How to do Social & Community Management on Launch day

(writing this on a launch day myself -- sharing what is working)

Author

Ish Verduzco
January 30, 2024

Believe it or not, I’m actually writing this newsletter edition on a launch day myself.

I’m halfway through the day, on my 3rd cup of coffee, and things are going great so far.

I’ve outlined a few things that are working (and have worked for me throughout the years).

Ok, now let’s dive in.

Launch days are nuts.

You’ve likely been prepping for months.

Countless hours working with your teammates on your product, offer, and messaging.

All for it to come down to one important day that will determine your success (or at the least initial success that will fuel your motivation to keep pushing post-launch).

I’ve led multiple product launches, book launches (including my own), and helped a bunch of startups rollout their apps as well.

This post isn’t intended to cover your entire marketing launch plan, but will highlight why (and how) you should be doubling down on your social & community management strategy when you launch a product.

Community management done right can make or break you on launch day.

Since it keeps your announcement top of mind instead of just being a small blip in the sea of noise that most people see on social everyday.

How to do Social & Community Management on Launch Day

1/ Engage with every neutral or positive mention

Community Management is exhausting.

Depending on your audience this could mean a hundred individual notifications on launch day.

Or even a hundreds notifications an hour throughout the day (if you’ve put in the work ahead of time).

Doing community management the right way means taking the time to like and/or reply to every single mention.

Especially if they are positive or neutral.

You can decide with your team how you want to handle criticism or negative mentions.

Trolls should mostly be ignored unless they highlight valid points.

But for the positive or neutral mentions, you should be answering questions, directing people to find more information, helping people if they are stuck in the onboarding process, and thanking people for their support,

In general, your goal should be to make your community feel seen — this day is about them just as much as it is about you.

2/ Ask a handful of supporters to amplify your post with commentary

Once your announcement is live, share the link to your post with supporters, investors, teammates, old colleagues, etc.

You can even prep people ahead of time that the announcement is coming and that you’d love their support once the post is live.

Your goal here is to bootstrap initial engagement so that your post reaches 2nd and 3rd networks that you wouldn’t have been able to reach on your own.

Task different people on your team to reach out to different people in their network to help reach more people too.

3/ Create a single document with all notable community mentions

The rest of your team is likely not spending as much time on social as you are.

This is why it’s super important to highlight all of the positive testimonials and mentions from social in a single doc.

Share this doc with the entire team and encourage people to re-post throughout the day if they can’t come up with content to post on their own.

4/ Check your notifications throughout the entire day (including different timezones)

My launch usually start around 5 AM and I’m up doing social & community management until about midnight.

I try to have content created ahead of time and mapped out throughout the day to hit different timezones around the world.

I will usually supplement my content with re-posts from the community or contextual content (blogs, podcasts, videos, past posts) to help remain top of mind without being overly promotional.

Some people talking about you and your product launch will not be tagging you on social.

Either they will forget, they won’t know which handle to use, or they simply prefer to keep their copy clean without tags.

Using the search bar is how you find these posts and engage with them to drive more awareness.

Simply go to X, LinkedIn, or whichever platform you’re using and type in key words related to your launch.

Then engage with these posts or re-share accordingly.

6/ Engage your Founder’s accounts

If you are the founder then great, you can skip this step.

If you are not the founder then you need to get 100% buy-in from your leadership team to be active on launch day.

The truth is, people want to hear from people, not brands.

So it’s crucial for your founder(s) to be posting, replying, and showcasing an active presence on social during launch day/week.

If they don’t have time to do it, then you should do it yourself.

It will suck for a day since you will find yourself drowning (while trying to manage so many accounts, different voices/tones, content, and community management) but it will be well worth it.

7/ Keep the discussion going in the replies

Having a few great posts, liking mentions, and doing replies will get you by, but using the comments section to drive discussion will help your launch thrive.

Ask questions.

What did they like?

What feedback do they have?

Who would be a good person to share with?

What questions do they have that might you be able to answer?

Asking (and answering) questions the comments/replies of posts will create viral loops, allowing new people to discover the original post.

Final Thoughts

If you use these tips, you should be able to create a launch in a way where it feels like you are everywhere.

Omnipresence is the overarching goal.

You don’t need to do dozens of posts in a day in order to achieve this either.

Too much content from your account would probably do the opposite and frustrate people since you’re clogging up their feed with promotional content.

When people check their social feeds throughout the day, they should see content about your launch, but posted by other people (since you put in the work to engage with those posts), which gives off a less desperate vibe.

If people see other people talking about your product, they will be more likely to check it out themselves (and hopefully post about it too).

Last tip - have fun.

If you let the stress win you over, it will show in your copy, tone, & overall vibe.

Have fun and if you make a few minor mistakes, remember that it’s gonna be alright — none of us are curing cancer.

Yes, our work is very important but a minor typo or error in formatting isn’t going to ruin the day.

As long as you got your message out there clearly and are being overly communicative with your internal teammates, then the launch will be a success.

If you enjoyed this specific post, let me know and I’ll do more content about community management.

These 3 posts will also help you prep for launch day:

How to Produce Content That Compounds Over Time

And if you’re finding value in this newsletter, I’d really appreciate a share on social!

It goes a long way for me.

Thank you!

Ish

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