traffic and potential product users.
- MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of the product.
- Active LinkedIn profile: Connect with colleagues, friends, and interesting people. Share short articles or your thoughts on hiring, work, development, real-life anecdotes, or your product. My opinion is that you can also post memes with funny gifs, but it doesn’t look very professional if your entire feed consists of them. On LinkedIn, publish articles with personal experience.
- Twitter page: At the launch, my page is empty, but if you have an established page and know how to manage Twitter, it will be a significant advantage.
- IndieHackers account with publication capabilities: Posting on IndieHackers may not be initially available due to their strict moderation system. They monitor your activity, real projects, comments, and mentions on other platforms. Approval for posting may follow after assessing you as an entrepreneur. If you are interested in this platform, start building your image today.
- Availability of 10–12 free hours per day: Launching and promoting your project is not easy, and there will be no one to complain to. This can be a problem if you are employed. You need to decide how much you desire to launch your project. One option is to take a break and dedicate it to the launch.
- If you are reading further, it means nothing scares you, and you have all the necessary means and resources for the launch. Let’s move on to the plan. I’ll say in advance that the plan is approximate, and over four weeks, it may change a bit, but that’s okay — the essence of the plan remains a systematic approach and understanding of what we are doing and why.

## The first week

Every day for the week, I will write two articles.

The first article is simple and related to the product — in my case, it is about domains. It will be a thematic compilation of domain zones by industry and application area. These articles are more like SEO articles intended to generate future traffic to the product’s website by ranking on the first pages of search engines. Therefore, the article should include links to the pet project’s website. I partially create the article using ChatGPT. I’ll publish it on the following platforms:

## Publication platforms
- Medium
- Product blog

The second article needs to be of high quality. It should narrate personal experience and be related to the pet project. This article should immediately drive traffic and interest in the product, consequently bringing in the first test users. In the future, these users may become the foundation of our loyal audience, serving as primary critics and test users of our product. I’ll publish it on the following platforms:

## Publication platforms
- Medium
- IndieHackers
- Hackernoon
- dev.to
- HubPages
- LinkedIn
- Habr

!Notice: An important rule is not to monitor the published articles every hour. At the end of each day, review the articles, check the comments, and respond to them. There’s no need to reply to hateful, sarcastic, or toxic comments as they will only consume our time, which is already limited.

## The second week

The first week will be mentally and physically challenging, but we have a plan, and we stick to it. In the second week, we take a bit of a break and address the aftermath of the first week.

If critical issues and bugs were identified by the first users, I strive to resolve them quickly; otherwise, I create tasks in the backlog task manager and leave them for better times. The goal is to meet the current week’s deadlines. If fixing a particular functionality requires significant resource and time investment, it may be temporarily disabled. Otherwise, the entire promotion launch may end by the second week without even getting started.

I assess the results of the previous week’s campaign with articles and publications on various platforms. The following data is of interest: the number of new users, views, subscriptions, the number of comments, and the website traffic for the pet project.

I activate Google Alerts to monitor any mentions of my product, allowing for quick responses to any references.

I compile the collected data into an article, add graphs where possible, and publish the results of the first week’s efforts in placing articles on the previously mentioned platforms. For social media, I create a post-summary in numbers.

## The third week

The third week will be dedicated to preparing for the launch on ProductHunt and other platforms designed for pet project launches. It will involve going through a prepared list of platforms and preparing content for each of them:

- Fill out the profile for each platform.
- Draft several versions of the product name.
- Draft several versions of the product slogan.
- Brief product description (up to 250 characters).
- Brief product description (up to 150 characters).
- Brief product description (up to 50 characters) or describe your product in one sentence.
- Prepare the main product preview.
- Prepare a gallery of product screenshots.
- Prepare a video with a brief overview of the product, its advantages, and how to use it.
- Prepare the product icon/logo.
- Come up with hashtags and keywords.
- Provide a link to the pet project website.
- Collect all links to your social media profiles.

This comprehensive preparation will ensure a smooth and engaging launch on various platforms, maximizing visibility and interest in the pet project.

## The fourth week

After reading numerous case studies on ProductHunt launches and observing how people spend months preparing and building connections with startup communities, friends, investors, and top managers, I’ve decided not to overly engage in this process. Many follow intricate strategies, including reaching out to individuals personally with pre-prepared messages, cold emailing, and seeking influential launchers with high ProductHunt ratings.

However, I consider this process somewhat of a futile time investment. ProductHunt algorithms are intelligent enough to detect artificially inflated votes, and there might be consequences for such manipulations.

My goal is to launch quickly, assess results, learn from mistakes, and potentially relaunch later. It’s a common practice to launch a project multiple times.

Hence, the fourth week is dedicated to launching on ProductHunt and related platforms. I will publish on all the identified platforms, actively engage with comments, and share intermediate results on social media. I’ll ask friends and acquaintances for support on ProductHunt without excessively delving into complex pre-launch maneuvers.

## What do I want to achieve in the end?

Nothing terrible will happen, even if the results are not encouraging. We will gain invaluable experience and a systematic approach that can be repeated repeatedly. We will create the skeleton of a system and process that can be built upon in the future. We will understand our mistakes as users provide feedback and share their opinions.

There won’t be a situation where we get 0 users; I am confident we will attract a minimum of 1000 new beta testers and users. Is it worth spending a month of our lives on hard work for such experience and learning? It is more than worth it.

Wishing success to you and myself!

My [Twitter](https://twitter.com/aadrobushevskiy) is where I share ideas and the process of working on my projects.

## List of resources for launching on ProductHunt

- Producthunt
- HN
- Betalist
- Startupbase
- Launched
- Sideprojectors
- Techpluto
- Crazyaboutstartups
- Slant
- Saashub
- Startupcollections
- Startupstash
- Betafy
- Capterra

## List of platforms for publishing articles

- Medium
- IndieHackers
- Hackernoon
- dev.to
- HubPages
- LinkedIn
- Habr

## List of social networks for publishing

- LinkedIn
- Twitter
- Telegram
- Facebook
- Reddit

## Tools I used for the launch

- ChatGPT: For generating SEO articles, creating META data for blog posts, translating to English, and checking English grammar.
- Midjourney: Used for generating previews and images.
- Grammarly: Essential for grammar checking in English articles and comments. Also helpful for rephrasing certain phrases.
- SimilarWeb: Utilized for analyzing traffic on websites or publishing platforms.
- Notion: All notes, publications, and records are kept in Notion.
- Kaiten is the task manager for organizing and managing tasks.
- Google Alerts: Keeps track of any mentions on the internet based on specified keywords.