Building a following for the SoDunked! app

Now, we needed to get the word out and create interest so people might buy SoDunked!

The app was submitted to Apple the Friday before Thanksgiving. We had so much personal stuff going on the next two weeks—family visiting, holidays, cooking—that I absorbed myself in tasks. It was a great distraction for me. For Lyle, it didn't work. He was extremely antsy, checking email every 1/2 hour.

To keep our momentum going while we waited and maybe keep him from checking email so often, Lyle decided it was time to start using Twitter and Facebook to build a following. Always more interested in new tools and technologies than I usually am, this was a great fit for Lyle. He dove in, starting to post that very first day of our submission. I was starting to panic about starting the publicity before we even had an app accepted, but Lyle plowed forward. It turns out it was the right thing to do. Over the next month, from the day we submitted the app on November 19 to the day the app was accepted on December 16, he built a following of thousands.

A marketing expert could frame this better, but the idea of doing this advance work is to achieve the multiplier effect: to get even a few people to try the app and then each of them will share it with a few others who then share it with a few more, until it really adds up. Using Twitter and Facebook is an obvious way to begin this process. A small percentage of any 1,000 Twitter followers might actually read the posts, some of those might have iPhones or have friends with iPhones, and some small percentage of those will try the app.

Lyle and I brainstormed for ideas to Tweet or post to Facebook. Lyle spent significant time researching advertising options and costs that could help expand the number of followers. Together we needed to decide how much money we could afford to spend on advertising given that we were now spending off-limits savings. We opted for minimal cost and Lyle carefully tracked and measured the success of each ad we did try, canceling any that weren't effective. Mostly, we just did our own "advertising" by Tweeting and following, by writing to our networks on Facebook, and by telling everyone we knew (the latter was also done to share our excitement). It is hard to overestimate the amount of time spent on this aspect of marketing. Lyle was doing this while hanging out with the kids, while cooking, while "relaxing" in front of the t.v.--really whenever he wasn't working at his day job.

Ultimately, SoDunked! was accepted and made available for sale at iTunes just under 4 weeks later on December 16. Because Lyle had the foresight to create a following before the app was released, it gave us an audience, primed with anticipation, to announce that the app was available.