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<p>Two weeks ago, we published our very first article: a story-oriented post about <a href="https://momenteo.com/from-freelancer-to-founder-episode-1" target="_blank">the inception of Momenteo</a>. Looking to raise awareness about our newly launched product, we curated a list of channels to spread our story.</p> <p>Throughout the years, I developed a love-hate relationship with <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com" target="_blank">Hacker News</a>&nbsp;(HN) as a marketing channel. I learned not to expect anything from it, as it is highly unpredictable. Bracing for the backfire, I was thrilled to see that, a couple minutes after the submission, it was already gathering highly positive comments and loads of upvotes.</p> <p>The day got even better when Adam MacDonald, a <a href="https://www.producthunt.com/tech/momenteo" target="_blank">ProductHunt</a>&nbsp;(PH) curator, submitted our product designs to the very dynamic community. The 3 months it took to define our brand started paying off much earlier than we expected. An hour after the initial post, Momenteo was trending on the front pages of both Product Hunt and Hacker News.</p> <p>We had two great channels generating traffic at the same time. Here are some of our key takeaways about these 8 hours of excitement.</p> <p><strong>The Actual Numbers</strong><br> <em>Hacker News: </em>9000 Unique Visitors, 15 000 page views, 20 new users<br> <em>ProductHunt:</em> 1500 Unique visitors, 2000 page views, 75 new users<br> <em>Other sources:</em> 2000 Unique visitors, 3000 page views, 5 new users</p> <p><strong>The Conversion</strong><br> Drumming up traffic through storytelling is usually easier, it generates more engagement and curiosity while being somewhat product-agnostic. As seen in the HN numbers, it is very good for brand awareness. It falls flat when it comes to conversion rate, though:</p> <blockquote><p>20 NU / 9000 UV = 0,22% conversion rate</p></blockquote> <p>On the other side, PH generated a smaller volume of traffic, but the leads were much more qualified since people were already interested in the product, as seen in the conversion figures below:</p> <blockquote><p>75 NU / 1500 UV = 5% conversion rate</p></blockquote> <p><strong>The Long Tail</strong><br> Like the semiparasitic relationship between <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxpecker" target="_blank">Oxpecker birds</a> and hippopotamuses, a whole ecosystem feeds itself off PH and HN. Smaller websites are scavenging these platforms for content: design blogs, startup blogs, business blogs, technical blogs, etc. The interesting part of this content food chain is the localization. A lot of niches are hard to reach because of the language barriers. Some (very likable) people just localize content from HN and PH and serve it to their audience. As a matter of fact, we got <a href="http://36kr.com/p/5042320.html">Korean coverage</a> (we hope it was positive!)</p> <p>We all know what that means. Yep, Juicy backlinks for search engines (and a bit of residual traffic).</p> <p><img alt="Screen Shot 2016-01-28 at 14.07.31" class="aligncenter size-full" src="https://blogmanagement.momenteo.com/Content/blog-img/Screen-Shot-2016-01-28-at-14.07.31-300x246.png" /><br> <strong>The Discussion</strong><br> The inspirational aspect of the blogpost sparked numerous Twitter discussions and retweets. We were really hyped to feel the public’s positivity around the product for the first time (after close to a year of development in stealth mode). Also, multiple bots spread anything that trends on ProductHunt, meaning we also had 140 characters exchanges about features and product vision. All-in-all, close to 100 tweets ensued.</p> <p><strong>The Volatility</strong><br> Having a good rank on PH is permanent and keeps generating a steady (though low) stream of traffic, even two weeks after the initial buzz. On the other hand, as soon as your post disappears from the Hacker News front page, it’s pretty much dead. Deploying efforts into maintaining our position on the front page as long as possible kept us in the top 20 roster for about 8 hours. In our case, stimulating the discussion and bringing traffic onto the post have worked wonders.</p> <p>Got a similar experience? We’d be happy to have your opinion in the comments.</p>