why you should never ever keep your new product a secret
UserScape's second product is currently in the planning stage and I can hardly wait to tell you all about it! Not only because I respect and appreciate your opinions and feedback, but because it makes the best business sense to do so. So many entrepreneurs seem caught up in the idea that they must spring their new products on the world as a surprise. This is a terrible idea. All it accomplishes is putting your marketing back six months to a year.
It's critical to get your product out there so people can start talking about it and most importantly they can start linking to it. Most major search engines age their links and they value older links more than new ones. Getting your product early mentions is key to starting out with a decent search rank. As a side note, this is also why your temporary product page should be at the final URL you'll actually use for the product.
The other big side benefit of an early announcement is that you can build an email list of people who are interested in beta testing the product. A strong beta test is essential and there's simply no way to acquire enough interested people without announcing exactly what your product will be and starting to generate buzz about it.
So stay tuned, once development starts in earnest I'll be posting about the new product.