We went through exactly this at Page99Test.com, a 'micro-critique' writing community. (Well, in fact, I doubt any startup under 3 years doesn't go through the same thing, even those with funding.) Here's what we learned, briefly:
DON'T UNDERESTIMATE TWITTER
Prior to our launch (i.e., when we had just a sign-up page), we used Twitter a lot to get the word out. I was totally floored by how well it worked. Cost nothing more than time -- which is admittedly a resource in short supply for startups. Worth every minute spent. A lot of bloggers and journalists online found us and wrote about us before we'd even launched; in fact, The Guardian (big UK paper) wrote a full spread on us that continues to pay off, six months later.
We have a new 'startup' in the works. Although we don't see ourselves launching until mid- to late-summer, we're already starting to tweet about it.
DON'T DO PRESS RELEASES
If you want to pitch some writers, pitch them directly. No one seems to give a crep about press releases sent out over the wire. Very expensive if you're bootstrapping.
TRY TO GET HN TRAFFIC, TOO
Around the time we launched, one of the HN contributors (Shereef at bettermeans) wrote a post about us and sent some fab amounts of HN traffic our way. Of course, that traffic showed up just to check us out and then left, never to return again. Which was fine. A handful of uber-smart peeps from the HN community actually gave us stellar feedback that we used to optimize the site early on.
It's interesting that you say Hacker, because it is really the avenue we've used least. Facebook was a good start, because friends can invite friends, and so on. But it tends to seem like spam there which is an immediate turn off.
How did you go about contacting the writers? Did you have prior relationships with them or some sort of contact?
The reference to reaching out directly to writers was actually based less on P99T and more on a different startup we used to own, a realtor rating site. In that case, we found a writer for a major newspaper that we wanted to write a story on us --- just looked him up online and called him up --- and pitched the story over the phone. We followed up by sending him a press release we'd written... so we did actually write a press release, we just didn't -- and still haven't -- found it valuable to send it out over the newswire.
DON'T UNDERESTIMATE TWITTER
Prior to our launch (i.e., when we had just a sign-up page), we used Twitter a lot to get the word out. I was totally floored by how well it worked. Cost nothing more than time -- which is admittedly a resource in short supply for startups. Worth every minute spent. A lot of bloggers and journalists online found us and wrote about us before we'd even launched; in fact, The Guardian (big UK paper) wrote a full spread on us that continues to pay off, six months later.
We have a new 'startup' in the works. Although we don't see ourselves launching until mid- to late-summer, we're already starting to tweet about it.
DON'T DO PRESS RELEASES
If you want to pitch some writers, pitch them directly. No one seems to give a crep about press releases sent out over the wire. Very expensive if you're bootstrapping.
TRY TO GET HN TRAFFIC, TOO
Around the time we launched, one of the HN contributors (Shereef at bettermeans) wrote a post about us and sent some fab amounts of HN traffic our way. Of course, that traffic showed up just to check us out and then left, never to return again. Which was fine. A handful of uber-smart peeps from the HN community actually gave us stellar feedback that we used to optimize the site early on.