Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

hi... how you doing... you must have heared of when in roman do what romans do... use different different strategies approaching different sections of age, region dont forget the demographic factors also.

For eg: for students, target social networking sites according to region like in india orkut is more popular thn anyother site. Different countries have different likings. use ads, communities, applications, everything as a youngster u like to do.

for middle aged people, use blogs, twitter, linkedin, i mean to say proffesional networking sites, show that how they can use ur application for proffesional use.

try to add new things everyday, interact in the communities, blogs, participate not with use of others technology promoting your messaging software.

tanujathapliyal06 gave some great suggestions.

What sets your IM apart from all other IM's?

Make sure you have an engaging website, a free download for your IM (I assume it is free) and create a compelling press release focussing on the USP's and innovation offered by your IM. Then send the release to tech blogs such as mashable (mashable.com/) cnet (cnet.com) tech crunch( techcrunch.com) etc. (do a search for tech blogs on google, you'll find loads).

Also create a video on youtube with a focus on what sets your IM apart (what problems does it solve) and integrate this in your website and press release.

(PS. If you can make it so that your IM can be a chatroom for business websites (one that they can use for free to chat with customers), that has proven a great way of promoting your IM in the last year...

There are some very popular IM applications out there. Unless you have the marketing dollars of AOL, you should first define a niche. For instance, Facebook became massively popular by focusing on the student niche at first. Can you define a niche that is ready for instant messaging but that is under-utilizing it?

For example:
Can you make instant messaging easy and attractive for grandparents?
A particular type of small businesses for business communications?
Spanish speaking to American pen pals?