Tools we use to run SixCentral
We’ve had a few comments about what Wess and I are using to organize and manage all of the facets around SixCentral. I thought I’d take you on a wild ride into the engine behind SixCentral.
Blogging
I guess the easiest place to start is with blogging. As you are here reading the blog, I’m sure you’ve alreadyed guessed that we use the all-powerful Tumblr. Since we’ve never really been true believes in reinventing the wheel, we chose Tumblr to host our blog as it provided the most features as well as the easiest avenue to customize to our brand.
E-mail Marketing & Campaigns
In our opinion, the folks over at Campaign Monitor have the best solution for list management and marketing campaigns. Our current landing page has an update subscription form which directly links back to our Campaign Monitor account. We then segment our lists based on other metrics (beta subscribers, influential users, etc) and generating e-mail campaigns tailored to those audiences. For a base price of $5 per e-mail campaign with $.01 per e-mail address, its very reasonable and affordable — and really makes you think about how important your e-mail campaign is before you send it.
Marketing
Marketing wasn’t really part of our original skillset (Wess was the developer, and I was the designer) — however I’ve realized that it doesn’t necessarily take a web marketing agency to help you get the job done. We’ve marketed the product in two ways, which actually turned out to be very successful:
- Create a great design that would get recognition on design/CSS galleries as well as some features on blog lists. We’ve been fortunate to have been on many of the largest galleries which have also provided visibility to another group of people who like to create lists of design trends (Webdesigner Depot, etc).
- Generate buzz around Twitter (as it can easily be a direct route to your target market). As a designer, I have many followers (and follow many) people that are designers which is our original target audience.
Product Management
Although we will probably take some grief for this, we chose not to use Basecamp. Instead, we opted for a smaller (and more feature filled) product called GoPlan. GoPlan and Basecamp have many overlapping features, but what originally sold us on GoPlan was the development blog. Before we ever created this Tumblog, we had offered up our development blog via RSS. Another selling point was the ability to create multiple projects & upload files all on the free account.
E-mail, hosting ,etc
This one should be a no brainer for anyone, but we use Google apps for all of our e-mail. For hosting, we use the great services over at Slicehost — and haven’t had any problems yet. They provided stellar service and support, and can count on any other business that we venture off on.
Beta Tracking/Testing
We are currently using the Feedback widget from GetSatisfaction to track and manage all of our beta users feedback as well as to provide transparency to the flaws and recommendations our users are finding. Perhaps you weren’t part of the original beta invite set, but you can still learn more about the product each day by browsing the GetSatisfaction threads.
Although to this point we have lacked a bit in the bug tracking department, we are preparing to start using our LightHouse account to its full potential. The guys at LightHouse provide a slick interface on top of a powerful tracking system that amazes me every time I login. They thought of everything from the developers point of view, and made it easily managable for product managers and others.
And at the end of the day, the only costs we incur are the $5.XX each time we choose to send out an e-mail campaign. Can’t beat that price. I guess thats it for now — I’ll append more apps on to this list as we start needing them. In the meantime, make sure to check out all of the apps listed here, as they have helped preserve our sanity.
Ryan
