social hacking for questions
Warner Onstine
identifying what problem we are solving (and if we are actually
attacking the right problem or not). We're using the Customer
Development/Lean Startup methodology for our process
(http://custdev.com, http://startuplessonslearned.com). One of the key
tenets is to "Get out of the building" and actually talk with your
customers/potential customers about what you're doing and get them to
tell you what *their* problems are (they may not be what you think
they are.
Towards that end, we typically come up with 2 or 3 open ended
questions that are designed to spark a discussion about the customers
problems and issues (painpoints). A friend of mine hit on a good way
to find customers that he can have that discussion with using LinkedIn
questions. Using LinkedIn he created a related shorter, engaging
question and fired that off. Based on people's answers he contacted
them directly asking if they could talk further.
I thought this was an interesting way of using LinkedIn and thought
I'd share it with everyone else who may be trying to evaluate their
idea. No sense in building something for 3 months (or even 1 week) if
no one wants it.
-warner
Marc Palmer
Hi guys,
Yes, this LinkedIn usage is interesting.
I'm also wrestling with this issue. The big trouble I'm finding is that our project, much like yours I think, is not really geared towards geeks, and more towards "everyday people" (of which there are many more!). And that's most of the people we have direct contact with.
I'm finding that house/work-bound geeks are not really in my demographic (or just the idea sucks... but I don't believe that) and they tend not be the people who need to create notice boards (although they may well use them if other people created them).
I'm considering running accounts for existing groups (e.g. my kids' school) on their behalf (with their permission) to kickstart some usage.
I was joking yesterday with another team member: We're working on a feature to produce printable flyers to promote your notice board in the "real world" - and he reminded me that we don't yet know how much it will be used so shouldn't obsess too much. I however pointed out we have about zero real persistent users, and we have had only one actual feature request - for printable flyers! Not statistically significant perhaps, but its as significant as it gets at the moment :)
We're pretty sure that we have two big barrier features to crack before we can properly engage people. Closing the loop so that they come back to the site because of emails showing them activity is crucial.
Marc
~ ~ ~
Marc Palmer
Freelancer (Grails/Groovy/Java)
Founder of > http://noticelocal.com
Developer of > http://weceem.org
Twitter > http://twitter.com/wangjammer5
Resumé > http://www.anyware.co.uk/marc/
Blog > http://www.anyware.co.uk
Grails Rocks > http://www.grailsrocks.com