check! before you launch

You made a thing. Good job! It’s not easy, is it? Being a responsible author, you’ve, like, tested your link to make sure it works before you send it out to the whole wide world. So you’re all set to launch, right? Hold up, partner. There’s more to it than pointing people to your thing and saying “look, a thing.” I’ve got one word for you: “Public Relations”. Let’s make sure that on Day One, you get the word out successfully and you look presentable. No more scrambling to fill in the holes on your website, twitter, or whathaveyou mere moments after you’ve pulled the trigger.

Here’s a checklist of small-ish tasks you’ll want to cross off before you formally announce your new thing (app, website, physical product, an art of some sort). Go through this during your final testing, or while you wait for whatever overseer must approve your humble offering. Not all of these points will apply to you; I mean, I don’t even know if you’re on twitter or not. But it’s a start.

Writing

Write the announcement blog post. Hone it until it sells you on the darn thing. Remember to Save as Draft!
Write the PR email, one for people you don’t personally know. Don’t assume these people care about your app; lure them in. It’s an art unto itself.
Write the announcement tweet. Silly? It’s like writing a tagline for an ad campaign! It’s huge!
Write the friends-and-family announcement email. This one can be a bit more “you”. Offer individual promo codes, why not.
Write a thank-you email to your testers. An earnest one, like the letter you send your parents occasionally, hm?
PR Kit. A one-sheet webpage, PDF, or snippet with all the basic info a journalist or other interested party would need to know who you are and what you’ve made. Your pitch, company history, screenshots and other examples of the work. Not too long, or you’ll bore them.

Website

Add placeholder endorsement quotes. Hopefully, there’ll be some real ones soon! In the meantime, hide the placeholders.
Make a press kit and link it on the page. Include screenshots, video, logo or such, a short description, and a bit about you. Help the press make sense of it quickly and have stuff to include in their fawning review.
Link to thyself—if you have a parent company website or a personal website, add a link to your new creation on it.
Triple-check all links. You’ve probably used placeholders for the app url and such. Time to make it all real.
Check your forms. Have you been submitting to a test URL so far? Make sure people can fill out the form and submit it; then verify that the data ends up where it should. Broken forms are soooo common at launch!
If you’re using caching, warm the caches. If you’re running on Heroku, scale up your dynos. In general, prepare your website for (one hopes) heavy traffic.
Add analytics. Me, I always forget this until two weeks after a launch.

Social

Add Twitter Card and Open Graph metadata to your website.
Add a short app-link to your social profile (Twitter, Instagram, etc.) You usually get one URL per profile—during your launch window, point it where it matters!
Pin your announcement tweet. It’s what people will see when they check your profile because you have a :fire_emoji: avatar.
Make a promo image. This is totally optional, but a big, eye-catching graphic will go well with your tweet or Facebook post or whatever. I’m sorry.

Apps

Double-check the app title, subtitle, description, and keywords. After that, double-check the app title, subtitle, description, and keywords.
Pick your screenshots. Choose the most representative screens, and an order to present them in that tells a story. Add interesting, non-cliche overlays on top. Have these made automatically if possible.
Create the app preview video. Automate this any way you can, or you will regret it. Set an interesting poster frame for the video—it’s effectively a screenshot!
Generate an affiliate link and use it whenever you link to the app. Oh yeah baby, extra pennies!
Generate promo codes so you can send them out tout suite.
Update your in-app news system to alert the users of the old version of the app—or users of your other apps—that you have a new thing out! Oh, you don't have such a system? Now's the time to start rolling it into your standard app framework. You never know when you'll need to send an urgent (or immensely useful) message to all users! P.S. If you abuse this system, I will find you and I will chide you.