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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:

Email Marketing:

Blogging:

File Transfer and storage:

  • DropBox
  • GoogleWave

Widgets:

Brand Awareness/Marketing

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:

Visitors Overview - Google Analytics

Compete.com unique visitors chart from February to March

Site Profile for trioutnc.com (rank #142,759) | Compete

* 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?