How do you use Product Hunt to make people aware of your product? (Less-known approach)
Most people use Product Hunt primarily for launching their product, which is completely understandable and a basic thing. That's what the platform is best known for.
BUT I think Product Hunt offers far more opportunities than just launch day. If you approach it strategically, it can become an ongoing marketing channel rather than a one-day event.
This is roughly how I use it:
Talk about the product before launch through discussions, comments, and threads to build awareness naturally.
Meet people through discussions and invite interested members (or potential users) to test the product, share feedback, and build relationships with them. (Many of them became part of my LinkedIn community too.)
Improve the product based on that feedback so you have some momentum before launching.
Launch on a weekday to maximise your chances of ranking well and potentially being featured in the Product Hunt newsletter, which reaches more than 140,000 subscribers.
Search Product Hunt discussions for people describing the exact problem your product solves. Help them first, and only mention your product when it's relevant (not as hard promotion).
Leverage your Product Hunt badge. If your product ranks well, the badge becomes great social proof that you can showcase on your website and social media.
Experiment with Product Hunt ads if they fit your budget and goals. But those almost 5M monthly visits of this website are worth it.
How do you use Product Hunt to get your product noticed (besides launching)?
Replies
Building on Jernej, from the other end, because I did this in the wrong order and have the numbers for that.
I launched first. Single digit upvotes. Then I spent two days doing nothing but commenting on other people's launches and threads, roughly two dozen comments, and six makers have now changed something in their product off the back of one. One of them shipped a feature the same hour and told me the comment was too good to leave as a comment.
So your list is upside down from where I am standing. The launch was the least valuable item on it, not the centrepiece the rest is arranged around.
The distinction I would add is that these are not the same channel. Commenting did not make anyone aware of my product. Not one of those six went and looked at it. What it builds is awareness of a person, which is a different asset with a different clock on it. It compounds, and it cannot be measured in a launch week. That makes it the best thing on your list if you are building something over years, and close to useless if you need users this month. Worth telling people which one they are buying, because the tactics look identical and the payoff does not.
On the mechanic, since that is the practical part: every comment that got a reply did the same thing. Find the thing the maker has not thought about yet and hand it over as a design question rather than a criticism. Congratulations comments got nothing, every single time.
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@dalemooney Hey Dale, just to clarify, the list is not supposed to have an order; I just listed items (opportunities), not the chronological sequence.
One number to add: 8 followers to 73 in just over two weeks, with no launch and mostly without naming what I build. All of it came from commenting on other people's launches with something specific, usually a hole I found while poking at the product. A few of those makers changed their roadmap off a comment, then followed the profile.
So the awareness landed on me rather than on a product. It still pays. Whoever clicks through finds what I am building at the top of the profile. The comment history turns out to be a landing page nobody designs on purpose.
Jernej's ordering point is the one worth keeping. Comment on other people's launches for weeks before you post your own, a thread from a nobody account reads like a diary.