Participating in forums and getting great feedback

Posted June 28, 2006

I’ve been spending time over the past month or so in the Microsoft Producer user group, and have been getting some great information and feedback on the upcoming release of iPresent Producer , my soon to be released web presentation tool. (Quick note on the name iPresent Producer: I never intended for this to be the final name of the product, and so I’m in the process of renaming the product and defining its identity, as I get closer to launch - more on this later).

Anyhow, I really should be blogging more frequently, but I’ve just been so focused on development. Luckily, I’ve been speaking with some great folks over in the MS Producer forum. I really wished I had participated in this forum earlier in the process. I can’t stress the importance of spreading the word about your new product, even before it is released. The feedback and response you receive is well worth any “trade secrets” you may reveal.

However, you have to approach participating in a forum where your potential customers may exist in the right manner. Here are some tips for doing so:

  1. First and foremost, a forum is no place for blatantly marketing your product. You need to contribute in a meaningful way - answer questions and share useful information using your expertise in the market. I’ve been a user of MS Producer for several years, and have a lot of experience creating and distributing streaming media. I tend to answer technical questions on the board, because that’s what I know best.
  2. When answering technical questions, help the poster achieve a resolution to their problem. That means following the thread, and continuing to help until the poster is satisfied. You should view it as a practice run to the customer support that you’ll eventually provide.
  3. When you do contribute a useful response/post - always include your signature with a link to your website or blog.
  4. When a poster says: I wish Product X did Y. That’s your opportunity to pounce. I feel it is completely appropriate to mention that you’re building a similar product that solves the unmet need. However, I usually respond first with another alternative solution (even a competitor’s product), then I mention that I’m working on something that does Y

Anyhow, if done tactfully, contributing to forums related to your market can be a great way to introduce your product to potential customers, and more importantly a great way to receive feedback.

2 Comments so far

  1. Al Richards on July 14th, 2006

    I’ve been using MS Producer for years and have recently started to switch to Camtasia– also looking at Macromedia options, but too pricey.

    I produce multimedia training and marketing material for Johnson and Johnson and am very interested in your product. One thing I need, is the ability to create custom templates without having to delve into html ccs coding. Hope your product addresses that.

    Al Richards
    AJR Multimedia Marketing

  2. Carmen on July 18th, 2006

    Hi

    Thanks for stopping by. Over the years, I’ve worked on a variety of presentation authoring products and I’ve always found this to be a tricky area. It really is difficult to find the right balance between ease of use and flexibility of design. This is mainly because users/content authors of these types of systems have varying interests. Some want complete control of the player interface, with the ability to brand, customize, and stylize all aspects of what their end viewers see. Others simply want the ability to provide professional looking interfaces for communicating their message and aren’t as concerned with exactness.

    In my view, there are 3 ways to solve the player customization problem:
    1) Provide a library of templates that the user can select from
    2) Provide the ability to create templates html, css, etc
    3) Provide the ability to create templates using a GUI drag and drop editor

    The way I’ve set out to solve this problem is by offering both 1) and 2). iPresent Presio will ship with a variety of templates that users can choose from. Users can also create their own custom templates using the canned templates as a starting point and adding their own html, css, and js. Additionally, Presio will support a very simple scripting language for getting data output. There will be tags like: {PRES_TITLE}, {PRES_LOGO}, etc. that will allow users to place content exactly where they would like in the interface.

    I hope this will meet your needs. I thought about this problem quite a bit. Creating a GUI template editor for version 1 just seemed to be overkill. I think I struck the right balance of power and ease of use, but if not, I’ll be sure to consider other options in the future.

    Thanks.