Tactical marketing for software startups

I'm not an expert, but here are a few little ideas I've honed for building an audience, brand, and community at software startups.

These are tactics, not strategy. Not a complete list. Steal them all or some. Not in a particular order, other than the first two and the last one.

People who are doing particularly technical startups like databases or compilers are the ones who often, in my experience, feel like these least apply. But in fact they are absolutely relevant.

• Be respectful of, and genuinely invested in, the broader community.
• Avoid memes, sarcasm; remember that the internet and your potential customer base is wide and not all the same culture or native language as you.
• Have a mailing list. Send out a monthly update.
• Have a Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube account. Post an interesting update, lesson learned, or demo once a week.
• Publish release notes. Include a demo video with your release notes.
• Write a blog post at least once a month talking about a particularly interesting recent project or experience.
• Submit, and comment on, posts other than your own to HN, Reddit, Lobsters, Twitter, and LinkedIn to demonstrate good faith in the community.
• Meet local folks in your industry-community for coffee once a week.
• Avoid big releases. Talk about what you're working on early. Not to overpromise but to build the audience.
• Use a height: 20px; banner on your website to link your latest blog post, product release, or survey. Change it up or delete it every month or two.
• Put positive customer feedback on your home page.
• Make it easy and obvious how to quickly use your software, on GitHub README or your website.
• Search your domain on Twitter, HN, Reddit to notice folks sharing links to your work; once a week.
• Get in the habit of publicly talking about any interesting lessons you learned. Long or short. Video or prose.
• Ask specific individuals in the community for feedback on blog posts or launches. Be open to give feedback back to whoever asks, in turn.
• While dedicated marketing and devrel is necessary at some point, your audience is often most interested in hearing about the work from the people who worked on it.
• Do not forget that your community is made up of individuals. Treat them as individuals. Value their time and look to build a genuine relationship.