I think people around here fall into a thinking trap regarding "reviews".
The average user perceives no value from the opportunity to review your application. That sounds suspiciously like work! They perceive value from using your application (one would hope, anyway). I think folks here say "I need folks to review my app" because you think that that gets you "You will, naturally, publish that review somewhere which is visible", but this is sort of putting the cart ahead of the horse. Get the use first and you will get the talking later, rather than the other way around.
(This is one place where TechCrunch et al distort our perception of reality. TechCrunch et al will use any application just because it is new and shiny. New and shiny iPhone-enabled social network for blind dog walkers? Whatever, we'll give it 45 seconds just so we beat ReadWriteWeb to the first post about it! Conversely, TechCrunch et al will not use an application just because it is old, despite the fact that it actually provides value to Actual People. Actual People are not a constituency of TechCrunch et al.)
Bootstrapping your way into users isn't necessarily a fun place to be. I really can't pound the organic SEO drum enough -- it is cheap and anyone can do it. Write stuff which solves the problems of your target market. Bonus points if the stuff you write recommends they try your app for more of the same pain relief.
Incidentally, SEOMoz has a few oldie but goodie articles about "linkerati". Study carefully the factors which make content easy to consume and the factors which make content easy to recommend. (They're not co-extant. Content which is easy to consume but not easy to recommend, such as a lolcat picture, is not a high priority for you if you have no users.) This should inform what sort of stuff you build to ramp folks up in the early day. If it is too hard to recommend the trial because it takes hours of setup before you start seeing value from it, write a whitepaper. If the whitepaper takes too long for the average customer to "get", condense it into a blog post. Keep reducing the barriers to having your new best buddy in the world tell his friends/peers/readers about you.
You could encourage normal people who are using the app (via early-access or whatever) to 'review' it by a twitter, facebook or other social media campaign. Sure these things sound cheesy and old hat even to me now, but they can work. 'Tweet about us to get a free upgrade to Premium'/'free 500MB disk space'/whatever incentive you can provide once users have already got the app.
Comments
I think people around here fall into a thinking trap regarding "reviews".
The average user perceives no value from the opportunity to review your application. That sounds suspiciously like work! They perceive value from using your application (one would hope, anyway). I think folks here say "I need folks to review my app" because you think that that gets you "You will, naturally, publish that review somewhere which is visible", but this is sort of putting the cart ahead of the horse. Get the use first and you will get the talking later, rather than the other way around.
(This is one place where TechCrunch et al distort our perception of reality. TechCrunch et al will use any application just because it is new and shiny. New and shiny iPhone-enabled social network for blind dog walkers? Whatever, we'll give it 45 seconds just so we beat ReadWriteWeb to the first post about it! Conversely, TechCrunch et al will not use an application just because it is old, despite the fact that it actually provides value to Actual People. Actual People are not a constituency of TechCrunch et al.)
Bootstrapping your way into users isn't necessarily a fun place to be. I really can't pound the organic SEO drum enough -- it is cheap and anyone can do it. Write stuff which solves the problems of your target market. Bonus points if the stuff you write recommends they try your app for more of the same pain relief.
Incidentally, SEOMoz has a few oldie but goodie articles about "linkerati". Study carefully the factors which make content easy to consume and the factors which make content easy to recommend. (They're not co-extant. Content which is easy to consume but not easy to recommend, such as a lolcat picture, is not a high priority for you if you have no users.) This should inform what sort of stuff you build to ramp folks up in the early day. If it is too hard to recommend the trial because it takes hours of setup before you start seeing value from it, write a whitepaper. If the whitepaper takes too long for the average customer to "get", condense it into a blog post. Keep reducing the barriers to having your new best buddy in the world tell his friends/peers/readers about you.
You could encourage normal people who are using the app (via early-access or whatever) to 'review' it by a twitter, facebook or other social media campaign. Sure these things sound cheesy and old hat even to me now, but they can work. 'Tweet about us to get a free upgrade to Premium'/'free 500MB disk space'/whatever incentive you can provide once users have already got the app.