As some of you may know we launched a location based services startup called TriOut in Febarury 2010. Looking back from my years of attending and planning startup weekend events using social media tools to launch a startup of any kind can be great for marketing, planning, customer support and more.
Although TriOut is three months old, Lawrence Ingraham @LawPower (TriOut Founder) started working on TriOut in October of 2009. Fast forward three months later, even though we still have a long way to go I wanted to look back at how we used social media tools to launch and manage TriOut at it’s current state.
External Communication:
Phonebooth (Started with Google Voice, then switch to Phonebooth)
Project Management Documentation:
- Google Wave
- Google Docs
Internal Communication:
- Google Wave
- Gmail
- Skype
- SMS
Billing:
- Paypal
Customer Support:
- Get Satisfaction: http://getsatisfaction.com/triout
Email Marketing:
- Google Spreadsheet Sign-up Form
- Blue Sky Factory
Blogging:
- WordPress: http://tri-out.com/blog/
- Disqus Comment platform
File Transfer and storage:
- DropBox
- GoogleWave
Widgets:
- Custom Built http://trioutnc.com/u/widgets.php
Brand Awareness/Marketing
- Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TriOutapp
- Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/triout
- Facebook Fanpage: http://www.facebook.com/TriOutapp
- Google Buzz: http://www.google.com/profiles/trioutapp (new)
- Twitter Accounts: TriOut & TriOut4Biz (New)
- Flick: http://www.flickr.com/photos/triout
Measuring/Monitoring
- Pre-launch (beta sign-up form)
- New user registration (custom)
- Google Analytics
- Tweets: RowFeeder & Searchtastic
- Google Alerts
- Check-ins: Custom Built
- iPhone app intsalls/downloads – Apple
- Mobile Web check-ins – Custom
To Implement:
Highrise for CRM (customer relationship management)
Social Media Measuring platform: Either or both: Trackur and Argyle Social (supporting local NC startups!)
Results:
While I can’t get into how many users we have at the moment here’s some traffic and measurable items from October 2009 to now.
- @TriOut twitter account: 610 followers, listed 77 times
- Facebook Fanpage: 259 fans/likes
- Blog Subscribers:
- Users to date: N/A
- October 2009 35 Beta testers
- February 2010: 200 Beta Testers
- May 2010: Reaching a landmark
Google Analytics chart Visitors Overview from February launch to May 12:
Compete.com unique visitors chart from February to March
* Disclaimer: Phonebooth is a client and I’m a partner with TriOut.
As TriOut continues to grow we’re going to keep a close eye on what works in terms of marketing, communications and productivity.
What online tools do you use to manage your startup or business?
