How we used social media tools to launch and mangage a location based services startup.

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:

• Twitter
• Google Wave
• Gmail
• Skype
• SMS

Billing:

• Paypal

Customer Support:

• Get Satisfaction: http://getsatisfaction.com/triout
• Twitter

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?