On to day 5 which is all about marketing plans, a long 4.5 hour drive, and starting to actually code the product. Staying in the comfort of a B&B, I was hoping to have a really long sleep to recharge, but my body had different ideas! Surprisingly I still woke up really early again (just after 5am) so got straight to work.
I spent a little time tweaking the prelaunch website and Mailchimp campaign. I then created a list of initial marketing activities. These have to be done over the next couple of days (prelaunch), so have to be quick and easy to implement. Next is the list for when it launches. And finally there is a further list of things to be implemented over the next month and beyond.
My initial list is as follows:
Continue blogging on Medium, LinkedIn, and Huffington Post.
Drive prelaunch signups so we have a good email list.
Use social media to drive signups.
Let tech sites know about it on social media.
Contact all places I've stayed on this journey.
Update my progress on 4Networking forum.
Personal emails to my contacts with suggested tweets etc.
Contact startup and bootstrap communities.
Email journalists to tell them about this #7daystartup story.
Contact other people that reference "Morning pages" online.
Contact my existing email lists.
My launch list is:
Email to the pre-launch list (with special extended offer).
Contact all previous lists and contacts who showed interest.
Blog on Medium, LinkedIn, and Huffington Post.
Facebook dark posts.
Google Adwords.
Facebook and Google re-targeting.
Twitter ads.
Instagram image creation.
Demo videos on social media.
Get listed on Product Hunt.
My longer term list is:
Continue blogging on Medium, LinkedIn, and Huffington Post.
Continued social media marketing.
4Sight tour in 4Networking to speak about the whole challenge.
Email marketing to people who showed interest.
Just as an aside, the way I'm keeping track of all these lists, including their status, and further details (with extra info and website links etc) is a tool called WorkFlowy. I've been using this for a couple of weeks and finding it great for simple process and task management.
After putting together the above (and lots of other notes) I had a leisurely full English (actually, make that Scottish) breakfast. I packed things up in to my car and had set off in the fog and rain. Thankfully the weather brightened up the further I went. The roads I were taking were off the main routes and really were great driving roads. It made me realise just how capable (and fun) my car (a Mk7 VW Golf R) is under any conditions. There was every type of road you can imagine. From perfect tarmac with long straights and sweeping bends, to undulating rough roads with tight hairpins. I even drove alongside the famous Loch Ness and stopped for a photo, but no, I didn't spot the real monster ;)
An hour later it was sunny and 22 degrees, pretty different from how the day started. I drove through Fort William and alongside the loch there which really was lovely. I was starting to feel hungry by now, and saw a hand written sign for "boat cafe/pub" on the roadside. I followed it and had lunch on the deck of a converted boat on the canal. I didn't expect to be doing that for lunch today!
After lunch I carried on the final leg of today's drive to a cabin at Kinlochmore where I'm staying the night.
I settled down in the bar overlooking the Loch and fired up the laptop for an afternoon (and evening) of development.
After a few hours development, I had the following functionality working in the product :)
Writing with word count working.
Word count detects if you've hit 750 words yet and shows this.
"Inspire Me!" functionality working.
And here's a quick demo video...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBdAkF1xvm0
I sent this info out to all the people who have signed up to my pre-launch list as I think it's only fair they hear about things first. If you want to sign up and get these exclusive updates, just sign up here.
http://prelaunch.writingritual.com/
Since the video above was produced I've done lots more development work as I was burning the midnight oil. More info to come later about this so keep checking back here or sign up above :)